The Woman on the Cliff Read online

  Our food arrived. Moira took a bite of her burger and said, “So what else did Andrew say about me?”

  “Not much. I think he was fishing, you know, trying to find out if you were seeing anyone else. Finding out about Stuart seems to have him worried that you have legions of other men. He mentioned his cousin Hans at one point.”

  Moira laughed out loud. “Poor Andrew. He must be feeling insecure if he thinks I’d do it with Horrid Hans.”

  I laughed too. For the next hour, our conversation was more light-hearted. Moira seemed to genuinely enjoy my company, which surprised and delighted me. I even started wondering if I’d have made other friends eventually, back at the start of my university career, if my grief hadn’t driven me to retreat to my room rather than face those overwhelming social situations.

  Or if Elspeth hadn’t come along and claimed me as her own.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I wake early with a bitter taste in my mouth and glance across at the twin bed next to mine where Elspeth is still asleep, snoring lightly. My neck is stiff from the unyielding pillow, and I move my head from side to side to relieve the discomfort.

  My sleep was restless, flooded with alternating dreams of my daughter in jeopardy, and Innes Nevin’s face when Elspeth accused him of lying to me.

  I reach for my phone and realise that I’m hoping for a message from Innes, some reassurance that he’s been unjustly accused. His words play over and over in my head. There are two sides to every story, Ros. Let me know when you are ready to hear mine. I so want to believe he has a story to tell. There are no messages.

  I send off a good morning greeting to Izzy and get out of bed. I take a shower, lingering a while, allowing the pounding hot water to ease the tension in my neck and shoulders. Condensation builds on the cubicle door. On impulse, I write Moira’s name, my finger squeaking over the glass. The letters elongate in watery streaks, until they are illegible. I erase them with the palm of my hand. It seems a fitting metaphor for Moira’s short life, written large on the world only to be expunged by the stroke of another’s hand.

  There are lots of fluffy white towels on the rail outside the shower. I wrap one around my wet hair and one around my body. Despite the noise from the shower and the extractor fan, Elspeth is still fast asleep. Just as I’m wondering whether to wake her, an alarm sounds, and she stretches out a hand for her phone to turn it off. She sits up, rubbing her eyes, and looks surprised to see me up and about before her.

  “I’m used to being the first one out of bed,” she says. “How did you sleep?”

  How do you think? “Okay.”

  “Good. No nightmares about Innes Nevin, then.”

  It’s not really a question. As far as Elspeth is concerned, it’s time to move on. It’s as though my feelings on the matter are irrelevant. She trots off to the shower, leaving me to pack my things. I can’t stay here. My budget doesn’t run to staying at a place like this. I will need to find a bed and breakfast to stay in until Izzy is back on her feet. It should only be for another day or so. And then? There will be no reason for me to linger in St Andrews any longer.

  Breakfast is a quick affair. Neither of us feels like the full Scottish, so we make do with coffee and pastries. Elspeth is mindful of the time. She must be back in Edinburgh to interview a client before eleven. “I won’t have time to go back to the hospital again and say hi to Izzy. Give her my love, won’t you, Ros?”

  I wonder why she came, really. To support me, she claimed, but all she’s done is ruin my tentative relationship with Innes. There’s a lot of the old Elspeth in her still, I think.

  Once I’ve waved her off, I sit in a lounge overlooking the famous Old Course, drinking more coffee and calling various guest houses to see if they have a vacancy. The third one I call has a room free with parking in a yard at the rear, a bonus when you’re on a budget. I collect my bags and go directly there.

  The room is small but clean and prettily turned out. After unpacking, I drive to the hospital and am pleasantly surprised to see that Izzy is looking much better this morning, despite the bruising to her face being more colourful. There’s an array of ‘get well’ cards arranged on her bedside cabinet, and a pink teddy bear rests on her pillow next to Sebastian, who seems to have appeared since my last visit. Izzy is dressed and sitting on a chair, fingers flying over the screen of her phone. She greets me without looking up.

