Also by Ruth Rendell

OMNIBUSES CHIEF INSPECTOR WEXFORD NOVELS

Collected Short Stories From Door with Death
Wexford: An Omnibus A New Lease of Death
The Second Wexford Omnibus Wolf to the Slaughter
The Third Wexford Omnibus The Best Man to Die
The Fourth Wexford Omnibus A Guilty Thing Surprised
The Fifth Wexford Omnibus No More Dying Then
The Ruth Rendell Omnibus Murder Being Once Done
The Second Ruth Rendell Some Lie and Some Die
Omnibus Shake Hands for Ever
The Third Ruth Rendell Omnibus A Sleeping Life
Put On by Cunning

The Speaker of Mandarin
An Unkindness of Ravens
The Veiled One
Kissing the Gunner's Daughter
Simisola
Road Rage
Harm Done
SHORT STORIES NOVELS

The Fallen Curtain To Fear a Painted Devil
Means of Evil Vanity Dies Hard
The Fever Tree The Secret House of Death
The New Girl Friend One Across, Two Down
The Copper Peacock The Face of Trespass
Blood Lines A Demon in My View
Piranha to Scurfy A Judgement in Stone
Make Death Love Me
The Lake of Darkness
novella Master of the Moor
The Killing Doll
Heartstones The Tree of Hands
Live Flesh
Talking to Strange Men
non-fiction The Bridesmaid
Going Wrong
Ruth Rendell's Suffolk The Crocodile Bird
Ruth Rendell's Anthology of the The Keys to the Street
Murderous Mind A Sight for Sore Eyes
Ruth Rendell

ADAM AND EVE AND
PINCH ME

HUTCHINSON
London
© Kingsmarkham Enterprises Ltd 2001
The right of Ruth Rendell to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved
13579 108642
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated
without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the
product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

First published in the United Kingdom in 2001 by Hutchinson

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o 09 179439 o (paperback)
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Mackays of Chatham PLC
Chapter 1

Minty knew it was a ghost sitting in the chair because she was
frightened. If it were only something she'd imagined, she wouldn't
have been afraid. You couldn't be when it was something that came
out of your own mind.
It was early evening but, being wintertime, quite dark. She'd just
come home from work, let herself in the front door and put the hall
light on. The front-room door was open and the ghost was sitting
on an upright chair in the middle of the room with its back to her.
She'd put the chair there to stand on and change a light bulb before
she went out in the morning and forgotten to put it back. Her
mouth tightly covered up with both hands to keep the scream in,
she took one step nearer. She thought, What will I do if it turns
rouncR Ghosts in stories are grey like the people on black-and-
white television or else see-through, but this one had short, dark-
brown hair and a brown neck, and a black leather jacket. Minty
didn't have to see its face to know it was her late fiance, Jock.
Suppose it stayed there so that she couldn't use the room? It
wasn't absolutely still. The head moved a bit and then the right leg.
Both feet edged back as if it were going to get up. Minty squeezed
her eyes tight shut. Everything was silent. A shriek out in the street
from one of the kids that lived opposite made her jump and she
opened her eyes. The ghost was gone. She put the light on and felt
the seat of the chair. It was warm and this surprised her. You think
of ghosts as cold. She moved the chair back to where it belonged
under the table. If it wasn't in the middle of the room, maybe he

wouldn't come back.
She went upstairs, half expecting to see him there. He could have
got past her and come up while she had her eyes shut. Ghosts
didn't like lights, so she put them all on, all good hundred-watt
bulbs, and he wasn't anywhere to be seen. She'd loved him, thought
of herself as married to him though she wasn't, but she didn't want
his ghost about. It was upsetting.
Still, he'd gone now and it was time for a good wash. One of the
things Jock had liked about her, Minty was sure, was that she was
always spotlessly clean. Of course, she'd had a bath this morning
before going off to Immacue and she'd washed her hair; she
wouldn't dream of leaving the house without, but that was eight
hours ago, and she must have picked up all kinds of dirt from the
Harrow Road and the people who came into the shops, not to
mention the clothes they brought that needed dry-cleaning.
It was lovely having a bathroom entirely to herself. She said a
little prayer of thanks to Auntie as if she were a saint (which was a
way Minty had seldom thought of her when alive) every time she
went in there, for making that possible. Dear Auntie, thank you for
dying and leaving me a bathroom. Pm ever so grateful, iCs made a world
of difference. Your loving niece for ever and ever, Araminta. She took all
her clothes off and dropped them in the Aladdin basket with the
lid. It was expensive having more than one bath a day. She'd have a
shower put in when she could afford it. One day, though not as
soon as she'd hoped. Meanwhile, standing at the basin on the bath
mat, she used the big natural sponge Sonovia next door had given
her for Christmas.
Like everything else in the bathroom, the nailbrush had been
Auntie's. It was turquoise blue with a handle, which meant you
could get a good grip on it. Minty scrubbed her nails. She had
brought this hygienic measure to a fine art. It was no good just
rubbing the brush across your fingertips, you had to insert the
bristles on the outer edge right under your nails and move them
rapidly back and forward. She washed her feet last, taking care to
get plenty of soap between her toes, then using the nailbrush on
her toenails. It was Auntie who had said soap was disappearing
from the shops. Mark her words, the time was coming when you'd
not be able to find a decent cake of soap. It was all this gel and
essence in bottles these days, and powder stuff and cleansing bars,
not to mention the soap that wasn't soap at all but a cake of
something stuffed full of rosebuds and seeds and bits of grass.
Minty wouldn't have given you a thank you for any of it. She used
Wright's Coal Tar as she always had.
In the bathroom she felt safe. You couldn't imagine a ghost in a
bathroom somehow, it would be all wrong. How about her hair?
Should she wash it again? It looked clean enough, the fine, flyaway
fair hair behaving in its usual way and flying away at all angles.
Better put it under the tap and be on the safe side. She was going
out with Sonovia and Laf later and she didn't want to give offence;
there was nothing so unpleasant as greasy hair next to you. In the
end she gave it a proper wash; it couldn't do any harm.
Minty dried herself and dropped the used towel into the basket.
She never used a towel more than once and she never used body
lotion or perfume. Deodorant, yes, and on the soles of her feet and
palms of her hands as well as her underarms. Body lotion only
dirtied clean skin as make-up did. Besides, she couldn't afford all
that rubbish. She was quite proud of the fact that no lipstick had
ever soiled her mouth nor mascara her pale eyelashes. Normally,
since Auntie passed over, Minty would have walked naked across
the narrow expanse of landing into her bedroom, as she might have
if only the living Jock had been in the house. It was different
altogether with a ghost, who was dead and shouldn't want to look
at a nude woman from beyond the grave. She took a clean towel
from the cupboard, wrapped it round her and opened the door
cautiously. There was no one and nothing there. No ghost could
have survived in that bright light.
Minty put on clean underclothes, a clean pair of cotton trousers
and a clean jumper. No accessories, no jewellery. You never knew
what germs were harboured by things like that. She was due to give
them a knock next door at seven thirty. The cinema they were
going to was the Odeon at Marble Arch and the film started at
eight fifteen. Something to eat first and maybe a cup of tea.
Why had he come back like that? They said ghosts returned
when they had unfinished business to attend to. Well, he had. An
engagement isn't finished dll it ends in marriage. She hadn't even
seen his body or been asked to the funeral or had a pot of ashes like
they gave her when Auntie was cremated. All she'd had was that
letter telling her he'd been in the train that crashed and been burnt
to a cinder. The fact was that she'd started to get over it, she'd
stopped crying and got on with her life, the way they said you had
to, and now his ghost appearing like that had brought it all back.
Perhaps he'd only come to say a final goodbye. She hoped so.
The kitchen was spotless. It smelt powerfully of bleach, a scent
Minty liked. If she'd ever worn perfume it would have smelt like
bleach. Although she'd just had her big wash she washed her hands
again. She was very particular about what she ate. Food could be
messy and make you dirty. Soup, for instance, or pasta or anything
with gravy. She ate a lot of cold chicken and ham and salad and
bread, the white kind, not the brown, which might have any filthy
substance in it to make it that colour, and eggs and fresh unsalted
butter. Her weekly expenditure on tissues and paper napkins and
kitchen roll was ruinous but it couldn't be helped. She used the
washing machine to capacity every day as it was without adding
linen napkins to the load. When she'd eaten she washed up
everything she'd used and put it away, and washed her hands under
the running tap.
Was she going to leave all these lights on when she went out?
Auntie would have called it a wicked waste. The upstairs ones
would have to stay on. She wasn't going to go up there and turn the
lights off and have to come down the stairs with all that darkness
behind her. Out in the hall she took her coat off the peg and put it
on. There was always a problem with coats because you couldn't
really keep them clean. Minty had done the best she could by
running up a couple of cotton linings on the Immacue machine.
She could wash them and slip a clean one into the coat each time
she wore it. The best thing if she was to have any peace of mind

4
was not to think about the dirt on the outside of the coat, but it was
a struggle not to do this and she didn't always succeed.
The light was blazing in the front room. Minty went a little way
in there, retreated and, standing in the hall, put her hand round the
door jamb and snapped off the light switch. Her eyes had closed of
their own volition while she performed this action. Now she was
afraid to open them in case Jock's ghost had taken advantage other
temporary blindness to seat himself in the chair once more. With
the chair pushed up against the table, perhaps he wouldn't be able
to. She opened her eyes. No ghost. Should she tell Sonovia about
it? Minty couldn't make up her mind.
The street doors in Syringa Road opened on to tiny rectangular
front gardens. Minty's garden was paved all over, Auntie had seen
to that, but next door's had earth and flowers growing out of it,
masses of them in summer. Sonovia saw Minty coming and waved
from the window. She was wearing her new red trouser suit and a
long scarf thing in powder blue she called a pashmina. Her lipstick
matched her suit and her hair, newly done, was just like the shiny
hat on the toby jug Auntie had brought back from a trip to
Southend.
'We thought we'd go on the bus,' Sonovia said. 'Laf says there's
no way he's parking the car down there and maybe getting
clamped. He has to watch his step, being in the force.'
Sonovia always said 'being in the force', never 'being a
policeman'. Minty was disappointed about the car but she didn't
say so. She missed being taken about in Jock's car, though it was
old and what he called a 'boneshaker'. Laf came out from the front
room and gave her a kiss. His name was Lafcadio but that was a bit
much of a name to go to bed with, as Sonovia put it, and everyone
called him Laf. He and Sonovia were still only in their late forties
but they had been married since they were eighteen and had four
grown-up children, who'd all left home now and either had their
own places or were still at university. Auntie used to say you'd
think no one else had ever had a son a doctor and a daughter a
lawyer, another daughter at university and the youngest at the
Guildhall School of something or other, the way Sonovia went on
about it. Minty thought it was something to be proud of but at the
same time she couldn't really comprehend it; she couldn't imagine
all the work and study and time that had gone into getting where
they had.
'I've seen a ghost,' she said. 'When I got in from work. In the
front room, sitting in a chair. It was Jock.'
They had never met Jock but they knew whom she meant. 'Now,
Minty, don't be so daft,' said Laf.
'There's no such things as ghosts, my deah.' Sonovia always said
'my deah' like that when she liked to show she was older and wiser
than you. 'Absolutely not.'
Minty had known Laf and Sonovia since they came to live next
door when she was ten. Later on, when she was a bit older she'd
babysat for them. 'It was Jock's ghost,' she said. 'And when he'd
gone I felt the seat of the chair and it was warm. It was him all
right.'
'I'm not hearing this,' said Sonovia.
Laf gave her a pat on the shoulder. 'You were hallucinating,
right? On account of you being a bit under the weather of late.'
'Heed the wise words of Sergeant Lafcadio Wilson, my deah.'
Sonovia glanced in the mirror, patted her hair and went on, 'Let's
go. I don't want to miss the start of the picture.'
They walked along to the bus stop opposite the high wall of the
cemetery. When she had anything worrying her Minty never trod
on the joins in the pavement; she always stepped over them. 'Like a
little kid,' said Sonovia. 'My Corinne used to do that.'
Minty didn't reply. She went on stepping over the joins; nothing
would have induced her to tread on them. On the other side of the
wall were tombs and gravestones, big dark trees, the gasometer, the
canal. She'd wanted Auntie buried in there but they wouldn't have
it, there was no more room, and Auntie was cremated. The
undertakers had written to her and said the ashes were ready for
her to collect. No one asked what she was going to do with them.
She'd taken the little box of ashes into the cemetery and found the
most beautiful grave, the one she liked best with an angel on it
holding a broken violin kind of thing and covering up her eyes with

6
her other hand. Using an old tablespoon, she'd dug a hole in the
earth and put the ashes in. Afterwards she'd felt better about
Auntie, but she hadn't been able to do the same for Jock. His ex-
wife or his old mother would have had Jock's ashes.
Sonovia was talking about her Corinne, the one who was a
barrister, about what someone called for some reason the Head of
Chambers had said to her. All compliments and praise, of course.
No one ever said unpleasant things to Sonovia's children, just as
unpleasant things never happened to them. Minty thought of Jock
dying in that train, in the fire, a violent death which was a cause of
a return from beyond the grave.
'You're very silent,' said Laf.
'I'm thinking about Jock's ghost.'
The 18 bus came.

'That was an unfortunate choice of film,' said Sonovia, 'under the
circumstances.'
Minty thought so too. It was called The Sixth Sense and it was
about a poor little mad boy who saw the ghosts of murdered people
after they were murdered. Sonovia said that good it might be, but
she worried about the effect on the boy actor playing the part. It
couldn't be right for a child to see all that, even if it was only
acting. They went into a pub in the Harrow Road and Laf bought
Minty a glass of white wine. If it had been the pub where she'd first
met Jock she couldn't have stayed, it would have been too much for
her. She didn't know anyone in here.
'Now are you going to be OK going into the house on your
own?'
'You go with her, Sonny. Put all the lights on.'
Minty was grateful. She wouldn't much care to have gone in
there by herself. Of course, she'd have to tomorrow and the next
day and the next. She'd got to live there. The house once more
ablaze with light, Sonovia gave her a kiss, which she didn't often
do, and left her to the bright emptiness. The trouble was she'd have
to turn the lights out behind her before she went to bed. She went
into the kitchen, washed her hands and Sonovia's lipstick off her
face. The kitchen light out behind her, she walked down the
passage, expecting to feel Jock's hand on her neck. He'd been in the
habit of placing his hand on her neck and holding her head up to
his before giving her one of his deep kisses. She shivered but there
was nothing. Bravely, she switched off the front-room light,
turned, walked to the stairs, the darkness very deep behind her. She
ran up the stairs as fast as she could and into the bathroom, not
closing the door, because she knew that if she did she wouldn't dare
open it again.
She scrubbed her teeth, washed her face and neck and her hands
again, her underarms, her feet, and the bit between her legs which
was sacred to Jock. No other man would ever touch or enter it, that
was a promise. Before she left the bathroom she touched every
wooden surface, choosing three different coloured woods, the white
of the panels that boxed in the bath, the pink picture rail, the pale
yellow handle of the backbrush. She wasn't sure if something
portable would do, perhaps it ought to be part of the fixtures. It had
to be three surfaces or better still seven, but there weren't seven
different colours in the bathroom. No one, no ghost, was outside
the door. She'd forgotten her glass of water but never mind, it
couldn't be helped, she'd have to do without. It wasn't as if she ever
drank much of it.
Sitting on the bed she said a prayer to Saint Auntie. Dear Auntie,
please keep Jock's ghost away. Don't let him come back in the night. I
haven't done anything to make him haunt me. For ever and ever, amen.
She put the light out and then she put it on again. In the darkness
she saw Jock's face in front of her and though she knew that wasn't
his ghost but a kind of dream or vision, it gave her a fright. She
couldn't sleep very well with the light on but she wouldn't sleep at
all with it off. She buried her face in the bedclothes so that it didn't
make much difference whether it was dark or light in the room.
Auntie used to hear voices, she called them 'my voices', and
sometimes she saw things. Especially when she'd been in contact
with one of those mediums. Minty couldn't understand, and no one
had ever explained it to her, why a medium was called something
that meant 'halfway between' and not 'best' or 'worst'. Edna, who
was Auntie's sister, had been one of them, very much the worst in
Minty's opinion, and when Edna was in the house or they were in
hers she was frightened all the time.

