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 For Alex and Juliet. And for Gus, my companion animal.

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 the stranger diaries

PA RT T H E F I RS T

Clare

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 the stranger diaries

Chapter 1

‘If you’ll permit me,’ said the Stranger, ‘I’d like to tell you a story. After
all, it’s a long journey and, by the look of those skies, we’re not going to be
leaving this carriage for some time. So, why not pass the hours with some
story-telling? The perfect thing for a late October evening.
Are you quite comfortable there? Don’t worry about Herbert. He won’t
hurt you. It’s just this weather that makes him nervous. Now, where was
I? What about some brandy to keep the chill out? You don’t mind a hip
flask, do you?
Well, this is a story that actually happened. Those are the best kind, don’t
you think? Better still, it happened to me when I was a young man. About
your age.
I was a student at Cambridge. Studying Divinity, of course. There’s no
other subject, in my opinion, except possibly English Literature. We are such
stuff as dreams are made on. I’d been there for almost a term. I was a shy
boy from the country and I suppose I was lonely. I wasn’t one of the swells, those
young men in white bow ties who sauntered across the court as if they had letters
patent from God. I kept myself to myself, went to lectures, wrote my essays and
started up a friendship with another scholarship boy in my year, a timid soul

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 elly griffiths

called Gudgeon, of all things. I wrote home to my mother every week. I went
to chapel. Yes, I believed in those days. I was even rather pious – “pi”, we
used to say. That was why I was surprised to be invited to join the Hell Club.
Surprised and pleased. I’d heard about it, of course. Stories of midnight orgies,
of bedders coming in to clean rooms and fainting dead away at what they discov-
ered there, of arcane chants from the Book of the Dead, of buried bones and
gaping graves. But there were other stories too. Many successful men had their
start at the Hell Club: politicians – even a cabinet member or two – writers,
lawyers, scientists, business tycoons. You always knew them because of the
badge, a discreet skull worn on the left lapel. Yes, like this one here.
So I was happy to be invited to the initiation ceremony. It was held on
October 31st. Halloween, of course. All Hallows’ Eve. Yes, of course. It’s
Halloween today. If one believed in coincidence one might think that was
slightly sinister.
To return to my story. The ceremony was simple and took place at mid-
night. Naturally. The three initiates were required to go to a ruined house
just outside the college grounds. In turn, we would be blindfolded and given
a candle. We had to walk to the house, climb the stairs and light our candle
in the window on the first floor landing. Then we had to shout, as loudly as
we could, “Hell is empty!” After all three had completed the task, we could
take off our blindfolds and re-join our fellows. Feasting and revelry would
follow. Gudgeon . . . did I tell you that poor Gudgeon was one of the three?
Gudgeon was worried because, without his glasses, he was almost blind. But,
as I told him, we were all blindfolded anyway. A man may see how the
world goes with no eyes.’
‘So,’ I say, ‘what’s happening here?’
‘Something bad,’ says Peter.
‘You’re quite right,’ I say, counting to ten silently. ‘What makes
you think that?’

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 the stranger diaries

‘Well,’ says Una, ‘the setting, for one thing. Midnight on Hal-
loween.’
‘That’s a bit of a cliché,’ says Ted.
‘It’s a cliché because it works,’ says Una. ‘It’s really spooky, with
the weather and everything. What’s the betting they get snowed
in on the train?’
‘That’s a rip-off of Murder on the Orient Express,’ says Peter.
‘The Stranger pre-dates Agatha Christie,’ I say. ‘What else tells
you what sort of story this is?’
‘The narrator is so creepy,’ says Sharon, ‘all that “have a drink
from my hip flask and don’t mind Herbert”. Who is Herbert
anyway?’
‘A good question,’ I say. ‘What does everyone think?’
‘A deaf mute.’
‘His servant.’
‘His son. Has to be restrained because he’s a dangerous lunatic.’
‘His dog.’
Laughter.
‘Actually,’ I say, ‘Ted is right, Herbert is a dog. The companion
animal is an important trope in the ghost story genre because an
animal can sense things that are beyond human comprehension.
What can be scarier than a dog staring at something that isn’t there?
Cats are famously spooky, of course. Think of Edgar Allan Poe.
And animals were often thought to be witches’ familiars, helping
them perform black magic. But animal characters can be useful for
another reason. Can anyone guess what it is?’
No one can. It’s mid-afternoon, nearly break time, and they are
thinking of coffee and biscuits rather than fictional archetypes. I
look out of the window. The trees by the graveyard are dark even

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 elly griffiths

though it’s only four o’clock. I should have saved the short story for
the twilight session really, but it’s so difficult to cover everything
on a short course. Time to wrap things up.
‘Animals are expendable,’ I say. ‘Authors often kill them to create
tension. It’s not as significant as killing a human but it can be sur-
prisingly upsetting.’

