Текст книги "The Risk of Darkness"
Автор книги: Susan Hill
Жанры:
Криминальные детективы
,сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 19 страниц)
She woke from a nightmare of slimy darkness, in which she was choking on some foul substance and her lungs were being pierced with blades, to sit up in a terror of sweat. In reaching for the lamp she sent it crashing to the floor. Jane cried out but then shook herself, got out of bed on the side away from the broken base and felt her way to the light switch beside the door. As she did so, she heard a sound in the garden.
No, she told herself, there is nothing in the garden, apart from cats and foxes, possibly an owl. Nothing. No one.
She fetched a dustpan and brush, cleared up the mess and put it in the kitchen bin. There was a spare lamp in her study, which she brought and set up, switched on and read by for another twenty minutes.
“O Lord, illuminate the darkness of this night with your celestial brightness, And from the children of light banish the deeds of darkness. Through Jesus Christ, Our Lord.”
The noise outside was a muffled bump as if someone had fallen.
There were several things she might do: ring the police; ring the Dows; look through the window; go outside c And she could do none of them, she was paralysed with fear, her mouth puckered and dry.
Through her head ran a film which she could not stop, of Max Jameson pushing her down, holding her by the arms, staring into her face, holding the knife, laughing, crying in triumph, sitting opposite her, tormenting her with fear, and talking, talking, in a slow, peculiar whisper which susurrated in her ears.
She forced herself to climb out of bed, put on her slippers and dressing gown, and then to pull back the curtain. She had her hand on the latch, ready to open the window when she looked out into the night garden.
Max Jameson’s face leered back at her. His body was in shadow, even his neck seemed wrapped so that his face, with its wild hair and mess of beard, was floating alone a few yards away. Jane would have shouted, banged the window, gestured to him to get away but she did nothing, only froze in terror at the window, looking out as he looked in.
The sight of the police torches flashing out across the garden, probing the darkness to reveal anything hidden, was an inexpressible relief. They had arrived barely five minutes after she had called them. The patrol car had been in the area and the two young policemen were large, heavy-footed and reassuring as they probed bushes and roamed about behind trees, up and down the side paths, in and out of sheds. By then, the lights had come on in the Dows’ house, and there were other voices in the garden.
Jane sat in the armchair, drinking a mug of tea. It was half past three. Another hour and it would be breaking light. She did not know what she had seen, could not tell now if the face of Max Jameson had been real or a trick of her anxious imagination. But if she closed her eyes, it was there, clear and fleshed not vapour, not ghostly. Max Jameson, staring at her from the blackness.
She started to shiver, and the mug of tea spilled. She reached out to put it on the table beside her but her hand would not do as she wanted it to and the mug smashed on to the floor, the hot tea splashing up, scalding her bare foot.
When Rhona Dow appeared in the room, dressed in a huge pink velour robe, hair on end, Jane burst into tears.
Twenty-five
DS Nathan Coates sat in the front seat of the car, concealed behind a broken run of wooden fencing, watching a vegetable warehouse. He and DC Brian Jennings had been watching the warehouse for the best part of two days, during which time a great deal was supposed to have happened and absolutely nothing had.
Nathan crunched hard down into an apple.
Jennings winced. “Could you eat that a bit louder, Sarge?”
“You askin’ or tellin’?”
“Only c”
“Only I have to put up with your roast chicken crisps every half-hour. You’d do a lot better getting your mouth round one of these.” Nathan buzzed down the window and threw the apple core on to the waste ground.
“People could take root here.”
“You have.”
“I think this is a fruit and veg warehouse. I don’t think there’s anything in there but fruit and veg. Nothing goes in but fruit and veg, nothing comes out but—”
“All right, you said it and said it.”
“I reckon the DI’s got a dodgy informant.”
“We wouldn’t be here—”
“One sergeant, one DC c and a load of bananas.”
“Hang on—”
“Oh look, Sarge, it’s a fruit and veg lorry!”
Nathan picked up his binoculars and trained them on to the roll-up doors of the warehouse. The lorry pulled up and started to reverse slowly as the doors opened.
“I seen him before c that driver.”
“Yeah, driving a fruit—”
“Shut it. Get a take on the number plate, I want a shot of him.”
