“No. I mean, we went to McDonald’s a couple of times after school, but that’s all.”

“Rose, do you have any evidence at all to support your accusation that Luke and Lauren Anderson were having an affair?”

“If you mean was I watching at her window, then no. But it’s obvious, isn’t it? Why else would she spend her spare time with someone like him?”

“But you spent time with him.”

“Yeah. Well…that was different.”

“Didn’t you try to be nice to him, to befriend him, when you talked to him in the hallways and the playground, and when you went to McDonald’s with him?”

Rose looked away and continued twirling her hair around her fingers. “Of course I did.”

“And what happened?”

“Nothing. He just sort of…like he got bored with me or something. Like I didn’t read all those stupid books he was always carrying around, and I didn’t listen to the same lousy music. I wasn’t good enough for him. He was a snob. Above the rest of us.”

“And because of this you assumed he was having sexual relations with a teacher. That’s a bit of a far stretch, isn’t it?”

“You didn’t see them together.”

“Did you see them kissing, touching, holding hands?”

“Of course not. They were too careful to do anything like that in public, weren’t they?”

“What then?”

“The way they looked at each other. The way she always left him alone in class. The way they talked. The way he made her laugh.”

“You were just jealous, weren’t you, Rose? That’s why you’re saying all this. Because you couldn’t get along with Luke, but Miss Anderson could.”

“I was not jealous! Certainly not of that ugly old bitch.”

For a moment, Banks wondered if there was anything in what Rose Barlow was telling him other than sour grapes. It may have been innocent, a true teacher-pupil relationship, but Banks had enough experience to know that anything involving two people of the opposite sex—or the same sex, for that matter—in close proximity could turn into something sexual, no matter what the difference in their ages. He had also read about such things in the newspapers. He would keep an open mind and have another talk with Lauren Anderson when he got back from Peterborough, push her a little harder and see if any cracks showed.

“What do you think of Miss Anderson?” he asked Rose.

“She’s all right, I suppose.”

“You just called her an ugly old bitch.”

“Well…I didn’t mean…I was angry…I mean, she’s okay as a teacher. All right?”

“Do you get on well with her in class?”

“Okay.”

“So if I ask any of the other pupils in the class, they’d tell me that you and Miss Anderson get along just fine?”

Rose reddened. “She picks on me sometimes. She put me in detention once.”

“What for?”

“Not reading some stupid Shakespeare play. So I was reading a magazine under the desk. So what? I can’t be bothered with all that boring English stuff.”