The Chorister at the Abbey (17 page)

‘Good grief! Did you?’ Robert watched Sandy’s face as she blushed.

‘Aha!’ he said, realization dawning. ‘I wondered why Edwin was more cheerful. Have you got over Sam now?’

She bent her head. ‘Who knows? Stranger things have happened.’

‘We can all change. I used to be a hypocritical old fart till I met Suzy.’

Alex laughed loudly. ‘Hypocritical maybe! Fart certainly. But not old! Suzy is very lucky. But then so are you. She’s great and I’m happy for you. Are you in love?’

‘Yes, I am.’

That’s true, Robert thought. The Sandy he had met eight years ago had attracted him deeply, but along with the dark good looks she’d had an intensity which reminded him of his wife. Suzy was very different, much easier going. She has a lighter touch and a more gregarious nature, he thought, and I do love her very much. She’s right for me and I mustn’t lose her.

There would be someone else who was right for Alex, maybe someone not so far away.

‘Let’s drink to falling in love!’ he said.

Alex looked at him archly. ‘But not with each other!’ she said, and they both laughed out loud.

28

My lovers and friends hast thou put away from me, and hid mine acquaintance out of my sight.
Psalm
88:18

Rachel Cohen swung the car round the corner yet again in a vain attempt to find a parking space in the middle of Islington. Suzy said breathlessly, ‘I told you not to come and meet me from Euston. I could have got a cab.’

‘I was trying to be a good friend, actually. Look, I think that woman is going. If we wait here a minute I can have her space and it’s only five minutes’ walk from the flat.’

‘So maybe we can get a cab from here?’

‘Very funny.’

‘Rachel, you’ll have to move because there’s a big white-van-man right up your exhaust pipe.’

‘I should be so lucky.’ The van behind started hooting. ‘Shit!’ Rachel gunned the accelerator and her little car shot forward.

‘Watch out, Rache! This is madness. You must be bonkers to bring the car out in traffic like this. On a Saturday afternoon as well. I’ve seen more cars in five minutes here than you get in Tarnfield in a week.’

With a snort of anger mixed with contempt, Rachel seemed physically to hurl the little car into a tiny space. ‘Touch parking,’ she snarled as they crunched into the car behind. ‘Suzy, you sound like those awful people from the provinces who blag invitations to London and then spend the whole time telling you how much nicer it is in Netherbuttock or Brigadoon!’

‘I’m not like that.’ But Suzy started to laugh. ‘Or maybe I am. I need to get away to know that I’m missing it already!’

Rachel had recently moved from a smaller two-bedroom flat to a wonderful attic ‘space’ with a huge through dining room and living area. It was all very contemporary and minimalist; Suzy gasped in genuine admiration. She was glad, too, that it was a different flat from the one where she and Robert had stayed with Rachel for a traumatic weekend eighteen months earlier. It really was easy, she thought ten minutes later, drinking cappuccino from Rachel’s all-singing-all-dancing coffee machine, to put Tarnfield in another place in her head.

‘We’re staying in tonight and I’m cooking,’ Rachel said decisively. ‘No negotiation on that one. I’m going to start preparing artichokes and washing the mung beans just in case you forget where you are! Have a look at the roof garden. And when you’ve filled your lungs with top quality toxins, come back in and tell me everything from the beginning.’

Suzy went out through the new sheer french windows, on to the decking that flanked Rachel’s apartment. Rachel had put pots of various evergreen shrubs in the corners, and along the top of the grey metal parapet were shallow boxes with tiny daffodils bobbing in the wind. It was bright and dry, much warmer than in the north. Suzy caught the scent of a tub of fat blue and pink hyacinths placed by the door. She looked over the edge, down to the rows of Georgian houses, the gastro-pub on the corner and in the distance the tower of University College Hospital and the ever-present cranes at building sites in the city.

It didn’t help. Her mind seemed to be in constant transit, ricocheting from the past to the present, Newcastle to Tarnfield, Tynedale TV to Norbridge College, Nigel to Robert. And now London.

She went and sat down on the slimline sofa with little wooden legs which Rachel had positioned tastefully in front of the kitchen area where she was chopping crazily.

‘That’s enough of that,’ Rachel announced. ‘It’s packet opening from here on. So now tell.’

And Suzy did so, recounting everything that had happened since the week before Christmas. As she talked, she surprised herself by how often Morris Little’s murder featured. It was the murder which had upset Robert in the first place, making him think about the Frosts and worry that Jake needed a stepfather. And then Robert’s solicitous visits to the Little family had wrecked all her Christmas shopping plans and led to so much tension. Since Morris’s murder Robert had been less keen on the Chorus, and he’d been so preoccupied, writing away in his study. I wonder, Suzy thought . . .

