The Chorister at the Abbey (15 page)

‘I was involved with the Frosts’ elder sister for a while.’

‘Oh, really? So did she share the family’s interesting reputation?’

Alex smiled at him. She was surprised but not shocked. She waited for him to continue.

‘No, Marilyn was lovely,’ Edwin said after a pause. ‘Not like the rest. She was the eldest by a long way, with a different father. Her education was non-existent but she had brains. And the sisters helped her. So she enrolled at the college to do music.’

‘And you were her teacher?’

‘Yes. Dangerous of course. She was nineteen and I was thirty. When we realized how things were going, she left the college. She was over eighteen. It was unwise perhaps, but there was never a scandal.’

‘Did everyone know?’

‘Oh yes!’ He remembered how impossible it had been to hide their happiness. ‘There was some talk, and some nastiness. But we planned to get married.’

‘And what happened?’

He paused for longer. ‘She discovered life outside Norbridge, so we split up. She’s in Derby now. We’re still friends.’

‘That’s good.’

Alex could tell there was more to the story, but Edwin looked drained.

She shrugged. ‘Well, as I’ve told you before, I was ditched too. But in my case we weren’t friends afterwards. I hated my husband and still do. I could kill him, I really could. He left me for a woman in his office. Someone he didn’t have anything in common with, except . . .’

‘Except?’ he prompted, genuinely intrigued.

‘We were childless. He couldn’t have kids. It was okay because I loved him so much. I assumed he adored me too. But then he came home and told me . . .’

She found it hard to say. Edwin waited. ‘He’d had a one-night stand with her at a Christmas party. She got pregnant. It was a fluke but the child was definitely his. I went off the rails with jealousy. I’d been
sooo
understanding about his low sperm count. And now bingo! Hole in one, as they say. He was leaving me. And he was so bloody thrilled! That was almost the worst of it. He thought that because I loved him, I should be delighted about the baby too. The selfishness of men! I went mad, literally I think. I behaved desperately badly.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I followed him to her house more than once, and ranted at both of them. I lashed out at him and scratched him on his face. I screamed whole nights away. At first I tried sex with someone else, but that didn’t work, so I got madder and madder and eventually I got pissed and crashed the car and ended up in hospital and lost my licence. I was out of my mind for over a year. It’s only through good luck that I didn’t murder McFay and his girlfriend. Both of them. And I just couldn’t be near them and our so-called friends when the baby was born.’

‘So you came back to Norbridge.’

‘Yes, I did. But not before I’d fallen out with everyone we’d known. You see, they all seemed to be on his side. People are so sentimental about babies. But I behaved appallingly.’

‘You were in shock. I sympathize.’

‘You do?’ Alex’s eyes widened.

‘I wish I’d done something like that. I withdrew and went cold to everyone, even Lynn, who was out of her mind with worry about me. I stopped eating. You took your anger out, I bottled mine up. But it was the same thing. Jealousy – which is evil, but so very understandable. I know exactly what you mean.’ It took the Psalms to tell me that justified anger should be expressed, he thought. You let the sun go down on it as much by repressing it as by feeding it.

Alex tried to laugh. ‘We’re a right pair, aren’t we! Fire and ice.’

Edwin looked at her steadily. ‘Maybe we are,’ he said seriously.

Alex grabbed her empty glass and stood up. ‘I’m going to have another cranberry juice, though I’d love a scotch,’ she said to hide her embarrassment. ‘Now our confession session is over, we should go back to discussing Morris Little, because you still haven’t explained why being in love with their big sister means that you think the Frosts are innocent.’

‘I’m not in love with her,’ Edwin said to Alex’s back. ‘Not now.’

She came back with a pint for him and juice for herself. Edwin started talking straight away. ‘Marilyn knows what the boys are like. It’s been one petty crime after another. They both had ASBOs and Jason had been charged with a drugs offence, though it was dropped. To be honest, I didn’t contact her about it because . . . well, because contacting her is difficult. But a few days ago she called me. All she said was that she would be allowed to visit them. And that she didn’t believe that they’d done it.’

