The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5)

away from this place. She’d have some sort of breakdown if she was locked in here for much longer. ‘Miranda did read. I wasn’t taking much notice. I was very tired and I kept looking at my watch, hoping that it would be over soon. All the students had done their pieces and I thought: Hurrah! At last! I can escape to my room. And then Miranda stood up and my heart sank. But it was good. The writing, I mean. Only a couple of paragraphs, but so good that I even wondered if she’d written it. I thought she might have stolen it. We all hope that we’ll get better as we practise, but this was so different from her published novels that I couldn’t believe it came from the same person.’
    ‘What was it about?’ Joe wondered briefly if stealing fiction was a crime in the technical sense. There’d be copyright law, but surely that would be a civil matter.
    It took Nina a while to answer. ‘I’m not sure what it was about,’ she said. ‘Not really. You can see for yourself. She left her reading copy in the drawing room and I picked it up. She’d have it saved on her PC of course, but she’d probably want it back. You can’t be too careful about copyright.’
    Nina got to her feet and fetched a sheet of paper from a drawer. It was A4, double-spaced, and still the writing only covered three quarters of the paper. Although Joe could have read the words for himself, Nina continued describing them. He thought it was the teacher in her.
    ‘Miranda described a woman walking into an empty house. No furniture except one kitchen chair. There was little background or context. We didn’t know who had lived there before or why the writer was there, but in a few words she managed to conjure up such a sense of bleakness. Despair. Just by following the woman as she opened the door and walked inside.’
    ‘How did the group react?’
    ‘It was astonishing. Miranda made everybody forget Jack Devanney’s tantrum in the dining room. The first couple of sentences hooked us in. And from then we were completely silent. Listening.’ Nina paused. ‘Partly it was shock, I think. We hadn’t expected her to come up with anything so moving. When she finished there was a moment of complete quiet and then somebody said: Come on, Miranda, read some more. You’ve got to tell us what happens next. But she just shook her head and said goodnight to everyone. People started to clap. I went to bed.’
    Joe tried to picture the scene. The residents were all tired and this was their last night. Jack had disrupted the meal. Everyone had had his or her few minutes in the spotlight, and tried to be generous when the others had theirs. Then the dumpy, middle-aged woman had begun to read and had immediately grabbed their attention. Another bizarre kind of magic.
    ‘Who asked Mrs Barton to carry on reading?’
    Nina looked at him strangely, as if the question could have no relevance. ‘It was Joanna.’
    ‘I thought she, Jack and Giles Rickard were on the terrace while the reading were going on.’ Vera had told Joe she’d seen the three of them outside.
    ‘So they were at the beginning. But they came into the drawing room later.’ Nina gave a little smile. ‘Joanna handled it very well. Jack here’s sorry for being a prat. ’ Nina spoke using Joanna’s grand voice. If he’d had his eyes shut, Joe thought he wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart. Nina continued, as herself this time: ‘Then Jack gave a little bow. You could imagine him as a performer of sorts. He reminded me of a circus ringleader. By then we’d all had a lot to drink and we were willing to be forgiving. Both Joanna and Jack listened to the other readers and stayed until the party broke up.’
    ‘Did Miranda read more of her work?’
    ‘No,’ Nina said, ‘and that surprised me. I always thought she loved being the centre of attention.’
    ‘What about Giles Rickard?’ Joe asked. ‘Was he there?’
    ‘Mr Rickard didn’t come in with Joanna and Jack,’ Nina said. She stood up and walked to the window. Joe thought she was playing the evening before in her mind like a film, as he’d done earlier. ‘But he must have slipped in quietly at some point later, because he was there while Miranda was reading. He went up to speak to her. I presumed he was congratulating her on the work. It seemed a kind thing to do. He’s something of a celebrity and it would have meant a lot to her.’
    They looked at each other. Joe pictured Miranda Barton flushed with