‘You’ve stopped talking.’

‘Yes. I just thought that maybe one of the things on Robert’s mind is this murder. Maybe that’s what he’s writing about!’

‘But I thought you said two local lads had been charged with that.’

‘They have. But Robert seems to think there’s more to it. He’s spent a lot of time talking to Norma, Morris’s wife. She says there’s no way the lads are responsible. Morris would have run a mile rather than confront them. It was quite an elaborate murder, really. The Frosts have confessed but they were so drugged up, who could know what they thought they were doing?’

‘Aren’t you being melodramatic? Aren’t they the obvious suspects?’

‘But the timing doesn’t fit! First, Morris was killed. Then there was a power cut caused by the Frosts in the plant room. Then the murderer or murderers escaped. Then the light came on and the next person along the corridor found the body.’

‘Couldn’t it just have been an opportunist killing? Kids can be pretty vicious these days.’

‘But why was Morris Little in the college anyway? I can’t help feeling there’s more to it and I’m not the only one. It makes everyone more uncomfortable. Everyone seems destabilized. My friend Lynn the rector’s wife is having awful trouble with her daughter, whose friend found the body. It’s as if everything has been a bit off key since. And it certainly hasn’t helped me and Robert.’

‘Maybe it brought things to a head. Have some wine . . .’

While Rachel fussed in the kitchen area, Suzy got up and walked on to the roof garden again. Below her, Islington went about its business. It was just getting dark. People were hurrying back from Sainsbury’s or unpacking cars. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a flock of nuns, three or four or them, hurrying down the road, habits billowing. Then she refocused. They weren’t nuns at all, but Muslim women. Of course. There were so few nuns now. She thought suddenly of the only conversation she’d had with Morris Little, about the derelict convent.

‘Rachel,’ she said, going into the flat, ‘I really do think there was something weird about Morris Little’s murder. He was a spiteful man. He upset everyone. He even said something offensive to me about that derelict convent and the old nuns. Lots of people must have been relieved when he died. And now those boys are being blamed.’

‘So if you think that, why don’t you do something? Like you did before?’

‘But look what happened last time. My children were in danger!’

‘Yes, and as a result you’ve been frozen ever since!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Suzy, you’re stuck in time! You’re not yourself. You had a terrible experience and as a result you can’t move on.’

Suzy thought about it. After the deaths in Tarnfield which had brought her and Robert together two years earlier, she had been unnerved by any hint of violence. It was like being post-natal, when your sensitivities are raw, as if your organs were on the outside. Nature’s way of making you care for your tiny child. Since the murders, there had been some aspects of the ‘chat show’ side of her TV job which she had only been able to do after shutting herself in the ladies’ loo, and forcing herself to face whoever was ‘victim du jour’. Was she in any fit state to take on more horror?

‘So you think I should get involved in this murder? But I hardly knew the man.’ Yet as she said it, the nuns drifted through her mind, habits flowing. Morris had been a misogynist.

‘Yes! Go for it! Toughen up again! You’ve not been yourself, Suzy. You’ve been living in another woman’s house with another woman’s husband, scared to put your head above the parapet, living on hold. But Jake and Molly are fine. Get on with your own life now.’

Suzy remembered the stupid row she and Robert had had about Mary’s rug. It was true. Another woman’s home. The subtext was that Robert saved me, and then gave me a place to live, she thought. As always, Rachel’s sharp mind had got down to the root of the trouble. And hadn’t Lynn hinted at something similar? It was a sense of inequality – a suspicion that Robert cared for her because he had rescued her and her children.

‘You’re right. That’s why I prickled so much when Robert talked about Jake needing a stepfather. I thought he loved me because I was a flake and he was Mr Perfect.’

‘But when you first met, there was nothing needy about you, was there? You were little Miss Dynamite, at least by Tarnfield standards. You need to get beyond this idea that you’ve been rescued, Suzy. You haven’t. Have you ever thought that it might be Robert who’s really the needy one?’

It was an odd idea. Suzy glanced outside at the everlasting glow of London. It was beautiful and it had made her see more clearly – but the bright lights were not for her. She suddenly wanted to go back to Tarnfield to try and sort this out.

‘So would things be better if Robert were Mr Imperfect?’ Rachel prompted. ‘And you were Miss Dynamite again?’