Losing Jock had been a bad shock, especially coming less than a
year after she lost Auntie. She hadn't been the same since, though
she couldn't exactly have said how she'd been different. Something
inside her head seemed to have lost its balance. He'd have said, but
said it in a nice way, 'You never were all that balanced, Polo,' and
maybe he was right.
She'd never get married now. Still, she had her house and work,
and nice neighbours. Maybe she'd get over him one day the way
she was getting over Auntie. She'd slept all right, the deep,
dreamless sleep of someone whose dreams all come in her waking
hours. The bath was filling with water as hot as she could stand it.
Never leave a bath to run on its own, was Auntie's advice. Her
sister Edna, the one who saw ghosts, did that; she went down to
answer the door and when she'd taken the post in and a parcel she
turned round to see water dripping through the ceiling. Auntie had
a lot of tales to tell of her sister Edna and her sister Kathleen,
especially the things they did when they were young. Sometimes
her voices were their voices and sometimes they were God and the
Duke of Windsor.
The water was hot and clear, unpolluted by bath essence. She lay
back and dipped her head under, shampooed her hair first, soaped
her body vigorously. Jock said she was too thin, needed to get some
flesh on her bones, but it was natural, there was nothing to be done
about it. It didn't matter now that she wasn't well-covered. She
rinsed her hair, kneeling up and putting her head under the
running tap. It could dry naturally. She didn't like hairdryers,
blowing dusty air all over your head, not even the one he'd bought
her that claimed to purify the air it puffed out. Her teeth well
brushed, she rinsed mouth wash over her palate, under her tongue,
round the back molars. Deodorant, clean underwear, clean cotton
trousers and long-sleeved T-shirt. In the local Asda they called the
ones they sold anti-perspirants, a name Minty didn't like at all; it
made her shudder to think of perspiration.
Breakfast was toast and Marmite, clean and dry. A cup of tea
with plenty of milk and sugar. Minty put two bath towels, two hand
towels, two sets of underwear, two pairs of trousers and two T-
shirts and the coat lining into the washing machine, set and started
it. She'd come back at lunchtime and put it in the dryer, and maybe
make time to visit Auntie's grave. The morning was grey, misty,
still. There was a queue for the 18 bus so she walked to the dry-
cleaners past Fifth and Sixth Avenues, stepping over the joins.
Minty had grown up with street names like that and couldn't see
anything funny about it but it made Jock laugh. He'd only been in
the area a few months and every time he saw the name he'd cast up
his eyes, laugh that soundless laugh of his and say, 'Fifth Avenue! I
don't believe it.'
Admitted, it wasn't a very nice part, but 'run-down' and 'a real
slum', which were what Jock called it, were going a bit far. OTT,
to use his own expression. To Minty it appeared grey and dreary
but familiar, the background of her life for nearly thirty-eight
years, for she'd been a baby when Agnes left her with Auntie 'for an
hour at the maximum' and never came back. The row of shops ran
from Second to First Avenue on the Harrow Road. Two of them
had closed and been boarded up or they'd have been vandalised.
The Baiti takeaway was still there, a bathroom fittings shop, a
builder's merchant, a unisex hairdresser and on the corner,
Immacue. It was just as well Minty had brought her key, for
Josephine wasn't there yet.
She let herself in, put up the blind on the door, slid back the bars
on the window. Some very strange people roamed the Harrow
Road by night. Nothing was safe. Minty stood still a moment,
breathing in Immacue's smell, a mixture of soap, detergent, clean
linen, dry-cleaning fluids and stain remover. She'd have liked 39
Syringa Road to smell like that but she simply hadn't the
wherewithal. It was a scent that developed over years of cleansing
within a relatively small space. And inhaling it was the reverse of
what Minty sometimes experienced when it was her lot to sort

10
through the piles of clothes customers brought in and, as they were
moved and lifted and turned over, there rose from them a nasty
odour of stale sweat and food stains.
Exactly nine thirty. She turned the sign on the inside of the door
to Open and went into the back room where the ironing awaited
her. Immacue provided a shirt service and it was her job on
weekdays, and Saturdays too, to iron fifty shirts before lunchdme.
It was mostly women who brought them in and collected them, and
Minty sometimes wondered who wore them. Most people were
poor around here, single mothers and pensioners and out-of-work
boys looking for trouble. But a lot of yuppies who worked in the
city had bought houses nearby; they were cheap by present-day
standards and near the West End, even if they were the kind of
places their parents wouldn't have looked at twice. They must be
the men who wore these snowy white and pink and blue striped
shirts to go to their jobs in offices and banks, these two hundred
immaculate shirts encased in cellophane and with a neat little
cardboard collar and cardboard bow tie fixed to each one.
By the time Josephine came in Minty had ironed five. Always
when she arrived in the morning she went up to Minty and gave
her a kiss. Minty submitted to this salutation, even lifted up her
cheek for it, but she didn't much care for being kissed by Josephine
who wore thick, waxy, dark-red lipstick, some of which inevitably
came off on Minty's clean, pale skin. After she'd gone to hang up
her coat Minty went to the sink and washed her cheek and then she
washed her hands. Fortunately, there were always plenty of
cleaning materials, cloths, sponges and brushes at Immacue.
Customers started coming in but Josephine attended to them.
Minty wouldn't go out there unless one of them asked for her
specially or Josephine called her. There were still some who didn't
know what had happened to Jock and who asked how her fiance
was or when was she getting married, and Minty had to say, 'He
got killed in the Paddington train crash.' She didn't like having
sympathy; it embarrassed her, especially now she'd seen his ghost
last night. Saying he was dead and accepting the kind things they
said seemed like cheating somehow.

ii
They had coffee at eleven. Minty drank hers and washed her
hands. Josephine said, 'How're you feeling, love? D'you reckon
you're starting to get over it?'
Minty wondered if she should tell about the ghost but decided
against. A woman customer had once said she'd seen her mother in
a dream and in the morning got a phone call to say she was dead.
She'd died at the precise time of the dream. Josephine had said,
quite rudely, 'You can't be serious,' and laughed a scornful laugh.
So better say nothing about it.
'Life has to go on, doesn't it?' she said.
Josephine agreed. 'You're right, it's no good dwelling on things.'
A big, full-breasted woman with long legs, she had bright blonde
hair as long as an eighteen-year-old girl's, but a kind heart. Or so
everyone said. Minty lived in fear that a flake of the dark-red
varnish she wore on her fingernails would chip off and fall in the
coffee. Josephine had a Chinese boyfriend who couldn't speak a
word of English and was a cook in a restaurant in Harlesden called
the Lotus Dragon. They'd both met Jock when he called for her
after work.
'He was a lovely chap,' said Josephine. 'Life's a bitch, when you
come to think of it.'
Minty would rather not have talked about it, especially now. She
finished the fiftieth shirt at ten to one and went home for an hour.
Lunch was free range eggs scrambled on white toast. She washed
her hands before eating and again afterwards, and her face as well,
and put the washing in the tumble-dryer. The flower-selling man
had set up his stall outside the cemetery gates. It wasn't really
spring yet, it was still February, but he'd got daffodils and tulips as
well as the chrysanths and carnations that had been around all
winter. Minty had filled an empty bleach bottle with water and
brought it with her. She bought six pink tulips and six white
narcissi with orange centres.
'In remembrance of your auntie, is it, love?'
Minty said it was and it was nice to see the spring flowers.
'You're right there,' said the flower-selling man, 'and what I say
is it does your heart good to see a bit of a kid like yourself

12
remembering the old folks. There's too much indifference in the
world these days.'
Thirty-seven isn't a 'bit of a kid' but a lot of people thought
Minty much younger than she was. They didn't look closely
enough to see the lines coming out from the corners of her eyes
and the little puckers round her mouth. There was that barman in
the Queen's Head who wouldn't believe she was a day over
seventeen. It was her white skin, shiny about the nose, and her
wispy fair hair and being as thin as one of those models that did it.
Minty paid the man and smiled at him because he'd called her a kid
and then she went into the cemetery, carrying her flowers.
If it weren't for the graves it would have been like the country in
there, all trees and bushes and grass. But it was no good saying that,
Jock said. The graves were the reason for the trees. A lot of famous
people were buried here but she didn't know their names, she
wasn't interested. Over there was the canal and beyond it the
gasworks. The gasometer loomed over the cemetery like some
huge old temple, commemorating the dead. Ivy was the plant that
grew most plentifully in here, creeping over the stones and slabs,
up the columns, twining round the statues and pushing its tendrils
through the splits and cracks in tombs. Some of the trees had black,
shiny, pointed leaves, like leather cut-outs, but most were leafless
in winter, their bare branches sighing and shivering when the wind
blew but hanging now limp in stillness. It was always quiet, as if
there were an invisible barrier above the wall that kept out even the
traffic noise.
Auntie's grave was at the end of the next path, on the corner
where it met one of the main aisles. Of course, it wasn't really her
grave, it was just the place where Minty had buried her ashes. The
grave belonged to Maisie Julia Chepstow, beloved wife of John
Chepstow, who departed this life 15 December, 1897, aged fifty-
three, asleep in the arms of Jesus. When she'd brought Jock here
she'd told him this was Auntie's grandmother and he'd been
impressed. For all she knew, it might be true. Auntie must have had
two grandmothers like everyone else, just as she must have. She was
going to have Auntie's name put on the stone, she'd said. Jock said

i3
the grave was beautiful and moving, and the stone angel must have
cost a fortune, even in those days.
Minty took the dead stalks out of the stone pot and wrapped
them in the paper that had been round the tulips and narcissi. She
poured the water out of the bleach bottle into the vase. When she
turned round for the flowers, she saw Jock's ghost coming down
the main aisle towards her. He was wearing jeans and a dark-blue
jumper and his leather jacket, but he wasn't solid like he'd been last
night. She could see through him.
She said bravely, though she could hardly get the words out,
'What d'you want, Jock? What have you come back for?'
He didn't speak. When he was about two yards from her he
faded away. Just vanished like a shadow does when the sun goes in.
Minty would have liked some wood to touch or maybe to have
crossed herself, but she didn't know which side to start from. She
was shaking all over. She knelt on Auntie's grave and prayed. Dear
Auntie, keep him away. If you see him where you are tell him I don't
want him coming here. Always and for ever your loving niece Araminta.
Two people came along the path, the woman carrying a little
bunch of carnations. They said, 'Good afternoon,' the way no one
ever would if you met them outside in the street. Minty got up off
her knees and returned the greeting. She took her parcel of stalks
and her empty bleach bottle, and dropped them in one of the litter
bins. It had begun to rain. Jock used to say, don't worry about it,
it's only water. But was it? You didn't know what dirt it picked up
on its way down out of the sky.

^
Chapter 2

Auntie's real name was Winifred Knox. She had two sisters and a
brother, and they all lived at 39 Syringa Road with their parents.
Arthur was the first to leave. He got married and then there were
just the sisters at home. They were much older than Auntie who
had been an afterthought, the baby of the family. Kathleen got
married and then Edna did and their father died. Auntie was left
alone with her mother and she cleaned offices for a living. Her
engagement to Bert had been going on for years and years but she
couldn't marry him while Mum was there dependent on her, in a
wheelchair and needing everything done for her.
Mum died the day before Auntie's fortieth birthday. She and
Bert waited a decent interval and then they got married. But it
didn't work, it was a nightmare.
'I didn't know what to expect,' Auntie said. 'I suppose I'd led a
sheltered life, I didn't know anything about men. It was a
nightmare.'
'What did he do?' Minty asked.
'You don't want to know, a little innocent like you. I put an end
to it after a fortnight. Good thing I'd kept this house on. If I'd any
regrets it was not having any little ones of my own but then you
came along like a bolt from the blue.'
Minty was the bolt and her mother was the blue. Her name was
Agnes and she'd been Auntie's best friend at school, though they
hadn't seen so much of each other since then. No one was surprised

i5
when Agnes appeared with a baby, she'd been asking for it, going
with all and sundry. There was never any mention of the baby's
father, it might have been a virgin birth for all the talk there was of
him. It was the early sixties and people weren't anywhere like as
strict as they'd been when Auntie was young, but they still looked
down their noses at Agnes and said the baby was a liability. Agnes
brought her to Syringa Road sometimes and the two of them
pushed the pram round Queen's Park.
That afternoon in May when Minty was six months old there
was no talk of park visiting. Agnes said could she leave Minty with
Auntie just for an hour while she went to visit her mum in the
hospital. She'd brought a supply of nappies and a bottle of milk and
a tin of pureed prunes for babies. It was funny how, whenever she
told Minty this story, Auntie never left out the pureed prunes.
The time Agnes came was just after two and when it got to four
Auntie began to wonder what had happened to her. Of course, she
knew very well that when people say they'll be back in an hour they
don't actually return for two or three hours; they're just saying it to
make you feel better, so she wasn't worried. But she was when it
got to six and seven. Luckily, what few shops there were in the area
stayed open round the clock, so she asked the lady next door - that
was before Lafand Sonovia came - to keep a lookout for Agnes and
she took Minty in the pram and bought baby porridge and more
milk and a bunch of bananas. Auntie'd never had any children of
her own but she was a great believer in bananas as nourishing, the
easiest to eat of all fruits and liked by everyone.
'Personally,' she'd said, 'I'd regard anyone who turned up their
nose at bananas with the deepest suspicion.'
Agnes didn't come back that day or the next. She never came
back. Auntie made a bit of an effort to find her. She went round to
Agnes's parents' place and found her mum had never been in
hospital, she was as fit as a fiddle. They didn't want the baby, no
thanks, they'd been through all that when theirs were little and
they weren't starting again. Agnes's dad said he reckoned she'd met
someone who'd take her on but not the kid as well and this was her
way of solving that problem.

16
'Why don't you hold on to her, Winnie? You've none of your
own. She'd be company for you.'
And Auntie had. They gave her the baby's birth certificate and
Agnes's dad put two ten-pound notes in the envelope with it.
Sometimes, when she'd got fond ofMinty and looked on her as her
own, Auntie worried a bit that Agnes would come back for her and
she wouldn't be able to do a thing about it. But Agnes never did
and when Minty was twelve the mum who hadn't been in the
hospital came round one day and said Agnes had been married and
divorced and married again, and had gone to Australia with her
second husband and her three kids and his four. It was quite a
relief.
Auntie had never adopted Minty or fostered her or any of those
things. 'I've no legal right to you,' she often said. 'It'd be hard to
say who you belong to. Still, no one's showing any signs of wanting
to take you away, are they? Poor little nobody's child you are.'
Minty left school when she was sixteen and got a job in the
textile works in Craven Park. Auntie had brought her up to be very
clean and though she'd been promoted to machinist, she didn't like
the fluff and lint that got everywhere. In those days everyone
smoked and Minty didn't like the smell and the ash either. Auntie
knew the people who ran the dry-cleaners. It wasn't Immacue then
but Harrow Road Dry-Cleaning and an old man called Mr Levy
owned it. Minty stayed there for the next eighteen years, at first
when Mr Levy's son took over, then when it became Quicksilver
Cleaners, finally working for Josephine O'Sullivan. Her life was
very simple and straightforward. She walked to work in the
mornings, worked for eight hours, mostly ironing, and walked
home or got the 18 bus. The evenings she spent with Auntie,
watching TV, eating their meal. Once a week they went to the
cinema.
Auntie was quite old when her voices began. Both her sisters had
died by then but it was their voices she heard. Kathleen told her she
ought to go to the pub after the cinema, take Minty, it was time
Minty had a bit of life, and to make it the Queen's Head, it was the
only one round there that was properly clean. She used to go in

i7
there with George when they were courting. Auntie was a bit
doubtful but the sisters were insistent and after she and Minty had
been to see Heavenly Creatures the two of them went shyly into the
College Park pub, the Queen's Head. It was clean, or as clean as
you could get. The barman was always wiping down the surfaces
and with a clean cloth, not some old rag.
Edna didn't talk about pubs or having a good time. She kept
telling Auntie to concentrate and she'd see her dead husband
Wilfred. He was dying to 'get through', whatever that meant,
though why Auntie should want to when she'd never been able to
stand Wilfred Cutts she didn't know. Then God started talking to
Auntie and the sisters took a back seat. Young Mr Levy said,
'When you talk to God it's praying but when God talks to you it's
schizophrenia.'
Minty didn't laugh. She was frightened of having God in the
house, always telling Auntie He was training her to be the Angel of
the Lord and not to eat red meat. Auntie had always been a great
one for the Royal Family and she could remember Edward the
Eighth renouncing the throne for love of a woman, so it wasn't
surprising when his voice joined God's. He told her he'd got a son,
born in secret in Paris and he'd had a son and she was to tell the
Queen she'd no business being where she was and this King
Edward the Tenth ought to wear the crown. Auntie was arrested
trying to get into Buckingham Palace and they wanted to put her
away, but Minty wasn't having that. While she had her health and
strength Auntie was staying put.
'She's been like a mother to me,' she said to young Mr Levy,
who said she was a good girl and it was a shame there weren't more
like her.
In the end Auntie had to go but she didn't live long in the
geriatric ward. She'd made a will a long time ago and left Minty the
house in Syringa Road, and all the furniture and her savings, which
amounted to £1650. Minty didn't tell anyone the amount but let it
be known Auntie had left her money. It proved Auntie'd loved her.
When she added it to her own savings the total came to £2500. Any
sum over a thousand pounds was real money, Minty thought, proud

18
of what she'd amassed. It was after that that she collected Auntie's
ashes from the undertakers and buried them in Maisie Chepstow's
grave.
A long dme passed before she went back to the pub. The
following week Laf and Sonovia hadn't wanted to see the film so
she'd gone alone; she didn't mind that, it wasn't as though she
wanted to talk in cinemas. Wisely, she went to the six-ten showing
when hardly anyone else did. There were only eight people in the
seats besides herself. She liked being alone with no one to whisper
to her or pass her chocolates. On the way back she dropped into
the Queen's Head and bought an orange juice. Why, she couldn't
have said. The pub was half empty; it seemed less smoky than usual
and she found a table in the corner.
All her life Minty had never spoken to a man who wasn't
someone's husband or her employer or the postman or bus
conductor. Those sort of people. She'd never seriously thought of
having a boyfriend, still less of getting married. When she was
younger Sonovia used to tease her a bit and ask her when she was
going to get a man of her own, and Minty always said she wasn't
the marrying kind. Auntie's mysterious but horrific account of her
marital experience had put her off. Besides, she didn't know any
unattached men and none showed any signs of wanting to know
her.
Until Jock. Not the first but the second time she went into the
pub she saw him looking at her. She was sitting at that same corner
table on her own, dressed as she always was in a clean pair of cotton
trousers and a long-sleeved T-shirt, her hair newly washed and her
nails scrubbed. The man she stole cautious glances at was tall and
well-built, long-legged in blue jeans and a dark-blue padded jacket.
He had a handsome face and a nice tan; he looked clean and his
brown hair was short and trim. Minty had almost finished her
orange juice. She stared into the golden grainy dregs of it, to avoid
looking at the man.
He came over, said, 'Why so sad?'
Minty was too scared to look at him. Tm not sad.'
'You could have fooled me.'

i9
He sat down at her table, then asked her if she minded. Minty
shook her head. 'I'd like to buy you a real drink.'
Auntie sometimes had a gin and tonic, so Minty said she'd have
one of those. While he was getting her gin and a half of lager for
himself, Minty felt near to despair. She thought of getting up and
running away but she'd have had to pass him to get to the door.
What would Sonovia and Josephine say? What would Auntie have
said? Have nothing to do with him. Do not trust him, gentle
maiden, though his voice be low and sweet. He came back with the
drinks, sat down and said his name was Jock, Jock Lewis, and what
was hers.

