AllFreeNovel
Share Us
So, the sisters are in touch. Tanya is glad that they prevented Freya from warning Gaia about her visit. They are sitting in a small but immaculate sitting room: velvet sofa and carefully mismatched chairs, a bookcase that probably hides a TV, a few spotlit ornaments. No family photos on display and no sign of refreshments either.
‘Are you also aware that they have been identified as being the last remains of Emily Pickering, who went missing in 2002?’
‘Yes.’ Gaia is sitting very still but there’s nothing restful about her posture. Her clasped hands are white at the knuckles.
‘You knew Emily, didn’t you?’
‘No. Not personally.’
Tanya gets out the photocopy of Freya’s photograph. She offers it to Gaia.
‘Is that you in the picture?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘It looks like you.’ And it’s true that Gaia hasn’t aged much, apart from the hair. She would have been twenty-four in the picture, according to the date of birth on her Facebook page.
‘Maybe it is.’
‘So you knew Emily well enough to pose for a picture with her.’
‘I’m not posing. I was probably just working in the café. Dad always got me and Freya to help out. Cheaper than getting proper waiting staff. Mum was never interested.’
‘You studied archaeology at Cambridge, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Leo Ballard was your tutor?’
‘I’m sure you already know the answer to these questions, Detective Sergeant.’
‘For the tape,’ says Tanya, pointing to her body cam. She has always wanted to say this.
‘Yes. Leo was my personal tutor.’
‘So you had that in common with Emily. And with Tom Westbourne?’ She points at the photo where Tom is gazing admiringly at Emily. Or is he looking at Gaia?
‘I didn’t have anything in common with Emily,’ says Gaia. ‘She was like all the rest of Leo’s students. A middle-class girl playing at being an archaeologist. I was working class, state educated. Neither of my parents went to university. My dad was an auto-didact.’
That sounds faintly perverted, but Tanya isn’t going to interrupt the flow to ask what it means. It’s interesting that Gaia obviously still feels resentful towards Emily and her fellow students. ‘So, you had a special relationship with Leo Ballard?’ suggests Tanya.
‘Yes, I did,’ says Gaia. ‘Very special.’
‘A sexual relationship?’
For a moment she thinks that Gaia is going to refuse to answer but, in the end, she simply says, ‘Yes.’
‘Even though he was married?’ Tanya thinks of Alice Ballard, who is probably only a few hundred metres away, working at the Little Lives charity shop.
‘It was a marriage only in name,’ says Gaia. ‘Alice was a bit strange, to tell you the truth. Leo was quite worried about her.’
I bet he was, thinks Tanya.
‘Were you still seeing Leo in 2002?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ says Gaia. ‘Our relationship continued until I moved to London in 2003. Then I met Gino.’
According to Facebook, Gaia married Gino Fernandez in 2005. They have one daughter, Inez.
