The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5)

could use that. You do see?’
    ‘So you’ll have a beer then?’ Jack stood away from Joanna. ‘If you’re here as a friend. If it’s not a professional visit.’
    ‘Aye, why not?’ Vera leaned across the table towards Joanna. For the first time she saw how tense and strained the woman was. The performance for Joe had been a brilliant effort. ‘You submitted a piece of writing to get the bursary for the writing course.’ Her voice was low, and Jack, in the pantry, wouldn’t have been able to hear.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘It was about your marriage,’ Vera said. ‘Your marriage turned into fiction. You told me that and so did Nina Backworth. Very personal, she said. It must have been hard to write.’
    ‘No.’ Joanna was drinking wine from the Bristol Blue glass. Jack had obviously poured it for her as soon as Ashworth and Vera had left. ‘It wasn’t hard at all. I’d been bottling up the hatred for years and when I saw the advertisement for the Writers’ House, I sat here one afternoon and spewed it all out. Then I sent the story off, before I had a chance to change my mind.’
    ‘Did the writing come easily because you’d stopped taking the medication?’ Vera asked. ‘Is that why you came off it?’
    ‘To make me more creative, you mean?’ Joanna was self-mocking. ‘No, it wasn’t that. Not in that sense, at least.’
    ‘In what sense then?’ Vera thought of Jack’s words before all this had started, his fear that Joanna had found a new lover.
    But he came back into the room then and Joanna just shook her head and refused to answer.
    ‘Can I read the story?’ Vera was leaning back in her chair, the bottle raised towards her mouth. She could tell the question came as a surprise. ‘Ashworth should have asked to see it, but I didn’t want to make a deal of it while he was here.’
    ‘I can’t see what that could have to do with Tony Ferdinand’s death.’
    ‘Ferdinand had read it, hadn’t he? And he was known as something of a sexual predator.’
    ‘You think it might have turned him on?’ Joanna threw back her head and laughed. ‘Nah, he was just an ordinary perv.’
    ‘Rickard had seen it too?’ Vera was trying to grope her way through the complexities of the situation. She didn’t care if her ideas seemed ridiculous.
    ‘A copy of all submitted work was shown to every tutor,’ Joanna said.
    ‘Did Rickard recognize you?’
    ‘If he did,’ Joanna said, ‘he didn’t say anything.’
    ‘What did he make of your story?’
    ‘I don’t know. I was due to have a tutorial with him the afternoon Tony Ferdinand died.’
    There was a silence while they considered the implication of that fact. ‘So it might be important,’ Vera said. ‘Probably not, but you see how it could be?’
    When Joanna didn’t answer, Vera went on:
    ‘I could get a copy from Miranda Barton, you know. But I wanted to ask you first.’
    Joanna nodded. She went to a drawer in the dresser and took out an A4 envelope. ‘This is all I have left,’ she said. ‘I deleted it from the computer.’
    ‘Because you didn’t want Jack to read it?’ Vera kept her voice light. On the other side of the table Jack seemed about to speak, but said nothing. Not like him to keep quiet, Vera thought. Maybe he’s growing up at last.
    ‘Not because there’s anything secret,’ Joanna said. ‘And nothing really I’m ashamed of. Except being taken in by a bastard. But you know what Jack’s like.’ She turned towards her partner and gave him a smile that was almost maternal. ‘I thought it would make him angry. I thought he’d decide to go off and play the hero.’
    ‘Eh,’ Jack said, trying to keep it light. ‘Stop talking about me as if I’m not here.’
    Vera ignored the interruption. ‘You thought he’d confront your ex, you mean?’
    ‘Something like that. He’d have had a go at Paul, if he’d been able to find him.’
    ‘And would you have done that?’ Now Vera did look at Jack. The knuckles were white on the hand that clasped the bottle. If he squeezed it much harder it’d smash into pieces.
    ‘Yeah I would,’ Jack said. ‘If I’d found him I’d have killed him.’
    ‘And I wouldn’t have wanted that,’ Joanna said, suddenly serious. ‘I don’t blame Paul Rutherford or Giles Rickard any more. They didn’t turn me into a victim, Vera. I did that all by myself. Sometimes you just have to take responsibility.’
    Vera sat up in bed and read the manuscript Joanna had given to her. The bedroom