'Minty.'
'Yum, yum,' said Jock. 'Sounds like something that comes with a
shoulder of lamb.' He laughed, but not unkindly. 'I can't call you
that.'
'It's Araminta really.'
He raised his eyebrows. 'Minty, Minty, the rick-stick stinty,
round tail, bobtail, well-done, Minty.' He laughed into her
incredulous face. 'I shall call you Polo.'
She thought about it, understood. He didn't have to explain. 'I'm
Jock. John, really, but everyone calls me Jock. Live round here, do
you?'
'Syringa Road.'
He shook his head. 'I'm a stranger here myself but I soon won't
be. I've got a place up in Queen's Park, I moved in on Saturday.'
He glanced at her hands. 'You're not married, are you, Polo?
You've got a boyfriend though, I'm sure you have, just my luck as
usual.'
She thought of Auntie who was dead and of Agnes going off to
Australia. 'I haven't got anybody.'
He didn't like that. She couldn't tell why but he didn't. She'd
said it very seriously, of course she had, it was serious to her. To
make it better she tried to smile. The gin had gone straight to her
head, though she'd only sipped a few mouthfuls of it.
'Come on,' he said. Til make you laugh. Now listen. Adam and

20
Eve and Pinch Me went down to the river to bathe. Adam and Eve
were drownded. Who was saved?'
It was easy. 'Pinch Me.'
He did so. Very gently on her upper arm. 'Caught you out,
Polo.'
She didn't laugh. 'I ought to be going.'
She thought he'd try to stop her but he didn't. 'Here, have one
for the road.' He offered her not a drink but a Polo mint. 'I'll walk
you home. I've not got my car with me.'
She didn't believe in the car. Not then. Besides, if he'd had one
and offered to drive her she'd have refused. She knew all about not
taking lifts from strange men. Or sweets. They might be drugs.
Wouldn't being walked home be just as dangerous? She couldn't
refuse, she didn't know how. He held the pub door open for her.
The streets round here were deserted at night except for groups of
young men, wandering, filling the width of the pavement, silent but
occasionally letting out bestial yells. Or you'd meet just one, loping
along to the deafening beat of a ghetto blaster. If she'd been alone
she wouldn't have risked it, she'd have got the bus. He asked her
what was behind the high wall.
'That's the cemetery.' She didn't know why she had to add, 'My
auntie's ashes are in there.'
'Is that a fact?' He said it as if she'd told him something
wonderful, like she'd won the Lottery, and from that moment she
started liking him. 'Your auntie was very important to you, right?'
'Oh, yes. She was like my mother. She left me her house.'
'You deserved it. You were devoted to her and did all sorts of
things for her, didn't you?' She nodded, speechless. 'You had a
reward for your good services.'
Syringa Road didn't turn directly out of the Harrow Road but
out of a turning off it. He read out the street name in the sort of
tone you'd use to say Buckingham Palace or Millennium Dome.
His voice was lovely, like something sweet and dark-brown and
smooth, chocolate mousse maybe. But she was afraid he'd want to
come in and she wouldn't know how to stop him. Suppose he tried
to kiss her? Laf and Sonovia weren't in. No lights were on next

21
door. Old Mr Kroot lived on the other side, but he was eighty-five
and wouldn't be much use.
Jock dispelled her fears. 'I'll wait here and watch you in.'
She took three steps up the path and turned round. Five would
have brought her to the door. 'Thank you,' she said.
'What for? It's been a pleasure. Are you in the phone book,
Polo?'
'Auntie was. Miss W. Knox.'
If she hadn't wanted him to phone she should have said she
wasn't in the book, which was true. She wasn't. But maybe she did
want him to phone her. He went off whistling. The tune was 'Walk
On By', the one about being strangers when we meet.

Jock wasted no time. He phoned her next day. It was in the early
evening, she'd just got home from Immacue and was having a wash.
No good thinking she could get to the phone when she was all wet
and her hair dripping. She let it ring. It would only be Sonovia
wanting to tell her something about what Corinne had done this
time or the prize Julianna had won or where Florian had come in
his exams. The phone rang again while she was arranging cold ham
slices and cold boiled potatoes and cubes of cucumber on a plate
for her supper, with a chocolate mousse she'd made herself to
follow. The voice that was like the mousse said it was Jock and
would she come to the cinema with him.
'I might,' Minty said, and then she said, 'All right.'
That was how it began.
Josephine said, had she found out if he was married? Sonovia said
she knew nothing about him and would she like Laf to check on
Jock's antecedents, which he could easily do on the police
computer. When she told him, Laf said was she joking, a guy with a
name like John Lewis? There'd be thousands of them. Not to
mention the department store. Minty didn't much like any of this.
It wasn't their business. How would they like it if she started
checking up on their friends? Laf and Sonovia thought a lot too
much of themselves, just because he was the first black policeman

22
in the UK to have been made a sergeant. It made her keener on
Jock than she might have been without their interference.
She and Jock met in the pub and went to the cinema. After that
he came in what he called the 'boneshaker' to 39 Syringa Road to
call for her. The car was about twenty years old but at least it was
clean, he'd taken it into the car wash on the way. Sonovia was on
the watch from behind her frilly lace curtains but had to go away
two minutes before he arrived because Julianna was on the phone.
One day he called for Minty at Immacue. Afterwards Josephine
went on and on about how good-looking he was, as if she was
surprised at Minty finding anyone like that. Next time Jock came in
Josephine happened to be sitting on the counter where she could
show off her legs in her Wolford Neon Glanz tights. If Jock was
impressed he didn't show it. He took Minty to the dog races at
Walthamstow and he took her bowling. She'd never been
anywhere like that in her life before.
It was a long time before she plucked up her courage and asked
him if he was married. At the time he was humming that song
about walk on by, wait on the corner.
'Divorced,' he said. 'Don't mind, do you?'
She shook her head. 'Why would I?'
He was in the building trade. His hands would have been in a
terrible state if he'd done rough work and they weren't, so she
thought he must be a plumber or maybe an electrician. He never
took her to his place in Queen's Park. She didn't know if it was a
house or a flat or just a room, she knew only that it was in Harvist
Road but not the number. He'd no brothers or sisters, no one
except his old mother who lived in the West Country that he went
to see every couple of weeks, travelling all the way down there by
train. When he got divorced he had to let his ex-wife have his
house. It was sad.
They'd been going out for six weeks before he kissed her. He put
his hand on the back of her neck and pulled her face to his. She
liked it, which she hadn't expected. She started washing herself
even more. It was important to keep herself nice for Jock, especially
now he'd started kissing her. He was clean himself, not so clean as

23
she was, but no one could be. She was proud of that. On a Saturday
evening, when they'd been to the Queen's Head, they brought back
Baiti takeaway for supper. Well, Jock did. She had a sandwich she
made herself and a banana. Jock said he hated bananas, it was like
eating sweet soap, and Minty couldn't help remembering what
Auntie'd said about viewing someone who didn't like them with the
deepest suspicion. But what happened next drove all that out other
head. He said he'd like to stay the night. She knew what that
meant. He wasn't talking about dossing down on the front-room
couch. He kissed her and she kissed him back but when they got
upstairs she left him in the bedroom while she went to have a bath.
It worried her that she couldn't wash her hair but it was no good
going to bed with it wet. And she wished the sheets hadn't been on
since Wednesday, she'd have changed them if she'd known what
was coming.
What happened with Jock wasn't the way Auntie hinted it would
be. It hurt but somehow she knew it wouldn't always. Jock was
surprised she'd never done it before; he could hardly believe it just
as he could hardly believe she was thirty-seven. He was younger
but he never said how much.
'I'm yours now,' she said. 'I'll never do that with anyone else.'
'Good-oh,' he said.
She got up early in the morning because she'd had a bright idea
before she went to sleep. She'd make a cup of tea and bring it up to
him. And it would give her a chance to wash. When he woke up she
was bathed and her hair washed, wearing clean trousers and T-
shirt, standing meekly by the bed holding a mug of tea and the
sugar basin.
'The first time,' he said. 'No woman's ever done that for me
before.'
She wasn't as pleased as he expected her to be. Who were these
other women who hadn't made him tea? Maybe only his mother
and the one who'd been his wife. He drank the tea and got up,
going off to work without having a proper wash, which shocked
her. A week went by before she heard from him. She couldn't
understand it. She went up to Harvist Road on the bus and walked

'4
up and down the street, going up to some of the front doors to read
the names on the bells. His wasn't there. She looked along all the
surrounding streets for the boneshaker but couldn't find it. The
phone rang twice that week. She touched three colours of wood
before answering and prayed, Dear Auntie, let it be him. Please. But it
was Corinne the first time, asking her to take a message to Sonovia
because next door's phone was out of order, and a salesman the
next, wanting to double-glaze her house. By the time Jock phoned
she'd given up hope.
'I didn't know where you were,' she said. 'I thought you'd died' her
voice full of tears.
'I didn't die,' he said, 'I went to the West Country to see my old
mum.'
He was coming round. He'd be with her in half an hour. She had
a bath, washed her hair, put on clean clothes, all this for the second
time in three hours. When the half-hour was up and he hadn't
come, she prayed to Auntie and touched seven different colours of
wood, the oak-stained living-room door, the cream front door, the
pine table, the green-painted chair in the kitchen, upstairs for the
white bath surround, the pink picture rail and the yellow back
brush handle. Ten minutes afterwards he arrived. They went to
bed, though it was the middle of Saturday afternoon. She liked it
even more and wondered if there was something wrong with
Auntie or was it with her? Jock took her to see Sliding Doors and
then for a meal at the Cafe Uno in the Edgware Road. Next day,
because it was Sunday, she said she wanted him to see something
special, and they went into the cemetery and she showed him
Auntie's grave.
'Who's this Maisie Chepstow?' he said. 'She's been dead a long
time.'
'She was my auntie's grandma.' The fantasy seemed to come
naturally. It might even be true. What did she know about Auntie's
ancestors? 'I'm going to have a new gravestone done with her name
on.'

'That'll be expensive.'

25
'I can afford it,' Minty said airily. 'She left me money. Quite a lot
of money and the house.'
Jock didn't go off to see his mother again for a month and by the
time he did they were engaged. They wouldn't get married until
he'd got a better job and was earning real money, he said.
Meanwhile, he borrowed £250 from her to buy a ring. It was her
idea. He kept saying, no, no, I wouldn't dream of it, but when she
insisted he gave in. He measured her finger and brought the ring
round next day, three diamonds on a hoop of gold.
'I'll give him the benefit of the doubt,' Sonovia said to her
husband, 'but they can make diamonds in the lab these days and it's
no more costly than making glass. I read about it in the Mail on
Sunday.'
Jock stayed the night of 30 June and in the morning he turned
over in bed, gave Minty a little pinch on the shoulder and a little
punch on the arm and said, 'Pinch, punch, first of the month. No
returns.'
Another pinch joke. He said it brought you luck. But you had to
be the first to do it. That was the point of the 'no returns'. On i
April, he said, it would only be April Fools' Day till twelve noon
and afterwards Tailpike Day. You had to manage to pin a tail on
someone without them knowing.
'What sort of tail?'
'Paper, string, anything, you name it.'
'So they get to walk about without knowing they've got a tail?'
'That's the point, Polo. You've made a fool of them, right?'
It turned out that he was a general builder, he could do anything.
She asked him to see if he could do something to stop the
bathroom window rattling and he promised he would, but he never
did it any more than he mended the shaky leg on the kitchen table.
If he had a bit of capital, he said, he could set up in business on his
own and he knew he'd make a success of it. Five thousand in his
pocket would make all the difference.
'I've only got two thousand and a half,' Minty said, 'not five.'
'It's our happiness at stake, Polo. You could take out a mortgage
on the house.'

26
Minty didn't know how. She didn't understand business. Auntie
had seen to all that, and since Auntie went she'd found it hard
enough working out how to pay the council tax and the gas bill.
She'd never had to do it, nobody'd shown her.
'Leave it to me,' Jock said. 'All you'll have to do is sign the
forms.'
But first she handed over nearly all the money she had. She'd
been going to give him a cheque, make it out the way she did the
ones to the council but put 'J. Lewis' instead of 'London Borough
of Brent', but he said cash would be easier for him because he was
in the process of changing his bank. The money would buy a
second-hand van, an improvement on the boneshaker and leave
something over for advertising. She told no one, they wouldn't
understand. When he talked about the mortgage again he was
sitting up in her bed at 39 Syringa Road, drinking the tea she'd
brought him. He wanted her to come back to bed for a cuddle but
she wouldn't, she'd just had a bath. Her engagement ring had had a
good clean, soaking in gin overnight. The house he reckoned was
worth around eighty thousand. Laf had told her the same so she
didn't need convincing. The obvious thing to do was take out a
mortgage on it of ten thousand pounds, one eighth of its value.
Minty wasn't a very practical person but Auntie had taught her
some of the principles of thrift and neither a borrower nor a lender
be. She'd already done the lending and now she was going to start
borrowing - but all that much? 'I'll have to see,' she said. Til have
to think about it.'
Jock had been spending every evening with her and most nights.
When he hadn't come round or phoned for three days she phoned
the number he'd finally given her in Harvist Road but no one ever
answered. Perhaps it was just that he was with his mum again. If he
never came back it would be because she'd hesitated over the
mortgage. She imprisoned herself in rituals, praying, taking extra
flowers to Auntie's grave, hardly moving about the house without
touching wood, walking round the room like an old person who
couldn't get about without holding on to the tables and chairs. The

27
rituals brought him back, and the prayers and the flowers. She'd
decided to let him have the ten thousand.
He wasn't as happy as she thought he'd be. He seemed a bit
absent, as if his thoughts and his interests were elsewhere. She
couldn't put her finger on it, but he was changed. When he
explained she understood. His mum was ill, he said. She'd been on
a hospital waiting list for months. He'd like to take her out of the
National Health Service and pay for her op privately if he could
afford it. The whole thing was a worry. He might have to go down
and be with her for a bit. In the meantime he'd get the application
forms from the building society.
Minty said she'd got about £250 left in the bank and he was to
have that towards his mother's op. His bank still hadn't completed
the changeover to the other branch, so she drew the cash out of the
bank and emptied her account. He put the notes in the pocket of
his black leather jacket and said she was an angel. The jacket
looked new, it was so stiff and glossy, but he said, no, he'd had it for
years, just never got around to wearing it. Next day he phoned her
on his mobile - she didn't know he'd got a mobile - and said he was
in the train going to the West Country. Thanks to her, his mother
would be able to have her hip done next week.
Minty told Sonovia about the op, leaving out her personal
involvement. They were in the cinema, waiting for the big picture
to start and Laf to get back from the Gents. It was the first time
Minty'd been out with them since Jock came on the scene.
'His mum's getting a hip replacement for £250? You have to be
joking.'
'Ops cost a lot when they're private,' Minty said.
'I don't mean it's a lot, my deah, I mean it's nothing.'
Minty didn't like that. She'd always suspected Sonovia was
jealous because her Corinne hadn't got a boyfriend. The lights
went down and she accepted the pack of popcorn Laf handed her.
She usually liked popcorn, it was dry and clean and not messy to
eat, but this evening somehow it tasted stale. It'd be a shame if
Sonovia and Laf were to turn against Jock when he'd soon be
coming to live next door permanently.

28
Like the rest of the country, she saw about the Paddington train
crash on television. She didn't connect it with anyone she knew.
Jock had phoned her the day before from his mum's as he'd
promised and he hadn't said anything about coming home soon.
When he hadn't phoned or appeared for three days she looked so
pale and ill that Josephine asked her what was wrong.
'Jock's gone missing,' she said. 'I don't know where he's got to.'
Josephine didn't say much to Minty but she said a lot to Ken. He
couldn't understand a word but she talked to him just the same. He
liked the sound of her voice and as he listened, smiled with the
tranquillity of the Buddhist at peace with himself and the world.
'Maybe that Jock's ma lives in Gloucester, Ken, or near it.
What's the betting he was on that train, the one the local train
smashed into? They haven't named all the casualties yet, there
were horrific injuries. Minty'll be devastated, it'll about break her
up.'
It did. She got the letter when Jock had been missing a week.

29
Chapter 3

The ghost came into Immacue. Minty was in the back, ironing
shirts but keeping an eye on the shop while Josephine had popped
down to Whiteley's. She heard the bell and came out. Jock's ghost
was there in jeans and black leather jacket, reading the card on the
counter that gave details of their special offer to pensioners. One
free of charge if you bring in three items. She screwed up her
courage to speak to it. 'You're dead,' she said. 'You stay where you
came from.'
It raised its eyes to look at her. They had changed colour, its
eyes, being no longer blue but a pale, washed-out grey. She
thought its expression threatening and cruel.
'I'm not afraid of you.' She was but she was determined not to
show it. 'If you come back I'll find ways of getting rid of you.'
The bell sounded as the door opened and Josephine came in. She
was carrying a bag of food from Marks and Spencer and another
one from the shop that sold cut-price make-up and perfumes.
'Who were you talking to?'
She could see through the ghost to Josephine on the other side.
It was fading, blurring round the edges. 'Nobody,' she said.
'They say it's the first sign of madness, talking to yourself.'
Minty didn't say anything. The ghost was melting away like the
genie going back into the bottle in the pantomime Auntie took her
to when she was little.
'But I see it this way. If you're nuts you don't know you're

3°
talking to yourself. You think you're talking to someone because
you see things normal people don't see.'
Not liking that sort of talk, Minty went back to her ironing. It
was five months since Jock had been killed. She'd been out of her
mind with worry, though, funnily enough, she never thought he
might have been in that train crash. It hadn't sunk in that the
express was coming from the West Country, and even if it had she
hadn't known where Gloucester was or that Jock's mum lived
there. Besides, he'd said on the phone he wouldn't be coming back
till the day after. Lists of casualties appeared in the papers but
Minty didn't often read a paper. Laf brought round the Evening
Standard when they'd finished with it but mostly she made do with
the telly. You got a better idea from seeing pictures, Auntie always
said, and there was always the newscaster to explain things.
She didn't get many letters either. Something coming in the post
was an event and even then it was mostly a bill. The letter that
came when she hadn't heard from Jock for a week had Great
Western printed along its top in big sloping letters and it was done
on a computer. Well, Laf said it was. It addressed her as Dear
Madam and regretted to inform her that her fiance Mr John Lewis
had been among those travelling in the Gloucester express who
were fatally injured. Minty read it standing in the hall at 39 Syringa
Road. She went out just as she was, without a coat, letting the door
slam behind her, and into next door. Sonovia's son Daniel, the
doctor, who'd been out on a late night and had stopped over, was
sitting at the kitchen table eating his breakfast.
Minty thrust the letter into Sonovia's face and burst into a storm
of tears. Crying wasn't something she did much of, so when she did
it was a violent explosion of long pent-up misery. It wasn't just Jock
she was grieving for but Auntie and her lost mum and being alone
and not having anyone. Sonovia read the letter and handed it to
Daniel and he read it. Then he got up and fetched a drop of brandy
in a glass which he personally administered to Minty.
'I have my doubts about this,' Sonovia said. Tm going to get
your father to check up on it.'
'Don't let her go to work, Mum,' Daniel said. 'See she lies down

31
and rests, and you could make her a warm drink. I'd better go or I'll
be late for surgery.'
Minty lay down till the afternoon and Sonovia brought her
several warm drinks, sweet tea and her own recipe cappuccino.
Luckily, her neighbour had a key to 39 or Minty wouldn't have
been able to get back in again. Whether Laf ever did check she
never found out. She thought that maybe she'd dreamt Sonovia
saying that. Jock was dead all right or the train people wouldn't
have written. Josephine was very nice about her taking time off
work. After all these years when she'd been as regular as clockwork,
she said it was the least she could do. Minty got a lot of sympathy.
Sonovia personally made an appointment for her with a counsellor
and old Mr Kroot on the other side, who hadn't spoken for years,
got his home help to put a card with a black border through her
letter box. While Josephine sent flowers, Ken brought round a dish
of lemon chicken with fried rice and Butterfly's Romance. He
wasn't to know she never ate stuff from restaurant kitchens.
For five days she wept non-stop. Touching wood or praying
should have stopped it but it didn't have any effect. All that time
she only had one bath a day, she was so weak. It was remembering
the money that stopped her crying. Ever since she had the letter
she hadn't thought about it but she did now. It wasn't so much that
it was her savings that were all gone but the money that Auntie had
left her and which she'd seen as a sacred trust, something to be
looked after and treasured. She might as well have thrown it down
the drain. As soon as she felt able to go out again, she bathed and
washed her hair, put on clean clothes and took her engagement
ring to a jeweller in Queensway.
He looked at the ring, examined it through a magnifying glass
and shrugged. It might be worth twenty-five pounds but he
couldn't give her more than ten. Minty said, in that case she'd hold
on to it, thank you very much. It took only a few more weeks for
her love for Jock to turn sour and change into resentment.

