LITMIR.BIZ

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building up here at Plas Coch was built by the monks as a shelter or a hostel on the route. A sort of way station. So, we’re just continuing that tradition.’ She nodded at the picnic table. ‘We provide the basics for passing travellers to help themselves to. Usually it’s produce from our own gardens, but we’re a little bit short at this time of year.’ She tried out what she thought was a laugh. ‘And we never quite run to bananas.’

      ‘You work for the Foundation?’

      ‘Yes, I’m sort of the housekeeper and warden.’

      ‘You keep the table stocked?’

      She produced another warped laugh. ‘There’s a bit more to it than that. We run a retreat here. But we’re not affiliated to anything in the religious sense. People come and stay for some non-denominational spiritual healing.’ She walked back to the door. ‘Come inside and I’ll show you round after we’ve had that tea.’

      ‘I’m not intruding?’

      Her tour-guide persona dropped and she looked at me solemnly for a moment. ‘No, I think we both need this.’

      She pushed open the low, wide oak front door, and stood aside to let me through. I stopped on the threshold, adjusting to the surprise. Instead of the dark hallway I had expected it was a fully vaulted space with a red-and-black tiled floor and flooded with light from the two-storey glazed bay at the far end that gave out onto a formal knot garden, edged with low clipped box hedges, that filled an inner courtyard formed by a cloistered arrangement of glazed and timber-boarded, single-storey contemporary buildings. It was a similar sort of architectural juggling as the gates at Plas Coch.

      She led me through to a comfortable stone-flagged kitchen, explaining that this was her private quarters. I heard the hesitation as she suppressed the word our. Another adjustment she was having to practise without cracking-up.

      ‘How long have you been working here?’ I asked as she busied herself with a kettle at the Rayburn.

      ‘Fifteen years.’

      So Jessie would have been nearly three, I calculated silently.

      ‘You can talk about her, Sergeant,’ she read my thoughts, ‘that’s what we’re here for.’

      ‘Please, call me Glyn.’

      She nodded. ‘Ursula tells me that it’s good for me to talk about her. That I’ve got to celebrate that she had a presence on this earth.’ She closed her eyes forcefully. ‘It’s so very difficult to think of her life as something that’s over. Stopped.’ Her knuckles went white on the handle of the kettle.

      I waited for the tears. ‘Shall I go?’ I asked softly.

      She shook her head, opened her eyes and forced a wan smile. ‘No, I’ve got to start adjusting to this.’ She unclenched her hand and went on as if I had already asked the question: ‘Yes, Jessie grew up here. She had no real memory of anywhere else.’

      ‘Where were you before?’

      ‘London. A single mother. Despairing about my future, and then a wonderful piece of serendipity arrived. I was introduced to the ap Hywels, who were starting up the Foundation and were looking for someone to help them run the Welsh side of it.’

      ‘The Welsh side?’ I asked.

      ‘We’ve also got health clinics in Sierra Leone.’ She spread her arms to take in the kitchen. ‘I got this, and the rest is history.’

      ‘I don’t mean to be indelicate …’

      She looked at me questioningly.

      ‘Jessie’s father?’

      She let a reflective beat pass. ‘Dead, I’m afraid.’

      We sat there drinking tea and eating biscuits with the photograph albums in front of us and she told me the tales behind the pictures, seeming to relax into the memories as the pages turned over. Jessie’s life at the Home Farm. The guinea pigs, rabbits and ponies. The first days at school, the nativity angel, followed by promotion from first shepherd to the Virgin Mary. The picnics by the pool below the waterfall and on the moors, the beaches at Newport and Aberdovey. Jessie the child, growing up from skinny stagger-stepping topless and gap-toothed, to a serious, attractive young woman getting ready to move out into the wider world.

      ‘I wish I had taken a little time to know her,’ I said regretfully.

      ‘You might not have liked her.’

      ‘No?’ I asked, surprised.

      ‘She was at a wilful age. I’m afraid we argued quite a bit. It’s one of my real deep regrets now.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘The young think that we’ve never been their age. I was looking forward to her getting out there, finding her feet and mellowing. And then coming home and us becoming friends again.’ She fought back the tears.

      ‘I’m so sorry.’

      She put her hand over mine briefly, sniffled and managed a weak smile. ‘Don’t be; we can’t stop the things that are meant to happen.’ She shifted her hand to the cover of one of the photograph albums. ‘As Ursula continually reminds me, I’ve got all these wonderful memories. I want you to fix these happier times in your mind, and take them away with you as well.’

      I nodded. ‘Why do you think she was down there that night?’

      Her face went rigid and she stared at me before she slowly started to nod. ‘We’ve come round to the and, haven’t we?’

      ‘You don’t have to talk about it.’

      She studied me again. ‘But you do, don’t you?’

      I nodded again.

      She was contemplative. I thought for a moment that she wasn’t going to answer me. ‘I don’t know why she would have been down there on that particular night. It wasn’t unusual though. The pool and the waterfall are just above the car park. That was one of their favourite spots.’

      ‘They?’

      ‘She had lots of friends. She was a popular girl.’

      ‘It was raining that night.’

      She gave a slanted smile, another memory had returned. ‘They were youngsters. They didn’t care.’

      ‘Did she have a boyfriend?’

      ‘She had friends who were boys. I don’t think she had learned the patience to work at a steady relationship yet.’

      ‘Would you be prepared to give me a list of Jessie’s friends?’

      She thought about it for a moment before she leaned across the table towards me. ‘No, Glyn, I wouldn’t,’ she said softly. ‘They’ve all been dreadfully hurt as well. I think it’s time to put a line under it and leave them to heal.’ She scanned my face. ‘Why is this so important to you?’

      I had tried to rehearse this moment. I had anticipated the question and experimented on the soft lies to answer it. But now that it came to it I felt that I owed this woman the truth. ‘This is only my own opinion,’ I warned her. ‘There will not be any kind of official investigation into this.’

      She gestured for me to go on. She was frowning now.

      ‘I think that there’s a possibility that Jessie’s death wasn’t an accident.’

      I waited for the shock. I waited for anger or incredulity. Instead she stood up and slowly walked to the window and remained there with her back to me.

      ‘Cassie?’

      She turned round. Even backlit as she was I could make out the tracks the tears had coursed down both her cheeks.

      ‘Are you all right?’

      She nodded tentatively. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. All I want to say is that living here has taught me that there is no such thing as the unexpected.

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