Vera Stanhope Quotes

We don't often notice the people who look after us, do we? Though we'd miss them if they weren't there

But she thought the men’s brains had turned to jelly. They couldn’t see straight. Faced with a pretty woman they all seemed to lose their reason.

the hugeness of the world was a pool to dive into, not somewhere to drown.

Was it only possible truly to enjoy something if you knew there was a danger that it might be taken away?

Vera thought for a moment that she might have found a man if she’d scrubbed up a bit better, then decided that no man was worth the time it took to plaster stuff on your face in the morning, when you could have an extra cup of tea instead.

In theory Vera liked strong women; in practice they often irritated her.

Not unless he crossed the line.’ Holly supposed she should let this go, but she was tired of Vera’s bullying. ‘Ah, that line . . .’ Vera leaned back in her chair with her eyes half-closed. ‘If only we knew exactly where it was.’ There

He was never very good at talking about feelings. He'd been on his own for so long that it was as if he'd had to learn a new language

the light had the clear, sharp quality which comes before rain.

She’d learned that it was important when you were dealing with professional do-gooders to keep calm. Otherwise they judged you. Wrote things like anger-management problems in their reports.

Oh, I’m interested in everything, Joe. That’s why I’m a bloody brilliant detective.’ She gave him her widest smile. ‘That’s why I’m in charge and you’re sitting there, doing as you’re told.

Vera watched him walk to his car, the champagne in one hand, the flowers in the other. Thought that if she'd been married to someone like Joe Ashworth, she'd be so bored she'd commit murder herself.

And once the others started shouting too, she stopped speaking and just watched. Pleased, as if it was what she had wanted all the time. That hate spreading like a wild fire on the hill.’ A pause. ‘It was as if she was drunk on the power.

Now it came back in jagged flashes, like the sunlight on the pavements. She thought, This is what it is like to be old. This is how old people remember their childhood.

An inspector’s role was strategic. Except that she’d always been seduced by the detail. She told herself she’d be back at the station before lunchtime.

Mary watched her fondly. ‘My Clive

You never answered back?

Vera had never bothered about punctuality unless she was the person doing the waiting.

Then the class moved on,’ Vera said, ‘to the Revenge Tragedies. Webster. The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil. Very gory. Makes today’s violence on telly look restrained.

We’d talked about it. About the jealousy that drove Othello to madness.

rooms, easy to heat. Now there was one L-shaped open-plan

Let folk into your life and they started making demands. She hated people making demands.

she’d never had a best friend, no one with whom she could share her dreams. The nearest she had was Joe Ashworth.

It gave people the right to pity me. And in my opinion, there is nothing more degrading than pity.

Don’t be daft, lad. I’ve worked with more loonies than you’ve had hot dinners. And I don’t just mean the offenders.

We don’t often notice the people who look after us, do we? Though we’d miss them if they weren’t there.

last

Vera had a stab of recognition which made her stop in her tracks. For a moment, the woman, overweight, aggressive, seen reflected in the shop window, looked very much like her.

But perhaps do-gooders could wear lacy bras too.

He was so restless and he had so much energy, but it was destructive. Like it wasn’t the sort of energy that got walls painted or the house cleaned. He just prowled like a lion in a cage.

It was much more organized than he would have expected, for a lad with a temper who’d been on the fringes of criminal activity since he was a boy. It came to Joe that perhaps Keane had needed order, to be in control, and the anger came out of chaos and situations he couldn’t handle. Three young kids and a flaky wife might do that to you. For the first time, he felt some sympathy for the dead man.

She allowed herself a moment of self-pity, while she thought how different her life would have been if her mother had lived. Because her mother would have loved her, wouldn’t she? Unconditionally. She would have taken her into town and bought her the sort of clothes the other girls wore, had tea ready on the table when she got in from school, taken an interest. All the things that Hector had never managed to do. It occurred to her that with a mother like that, she’d have grown into a different woman. Softer, weaker. Not so good at her job.

obligation to their parents. She said they don’t ask to be born. The obligation all goes one way. I didn’t see it then but now I think she

was there,

Well,’ she said. ‘They’re planning on going skinny-dipping in the lough in the morning. A kind of tribute to Rick Kelsall. I might go and watch.’ A pause. ‘I might even join them.’ The look of horror on the young officers’ faces made her laugh. ‘Ah, I’m only kidding. About me, at least. The world’s not ready for that. But really, I thought you youngsters weren’t into body-shaming. You should have a word with yourselves.

