The Perfect Sinner

‘It’s coming out a bit green. The pump’s been greased.’

‘A cup of tea then?’

Eliza went into the larder and came out with two tumblers of a thick amber liquid. Beth recognised the sweet honey smell of her mead and resigned herself. Her grandmother put one on the table and drained most of the other one at a gulp. She was the same as ever, as thin as a kipper, as she always said, and much the same colour. Eliza’s skin was as tough as tanned leather. She looked as if she’d been smoked. Scorning hairdressers after a woman in Dartmouth had once tried to charge her a pound for a cut and wash in the nineteen seventies, she had bought a pair of electric clippers and kept her white hair shorn in a bristly crew cut. She was not much more than five feet two inches tall, but she was not in the slightest bit fragile.

She stood looking down at Beth, who was trying to find a section of the sofa where the ends of the springs weren’t so sharp.

‘You’ve got yourself in a pickle, girl,’ she observed. ‘I never thought going off to London was a good idea. Don’t know what’s wrong with Slapton.’

Eliza didn’t read the papers. She said bad news would come and find you soon enough if it mattered. There wasn’t a radio in the house and Beth was pretty sure her grandmother had never watched television in her entire life.

‘I asked Lewis,’ the old woman said, divining Beth’s puzzlement. ‘They were talking in the churchyard yesterday. I heard your name before they saw me.’

So Lewis knew all about it too.

‘You got thinner,’ Eliza observed, inspecting her.

Thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me. That’s not a compliment. You look like a refugee. Have you been doing what I said? A mug of hot milk every night, with local honey in it? Got to be local. The bees give you what you need, see? The pollen from the flowers around about where you live, that’s the best thing for you.’

There’re not many bees in central London, Gran.’

Eliza snorted. ‘Course there are. There’s bees everywhere. You’re just too busy to notice as well as too busy to eat properly. Well, I suppose I thought you’d be more different.’

‘I haven’t been away that long.’

‘Oh yes you have. Two letters and one postcard in getting on for three years? I suppose I should be counting myself lucky. It’s more than your dad’s had.’