The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5)

who had nervous breakdowns when the rules let them down.
    ‘I didn’t have the care of Lucy,’ he said. ‘When Margaret left, she married again very quickly. They formed a new family. The children even took their stepfather’s name. But she was always my baby.’
    ‘Lucy must have passed her exams,’ Vera said. ‘She went off to university.’
    ‘To do English in Manchester,’ Winterton said in the same frantic tone. ‘At first she did well. She phoned me occasionally, full of her news. The end of the next year she came home for a bit and I saw her then. I thought she’d lost weight. Later I found out she’d already started taking heroin. I should have realized, shouldn’t I?’ He paused for breath and scraped his nails over the table. ‘A police officer with all those years of experience. I should have seen the signs.’
    ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Vera said.
    But Winterton seemed lost in thought and didn’t hear her. ‘She told me she was writing a novel,’ he said, his voice suddenly bright. ‘I was so proud of her. It explained her nerviness, you see. Writers aren’t like everyone else. They’re more sensitive.’
    Vera said nothing.
    ‘She finished her degree,’ he said. ‘I went down for the graduation, but they didn’t let me in. There were only two tickets and Margaret and her husband took those. Lucy came back to Carlisle, but she never really settled. She was still working on her book.’ He looked at Vera. ‘She had her heart set on doing an MA at St Ursula’s. An obsession. She’d seen Tony Ferdinand on the television. She thought he could get her a publisher.’ The galloping words seemed too much for him and he lapsed into silence, rested his chin on his chest.
    ‘What happened next, Mark?’ Vera needed it for the tape recorder.
    He lifted his head, took off his glasses again and looked at her with his wild eyes. ‘She got a place on the course,’ he said. ‘I was so pleased. I thought it would make her well again. I took her down to London and she was as excited as a small child. “This is my fresh start.” That’s what she said when I dropped her off.’
    ‘And then?’
    Vera knew what had happened. She’d spent a couple of hours reading the student records in the St Ursula archives. The change of surname had thrown her at first – that had wasted them all a lot of time – but she’d known what she was looking for and she could be persistent when she set her mind to it.
    ‘They killed her,’ Winterton said.
    Vera stared out of the window. The room was on the first floor of the police station. It looked out over the river. She saw the street lamps on the other side. Soon it would be daylight and the town would be busy with folk on their way to work. She turned back to the room. ‘That’s not entirely true, is it, Mark? She killed herself.’
    ‘They tormented her,’ he said. ‘They tore her apart.’
    ‘It was a tough regime,’ Vera said. ‘Not everyone could cope. Even Nina Backworth left before she completed the course.’
    ‘Her!’ Winterton shot to his feet and was rearing over her. ‘She was one of the tormenters. Lucy thought she was a friend – her only friend in the place – and Backworth ended up killing her. It was the worst sort of betrayal.’
    ‘Tell me about it,’ Vera said.
    ‘They had this session,’ he went on. ‘Everyone on the course there. Ferdinand had brought in a visiting tutor, an old friend. And they chose Lucy’s work for discussion. There she sat facing them all. Like it was some sort of interrogation. And they picked her writing apart. Sentence after sentence for three hours. She’d put her heart into that book. By destroying it, they were destroying her.’ He paused. ‘She told me that it was like exposing herself, as if her skin was made of glass and they could see into her soul.’
    ‘What was the name of the visiting tutor?’ Vera asked. She knew fine well, but she needed it for the tape.
    ‘Miranda Barton.’ He spat out the name. ‘The great novelist. The cruellest woman.’
    ‘Lucy left.’
    ‘That evening. She didn’t even go back to her room to pick up her stuff. She phoned me about midnight. She’d tried earlier, but I was at work and her mother was away on a cruise with her fancy man.’ He paused. ‘She was crying as she told me about it. Sobbing. And there was nothing I could do to help.’ He looked up. ‘I never heard from her again. I tried to get hold of her, but there was no