For Better For Worse (34 page)

‘Oh Bear, I wanted to ask for you,’ she blurted out. ‘I so much wanted to talk to you … but I thought perhaps it wasn’t the done thing.’

‘Well, I’m here now,’ he said, his voice as gentle as a whisper. ‘You look very upset. Whatever’s happened?’

So she told him. She told him about the cut up apron and now the incident with Jenny. He examined the plait and the envelope that had contained it carefully, but didn’t interrupt what she had to say. She told him that she often had the feeling she was being watched, and not just by Mrs Goodall. Eventually she was all talked out, spent and exhausted and struggling not to cry. Someone had brought a cup of tea in for her. She picked it up, her hand still trembling, and gulped a mouthful. Why did the English always think everything would be all right after they’d had a cup of tea? It was a ridiculous thought but somehow it worked. She was thinking more clearly now.

‘No address on the envelope,’ he mused.

‘That means that he must have pushed it through the letter box himself,’ she said, staring at him helplessly.

‘What makes you think Henry has done this?’

‘He thinks I was the one who reported him to the police.’

‘But Jenny is his daughter,’ said Bear.

‘And he was really horrible to her the last time he saw her.’ She explained how Henry had hustled them all out of the house and how upset Jenny had been.

His face darkened as he twirled the plait in his fingers. He was angry. Angry because this would put his request to court Sarah firmly on the back burner, and more importantly, angry because no man should treat the mother of his children, or indeed his children, in such a way. He frowned. Something else was niggling at him.

‘You don’t believe me,’ she challenged. ‘You think I’m imagining it?’

‘I didn’t say that, Sarah,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘but something doesn’t quite add up.’ He held the plait next to his own shoulder. ‘If Henry was this close to Jenny, why didn’t she tell you she’d seen her father?’

Sarah gulped. He was right. She hadn’t thought of that. Jenny adored Henry and of course she would have said if she had seen him. ‘But who else could have got that close …’ She felt a chill run through her body even as she said the words.

‘Somebody so ordinary that nobody noticed him,’ Bear mused, ‘or her. Jenny was probably distracted, talking to her friends. It wouldn’t have taken more than a second or two.’

‘But how could it have happened?’ Sarah protested. ‘She was on the beach with all the teachers. Surely they would have seen something as dreadful as this?’

‘You say the whole class travelled together to Lancing?’

Sarah nodded. ‘Oh God, it happened on the bus, didn’t it?’

‘Probably,’ said Bear.

‘I got off
one
stop before her,’ said Sarah. ‘One stop! He must have moved like greased lightning.’

Bear looked thoughtful. ‘Did you see anyone on the bus you knew? Someone who might have a grudge against you?’

‘No,’ she said helplessly. ‘Like I told you, we’ve had some trouble with the next-door neighbour, Mrs Goodall, but I can’t imagine she would have anything to do with this. She’s not the sort of person to catch buses, if you know what I mean.’

‘What sort of trouble?’

Sarah gave him a brief résumé of the various times they had had a run-in with Mrs Goodall. There was the complaint about noise from the radio (when Kaye was listening to her play). She’d complained about the police coming at the dead of night (that was when DC Harris brought her pram back from the seafront). She’d complained about Annie being rude (apparently she’d stuck out her tongue at her) and the number of callers to the house (including, would you believe, Lottie’s first footing on New Year’s Eve!). She’d rung the doorbell when Edward was crying in his pram or when Jenny shouted in the garden … Funnily enough, when Sarah added them all up, there were a lot more than she’d thought. ‘She can be a bit of a pain,’ she told Bear. ‘Kaye thinks it’s because they crossed swords at the public meeting about Beach House. Mrs Goodall thought it was an ugly eyesore and needed to be pulled down, but Kaye and her friends got a preservation order slapped on it. She can be difficult, but being responsible for something as vindictive as this … I can’t believe she’d do it.’

Bear nodded and Sarah remembered how sharp she had been with her daughter when she’d found the cut plait. ‘When I told Jenny off,’ she said brokenly, ‘she told me she didn’t know when it had happened and I didn’t believe her. I feel terrible now.’ The tears rolled down her face and she searched her pocket for a handkerchief. ‘I was so cross with her and it wasn’t even her fault.’

He looked sympathetic but made no comment. Little did she know how much this was hurting him too. Picking up the apron, he said, ‘He most likely used something like a Stanley knife, probably a 199, which is very sharp. I reckon it would have cut through the hair very quickly. And you can’t think of anyone else who might have done this?’

Sarah shook her head.

‘Have you any enemies? Someone from the past maybe?’

