Last Walk Home

She drank some tea and nibbled at a biscuit, then she reached for the packet of cigarettes on the bedside table.

‘I really think you ought to try to give them up,’ Derek said apologetically. ‘You know what the doctor said.’

She pulled a face. ‘The doctor’s an old woman.’ She took out a cigarette and he lit it for her; she inhaled deeply. ‘The doctor we had in Ellenborough smoked all the time.’ The Marshalls had lived in Ellenborough, a large town forty-five miles away, before they moved to the Hadleigh suburb of Cannonbridge.

Outside there was the sound of feet on gravel, the click of the letterbox. ‘That might be a letter from Janet,’ Lisa said. ‘Do go down and see.’ There was only one post a day now in Hadleigh. Lisa had written to Janet again last week, asking her to come over as soon as the school term ended on Friday, stay as long as she liked.

Derek went downstairs to the hall. Three envelopes lay in the wire cage at the back of the door. The first was postmarked Cannonbridge, addressed to Lisa in the bold handwriting of her friend Carole Gardiner. The second was an advertising circular, and the third – he drew a long breath and ripped it open, running his eye rapidly over the sheet, biting deep into his lip as he read, unaware of any sensation of pain. He stood frowning down at the letter and then went swiftly into the sitting room and knelt by the grate.

He pushed aside the tapestry firescreen that had been worked by Mrs Marshall, struck a match and set fire to the letter and its envelope. When they were both thoroughly consumed he ground the ashes into dust with the poker and replaced the screen. He got to his feet and went back upstairs.

‘Nothing from Janet,’ he said as he entered the bedroom. On his tongue he could taste the blood from his bitten lip. ‘But Carole Gardiner’s written to you.’

‘When are we going to have the phone put in?’ Lisa said impatiently as she took the letter he held out. ‘It’s such a nuisance, all this letter-writing.’

‘There’s a waiting-list for phones,’ he said. He had no idea if this was so; he had made no application for a phone. What he did know with bleak certainty was that he could afford neither the installation fee nor the quarterly expenses.

‘You couldn’t ring Janet even if we did have a phone,’ he reminded Lisa. There was no phone at Rose Cottage and Janet didn’t intend to have one put in.

Lisa’s full red mouth looked sulky. ‘What’s your letter?’ she asked after a moment’s silence.

He glanced down at the envelope in his hand. ‘It’s only a circular,’ he said. ‘Some central heating firm.’ As soon as the words left his lips he knew his mistake.

‘We’ll have to get some kind of central heating put in before next winter,’ Lisa said with energy. ‘We must have the house nice and warm for the baby.’

‘There are gas-fires in the bedrooms.’ He drew a little sighing breath. Even the gas-fires, small and old-fashioned, would be expensive enough to run. And Lisa wasn’t by nature given to economy, she seemed to think she had only to express a wish and the means to gratify it would float in on the summer breeze.

‘If we sold this house and moved to Cannonbridge,’ she said coaxingly, ‘we could buy a lovely new bungalow with central heating already laid on. We could buy one out at Leabarrow, near Carole.’ Leabarrow was a newish development on the opposite edge of Cannonbridge.

Derek gave her a despairing look. ‘Ivydene isn’t ours to sell. Half of it belongs to Janet.’ As Lisa well knew.

‘I’m positive you could do something about that if you tried, if you went to see a solicitor. Carole says people can always get round that sort of thing if they really want to.’ Her tone now held a strong suggestion of a whine and her delicate eyebrows came together in a frown. ‘It’s so boring being stuck out here in the middle of nowhere.’

‘There’s no question of selling the house if Janet’s against it,’ he said. ‘And you know she’s against it.’ Lisa had put forward the suggestion some weeks ago and Janet had abruptly dismissed the notion.

‘Carole says we can force a sale, whatever Janet says, and split the proceeds.’

‘I’m sure that can’t be right,’ he said sharply. ‘We’d have to reach agreement with Janet on any course of action.’ He closed his eyes; half the proceeds of the sale of Ivydene would be nowhere near enough to buy one of the Leabarrow bungalows and he was in no position to raise or finance a mortgage.

He opened his eyes and his expression was once more easy and amiable. ‘You haven’t read Carole’s letter,’ he reminded Lisa.

She gave a moody shrug. ‘It won’t be anything important, it’ll just be to say when she wants me to go over there.’ She ripped open the envelope and drew out a single sheet covered with a few lines of bold scrawl.

Carole Gardiner was the wife of a welder on an oil rig; they had two small children. The Gardiners had moved to Leabarrow twelve months ago from an industrial town up north. Lisa had met Carole in the waiting room at her dentist’s and they had struck up an immediate friendship.

She glanced over the letter. ‘Mike’s away again. She wants me to go over there some time this week.’ Carole never wanted visitors when her husband was at home, his reappearances were a kind of regular explosive honey­moon. But in Mike’s absences she was delighted to have Lisa’s company. Lisa usually stayed the night and Carole arranged for a baby-sitter so they could go out for the evening.

‘I’ll go over there later in the week,’ she decided.

‘You could go over on Friday morning,’ Derek suggested. ‘It’s the clinic this Friday, you’d have to go into Cannonbridge for that anyway. You could stop over till Saturday.’ He never minded these brief absences of Lisa’s, they gave him a chance to draw breath, clear his thoughts.

