The Skeleton Tree by Diane Janes (reading women TXT) 📕

was cleaning her top window when she saw them, though no one really believed her – she was blind as a bat, poor old thing. Anyway, she reckoned this chap weren’t following Dora at all. Said she thought he turned off towards the bridge what goes over the beck while that Dora carried on along the track. There was a couple of paths led off the track before it reached Green Lane.’

‘But you don’t think he turned off?’

‘Well, I don’t know. I never saw him turn off. Not that I saw him doing anything else either. They was both just walking. Her pushing her bike and him just walking along, ordinary like.’

‘And they just carried on walking until they both went out of sight?’

‘I suppose so, yes. But you see I only saw them when they was partway along. Then I went back to playing. I mean … I suppose he could have turned off without me seeing.’

‘And you never saw anyone coming back … later on?’

‘How do you mean, coming back?’

‘Well, if Dora and the man were heading along the track towards the farm …’

‘Oh, no. They wasn’t walking towards the farm when I saw them. They was both walking back in the opposite direction.’

‘Back towards Bishop Barnard?’ Wendy couldn’t conceal her surprise. That wasn’t how she had pictured it in her mind at all.

‘That’s right,’ said Peggy. ‘I suppose she must have walked the other way first, but you see, I wasn’t looking out of the window the whole time. Some of the time I was playing in my bed. I would’a had my doll and some books to look at and that.’

‘So really,’ Joan said, ‘it was lucky you just happened to be looking out at that particular time and saw them.’

Peggy laughed, startling the cat, who shied away and disappeared behind the chair again. ‘I don’t see that it was very lucky. It didn’t do her much good, did it? Nor the police. Questioned me left, right and centre, they did, but it didn’t make no difference. I couldn’t tell them what I didn’t know.’

Joan nodded. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, why did it take you so long to tell the police what you’d seen?’

‘That weren’t my fault.’ Peggy’s swift, defensive response suggested someone accustomed to having the world’s wrongs unfairly heaped on her shoulders. ‘That was our mam. She never told bairns anything, our mam, so when I saw the police searching all along the track and in the fields and that, she pretended not to know what it was all in aid of. Said somebody must have lost summat on the farm.

‘It wasn’t until a day or two later, when I was better and playing out again, and some of the kiddies in our street said they still hadn’t found that Dora Duncan, and the mams was all telling everyone not to go over to the farm, that I realized it must have been her what they were looking for. I knew it were no use asking our mam anything, so I went and asked me grandad. He was a grand old chap, me grandad. He used to tell me all sorts. Well, when I told him I’d seen that Dora on the day she went missing, first off he told me to keep quiet. He didn’t hold with the police, didn’t Grandad. Never had no time for them. Only then our mam got to hear about it and it was straight into her best hat and coat and down the police station with me.

‘There was a lot of chew over it after, what with policemen coming to the house, traipsing all over, wanting to look out of our back bedroom window. Our mam wasn’t happy about that. In the end I think she wished she’d listened to Grandad. It never did any good anyway. They never found that Dora, did they?’

‘Even so, you did the right thing, going forward,’ Joan said. ‘It could have been very important.’

Peggy shook her head, half smiling at the recollection. ‘It didn’t half start some trouble between Mam and Grandad. Grandad lived with us, you see, and he liked to think he was the man of the house, with our dad being away in the army. Grandad was that mad at having the police in the house, he threatened to tittle off to me auntie Margaret’s. He was swearing under his breath when the police came looking round.’

‘Perhaps he’d had some trouble with them,’ Wendy suggested hesitantly.

‘Oh aye. He didn’t like them. Our Uncle Billie got put away during a pit strike before the war. He was a miner, Uncle Billie, and there’d been some trouble over the men stealing coal. Me grandad told me all sorts. I was his favourite, see? Being the only girl and a bit sickly, like. Wouldn’t think so, to look at me now.’ Peggy’s bosom heaved up and down with laughter. ‘He used to tell me all sorts of stuff from when he was a boy. Lived in Bishop Barnard all his life, he had. You wouldn’t have needed to see anyone else for your book if you’d have had me grandad.’

‘I daresay his memory would have gone back to the last century,’ Joan said.

‘Oh aye. He died just before VE Day, and he were a fair age then. He used to tell me all about the hunt. They used to meet up at the Green, where the old Grange was. All the nobs from the big places round and about used to come riding up the lane, Grandad said, expecting you to get out of their way and touch your cap when they passed you. Grandad wouldn’t do it, mind. “Sod ’em,” he used to say. “Stuck up buggers. They ain’t no better than us, they’ve just got more bloody money, that’s all.”’ Peggy laughed again.

Joan had closed her notebook and replaced it in her handbag. She caught Wendy’s eye, but Peggy was still in full flow.

‘Mind you,’ Peggy continued,