‘And allied with the mystery of the psalter, the assignation with Wanda, and the power cut, it made you wonder?’

‘Yes! Say someone else met Morris, beat him on the head, then waited during the power cut, and came back when you and Tom were off the scene?’

‘But the Frosts’ fingerprints are on the wood, aren’t they?’

‘Does that mean anything?’

‘And they’ve boasted about causing the power cut, haven’t they?’

‘But maybe that was a coincidence?’

‘So who else would have wanted to kill Morris Little?’

‘That,’ said Edwin slowly, ‘is the easiest question to answer. Almost everyone in Norbridge hated Morris. Including me.’ He paused. ‘Look at this. I only found it yesterday when I went through Morris’s emails.’ Edwin fished in his pocket and Alex looked down at the printout he produced.

A moment later, lifting her eyes from the page, she said, ‘My God! I’ll get both of us a scotch after all.’

26

All mine enemies whisper together against me; even against me do they imagine this evil.
Psalm 41:7

‘This is an all right spot!’

Poppy Strickland eased her large round firm bottom a little closer to Tom Firth’s agonizingly thin thighs. They were sitting together in the Mitre Lounge, a dark offshoot of the Norbridge Arms, where the town’s youth gathered, faces illuminated by the glowing stained glass window effect of bright beeping game machines. Tom couldn’t help jigging his shoulders softly along to the rap. He looked a particularly livid yellow while Poppy flashed scarlet and blue alternately. Both sucked a commercial cocktail of chemicals through plastic straws with the look of suckling babies, lulled by the thudding beat of the music.

Poppy’s lush lips parted to reveal very white teeth and, just before she spoke, Tom had congratulated himself, yet again, on getting off with her – if that was what had happened. He wasn’t quite sure. Poppy was not a great talker. After a fumbling clinch outside the cinema complex in Newcastle when he visited her, she had just said ‘All right’ when he suggested meeting the next time she was home from university.

Then he’d had a brainwave. His mum’s birthday was coming up. If Poppy was coming home for half-term, he could ask her to help him choose something for his mother. The scheme was a winner. It was safe, cosy, and made him look like a nice guy. And he would have time to think up their next outing, and maybe take things a little further. Predictably, when he’d asked her, Poppy had just said ‘All right.’

They’d met at eleven o’clock that morning, and trawled Marks and Spencer, H. Samuel and Waterstone’s before choosing a set of Cumbrian Heather Bath Accessories from McCrea’s. The gift safely out of the way, Tom had made for the trendy atmosphere of the Mitre Lounge and was now wondering what to suggest next.

‘Yes, it’s all right here,’ Poppy repeated. Then she said brusquely: ‘Have you seen Chloe?’

Was this an innocent question, or was she becoming a bit proprietorial? Tom was rather chuffed at the thought.

‘No,’ he said emphatically, but then he wondered if the truth might be a better option. After all, he had no idea whether the two girls were in touch. ‘Well, actually, she’s been coming to Chorus practices with her mum. Have you seen her yourself?’ he added, suddenly suspicious. He was a bit nervous about where Poppy’s loyalties lay.

‘Nah.’ She shook her head. ‘But I’ve tried texting her. She hardly ever replies and when she does, it’s weird.’

‘Like?’

‘She says she’s busy ’cos she’s seeing someone.’

‘Yer what?’

‘You sound surprised.’

‘I am. She looks really frumpy and grim. Wears scarves, long skirts, Timberlands.’

‘So?’

‘Well, it’s not exactly sexy.’ Tom paused before his next killer sentence. ‘You look sexier than her these days.’

Poppy sucked audibly at her straw, which Tom found uncomfortably erotic. I like big girls, he said to himself. And Poppy was less big than she used to be, and shapely with it. He relaxed into her and conversation stopped for a minute.

Then Poppy said, ‘I bet he’s an old guy. Or married.’

‘Who?’