She pouted. ‘I’ve nothing decent to wear.’ She gestured at her clothes strewn over the backs of chairs, scattered on top of the chest of drawers. ‘Everything’s getting so tight round the waist.’ It would never occur to her to pick up a needle and scissors, let the garments out. ‘I’ll be needing a lot of new things soon,’ she added. ‘And there’s all the stuff to buy for the baby.’

She gave him a wheedling smile. ‘There’s a Mother and Baby fortnight on at Hanson’s.’ This was the most expensive store in Cannonbridge. ‘They have such lovely things. I could go along there with Carole.’

She wouldn’t need to fatigue herself penning a reply to Carole’s letter, she could phone her from the neighbour­hood shop just along the road. She popped in there at least once a day for a tin or something from the frozen food cabinet.

Derek was anxious to steer her away from thoughts of spending. ‘Would you like me to run you over to Longmead this evening to see Janet?’ he said. ‘You could find out if she’s coming to stay or not.’ They’d already paid a few visits to Rose Cottage although Janet hadn’t been very pressing about urging them to come over. ‘She may not have had time to write,’ he said. ‘She must be busy at the end of term. She may just intend to hop on the bus on Friday and come straight over.’

Lisa made no reply. ‘We could pop over there about half past seven,’ he persisted.

‘No, thanks,’ she said abruptly. ‘I don’t see why I should go running after Janet if she can’t even be bothered to answer my letters. And anyway,’ she added with a return to her childish manner, ‘I don’t need her now I’ve got Carole.’ Carole was fifteen years older than Lisa and so fitted comfortably into the mother/older sister slot that Lisa was accustomed to. She much preferred the company of people older than herself, she hadn’t kept up with any of her schoolfriends.

And Carole always had plenty of money, was always happy to pay for the steak dinners and wine, tickets for a show, drinks at a club.

‘Then if you won’t come, I think I’ll go over to Longmead on my own,’ Derek said. ‘I’ll ask Janet what she’s going to do about the holidays. I’ll explain that you’re upset she hasn’t written – ’

‘Don’t you dare!’ Lisa said with force. ‘I will not go running after her and I won’t have you going running after her either!’

‘I don’t for one moment think she’d see it like that,’ he said mildly. He gave a joking smile. ‘Of course she may have more ambitious plans for the holidays, she may be going off on a luxury cruise.’

She could certainly afford it. She’d been teaching for seven years now and she was the type to save. She’d been left some money in her father’s will – a sore point with Lisa who’d been left nothing; when her father breathed his last he had no idea that he’d begotten a second child.

Mrs Marshall made her will twelve months before she died and she had divided her estate between her two daughters with scrupulous fairness. The house and its contents were left to them jointly and her investments were split in two, Janet’s share to be paid over without delay as she was already of a sensible age, but Lisa’s to be withheld till she was twenty-five.

‘Promise me you won’t go over to Rose Cottage,’ Lisa insisted.

He moved his shoulders. ‘All right then, if that’s what you want.’

She sank back against the pillows with a satisfied air. ‘I’m hungry,’ she said suddenly, like a child.

‘I’ll make you some breakfast,’ he offered. ‘I’ve plenty of time. What would you like?’ He removed the little glass from the tray and set it down on the bedside table.

She put out a finger and touched the rosebud. ‘What a pretty colour.’ She gave him a delicious dimpled smile and he had a sudden sharp memory of North Africa, the golden idle days, the starry, scented nights. ‘I’ll have some toast and scrambled eggs,’ she said. ‘Some of that lime marmalade. And lots of coffee.’

‘I’m yours to command, Princess.’ He bent down and kissed her, picked up the tray and went briskly down again to the kitchen. The bills were still on the table but he gave them barely a glance as he swept them up into a pile and thrust them back into the drawer of the dresser.

CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_2e55e4af-f844-5d6f-bdf4-7f89ea4fa588)

The morning session at Longmead school ended at noon. At five minutes past twelve Janet Marshall walked up Mayfield Lane and pushed open the little wooden gate of Rose Cottage. A trellis brilliant with the full flush of pale pink roses arched over the gate, scenting the air with their delicate perfume. She went up the path to the front door which was exuberantly garlanded on either side with great swags of climbing roses, red and white. She took a key from her shoulder-bag and let herself in.

The cottage was a good two hundred years old; it was small and set well back from the lane, a situation that gave it plenty of privacy without making it in any way isolated. It had a long narrow garden in front and an even longer strip at the back. The cottage belonged to Oswald Slater, the owner of Mayfield Farm, and stood upon his land. It had been allowed to lie empty for many years and had fallen into sad disrepair, but after the spectacular rise in property values in recent times Slater had considered the dwelling worth restoring and modernizing, and it was now a comfortable little residence with a new lease of life ahead of it. It suited Janet very well, standing as it did only a couple of hundred yards from the school.

She hung her bag on a hook just inside the front door. The tiny hall led into the single living-room which was simply and pleasantly furnished with pieces she had brought from Ivydene, pieces she remembered from her childhood in Ellenborough; they gave her an agreeable sense of continuity and tranquillity.

She switched on the radio which began to play light music, but she gave it no more than a fraction of her attention as she set about preparing her lunch.

She shook out a clean cloth and put it on the table in the centre of the room. She took out a jug of goat’s milk, butter and cheese from the fridge, reached down a beaker from the open dresser and brought a tin of crispbread from the pantry. At the sink she carefully washed a fine Cos lettuce she had grown in the garden and made it into a salad with cucumber and tomatoes she had bought on her Saturday trip into Cannonbridge. All her movements were quick, neat and methodical.