The members of the creative writing group go clattering down

the stairs in search of caffeine but I stay in the classroom for a
bit. It’s very strange being in this part of the school. Only adult
education classes get taught here; the rooms are too small and too
odd for lessons. This one has a fireplace and a rather disturbing
oil painting of a child holding what looks like a dead ferret. I can
just imagine the Year 7s trying to disappear up the fireplace like
twenty-first-century chimney sweeps. Most school life at Talgarth
High happens in the New Building, a 1970s monstrosity of plate
glass and coloured bricks. This building, the Old Building, which
was once called Holland House, is really just an annex. It has the
dining hall, the kitchens and the chapel, as well as the head teacher’s
office. The first floor has rooms which are sometimes used for music
practice or drama. The old library is there too, now only frequented
by teachers because the students have a modern version in the New
Building, with computers and armchairs and paperbacks in carou-
sels. The top floor, which is out of bounds to students, is where
R.M. Holland’s study is, preserved just as he left it. The creative
writing students are always excited to learn that the author of The
Stranger actually lived in this house. In fact, he hardly ever left it. He
was a recluse, the old-fashioned sort with a housekeeper and a full
staff. I’m not sure I would leave the house myself if I had someone

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 the stranger diaries

to cook and clean for me, to iron The Times and place it on a tray
with my morning infusion. But I have a daughter, so I would have
to rouse myself eventually. Georgie would probably never get out
of bed without me to shout the time up the stairs, a problem R.M.
Holland certainly never had, although he may, in fact, have had a
daughter. Opinion is divided on this point.
It’s October half-term and, with no pupils around, and spending
all my time in the Old Building, it’s easy to imagine that I’m
teaching at a university, somewhere ancient and hallowed. There
are parts of Holland House that look almost like an Oxford college,
if you ignore the New Building and the smell of the gymnasium. I
like having this time to myself. Georgie is with Simon and Herbert
is in kennels. There’s nothing for me to worry about and, when I
get home, there’s nothing to stop me writing all night. I’m working
on a biography of R.M. Holland. He’s always interested me, ever
since I read The Stranger in a ghost story anthology as a teenager. I
didn’t know about his connection to the school when I first applied
here. It wasn’t mentioned in the advertisement and the interview
was in the New Building. When I found out, it seemed like a sign.
I would teach English by day and, in the evenings, inspired by my
surroundings, I would write about Holland; about his strange,
reclusive life, the mysterious death of his wife, his missing daughter.
I made a good start; I was even interviewed for a news item on local
TV, walking awkwardly through the Old Building and talking
about its previous occupant. But, recently – I don’t know why – the
words have dried up. Write every day, that’s what I tell my students.
Don’t wait for inspiration, that might not come until the end. The
muse always finds you working. Look into your heart and write.
But, like most teachers, I’m not brilliant at taking my own advice.

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 elly griffiths

I write in my diary most days, but that doesn’t count because no

one else is ever going to read it.
I suppose I should go downstairs and get a coffee while I still
can. As I get up I look out of the window. It’s getting dark and
the trees are blowing in a sudden squall of wind. Leaves gust across
the car park and, following their progress, I see what I should
have noticed earlier: a strange car with two people sitting inside it.
There’s nothing particularly odd about this. This is a school, after
all, despite it being half-term. Visitors are not entirely unexpected.
They could even be staff members, coming in to prepare their
classrooms and complete their planning for next week. But there’s
something about the car, and the people inside it, that makes me
feel uneasy. It’s an unremarkable grey vehicle – I’m useless at cars
but Simon would know the make – something solid and workman-
like, the sort of thing a mini-cab driver would use. But why are its
occupants just sitting there? I can’t see their faces but they are both
dressed in dark clothes and look, like the car itself, somehow both
prosaic and menacing.
It’s almost as if I am expecting a summons of some kind, so I’m
not really surprised when my phone buzzes. I see it’s Rick Lewis,
my head of department.
‘Clare,’ he says, ‘I’ve got some terrible news.’