  “Hi, Mum. Guess what? I’m being discharged today.”

  “That’s great, love.” Izzy picks up on my lack of enthusiasm. It springs partly from the events of the previous evening, but there’s also anxiety about her safety when she comes out of hospital. She guesses this immediately.

  “You don’t have to worry about me, Mum. There’s good security in my hall and I’ll make sure I don’t go out unaccompanied until the police tell me it’s safe. They’ve been over it all with me.”

  This is only slightly reassuring. I remind myself not to allow my fears over her safety to knock her confidence. I nod and smile. Izzy says, “With all that’s been going on, I forgot to ask if you were enjoying your stay with your friends here.” I don’t answer at first. There’s a beeping sound from further down the ward that distracts my attention. “Mum?”

  “Oh! Sorry, Iz. Yes, everything’s fine. They’re good people.”

  “Cool. Will you be staying for long?”

  Will I? Is there any point in my staying, now that I don’t know if Innes was telling the truth about Menzies?

  “Maybe a couple of days,” I tell her. “At least until I know you’re okay with me not being around.”

  A nurse arrives and confirms that Izzy will be discharged as soon as her prescription for painkillers arrives, which happens five minutes later. I drive my daughter to her hall of residence, taking care to go slowly, mindful of the pain that any sudden jolt might cause her. It reminds me of that first trip home from the hospital with her when she was barely two days old, Doug driving, me sitting in the back seat, Izzy strapped into her little baby carrier next to me. I’d held my arm across her car seat all the way, not trusting her safety to the thin straps securing her to the seat.

  It’s a wrench to leave her, but at least she’s not alone when I go. Two friends turn up ten minutes after we arrive at her room. One is her new ‘bestie,’ a slim blonde girl with a Mancunian accent. She assures me that she won’t let Izzy out of her sight.

  Alone outside Izzy’s hall of residence, I feel at a loss for what to do next. The house on North Street exerts a pull on me and, after a short walk, I find myself standing on the street opposite the front door. I doubt that it’s let to students now. There’s a buggy in the alleyway running alongside the house, a vase of orchids on the living-room windowsill. It’s a family home now.

  Resisting an urge to knock on the door, I walk on, heading in the direction of the West Sands. It’s a cold, blustery day. The North Sea roils, frothing with yellow foam from the churned-up sand. Gulls screech and swoop over the turbulent waves, white streaks in the relentless vista of grey water and sky. The air feels moist and tastes of salt. Before me the West Sands stretch into the distance, two miles of continuous sandy beach backed by dunes planted with spindly marram grass.

  I walk along the beach to clear my head, battling against the wind that seems to howl from all directions, sand in my teeth. Afterwards, chilled to the bone and in need of coffee, I head back into town.

  Market Street is bustling with afternoon shoppers, and the cafés all seem to be doing a roaring trade. I choose one that seems less busy than the others and select a table by the window where I can distract myself by people-watching.

  Snippets of conversation reach my ears. The couple to my right are considering adopting a child after another fruitless round of IVF. At the table behind me, two lecturers from the university are discussing the standard of student essays. It isn’t possible to follow the thread of two different conversations, and when the couple get up to leave, I realise I will never know what decision th
ey reached. They are replaced by a group of students talking loudly about the latest series they have been binge-watching on Netflix.

  I close my eyes and massage my temples, and the voices seem to become at once more amplified and less distinct, a cacophony of background noise. I sit like that, eyes closed for several moments, until my phone rings, making me start. It’s an unknown number.

  “Hello,” I say. It’s difficult to hear because of the noise and I press the phone against my ear. That’s why I think I’ve heard wrongly when the caller greets me.

  “Hi, Ros. It’s Lucy.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Inspector Menzies was furious when he discovered that we’d kept Moira’s affair with Andrew Kelso from him. He turned up at our door the day after his initial visit, demanding to know what else we’d been hiding. I remember thinking that he must be an excellent detective to have uncovered the details of their secret affair so rapidly.