Laf told Sonovia no Jock nor John Lewis was numbered among the
rail crash victims, no one with a name even remotely like that. He

32
got on to Great Western and found that sending letters of that kind
wasn't their policy and, in any case, the woman who signed the
letter didn't exist. Laf knew very well that news of a death in those
circumstances would come via the police. A couple of police
officers would have come to Minty's door. He'd very likely have
been one of them himself. If, of course, they'd known of her
existence. How would anyone have known? Minty wasn't married
to Jock, she wasn't even living with him. The woman they'd have
contacted was Jock's mother - if he had a mother, if any of what
he'd told Minty was true.
'It's tipped her over the edge,' said Sonovia.
'What d'you mean, over the edge?'
'She's always been peculiar, hasn't she? Come on, Laf, face it, a
normal person doesn't have two baths a day and wash her hands
every ten minutes. And how about jumping over the joins in the
paving stones like a kid? Have you seen her touching wood when
she's scared of something?'
Laf looked troubled. When something upset him, his face, the
same dark rich chestnut brown as his shoes and as glossy, fell into a
mass of pouches, his underlip protruding. 'He made a fool of her
and when he got himself a better proposition he was off. Or the
idea of marriage scared him. One thing's for sure, he wasn't killed
in any train crash, but we won't tell her that. We'll take her out
with us a bit more. Get her out of herself.'
So Minty, who'd been shown the world by Jock and liked it,
who'd late in life discovered sex and been going to get married, had
her social life reduced to a once-a-fortnight cinema visit with her
next-door neighbours. She never said another word to them about
Jock until she saw his ghost sitting in the chair in the front room.
Telling her not to be so daft and that she was hallucinating decided
her against ever saying any more to those two about it. She'd have
liked someone she could talk to and who'd believe her, someone
who wouldn't say there's no such thing as ghosts. Not a counsellor,
she didn't mean that. She'd kept the appointment Sonovia had
made for her, but the counsellor had only told her not to bottle up
the grief but let it all pour out and to talk to other people who'd

33
been bereaved in that crash. How could she? She didn't know
them. It hadn't occurred to her to bottle up her grief, she'd cried
for a week. What would it look like, a bottleful of grief? A cloudy
grey liquid, she thought, with no foam or bubbles in it. Anyway, it
didn't work the way she'd been promised it would. She still felt
terrible about Jock, wishing she'd never met him so that he
couldn't come ruining her life. What she wanted most was
someone who knew how to get rid of ghosts. There must be
people, vicars or something like that, who'd tell her what to do or
do it for her. The trouble was no one believed in her ghost.
Sometimes it looked as if she'd have to get rid of it herself.
After the sighting in Immacue, she didn't see him again for a
week. By now it wasn't so dark in the evenings and she was coming
home from work in the light. She took care never to leave that
chair in the middle of the room and she told Josephine she mustn't
be alone in the shop, it made her nervous. Her nerves had got bad
since she lost Jock. It was a funny position to be in, hating someone
and missing them at the same time. Once she went up to Harvist
Road to look at the house where he'd finally told her he'd lived.
She thought the woman he rented the room from might have hung
a black wreath in one of the windows or at least kept the curtains
drawn but there was nothing like that. What would she do if the
ghost came out of the front door and down the steps? Minty was so
afraid she ran all the way back to the bus stop.
'It's best for her to think he's dead,' Sonovia said to her daughter
Corinne. 'Your dad says he'd like to get his hands on him and if he
shows his face round here after what he's done he won't answer for
the consequences. What's the use of that sort of talk, is what I say.
Let her get her mourning over with, that's the best way, and then
she can get on with her life.'
'And what life would that be, Mum? I never knew she'd got one.
Did he have any money off her?'
'She's never said, but I have my suspicions. Winnie left her a bit;
I don't know how much and I wouldn't ask. Your dad says he can
see the whole scenario. That Jock got talking in the pub and
someone - Brenda, very likely, she can never keep her mouth shut

34
- she pointed Minty out to him and said about Winnie Knox
leaving her the house and a bit of money, multiplied it by ten, no
doubt, and Jock saw the gravy train coming out of the tunnel.'
Corinne went to the window and looked out into the back
garden, which was divided from next door's by only a chain-link
fence. On the other side of it, standing on a black plastic bin liner
which she had spread on the grass, Minty stood pegging out the
washing. 'I'm being serious, Mum. How do you know if he ever
existed? Did you ever see him?'
Sonovia stared at her. 'No, we never did. We keep ourselves to
ourselves, as you know.' Her daughter looked as if she didn't know,
as if it was a surprise to her, but she said nothing. 'Wait a minute,
though. We did see his car, a real old banger. And your dad heard
his voice through the wall. Laughing. He had a very deep, warm
sort of laugh.'
'All right. Only people do fantasise. And now she's seeing his
ghost, is she? D'you know if she's ever had psychiatric treatment?'
'Who? Minty?'
'No, Mum, Mr Kroot's cat. Who else but Minty?'
'Don't ask me.'
'I only ask because normal people don't act the way she does.
Seeing ghosts and not knowing any men before Jock and always
wearing the same sort of clothes, exactly the same. And all the
compulsive things.'
'Now you mention it, that's just what I was saying to your dad.'
'I had a client like that. She was up on a charge of Actual Bodily
Harm but she was doing most of the bodily harm to herself, cutting
herself to relieve her tension, she said. She had so many
compulsions she lost her job because she was too busy arranging
things in the right order and going back ten or a dozen times to
check, that she'd no time to do her work.'
'You'd have to be mad to go on like that.'
'Well, you said it, Mum,' said Corinne.

Auntie said Agnes meant to call her Arabella. Then her best friend
apart from Auntie had a baby - she was properly married - and

35
named her Arabella, so Agnes settled on Araminta, it being that bit
different. They'd once talked about names, she and Jock, and he'd
said that though his name was John his mother called him Jock
because she came from Scotland. That was really all Minty knew
about Mrs Lewis, that she was Scottish and must have lived
somewhere in Gloucester.
Jock hadn't had time to buy a van or start a business, so he must
still have had all her money when he died. Where would it be now?
Minty asked Josephine, not mentioning names, of course, but just
saying what would happen to someone's money if he died and
hadn't made a will like Auntie had? She knew he hadn't made a will
because he said so and said they must both make them after they
were married.
'It'd go to his next of kin, I suppose,' said Josephine.
That wouldn't be his ex-wife because she was ex. It would be old
Mrs Lewis. She ought to give Minty's money back. It wasn't
rightfully hers, it'd only been a loan to Jock, not a gift, and not even
a loan to Mrs Lewis. You wouldn't be far wrong if you said she'd
stolen it. Minty often thought about Mrs Lewis having the
enjoyment of it. Living in her nice house in Gloucester, using
Minty's money at bingo and buying luxuries in the shops, Belgian
chocolates and cherry brandy. She'd intended to use the money to
have a shower installed. You didn't use so much water under a
shower but you got cleaner. It would be easy having two showers a
day and washing her hair at the same time. And it wasn't a hosepipe
on the taps she had in mind but a real shower cabinet you walked
into with a glass door and tiled walls. She'd never have it now, or
not for years and years.
When Jock appeared again, sitting in the kitchen chair, she
wasn't as frightened as she'd been the first time. Maybe that was
because he was vague and misty, almost transparent. You could see
the green-painted bars on the back of the chair through his chest.
She stood in front of him and asked him why he'd let his mother
have her money. He didn't answer, he never did, and he soon went
away, doing his genie-vanishing-into-a-botde act, disappearing like
melting snow.

36
But in the night he spoke to her. Or he spoke. It might not have
been to her or to anyone. His voice woke her out of deep sleep,
saying, 'She's dead, she's dead ...' That soft, sweet, brown voice. It
didn't sound sad, but then it never did. Whom did he mean by
'she'? Not his ex-wife, she'd be too young. Minty lay in bed,
thinking. The darkness was impenetrable when the curtains were
drawn and the street lamps out. She looked for his ghost in vain,
peering into the blind empty corners.
It must have been his mother he meant. And he wouldn't have
been sad because old Mrs Lewis would be joining him wherever he
was. Minty closed her eyes again but it was a long time before she
went back to sleep.

37
Chapter 4

In Zillah's experience, men didn't propose except in old-dme
novels. They just talked about 'one day' when you and they got
married or even 'making a commitment' or, more likely, as an
unwelcome duty because you were pregnant. They never said, as
Jims had just said, 'Will you marry me?' It made her hesitate about
taking him seriously. Besides, there was another reason why he
couldn't possibly be asking her to marry him. 'Did you really say
what I think you did?' asked Zillah.
'Yes, I really did, darling. Let me explain. I want to marry you, I
want to live with you and I want it to be for the rest of our lives. I
like you. I think we'd get on.'
Zillah, who had been driven by poverty to stop smoking a week
before, took a cigarette out of the packet he had put on the table.
Jims lit it for her. 'But you're gay,' she said.
'That's the point. I am also the Conservative Member of
Parliament for South Wessex and between you and me I think I
shall be outed some time in the next six months if I don't do
something to stop it.'
'Yes, OK, but everyone gets outed these days or comes out. I
mean I know you haven't been but it was always only a matter of
time.'
'No, it wasn't. What makes you say that? I take the greatest care
to be seen about with women. I've been taking that ghastly model,
Icon, about for weeks. Just think about my constituency. You live

38
in it, you ought to know what it's like. Not only have they never
returned anyone but a Conservative, they have never, until me,
returned an unmarried man. They are the most right-wing bunch
in the United Kingdom. They loathe queers. In his speech at the
annual dinner last week the Chair of the North Wessex Conservative
Association compared what he calls "inverts" to necrophiliacs,
practitioners of bestiality, paedophiles and satanists. There'll be a
General Election in less than a year. I don't want to lose my seat.
Besides ...' Jims put on that mysterious look his handsome face
often wore when he made reference to the corridors of power.
'Besides, a little bird told me I have the weeniest chance of a post in
the next reshuffle if I keep my tiny paws clean.'
Zillah, who had known James Isambard Melcombe-Smith since
her parents moved into the tied cottage on his parents' estate as
land agent and housekeeper twenty-five years before, sat back in
her chair and looked at him with new eyes. He was probably the
best-looking man she had ever seen; tall, dark, film star-ish in the
way film stars were when beauty was a Hollywood prerequisite,
slim, elegant, too handsome, she sometimes thought, to be hetero
and far too handsome to sit in the House of Commons. It amazed
her that those people like this Chairman and the Chief Whip
hadn't rumbled him years ago. She'd even have fancied him herself
if she hadn't known since she was sixteen that it was hopeless.
'What do I get out of it?' she asked. 'No sex, that's for sure.'
'Well, no. Best to call a spade a spade, darling. It would be, as
you might say, a marriage blanc but also an open marriage, only that
part would be our little secret. As to what you get out of it, that will
not be cat's meat, not in anyone's estimation. I have quite a lot of
dosh, as you must know. And I'm not talking about the weeny
pittance I get from the Mother of Parliaments. Plus my charming
home in Fredington Crucis and my very up-market apartment
within the sound of the division bell - valued, I may add, at one
million smackers only last week. You get my name, freedom from
care, lots of lovely clothes, the car of your choice, foreign trips,
decent schools for the kids ...'
'Yes, Jims, how about the kids?'

39
'I love children, you know that. Don't I love yours? I'll never
have any of my own unless I set up home in a same-sex stable
relationship and contrive to adopt one. Whereas I'd have yours
ready made, lovely little pigeon pair with blond curls and Dorset
accents.'
'They have not got Dorset accents.'
'Oh, yes, they have, darling. But we'll soon change that. So how
about it?'
'I'll have to think it through, Jims,' said Zillah.
'Okey-dokey, only don't take too long over it. I'll give you a bell
tomorrow.'
'Not tomorrow, Jims. Thursday. I'll have decided by Thursday.'
'You'll decide in my favour, won't you, sweet? I'll say I love you
if you like, it's almost true. Oh, and about the open marriage
aspect, you'd understand, wouldn't you, if I draw the line at that ex-
husband of yours? I'm sure you know what I mean.'
After he'd gone, in the Range Rover, not the Ferrari, Zillah put
on her duffel coat, a scarf that had been her mother's and a pair of
over-large wellies some man had left behind after a one-night
stand. She walked down the village street, thinking about herself
and her situation, about Jerry and the future, about Jims and her
relations with her parents, but mostly about herself. She had been
christened Sarah, as had six other girls in her class at primary
school, but discovering by means of a blood test in her teens that
her group was B, a fairly rare blood group in all but gypsies, and
that Zillah was a favoured Romany name, she rechristened herself.
Now she tested it out with a new double-barrelled surname. Zillah
Melcombe-Smith sounded a lot better than Zillah Leach. But then
almost anything would.
Fancy Jims knowing about Jerry. That is, knowing about the sort
of unwritten arrangement she had with Jerry. Or had. Of course,
she didn't believe the letter she'd had, that was an insult to
anyone's intelligence. He didn't own a computer. Some new
woman must have written it. 'Ex-husband' was the term Jims had
used. Naturally, he would, everyone did, though she and Jerry
weren't actually divorced; they'd never got round to it. And now if

40
Jerry wasn't dead, he wanted her to think he was, which amounted
to the same thing. It meant he wouldn't come back; the
'arrangement' was over and the kids had lost their dad. Not that
he'd ever been much of a father to them, more of a here-todaygone-tomorrow
dropper-in. If she accepted Jims - how romantic
and old-fashioned that sounded - would she be able to describe
herself as a widow or would it be safer to call herself single? If she
accepted him it would be one in the eye for her mother and might
stop her being so insufferably patronising.
The village of Long Fredington was so called for the length of its
main street, a full half-mile from Button's Farm in the east to
Thomas Hardy Close in the west. It was the largest of the
Fredingtons, the others being Fredington St Michael, Fredington
Episcopi, Fredington Crucis and Little Fredington. All were
picturesque, the stuff of postcards, every house, even the newest,
every barn, the church, the mill, the pub (now a private house), the
school and the shop (also now private houses) built of the same
golden-grey stone. If you were well-off, especially if you were well-
off and retired, it was a charming place to live. If you had a car or
two and a job in Casterbridge or Markton, a husband and a nanny,
it wasn't so bad. For someone in Zillah's position it was hell.
Eugenie went to school on the bus, that was all right, but there was
no nursery or pre-school for Jordan and he was at home with her
all day. She had no car, she hadn't even got a bike. Once a week, if
they hadn't anything better to do, Annie at the Old Mill House or
Lynn at La Vieille Ecole drove her ten miles to the Tesco to pick
up supplies. Much less often someone asked her round for a meal
but these were rare outings. They had husbands and she was a very
good-looking unattached female. Anyway, she couldn't get a
babysitter.
At All Saints' Church, a handsome fourteenth-century building
from whose interior all the priceless brass had been stolen and
melted down and the unique mediaeval wall paintings defaced with
graffiti, she turned left down Mill Lane. After two smartly
refurbished cottages were passed, all occupied dwellings ceased.
But for birdsong, it was silent. The lane narrowed and beech

41
branches met overhead. Although late autumn, the day was sunny
and almost warm. If this was global warming, thought Zillah, she
couldn't get enough of it. Never mind the seas rising and the
coastline disappearing, she didn't live near the coast. And maybe she
wouldn't live down here at all much longer, not if she married Jims,
her best friend, her childhood friend, really the nicest man she knew.
At the ford she trod carefully on the flat stones that formed a
causeway across the brook. Ducks stared indifferently at her from
the bank and a swan glided downstream. She had to admit it was
pretty and it would be a whole heap prettier if she could venture
out into it from Fredington Crucis House, wearing Armani jeans, a
sheepskin jacket and Timberland boots, having left the Range
Rover parked outside the church. But Jims was gay, a difficulty not
to be underrated. And what about Jerry? He wouldn't have got
whoever it was to send her that letter if he didn't want her to think
he was dead, but he was brilliant at changing his mind. If there was
one thing beyond his liking mints and hating bananas that - well defined Jerry, it was his rapid mind changes. Suppose he had a rethink
and wanted to be alive again?
A large duckpond dominated the front garden, if this it could be
called, of the Old Mill House. Although no rain had fallen in Long
Fredington for a week and the stream water was exceptionally low,
the banks of the pond were a quagmire. Waterfowl had been
slopping about in it, animals with hooves had churned it up, and
now Annie's three children and her two were sitting in it, Annie's
Rosalba instructing her sister Fabia, her brother Titus and Zillah's
children in the art of face-painting with mud. When Zillah came
up the drive she had just completed a rendering of a Union Jack in
monochrome that extended from Jordan's chin and round cheeks
to his high domed forehead.
'Jordan ate a slug, Mummy,' said Eugenie. 'Titus said there was
this man ate a live goldfish and the cruelty to animals people made
him pay a lot of money.'
'And Jordan wanted to eat one,' said Rosalba, 'because he's a
naughty boy but there's no goldfishes in our pond. So he ate a slug.
And that's cruel too and he'll have to pay a hundred pounds.'

