The Newcomer

Fleshy.

Her skin began to prickle.

‘Mr Worthington? Is that you, boy?’ She knew it wasn’t the dog.

She stood stock-still and held her breath. But there was no answering thump of a wagging tail or whiskery nose sniffing her leg.

Fear crawled from her stomach, through her bowels and down her legs. She began to shake.

She was breathing faster and recognised panic. What should she do? Scared to progress further and tread on anything else that might be lying in the dark, but knowing she had to, she reached her foot forwards, feeling for anything else.

What was that?

She drew her foot back quickly.

‘Oh dear Lord,’ she whispered, and took two quick hops to where she hoped the light switch was.

In the sudden glaring light, she saw her beloved aunt’s body.

‘Robert! Robert!’

Robert was dreaming of Venice, sitting in the sun, under the shade of a bougainvillaea and having lunch alone, watching the beautiful women walk by. Where was Angela? He couldn’t remember why she wasn’t with him, but never mind. He could sit here without guilt. Of course Angela would be very cross if she caught him but it was innocent fun. Then he heard her. Upset. Angry? Her voice was coming in distressing sobs.

‘Robert, oh dear God. Robert! Robert. Robert.’

The vision faded and he sat up in bed, ready to apologise. It had only been lunch. Nothing more. Angela would understand. But Angela’s side of the bed was empty. He ran his hands through his thick, dark hair and heard her shout again, ‘Robert, it’s Auntie Mamie, she’s fallen.’

A dose of adrenaline hit him and he leapt out of bed. Six foot two, muscular and naked, he sped onto the landing and looked over the banisters. His wife had one hand to her mouth while the other clutched her nightdress to her heart. He saw the body on the rug. Twisted awkwardly. Her eyes half open. A bruise spreading on her temple. He knew she was dead.

He took the stairs two at a time. Stepping round the grim scene, he reached Angela and pulled her to his strong, naked chest.

‘Darling. Don’t look. Make some tea. I’ll call the police.’

‘She needs an ambulance.’ Angela pushed her way out of Robert’s arms. She stepped carefully over Mamie’s feet and went to the phone on the hall table. ‘Check her breathing, Robert, and fetch a blanket. She’ll get cold.’

Robert dashed for the blanket from the back of the sofa, then knelt and checked Mamie’s pulse. Nothing. He bent his ear to her nose. She wasn’t breathing.

‘Ambulance, please.’ Angela’s voice broke as the emergency operator asked for details.

Robert placed Mamie’s lifeless arm gently on her chest and stood up. ‘Darling, we need the police as well. I’m so sorry. She’s gone.’

Angela took the receiver from her ear and looked at Mamie, lying in her scarlet silk pyjamas, and her legs gave way.

Robert took the phone and gave the emergency operator their address and an assessment of what had happened. He put his hand fondly against Mamie’s cool cheek, before pulling the blanket snugly over her as though she was sleeping.

Finally, he collected Angela’s small frame in his arms and carried her to the kitchen. Tenderly he lowered her onto her chair by the Aga.

‘I’ll make tea. The police and ambulance will be here soon.’

‘Mamie,’ keened Angela, her head in her hands. ‘I didn’t hear her fall, Robert. I should have heard her. Why didn’t I hear her?’

‘Darling, it’s an accident. Somehow she tripped on the stairs and fell. I don’t think she would have known anything about it.’ He smiled into Angela’s green eyes. ‘In a funny sort of way, isn’t this so typically her? Exactly the way she would have liked to have gone? After a great party where everyone loved her … and full of gin.’

1 (#u68b2c4e0-1ab1-559d-9e35-f3749b316f39)

Six months earlier

‘Penny?’ Simon Canter shouted from the bottom of the vicarage stairs, his shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, a sheen of sweat on his brow.

‘Penny.’ He shouted a little louder.

He had been emptying and clearing his office for the last three hours and it had not put him in the happiest of moods. ‘Penny!’

‘What?’ Her voice from upstairs was irritated. ‘I’m sorting the bloody books in Jenna’s room.’

‘Where are the bin liners?’

‘Under the sink, where they usually are.’

‘I’ve looked and they are not.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ she muttered to herself, then shouted, more loudly, ‘Have you looked in the box by the back door?’

‘No.’

‘Well, look!’

Penny was not quite as busy as she was pretending. In truth she had been lying on her daughter’s bed for most of the morning, surrounded by packing cases and constantly being distracted by long-forgotten possessions. She had been flicking through her own old copy of Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes. She had won it at her boarding school. Her headmistress’s inscription still gave her a tiny thrill of pride.

Awarded to Penelope Leighton

For continued improvement in English Literature.

Congratulations

Miss Elsie Bird

Penny had had a difficult childhood. Her father had died when she was young and later she had discovered the woman she had been told was her mother was not. It had destroyed her sense of self-worth and left her with a need for praise and approval wherever she could find it. Even now, reading Miss Bird’s dedication to her more than thirty years later, she felt the pleasure of having done well.

It wasn’t until she’d met Simon, in her early forties, that she’d found the wonder of loving and being loved in return. And she, a woman who worked in the febrile, emotionally incontinent, ego-driven world of television, had found all that in a vicar! Now Simon shouted again from downstairs, ‘They are not there!’

‘What aren’t where?’

‘The bin liners.’

Penny huffily put the book down and went to go downstairs and find the bloody bin bags herself when she spotted them. They were where she had put them, at the top of the stairs.

‘Oh, here they are,’ she called cheerfully, covering her guilt.