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One sniff inside the place was enough for the memories to come flooding back, and with them the fear. I rubbed my sweating palms down the side of my trousers as the mingled smell of chalk dust and boiled cabbage hit my nostrils and I was twelve years old again.
School!
At the time, the nine long years I’d spent, first in junior school, and then at the grammar school, had seemed like Purgatory. The latter school’s motto had been Mores et Sapientia — Latin for Ways and Wisdom. Sadly, it instilled none of the second, and as for the first, I went my own way. I always have and I always will.
Day after day I was relentlessly teased, not only for my red hair, but also for my name and my tall thin figure. So Verity Long became Very Long and, sometimes, Very Long, Very Thin. Fellow pupils thought it hilarious; I hated it, and some of them.
I’d sworn I’d never go back yet here I was, not at my old alma mater but at the prestigious Crofterton Girls’ College and, to make matters worse, I was on my way to an appointment with the Headmistress.
I crossed the entrance hall to the open-tread staircase. It zigzagged up two flights and a half landing and at the top were two doors marked Staff Room and Headmistress – Mrs J Parr. I rapped on the latter, my heart pounding, and sternly reminded myself that I was not here to be castigated or punished, but on business. Deadly business.
“Come!”
Obeying the barked response to my knock, I entered the dragon’s den and my jaw dropped in surprise at the woman sitting behind the desk in front of the window.
The office was sparsely furnished. It contained a metal filing cabinet against the right hand wall and the desk with the usual complement of telephone, blotter, and computer terminal. Other than a coat stand and a pot plant on the window ledge, the office was bare. Not even a picture or a framed certificate sullied the pale blue walls.
“Miss Long? Welcome to Crofterton Girls’ College. Do come in and have a seat.”
Jane Parr was nothing like the Victorian principal I’d imagined. She was no grey-haired martinet in a high-necked dress and a pair of pince-nez. Instead a long colourfully patterned skirt, a cream silk blouse, and a pair of round dark-framed glasses under short brown hair met my gaze. She smiled reassuringly at me, as if aware of the terror her position inspired and the way her appearance dispelled it.
Pretending she’d had no effect, I shook the hand she offered, relaxed back in my chair, and took out my pad and pen.
“Thank you for seeing me, Mrs Parr. I take it you know the reason I’m here?”
The smile was replaced by a sombre and disapproving look. She nodded. “Yes. Peter Hamilton, the Chairman of the Board of Governors, has been in touch. I am to give you every assistance in uncovering the killer of one of my teachers.”
According to my information the murder had taken place just over a year ago and the body of Emily Rimmer discovered two days before the start of the new school year. As the only regular member of Crofterton Police’s Cold Case Unit the job had been passed to me at the insistence of George Johnson, the Assistant Chief Constable. The fact that, after Christmas, his twelve-year-old granddaughter was hoping to become a pupil at the prestigious establishment had absolutely nothing to do with it. Oh no, nothing at all. And the fact that the Chairman of Governors was the ACC’s brother-in-law was purely coincidental. Yeah, in a pig’s ear it was.
What’s more, the body had been bundled into a chest freezer in the school’s kitchen. Now, that’s what I call a cold case!
Still, I’d spoken to the Chairman and discussed how best to go about satisfying the ACC’s needs, while at the same time letting the Board know of any problems there might be in the running and functioning of the school. Problems other than a murderer on the loose, that is.
“I shall be as discreet as I can,” I assured her.
She pushed a stray lock of hair off her forehead with a pudgy-fingered hand. “Thank you, though I have to say that I’m not happy about the situation. Not happy at all. Having what amounts to a stranger wandering about the place, asking questions of my staff, disrupting the routine, it’s all most upsetting.”
She bit her lip, her hands clasped tightly together. It was time to bring her back to reality.
“I doubt Emily Rimmer was too happy about being murdered, either, Mrs Parr.”
She took a moment or two to digest this.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I just hate to think that someone here might have done this.”
It was the logical conclusion. There had been no report of any break-in, and the police had fetched out the janitor-cum-groundsman and done a thorough search.
“It’s always possible that Emily came here with someone who then killed her, Mrs Parr. It’s one of the things I’ll be looking into.”
“Then I must hope that you find them.”
“Indeed. Now, what can you tell me of the circumstances surrounding Emily’s death?”