Nathan leaned behind to get his camera and angled it on to the cab of the lorry. “Got him. That’s Piggy Plater. I done him at a break-in on the industrial estate couple of years back, only he had a clever brief, he got off with a suspended, said he’d been forced into it by his brother. Well, well, Piggy Plater. So what’s he doing here—and don’t say driving a fruit and veg lorry. You on to that number c”
The DC was.
The man in Nathan Coates’s sights had now jumped down from the cab and was talking into a mobile. At the back of the warehouse some shadowy figures were opening up the lorry. A dark blue BMW drove round the corner and glided up beside it. A man in a cream linen jacket got out of one door, a scruffier, heavy one from the other.
“Bloody hell, Frankie Nixon and his sidekick. This is notbananas.” Nathan clicked away for another dozen shots, before dropping the camera. “We need to set up a twenty-four-hour on the place. Something’ll be going up before long.”
His phone rang again.
“DS Coates c”
“Jenny McCreedy Forensic Science Service. I’ve been trying to contact DCI Serrailler but I’m told he’s on leave this week and to call you.”
Nathan sat up. His eyes were on the BMW. Frankie Nixon had climbed back in. His heavy was glancing around before sliding into the passenger seat. The car was out of the yard in one fast, sweeping acceleration. The lorry was inching back further into the dark maw of the warehouse and the roll-door had begun to close. But the scene took on the slightly distant quality of a film. Nathan had his head bent into the mobile receiver.
“You got something? Tell me there is a God.”
“We’ve got something.”
“From Sleightholme’s house?”
“Nope, the house is clean. But from the car we have two hairs and a fragment of fingernail. Both hairs are from the same head and the DNA is that of the boy David Angus. The fingernail paring isn’t, that hasn’t been matched. Yet.”
“It’s from the other boy then?”
“No. Nor from the little girl they found alive in the boot.”
“You telling me there was anotherkid?”
“Looks like it.”
“Dear God c Is that it?”
“No. They’re not through. But as there was a definite match with your case I thought you’d want to know. When’s your DCI back?”
“Don’t worry, I’ve a number for him, he’s not going to want to wait for this. Thanks a bunch.” Nathan punched the air.
The lorry had been swallowed up into the warehouse and the door was shut down. There was no one about. The afternoon sun made the waste ground around them look dusty. A finch swayed on a thistle head a few yards away.
“Let’s get out of here.”
“What was all that about, Sarge?”
“David Angus.”
“They found him?”
“Sort of.’” Nathan switched on the engine and ran the car hard back, making the tyres spin.
The DC leaned back. “Tell us about this Frankie Nixon then.”
“I don’t give a monkey’s fuck,” Nathan said viciously, “about Frankie Nixon.”
Twenty-six
“You don’t look happy, Simon.”
“I think the group is too big c Can we try splitting off the two in the church? That would make a five and a two c over here?”
Simon walked backwards across the gallery and looked again. The hangers had done a near perfect job apart from this one group of Venice drawings. Several had dark spaces behind the faces of the old women and men he had seen praying in churches around the Zattere; grouped as they had been they cancelled one another out, separated altogether their impact was diluted.
It was always the way—most fell into place but the last few took ages to get right.
The gallery was small and had a low ceiling. Its proportions were perfect, its position in a prime corner of Mayfair ideal. He knew how lucky he was.
Now he leaned against the wall and glanced out of the window.
Diana was looking straight back at him from the sunlit street. Simon cursed under his breath. He did not like the past rearing up in front of him, especially past he had firmly banished.
But when he looked at her again, something changed inside him. He was delighted to be where he was, to be having this exhibition here, now, excited, proud, keyed up—and strangely, the sight of Diana suddenly pleased him. He was glad to see her. She looked, as ever, beautiful, elegant, happy.
He remembered how it had always been—an ideal relationship, without commitment, with each suiting the other, each enjoying the other, each having a world and work to return to, neither wanting to pin the other down. It had been good. It had been fun. He had had some delightful days, evenings, nights in Diana’s company. Her desperation, when she had pursued him at home the previous year, seemed a long way off. That must be over. Why could things not be as they had always been? Simon could see no reason at all.
He went out of the gallery door to greet her.
The last time they had been in London together they had seen Eugene Oneginat Covent Garden but tonight there was ballet which Simon could not take. Instead, they saw a new play, which was so bad, and so badly acted by a Hollywood star, that it became funny and they slipped out of their seats before the end.
