Death of a Teacher by Lis Howell Page A

staying warm until late.
    Peace. She needed time to think.
    For a start, she had to face something embarrassing. She knew she was in danger of making a fool of herself over Jed Jackson. Her face reddened thinking about it, and the tight skin round her half-moon scar prickled. Why was she overreacting to him? Was it because respect for older women seemed in short supply at Norbridge Police Station? Was it the novelty? A form of maternalism? The fact he laughed at her jokes? Or was it the last kick of her ageing hormones? Her reaction was physical as well as emotional, as her pink face testified. Rose felt like a teenager when Jed spoke to her, and she hated herself at the same time as longing for his attention.
    ‘So who do you think vandalized the school?’ Jed had said that morning in the coffee shop. 
    ‘I don’t know,’ Ro had answered slowly. ‘There’s something odd about it. I thought the deputy head was too calm about it.’
    Jed was quiet for a moment. ‘Mrs Rudder and Miss Hodgson both taught me at St Mungo’s. They’ve been there for years.’
    ‘Mrs Rudder was very composed. In control.’
    ‘Yes, she was. Just like her. Doesn’t like things to be out of place.’
    ‘But things were out of place. There was a great big hole in the window! And why break a window at the school, when you are so likely to be seen? Vandals don’t usually operate on a Saturday morning in broad daylight. I don’t want to let this go, Jed.’
    ‘So what do you want to do?’
    ‘I’d like to talk to the other teacher, the one in the background, the younger woman. She was there when it actually happened. I took her name and address. Miss Alison MacDonald. Will you come and see her with me? She’s away for the weekend but she said she’d be back on Sunday evening.’
    And what did I really want? Ro asked herself, looking back at the morning’s meeting. To go and interview a teacher on a Sunday, my day off? To pretend to be a real cop? Or was it an excuse to be with Jed Jackson again?
    Ro ran her fingers over the ridges of her scar. Much as she loved having her son racketing around, Mrs Carruthers had been right: it was good to be on her own and able to think. She would have to get a grip. Blushing every time Jed Jackson spoke to her was downright stupid, and there would have been no point even if he had been twenty years older. Since going back to Liverpool to live with her mother when Ben was a toddler, Ro had decided there was no room for men in her life; moving to Cumbria hadn’t changed that. For the last five years the only men she had met were doctors, Ben’s teachers and Mrs C’s husband, who was dentally challenged and enough to put you off the opposite sex for life. Maybe that was why Jed was having such an effect.
    You’re an idiot, she told herself. You’re a wrinkled, middle-aged woman. There was only one cure. She opened a bottle of wine and decided to do the ironing. At least she could get the creases out of something!
     
    At about the same time, Brenda Hodgson opened the gin bottle. Then, after thinking for a few minutes, she went into the sitting-room of her cluttered but shiny clean house and pressed the ‘quick call’ button for her brother.
    ‘Hello, Peter. Did you get anywhere with Phil Dixon on the chapel?’ she asked him.
    Peter said, ‘I certainly hope so. I made the point most firmly. He must have understood my point of view.’
    ‘You know,’ Brenda said quietly, ‘I really think it might be better if the chapel were closed altogether. It has such nasty associations now. And there have been doubts cast on its validity, and the validity of the Book .’
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ her brother snapped. ‘It’s a vital piece of local history. Just because one silly rambler goes walking and falls and gets killed, it’s no reason to talk abut closing the place completely. You must never say such a thing again.’
    He put the phone down. It was the nearest they had come to a quarrel