I had read the police case notes thoroughly before I came, but I wanted to hear the headmistress’s take on things.
“She was found on Monday, the 30th of August, by the college’s cook, Laura Cross, who had come in to prepare the kitchens after the six-week break.”
“Prepare the kitchens?”
“Yes. Obviously, the kitchens are left clean before we finish for the summer holidays, but Mrs Cross still likes to go over them again – a fair amount of dust can settle in that time. The freezer needs switching on and there are deliveries of fresh and dried goods to be taken in, and so on.”
“I see. Go on.”
“Well, she was surprised to find that the freezer, which had been unplugged, defrosted and left open in July, was already switched on and the lid closed.” Mrs Parr gave a small shake of her head. “The poor woman had a considerable shock when she opened it.”
“Very understandable.”
I’d speak to Mrs Cross and the teachers when I came in again on Monday. In the meantime, I asked what she could tell me about Emily Rimmer.
“She had a flat on St Thomas’ Road, just round the corner here. She taught Food Technology and –”
“Oh? And what might that be? Sorry to show my ignorance, but it’s a long while since I was at school and a lot of things have changed.”
“Yes, of course.” She gave me an apologetic smile, wrinkles appearing at the corner of her eyes. “Food Technology is cookery or domestic science.”
“Was Miss Rimmer a good teacher?”
“Yes, she came with glowing references and excellent qualifications.”
Which was not the same thing, as far as I was concerned. My own Domestic Science teacher probably had impeccable credentials, but she couldn’t teach for toffee. Fortunately, I had an aptitude for the subject so she liked me, but she regularly reduced some of my less able classmates to tears.
“How long had she been here?”
“Two years.”
“Was she popular?”
“So far as I know. I received no complaints about her.”
Jane Parr answered my questions readily enough, but looked uncomfortable in doing so and I wondered why, when she herself was above suspicion with a rock solid alibi – she had not only been attending a symposium of head teachers eighty-odd miles away, but also on the platform addressing the gathering at the time that the pathologist reckoned Miss Rimmer had been killed.
I watched her fidget, tapping a pen against the blotter, while I made a few notes and waited for her to say what was on her mind.
“Mr Hamilton mentioned that you would be working undercover. Is that right?”
For the first time I noticed her eyes, brown with long lashes, and the way she had of staring at you, compelling you to tell her everything. Well, it might work well with her pupils, but at the age of thirty-two I was an older and wilier bird than that. The less people knew of my methods, and my reasoning, the better.
“In a manner of speaking, yes. My superiors thought it best. If it meets with your approval, I think people will talk to me more readily if they believe that I am preparing a report for the governors on the general satisfaction of teachers and pupils in the school.”
She leaned back, steepling her fingers on her chest, considering my cover story. She nodded a few times. “Yes, I like that. They are used to Ofsted reports, they’ll just assume this is the same sort of thing.”
“It isn’t altogether untruthful, Mrs Parr. My findings, where they are relevant, will no doubt be passed on to Mr Hamilton.”
“Will it help you uncover Emily Rimmer’s murderer, though? After all, that is the only reason you’re here.” She sat forward abruptly. “Isn’t it?”
I smiled. “Of course, though I also happen to think that it is in the school’s best interests to solve this case. You must realise that it will help to reassure the parents of prospective pupils.”
The cynic in me said it wasn’t so much the murder of one of the staff that bothered the Board of Governors as the loss of any parents – fee paying parents – as a result of there being a killer still on the loose at Crofterton Girls’ College.
To my surprise, Jane Parr waved my comment away with a flick of her hand. “Our examination results speak for themselves, our Ofsted reports put us in the top twenty per cent in the country, and parents soon forget.”
And thus had Emily Rimmer been swept under the carpet. I bit back the retort on my tongue. I might be here investigating for some time and it wouldn’t help to antagonise the Head.
“Well, I think that’s all for now, so I won’t take up any more of your time.” I dropped pad and pen back into my bag. “What time would you like me here on Monday?”
She opened a drawer and drew out what looked like an appointments diary. “Ten o’clock will be fine. I’ll give you a tour of the school and introduce you to the teachers during the lunch break. I’ll forewarn them that you’re coming and tell them you’re conducting a report for the Governors.”
