Shadows in the Cotswolds by Rebecca Tope

Winchcombe. A police officer was being interviewed on an old stone bridge, where behind him, amongst a stretch of woodlands, a body had been found. As the camera slowly panned, a woman and a dog came into focus, part of a small knot of people. ‘There!’ shrilled Stephanie. ‘That’s her.’
    It was unmistakably Thea and her spaniel. She was trying not to be caught on camera, turning sideways and bending to the animal – which only seemed to impel the camera operator to hold his lens on her for some extra seconds. The police spokesman was asking the public to help with identification of the dead woman, without showing a picture of her.
    Drew had little doubt that Thea was yet again involved in a house-sit where something had gone badly wrong.
    ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘How clever of you to remember her.’

Chapter Nine
    After his preliminary interview with Higgins, Gladwin took Fraser Meadows off to compose a formal statement in the hurriedly set-up incident room in a hall on the other side of the high street, and Thea seized the chance to talk to her mother alone. They were in the living room at Thistledown, the house having been declared no longer part of the police investigation. The assumption was that the visitors would stay overnight as originally planned.
    ‘Have you ever met Oliver?’ Thea began. ‘I’ve lost track, after everything that’s been going on.’
    ‘No. I spoke to him on the phone when Fraser suggested you could house-sit.’
    ‘Before or after you spoke to me about it?’
    ‘Um … I’m not sure. Does it matter?’
    ‘Not really. But you did tell me you’d dismissed theidea at first. Why did you? Was there something fishy about it?’
    ‘No, no. I just didn’t want you to think I was interfering. I know how independent you like to be.’
    Thea sighed, wondering as always why she felt so chafed whenever a family member claimed to understand everything about her. She didn’t regard herself as unduly independent. She’d never been tempted to emigrate to Australia to get away from the family, or keep her life a dark secret from them. She looked at her mother – the white hair and wrinkled neck, mottled hands and stiffening knees. The woman was old by any standards. The fact that there were now innumerable women twenty years her senior still up and running should not obscure this truth. Her mother had been alive for a long time, and her brain and body might be expected to show some signs of wear. Ought they to be taking the apparent memory lapses more seriously? Were they shortly to be faced, as a family, with the dreaded horror of dementia in their parent?
    ‘Have you met Maureen, then? Your namesake. Isn’t Fraser living with her? Did you stay there last night?’
    ‘Um … Mo. You mean Mo. They never call her Maureen. Yes, I have met her. She’s very dark. Her mother was Spanish.’
    ‘Was?’
    ‘She died about ten years ago. They’d been divorcedfor ages, of course. Absolutely ages. They went to Australia, and then she came back.’
    ‘Where were you this morning? I tried to phone you at home and there was no answer.’
    ‘I was at Damien’s,’ came the surprising reply. ‘Fraser collected me from there after breakfast, and we came here. It isn’t very far.’
    ‘So Damien has met Fraser?’
    ‘That’s right. I said that on the phone, days ago.’
    Thea had forgotten, or paid no attention. Somehow it came as a relief to know her brother had met and presumably accepted the mysterious boyfriend. She still felt in need of more information. ‘But you said Fraser married again, didn’t you? Did they have any children?’
    ‘No. I told you that, as well. She died tragically, only a year after they were married.’
    Thea recalled to mind the murdered Melissa, who had betrayed no trace of an Australian accent. If she had been Fraser’s daughter, she might be expected to have been conceived and raised in the Antipodes – although there could be numerous alternative