  Even Elspeth was impressed. “Amazing. He doesn’t strike you as being exactly Brain of Britain material, does he?”

  Lucy agreed. “I bet it was his handsome young constable who figured it out.”

  “I thought all police officers were just pigs to you,” Shona said.

  “Some pigs are smarter than others. And better looking.”

  I’d also noticed that PC Innes Nevin was good-looking. And I agreed that what Lucy said was probably right. Nevin had come across as far more intelligent than the plodding Menzies.

  It was PC Nevin who brought us the shocking news of Stuart Brogan’s suicide. Elspeth, Shona, Lucy, and I were watching TV when he knocked on our door. Shona let him in. I turned off the TV. I could tell by the solemn look on his face that, once again, he had bad news to deliver. A stunned silence followed his words.

  “So, Stuart Brogan killed Moira?” PC Nevin gave no response to Elspeth’s question.

  “Did he leave a note?” I asked.

  “Yes. There was a note.”

  “What did it say?”

  Elspeth answered my question. “I don’t suppose PC Nevin is allowed to tell us.”

  “That’s correct,” he said. “For the time being.”

  “But he confessed, didn’t he?” Elspeth said. “In the note, I mean. He must have done — otherwise why take his own life? He knew it was only a matter of time before the police worked it out.” We took Nevin’s silence for assent.

  “How do you know Stuart wrote that note himself? You’ll continue your investigation, won’t you”? I said.

  There was a slight pause before he answered. “We found a ring in Brogan’s jacket pocket. It matches the description of the one we were told your friend always wore. It was missing from her finger when her body was found.”

  “Her grandmother’s wedding ring,” Lucy said in a hushed voice. “It had an inscription on the inside.”

  “Aye, that’s the one,” PC Nevin said.

  “I can’t believe it,” Lucy said.

  “Why not?” Shona said hotly. “Moira said she was avoiding him after he found out about Andrew because she was afraid of his temper. He’d have beaten Andrew up badly if Moira hadn’t got between them that time.”

  “But surely the fact that he had the ring doesn’t prove he killed Moira?” I said. “She might have left it at his house, or . . . or something.”

  “No,” Shona and Lucy said at once. Shona explained, “Moira was wearing the ring when she left the house the day she disappeared. She’d mislaid it. Lucy helped her look for it.”

  “That’s right,” Lucy said. “I remember that too. It was on the kitchen windowsill. She’d taken it off to put some hand cream on and couldn’t remember where she’d left it.”

  “Thank you,” PC Nevin said, and made a note of it.

  We learned quite soon afterwards that the police were convinced of Stuart Brogan’s guilt. The discovery of Moira’s ring in his pocket, his violent behaviour towards Andrew Kelso, and the fact that he had had no alibi for the time of her death seemed to satisfy the police that he was their man. The case was closed.

  Moira’s parents wrote to us to say that they were planning on having their daughter buried at a private service when her body was released by the police. It was their wish to have only close family members present, and they hoped we would respect their wishes and not try to attend. That way, they hoped, the reporters would also stay away.

  “So that’s it then,” Shona said, summing up how swiftly the whole event had taken place. Barely a fortnight had passed since Menzies and Nevin had knocked on our door to deliver their shocking news.

  We were all deeply affected by Moira’s murder, and by Stuart Brogan’s suicide. Lucy seemed to unravel more and more in the weeks that followed the two shocking occurrences. Over and over, she would repeat, “It’s not fair. It’s not right. She should still be here, living her life. Someone like her — clever, beautiful. She should be here, looking forward to a wonderful life. It just makes you realise how . . . how futile it all is.”

  We did our best to console her but as the weeks passed, our time was again taken up with work and other things. It wasn’t that we forgot Moira, just that we carried on with our lives, finding our own ways of coping without unravelling completely. It took us a while to realise that Lucy wasn’t coping so well.

  “Has anyone else noticed that something’s going on with Lucy?” Shona asked one day when she, Elspeth and I were assembled in the kitchen. It was a month or so after Moira’s murder and Stuart Brogan’s suicide.