“Thank you.”
“Please, Miss Long,” she said as she rose to show the interview was at an end, “cause as little disruption as you can. This is a very busy time in the school year.”
“I’m sure it is.”
I took my leave without pointing out that as well as a damned good education, I also had an honours degree in DDI—Disruption, Disturbance and Interference. If I had to ruffle a few feathers to uncover Emily Rimmer’s murderer, I would do so.
* * *
I walked through the school grounds, past the science block, sports hall and tennis courts, considering this latest case and wondering why, a year ago, the police had failed to find the killer. What vital thread had they not followed, what clue had eluded them? The answers to these and a lot more questions would probably be found in the fat folder sitting on my desk at home. I’d had no more than a chance to skim through it since Detective Chief Inspector Jeremy Farish had passed it to me at dinner last night.
Thinking of dinner reminded me that it was past lunchtime and my stomach growled with hunger, but a diet of pizza or, worse, boiled cabbage in the school’s dining room did not appeal. I could go home to Fernbank for something to eat, or stay in town and call in at the ABC wine bar for one of their lavishly buttered and filled ham baguettes. I might even risk a small glass of Merlot.
Drooling at the thought, I left the car where it was and walked the few streets to the town centre. The grey, drizzly November day had kept most shoppers at home, though by now I expected the ABC, and the next door restaurant Chez Jacques, to be busy with businessmen dawdling over their expense account lunches.
Both establishments were owned and run by my oldest friends, Valentino and Jacques D’Aumbray. Val had given me away at my wedding two months ago, as I no longer had a father to fulfil that role, and Jacques, the older brother and chef patron of the restaurant, had provided us with the venue for our reception and an excellent luncheon after the ceremony.
Since then I’d seen them only rarely and now was as good a time as any to put that right.
I stepped inside the ABC raising a hand to wave to Val, and just as quickly lowered it again. The Frenchman was not behind the bar. I glanced among the packed tables, searching for the good-looking dark-haired figure with the broad shoulders and slim hips and was all set to march into the kitchen and fling my arms around him, when I realised someone had beaten me to it. He stood at the end of the counter, draped in a shapely brunette, and would have seen me were his face not buried in her neck, his arms around her waist, holding her close.
Like a kangaroo kick in the solar plexus I recognised the blue-suited back and the mass of chestnut curls tumbling down and over her shoulders.
My best friend in a clinch with Constable Becky Bowles, my assistant?
Stunned, I stopped in mid-stride, then spun on my heel and tiptoed out, eager to get away without being seen.
How long had this been going on?
I marched back through the streets to where I had parked.
Hurt, upset, confused, and angry, tears streamed down my face as I got in the car. I switched on the engine as the heavens opened and the rain poured down, just as it had done all those years ago, on the night that I first met the Frenchmen.
* * *
At the age of twenty I had gone to work in Paris in the mistaken belief that this would teach me about men, and love, and chic. It didn’t. All I learned was that a man needs a woman when his wife is sick or away from home, that I didn’t want to be that woman, and that the French for dustbin is poubelle.
I might not have had a lot to show for my time spent working in France if my kindly employer hadn’t sensed my broken heart – and aversion to housework –and packed me off, away from the capital, to their vineyards and winery in the Burgundy region.
“May I suggest that you drive down, Mam’selle. In this way you will see more of la belle France, and have a holiday at the same time. They are not expecting you in Beaune until the 29th and I’m sure you will enjoy the journey.”
I doubted that. Although I had the use of a small company car I’d barely used it. Driving around Paris was a nightmare at best and suicidal at worst. Besides it really hadn’t been necessary; the city had excellent bus and underground systems and I enjoyed travelling on the Metro.
However, M. Rosigny’s idea of my leaving Paris with its difficult memories behind me for a while was a good one and learning more about wine, and the process of making it, did have its attractions. So, two weeks later, I’d set off.
And got lost in France.
The rain had lashed down, glistening like knife blades in the street lights. It wasn’t fit for a dog to be out, let alone a stupid woman who’d run out of petrol in the middle of nowhere and now trudged through the small town of Tours l’Évêque, footsore and weary, and looking for help, or shelter at the least.