It was a warm evening and still light and the pavements were busy. Simon took Diana’s arm, leading her across the road towards a bar he knew. The outside tables were full but there was a circular verandah upstairs. He felt light-hearted, as so often in London, a different person, less inhibited, more spontaneous.
“Champagne cocktail,” he said, steering Diana to a seat.
“Perfect.”
Yes, he thought. This is good. Just this. Nothing more. Nothing heavier. This is exactly right.
Diana wore a pale green silk dress. She was the best-dressed woman in the room and the most beautiful. He touched her shoulder.
“Where would you like to eat?”
“You say. But I want to talk to you c talk and talk. How long is it since we did, Simon?”
“Too long. You go first. You sold the restaurants?”
“Months ago. And haven’t decided what to do next, as that is your next question. Not another business which eats up my life, I can tell you that. I bought a small house in Chelsea and put the rest of the money on deposit.”
“But you’ll need a challenge. You thrive on them.”
“No.” She looked directly at him. She had tiny lines at the corners of her eyes, more on her neck. She was ten years older than him and sometimes he could see those years. It had never troubled him in the slightest. “I want something absorbing and wholly peaceful. I had fifteen years of stress and a high mileage. Enough for anyone. Maybe I’ll open a gallery?”
He laughed and began to talk about the exhibition. As always, he found it impossible to talk about his drawing, easy to tell stories about the room, the hanging, the buyers, the private view, the frames, the prices, who else was showing in London. Gossip. Unthreatening.
“And Lafferton?”
He shook his head. He preferred not to talk about that either, and his police work he never mentioned at all.
They had a second drink, then went out, to walk through the London dusk towards Piccadilly.
“In a couple of days, your private view will be over and every drawing sold,” Diana said. “I hope I have an invitation.”
“Of course.”
They stopped by Fortnum’s. “Choices,” Simon said. “Restaurant? My hotel?”
“Or my house.”
But she caught his hesitation.
“Right,” Diana said lightly, “I’m hungry. I ate a tomato sandwich at twelve fifteen and I’ve just had two champagne cocktails. I might faint.”
Simon took her arm, laughing, and steered her down Duke Street towards Green’s.
Twenty-seven
Natalie woke, heard the noise and pulled the pillow over her head. But the sound still came through so in the end she had to get up.
“Now what? Bloody hell, Kyra, it’s two o’clock, what’s up with you?”
Kyra was standing beside the window. Her curtains were open and she was staring across at next door.
“I said before, you let it alone. Come on, back in bed. Who was you talking to?”
Kyra pressed her lips together but let herself be led back and settled under her duvet.
“Kyra, you worry me. Talking to yourself, making them noises.”
Natalie sat on the edge of her daughter’s bed. Her blonde hair was matted and she smoothed it with her fingertips. Funny, how kids were different at night, how you could love them more because they seemed smaller. Funny that.
“You want to tell me anything now?”
They hadn’t let her come in the room when they’d talked to Kyra. There were two of them, both women, a young doctor they said was the psychiatrist only she didn’t look old enough, and a woman family police officer.
It had taken over an hour. Natalie had started to fret in the end. She felt angry and she felt sick. There’d been stuff in the papers and on the telly. There’d been the posters everywhere, when the little boy went missing first, and she’d talked about it, they all had and she’d been with them like any of the people in Brimpton Lane. Natalie had talked to a couple of the others in the past week and they’d said the same, how different they felt now. Their houses, their road, their neighbours, everything c their everyday lives. They felt different and they would never not feel different. They felt soiled and scarred, as if they needed to wash. A few had said they wanted to move. Someone had said they wanted to get up a petition for the council to change the name of Brimpton Lane when it was all over, only what would changing the name do to help, what difference could that make? They lived there, she’d lived there, the house was there. Only who’d have it now? Who would ever buy it and walk about in her rooms and sleep there and eat there and cut the grass and clean the windows? Knowing.
It was bad enough having to be next door. Bad enough going over and over it, remembering. Bad enough having doctors and police ask your kid questions for more than an hour.
“What did you tell them?” she’d asked Kyra as soon as they got into the car. But Kyra’s mouth had firmed up, the way it did, and she hadn’t spoken. Not at all, not once, not until after television and her tea and her bath and then it had been about a holiday she wanted. In a caravan.
“Where’d you hear about caravans?”
But Kyra hadn’t answered.
“Did you tell them about what happened at Ed’s?”
Nothing.
“About making cakes and that?”
After a long time, Kyra had nodded.
