The Facts of Life and Death

16

Miss Sharpe had read the Gazette right there, outside the newsagent’s.

The meagre report underneath the giant font consisted mostly of caution and police-speak. The police wouldn’t say who she was or how she’d died. They wouldn’t even call it murder. Yet. All they were doing was asking anyone who’d seen a woman hitching a lift between Bideford and Northam to contact this number. There was a photo of a five-bar gate and a field beyond it.

Now Miss Sharpe stood at the staffroom window with a cup in one hand, a saucer in the other, and felt a wave of melancholy wash over her.

The thought of some poor woman lying in that lay-by – maybe for days – undiscovered in the rain, had disturbed her deeply.

Without a face or a name for the victim, it could be anyone.

With a hitch in her chest, she almost felt that it could be her.

After all, who would miss her? Who would call the school and let them know she hadn’t come home the night before? She had only moved here three months ago; she didn’t have a husband or a boyfriend. Her father was across the other side of the country and her colleagues were friendly, but only as far as the car park. Her badminton partner at the club was a sixty-year-old man called Edward, whose dentures had once fallen out during an exuberant rally, and who only ever spoke to her to shout things like ‘Mine!’ and ‘Down at the net!’ He might miss her drop shot, but he wouldn’t miss her.

Only Harvey would miss her if she disappeared – and then only when the Bugsy Supreme ran out.

A loud wooden squeal interrupted her thoughts. Behind her, Dave Marshall was making his usual noise. He was the PE teacher, and so used to shifting the gym equipment around the school hall that he couldn’t even sit down for a cup of tea without a great scraping of furniture. He was the only male member of staff, and treated everyone – even the headmistress – like girlish underlings.

Now – without even turning her head – Miss Sharpe could tell he was picking up the Gazette. Flapping it open like a tarp in a typhoon.

It took him a nanosecond to form an opinion.

‘Silly cow,’ he pronounced, expecting to be listened to, as always.

Usually Miss Sharpe wouldn’t indulge his masculine nonsense, but today she was rattled by death, so she turned a cool eye on him. ‘Excuse me?’

He held up the newspaper for her to see. ‘Hitchhiking. What does she expect?’

A couple of the other teachers tittered nervously. Not Miss Sharpe. If Miss Sharpe ever caught herself tittering, she’d give herself a good smack.

‘I imagine,’ she said icily, ‘that she expected someone to pick her up and drop her off closer to home.’

Marshall gave a snort of laughter.

‘Why, what would you expect?’ she demanded.

‘What I expect and what she can expect are not the same thing,’ he smiled.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m a man,’ he pointed out, in case she hadn’t noticed his lack of deodorant. ‘Everyone knows women shouldn’t hitch.’

Miss Sharpe knew that too, but she still bristled like a hog.

‘That’s as good as saying she deserved to get murdered. I suppose women shouldn’t wear short skirts either? Or show off their ankles.’

Marshall snorted again. ‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Emily Pankhurst.’

‘Emmeline,’ she snapped.

‘Christ, I’m only joking,’ he said – then raised his brows and rolled his eyes meaningfully.

Miss Sharpe was this close to tipping her tea over his big stupid head. She knew that look. Her father used to do it too – more and more after her mother had died. It was a look that said she was acting irrationally, but that he wasn’t going to argue with her because acting irrationally was what women did, and that sanity would only be wasted on her.

Miss Sharpe controlled her urges, and turned her back on Dave Marshall.

She wasn’t being irrational. A young woman – just like her – had been murdered and dumped in a lay-by like a fast-food wrapper, and a grown man thought she had it coming.

Wasn’t that reason enough to be angry?