Unsurprisingly, I appeared to have the place to myself, but ahead of me a beam of light shone out like a beacon in the darkness. I prayed that it might be a garage still open, though knowing my luck I fully expected to see an all-night laundry at the top of the hill. I hastened my steps, drawn on by the sound of voices, and music, and the chink of glassware.
Six men looked up as I entered the Café-Bar des Deux Frères, four clustered around a table football at the rear, while one served a solitary drinker. The air was thick with Gauloise-scented smoke but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that it was warm and, above all, dry.
Water dripped off my coat and pooled at my feet. I shook myself like a dog sending raindrops flying around the room.
“Alors, but she’s wet,” said the man sitting at the bar.
From the back of the room someone answered this with a ribald remark. I blushed, but ignored him, my attention held by the dark-haired, dark-eyed man behind the counter. He looked me up and down, then disappeared through a beaded curtain at the end of the counter. Damn! And I was desperate for something to eat and drink.
When he came back he carried a large bath towel and a mop and bucket and motioned me towards the coat hooks by the door. I slipped out of my sodden mackintosh and hung it up and he positioned the bucket underneath to catch the drips, then handed me the towel, his dark, sexy, come-to-bed eyes holding my gaze.
“Merci.” I looked away. I hadn’t fled from one love affair only to be immediately entangled in another. I flung the towel over my head, drying my hair and face while he mopped the place where I’d stood.
I pulled off the towel, patted my hair down in case I looked like a sodden hedgehog, and asked for a glass of wine. The barman nodded and strode off to pour my drink. It would prove the first of many in the years ahead.
* * *
But not today. Today, Val was kissing my assistant, Constable Becky Bowles.
I scowled at the thought, wiped away my tears, and pulled out into the traffic. As I drove I wondered at the intensity of my reaction to seeing them together and all the way home thought about my own relationship with Val.
I had known him for over twelve years and we might have been lovers once—if I hadn’t persisted in turning down his advances and then marrying Jerry. If I didn’t want him, it was unfair of me to keep him from someone who did. I had never considered myself churlish and the thought came at me like a slap in the face. Did I really begrudge Val and Becky whatever happiness they may have found in each other’s company?
While telling myself that I had no right to feel this way was all well and good, it didn’t stop me from feeling hurt and angry. So angry, in fact, that when I eventually let myself in to the old Victorian vicarage I called home, I slammed the door hard enough to make the windows rattle.
Guess it would be lunch in Fernbank after all. I hammered upstairs to wash my mascara-streaked cheeks. Look on the bright side, I told myself a few minutes later as I pulled on a pair of comfy slacks and a sweater, now I could have as much to drink with my lunch as I damned well pleased.
Yet I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d seen.
Val and Becky. Why?
He must be at least ten years older than her. Not that that mattered. Not these days and not to anyone other than the pair of them. So what had it to do with me and why was I so upset? I had no answer to that.
My sandwich tasted of sackcloth and ashes. I swallowed it down with copious quantities of wine and began to feel better. Then, as I wasn’t due to meet Becky until the following afternoon, I put my mixed emotions to one side and went into the office to transcribe the notes I had taken that morning in Mrs Parr’s study.
They didn’t amount to much—barely a page—and I opened the folder on the Emily Rimmer case for another read through.
On Friday September 3rd of the previous year, Mrs Laura Cross had discovered the body. The police had interviewed her, Mrs Parr, the victim’s fellow teachers, and her friends, of whom there were surprisingly few. There was no mention of a partner nor a boyfriend.
A constable had also spoken to a neighbour, who had noticed Emily leaving her rather grand flat at a little after 10 am two days earlier but not thereafter and not, unfortunately, on the day of her death. The college’s janitor had not seen her, although the front door to the main building had been left unlocked as he had been installing a new sound system in the Drama lab.
The interviews with the other teachers provided little of interest, although doubts had been cast on the statements of Daryll Wilford and Elizabeth Liversedge. The former had provided a fake alibi, but other than that appeared blameless, while the latter had answered questions aggressively after being heard to mutter that Rimmer would be no loss.
On the surface, no one interviewed appeared to have a motive and no amount of police work had uncovered one.
I flicked through the folder and pulled out the pathologist’s report. It noted a healthy female of medium build between the ages of twenty-five and thirty—Emily was twenty-nine. A round contusion on the back of the head would almost certainly have knocked her out and was probably what killed her. The body was not completely frozen, leading the pathologist to assume the freezer was not switched on until Emily went into it. He put the time of death at some time on the Wednesday afternoon, probably around four o’clock.