‘Chloe’s squeeze.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Because then he wouldn’t care what she looked like, would he? He’d just get off on the fact she was young. And she’s so secretive. Before she couldn’t keep her mouth shut about how popular she was and who she’d had sex with. Or nearly had sex with. But now, nada.’

There was a long but not empty silence while they both drank.

‘Actually,’ said Poppy, pausing to suck voluptuously on her straw, ‘I’m a bit worried about Chloe. She was my best friend, after all.’

‘So?’

‘Well, it’s not right somehow. There’s summat going on. I think you should keep a lookout.’

‘Me?’

Tom cast his mind back to his last conversation with Chloe, when he had told her about the psalter in Morris Little’s hand. For a minute he felt uncomfortable. Edwin Armstrong, whom he respected in an obscure sort of way, had told him not to tell anyone. But he had gone and told Chloe. Though surely that didn’t matter; they were family, after all. Edwin would probably have told Chloe himself. But the suspicion that he had been indiscreet would not go away. To make amends, he found himself agreeing with Poppy.

‘OK, I’ll keep an eye on her.’ He wasn’t sure why, but he felt that this way he would at least be able to check on what Chloe did. ‘Maybe she’ll have a coffee with me – you know, just as friends.’

‘It had better be just as friends,’ said Poppy, to his satisfaction.

Spurred on, he said, ‘And how about the weekend? Should we go to the Chinese on Fletchergate on Friday?’

‘All right.’ Poppy sank her plump leg even further into his bony thigh. This is wonderful, Tom thought. My strategy is working. With luck, if I play my cards right and take things slowly, then, with a bit of girly-style romance, we might be able to go a bit further this weekend.

‘And in the meantime,’ Poppy said in a sudden rush, ‘why not come back to my place and watch a movie in my bedroom this afternoon?’

Tom’s mouth gaped open and his big brown eyes shone like chocolate drops.

‘Great!’ he yelped, rather shrilly.

‘All right.’

At that moment, Alex Gibson came out of the Crown and Thistle, blinking in the sudden burst of watery sunlight. The pub had been dark and cosy, which was just as well. She had not wanted Edwin to see how appalled she was by the letter he had shown her. It had been in the mass of paper he had printed out from Morris Little’s computer.

‘I always wondered who had sent it to me,’ he’d said quietly. ‘But in a small town like Norbridge there are so many possibilities. Especially if you work somewhere like the college. But I would never have thought Morris hated me enough.’

Alex had been transfixed by the words.
You think you’re
the most musical man in Norbridge don’t you? Up yourself
aren’t you? And now they say you’ll be head of the college’s
music department. But don’t they remember what you did to
Marilyn Frost? I bet she’s not the only one either. Isn’t it wrong
to shag your pupils? But I’ll tell you something – I know where
Marilyn is and if you don’t withdraw from this head of department
thing I’ll make sure everyone else knows too
. . .

It had been so spiteful. ‘I wasn’t sure whether or not to show it to you,’ Edwin had said softly. ‘But once we started talking about Marilyn, it seemed a lot easier to tell you everything. Anyway . . .’ He pulled his battered brown leather briefcase on to his knee. ‘. . . I’m not the only one. And I’m glad now that I know where it came from.’

He’d pulled out a sheaf of paper. ‘There are about ten others. They were all sent from a separate account called Norbridge Man. I printed out everything on his hard drive entitled Norbridge and got these too. I didn’t want to show you them because some of them are horrible. And cruel and untrue, I suspect. But Morris was writing to a lot of people.’

‘Was there any pattern?’ Alex had asked.

‘They’re all to people he thought were too big for their boots. People who had maybe snubbed him or people he felt were “up themselves”. That’s a phrase he uses a lot.’

Edwin had seemed saddened rather than angry. He seemed to feel that perhaps he should have listened to Morris, rather than swatting him away. ‘Maybe I
was
a bit up myself. At one time I thought I had the world at my feet.’

‘When you were with Marilyn?’

‘You’ve been there too, haven’t you?’

‘The Golden Age.’ Alex nodded and they had both smiled.