“Did they say it was all right, then? To make the cakes and stuff?”
Nothing.
“What else did you tell them? About when you went round there. What did they ask you? What’d they say?”
Nothing.
“Hell, Kyra, I’m trying to make it OK, I don’t want them upsetting you, I’m trying to make sure it was all right.”
“It was all right.”
Natalie had given up.
Now, she stroked Kyra’s thin fair hair, wispy as dandelion clocks over her ears. Kyra’s eyelids drooped, and then snapped open again.
“You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”
“What?”
“Anything. Anything that happened.”
Kyra frowned.
“Did Ed c?”
Kyra closed her eyes fast.
Natalie waited. Nothing.
Kyra’s eyes stayed shut.
Natalie went downstairs and put the kettle on, lit a cigarette and sat at the breakfast bar. It was warm. A dog barked somewhere down the street. She wanted to be somewhere else. Maybe they could. She could work in a call centre in some city, go back to where her family were, try London even. Every day she woke up now, she felt bad, sour. Old. And she was twenty-six. She didn’t deserve to end up in a house next door to a child murderer. No one deserved that.
For a moment, she thought she heard a sound upstairs, but when she went out into the hall it was quiet. For company, Natalie turned on the all-night radio and spent half an hour listening to the phone-ins, sad people needing to chat to strangers about being sad people at three in the morning.
When Kyra heard the voices coming faintly from the radio, she went back to her post at the window. Ed’s house was lit by the street lamp. It looked sad.
They had asked her what she thought about Ed’s house. When she had told them that she liked it more than being in her own house, and being with Ed more than being with her mother, they’d looked strangely at her. Asked her why and if she was sure and if she meant it and whether Ed had ever told her to say that, which seemed to Kyra the most stupid question of all. They’d asked her to tell them what Ed had said and whether Ed had taken her in her car anywhere or swimming or to shops or into the country and had she had any of Kyra’s friends to the house, to do cooking and things, when Kyra was there or when she wasn’t.
Questions. All about Ed. Weird questions, rude questions, stupid questions, but when she’d asked them questions they hadn’t answered, not properly. She had wanted to know where Ed had gone and whether she knew about the people going in and out of her house and when she was coming back and if she could go and see her and they hadn’t answered a single one of those questions. Not one.
Twenty-eight
“Why did you cry, Edwina?”
“ED. I keep telling you.”
“Ed.”
“Have you any idea why that was?”
Say nothing. Just like the police. Say nothing.
“It’s just that you don’t strike me as someone who cries easily.”
Nothing.
“Do you remember crying much as a child?”
Here we go. She knew what was coming. Bound to. Your childhood. That’s all they wanted to ask about, all they blamed everything on, all they were going to pry into. OK, fine. Nothing to tell. And, even if there had been, say nothing.
It was a small room. Dark red tweed-upholstered chair. Quite comfortable. The shrink sat in another the same, with a clipboard on her lap. She’d have expected any doctor to be behind a desk. Might have felt better if she had been, somehow. The other thing was her being a woman. Doctors were men. Should be men. Like nurses were women. Only not now. This was a woman. Young. Too young. How could she be so young and be here? Short, dark, shiny hair. Designer glasses. Oval rims. Blue T-shirt. Darker blue denim skirt. Flat pale blue shoes. Wedding ring. Another ring with a twisted bit in it and a tiny chip of diamond that caught the light. Necklace with big beads. Smiled. Looked straight at her. And smiled.
Say nothing. You say nothing, not to the police, not to the prison officers, not to the shrink. Nothing.
“Why do people cry at all?”
She seemed to want to know. Really to be asking her. Why do people cry?
She thought about it. Why do they? Your dog dies. Your cat gets run over. You shut your finger in the car door. She winced, remembering the pain that had made her feel faint and sick.
“What? Something you remembered?”
“Yeah, trapping my finger in the car door. Bloody hell.”
“Oh, yes, I did that once. It’s agony. Worse than labour pains.”
“Wouldn’t know.”
“That and having a hockey stick swung across my nose.”
“Ahh c”
“It was.”
Ed imagined it. Her eyes watered.
“So that’s one thing.”
“What?”
“A reason to cry. Pain.”
Shit. They were talking, like normal people, like people talk, and she’d said things.
Say nothing.