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 the stranger diaries

Clare’s diary

Monday 23rd October 2017

Ella is dead. I didn’t believe it when Rick told me. And, as the
words began to sink in, I thought: a car crash, an accident, even an
overdose of some kind. But when Rick said ‘murdered’, it was as
if he was talking a different language.
‘Murdered?’ I repeated the word stupidly.
‘The police said that someone broke into her house last night,’
said Rick. ‘They turned up on my doorstep this morning. Daisy
thought I was about to be arrested.’
I still couldn’t put the pieces together. Ella. My friend. My col-
league. My ally in the English department. Murdered. Rick said that
Tony already knew. He was going to write to all the parents tonight.
‘It’ll be in the papers,’ said Rick. ‘Thank God it’s half-term.’
I’d thought the same thing. Thank God it’s half-term, thank
God Georgie’s with Simon. But then I felt guilty. Rick must have
realised that he’d got the tone wrong because he said, ‘I’m sorry,
Clare’, as if he meant it.

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 elly griffiths

He’s sorry. Jesus.

And then I had to go back to my class and teach them about ghost
stories. It wasn’t one of my best teaching sessions. But The Stranger
always does its bit, especially as it was dark by the time I’d finished.
Una actually screamed at the end. I set them a writing task for the
last hour: ‘write about receiving bad news’. I looked at their bent
heads as they scribbled their masterpieces (‘The telegram arrived at
half-past two . . .’) and thought: if only they knew.
As soon as I got home, I rang Debra. She’d been out with the
family and hadn’t heard. She cried, said she didn’t believe it, etc.,
etc. To think that the three of us had only been together on
Friday night. Rick said that Ella was killed sometime on Sunday.
I remember I’d texted her about the Strictly results and hadn’t had
an answer. Was she already dead by then?
It wasn’t so bad when I was teaching or talking to Debra, but now
I’m alone, I feel such a sense of . . . well, dread . . . that I’m almost
rigid with fear. I’m sitting here with my diary on the bed and I don’t
want to turn the light off. Where is Ella? Have they taken her body
away? Have her parents had to identify her? Rick didn’t give me
any of these details and, right now, they seem incredibly important.
I just can’t believe that I’ll never see her again.

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 the stranger diaries

Chapter 2

I’m at school early. I didn’t really sleep. Horrible dreams, not actually
about Ella, but searching for Georgie in war-ravaged cities, Herbert
going missing, my dead grandfather calling from a room just out of
sight. Herbert was at Doggy Day Care for the night – which was
probably part of the reason for the anxiety dreams – but I didn’t
need him to wake me up demanding food, walkies and dancing
girls. I was up at six and at Talgarth by eight. There were already a
few people here, drinking coffee in the dining hall and attempting
to start conversations. They always run a few courses here at half-
term and I like to try to identify the participants: women with
unusual jewellery tend to be doing tapestry or pottery, men with
sandals and long fingernails are usually making stringed musical
instruments. My students are always the hardest to spot. That’s
one of the nice things about teaching creative writing – you get
retired teachers and solicitors, women who have brought up their
families and now fancy doing something for themselves, twenty-
somethings convinced that they are the next J.K. Rowling. My
favourites are often the people who have done all the other courses

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and just take mine because it’s next on the list after Candle Making.
Those students always surprise you – and themselves.
I get a black coffee from the machine and take it to the very end
of one of the tables. It feels strange to be eating and drinking, going
through the usual routine, thinking about the day’s teaching. I still
can’t get used to the thought that I’m living in a world without Ella.
Although I’d probably describe Jen and Cathy from university as
my best friends, there’s no doubt that I saw Ella more than I saw
either of them – I saw her every day during term time. We shared
our frustrations about Rick and Tony, the students, our occasional
triumphs, juicy gossip about the pastoral leader and one of the lab
technicians. Even now, ridiculously, I want to text her. ‘You’ll
never believe what’s happened.’
‘Can I sit here?’
It’s Ted, from my creative writing class.
‘Of course.’ I arrange my face into a welcoming shape.
Ted’s a good example of creative writing students being hard
to classify. He’s shaven-headed and tattooed and looks more like
a potential ‘Woodcarving: an Introduction’ or even an ‘Exploring
Japanese Pottery’. But he had a few good insights yesterday and,
thank God, doesn’t seem to want to talk about his work in pro-
gress.
‘I enjoyed yesterday,’ he says, unwrapping a packet of biscuits,
the sort they have in hotel bedrooms.
‘Good,’ I say.
‘That ghost story. I kept thinking about it all night.’
‘It’s quite effective, isn’t it? R.M. Holland wasn’t the greatest
writer but he certainly knew how to scare people.’
‘And is it true that he actually lived here? In this house?’

