Silent Voices

promoted?’ Vera had never quite believed in saints. What was it about Jenny Lister that she’d stayed in the field instead of taking the opportunity to become a manager?
    ‘She didn’t want it,’ he said. ‘She said she didn’t need the money or the aggro. And she’d miss working with clients and foster parents. She’d miss the kids.’
    ‘Did you believe her?’
    The man looked up, shocked. ‘Of course! Jenny Lister didn’t lie.’
    Not true , Vera thought. We all lie. We wouldn’t survive otherwise. It’s just that some of us do it better than others. Jenny Lister must have been a magnificent liar.
    The man continued. ‘She loved being the most talented social worker in the place. Perhaps she knew management wouldn’t be her thing. She wouldn’t have wanted to be second best.’
    ‘What about her background?’ Vera asked. ‘Was she local?’
    He looked up from his food. ‘Yes, born-and-bred Northumberland. Went south to university, but lived the rest of her life here.’
    ‘Are her parents still alive?’ Maybe Jenny had confided in them if they were local. Maybe they’d have Hannah to stay for a while.
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘She never talked about it, but my wife’s a local-history buff and came across the story in an old copy of the Hexham Courant . Jenny’s dad was a solicitor, seemed he was defrauding his clients. He took his own life before the case could go to court. The mother lived for a good few years after that, but she was never the same apparently. She couldn’t stand the shame. I think she lived in residential care somewhere on the coast. She died about ten years ago. I remember Jenny going to the funeral.’
    Another woman with a crook for a father, Vera thought. Perhaps she and Jenny would have had things in common after all.
    On the way back to the station, pushing her way against the market-day flow of people on the wide pavement, Vera’s mobile beeped to show she had a text. She’d never really understood the text thing. Why not phone and leave a message? Really she needed specs, but was too vain and too disorganized to go for an eye test, and here in the busy street she couldn’t be arsed to try to read it. She’d be flattened by the elderly farmers and the county ladies walking in the opposite direction. In her office, she made coffee before checking her phone. The message was from Simon Eliot. Of course, that was the way the young communicated. Jenny’s friend Anne just home from holiday. Happy to talk to you. Then a phone number.
    She was about to phone Anne Mason when there was a call on her landline. It was Holly, just back from taking Hannah to the mortuary, speaking in a sort of stage whisper. ‘Is it OK if I stay with her, boss? She’s in a real state. She’s only a kid.’ Was there a touch of accusation in the tone? As if Vera was a heartless beast for not taking better care of the girl?
    ‘Sure, if she wants you there.’
    ‘She’s so knackered I’m not quite sure what she wants, but she’s asked if I can hang around.’
    ‘That’s great then. See if you can get her to talk. So far all we have on Jenny Lister is that she’s a cross between Saint Theresa and Gandhi. With about as much of a love life.’
    ‘Yeah,’ Holly was enthusiastic, glad to have something to get her teeth into. ‘Her husband left when Hannah was a baby. There must have been men in her life since then. I mean, that was years ago.’
    She seemed not to realize there was anything cruel in the comment, and Vera let it go. Vera had never had a man in her life. What would Holly have made of that?
    Anne Mason lived halfway up a hill looking down over the valley, where Barnard Bridge village ran the length of the burn. Vera didn’t much like this sort of barn conversion – a massive structure that left you with echoing spaces and an exposed roof. The design reminded Vera of a church, and where would you put all your junk if you didn’t have an attic? She could see Anne’s place from the beginning of the narrow lane, which branched off the main road a couple of miles out of the village. The lane ran along the Tyne for a while and her view was hidden by woodland. Then the car emerged into open countryside and she saw the building again, the milky sun reflected from the glass that had replaced the wide barn doors.
    Anne Mason didn’t seem to be the sort of woman who would collect much junk. She was slight and fine with small hands, sensible short grey hair. She was still