White Lies (15 page)

Gillian smiled, but Meinwen didn’t miss the surreptitious glance at her watch. “I’ll look into it but that’s all the time I can give you, I’m afraid. Make another appointment with Amanda but bring Mr. Fenstone with you. I can’t discuss his brother’s will without his presence.”

“Okay. When should I make it for?”

“Give me a couple of days. Who’s the officer looking into reopening the case?”

“DS Peters.”

“Right. I’ll have a word.” She stood again holding out her hand to indicate the door. “It was good to see you, Meinwen.”

Chapter 12

The rain had turned to mist by the time Meinwen left the solicitor’s office, the streetlights garnering halos of yellow around the bulbs. She pulled out her fold-up umbrella and sheltered beneath it. If she half closed her eyes, Meinwen could see diffusion rainbows through her damp lashes and if she let her vision deliberately blur the neon lights changed into blots of formless color. She walked along like this, making the world a palette of light against the darkness.

She trotted back through the market and out to the west, where the spire of St. Pity’s was picked out by floodlights, stark against the dark clouds behind. Her house was a couple of hundred yards this side if it. Living so close to the church had been a boon when she’d first moved to Laverstone. The spire could be seen from almost anywhere in the town and catching sight of it helped her compile a mental map of the area.

She followed it now. The whole church, when it became visible past Hopkin’s Field, all but glowed under the floodlights. They were subsidized by the council since the church’s weekly donations wouldn’t have paid for the bill to run them, let alone running the church itself. The diocese of Bath and Wells had made grumblings about selling off St. Pity’s but there had been enough local protest to stop the proposal.

As she walked down Vicarage Road she could see lights on in the Rectory. Father Brennan burning the midnight oil, no doubt. Not that it would be midnight for several hours yet. She caught the telltale sound of European football as she passed. Father Brennan’s forty-two inch television had, according to the church records she’d checked after it had appeared, been a “gift from the diocese.”

She paused in the act of opening the gate to The Herbage. There was a van parked on the gravel drive, an ice cream van still plastered with the fading temptations of summers past. She couldn’t help grinning as she hurried to her front door, letting herself in to find the house already warm and lit.

“Dafydd?” She checked the kitchen and conservatory. The kettle was warm but hadn’t been recently boiled. She went through to the living room. “Dafydd?”

“I’m up here.”

She dropped her bag on the table and trotted upstairs. Her bedroom, at the front of the house, was still dark but light shone under the bathroom door. A wall of steam swept out as she opened it. “It’s usually only spiders I find in my bath.”

“Wotcha.” Dafydd grinned, twisting his head round to look at her properly. The white suds of her bubble bath set off his dark skin beautifully, the ends of his dreadlocks just skimming the surface as they swished with the movement. “Hope you don’t mind. I was in the area and still had the key you sent me.”

“Mind? Of course I don’t mind.” Meinwen smiled at her oldest male friend and erstwhile lover. They’d shared three years of Methodist school together and a further decade of life in a tiny seaside town in Wales, where the tourist season lasted six weeks in August if you were lucky. She and Dafydd had seen the best and worst of each other, celebrated their successes and commiserated in the miseries. He’d delivered the eulogy at her mam’s funeral and she’d been his best man when he’d married his late wife.

She came a little farther into the bathroom and bent to kiss his forehead.

“Is that any way to greet your best friend?” Dafydd frowned. “I am still your best friend, I suppose?”

“Of course you are.” Meinwen couldn’t help smiling. “But you’re all wet and...naked...and...”

“Out of tea?” He nodded toward an empty cup on the side of the bath. “Unless you’ve anything stronger.”

Meinwen frowned, mentally examining the cupboards in the kitchen. “There’s a bottle of elderflower wine I could open if you like? Or I could pop down to the corner shop on Markham Road and pick up some tins.”

“A glass of wine would be the makings of an evening,” Dafydd reached across to squeeze her hand, dripping water over her skirt in the process. “We could sit on the edge of the bath and pretend we’re at your mam’s house in ’Dovey.”

“And why would we want to do that?”“

“Relive old times? You were seventeen when I waltzed you in the Empire ballroom. Paralytic on port and lemon, you were. I had to carry you home and hold your hair out of the toilet.”

“Oh, don’t. Me mam went spare.”

“
Ydy yma
! I remember. I don’t know whether she was more upset because you were drunk or because you were sat in the outside lavvy wi’ a black man.”

“She said it was because I was drunk. I can still hear her now. ‘You got that from your father.’ I don’t think I’ve ever been drunk since, except maybe once when your mate Steely Jones joined the Fusiliers.”

“Steely Jones? He’s back now. Took over from his dad at the golf club.”

“Has he now?” Meinwen shook her head and picked up his tea cup. “I’ll fetch you that drink. You want it brought up or are you coming downstairs for it?”

“I’ll get out, unless you have a pressing need to join me in here?”

“That tub is barely big enough for one let alone two.” Meinwen pushed down on the top of his head and he sank below the level of the water. She was ill prepared for the corresponding rise of her friend’s penis like a Venus of the soapsuds, a contender for the size title even when relaxed and flaccid. She coughed and let go, scurrying down the stairs to the kitchen.

She went directly to the cupboard where she kept the remaining bottles of last year’s elderflower wine and transferred one of them to the tiny fridge, shifting aside a paper bag of honeycomb fungus she’d collected a couple of days before. She rinsed and dried two wine glasses, hearing the bath water gurgling down the waste pipe outside. She set the glasses on a tray and carried them through to the sitting room.