A cold chill ran through her body. ‘Nat Rivers,’ she said. ‘We used to live next door to him and his mother. He hates me.’

Bear raised an eyebrow and wrote the name in his notebook, which was resting on the table between them.

‘He used to knock his mother about,’ Sarah went on. ‘I could hear him through the walls. He got sent to prison and then Mrs Rivers moved away. I bumped into him once. He accused me of knowing where she was, even though I didn’t.’

Bear carried on scribbling. ‘If it wasn’t Nat, can you think of anyone else?’

Sarah leaned forward. ‘Could Henry have persuaded someone he met in prison to do it?’

‘It’s possible,’ Bear frowned. ‘But why would he do that?’

‘I don’t know … I guess you’re right,’ she conceded.

They fell silent, Bear examining the apron again and Sarah drinking the rest of the tea. ‘So where do we go from here?’

‘What I’ll do is get you to say all this again while somebody takes it down,’ he said. ‘Now that this has been flagged up, I’ll make sure an officer goes around Church Walk to check that there’s no one loitering about.’

‘Should I tell Jenny?’

‘Personally, I wouldn’t,’ said Bear. ‘You’ll only frighten her, but make sure you are the one who picks her up from school and keep an eye on her.’

‘I will,’ said Sarah, blowing her nose.

‘Stay for a few minutes and finish your tea.’ He stood to his feet and as he moved from the room, his hand briefly covered her shoulder. ‘Try not to worry.’

The door closed and Sarah sighed. She could still feel the warmth from his touch. She had longed to sink into his arms and for him to hold her, but he couldn’t do that, could he. He was the policeman and right now she was just another member of the public. She brushed a tear away from her cheek and stood up. Oh, why did life have to be so complicated, and if not Henry, or Nat Rivers, who else would have done such a terrible thing?

*

Henry was in full swing. Ever since Kaye climbed into the car, he hadn’t stopped talking. She was enjoying the feel of the wind in her hair, blowing it into an untidy mop of curls. She turned her face towards the oncoming road and blanked out most of what he was saying, only mumbling an occasional reply. Her conversation with Mr Young was constantly going round and round her head
. ‘It’s pretty advanced and there’s not a lot we can do.’
He must have meant there was
nothing
they could do, and yet she’d heard that some people had an operation to cut out the diseased part. Why wouldn’t Mr Young do the same for her? Surely she could walk around with half a lung … it certainly beat the alternative. She made up her mind to ring him as soon as she got home. She would demand a second opinion.

‘You have no idea how dreadful it was,’ Henry was saying. ‘I honestly thought I would never survive …’

Lung cancer … hadn’t George VI got the same thing? He smoked a lot as well. Perhaps there really was a link between smoking and cancer. She’d hardly given it much attention and there were denials in the press, but everybody knew that the King had spent time in hospital having an operation earlier in the year. Of course, nobody actually said what it was for, but everybody thought the same thing.

‘She wants me to cruise around the Rock of Gibraltar,’ Henry prattled on. ‘I know it was reckless of me to promise, but I really can’t get out of it.’

Kaye leaned her arm on the car door and turned away from him. What on earth was he talking about? Her mind drifted back to her own problem. Should she tell Sarah and Annie? And what was going to happen to Lottie? Thank God she’d had Dobbin draw up those papers. Had she signed them all? Yes, yes she had.

Henry interrupted her thoughts again. ‘Kaye, we’ve been stuck behind this blessed lorry for the past mile,’ he said petulantly. ‘Can you see if anything is coming the other way?’

‘Now you see the disadvantage of having a left-hand drive,’ she remarked, but he didn’t laugh.

Henry pulled out slightly and Kaye looked ahead. There was a clear stretch of road. ‘Pull out now,’ she said, and Henry motored past the lorry. As soon as they were back on the right side of the road, he went on with his discourse and Kaye went back to her thoughts. She’d forgotten how self-centred and arrogant he could be. Oh, he could be charm itself when he wanted something, but if he didn’t get it, another Henry emerged.

‘So I fully intend to come and live with you as soon as I get back,’ he said casually. He reached over to the glove compartment and took a coffee crunch from a small paper bag.

Kaye’s head spun round. ‘Pardon? Come and live with me? What are you talking about?’

‘Sweetheart,’ Henry scolded, ‘you haven’t been listening.’

‘So tell me again,’ she said irritably.

Unwinding the paper with his teeth, he popped a sweet into his mouth. ‘After I’ve done this cruise, I’m coming to live with you.’

Kaye felt a rush of adrenalin. ‘There’s no room,’ she said crossly.

‘It’s a big house,’ he smiled.