There were a couple of plants on the window ledge and they looked neglected. Dusty. Yellowed leaves at the bottom no one had bothered to pull off. One of them wanted cutting back. She hated that. Why not have plastic plants if you couldn’t be bothered to look after real ones?
The shrink’s handbag was on the floor beside her chair, next to a plain black briefcase. The handbag had a photograph on the front. Scarlett and Rhett from the movie. She’d watched that half a dozen times. Scarlett had rhinestones stuck on for her necklace and there were rhinestones scattered on Rhett’s shirt front. She couldn’t get her head round a shrink having a handbag like that. She couldn’t stop looking down at it. Scarlett and Rhett.
Ed didn’t use handbags, she used her pockets and totes if she needed to carry bigger stuff.
“I think you cried because you remembered something.”
“No.”
“Right.”
Ed waited. The shrink was going to go down the list now. You cried because you remembered something when you were little. Your mother. Or your dad. Someone hitting you, someone shouting at you, someone pushing you into a dark cellar and shutting the door on you, someone telling you you smelled. Or because of something else.
She waited.
But Dr Gorley sat in silence, looking at Ed. Then glancing at her notepad again. Then back at Ed. But not in any hurry, not irritated. Not anything. Just patient. Relaxed. Just waiting.
Say nothing.
She knew why she had cried and she was bloody angry at herself but she hadn’t been able to help it. The tears had just started. The policeman with the fair hair had been looking at her, asking his questions, looking, saying this, saying that. And then the picture had come into her head and with it had come the instant realisation of what would happen. And what would never happen.
She had seen herself in the caravan with Kyra. They had been coming down the steps, locking the door carefully and then walking off down the site towards where they could see the sea. Towards the beach, where they would go for the day. Kyra had a bucket and spade, Ed had a ball and the tote with their picnic in. But they’d buy drinks and ices down there. It was sunny. It was warm. They could hear other children’s voices, people shouting and calling out and laughing from the beach. Kyra was bouncing along, holding Ed’s hand, looking up at her now and then, excited. That week, that holiday, was going to be the best ever, best for Kyra, best for Ed. It formed a little see-through bubble in Ed’s mind and the bubble was quite, quite separate from everything else. Everything.
And now without warning, it had burst. She had looked round the interview room. Looked at the cops. Looked at her own hands. And the bubble had burst and she had known the truth, that the holiday would never happen and that she would never see Kyra again. No matter what she, Ed, said or did not say, no matter what else might happen. The bubble had burst.
Her eyes filled with tears.
“What is it?” Dr Gorley said. Her voice was soft, a nice, sweet sort of voice. She wanted to know because she cared and because she wanted to help and because she was a friend, not because she was a shrink, not because she was trying to probe and pry and then report back, not—
Shit.
The tears began to slide down Ed’s cheeks.
Twenty-nine
Dougie Meelup was a kind man. Take this weekend. He had come home on Thursday with the coach tickets and the booking for the hotel, everything sorted, her treat. It wasn’t her birthday or his or their anniversary.
“You could do with a bit of a break,” he’d said, “and you like Devon.”
So here they were, walking along the seafront on a bright, blustery day, making for one of the benches in the sun. She had the afternoon off in any case and Dougie had taken a day of his holiday; the coach had left at half past one and now it was half past five, with two whole days to come.
“If we sit here, I can get us a cup of tea from that stall. You settle yourself.”
Eileen had been able to tell that he was a kind man the first night she had met him, when Noreen and Ken Kavanagh had dragged her out to the bowls club. Bowls was for old people, the women wore white hats, she’d thought, it just wouldn’t be her sort of thing. But they hadn’t taken no for an answer. The car had turned up and Ken had been at the door and that was that.
She’d been right about bowls. It might be something you could enjoy playing but watching it was like watching paint dry and she couldn’t see herself there again. It had been Dougie who had made the difference.
Eileen had been widowed four years and by the time Cliff Sleightholme had passed on, they had had precious little left to say to one another and that was how old age would be, she’d supposed. She had never imagined life without him and she had been shaken by how empty the house seemed, how she had taken his presence and the company for granted. They may not have said much to one another but there had not been loneliness. She had got the job on the checkouts within three months, partly because the money she was left to manage on was less than she’d expected, partly because she couldn’t stand being on her own in the house day and night. It got her out and she had made friends with Noreen and a couple of the others, but once she was home she was still by herself there.