  “What do you mean?” Elspeth said. She didn’t seem particularly interested.

  “Well, she’s been a bit quiet and withdrawn. I know she’s been getting up late and skipping a lot of lectures,” I commented.

  “Lucy’s moods have always been all over the place,” Elspeth said, a bit unkindly. “I’ll grant she’s been on the quiet side lately, but that’s almost a relief from the times when she chatters incessantly.”

  “You’re heartless,” Shona said.

  “I’ve been concerned about her too, to tell the truth,” I admitted. I’d had some experience of grief, what it does to you, and I recognised some of the signs in Lucy. But I was convinced that it wasn’t just grief over Moira that was bothering her. “I think she might be a bit depressed.”

  “That’s not what I’d call it.” Elspeth, ungracious as ever, put her index finger to the side of her head and twirled it. “She’s bonkers.”

  Shona looked thoughtful. “I know she’s got a boyfriend now. Maybe she’s just preoccupied with him.” This was news to me and, judging by Elspeth’s expression, she didn’t know anything about a boyfriend either.

  “I think his name’s Alec, but don’t quote me on that,” Shona said.

  “What’s he like?” Elspeth’s curiosity had been piqued.

  “Shortish. Skinny. A bit punky. I saw them together the week before last and I asked her about him. She asked me not to tell anyone else yet, because it was early days.”

  “Huh.” Elspeth was put out at being left out of the loop. Turning to me, she asked huffily, “Did you know?”

  “No! I’m as surprised as you are. Come on, Shona, let’s have some details.”

  “Okay but act surprised when she tells you. Lucy was walking home from the pub one night when she heard a voice behind her asking for a light. She turned around and came face to face with a boy with spiky hair and multiple piercings. Oh, and he was wearing tight-fitting tartan trousers and a pair of Doc Marten boots. And a denim jacket covered in badges, some of which were identical to the ones on Lucy’s duffel bag.” Shona giggled. “She even told me which ones, but I can’t remember.”

  We all smiled. It sounded like Lucy had met her soulmate.

  “Lucy slung said duffel bag off her shoulder to root around for her box of Swan Vestas. In return, the guy offered to make her a rollie. They sat together in the graveyard of the cathedral. He took out a packet of Rizlas and a rusted tobacco tin with an olive-green lid, exactly the same as hers! He was a
bit inexpert at rolling the fags, apparently. Lucy said she could have done a better job herself but she didn’t comment.”

  We nodded. Lucy seldom criticised other people.

  Shona continued. “After they’d been smoking for a few minutes, he asked Lucy if she was a student. When she told him she was from Yorkshire, he said, ‘Dinna ken where that is.’” Shona said this in her best Fife accent. “Then he said, ‘You’re no wan o’ they posh gits, are ye?’”

  “He thought she might be a yah? That’s hilarious,” Elspeth said. “I bet it was her English accent.”

  ‘Yah,’ was the name given to a certain type of wealthy, public school-educated, usually English student at St Andrews. They were distinguishable by the way they dressed, their clipped, upper-class accents and air of privilege. Lucy couldn’t have been less like a yah if she’d tried.

  “Probably. Apparently, Lucy found his accent almost unintelligible, but they still managed a tentative conversation.” There was a pause. “Not sure I should tell you the next bit,” Shona said, to be met with howls of protest. She looked at Elspeth. “Don’t tease her about it, alright?”

  “Pinkie promise,” Elspeth said, crossing her little fingers.

  Shona looked doubtful but carried on. “Turns out he’s still at school,” she said in a hushed tone, and waited for the inevitable squeals of delight to quieten down.

  “How much younger than Lucy is he?” Elspeth asked.

  “He’s seventeen. Nearly eighteen.” Lucy was twenty. At that age, the gap seemed enormous. “I wish I hadn’t told you. No jokes about cradle-snatching, Elspeth.”

  “Well, I for one am pleased she’s hooked up with a kindred spirit. But surely if that’s the case, she should be in a better frame of mind,” I said.