‘Apart from my own rooms,’ Kaye spat, ‘Sarah and her children have a space in the attic, Annie is in one of the bedrooms with Edward, and of course Lottie has the second bedroom. There are no other rooms so, no, you can’t stay with me, and besides, why would I want you living with me? I want to divorce you, Henry!’

He changed gear as they began a hill climb. ‘Who is Lottie?’

‘My Aunt Charlotte,’ she said bitterly. She paused, remembering. ‘The one you made sure stayed in the mental home. And while we’re on the subject, why did you do that Henry? Why did you keep Granny’s arrangement going?’

Henry shrugged his shoulders in an innocent expression. ‘I thought that was what you wanted, darling.’

Kaye bristled. ‘But you never even spoke to me about it. How could you possibly know what I wanted? Anyway, she’s living with us now.’

‘Can’t someone else look after her?’

‘I don’t want anyone else looking after her,’ Kaye snapped. ‘She’s my aunt and she lives with me.’

‘I don’t fancy being in the same house as some batty old woman who ought to be locked up,’ said Henry.

‘Henry, let’s get this straight once and for all – you are not coming to live with me,’ Kaye shrieked. ‘And I’ll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself. Lottie is not batty!’

She could hear him crunching his sweet as Henry accelerated the car angrily.

*

Annie enjoyed working in the shop, especially first thing in the morning. At times she and Mr Richardson had a job to keep up with the numbers of customers coming into his shop. He was obviously glad of his decision to employ an assistant, especially one as capable as she was. At first, the children were patient but excitable and noisy as they waited to be served, but when it came close to the time when they should be in school, they became fractious. Annie could control them far better than he could because they could sense his discomfort and messed him about.

‘Come along now, young man,’ he said sharply to one small boy with rather dirty hands. ‘Don’t touch anything and hurry up and make up your mind. There are other people waiting.’

‘I’ll have a Mintola,’ the boy said, pointing to the shelf, but when Mr Richardson got the jar down he said, ‘no, hang on a minute, I’ll have some Spangles and a Punch.’

‘You don’t have enough coupons for that, me laddo,’ said Mr Richardson.

The area behind the counter was small and Annie and Mr Richardson kept bumping each other as they rushed to serve the customers. Once they both bent down at the same time and nudged each other. The children giggled, and someone said in a loud voice, ‘Whoops-a-daisy. Looks like the meeting of the big four,’ which made several customers laugh out loud. Mr Richardson blushed a deep crimson.

As school time loomed, the shop emptied. ‘Mr Richardson,’ said Annie as Mrs Richardson produced a large mug of tea from the flat upstairs, ‘may I make a suggestion?’

He looked a little cautious but told her to go ahead.

‘I am very new here and you understand the tobacco labels far better than I do,’ she said, blinking for effect. ‘Would it help if I stayed behind the sweet counter when the rush is on, then I wouldn’t get in your way.’

She could see at once that he liked the idea and she imagined his inner thoughts. The children played him up. It would be far better to let Mrs Royal do it.

‘If you think you could manage the sweets on your own,’ he said pompously.

‘If I get stuck,’ she smiled affably, ‘I can always call to you.’

*

Mrs Goodall couldn’t believe her eyes. Yes, yes she was right. The woman wheeling that baby away from Copper Beeches this morning was none other than Cllr Mitchell’s wife. She had seen her a couple of days ago and hadn’t been too sure, but now that she had the woman’s photograph right in front of her, she was positive. She glanced again at the article headed ‘Cllr Mitchell and his wife, Judith, visit spring flower show’ and raised a satisfied eyebrow. What was Judith Mitchell doing with that baby? There could only be one answer. The child had to be a relative and what relative could it be other than her own grandchild. So the little minx who had put her tongue out wasn’t married. Mrs Goodall smiled to herself. She had been right all along. That Kaye woman was bringing the area into disrepute. Could it be that Mrs Royale was running a home for unmarried women? If she didn’t do something about it, before long they’d end up with men prowling around the streets looking for loose women all day long. She’d seen one already. That weaselly man in the buff-coloured raincoat for a start. Dearie me, given time, she wouldn’t even be able to walk to church safely. Come to think about it, there were four women living alone in that house and none of them appeared to go out to work, so how were they making their money? Her hand flew to her mouth in horror. She wasn’t one to gossip of course, but could that house already be a … a brothel? If this was so, then the children she saw in the garden were being exposed to goodness knows what. Mrs Goodall shuddered to think. It was her duty as a law-abiding citizen to do something about it. She didn’t want to make trouble, but it couldn’t be helped. With a deep sigh of regret, she reached for the telephone.