If only, Suzy sighed. But what had Rachel said? ‘
In
another woman’s house, with another woman’s husband
.’ Was that what was holding her back? She shook her head fitfully. That was ridiculous. Mary was then. This was now.

‘Rache,’ she said slowly, ‘you’ve put your finger on it. I need to get my confidence back. And to accept that perhaps Robert isn’t quite as sanctimonious as he seems!’

‘It isn’t easy for him either,’ Rachel said gently. ‘How can he know where he stands with the kids?’

‘You’re right.’ Suzy looked out over the rooftops. ‘I hadn’t thought of it from that angle. Maybe he needs Jake as much as Jake needs him! Thanks, Rachel.’

‘Don’t mention it. Just eat your kalamati olives with ariago shavings! Bet you don’t get much of that in Netherbuttock. Or Brigadoon.’

Alex Gibson, alias Sandy McFay, had been invited out again. Not as exciting as her date to hear
The Dream of
Gerontius
coming up the next week with Edwin, but not bad. Until recently she had spent every evening comatose in front of the telly, or painstakingly sorting out her mother’s possessions. Even at her lowest, Alex’s ability to be thorough had not deserted her. Much of her mum’s stuff was boxed up now – there were cartons and black bags all over the bungalow marked with labels like
Nighties –
winceyette
or
Rufflette tape and summer curtains
. It was mostly useless, she knew, but it seemed to bring Mum back for a while and to pay respect to a generation that saved silver paper.

In the past, Christine and Reg Prout had invited her round to their house, but it had always been at the last minute and out of a sense of family solidarity. This time, her sister’s invitation to a local gathering had been genuinely enthusiastic.

‘Do come. It’s a wives’ do.’

‘But I’m not anyone’s wife, Chris.’

‘Well, I know you’re not, not any more, but what I mean is – it’s the girls! Me, Pat Johnstone, Millie Dixon and a few more people. I know Millie’s rather posh but she can be good fun. We do it every so often and we’re getting together because poor Pat needs a break.’

‘Pat Johnstone? Why?’

‘Oh, come on, Alex, you must have heard. Or has your head been in the clouds because of that Waterstone’s promotion?’

‘You promised me you wouldn’t mention it.’

‘Don’t worry, little sister, your secret is safe with me. Anyway, didn’t you know about David Johnstone? He had a terrible car accident not far from where you live! Wrapped himself round a tree.’

‘Oh, that’s awful! Will he be all right?’

‘Oh yes. But he’s hospitalized for quite a while. Pat needs taking out of herself.’

‘Well, in the circumstances I don’t see how I can refuse. Where are you meeting?’

‘At the Workhaven Motel, on the road from Fellside. They do a lovely weekday pasta night with two for the price of one.’

So here Alex was in a Burns’ taxi, going for a good old-fashioned female night out. It took her mind off Edwin. The Workhaven Motel was a long, low building converted from a 1940s airbase, now painted bright pink and resplendent with fairy lights. Pat Johnstone and Millie Dixon seemed already quite plastered and had their arms round each other. Alex and her sister joined them at the bar, and then they all weaved their way on to what could only be described as a dance floor though it was crowded with tables. They plonked themselves at a long, thin trestle affair covered with a thin pink cloth and alive with jangling cutlery.

‘Poor Pat,’ Christine whispered.

‘She doesn’t look poor to me. She looks pissed!’

Christine sipped her gin and tonic genteelly. ‘Oh no, Alex, that’s unkind. Pat’s had a terrible few days. She’s been over to the hospital every day. David is quite out of it. Saying all sorts of things.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Reg told me. He went to see him straight away after the accident. I don’t know why, but anyway he felt he had to go. David was rambling. He seems to have been completely confused and to think the accident happened at the convent!’

‘Another one?’

‘Yes; strange isn’t it?’

Pat Johnstone came tottering towards them. She was wearing very high heels and a low-cut silky dress which revealed a pancake-flat chest.

‘Chris and her sister. The odd one. How luvverly to see you. Have you heard about poor David? Bet this’ll put a stop to his shenanigans in Fellside.’ She laughed her trademark cackling laugh. ‘He’ll have plenty of time to look at old books now!’

‘Sorry?’ Alex felt her ears twitch. ‘What do you mean, old books?’

‘Oh, it’s garbage, you know. He was looking at some old book he’d come across. A photocopy, anyway. But that’s over now. And I’ll tell you what . . .’ She leant across to Alex, who could smell the drink on her breath. ‘. . . I’ll be paying that other woman a visit. I’ll soon find out who she is! I’ve got her scarf!’