Then Edwin had looked at his watch. ‘Bugger. I’m needed at a meeting of the new Credits Resource Audit Practice committee. CRAP for short.’

‘It may be crap but it won’t be short if I know the college! You’d better dash . . .’

‘Listen, Alex, they’re doing
Dream of Gerontius
in Newcastle the week after next. Do you fancy going over, and having supper afterwards?’

‘Yes, great.’

‘I’ll call you.’ He grabbed his papers and left suddenly.

Alex gathered her bag and gloves thoughtfully and pushed her way outside, blinking in the glare.

It might have been the whisky, a novelty these days, but her head was spinning. She breathed in the clammy air, aware of a sense of warmth – or at least of less raw chill. Maybe winter was ebbing. It would be the anniversary of her mother’s death just after Easter, and for the first time she sensed the seasons coming round again. For most of the year she had stood still or even gone backwards, but now the world was spinning on at a faster rate.

The low bright winter sun went behind a high cloud and suddenly she could see clearly along Market Street. It had the grey quietness of a provincial town where lunchtime was still recognized. Most shoppers were munching, many in the dated snugness of McCrea’s. But then Alex saw Suzy Spencer pushing her way out of the heavy old-fashioned glass-plated doors opposite. She was snuffling into a large white handkerchief. Her eyes were red and her head was pulled down into her collar. She’s crying, Alex thought.

And suddenly, she thought, I need to sort all this out. I want to go over and ask Suzy what’s the matter, but because of the past I can’t. I like Suzy. I’d like to be her friend but if I go on evading things like this, at some point we’ll both be compromised. And there are other people to think of too. Like Edwin.

Alex walked back to the college, keyed up and agitated. There was to be no more of this stupidity. She went straight to her computer, found Robert’s address on the internal address list, and emailed asking if they could meet. And she signed it with her real name.

Suzy dried her eyes and started driving savagely out of Norbridge. She felt angry with everyone. On the way to the north-east, without thinking she took the old Military Road, not the main A69. The car bounced down the straight switchback which cut the bleak landscape with Roman brutality. Occasionally Hadrian’s Wall reared to her left, and on her right the iron grey hills stretched for miles under pearly skies. It was the top of the world.

She had been going far too fast, and forced herself to slow down and pull in at a lay-by. She was ahead of schedule now. She got out of the car and walked over to a stile which led up to the Wall, and looked around her. To the east she thought she could sense the change of light over the big city thirty miles ahead. To the west, hills and bogs and no man’s land stretched till it all dropped down to Norbridge in its isolation, and the soft coastal plain. Which way did she want to go?

I’m tearing myself apart, she thought. I don’t want Nigel any more, but I don’t want Robert as he is now. Yet guilt pulls me to both of them. Nigel was my husband for years and we were a duo, responsible for shaping each other. And I clung to Robert when things went wrong. But which one do I love? And who loves me? And what do my children need? Her head ached with thinking.

She climbed back in the car. The wind was freezing up here on the ridge, but even so the light was brighter and the sensation bracing rather than chilling. The year was moving on and spring was in the wings.

She punched into her mobile phone book and chose a number. Three hundred miles away a mobile rang in response.

‘Is that you, Suzy?’

‘Oh Rachel, thank goodness you’re there. I couldn’t have coped with your voicemail.’

‘What’s wrong with “Leave a message already”?’

‘Stop taking the piss. I want to come down to London and see you this weekend. I was supposed to be going to Nigel’s with the kids but I’m sick of playing Happy Families.’

‘And you’d feel bad having a romantic time with Mr Perfect while poor Nigel does the Daddy thing?’

‘It’s Mr Perfect who’s giving me bother.’

‘Wow. This is news.’

‘Old news really . . . you
know
it hasn’t been right since New Year. I just want time to think without the pressure of places. Everywhere I look relates to one man or the other. I want to be somewhere unconnected with them, where I can go to pieces.’

‘Welcome to my world. Car or train?’

‘Train. On Saturday morning. I’ll let you know what time.’