Free Dead of Winter by Elizabeth Corley

food arrived and talked without prompting.
    ‘Issie is a disturbed young woman but in all the years I’ve taught her she has never once missed an art class. So I knew something was wrong when she didn’t appear yesterday.’ She paused to eat some quiche. ‘I also have a strong feeling that she isn’t coming back. You’ve hardly touched your food; don’t you like it?’
    ‘I’m not that hungry.’ He pushed the plate to one side. ‘Look, this isn’t the right place for us to talk and I really do need you to answer some questions.’
    ‘Let’s go to the old staffroom in the main house; it’s hardly ever used.’
    Five minutes later, Fenwick watched as she coaxed fresh coffee from a machine that looked older than she was.
    ‘Don’t worry; this makes the best coffee in the school. Sometimes the older things are, the better they get.’
    He avoided her eyes.
    The machine emitted embarrassing burping noises as the water heated but he had to admit that the coffee smelt good.
    ‘You’re really worried, aren’t you?’ she said, pre-empting his next question, ‘and I mean about Issie, not the coffee.’
    ‘Aren’t you? Isn’t that why you reported her missing?’
    Miss Bullock studied the plate of fresh fruit she had taken for dessert.
    ‘Call me Lulu; everyone does. Yes, I’m concerned; I have been for months. Something’s not right about her. Despite Issie’s bravado I think she’s vulnerable.’
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘Her father’s death hit her badly. Before that she’d been confident, mature for her age. It happened just before Christmas in her second year. I was mother for her house.’
    ‘Mother?’
    ‘It’s a St Anne’s tradition for the first-years, to help them transition from a home environment. Issie didn’t really need me in year one; in fact she helped me with other girls, like a big sister. Then her father died and she went to pieces. He was the centre of her world; her best friend. They used to write to each other several times a week – email, or by post when there wasn’t a connection. Wherever he was in the world his letters would arrive without fail.
    ‘For a year after his death she couldn’t get through a day without crying, but then slowly she started to heal – on the outside, at least – but I didn’t think she was right inside. Not that she ever admitted it.’
    ‘Is that when her grades started to suffer?’
    ‘Yes; she lost her scholarship at the end of her second year. Then just before her mother remarried her behaviour completely deteriorated. Issie seems to loathe Saxby. To her he’s everything her father wasn’t: a bully, opinionated, mean … you name a character defect and she thinks he has it. She refused to go to their wedding. The invitation turned up here at school – it was a grotesque, ostentatious thing, I grant you. She sent a “regretfully decline” card as her RSVP.
    ‘It caused uproar at home. Issie weathered the storm for weeks. He cancelled her allowance so she simply stopped spending money; then he forced her mother to withdraw approval for Issie to go on any school trips.’
    ‘Saxby has that much power over the mother?’
    ‘Oh yes, she’s weak. Calls herself a “man’s woman”; doormat, more like.’
    ‘Did Issie give in and accept eventually?’
    ‘Not for a long time. She was amazingly strong-willed but the last straw came when he threatened to cut her art tuition. She came to see me with the letter, in floods of tears. She asked whether I could go on giving her tutorials even though her mother had withdrawn permission. Of course, I said yes …’
    The coffee machine emitted a cough like a sixty-a-day veteran.Fenwick looked at it with concern, afraid that it might be a death rattle and with it the passing of his only chance of decent coffee.
    ‘Don’t worry, it always does that.’ Miss Bullock stood up and turned it off. ‘Black no sugar would be my guess?’
    ‘Yes, thank you. Go on – you agreed to continue