42
'Not a naughty boy/Jordan wailed. Tears gushed out of his eyes
and he rubbed them with his fists, ruining the Union Jack. 'Won't
pay a hundred pounds. I want my daddy.'
Those words, frequently uttered, never failed to upset Zillah.
She picked him up. He was wet through and covered with mud.
Rather late in the day she wondered indignantly what Annie was
thinking of, leaving five children, the eldest of whom was eight,
alone beside a large pond that must be at least six feet deep in the
middle.
'I only left them for two minutes,' Annie cried, running out from
the front door. 'The phone was ringing. Oh, look at them! You
three are going straight in the bath.'
Though she had no need to think of the cost of hot water as
Zillah did, she didn't offer to put Eugenie and Jordan in the bath.
She didn't ask Zillah in either. Jordan hung round Zillah's neck,
wiping his hands on her hair and rubbing his muddy cheek against
hers. The chances were she'd have to carry him all the way home.
She waited for Annie to say something about picking her up in the
morning and taking her shopping, but Annie only said she'd see her
soon and if she'd excuse her she'd have to get this lot cleaned up as
she and Charles were going out to dinner in Lyme and they'd have
to leave by seven.
Zillah sat Jordan on her right hip with her right arm round him.
He was a heavy boy, big for his age. Eugenie said it was getting
dark, which it wasn't, not yet, and she'd be frightened if she didn't
hold Zillah's hand.
'Why am I too big to be carried, Mummy?'
'You just are. Miles too big,' said Zillah. 'Four is the upper limit.
No one over four gets carried.'
Jordan burst into loud wails. 'Don't want to be four! Want to be
carried!'
'Oh, shut up,' said Zillah. 'I am carrying you, you halfwit.'
'Not a fwit, not a fwit! Put me down, Jordan walk.'
He trudged along, very slowly, trailing behind. Eugenie took
Zillah's hand, smiling smugly over her shoulder at her brother.
The sinking sun disappeared behind a dense wall of trees and it

43
suddenly became viciously cold. Jordan, snuffling and whimpering,
rubbing at his eyes with muddy fists, sat down in the road, then lay
down on his back. It was at times like these that Zillah wondered
how she had ever got into this mess in the first place. What had she
been thinking of to get involved with a man like Jerry at the age of
nineteen? What had induced her to fall in love with him and want
his children?
She picked Jordan up and, in the absence of any handkerchief or
tissue, wiped his face with a woollen glove she found in her pocket.
A bitter wind had got up from nowhere. How could she hesitate
about saying yes to Jims? She was suddenly visited by fear that
maybe he wouldn't phone for his answer on Thursday, maybe he'd
find some other woman who wouldn't keep him waiting. That Icon
or Ivo Carew's sister Kate. If it weren't for Jerry ... She was going
to have to sit down when she'd got this lot to bed and seriously
think about what Jerry was up to and what that letter meant.
It took three times as long to get back to Willow Cottage with
the children as it had taken her to get to the Old Mill House on her
own. Twilight was closing in. The front door opened directly into
the living room where the bulb in the light had gone. She hadn't a
replacement. The cottage wasn't centrally heated, of course it
wasn't. It belonged to a local landowner and had been let at a low
rent to various more or less indigent people for the past fifty years.
No improvements had been made to it in that time, apart from
perfunctory painting carried out by tenants and mostly left
unfinished. Thus, the inside of the front door was painted pink, the
cupboard door black and only an undercoat in uncompromising
grey had been applied to the door to the kitchen. Electrical fittings
consisted mostly of partly eroded cables passing, looped and
knotted, from ten- and five-amp points, obsolete in the rest of the
European Union and rare in the United Kingdom, to extension
leads connected to a lamp, a fan heater and a very old 45 rpm
record player. The furniture was rejects from the 'big house' where
Sir Ronald Grasmere, the landlord, lived. It had been discarded
forty years before, was old then and had come from the
housekeeper's room.

44
The kitchen was worse. It contained a sink, a gas cooker from
circa 1950 and a refrigerator that looked huge because its walls
were nearly a foot thick, though its usable interior quite a small
space. Originally it must have been a very good one, for it had
lasted more than sixty years. There was no washing machine. Zillah
stripped off the children's clothes and put jeans, T-shirts, sweaters
and Jordan's anorak to soak in cold water in the sink. She switched
on the fan heater and put a match to the fire she had laid earlier. It
was strange how Jims never seemed to notice the state of the place
or the inadequacy of the fittings or, come to that, the cold. At any
rate, he never mentioned them. Did this augur well for a life
companion or not? Of course, he was a pal of Sir Ronald. If she
married him she and Jims would no doubt occasionally have Sir
Ronald to dine. Perhaps in the Members' dining room ...
As she began making scrambled eggs for the children's tea,
Zillah decided that if she did marry Jims, no way was she going to
do the cooking in future. Or any housework as long as she lived.
Who was it said, Til never be cold or hungry again'? Oh, yes,
Scarlett O'Hara. If only she had a video in this bloody bloody place
and the film of Gone With the Wind she'd play it tonight after the
kids were in bed. If she married Jims she'd be able to watch videos
every night. What an ambition! But she'd also be able to have
unlimited babysitters and go to the cinema and the theatre and
nightclubs, shop all day long, have facials and her hair done at
Nicky Clarke and stay at health farms and be a lady who lunched at
Harvey Nichols.
Was she going to marry him, then? Had she made up her mind?
The children would be able to play video games and have
computers instead of watching whatever rubbish was currently on
television: Baywatch or something of that ilk. Not great in black and
white. She'd better bath them. Jordan had mud on his feet and in
his hair. But Jims was gay. Besides, there was another pressing
reason, not for just not marrying him but for not marrying anyone.

The letter had come in October of the previous year. For about
five minutes, if that, she'd believed what it said and that it came

45
from the people it said it did. Maybe that was because she'd wanted
to believe it. But had she wanted to? Not entirely. Anyway, that
hardly mattered, for she'd soon seen it was an obvious nonsense.
Jerry hadn't been on a Great Western train going from Gloucester
to London. He'd left her and the kids and Willow Cottage ten
minutes before that train collided with the other one and driven
himself off somewhere or other in his battered Ford Anglia, which
was twenty years old if it was a day.
The letter purported to come from the Great Western. In fact,
since she was his wife and still was on the day of the train crash,
she'd have been the first to hear of his death and not ten days
afterwards. Not in a phoney letter that cried out to be disbelieved,
but from the police. They'd very likely have wanted her (or
someone she named) to go and identify the remains. There'd have
been a funeral. So after the first five minutes she hadn't believed
the letter. But she'd wondered who'd written it and what Jerry was
up to. Certain things seemed clear. He'd arranged for the letter to
be sent to her and this must mean that he wanted her not
necessarily to think he was dead, but to act as if he were dead.
What he was really saying was: 'This is to show you I'm off, I won't
be troubling you again. Just act as if I was dead. Shack up with
someone, get married if you like. I won't interfere or put a spoke in
your wheel.' Was he saying that? She couldn't think what he'd
meant if he hadn't meant that.
Of course, he was always a joker. And his jokes weren't even
clever or particularly funny. Zillah, Zillah, the rick-stick Stillah,
round tail, bobtail, well done, Zillah. Pinch, punch, first of the
month, no returns. If he happened to be sleeping with her on the
night of the last of the month - it didn't happen that often - he'd
always awakened her with those words and the corresponding
gestures. 'No returns' meant the rules of the game stopped her
pinching and punching him back. There was another one about
going into the garden and meeting a great she-bear who said,
'What, no soap?' She couldn't remember the rest of it. Once, long
ago, she must have found him funny. And his country singing and
his mint-eating.

46
They'd not really lived together since Jordan was born and not
much before that, and she'd never been such a fool as to think she
was the only one. But she had thought she was the preferred one.
'All other girls apart, first always in my heart,' as he'd once told her
and she, being young, had taken it seriously. It was probably a line from Hank Williams or Boxcar Willie. Disillusionment set in when
he was always somewhere else and about as bad a provider as could
be. What was the good of setting the Child Support Agency on his
track when he never earned anything?
Because they thought he and she were divorced, everyone
believed that when Jerry came visiting it was to see his kids and that
Jordan bunked in with Eugenie and he slept in Jordan's room or
downstairs on the couch. The truth was, however, and there was
never any question about it, that he shared Zillah's bed. Sex with
Jerry was really the only thing about him she still liked as much as
she ever had and there had been plenty of it that last weekend he'd
spent at Willow Cottage. For a moment, running the children's
bath, she wondered about that remark ofjims's. Something about
he didn't mind what she did about sex but he drew the line at 'that
ex-husband of yours'. She'd been too struck with surprise at his
proposal to think much about it at the time, but did that mean he wasn't among those who believed Jerry had been visiting just as the
children's father? Probably. It didn't matter. Jims, as she very well
knew, was no fool.
It showed her something else as well. That Jims took it for
granted she and Jerry were divorced. Did her parents? They no
longer lived on Jims's father's estate but had retired to a bungalow
in Bournemouth. Relations between her and them were strained
and had been since she moved in with Jerry, got pregnant and
dropped out of the art foundation course she was doing at a north
London polytechnic. Strained but, since the original rift was
mended, not broken off. It was her parents who'd persuaded Sir
Ronald to let her have this house. Still, when she spoke to her
mother on the phone, she had the impression they considered her a
divorced woman who had only got what she asked for.
The children had to share a bath. It cost too much to keep the

47
immersion heater on for long. Eugenie stared searchingly at her
brother until he said, 'Stop looking at me. Your eyes are making
holes in my tummy.'
'Mummy,' said Eugenie, 'did you know his willy is called a penis?
Some people call it that. Did you know?'
'Yes, I did.'
'Titus told me when Jordan got his out to do a wee. Are they all
called a penis or is it just his?'
'All,' said Zillah.
'You should have told me. Annie said it's wrong to keep children
in the dark. I thought she meant keep them in a dark bedroom but
she said, no, she didn't mean that, she meant it's wrong to keep
them in the Darkness of Ignorance.'
'It's a willy,' said Jordan.
'No, it isn't.'
'It is.'
'It isn't.'
'It is, it is, it's mine and it's called a willy.' He began to cry and
beat the water with his hands so that splashes went all over the
room and Zillah. She dabbed about her with a towel. Every towel
had to be washed by hand and dried on the line, as she didn't need
to remind herself.
'Do you have to provoke him, Eugenie? If he wants to call it a
willy, why not let him?'
'Annie says it's wrong to teach children baby words for Parts of
the Anatomy.'
Zillah got them to bed. When she had finished reading Harry
Potter to them - though Eugenie could read perfectly well herself
and had been able to for two years - she thought as she kissed them
goodnight that they might not see their father again. It seemed,
suddenly, intolerably sad. If he intended never to see her again he
wouldn't see them either. In Jordan's rosy face on the pillow she
could see Jerry's nose, the curve of his upper lip, in Eugenie's his
dark-blue eyes and strongly marked eyebrows. Neither of them was
much like her. Last time Jerry had been at Willow Cottage, when
he was sitting at breakfast that final morning, Jordan had taken

48
their two hands, hers and Jerry's, and laying his over hers on the
table, said, 'Don't go, Daddy. Stay here with us.'
Eugenic hadn't said a word, just looked at her father with cool,
penetrating reproach. Zillah had hated Jerry then, even though she
hadn't wanted him to stay, hated him for not being a proper dad to
his children. They could have a new one in Jims and everything a
good father should provide.
Still, there was no getting away from the fact that she was
married already. But Zillah knew it was hopeless to start thinking
about divorce now. The children were involved, so it couldn't just
be done by post. There would have to be a court hearing and
custody decided. Jims wouldn't wait. He was notoriously impatient.
He had to get married, or at least get himself engaged, before
someone outed him and that might happen any day. If she hesitated
he'd go after Kate Carew.
So if she married him, was she going to do it as a divorcee or a
widow? If as a widow, wouldn't Jims find it odd that she'd said
nothing about Jerry dying in the train crash when it happened? It
would have to be as a divorcee. Or, better still, as a single woman.
Then she wouldn't have to produce the decree absolute or
whatever it was to show the registrar. Or the vicar. Jims might want
to get married in church.
Zillah hadn't given a thought to religion since she was twelve,
but so do old beliefs and habits resonate faintly throughout life that
she baulked at marrying in church in a false character. Besides,
she'd been married to Jerry in church and she knew enough about
church weddings to know that the vicar would say something about
declaring if you knew any impediment to the marriage. If Jerry
being still alive wasn't an impediment she didn't know what would
be. She was baulked but not put off the idea. Now she'd thought of
these stumbling blocks she found she really wanted to marry Jims.
There was no doubt. She'd say yes on Thursday.
Dragging all those sopping wet and still dirty clothes out of the
now cold water in the sink was one of the things that decided her.
To get away from that. And the crack behind the outfall pipe from
the lavatory where water (or worse) dripped, and the clothes line

49
that fell into the mud when overloaded and the life-threatening
electric wiring. And when Annie didn't offer her a lift, having to
walk two miles to Fredington Episcopi where there was a small, ill-
stocked village shop, and two miles back, laden with junk food in
plastic carriers. She'd say yes.
But somehow she'd have to get over the question of what, on
forms you filled in, they called your marital status. And it was for
Jims as well as the registrar or vicar. He was no fool. Why
shouldn't she say she and Jerry had never actually been married at
all?

50
Chapter 5

In the fruit and vegetable section of Waitrose at Swiss Cottage
Michelle Jarvey was choosing food for her husband. Matthew was
with her, pushing the trolley, for it would have been difficult
attempting to buy anything if he were absent. Besides, they did
everything together. They always had. He'd try kiwi fruit, he was
saying, now the Coxes were over. He couldn't stomach any other
sort of apple.
To the other shoppers Mr and Mrs Jarvey would have presented
a sight almost comic. If to themselves they were a serious, and to
some extent tragic, pair, Michelle knew quite well that the rest of
the world saw them as a grossly fat, middle-aged woman and a man
so thin, worn, wizened and cadaverous as to resemble someone
freed after five years in a prison camp on a starvation diet. Matthew
was too weak to walk far and when he pushed the trolley, which he
insisted on doing, he was forced to double up as if in pain.
Michelle's monstrous bosom rested on a stomach which, with her
hips, resembled in shape the lower part of a spinning top,
undulating as she walked. Today she wore a tent-like green coat
with a fake fur collar in which her still pretty face nestled as if it
were peeping out from a mound of clothes bundled up for the
charity shop. The huge body balanced on surprisingly good legs
with ankles so slender that you wondered why they didn't crack
under the weight.

5i
'I'll just get two kiwis, then, shall I?' said Michelle. 'You won't
want too much. You may not fancy them.'
'I don't know, darling. I'll try.' Matthew shuddered a little, not at
the kiwi fruit, which were just like bits of a tree, really, or even two
small furry animals, but at an overripe banana among the rest, a
banana with a brown bruise and squashy tip. He turned his eyes
away, remembering to keep them lowered. 'I don't think I want any
strawberries today.'
'I know you don't, darling, and no pears or peaches.'
Michelle didn't say because they bruise easily, they decay fast.
She knew that he knew that she knew. They moved on past milk
and cream and cheese, she helping herself surreptitiously while he
looked the other way. She dared not buy meat or fish, she'd go to
the local corner supermarket for that on her own. Once he'd
actually vomited. It was the only time they'd ventured together into
the meat section and she'd never risk it again. Among the cakes and
biscuits she grabbed the things she knew she shouldn't eat but had
to. To distract herself, to distance herself, to console herself.
'Those,' he said, pointing.
He wouldn't say 'butter puffs'. 'Butter' was among the words,
along with 'cheese' and 'mayonnaise' and 'cream', he hadn't uttered
for years. He'd be sick. She took two packets of the dry, flaky
biscuits. His face had become even paler than usual. In a surge of
love for him she wondered just how much torment being in a food
store brought him. He insisted on coming. It was one of the
courage-testing tasks he set himself. One of the challenges.
Looking at a magazine was another, turning the pages and forcing
himself not to skip the ones with the colour shots of souffles and
pasta and roast beef. Talking to people who didn't know, watching
them eat, watching her eat. They came to fruit juices. She took a
carton of pineapple juice, looked at him, raising her eyebrows. He
nodded, managed a death's-head smile, all skull and teeth. She laid
her hand on his arm.
'What would I do without you, my darling?' he said.
'You don't have to do without me. I'm always here for you, you
know that.'