She called up the stairs. “Dafydd? Shall I open the wine now or wait until we eat?”

“What are we eating?”

“I could do us a mushroom risotto.”

“Nah. Let’s get a Chinese. My treat. Is there somewhere that does home delivery?”

“I don’t know. Let me check.” Meinwen booted up her laptop, putting her notes and papers in some semblance of tidy while it chugged through the welcome screen. Dafydd had come downstairs in her dressing gown in the meantime, his clothes bundled under his arm.

“Is there any chance you could put these through a wash for me? I had an accident in the van.”

“Oh no.” Meinwen took them off him. “Was it on the M-five? There aren’t enough services on there to allow for toilet breaks.”

“I dropped a can of cola over my pants. I had to brake suddenly and I’d left the can on the dash.” Dafydd grinned. “I didn’t lose control of my bladder or anything.”

“Oh.” Meinwen carried them through to the kitchen. “I’ll just pop them in. Would you open the wine?”

“Sure.”

She put the washing machine on and went back to the sitting room where Dafydd was just pouring the wine. “Just a small one for me.” She picked up the laptop and did a local search for home delivery restaurants. She scrolled through the listings. “The China Garden on Summer Row does delivery if you spent twenty pounds.”

“Is it any good?” Dafydd passed her half a glass of wine before sinking into the sofa. He barely managed to keep his glass upright. “Whoa!”

“The springs have gone on that end. I should have warned you.” Meinwen took a sip of wine and set the glass on an end table. “It’s the inspector’s favorite. He goes there quite a lot, I believe.”

“The inspector?”

“Inspector White, from the local police.”

“What’s he doing on your sofa?”

“Nothing. I meant the restaurant. He’s quite the connoisseur of eateries.”

“Comes with the job, I suppose.” Dafydd struggled upright and switched ends. “Is there a menu online?”

“No, but we could just get a vegetarian meal for two, couldn’t we?”

“Vegetarian?”

Meinwen glanced up. Dafydd’s look of dismay was a picture. “Well...Vegetarian for me. I suppose you can get whatever you like.”

“Magic. We can always try each other’s dishes if you feel like it. Do you eat fish?”

“Not since mam made Cottleston Pie with all the heads sticking out.” Meinwen shuddered. “I tell you. Even Hell trembled when she set foot in the kitchens.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in hell?”

“For her, I’ll make an exception.”

Dafydd laughed. “You going to phone it through, then? I’ll have spicy beef for starter, beef chow mien and special fried rice, a portion of crispy spring rolls and a fritter.”

“Right.” Meinwen picked up the house phone to order it, sipping her wine while the order was repeated back to her. She looked at Dafydd when she put the phone down. “It’ll be here in thirty minutes.”

“Great.” He looked around the room. “Where’s your telly?”

“I don’t have one. Never needed it.”

“What? Not at all? What do you do for entertainment?”

Meinwen shrugged. “Read. Do the crossword. Write my pamphlets for the shop.”

“Right, the shop, yeah. That’s why I’m here, actually. I dropped a package off there this afternoon.”

“Not the quartz monkey?”

“Yeah. That’s right. You’ve seen it then?”

“I thought that came from my supplier in China.”

“It did, once. You sold it to Mildred Pearson before your old shop closed down. She gave it to me last week and now I’ve brought it to you.”

“Why? Didn’t you want it yourself?”

“Mam wouldn’t have it in the house. Have you seen the size of its todger?”

Meinwen grinned. “He is a god. Why did you block the door with him?”

“Block the door? I just put him through the letterbox.”

“It’s two feet high. Weighs a ton.”

“No.” Dafydd shook his head, grinning. “A couple of inches at most. Fits in a pocket, so it does.”

“It does not.”

“Didn’t I read that Monkey can change his size at will? Maybe he grew after I slipped him through the letterbox.”

Meinwen frowned. “That’s not possible.”

Dafydd laughed. “I give in. The look on your face.” He thumped the arm of the sofa. “Priceless.”

“You!” Meinwen thumped his arm, smiling. “I almost fell for that.”

“What? A statue growing in size?” Dafydd shook his head. “You always were gullible. I borrowed the key from that bird in the gallery. Which reminds me...” Dafydd rummaged in his overnight bag. “I brought you some flowers.” He handed Meinwen a small bunch of handpicked blooms wrapped in a page torn from the Aber News, the free weekly paper that filled the recycling bins on Tuesdays. Most were curled and withered thanks to a day spent in the proximity of Dafydd’s socks. “They’ll perk up a bit on water.”

“Perk up?” Meinwen stared at them. “I’m tempted to put them in the church font to see if they can be resurrected.”

“Don’t be like that, Manny. Picked them myself, look you, out of your mam’s garden.”

“She’s been dead five years, man. We sold the house after the funeral.”

“Right, you did, yes. That explains my being shouted at.” He jumped at a knock at the door, pulling out his wallet. “That was never half an hour. I hope you’re hungry.”

“Certainly am.” She put the laptop down and stood, crossing back into the kitchen and returning with a tray piled high with plates and bowls, forks, chopsticks and napkins. She put it all on the coffee table just as Dafydd closed the door, carrying in two bags of food.

“There’s enough to feed an army here, or a small task force, anyway.”

“I’m sure you’ll leave no bean sprout unaccounted for.” Meinwen began opening the tin trays and boxes, filling a shallow bowl with rice and egg noodles.