Not me, pet. I’m on the side of the angels.’ She held out a hand the size of a shovel. ‘Vera Stanhope.

He would have liked to ask if she’d ever wanted children. He’d assumed that all women got broody as they got older. But although he felt close to the fat woman whose presence seemed to take up half his lounge, he thought the question was a bit personal.

She’d play on their sisterhood, the struggle they’d both had to be taken seriously by male colleagues. She imagined reeling Caroline in, disarming her. Beautiful women never see fat, ugly ones as a threat.

Her phone rang just as the launch came back into view. It was Ashworth. ‘I thought you’d like to know what we’ve got so far.’ We. So he’d already started to work his magic, making allies, building bridges. The local team would feel sorry for him, being managed by a fat cow like her.

Emma immediately imagined Vera Stanhope standing there. She was certain it was her, could picture her, legs apart, putting all her weight behind the knocking.

She might as well take the opportunity to take the weight off her feet.

Dan Greenwood was standing at the back of the church next to a large, formidably ugly woman.

fitted coat reaching almost to the ground.

Mary hadn’t said a word. She’d seemed frozen. It had been as if she were holding her breath.

And miles to go before I sleep . . .

Toast was one of the few things he could cook well.

Perhaps fear in the abstract is worse than facing the immediate reality.

Ah pet, I’ve been wandering down memory lane. Not always a comfortable place to be.

The ferret will always get the rat,’ Nancy said cryptically. ‘If it's got an empty belly.

Throughout her childhood this house had been full of talk. She'd thought it was like a soup of words, drowning her. Perhaps that was why she liked numbers best, counting things. Numbers were precise, unambiguous. ‘What then?’ ‘I need to know why she

Delegation was supposed to be about shipping out the crap, but she’d never seemed to have got the hang of it. Usually she was left with that stuff herself.

woman

metaphor

God,’ he said. ‘Save me from forceful women.

Could you do that? Just turn your back on it?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then what's the point in asking the question?

Kemp Methodology.

ridiculous

coxswain.

He’s very focused,’ she said. ‘He decided he wanted to visit and that was it. He wouldn’t think much of anything other than how he’d get here, once the decision was made.’ Christopher had always been like that, even when he was quite young.

What did this remind him of? One of those Westerns he’d liked as a kid. He was the old deputy returning to his home town for the last time to see off the villain. Swaggering into the saloon. Letting the townsfolk know he was back, still alive.

Was anyone else seen in the place? We’re especially interested if they made their way down this valley.’ She pointed with a ruler to the map and looked around the room to check that she had their full attention. ‘This is where Randle’s body was found by Percy Douglas.’ Another stab at the map. ‘And this is the big house where Randle was the temporary house-sitter and where Benton’s body was found.’ A pause. ‘Joe, fill us in

She stipulated that the trust should not benefit anyone under eighteen.

vindaloo

collieries,

dour.

odious

She turned pale and skinny.’ Jill paused and tried to find the words. ‘Like a ghost. Like she didn’t want anyone to see her, to know she was there.

When did we all start texting? Joe thought. When did we stop actually speaking to each other?

David Almond

But no one she felt any obligation to, no one she had to put herself out for. She thought it could be a two-edged sword, friendship. You’d end up giving more than you got.

She saw the delight and excitement Samuel gave her as a wage, her dues for living such a boring and unadventurous married life, for keeping the Calvert show on the road. She knew it wasn’t the way women usually looked at things, but couldn’t see why they couldn’t all maintain a civilized friendship.

I take him for granted too, she thought. Think of him as family, expect more of him than I should.

You know how it is when you suddenly see a person through someone else’s eyes?

I’d been taken in by Danny. He’d impressed me with his talk, his dreams and his plans for the future. He tried the same stuff with Mum, only he couldn’t impress her. She was perfectly pleasant and tactful, but it was obvious to me that she couldn’t stand him.’ ‘That’s why you dumped him?’ ‘I think so. Not because Mum didn’t like him. But because she made me realize that I didn’t like him much either.

taciturn

Holly wondered if this was some kind of message about the strength and importance of nature,

Hadrian’s

Hadrian’s Wall,

you have to let go of the guilt. That way lies madness.