52
There was no one near to hear them. 'My sweetheart,' he said.
'My love.'

She had fallen in love with him at first sight. Because it wasn't the
first dme she'd felt like that, though her love had never been
returned, she expected, with anticipatory bitterness, that once again
her feeling would be unrequited. But he had been the same and
loved her back with a like ardour. He was a teacher and he had two
degrees while she was just a nursery nurse, but he loved her, she
didn't know why, couldn't account for it. They weren't very young,
both of them were in their late twenties. Passion overtook them.
They made love the second time they met, moved in together after
a week, got married two months after their first meeting.
Michelle was - well - not thin then, but not plump either, just a
normal size. 'A perfect figure,' Matthew said. If anyone had asked
her the secret of their love and their successful marriage she'd have
said it was because they were so kind to one another. He'd have
said it was because no one else had ever mattered much to either of
them once they'd met.
He was funny about his food even then (Michelle's way of
putting it) but she'd always thought men quite different from
women in their attitudes to eating. Really, it was just that, like most
men, there were a lot of things he didn't like. Red meat was on his
poison list and all kinds of offal, shellfish and any fish that wasn't
white - in those days, when she could joke about it, she called him
a 'fish racist' - sauces and mayonnaise and custards, anything
'sloppy'. He was faddy, that was all. But he began to get worse,
though she never put it like that. Eating disorders as real illness
were just beginning to be recognised, but everyone thought they
only applied to young girls who wanted to stay thin. Because they
talked about everything, they sometimes discussed, in depth, his
problem. How he couldn't eat things that looked like other things.
An example was rice, he'd just got it into his head that rice looked
like maggots. Soon he couldn't eat anything that had once been
alive, though - thank God, she said to herself- that didn't apply to
fruit and vegetables, some fruit and vegetables. All pasta was like

53
Til just get two kiwis, then, shall I?' said Mic^ " ^
want too much. You may not fancy th"- Vye^0^
.1 don't know, darling. I'llti-'' ^^ . ^
the kiwi fruit, which -- ^so y^- ^^, c
small mrrv - ^<^ ^s^^^ ^
b- ^^^.^^^^

.
thfc v ,oe lv - riv^" i.An^^'1 i c^ }^<^^>&
^^>^:^
*". ^l^6 .^^o,^^;^*0^

^
He we ^-A. ^v(es^°'s ^e ^^ ^ ^
alongwiA ^^^vve ^^^^^
for years. . ^ ^ ^^T^ %
biscuits. His ^ vo "a^^-xvo^^, ^tevv,^, <vc
loveforhim. ^^^'^^^^^ ^

^^^^ ^^^<^
courage-testing ^ ^ ^ ^ V^^ ^^
Looking at a im ^ %° ^ ^ c. ^ ^ ^v^ ^'0 ^
himself not to sk vv ^s ^V^ ^ ^^ ^'
pasta and roast be< ^^t ^e ^o^^^ ^ ^o}^' ^
them eat, watching ^ -^^ ,o ^^ ^°^co
carton of pineapple , ^'^^^^ ^^^'y^ ^e
nodded, managed a d ^^ ^ ^ ^ ^^ 0^
her hand on his arm. ^^^ A{^v^ oi ^e ^ ^
.What would I do w ^ ^e^ ^., s^-^
.You don't have to do ^".^ o^ ^e^^6 ^0 ^
know that.' ^ ^o^^^ ^{^
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52 'v}ve vv ,Ae^ . A} '' ^.
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she tried not to eat too much in front of him. At mealtimes, while
he sat miserably resigned, picking at half a lettuce leaf, a slice of
hard-boiled egg and one plain-boiled new potato the size of a
marble, she ate the same multiplied by five, plus a chicken wing and
a bread roll. But when she went back to the kitchen and he
returned thankfully to his computer, she filled herself up with the
comfort food that consoled her for watching his sufferings: ciabatta
with brie, fruit cake, Mars bars, creme brulee and crystallised
pineapple.
Their love never wavered. She'd have liked children but none
came. Sometimes she thought it might be because he was so
malnourished that his sperm count had sunk very low. It was no good going to a doctor, though the reactionary old GP had been
replaced by a bright young woman who was always trying to put
Michelle on a diet. No one really understood Matthew; only she
could do that. She had to watch his body slacken and bend, his face
^wrinkle like an old man's, his joints protrude through the skin you. couldn't call it flesh - and that skin assume a greyish pallor. At
thirty she had been plump, at thirty-five overweight. Now, at
learly forty-five, she was grossly fat. While she spoke often of his
vulsion from food and they were always discussing what caused it
m whether a cure would be discovered one day, he had never
;e mentioned her obesity. As far as he was concerned, she might
be the hour-glass girl of twenty-seven he'd fallen in love with.
ie had a sister in Bedford and he a brother in Ireland and
ler in Hong Kong, but they had no friends. So geared is
r to an eating and drinking together ethos, and eating was
ling they were obliged to avoid in public, that they were
to keep friends or make new ones. One by one, people they
drifted away when their invitations were refused and they
^ver themselves invited. Michelle's greatest dread had been
lehow they would be obliged to accept a summons to tea or
id Matthew, confronted by butter or a jug of milk or pot
would turn white and begin that dreadful dry retching.
aulse people than risk it.
only one confidante. And that confidante had become a

55
friend. One day, Hearing despair and terrified that he couldn't go
on much longer, she had sat in her kitchen with Fiona, while
Matthew worked slowly and feebly at his computer, and told her
everything. And instead of laughing at a middle-aged man who
couldn't eat and a middle-aged woman who couldn't stop eating,
Fiona had sympathised, seemed to understand and even suggested
remedies. She'd lived on such a varied diet, such novel and
sophisticated food, she had all sorts of ideas for an anorexic who'd
like to eat if only he could. A year later, which was last year,
Michelle told her that she'd saved Matthew's life and they would
both be eternally grateful.

When they got back from Waitrose to their house in Holmdale
Road, West Hampstead, Michelle set about preparing Matthew's
' 'i. It was to include several of the foodstuffs Fiona had
and which Matthew found acceptable.
((U^iona had said. 'Very nourishing, are peanuts.'
^^lH^lto utter the word, 'Greasy.'
^^"l^eanuts. Delicious. I love them.'
^ ^iv that so did he. He loved no
lfe£1^ .^ ^' ^ . ' "o!muts'as he tolerated
gy-.a^BSi, ^ -S- S s? co ' -n pflllpd Pnn
^ ? ^ S ^ ^ ^

"A^M^t^^^^^
-'-W^^^^^^^^^^ -
-^^Wte^^ ^ ^^^ § ^ I
'^M^^ok^^^J?^^^ § /
mMSHS^^^^lif ^^ ^ ^
prorely repelled b^ ^ S § ^ ^ Ae

^^^.^y^S^ff § ^
btfaat she was? ^ <S' ^ ,^ /.
^^enhe-^^ ^ ^
^.^eA .._ .Itll-^f"" ^ I dllU d
|» seeds looked^ c ^ / „
"r plain cake a^ ^ ^small
all of it had^-J /whle

lied on the weight.? f herself
6 /h butter.
Matthew smiled at her. It was his way of not looking at his plate, to
turn his head away from it and smile at her as he thanked her.
'I just saw Jeff Leigh go by,' he said, picking up one peanut. 'Is he
never going to get a job?'
Neither of them much cared for Fiona's boyfriend. 'I'd so much
like to think he wasn't with her for her money,' said Michelle. 'I'd
like to think he was disinterested, darling, but I don't. He expects
her to keep him and that's the truth of it.'
'Fiona likes to be in control. I don't mean to criticise. To some it
would be a compliment. She may want him to be dependent on
her.'
'I hope you're right. I want her to be happy. They're getting
married in June.'
Matthew ate another peanut and a fragment of Ryvita. Michelle
had long ago mastered the art of not watching him. He sipped the
juice. 'I'm afraid her friends won't think much of him if he does
nothing and lets her keep him. He seems to have some skills. He's
done a few useful jobs about the house for Fiona, putting in an
electric point for one, and if you remember, he was something of a
wizard on the computer when he came in here to write those letters
or whatever it was he did.'
'Job applications, he said. That was in October, nearly five
months ago. I can't eat this lettuce, darling, or any more nuts. I've
eaten the Ryvita.'
'You've done very well,' said Michelle, taking his plate away and
bringing in a kiwi fruit, sliced, the core removed, and half a sponge
finger.
Matthew ate two slices, then a third to please her, though he
nearly choked on it. 'I'll do the dishes,' he said. 'You sit down. Put
your feet up.'
So Michelle heaved her huge bulk on to one end of the sofa and
put her slender legs and dainty feet, in which every delicate bone
showed, up on the other end. She had the Daily Telegraph to read
and Matthew's Spectator, but she felt more like just resting there
and thinking. Six months ago Matthew wouldn't have had the

57
strength to cany out the plates and glasses, stand at the sink and
wash them. If he'd insisted on washing up he'd have had to sit on a
stool to do it. The small improvement in his health and weight was
due to Fiona. Michelle had come to care for Fiona, who was a real
friend, almost like a daughter. Without envy and nearly without
longing - for hadn't she her darling Matthew? - she could look at
Fiona's slender figure, long, straight, blonde hair and sweet, if not
classically good-looking face with nothing but admiration. Their
houses were semi-detached but hers and Matthew's, though now
considered a very valuable property more for where it was than for
its design or convenience, was greatly inferior to Fiona's with its
rear extension, large conservatory and loft conversion. Michelle
had no envy about that either. She and Matthew had enough space
for their wants and the value of their house had gone up by a
dazzling five hundred per cent since they bought it seventeen years
before. No, it was Fiona's future happiness that concerned her.
Jeff Leigh had first been seen in Holmdale Road in the previous
August or September. Fiona introduced him to them as her
boyfriend, but he didn't move in until October. He was handsome,
Michelle had to acknowledge, healthy-looking, regular-featured, a
little heavy for her taste. Thinking like that made her laugh. It
seemed in the worst of taste to say she could only fancy thin men.
Jeff had a sincere and almost earnest face. You could say that he
looked as if he really cared about you, what you were saying and
who you were; he was a truly concerned human being. This made
Michelle think he didn't care a toss. And when he offered her one
of his Polo mints, as he always did, he smiled to himself as she took
it as if saying, aren't you fat enough? She loathed his jokes. Though
he was out a great deal, he earned nothing, while Fiona, a
successful banker, earned a lot and had inherited a sizeable sum
when her father died last year.
Michelle wished she and Jeff would postpone their marriage for
a while. After all, they were living together, it wasn't as if they were
sexually frustrated - she recalled with tenderness how she and
Matthew hadn't been able to wait more than twenty-four hours so
marriage surely wasn't imperative. Would she have the courage

58
or the impertinence to suggest gently to Fiona that waiting a little
might be a good idea?

It was comforting, Michelle thought before she drifted off into
sleep, how the worst things that happen to one can sometimes lead
to good. For instance, when Matthew had twice fainted in the
classroom, when he had to sit down all the time in the science lab
and could barely walk the distance to the Senior Staff Room, they
had known he would have to resign. What would they live on? He
was only thirty-eight. Apart from a little dabbling in journalism
there was nothing he could do but teach. She had long ago given up
work to look after him, to occupy herself in the never-ending,
nearly hopeless task of attending to his nourishment. Could she go
back? After an absence of nine years? She'd never earned much.
Matthew had done some writing for New Scientist and an
occasional piece for The Times. Now, because it was the most
important thing in his life after her, he settled down to write, in his
despair, what it meant to have his particular kind of anorexia. To
hate food. To be made ill by that which was the staff of life. Eating
disorders were becoming very fashionable at the time. His article
was snapped up. It led to his being asked if he'd contribute to a
prestigious weekly that came to be known as 'An Anorexic's
Diary'. Matthew, the purist, objected at first and said the word
should be "anorectic" but gave in because the money was so good.
Michelle often thought how strange it was that though he could
barely talk about certain foodstuffs he could write of them, describe
his nausea and horror at particular kinds of fat and 'slop', define
with a searching precision the items he could just bear to eat and
why.
'An Anorexic's Diary' saved them selling the house and going on
the benefit. It was immensely popular and inspired a lot of letter
writing. Matthew got a huge postbag from middle-aged women
who couldn't get off diets and starving teenagers and fat men who
were addicted to beer and chips. It didn't make him famous - he
and she wouldn't have liked that - but his name was once
mentioned on a TV quiz show and was the answer to a crossword

59
puzzle clue. All this afforded them a little quiet amusement. She
hadn't liked it when Jeff Leigh clapped Matthew on the back and
said insinuatingly, 'Wouldn't do for you to gain weight in your
position, would it? Mind you keep the rations low, Michelle. I'm
sure you can eat for two.'
That had hurt her because it was what you said to pregnant
women. She thought of the child she'd never had, the daughter or
son who would be sixteen or seventeen by now. Dream children
she often dreamed of or saw before her closed eyes when she lay
down. When Matthew came back into the room she was asleep.

60
Chapter 6

The knife wouldn't do. It was too big to carry about easily. Auntie
had had quite a lot of knives, carvers and saws and choppers, which
was funny because she'd never cooked much. Maybe they'd all been
wedding presents. Minty went through them carefully and selected
one which was eight inches long with a sharp point and a blade that
was nearly two inches wide at the hilt.
She'd never really got rid of Auntie's stuff, apart from a few
clothes she'd taken to the Geranium blind shop. They weren't as
clean as they might have been and carrying them, even in a plastic
sack, made her feel dirty all over. The rest she'd shut up in a
cupboard and never opened again. She opened it now. It smelt
awful. Just her luck when she was off to work, she'd have to have
another bath before she went. The purse on a belt some people
called a bum bag but Auntie wouldn't, it was too crude, hung by its
strap over a hanger on which was a coat that smelt of mothballs.
Minty resolved to have a real clean-up and clear-out that evening,
take the stuff to Brent Council's old clothes bank and wash out the
cupboard. The bum bag she brought delicately to her nose. One
sniff was enough. She washed it in the bathroom basin, laid it to
dry on the edge of the bath, then washed herself all over. When it
was dry it would make a convenient holder for the knife.
As a result of all this she was a bit late for work, very unusual for
her. Josephine, all smiles, said nothing about her lateness but
announced that she and Ken were getting married. He'd asked her

61
over the wonton and prawn toast they'd had last night. Minty
wondered what form the proposal had taken since Ken didn't speak
any English.
'I'm starting my Cantonese conversation class next week,' said
Josephine.
Minty accepted an invitation to the wedding. As she began the
ironing she asked herself if she would ever meet another man who
would want her as Jock had done. If it happened it mustn't be while
Jock continued to haunt her. It wouldn't do to be out with a man in
the pub or at the pictures and have Jock appear between them, or
watching them. Besides, she'd promised him there would never be
anyone else. She was his for ever and ever might be another fifty
years. What did he want? Why had he returned? Because he was
afraid she'd met a new man?
The shirts smelt of that indefinable clean scent she liked so
much, newly washed linen. She savoured each one, bringing it to
within an inch other nose when she'd lifted it from the pile. Minty
ironed the shirts not just as they happened to come, picking up the
top one first, then the next one and so on, but choosing them
according to colour. There were always more white ones than
coloured, about twice as many, so she would do two white, then a
pink, two more white, then a blue stripe. It upset her if the
sequence went wrong and she found she had four or five white ones
left at the end. This morning there were fewer whites than usual
and she could see as she progressed that she was going to have the
luck to make the ironing of a pink and yellow striped shirt her final
task.
It was more than a week since she'd seen Jock and then, just
when she thought he'd satisfied himself, found what he was looking
for or simply got tired of the search, he'd appeared again. She'd
gone to the pictures with Sonovia and Laf, one of the cinemas in
Whiteley's, and seen Sleepy Hollow, a film people found frightening
about a headless horseman, a ghost of course, that kept appearing
in this town in America and chopping people's heads off.
'Never seen anything so ridiculous in all my life,' Sonovia said

62
scornfully, passing her the popcorn. Laf had fallen asleep, snoring
softly.
'It's scary,' Minty whispered, but more out of politeness than
truth. Films weren't real.
But just as the tree split open again and the phantom horseman
and his horse leapt out from its roots, Jock's ghost came into the
cinema and sat down in the end seat of their row on the other side
of the aisle. The way they were sitting, she two seats in from the
end, Sonovia next to her and Laf next to Sonovia, meant she had an
uninterrupted view of him. He'd sat down without looking at her
but now, no doubt because he felt her eyes on him, he turned his
head and fixed on her a dull expressionless gaze. She was wearing
Auntie's silver cross on a ribbon round her neck and she put her
hand up to it, clasping it tightly. This action, supposed to be a sure
specific against visitants from another world, or so Auntie had said,
had no effect on Jock. He stared at the screen. Minty touched
Sonovia on the arm.
'D'you see that man at the end of the row?'
'What man?'
'On the other side, sitting at the end.'
'There's no one there, my deah. You're dreaming.'
It didn't altogether surprise her that he was invisible to others.
Josephine hadn't been able to see him that time in the shop. What
was he made of? Flesh and blood or shadows? She'd promised him
that once she'd been with him she'd never go with anyone else.
Was it possible he wanted to keep her to her vow and he'd come
back to take her away with him? Minty began to tremble.
'Not cold, are you?' Sonovia whispered.
Minty shook her head.
'Must have been a cat walking over your grave.'
'Don't say that!' Minty spoke so loudly that a woman behind
tapped her on the shoulder and told her to be quiet.
She was silent, shivering. Somewhere in this world was the place
where her bones or her ashes would be buried. A cat, going about
its nocturnal business, had trodden on that ground and passed on.
Jock wanted to take her there, to that grave, and have her ghost

63
with him wherever that was. She couldn't watch the film. Reality
was more frightening. Jock had only been there ten minutes but he
got up to leave. As he passed her he whispered, 'Polo,' and touched
her on the shoulder.
She shrank back in her seat. His touch wasn't like a shadow or a
breeze but real, a warm hand with a natural hand's pressure, heavy,
possessive. 'Go away,' she said. 'Leave me alone.'
Sonovia turned and glared at her. Minty looked round, towards
the exit, but Jock had gone.
After the film was over Laf and Sonovia took her for a drink in
the Redan.
'What were you muttering about in the cinema?' Laf asked,
grinning. 'Sitting there with your eyes shut, nattering away to
yourself and making faces.'
'I was not.'
'Yes, you were, my deah. What's the point of going to the
pictures if you keep your eyes shut?'
'I was scared. Everyone was scared.'
They denied it. But she couldn't talk about the film, neither able
to agree with Laf who pretended to have enjoyed it nor with
Sonovia who couldn't stop laughing over the frequency of the
horseman's decapitations. Jock's ghost had distracted her entirely.
It seemed that he had been threatening. She could sdll feel the
pressure of his hand. He shouldn't take her with him, she didn't
want to die, to be taken to some awful scary place inhabited by
ghosts. She'd take steps to defend herself.
When she first saw him she wouldn't have believed a weapon
would be effective against him, but the hard and heavy feel of his
hand had convinced her that, ghost though he was, he was solid and
unyielding. So she needed the knife and needed to carry it with her
at all times. For who knew where he'd next turn up?

