At least the beer was good

Jay, a woman with a new identity is now living in the seaside village of Oxhope. It hasn’t yet been revealed why she’s there, or what happened in her past that has meant she  had to start a new life, but she’s beginning to settle into it. She’s begun to make friends, including two women similar in age to her, called Emma and Gemma. Jay and Emma unexpectedly and very shockingly find the body of a murdered woman, and are intensively questioned by the police. Jay didn’t know, Kari, the poor victim, but had seen her at a music festival at the local pub where she had seemed very interested in a local band, Off With Her Head. Several weeks later Jay bumps into Louis, one of the band as she’s walking to the pub for lunch, and later he joins her there. He begins to talk about the recent horrific events:

“You do know about it, don’t you, the woman who was murdered
“Yes, yes, shocking…” she stumbled over her answer, a thought had struck her. The terrible event had been covered on TV and in the press, but there had been no mention of her or Em, instead another woman was named as the person who’d been involved. This must be Eric, Eric had kept her out of the news.
“Did you know her?” Louis asked tentatively. He had pushed his half-eaten burger away.
“No, I think I’d seen her in here, that’s all. Was she a friend of yours?”
He nodded and looked out the window. Jay was sure he wasn’t seeing the road outside and the old building opposite.
Abruptly he got up, gave a curt ‘see you’, and left the pub.
Jay pushed her soup away and tried to think of other things, naming counties of England, rivers of Europe, capital cities of South America, anything but think of poor Kari. It didn’t help. It may be lunch time but she went and got another lager, a different one from Allis in Dunderland, brewery Mad Batter this time with a picture or a zany cricket player on the label.
She took out her phone and looked for Louis’s band on Facebook. There were loads of pictures on their page, and it didn’t take long to find pictures of Kari with them. She skimmed through, and although Louis was entwined with her in a few, there were far more of her with the singer – Maxi. She realised she’d seen him in the pub a couple of times too; he looked older than Louis, and when she’d noticed him it was because he was usually loud, drunk and very annoying.
“All on your own?”
Jay jumped and automatically closed her phone. It was Gilly.
“Can I join you?” and Gilly slipped into  the seat Louis had just left. “Did you not enjoy the burger, or was it just too big?” she indicated the remains of Louis’s lunch.
“It wasn’t mine, I had the soup, it was very good,” Jay buttoned down her irritation, Gilly was only being friendly. “I’m glad I’ve seen you, Gilly, I was going to ask about the Big Village Street Party I’ve seen advertised.” She wasn’t the least bit interested in this annual event she’d seen posters about. It was the first thing which had jumped into her head.
“I’ll just order some lunch, then I’ll tell you all about it,” Gilly said, picking up the menu. Jay wondered how quickly she could make an excuse and leave… She sighed, she would probably  have to stay and chat to Gilly and just hope the conversation didn’t swing round to events she didn’t even want to think about. At least the beer was good…