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 the stranger diaries

‘Yes. He lived here until 1902. The bedrooms were on the floor
where we were yesterday. His study is in the attic. ’
‘This is a school now, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, a secondary school, Talgarth High. When Holland died,
the building became a boarding school, then a grammar. It went
comprehensive in the 1970s.’
‘And this is where you teach?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you tell your students that story? The Stranger?’
‘No. Holland isn’t on the curriculum. It’s still all Of Mice and Men
and The Remains of the Day. I used to run a creative writing group
for the GCSE students and sometimes I read them The Stranger.’
‘Must have given them nightmares.’
‘No, they loved it. Teenagers always love ghost stories.’
‘I do too.’ He grins at me, showing two gold teeth. ‘There’s a
funny feeling about this place. I bet it’s haunted.’
‘There are a few stories. A woman was meant to have fallen
from the top floor. Some people say it was Holland’s wife. Or his
daughter. I’ve had students say that they’ve seen a woman in a
white nightdress floating down the stairs. Or sometimes you can
see a falling figure out of the corner of your eye. Apparently the
bloodstain is still visible; it’s outside the head teacher’s study.’
‘Very appropriate.’
‘Oh, he’s the young and trendy type. Not Dickensian at all.’
‘That’s a shame.’
Ted dunks his biscuit but it’s the wrong sort and half of it falls
into his tea. ‘What’s the topic this morning?’ he says. ‘I left my
timetable in the room yesterday.’

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‘Creating memorable characters,’ I say. ‘Time and place in the

afternoon. Then home. Excuse me, I’d better go and prepare.’
I go up to the classroom to make sure everything is in place for
the day but, when I get there, I just sit at the desk with my head in
my hands. How the hell am I going to get through this day?

I first met Ella when we interviewed for jobs at Talgarth High five
years ago. We were greeted by Rick, who was trying to pretend
that a third of the English department hadn’t resigned at the end of
the Easter term, leaving him with a few short months to find two
experienced English teachers. A little while ago I looked in my diary
to find my first impressions of Rick but they were disappointingly
banal. Tall, thin, rumpled-looking. Rick is the sort of person whose
charms – such as they are – dawn on you gradually.
‘It’s a really vibrant department,’ he told us as he gave us the tour.
‘And the school’s great, very diverse, lots of energy.’
By then we had worked out that there were two posts available
and that we weren’t in competition. We exchanged a look. We both
knew what ‘vibrant’ meant. The school was on the edge of anarchy.
It had just received a ‘Requires Improvement’ rating from its latest
inspection. The old head, Megan Williams, was still clinging on, but
she was ousted two years later by Tony Sweetman, who had been
helicoptered in from another school with only ten years’ teaching
experience. The school is rated Good now.
Afterwards Ella and I compared notes in the staffroom, a cheerless
place in the New Building with passive-aggressive Post-its on the
appliances – ‘Please help empty the dishwasher. It can’t always be
my turn!!’ We’d been left alone with coffee and a plate of biscuits
while ‘the panel’ made their decision. We both knew that we’d be

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offered jobs. The prospect was made a lot less bleak by the woman
sitting opposite me: long blonde hair, bony nose, not beautiful but
extremely attractive. I learned later that Ella, a Jane Austen enthusiast,
identified with Elizabeth Bennet. But, to me, she was always Emma.
‘Why do you want to come here?’ Ella had asked, stirring her
tea with a pen.
‘I’ve just got divorced,’ I said. ‘I want to move out of London.
I’ve got a ten-year-old daughter. I thought it might be nice for her
to live in the countryside. And be near the sea.’
The school was in West Sussex. Shoreham-by-Sea was only fif-
teen minutes away, Chichester half an hour on a good day. Both
Rick and Tony had made a lot of this. I was trying to focus on the
drive through the lush countryside and not the art rooms with the
broken windows and the cheerless quad where the plants had all
been killed by the salt winds.
‘I’m escaping too,’ Ella had said. ‘I was teaching in Wales but I
had an affair with my head of department. Not a good idea.’
I remember being touched, and slightly shocked, that she had
confided in me so early in our acquaintance.
‘I can’t imagine having an affair with that Rick,’ I said. ‘He looks
like a scarecrow.’
‘If I only had a brain,’ Ella sang in a surprisingly good imitation
of the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz.
But she had a brain, and a good one, which is why she should
have known about Rick. She should have listened to me.
Too late for that now.

