Without enquiring any further, she gabbled, ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ and hung up.
The next question to arise was how to get out of here without running the paparazzi gauntlet. The front door was clearly out of the question – was there any chance of vaulting over the back wall? She hadn’t even made it to the end of the garden yet – at a certain point, two thirds of the way back, it became too tangled and overgrown with brambles to contemplate. But perhaps if she took a good, hacky knife and a stepladder …
She hurried to the kitchen and selected the most evil-looking of her Japanese Saji knives, grabbed the stepladder she’d been using to strip the bedroom wallpaper, and set off through the back patio doors. Stepladder under her arm, knife held out in front of her for optimum safety, she marched across the less neglected stretch of the garden, until she reached what had once been the orchard and was now a dark and twisted thicket, hosting who knew what.
She put down the stepladder, resolving to come back for it, because this would be hard and possibly dangerous work. Her knife sliced through the thorny branches with ease, but there were so many of them, and the distance to hack through so uncertain that she was soon disheartened. It was going to take far too long.
Perhaps she could just climb the wall a bit closer to the house? But, she thought, she would probably be seen. The beauty of going over the rear wall was that it backed on to the church graveyard, and she doubted that the vicar would allow enterprising snappers to set up their tripods among the lichened headstones.
But she was already scratched halfway up her arms and hot and itchy with the effort of what she had done, and still the wall was nowhere in sight.
She dropped the knife and took a deep breath. Her priority was to get to the police station. Never mind all this ducking and diving.
She wiped her forehead and bent to pick the knife up again. Something lay, not far off from its glinting blade, at the foot of a withered apple tree. It was a coi
n, an old one, not in current circulation, with a hole bored into it, as if it had once been a pendant or keyring charm.
She picked it up and saw that it was a gold sovereign, of a design much imitated even now in the form of rings and other jewellery. This was no copy, however, but a genuine article. It had been a keepsake, perhaps a treasure.
And on the bark of the old tree, she noticed some initials carved. DH and FJ, with the classic heart around them. DH must be some olden Harville, she thought, and FJ his sweetheart. Perhaps they had married.
She resolved to look into the history of the Harvilles and try to identify these lovers, now long gone. But first, there were lovers in today’s world to consider: herself and Jason.
She put the sovereign charm into her bag and turned back. There would be no wall-climbing today.
She put on a cardigan to hide her scratches and opened the front gate to the expected barrage. Clicks and shouts and rude, forceful figures standing in her way. She swept past them all, keeping her eyes to the front and her mouth shut.
Even as she climbed into her car, a camera was pushed in beside her, so that she had to struggle to get the door shut. She drove off, chased by a gaggle of the more desperate sorts until they could no longer keep up with her.
Wryly, she wondered how many had got their shot, and which one would end up in the sidebar of shame. Not that she cared.
There were even a few stragglers at the police station, and these were the ones whose long wait was rewarded, for they would get a rarer photograph.
She ran up the steps to the front door and hurried to the desk. Annoyingly, there was somebody already there, making a very long meal out of reporting somebody parking over his driveway. The sergeant gave her an apologetic look and pointed towards a side room.
She expected to see Mia. She didn’t get what she expected.
‘Kayley! Hello. What are you doing here?’
Kayley looked sheepish and took a sip out of her cardboard cup of coffee.
‘I’ve come to make a statement,’ she said. ‘But I wanted to talk to you first.’
‘A statement?’ Jenna struggled to overcome her disappointment, but it wasn’t easy. ‘Has there been trouble at the youth club? Something to do with the talent contest?’
‘No, that’s not it. Look, I had no idea about you and Jason. Obviously.’
‘Is this to do with Jason?’ Her heart lurched. She wasn’t sure if it was up or down.
‘Yeah. And before I tell you, I’m sorry. OK? I didn’t know it would work out this way.’
‘I’m all right. Where did you get the coffee?’
‘Vending machine, out in the hall. D’you want one? I’ll get it for you. Least I can do, in the circumstances.’
Jenna watched, nonplussed, as Kayley went out of the room, returning a minute later with another cardboard cup.
‘So,’ said Jenna, taking a sip of the scalding liquid. ‘What’s this all about, then?’