The Black Path by Paul Burston Page B

When it finally pulls in, there isn’t a spare seat left. She has to stand next to the toilet, which she hates. But at least the journey won’t take long.
    Next to her is a woman in her forties with a teenage girl who is clearly her daughter. The older woman is dressed in various shades of blue, with a turquoise necklace and matching ear-rings. The daughter is a riot of clashing colours – a green skirt over blue jeans, an orange vest over a purple shirt, and dyed scarlet hair which hangs heavily around her pale, sullen face.
    As the train pulls out of the station, the mother turns to the girl. ‘Do you like my outfit?’ she asks, clearly proud of the choices she’s made.
    ‘Do you want my honest opinion?’ the girl replies.
    Something in her tone reminds Helen of herself when she was a teenager. Her mother had often described her as defiant, especially where Frank was concerned.
    The older woman nods.
    ‘You look weird. You’re too colour-coordinated.’
    The mother holds out a foot encased in a bright pink running shoe. ‘My shoes don’t match.’
    ‘They’re ugly,’ the girl says flatly.
    The older woman’s smile fades. Then her face hardens. ‘Maybe I like ugly,’ she snaps. ‘Remember your father.’
Statement from Jane Morgan
Aged 33
Barmaid at The Jolly Brewer
The day before he died, Richard Thomas stopped in for a pint at The Jolly Brewer pub in Park Street. The barmaid, Jane Morgan, remembered it well because he didn’t seem his usual self. He barely spoke to her, simply asking for ‘a pint of the usual’. When she tried to engage him in conversation, asking about his wife and daughter, he smiled weakly but said nothing. After paying for his pint of bitter and telling her to ‘have one for yourself’, he sat in the corner, barely acknowledging the nods and greetings from people he’d been happily chatting with only days before.
A few nights earlier, she’d watched him laughing and joking with some of the regulars. ‘He was friends with everyone,’ she said. ‘There was that time he won money on the horses and insisted on buying a round for the entire pub. And his daughter – Helen – he never stopped talking about her. One night he came in with a pet rabbit he’d bought for her on the way home from work. You should have seen him. He was like a big kid.’
Miss Morgan confirmed that Mr Thomas was a regular at the pub. ‘He came in most days. But that afternoon there was something different about him. He must have sat there for almost an hour, nursing his pint and staring into space. When he left, I remember thinking, There goes a man who looks like he could use a hug . He wasn’t himself at all.’
When Mr Thomas failed to show up the following night, or the night after that, she assumed that he’d had a row with his wife and she’d put a stop to him coming to the pub. According to her niece Lisa Johns, who lived next door to the Thomases, Richard and his wife Mandy often argued. ‘That Mandy Thomas is a right miserable cow,’ Jane recalled Lisa saying a few weeks earlier. ‘I pity that poor man, being married to her. She’d try the patience of a saint.’
What did Jane make of Mandy Thomas? ‘I bumped into her a few times at Tesco’s. She always seemed perfectly pleasant to me. A bit quiet, perhaps. But you never really know what goes on behind closed doors, do you? People aren’t always who you think they are.’
According to Ms Morgan, Richard Thomas was a popular man – ‘the life and soul of the party’. She was first informed of his death by Lisa Johns, who phoned her in tears that same afternoon. ‘She ran to the bathroom and was physically sick,’ Ms Morgan said.
Why was her niece so upset? ‘Why wouldn’t she be? It’s a terrible thing to have happened. And teenage girls are easily upset. They take these things to heart.’
Asked if she could think of anyone who might hold a grudge against Mr Thomas, Ms Morgan shook her head vigorously. ‘No. No