In the morning, I talk to the students about The Stranger.

‘You often get archetypal characters in ghost stories,’ I say.

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‘The innocent young man, the helper, the hinderer, the loathly
lady.’
‘I know a few of those,’ says Ted with a slightly uncouth guffaw.
‘I don’t know what that means,’ says Una. ‘What is a loathly
lady?’ I recognise her as the type who makes heavy work of these
things.
‘She’s a common character in gothic ghost stories,’ I say. ‘Think
of The Woman in Black or Mrs Rochester in Jane Eyre. She descends
from legends like the one in The Wife of Bath’s Tale, where a beau-
tiful woman becomes a hideous hag, or vice versa.’
‘I’ve definitely met her,’ says Ted.
I’m not going to be diverted. We have heard enough about
Ted’s love life over the last two days. ‘Of course,’ I say, ‘you have
legends like the one in Keats’ Lamia where a snake actually turns
into a woman.’
‘But there’s no snake woman in The Stranger,’ says Una.
‘No,’ I say. ‘R.M. Holland tends to avoid women in his fiction
altogether.’
‘But you said that his wife haunts this house,’ says Ted and I curse
myself for our jolly chat over the biscuits.
‘Tell us,’ say several people. The more sensitive types shiver
pleasurably but, with the autumn sun streaming in through the
windows, it’s hard to believe in ghosts.
‘R.M. Holland married a woman called Alice Avery,’ I say.
‘They lived here, in this house, and Alice died, possibly from a
fall down the stairs. Her ghost is meant to walk the place. You see
her gliding along the corridors on the first floor or even floating
down the stairs. Some people say that if you see her, it’s a sign that
a death is imminent.’

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‘Have you ever seen her?’ asks someone.

‘No,’ I say, turning to the whiteboard. ‘Now let’s do an exercise
on creating characters. Imagine that you’re at a train station . . .’
I glance surreptitiously at my watch. Only six hours to go.

The day seems to go on for ever, for centuries, for millennia. But,
at last, I’m saying goodbye to the students and promising to look
out for their books in the Sunday Times culture section. I collect
my papers and lock the classroom. Then I’m almost sprinting across
the gravel towards my car. It’s five o’clock but it feels like midnight.
There are only a few lights left on in the school and the wind is
blowing through the trees. I can’t wait to get home, to have a glass
of wine, to think about Ella and, most of all, to see Herbert.
If you would have told me five years ago that I would become
this dependent on a dog, I would have laughed. I was never one
of those children who adored animals. I was brought up in North
London, my parents were both academics and the only animal
we owned was a cat called Medusa who was rudely uninterested
in anyone but my mother. But, when I got divorced and moved
to Sussex, I decided that Georgie needed a dog. A dog would be
motivation to get out into the countryside, to go for walks and cut
down on the hours spent staring at her phone. She could pour out
her teenage angst into its uncomplaining canine ear. I’d benefit too,
I thought vaguely; a dog would keep me fit and allow me to meet
other dog-walkers. Much better than a book club where there was
always the danger that someone would suggest The Girl on the Train.
So we went to a rescue place and we chose Herbert. Or he chose
us, because that’s how it works, isn’t it? I wanted a dog that was
small enough to pick up in emergencies but not so small that it