She finished the last shirt and slipped it into its cellophane bag,
inserting a cardboard bow tie, spotted blue and white, under the
collar. Josephine had popped down to the car hire place to make
transport arrangements for her wedding and, when the doorbell

64
rang, Minty thought it was Jock. It would be just like him to come
today, the last time she'd ever be out without the knife. She picked
up a pair of scissors from the shelf where they kept the stain
remover and the spray starch. But it was only Ken, who pretended
to be scared of the blades pointing at him and began clowning
about with his hands up.
Josephine came back and the two of them started canoodling,
kissing with their mouths open and all that. Funny, because
Josephine had told her before she met Ken that the Chinese never
kissed, they didn't know how to. Maybe she'd taught him. Minty
quite liked them, but their going on like that made her want to stab
them with the scissors. She felt left out, isolated, shut into a world
of her own, inhabited only by herself and Jock's ghost. Like
someone sleepwalking, she trailed into the back room and sat down
on a stool, staring at the wall and turning the scissors over and over
in her hands.
Jock had always had a pack of Polo mints in his pocket. That was
why he'd called her Polo, she thought. He'd passed them to her
when they were at the cinema and she'd liked them, they were a
clean sort of sweet, they didn't come off on your hands. Pinch,
punch, first of the month, she remembered, no returns. Just walk
on by, wait on the corner ...
She'd brought her lunch in with her, sandwiches of grated cheese
and lettuce, a small plain yogurt. You never knew what went into
the flavoured kind. When she'd eaten it she wrapped the remains in
newspaper, then a plastic carrier and put the lot in Josephine's
rubbish bin in the backyard. Even touching it made a more than
usually thorough wash necessary. She scrubbed her nails with a
brush, left her hands soaking in clean, soapless water for five
minutes afterwards. When they came out and were dried the
fingers were pallid and wrinkled, which Auntie had used to call
washerwoman's hands. Minty rather liked them that way, it meant
they were really clean.
It was one of those afternoons that passed uneventfully. A man
came in with his seven shirts. He always did, once a week.
Josephine asked him once if he hadn't a wife or a girlfriend to bring

65
them in for him, not to mention washing or ironing them.
Josephine hadn't put it that way but she did mention it and the man
hadn't liked it one bit. Minty thought he might not come back but
take his shirts to the place down Western Avenue. As it was, he
took a fortnight before reappearing and Josephine was especially
nice to him, remembering how tactless she'd been.
After that there was no one until a teenager came just as they
were closing and wanted to know if she could pay by instalment for
having her dress cleaned. It was a short red dress with bootlace
shoulder straps and hardly any skirt, and Minty thought it would
have washed. She^d have washed it. Josephine said, 'Certainly not,'
and the poor kid had to take the dress away again.
Minty walked home. She had an uneasy feeling Jock would be on
the bus. He'd never yet appeared in the open air. Old Mr Kroot
was in his front garden, sweeping the path. He pretended not to see
her. Maybe he hadn't been the one who had sent that condolence
card but the home help without him knowing. She could tell he
knew she was there. Something in the way he stiffened told her
that, and the way his wrinkled old hands with tree-root veins
tightened on the broom handle. When she was a child he'd been
quite friendly and then, one day, while his sister was staying with
him, she and Auntie had had a row. It was about the washing line or
the fence between the gardens or maybe Mr Kroot's cat peeing up
against the bushes, something like that but Minty couldn't
remember what. Mr Kroot's sister and Mr Kroot had never spoken
to Auntie again and Auntie had never spoken to them. So they'd
never spoken to Minty again either.
The sister wasn't there at the moment. She lived somewhere
else, a long way from London. Mr Kroot was all alone with his cat,
which didn't have a name. He just called it Cat. He turned and
looked through her as if she were a ghost like Jock. Then he went
into the house with his broom, shutting the door much harder than
he normally would have. The cat came up to the door just as he'd
closed it. It was so old that Minty could hardly remember a time
when it wasn't there, it must be at least twenty by now, and if you
multiplied that by seven, which was what Auntie said you had to do

66
if you wanted to work out a cat's real age, it must be a hundred and
forty.
As Minty unlocked her front door and went into the house, the
cat began a deep-throated senile yowling to be let in. She half
thought Jock might be in the hall, waiting for her, but there was no
one and nothing there.

Would a knife have any effect on a ghost? What were ghosts made
of? Minty devoted quite a lot of thought to this. Before she saw
one, before one touched her, she believed them composed of
shadows and smoke, vapour and some cloud-like intangible
substance. Jock's hand had been firm, exerting a strong pressure,
and the seat of the chair he sat on had been warm to her touch.
Was he the same person he'd been when he was on the earth? A
thing of flesh and blood, not like a black-and-white photograph, a
greyish moving image, but brown-haired, pink-skinned, his eyes
that same dark blue? Blood - would he bleed?
She would try it. If it failed to work she'd have lost nothing.
She'd just have to try some other way. Imagining it as she ran her
second bath of the day, she saw the knife go into the ghost body
and the ghost dissolve, disappear in a wisp of smoke or melt into a
clear pool like water. There would be no sound, no cry or gasp,
only a vanishing, an acknowledgement of being beaten, of her victory.
Thinking of it like this almost made her want to see him. She
had her bath, using the big golden sponge that had once had a life
of its own, attached to some rock in the sea. When she was done
she washed it out in hot water, then cold. One day Jock had asked if
they could have a bath together, the two of them get into the water
at the same dme. She'd said no, she'd been shocked at the
suggestion. It wasn't what grown-up people did, it was for little
kids. Besides, if she'd shared a bathful of water with him she'd only
have had to take another bath on her own afterwards. He never
seemed to think of that.
For a moment, naked, she half wanted to see him. She opened
the bathroom door, stepped outside, crossed to her bedroom. He

67
was nowhere. In the clean clothes she'd wear for the evening, an
evening of a hygienic meal, an hour of television, two hours of
cleaning up, she went downstairs into the dark hall. The ghost
came in darkness or in light, nothing seemed to make a difference
to that. She felt it with her, all around her, though she couldn't see
it. As she was peeling her two potatoes and carving her home-
cooked cold chicken, his voice came singing, like music heard from
a long distance away: Today I started loving you again . . .

68
Chapter 7

Once she had said yes, Zillah thought she and the kids would move
in with Jims and arrangements would be made for the wedding to
take place later, say six months later. Jims had different ideas about
that. The proprieties must be observed. The Chairman of the
South Wessex Conservative Association had said only last week,
apropos of some local pop singer, his girlfriend and their baby, that
couples living together outside marriage should be banned from
owning property and have their passports and driving licences
withdrawn. Jims could think of no surer way of losing his seat at the
next election than by letting Zillah move in with him. Besides, he'd
engaged the services of a PR company and the woman acting for
him was doing her best to get photographs of Zillah and himself
into national newspapers. That slum in Long Fredington would be
an unsuitable background and his duplex in Great College Street
an improper one. He took a three-month lease on a flat in a
purpose-built block in Battersea with a view of the river and the
Houses of Parliament from the front windows. Jims, who knew
about these things, said this struck just the right note. It was more
serious than Knightsbridge and less raffish than Chelsea, it was
dowdy but solid, besides having a suitably political air. As to her
possessions and property in Willow Cottage, he recommended she
set fire to the lot, then revised this advice, remembering the owner
of the house, his old pal Sir Ronald Grasmere.
Much as she'd have liked to tell Jims she was now a widow,

69
Zillah didn't quite dare do this. The first thing he'd have wanted to
know was when did she hear of Jerry's death and why hadn't she
told him before. So she plucked up the courage needed to tell him a
lie he wouldn't much like but would mind less than the truth. 'I
wasn't actually ever really married to Jerry.'
'What d'you mean, darling, "really" married? Did you have one
of those funny affairs on the beach in Ball like Mick Jagger?'
'I mean we weren't married at all.'
He accepted it. The South Wessex Conservative Association
Chairman would very likely never find out. Zillah had a few qualms
when she remembered her wedding to Jerry in St Augustine's
Church, Kilburn Park - but not many and not for long. The PR
woman, Malina Daz, was told Zillah was single but had lived for
several years in a 'stable relationship' with the children's father.
Wisely, she decided to say nothing to the newspapers about Zillah's
marital or non-marital status and not to mention the children,
counting on Jims's relatively low notoriety quotient to make it
unlikely questions would be asked. She was counting also on
Zillah's beauty to solve everything. Zillah looked ravishing when
the photographer arrived and she had dressed herself in her new
Amanda Wakeley cream silk trouser suit with the Georgina von
Etzdorf scarf knotted at her throat. Handsome Jims leant negligently
over the back of her chair, his perfectly manicured hand
lightly caressing her long black hair.
But when Malina changed her mind about Jims's fame and
suggested they might describe Eugenie and Jordan as her niece and
nephew, children of her sister tragically killed in a car crash, Zillah
drew the line. So, rather surprisingly, did Jims. Malina must
remember, he said, that he wasn't all that well known, he wasn't a
celebrity.
'Temporarily,' said Malina briskly.
'If I get a post,' Jims said, dropping his voice, 'it will of course be
rather different.'
All this was making Zillah nervous. 'My children won't go away.'
'No, darling, and we don't want them to.'
'It might be wise', said Malina, 'not to give any interviews to the

70
print media for a year. Could we have your first husband tragically
killed in a car crash?' Reluctantly she was forced to relinquish this
favourite scenario. 'Well, no, maybe not. But by then', she added
coyly, 'another wee one may be on the way.'
Zillah thought the chances of another wee one slender in the
extreme. She had no experience of interviews or journalists but was
already frightened of them. Still, she had long ago cultivated the art
of banishing unpleasant thoughts from her mind. It was the only
form of defence she knew. So every time a picture of Jims as
Shadow Minister of State at the Home Office or UnderSecretary
for Health came into her head and she had a vision of a reporter
appearing on her doorstep, she thrust it away. And whenever a
voice whispered in her mind's ear, 'Tell me something about your
previous marriage, Mrs Melcombe-Smith,' she plugged it up. After
all, she knew Jerry wouldn't reappear. What surer way could there
be of making plain your intention to disappear than by announcing
your death?
Jims bought her an engagement ring, three large emeralds
mounted on a square cushion of diamonds. He'd already given her
a Visa card in the name of Z. H. Leach and now gave her an
American Express platinum card for MrsJ. I. Melcombe-Smith and
told her to buy any clothes she liked. Wearing her new Caroline
Charles green suit with the bead-encrusted bodice, she dined with
Jims in the Churchill Room at the Palace of Westminster and was
introduced to the Leader of the Conservative Party in the
Commons. Seven years ago Zillah would have described herself as
a Communist and she didn't know if she really was a Conservative.
'You are now, darling,' said Jims.
After dinner he took her into Westminster Hall and down into
the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft. Even Zillah, who took very
little notice of such things, had to admit that Sir Charles Barry's
stonework was impressive and the lavish fittings magnificent.
Obediently, she looked at the bosses showing St Catherine
martyred on her wheel and St John the Evangelist boiling in oil,
though she was squeamish about such things and St Lawrence
being grilled made her feel a bit sick. She'd take care not to look up

71
during the marriage ceremony. Against all this rich and brilliant
colour, she decided, an ivory wedding dress would be most
effective. Because she'd fixed on the single-woman option, she was
determined to push aside the memory of her marriage and was
almost reconciled to a church ceremony.
It was a pity the children couldn't be there. She rather fancied
Eugenie as bridesmaid and Jordan as page. They'd have looked so
chic in black velvet with white lace collars. Apart from these
frivolous considerations, she was seriously concerned about her
children. Their existence was one of those not exactly unpleasant,
more disturbing, facts she couldn't banish, though she tried. That
is, she tried not to think about them except as the two people she
was closest to in the world, possibly the only people she loved, for
her affection for Jims hardly came into that category. But the
circumstances were too awkward to allow her to forget the
troublesome aspects. For one thing, they constantly asked when
they were going to see Jerry again. Jordan had a disconcerting habit
of declaiming loudly out in the street or, worse, when Jims brought
an A1P friend to call, 'Oh, I do want to see my daddy!'
Eugenie, though less emotional, always spoke more to the point.
'My father hasn't been to see us for months,' or, quoting the
babysitter Zillah now employed almost daily, 'Mrs Peacock says my
father is an absentee dad.'
The last address Zillah had for him was in Harvist Road, NWio.
Sometimes she got out the piece of paper on which he'd written it
down and just stared at it, thinking. There was no phone number.
At last she phoned Directory Enquiries. Without a name they
couldn't or wouldn't help her. One afternoon, leaving Mrs Peacock
with the children, she went up to Harvist Road on a Bakerloo Line
train to Queen's Park. The place reminded her of her student days
when she and Jerry had shared a room in a house near the station.
They'd been very happy for a while. Then she got pregnant and
they married, but things were never the same.
'Needles and pins, needles and pins,' said Jerry, quoting his old
granny, 'when a man marries his trouble begins.' They were on

72
their two-day honeymoon in Brighton. Then he said, 'I quite like
being married. I may do it a few times more.'
She smacked his face for that but he only laughed. Now she was
looking for him to find out if he was willing to stay dead. His name
wasn't on a bell at the street number he'd given her. When she
banged the lion head knocker an elderly woman came to the door
and said, 'I'm not interested in double glazing,' before she'd even
spoken.
'And I'm not selling it. I'm looking for Jerry Leach. He used to
live here.'
'He called himself Johnny, not Jerry, and he doesn't live here
now. Hasn't since last year. Months and months. The answer to
your next question is no, I don't know where he's gone.'
The door was shut in her face. She walked across the road and
sat down on a seat in Queen's Park, gazing at the green expanse. A
black girl and a white girl, walking past, looked curiously at her
short-skirted linen suit and high heels, put their heads together and
giggled. Zillah ignored them. It was evident that Jerry didn't want
his whereabouts known. She must make up her mind he'd gone for
ever. What would he think when he saw her andjims's photograph
in the paper? Perhaps he didn't read them. But he'd be bound to
find out sooner or later. If this thing Jims called a reshuffle took
place, before the wedding. Because by then Jims might be a
Minister and on account of his youth and good looks and her youth
and good looks, a target for the media. Jerry was a rotten provider
and generally hopeless with money, and unfaithful and callous, but
not wholly bad. He was the last man to try and rubbish her
chances. If he saw she'd made a good marriage and done well for
herself he'd most likely laugh and say, 'Good luck, girl, I won't
stand in your way.' Besides, he'd be relieved she wouldn't any
longer nag him for child support. Not that he'd ever given her any,
there being no blood in a stone.
That silly joke of his kept running through her head. She hadn't
thought of it for years until Eugenie came out with it the other day.
Adam and Eve and Pinch Me went down to the river to bathe.

73
Adam and Eve were drownded. Who was saved? Perhaps he
actually was dead. But no. She reminded herself that whatever she
pretended or told Jims, Jerry was her legally wedded husband.
She'd have been the first to be officially informed. He was her
husband and she was his wife. Uneasily, she remembered that for
some reason, now forgotten, Jerry had required and got the old
form of marriage service from the Book of Common Prayer. There
had been a bit about whom God had joined together let no man
put asunder, and keeping only unto him as long as they both lived.
Moreover, she was going to have to go through all that again at St
Mary Undercroft where she didn't exactly know but could guess
that they'd have the same old service. And the vicar (or whatever.
The canon?) would say those awful words about answering as they
would at the dreadful day of judgement that no just cause or
impediment stood in the way of their getting married. Zillah didn't
really believe in the dreadful day of judgement but the sound of it
struck superstitious terror into her just the same. Jerry, wherever he
was, was six feet and thirteen stone of just cause and impediment.
Why did she always have to marry men who wanted their weddings
to be in church?
After a while she got up and wandered back to the tube station.
The trouble with thrusting unpleasant thoughts from your mind is
that the thrusting can never be absolute and each time they come
back it seems to be with redoubled threat. There were her parents
to worry about too. She hadn't yet told them Jerry was dead. Nor
had she informed them that the official version of their relationship
was that they'd never been married at all. Ostensibly, they'd be
giving the wedding reception. Jims, of course, would be paying.
She wondered how she was going to stop her mother telling the
Leader of the Opposition, not to mention Lord Strathclyde, how
she used to take little Zillah with her when she went making beds
and washing dishes up at the big house and the five-year-old was
sometimes allowed to play with seven-year-old James.
The train came. The carriage she got into was full of yardies
from Harlesden drinking lager out of cans, reminding her of the
world she'd soon be leaving behind for ever. At Kilburn Park she

74
moved carriages and went on to Oxford Circus. The best remedy
she knew for nerves and depression was shopping, a taste she'd
never till now been able to indulge. It was amazing how quickly
she'd taken to it and how much she enjoyed it. Already, after only a
few weeks, she knew the names of all the designers, was beginning
to get a good idea of what their clothes looked like and how one
differed from another. If only academic subjects were so easily
leamt she might have got herself some qualifications by this time.
Married to Jims she wouldn't need them.
Emerging from Browns some hour and a half later, laden with
bags, she felt enormously happy and carefree, wondering why she'd
been down in the dumps earlier. She took a taxi back to Battersea.
The children were having tea, the table presided over by the
babysitter.
'Mrs Peacock says you're going to marry Jims,' said Eugenie,
'but I said you can't because you're married to Daddy.'
'My mistake, Mrs Leach, I thought they knew.'
'Mummy marry Daddy,' said Jordan. 'Marry him tomorrow.' He
picked up his plate and banged it on the table, overturning a mug
of orange juice in the process, which set him off screaming, 'Jordan
wants Daddy! Wants him now!'
Zillah fetched a cloth and began mopping up the mess while Mrs
Peacock sat tight, her eyes travelling from Zillah to the Browns and
Liberty bags and back again. 'Is there any tea left in the pot, Mrs
Peacock?'
'It'll be cold by now.'