I thought about this, tapping my pen against my lips until my gaze caught on a line lower down. Emily had been virgo intacta. Did that explain the lack of a boyfriend? Did Emily’s fancy run in another direction?
I sighed and put the folder down. There was certainly plenty for Becky and me to get our teeth into, though if Becky was in the throes of a grande passion, and she had certainly appeared to be, the way she’d been trembling in Val’s arms, she would hardly be focused on the minor details of life—like her work. What on earth was I going to do if she moped around the office in some lovesick dream?
Hell’s teeth! What if she wanted to talk about it?
* * *
Crofterton is a medium-sized town nearly a hundred miles from London. It is twinned with similar towns in both France and Germany. Next morning I said goodbye to Jerry and drove out along the road to Bellhurst, which isn’t twinned with anywhere, though it does have a suicide pact with Grimsby.
Halfway between Crofterton and Bellhurst, and surrounded by protective stone walls, lies Bishop Lea, a mock-Palladian mansion that had been built to the whim of an ill-fated 1970s rock star. It was here I came every day to what I still thought of as my real job.
For the last three years I had worked for Kathleen Davenport, the famous crime writer, who employed me as her researcher and personal assistant. Working on old cases for Jerry was a recent development that had only come about since our marriage two months ago. While I enjoyed it, I didn’t always see eye to eye with Becky, and, after yesterday’s revelation, my relationship with her looked likely to worsen.
“Good morning, Boss, sorry I’m a little late. The traffic lights at Farnbrook weren’t working.”
“Good morning. How did you get on?”
She peered at me over the rim of her glasses from the far side of the office in her palatial home.
“Get on?” I flung the morning post onto my desk before going to the table by the door and helping myself to coffee. “How do you mean, get on?”
“Oh, don’t be so dense, Verity. At the college.”
This morning, KD, as she prefers to be called, was a vision of loveliness in scarlet and black. With her plump figure and dyed black hair, she looked like an overfed ladybird, though I didn’t tell her so. I’m not that daft.
“Oh, that.” I settled into my seat and switched on my computer terminal. “Very interesting.”
“Anything I can use?”
KD had written a whole series of books based around the character of Agnes Merryweather, a Church of England vicar and amateur sleuth, and a lot of her stories are based (very loosely) on real life cases. Cases that I had found in old newspaper reports and then researched. Now, she was after the sort of report that I gave when researching for her.
“I’m not sure, yet.”
I filled her in on my interview while I sorted the day’s mail, the bulk of it from her many fans. She paid close attention, nodding now and again, and saying nothing until I’d finished.
“What did you make of Mrs Parr?” she asked.
“I liked her. She’s not at all as I expected.”
“Well, she’s probably more interested in reaching targets these days than imparting knowledge into those who neither want it, nor think they need it. Headteachers these days are as much concerned with administration as they are with teaching.”
I had no reply to this crushing comment. “She’s in the clear anyway, though I’ve yet to meet the rest of the staff. I’m going in again on Monday and wondered if I might have the week off, please.”
She swivelled in her chair, a pen stretched between her index fingers. “Yes, I don’t see why not. I’m away in London for three nights next week for the launch of my new book, Death on a Dark Night. I’m staying at Bertram’s Hotel, as usual, and won’t be home until Thursday.”
Of course she was. I remembered making the booking for her while she’d grumbled away about book signings and publishers’ lunches. KD hated the razzmatazz of being an author and preferred to keep a low profile wherever possible. She might love her fans, but the idea that writing made her something of a celebrity reduced her to acid-tongued fury.
I often wondered if she were lonely, living on her own in the middle of nowhere in a five-bedroomed house. She had, so she’d once told me, married in haste and divorced just as quickly and had been alone ever since. I can’t say I felt sorry for her and she wouldn’t have thought she merited sympathy. There are a lot of things worse than being a solitary, childless fifty-eight year old woman with a couple of millions in the bank. Perhaps she thought of her characters as her children, or her friends—of whom in real life she had few, except for two or three of her fellow authors.
“Are you driving down or going on the train?”