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somehow ceased to be a dog. Herbert’s origins are murky but the

rescue place thought that he might be a cross between a cairn ter-
rier and a poodle. He looked, in fact, just like an illustration in a
child’s picture book. A white Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy, a
creature made by blobbing white paint on the page and adding legs.
And, of course, it was me that fell in love with Herbert. Oh,
Georgie loves him. She takes him for walks and endows him with
all sorts of anthropomorphic emotions. ‘Herbert feels shy around
other dogs. It’s because he’s an only child.’ But I’m the one who
dotes on him, who tells him my troubles and lets him sleep on –
and often in – my bed. I love him so much that sometimes, when
I look at him, I’m quite surprised to see that he’s covered in hair.
Andy, the owner of Doggy Day Care (I know, don’t judge me),
is pleased to see me. He’s a genial man who loves a chat. But, at the
first sight of Herbert, with his cheerful, understanding woolly face,
I find myself wanting to cry. I gather him into my arms, pay Andy
and almost run back to the car. I just want to get home with my
animal familiar. I stop off at the shops to buy wine and chocolate
biscuits, Herbert panting in my ear.
I live in a town house, a terraced two up, two down with a
black front door and wrought-iron railings. It’s just that this row
of town houses is in the middle of the countryside, sheltered by
a chalk cliff at the back. They were built to house workers at a
cement factory but that’s now derelict (sightless windows, rusting
machinery, wind howling through the iron rooftops at night). The
houses stay on though, pretty and gentrified, facing a meadow
with grazing cows and resolutely ignoring the nightmare edifice
behind them. We’re used to the house now; it’s quite convenient
for school and not far from Steyning, where there are some nice

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cafes and a great bookshop. But once in a while I catch sight of

the factory and all those gaping windows and think: why would
anyone choose to live here?
The slip-road leads only to the houses so it’s a surprise to see a
car parked outside mine. Or is it? A feeling of foreboding has been
following me all day. In fact, it’s with a dull sense of inevitability
that I recognise the car. As I park and unload an excited Herbert,
a woman gets out of the vehicle.
‘Hallo,’ she says, ‘are you Clare Cassidy? I’m DS Kaur. Can I
come in for a moment?’

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Chapter 3

DS Kaur is small with dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. She’s
probably ten years younger than me, around mid-thirties. She’s a
slight, almost girlish, figure but somehow she exudes authority, the
way some teachers do. Behind DS Kaur is a man, older than her,
greying and loosely put together. He introduces himself as DS Neil
Winston. A pair of them, just like on TV.
Herbert tries to jump up on Kaur but I pull him away. After
countless training sessions, he’s still determined to embarrass me.
‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘I like dogs.’
She brushes herself down all the same. Actually Herbert’s part
poodle so he doesn’t shed much but DS Kaur is not to know this.
She’s wearing black trousers with a white shirt and a dark jacket.
Plain clothes but anonymous enough to be a uniform. I’m certain that
she and Winston are the two people I saw in the car park yesterday.
‘Come in,’ I say. We walk up the path and in through the shiny
urban front door. I pick up the post with one hand and direct my
visitors towards the sitting room. Off the lead, Herbert rushes into
the kitchen and starts barking at nothing.

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 the stranger diaries

‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’ I say to Kaur and Winston.

‘No, thank you,’ says Kaur just as Winston says, ‘White, two
sugars.’
The bottle in my carrier bag clanks incriminatingly when I put
it down in the kitchen. I hope Kaur hasn’t heard. Already I know
she’s the one to be reckoned with. I make the tea and put some bis-
cuits on a plate. Then I head back to the sitting room with Herbert
frisking at my heels.
‘We’re investigating the murder of Ella Elphick,’ says Kaur as
I sit down. ‘I understand that you’ve been informed about this?’
‘Yes. Rick Lewis, my head of department, phoned me yesterday.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Kaur. ‘I know it must be an awful shock for you,
but we want to talk to all of Ella’s friends and colleagues as soon as
possible. We want to try to get a picture of her life so that we can
work out who would have done this awful thing.’
‘I thought . . .’ I stop.
‘What did you think?’ says Kaur.
‘I thought – I assumed . . . that she was killed by a stranger. A
random attack. A robbery gone wrong.’
‘Most murder victims are killed by people they know,’ says Kaur,
‘and we have reason to believe that this is the case here.’
‘Rick said Ella was stabbed . . .’
‘She was,’ says Kaur. ‘Multiple times.’
‘Oh my God.’
There’s a silence. Winston drinks his tea and Herbert whines
softly.
‘So,’ Kaur gets out a notebook. ‘You taught with Ella at Talgarth
High. Is that correct?’
‘Yes. We both teach English. Taught. Oh God.’

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