My parents had been through a messy divorce. They were both a bit flaky and self-obsessed. It was all shouting and throwing things, and not caring that I was stuck in the middle. I couldn’t see Robert behaving like that. Kindness is very attractive when you’re not used to it.’ ‘But

Everything seemed so compact and simple. So manageable.

A skein of geese flew overhead,

Of course.’ Vera got to her feet, suddenly brusque, almost impatient. ‘I’d like you to give a statement to my colleague here. I’ll see you before you go.’ Then she’d left the room. For someone of her build the boss moved remarkably quickly, and Holly didn’t really see her disappear.

ANNIE LAIDLER HAD RECOGNIZED THE WOMAN detective as soon as she’d first walked into the Pilgrims’ House. She was a regular customer at the deli and you couldn’t miss her. It was her size and those awful clothes, as if she didn’t give a shit what she looked like, or what people thought of her.

The last thing in the world she wanted was to end up like the boss. Vera was bloated, idle. When the inspector leaned against the desk at the front of the room to address her minions, the fat on her bum spread and made unsightly bulges in those dreadful crimplene trousers she’d taken to wearing now the weather was colder. Though Holly had seen her put on a surprising turn of speed occasionally, not even her biggest admirer – the brown-nose Joe Ashworth – would claim she was fit, and the woman’s diet would make any doctor weep.

Philip had already swum to the other bank, a brisk crawl, insulated perhaps by all that fat.

She was big and she wore a tent-shaped dress covered in purple flowers. Her legs were bare, and on her feet were the kind of sandals that walkers and climbers might wear. He could tell just from the way she stood and stared back at them that this was the last place she wanted to be. She was impatient, and she wanted this over.

It was a big woman with a dreadful frock and a green fleece. She could be collecting for charity. Or she could have escaped from the local loony bin. A couple of extra stone and twenty years or so, and Patty might look like her, if she didn’t pull herself together

So Patty sat in the cafe window while Vera made all the arrangements, and she wondered what it would have been like to have an adoptive mother like this woman. Scruffy and big, fumbling in her bag for her change. Instead of sleek and well-groomed and competent at everything.

She thought of the big woman with the crumpled clothes and the brown button-eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’d like it very much.

Holly managing to look smart and sophisticated, despite her obvious discomfort; Joe intent and anxious, staring at the men carefully lifting boulders from the mouth of the culvert; and Vera – Vera, so big that she dwarfed the rest of them. Sometimes she worried that she swamped them with her personality and her prejudices too, and that she didn’t give them the space or the confidence to make their own decisions.

A young woman still in her twenties, but confident and loud. Big-busted and wide-hipped, dressed in a black frock that hid most of the bulges. Vera didn’t know much about clothes, but thought that sort of magic wouldn’t come cheap. She could do with something similar herself, but would probably shrink it the first time she washed it.

She’d expected a police presence. Vera Stanhope, big and unmovable, and Joe Ashworth, and perhaps the sharp young woman who’d pretended to befriend her the night Miranda was killed.

For a plump woman, she was very light on her feet and Holly was startled for a moment.

She looked through the hall window before opening the door and saw the fat detective and her sidekick standing outside. ‘Sorry to disturb you, pet. Do you mind if we come in?’ And by the time Vera Stanhope had finished the words she was inside the house, the younger man trailing after her. Kate wondered how that must make him feel, always in the fat woman’s shadow.

And of course Malcolm had done as she’d wanted. Like he’d told that fat woman detective, he’d have swum naked three times round Coquet, if she’d asked him.

And of course Malcolm had done as she’d wanted. Like he’d told that fat woman detective, he’d have swum naked three times round Coquet, if she’d asked him. The rest of the evening had been a blur.

Vera put her hand on the woman’s fat slab of an arm. ‘Tell me.’ Tell me your story.

For once, Vera didn’t seem distracted by the thought of food, though Joe saw that she ate the sandwich in a couple of bites when it was presented.

Holly went up to her room, switched on the kettle and made a mug of herbal tea. She never travelled without teabags these days. Orange and cranberry, her favourite flavour. She sent an email to the boss and to Joe, describing her conversation with Robson and the barmaid’s description of the people in the Seahorse. She ate the salad she’d made, and then, guiltily, the packet of biscuits that was on the tray next to the kettle.