possibly do to have made you leave home? Just because he had different views to you? There are thousands of teenagers out there who don’t agree with their parents – hell, I was one of them. That’s life, but I think it goes beyond that.’
‘Why do you care?’
Claire paused, kept her face neutral. ‘Humour me.’
Chloe sighed.
Music and cheering could be heard from the stage area up the hall. She wished she was back out there fleecing the men for all they were worth. Anything sounded better than being here, facing this woman with her cold eyes and hard stare.
‘Ever since I can remember,’ she said, ‘Dad was preaching his faith daily. Not just when we needed to hear it but over trivial things. I can remember him grounding me when I ate an extra slice of bread. He made me watch all these films about third-world poverty.’
She sneered at the memory.
‘It ranged from things like that, to keeping me a prisoner when I wanted to go out, especially if it was a boy I wanted to see. He’d shout at me, calling me a whore for Satan, shit like that.’
She paused.
‘With Dad, it’s all about control. If he can’t get inside here,’ she said, tapping a finger against her temple, ‘he’ll attack you here.’ She lowered her hand to her heart. ‘I never let him get close enough to do any real damage and in some ways, that just made him worse. It was and always has been his way or no way.’
An uncomfortable feeling washed over her body. ‘Then of course there was the Manor house which we spent a lot of time in. It brought out the worst in him and me.’
‘Manor house?’
Chloe pulled a face of disgust as she remembered. ‘Yeah, Shrovesbury Manor, owned by Father Manuela…disgusting man. A lot of children at the local parishes attend there for what my father called “extra direction in the fulfilment of divine enlightenment”.’
She looked at Claire. ‘I refused to go when I was older.’ She let out a mock laugh. ‘Oh, Daddy loved that… A woman, thinking for herself and disobeying him?’ She shook her head. ‘That was never a good thing. It was like brainwashing and something about all of it didn’t feel right.’
Claire shifted in her seat. ‘In what way didn’t it feel right?’
‘It just…didn’t. The atmosphere was horrible. I still have flashbacks. I remember other children used to tell stories, rumours really. Some of us were scared of Father Manuela. There’s also this Chapel that he had built in the grounds, and the other kids used to scare us younger ones with stories of children going missing there. I never believed that…at least I kept telling myself I didn’t… Father Wainwright was there a lot of the time as well,’ she added, watching Claire’s reaction.
Claire stared hard at Chloe.
She didn’t know how much of this was truth and how much was just the ramblings of a bitter young girl trying to score points against her father. After all, who was going to believe an exotic dancer against men of the cloth? And besides, Mark Jenkins had a very good reputation in the community, as did Father Wainwright.
Something didn’t sit right about any of this or the circumstances of Wainwright’s death. Claire had known this from the start.
She threw Chloe a curve ball. ‘What about the foster children?’
Chloe shot her a surprised look. She was caught off guard by the question, and Claire saw the dread that appeared in her eyes.
‘How’d you know about them?’ Chloe’s voice croaked from the back of her throat.
‘It flagged up on various systems.’
‘Then you don’t need me to tell you about them.’
‘Most of the information’s missing. A lot of data was lost when social services merged various software.’
Chloe’s eyes narrowed a fraction. ‘Can’t you ask my father?’
Claire stared at her in silence. This was a tried and tested method for her. She knew the pressure would entice Chloe to talk. She would feel obliged to. After an intense minute, Chloe sighed, giving in.
‘Mum and Dad took in foster children to try and make up for me being such a failure in their eyes.’
‘They said that?’
‘They didn’t have to. I saw it on their faces every day.’ A tear began to slowly roll down her cheek. She sniffed and wiped the back of her hand over her eyes, smearing her make-up.
‘Did they experience the same treatment from your father?’
Chloe wiped her nose and tried to pull herself together.
‘They fostered three children. I have nothing to do with them and I don’t know where they are. I was never close to them. After all, they were there to replace me, someone else for Dad to mould into the perfect child.’
She paused to think, searching for a memory she’d tried hard to lock away. ‘I was almost six when they got the first kid, Stephen. He was with us for less than a year. Dad thought he could “save” him or whatever,’ she said, shaking her head, embarrassed by her own words.
‘He left soon after he hit sixteen anyway, couldn’t take the religion either. I was only young but I think he was like Dad’s experiment or something. He’d been passed from foster home to foster home since he was very young. He had issues. Dad got another kid just before Stephen left, called Emily. She might still be with them.’
Claire was making additional notes. She knew about Mark Jenkins’s foster children, but only the basics of their ages and where they’d come from.
Anything else she could pick from Chloe’s scarred mind was a bonus. She didn’t know if any of this would be relevant but she was in need of a lead…and a potential motive for the death of Father Wainwright. She looked up at Chloe, who was now staring at her feet.
‘You said there were three foster children?’
‘The third was Amelia. She came to us almost as soon as Stephen did. Weird kid.’
‘Why weird?’
Chloe pulled at the locket hanging on the chain around her neck, and bit her lower lip, smearing what remained of her lipstick on her teeth. ‘She’s like a lot of kids taken into care. Fucked up,’ she said at length.
Claire wrote the names of the Jenkins household on her notepad in large capital letters and drew lines between them with the word Connection?
She had enough information on them for now at least. She could tell Chloe was more than uncomfortable talking about them. She made the decision to move on.
‘What was your father’s relationship like with Father Wainwright? Were they close friends?’
‘Yeah, I’d say so. He came to the house at least once a week – Mum made him Sunday dinner after the ten o’clock