Dougie Meelup was kind. She knew no one at bowls apart from Noreen and Ken and he had got her a cup of tea and made a place for her on the bench at the front of the pavilion. He’d asked her about herself and when she found herself telling him, he had listened, listened properly, in the way people who are kind do listen. His own wife had gone off with someone else the previous year. “Broke my heart,” he said, “and I never saw it coming.”
But he had the boys. They were both married with a couple of children each, both living in the town.
“Campbell and Marie give me lunch every other Sunday,” he had said, after a few weeks of them seeing each other, going out to a meal, driving to the country one afternoon. “So how about you coming along with me next time?”
“Don’t be daft.”
“What?”
He had looked hurt. Eileen had felt a rush of guilt.
“I mean, they want to see you. They don’t know me, why would they want me to be there? Of course they wouldn’t.”
“They do. Marie said on the phone, bring your friend. She wouldn’t say it off her own bat, she’d talked about it with Campbell.”
“How do they know about me?”
“Well, because I’ve told them, how d’you think?”
She had gone. It had been hard until Marie had opened the front door smiling and after that everything had been good. Better than good. The next Sunday, it had been Keith and his Filipino wife Leah who had done the Sunday lunch, a barbecue that time, with Keith in charge because he was a chef and didn’t think women could cook meat properly.
Marrying Dougie had been marrying his family. Their wedding had been all about them, the boys, the daughters-in-law, the grandchildren, a registry office full of them.
Eileen had cried because of happiness and because of Dougie’s kindness, because of going from loneliness to a big family. And because neither Jan nor Weeny had been there.
“What do you mean, you’re getting married again, what are you talking about, Mother?” Jan had said, her voice going up and up. “What are you thinking? What about us? You can’t just marry some strange man.”
Eileen had told her everything about Dougie in a five-page letter, and written the same letter to Weeny and sent photos, sheaves of them, Dougie, the boys, the children, the dogs, Campbell and Marie’s caravan.
“He isn’t some strange man. I told you all about him.”
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, getting married again at your time of life.”
“I’m getting myself someone to look after me and keep me company in old age,” she had said, “so you don’t have to.”
Jan had shut up then. But she had not been at the wedding.
“It’s too far to come all that way.”
“There’s trains. You can even fly from Aberdeen. I’ll pay your fares to fly, to get you here.”
She thought that had done the trick. Jan had agreed. Eileen had sent the money. Only at the last minute, one of the children had apparently gone down with something and Jan couldn’t leave him.
“I don’t believe her,” she had said to Dougie. “I don’t think Mark’s gone down with anything at all. She just doesn’t want to come. She’d no intention of coming.”
Jan had kept the air-fare money, though.
If she had hoped for one daughter at her wedding, she had known Weeny would not be there. Not after the note.
The card had primroses on it, and Weeny’s writing was very neat. She said she was too busy “Travelling” for her job as a “representative.” Eileen had no idea what Weeny’s job was. She wondered what she had done wrong—not now, in getting married to Dougie, but then, in the past, in their childhood. She couldn’t think of anything. Cliff had been proud of Weeny. He had taught her to be tough, but the sisters had fought from the moment Weeny was born until Jan had left home to live with Neil. They had fought for attention, affection, pocket money, the biggest room, the first slice of pie and the last sweet in the packet. The house had been a battleground for twenty-two years and when they had both left, within a few months of one another, Eileen had felt that a long, long war had ended. But Cliff had minded. Cliff had ceased to have anything to say from the moment Weeny had gone.
Eileen sat in the sun, her coat collar turned up against the breeze, and looked out at the sparkling sea, creaming over on to the sand in little wavelets. A poem from schooldays came into her head. They live on crispy pancakes / From the yellow tide foam.
The gulls rode on the sunlit water.
“Here you are, hot and sweet.”
Nobody but Dougie Meelup would have got a tray out of them, with the two teas not in plastic beakers but china cups and saucers, and two slices of farmhouse fruit cake on a plate.
Eileen looked at him. He set it all carefully down on the bench beside her.
“What did I ever do to deserve you?” she asked. And meant it.
“Get on.” He settled back against the bench with a sigh. “Lovely,” he said, looking out at the sea. “Isn’t that lovely? Glad you came?”
She looked with him to where the seagulls bobbed on the water. Years, she thought, years and years and years, you think that’s it, that’s the hand you were dealt, you have to make the best you can of it. But then, everything turns upside down and what have you done to deserve it? She didn’t deserve Dougie.