“The train, I think. I hate the drive into London and Bertram’s isn’t far from Euston. Are you likely to solve your case in that time, do you suppose?”
“How long is a piece of string?” I shrugged. “I shall certainly try to do so, though I may be hampered by my cover story.” And, possibly, my assistant, of course, though I wasn’t about to tell KD that. “If I suddenly start asking questions about the murdered teacher they’ll quickly smell a rat.”
“Then you’ll have to be careful. Still, with an inventive mind like yours, I’m sure you’ll find some way to get them talking.”
I wasn’t so sure. My remit with the police was only as a researcher, not as detective. I was not employed to investigate as a regular member of the constabulary would do, though inevitably I overstepped my bounds. In this instance it might be required of me, by the ACC’s personal intervention in my working practices, but I knew that Jerry had his reservations of me taking on that role and had already started urging me to send Becky to the school if I had further queries after my second visit.
We worked on through the morning, fuelled by constant cups of coffee. I spent over an hour reading up on the Black Death and how it had devastated medieval villages. I didn’t ask why KD had asked me to do this; my research invariably ended up as a single sentence, a snippet of description, or an explanation of a fact in whatever crime she had planned for whichever book she was writing.
At half past twelve she called a halt and we said goodbye and wished each other a good week. I drove home to Fernbank, wishing I could have stayed with KD and not have to face my assistant.
Becky arrived looking morose and grunted a greeting as I let her in.
She was a pretty twenty-something with an hourglass figure and long wavy hair—all the physical attributes I lacked but had always longed for. I didn't hold that against her, but I resolved not to say anything about what I’d seen the previous lunch time. I just hoped we could both focus on the job in hand.
While she set up the laptop that let her access the Police National Computer, I made her a fruit tea.
“What have we got?” she asked as I placed the mug in front of her. “It’s a school job, isn’t it?”
“Yes, the murder of Emily Rimmer, a teacher at Crofterton Girls’ College, in September last year. I saw the Headmistress about it, yesterday.”
“Uh, huh.”
She fed the details in, then sat back and sipped her drink waiting for the results. They didn’t take long and she pulled a face.
“So, what’s come up?” I said.
“You know what’s come up. I’m sure Chief Inspector Farish has filled you in and you have the folder. It’s just an ugly death and a huge slog ahead of us.”
I had to agree, but was willing to make a start.
“What was the outcome of the original police investigation? What conclusions did they reach?”
She wrinkled her nose. “That it was one of the teachers. The victim had no boyfriend, and no enemies—sheesh! They always say that—so they assumed it must have been someone she worked with. Unfortunately, they couldn’t work out who. Great.” She looked across at me. “It’s not telling us much, is it?”
It wasn’t, but I doubted we’d drilled down far enough, yet.
“Well, I’m going in to the college on Monday. I’m hoping to visit the scene, for what it's worth after this length of time, and also to speak to some of the staff. In the meantime, perhaps we can go through the list of those interviewed.”
“Yeah, all right.”
Her lack of enthusiasm was beginning to grate. I opened my mouth to say something and promptly shut it again. What was going on here? Becky was an attractive woman, in a relationship with a handsome and wonderful guy. She ought to be full of the joys of Spring, not as miserable as sin. Had they argued? Broken up? I gritted my teeth as I shuffled papers and told myself that if she hurt Val, I would slap her so hard she’d end up in the middle of next week.
I stopped right there. Dear me! Such violent thoughts, when in reality, I would no more slap Becky than I would a puppy.
“Is everything okay, Becky?”
“Hmm?” A pale smile crossed her face.
“I asked if you were feeling all right.”
“Yes, I’m fine. A bit out of sorts today, that’s all.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Nothing to talk about.” She flicked back a strand of hair, trying to look casual and relaxed. She didn’t fool me. I let it go.
“How many suspects are we going to have to check on?”
Becky peered at the screen. “Ten, though that includes the Headmistress and the janitor who were generally thought to be out of it.”
“Yes, she has a cast-iron alibi, supposedly, but that’s still a lot of people to interview. We’ll have to divide them between us.”
I turned to face the whiteboard, all set to write a list of names when she dropped a bombshell on me.
“Oh, didn’t you know? I’ve been told to come here when you need me, but the ACC is adamant there should be no police at the school, undercover or otherwise. You’re on your own on this one.”