Stone Cold Red Hot - [8]

“There’s just a few more points.”

“Fine, it’s a break from work,” she tilted her head towards the front of the house, “there’s a pile of stuff waiting in there for me to finish. I’ve got a big fair in Mobberley at the weekend. I’ll show you before you go.”

“Yes. You were able to remember some of Jennifer’s friends – Lisa and Frances and Caroline.”

“Fluke, really, though I am good with names. I know Frances Delaney and her family from church – St Winifred’s. And it so happens that I used to give all four of the girls a lift up to the Bounty, it’s closed now but back then it had banqueting suites and they were waitresses. I was doing table decorations there for a while but I had to let it go. It didn’t really pay enough and it meant me missing some of the craft fairs. Anyway, the girls would come here and I’d give them a lift up on the Saturday morning, they’d share a taxi back or get a bus into town and another one out again.”

“Were you aware of any boyfriends at the time?”

“No, well nothing serious. Of course there was endless speculating and giggling but I was never privy to any secrets. I was just the next door neighbour with a car. Now I don’t know if Frances still hears from Jennifer, have you got her number?”

I shook my head.

“Right,” she stood up and crossed to the table by the sofa, picked up the phone. “She’s not far away,” she said as she pressed the buttons, “she’s in Burnage. Lovely girl, four kiddies. Mary?” she spoke into the phone, “its Norma Clerkenwell…I’m fine…you? Listen, I’ve someone with me who wants to get in touch with Jennifer Pickering, from next door to me, does your Frances ever hear from her now? No. She’s not said anything. Well, apparently they haven’t, not in all this time. I’d Roger here the other day and he says they’ve no address or anything. It is a shame, it is…yes, especially with Barbara so poorly. Look, can you give me Frances’ number and this lady might want to ask her a few questions – trying to trace Jennifer, you see. Great.” She wrote the number down on a pad by the phone. “Thank you Mary, bye for now…and you, bye bye.”

She tore off the paper and gave me it. “Mary says Frances has never mentioned Jennifer. That’s her number. She’s still Frances Delaney, married a boy with the same name.”

On the way out she opened the door to the front room to show me her wares. She’d put a large work table in the centre of the room and it was scattered with clumps of fabric, jam jars full of paint, trays with beads and coloured glass nuggets, small mirrors and assorted picture frames. Tools and brushes were stuck into a collection of vases in the centre. There was a smell of glue and varnish.

“Looks like chaos doesn’t it,” she joked, “you can see the finished results over there.”

The far wall was smothered with an array of fancy picture frames and mirrors, everything from tiny, stylish mosaic-edged mirrors to padded, frilled and be-ribboned portrait frames. There were plaques too, painted with house names and numbers and, at waist height, a long shelf held vases and jars decorated with vibrant glass mosaics.

“They’re great,” I pointed to the vases, “I love the mosaics.”

“They’re selling like hot cakes at the moment,” she admitted. She edged her way past the table and picked up a small urn-shaped vase. “Here,” she held it out, “do you like this one?”

“Oh, no,” I protested, “I can’t.”

“It’s good PR,” she insisted, “when your friends admire it you can tell them where you got it. Word gets round, it all helps the business.”

“Thank you, it’s lovely. You manage to make a living out of it?”

I thought of my friend Diane, a textile artist and printer whose income went up and down like a yoyo.

“Now, I do. I’ll just wrap this.” She pushed back her long, grey hair and rummaged in a carrier bag for some bubble wrap. “The first few years were very hard. I made a loss for the first three. But I’ve a couple of big contracts with gift shops – that gives me a fairly regular return and the craft fairs and commissions top it up.” She tore some sellotape from a dispenser and stuck it round the bubble wrap. “There.”

“Thank you, it’s lovely.”

“And I’ll give you one of these,” she took a business card from a box on the table. “I do orders to design, too.”

“Swap you,” I fished one of my cards from my pocket.

She helped me to manoeuvre my bike out of the door and down the steps to the path. She wished me luck with my search for Jennifer. “I do hope you find her,” she said, “I’d love to know how she’s turned out, I always thought she’d make something of herself, you know.”

I couldn’t make up my mind whether to keep the mosaic vase at the office or take it home where I’d see more of it. I dithered for a while. It looked great on the filing cabinet next to the cactus and the yucca, the tiny deep blue, turquoise and orange tiles complemented the colours in the room but not many of Mrs Clerkenwell’s potential customers would see it there. I would leave it at work until I’d finished the job for Roger Pickering, a sort of talisman for the case. Then, whatever the outcome, I’d take it home and show it off.