75
Chapter 8

This would be the first wedding Minty had ever been to. She was
never beset by the ordinary woman's anxieties, so she worried not
at all about what to wear and whether she ought to buy a hat. If
Jock hadn't stolen her savings she'd have bought Josephine and
Ken a present but now she had only her wages with nothing left
over for luxuries, which included gifts. Would he have paid her
back if he'd lived? Was he returning, his ghost appearing the way it
did, not to take her away with him but because he wanted to pay his
debt?
She hadn't seen him again since that night in the cinema, but
she'd brooded about the things Sonovia and Laf had said. The cat
walking on her grave. She couldn't help thinking about it, her
burial ground maybe up in that huge, awful cemetery in the far
north of London where Auntie'd once taken her to her sister
Edna's funeral. It wouldn't be like Auntie's resting place, nice and
cosy under the big dark trees and near to her home, only just the
other side of the high wall, but one of a bleak row of white
tombstones, each indistinguishable from the rest, her name that
had been engraved upon it obliterated by the wind and rain. But
would it be engraved on it? Who would do that for her? There was
no one now Auntie was gone and Jock was gone.
She dreamed of the grave. She was lying in it under the earth but
not in a box. They couldn't afford the cost of a coffin. She lay
under the cold wet earth, the worst place she'd ever been in, and

76
she was coated all over with dirt, on her skin, in her hair, in her
fingernails. Mr Kroot's old cat came and scratched the earth,
scraping with its paws the way they do. She saw it above her,
looking down through the hole it had dug, its grey muzzle all bared
teeth, and angry flashing eyes and shaking whiskers. Then it
scraped back all the earth into her mouth and nose, and she awoke
fighting for breath. After that dream she had to get up and have a
bath, though it was the middle of the night.
What Laf had said about her muttering and her eyes being shut
and Josephine saying talking to yourself was the first sign of
insanity, she hadn't liked that either. She hadn't been muttering,
she never did, and she'd had her eyes shut because she was scared.
They'd been laughing at her all the time they were in that pub.
Next time she wanted to see a film, she'd decided, she'd go on her
own. Why not? She used to go on her own and she could again.
She'd buy herself a packet of Polo mints. Or a banana because he
didn't like them - but no, not that, she'd have to dispose of the
outside of it somewhere.
In the bus on the way back, a man came and sat next to her. She
wouldn't look round because she was sure it was Jock's ghost and
she could hear a voice whispering, 'Polo, Polo.' But when she
edged her head very cautiously and slowly towards the right, an
inch at a time, she saw it was someone quite different, an old man
with white hair. Jock must have sneaked off when she wasn't
looking and made this old man sit there.
People didn't often go to the three-thirty showing. The
multiplex cinema was always nearly empty then. Immacue closed at
one on a Saturday, so in the afternoon Minty went to see The
Talented Mr Ripley. She bought one ticket and was told which
theatre to go in. There were only two other people there and she
had the whole row to herself. Jock didn't appear. She hadn't seen
him for a week, for you couldn't count that meeting on the bus. It
was nice being alone, you didn't have to keep saying thank you
when someone passed you the popcorn or a chocolate, or have the
person behind you telling you to shut up.

77
The evenings were getting light now. She could buy flowers for
Auntie from the man at the cemetery gate and walk down to the
grave in sunshine. There was no one about. It had rained so much
lately that the vase was brimming over, though the flowers in it
were dead. Minty threw them away under a holly bush and put her
daffodils into the water. Then she took two tissues from her bag,
laid them on the slab and knelt down on them, holding the silver
cross between her forefinger and middle finger. Her eyes tight
shut, she prayed to Auntie to make Jock go away for ever.

Sonovia was at her front gate saying goodbye to Daniel who'd
come in for a cup of tea. Minty hadn't seen him for months, not
since she got the letter saying Jock had been killed.
'How are you today, Minty?' he said in his busy doctor's voice,
all breezy and bedside manner. 'Feeling a bit better?'
'I'm all right,' she said.
'Been somewhere exciting?' Sonovia asked it in the sort of tone
that implies a person only does dull things, a tone with laughter
somewhere underneath it. Minty didn't answer. She was aware of
the bum bag with the knife in it sliding round under her clothes.
'You want a lend of my blue dress and jacket for Josephine's
wedding?'
How could she say no? She couldn't think of a way, but stood
there nodding, feeling awkward. Daniel went off to his car that he
could park anywhere because it had a doctor sticker in its window.
Minty wanted to go home, have a good wash, check Jock wasn't in
the house and shut all the doors. Instead she had to go into
Sonovia's, have a look in her clothes cupboard and choose the blue
dress and jacket, whether that was what she wanted or not, because
it was the only thing to fit her.
'I haven't been able to get into it since I put on weight,' Sonovia
said.
Minty tried it on. There wasn't a choice. She hated Sonovia
seeing her bare skin, so pallid and soap-smelling, and staring at the
bum bag, hanging round her thin waist. The dress was a bit big but
it would do. She shuddered so much as she pulled it over her head 78
how did she know how many times it had been worn and whether it
had ever been cleaned? - that Sonovia asked that regular question
of hers: was she cold?
'You look ever so nice. You really suit it. You ought to wear blue
more often.'
Minty studied herself in the mirror, trying to forget about the
dress being dirty. It was a fall-length mirror that Sonovia called a
pier glass. Behind her, opening the door and walking into the
room, she saw Jock's ghost reflected. He laid his hand on the back
of her neck and bending his head, pressed his face against her hair.
She lashed out at the thing behind her. 'Go away!'
'What, me?' asked Sonovia.
Minty didn't answer. She shook her head.
Sonovia said, 'Where were you this afternoon, Minty?'
'I went to see a film.'
'What, all on your lonesome?'
'Why not? I like being alone sometimes.' Minty pulled off the
dress. Jock had disappeared. She handed it to Sonovia like a woman
buying a garment in a shop.
Sonovia said in a voice Minty didn't care for, dry and tolerant,
like someone talking to a naughty child, 'I'll put it in a bag for you.'
Downstairs again, Minty refused the proffered cup of tea and the
alternative, a gin and tonic. 'I've got to get home.'
Mr Kroot was in his front garden and his sister was with him.
She had a suitcase, it looked as if she'd just arrived. She wasn't
called Kroot but something else, she'd married someone about a
hundred years ago. Minty didn't look at them. She let herself into
her house. The dress and jacket smelt of something. Stale scent
mainly. There was a spot of grease on the jacket hem, a splash of fat
maybe. She shuddered, glad Sonovia wasn't there to ask if she was
cold. All the pleasure she'd taken in the film had gone, driven away
by what had happened since. She felt vulnerable, endangered.
Going upstairs, she touched wood all the way, the banister bars
which were cream-coloured, the rail which was brown, the skirting
board at the top which was pale pink. Auntie had liked variety in
house decoration and Minty was thankful for it. What would have

79
become of her if all the woodwork had been white like in Sonovia's
place?
She ran a bath and got into the water holding the knife, she
didn't know why. Except that lying in the water with the knife in
her hands, she felt safer than she did anywhere else. Jock's ghost
had never come into the bathroom and it didn't come in now. She
washed her hair and lay in the water until it began to grow cool.
She wrapped a towel round her body and another round her head
while she dried the knife. Now there were three towels instead of
two for the wash but she accepted that, all in the good cause of
being spotless. Clean cotton trousers went on and a clean T-shirt.
Before handling the contents of Sonovia's bag, she put on a pair of
Auntie's black cotton gloves but she still held dress and jacket at
arm's length. She'd take them to Immacue on Monday and dry-
clean them herself, put them through the luxury valet service.
Leaving the dress in the spare room, well away from anywhere she
might be, she took off the gloves and washed her hands.

It was the purest chance that Sonovia went into Immacue. Usually
she took any clothes she and Laf needed cleaning to the place in
Western Avenue but he hadn't been very pleased with the job
they'd done on his dinner jacket, and for her part she'd not been
amused by the crack the manager had made about the policeman's
ball.
Now he wanted his grey flannels and houndstooth check sports
jacket cleaned. 'Take them round to Minty's place, why don't you?
Give it a go.'
At Immacue, clothes ready for collection were hung on a coat
rack. The rack stood on the left-hand side of the shop and extended
from behind the counter to the rear wall. When Sonovia entered
there was no one about, so she waited a while, letting her gaze
rove from the various aids to cleanliness on sale on the counter to
the stacked shirts on the shelves on the right to the coat rack on the
left. She was about to give a discreet cough when she spotted the
garment hanging at the very front of the rack. It was on a hanger

80
with a styrofoam collar and sheathed in transparent plastic but still
she had no difficulty in recognising her own blue dress and jacket. Angrily, Sonovia slammed her hand on the bell on the counter.
Josephine came out. 'Sorry to keep you,' she said. 'How may I
help you?'
'By fetching Miss Knox, that's how. I've got a bone to pick with
her.'
Josephine shrugged. She went to the door at the back and called,
'Minty!'
Sonovia was growing crosser by the second. When Minty came
out she was standing there fuming, with her arms folded. 'I'd just
like to know who you think you are, Miss Araminta Knox, to be so
fastidious. Borrowing a person's clothes and then deciding they're
not clean enough for you. I suppose you had one of your famous
baths after you'd tried them on. I'm surprised you'd keep them in
the house, or did you put them out in the garden over Sunday?'
Minty didn't say anything. She hadn't thought of that, putting
Sonovia's dress out in the garden. It would have been a good idea.
She advanced towards the coat rack and peered at the clothes
through their plastic sheath.
'I call it a disgrace, considering how long we've known each
other. The times you've enjoyed our hospitality! That you'd think
I'd keep dirty clothes in my wardrobe, that's what I can't get over.
Laf says I spend more on dry-cleaning than I do on food.'
'You don't spend it in here,' said Josephine.
Til thank you to keep out of this, Miss O'Sullivan. As for you,
Minty, Laf and me were going to treat you to American Beauty
tomorrow night and drinks after, no doubt, but we've changed our
mind; we'll be going on our own. Him and me might not be clean
enough for you to sit next to.'
Sonovia, flouncing out, forgot to take her dress and jacket with
her. Josephine looked at Minty and Minty looked at her, and
Josephine burst out laughing. Minty couldn't quite do that. But she
was glad she could keep the dress. Sonovia might never want it
back now and that meant she'd always have something to put on in

81
case anyone else ever asked her to a wedding. She went back to her
ironing.

Someone had once given Auntie a boxed set of stereo LPs of
something called Porgy and Bess. Minty couldn't remember why, a
birthday maybe, but Auntie hadn't anything to play them on even if
she'd wanted to, so the records were as good as new. If Minty had
been on speaking terms with Sonovia and Laf she could have asked
their advice, they had a thing that played CDs, but she wasn't, so
that was out. In the end, she bought wrapping paper with wedding
cakes and silver bells printed on it at the paper shop next to
Immacue, wrapped up the LPs and took them with her to
Josephine's wedding.
The dry-cleaners didn't open that Saturday morning. They put a
notice in the window that said: Closed for Wedding of Proprietor. The
marriage ceremony in the Oecumenical Church of Universal God
the Mother, Harlesden High Street, was followed by a reception at
the restaurant where Ken cooked, the Lotus Dragon. It was all very
enjoyable with dancing and tambourine-playing in the church and
a four-woman rock band, while a smiling green dragon, operated
on the principle of a pantomime horse, cavorted in when lunch was
in progress and made a speech in Cantonese. Minty had quite a
good time, at least at the start. She'd hoped to secrete the bum bag
with the knife in it under Sonovia's blue dress, but the outline of it
showed through and it looked funny. For some reason she expected
Jock's ghost to turn up. Once she'd seen the empty chair next to
hers she was sure of it.
'Why's there no one sitting there?' she asked Josephine's best
friend from Willesden.
The best friend said Josephine's mother was supposed to be
coming over from Connemara but she'd had a fall yesterday and
broken her ankle.
'They oughtn't to leave that chair there,' said Minty but nobody
took any notice.
Josephine said the empty chair reminded her of absent friends.
She looked quite nice if a bit flashy in a scarlet chiffon salwar

82
kameez and a big black ostrich feather hat. Ken wore a grey
morning coat and topper. There were red lilies all the way down
the table and green dragons on the napkins.
They ate prawn toast and spring rolls, followed by Peking Duck.
Even Minty ate it, she had to. During a long argument as to why
not 'Beijing Duck' between the best friend from Willesden and
Ken's brother, who could speak quite good English, Jock's ghost
came in and sat in the chair next to Minty. He was dressed as she'd
sometimes wanted him to be but had never seen him, in a dark suit,
white shirt and blue tie with white spots.
'Sorry I'm late, Polo,' he said.
'Go away.'
He never answered her. He just started laughing, as if he were a
real living person. She wouldn't look at him but she heard him
whispering, 'I went into the garden and met a great she-bear ...'
Someone a long way down the table was taking photographs.
While the flash blinded them, she picked up from the table the
knife you were supposed to use if you couldn't handle chopsticks.
Holding it down by her side and between them, she thrust it
upwards into his thigh through the suit trousers. She expected
blood, ghost blood that might be red like living people's or might
not, but there was none. Instead of vanishing speedily, he seemed
to blur like a reflection shuddering when the water surface is
disturbed, then to melt and trickle away. The chair beside her was
empty once more.
So it worked. Even a blunt knife got rid of him. But would it be
for ever? She laid the knife back on the table. It was quite
unmarked as if it had passed through no more than air. People were
looking oddly at her. She managed a bright smile for the cameras.
Dozens of them seemed to have appeared, flashing and snapping.
Would the ghost show on the photographs? If it did, filling the
empty chair, they were sure to put it in the Sunday papers.
Ken's brother made a speech, and so did Josephine's sister. More
and more drink came out. Minty thought it was time to leave,
though no one else did. She'd seen a sign saying Ladies, so she
followed the arrow, passed through a room where all the wedding

83
presents were laid out on a table, though she couldn't see hers, and
escaped by the back door into a dirty yard. It took her quite a long time to find her way back into the Harrow Road and by the time
she did she was shivering, frightened of running into Jock's ghost.
Just as Laf and Sonovia had for years put their Mail through her
letter box when they'd done with it, so Laf regularly popped round
with the Evening Standard, the Mail on Sunday and the Sunday
Mirror. Only he hadn't for the past two Sundays and Minty didn't
expect he would this week.
Next door the Wilsons were arguing hotly over just this
question. Both still in dressing gowns, lingering over a protracted
breakfast of bagels, Danish pastries and coffee, they failed to see
eye to eye as to continuing their quarrel with Minty, or 'sending
her to Coventry', as Sonovia called it.
'I don't want you taking those papers in there this morning, my
deah, and that's that. I want them for Corinne. She's stopped
taking a Sunday paper and I'm sure your own daughter's got more
right than the woman next door.'
'And for another,' said Laf, 'you want to keep up this row you're
having, though God knows why you do, with a poor girl who's daft
as a brush and doesn't know whether she's coming or going.'
'I like "girl", I really do. Minty Knox is a mere nine years
younger than I am, as you surely should know. As for "daft", she
knows how to borrow a person's clothes and accuse her of keeping
a dirty home. And I'll tell you something else, she's enough sense
to wear a money belt under her clothes. I saw it when she tried my
dress on, a bag on a belt round her waist.'
'Well, good luck to her. It's a pity more women don't in a
neighbourhood like this. There wouldn't be so many handbags snatched and muggings and all. As soon as I've got my things on
I'm going to take that page you want for Corinne out of the paper
and pop the rest round to Minty. Bury the hatchet, that's what I
say.'
'If you do that, Sergeant Lafcadio Wilson, you can find someone
else to cook your roast pork for Sunday lunch. I shall take myself

84
round to Daniel and Lauren and my dear little granddaughter. So
you've been warned.'
The more she thought about it the more Minty wanted to see
the Mail and the Mirror. No one would take all those photographs
if they didn't mean to get them in the papers and one of them
might have Jock in it, must have, even if in shadowy or transparent
form. It would be proof to show people, she thought vaguely,
people like those Wilsons and maybe Josephine. When she'd stuck
the knife into Jock she'd seen Josephine looking at her under that
big black hat as if she were mad, an awful stare with her lip curled
up.
When it got to half past midday and Laf still hadn't come, Minty
washed her hands, put her coat on and went round to the paper
shop, the one opposite the cemetery gates. There she bought three
Sunday papers. Going home, she passed Lafs and Sonovia's gate
and smelt the rich, savoury aroma of roasting pork, inviting for
others but enough to make Minty shudder. She dragged her
thoughts away from the bubbling fat, the spitting crackling and the
browning potatoes - you could never get a roasting pan really clean
- went indoors and washed her hands. Maybe she'd have another
bath in a minute.
That the papers contained no pictures of Josephine's wedding,
not only none of Jock taking his seat in the empty chair but none at
all, was a bitter disappointment. Minty had to content herself with
front-page photographs (and more inside) of someone called James
Melcombe-Smith MP to a Ms Zillah Leach. The bit of print
underneath said,

James Melcombe-Smith (^o), Conservative Member for South Wes-
sex, marries his childhood sweetheart Zillah Leach (z'j) at the chapel of
St Mary Undercroft in the Palace of Westminster. A likely candidate
for promotion when the Party Leader reshuifles the Shadow Cabinet,
Mr Melcombe-Smith and his bride will defer their honeymoon in the
Maldives until the House of Commons gets up for Easter on 20 April.
Minty wasn't very interested in any of that but she admired the
85
bride's looks, considering her far prettier and better-dressed in her
ivory slipper satin with cream and crimson orchids than Josephine
in that ugly bright red. Josephine's glare and curling lip still
rankled, and Minty felt resentful. She turned to the inside page but
it only showed this Melcombe-Smith person walking about in the
country with a gun and the bride grinning like mad in a dirty old
sweater with her hair all over the place, under a completely
incomprehensible heading: outing? who has the last laugh
now?
The trouble with some newspapers was that the ink came off all
over your hands. Minty went upstairs and had a bath. Jock's ghost
would be back. If not today, tomorrow and if not tomorrow, next
week. Because she hadn't killed it. That dinner knife was a hopeless
weapon. It simply made a ghost slip away for a while, escape, like
any live person would when a weapon was waved at it. Next time
she must be ready with one of the long, sharp knives, if she wanted
to be rid of him for ever.

86
Chapter 9

A production company had asked Matthew to go on a programme
they were making for BBCz Television. It was to be called Living
on Air or something like that and he was to be - well - the star,
really. That is, he was to talk to people with problems similar to his
own, interview them and point up the differences between
disparate attitudes to food. They'd make a pilot and if that was a
success it might lead to a series. Michelle was delighted. Matthew
was so much better-looking since he'd been on Fiona's regime and
he had such a beautiful speaking voice.
'It always reminds me of that newscaster,' said Fiona. 'What's he
called? Peter Sissons.'
'They must have picked him because he sounds so nice,' said
Michelle.
Fiona doubted that. They'd obviously picked him because of his
column and because he looked like one of those men you saw
pictures of who'd been in Japanese prisoner of war camps. But she
didn't say so. The two women were in Fiona's conservatory,
drinking chilled Chardonnay, while Matthew was at his computer,
writing this week's 'An Anorexic's Diary'. It was the prettier sort of
conservatory, a white, curlicued crystal palace, with white cane
furniture, blue cushions, a cane and glass table and a great many
little bonsai trees and tall ferns and spider plants in blue ceramic
pots. Beyond the glass could be seen Fiona's small walled garden in
which spring flowers bloomed and a fountain played.

87
'Jeff will be home in a minute,' said Fiona, for all the world as if
her boyfriend had a job and commuted like the neighbours. Then
she went on, embarrassing Michelle, 'You don't like him, do you?'
'I don't really know him, Fiona.' Michelle was finding this very
awkward, but asked so directly she had to speak out. 'I admit I have
wondered - and Matthew's wondered - if you're not being ... well,
a bit precipitate, marrying someone you've only known for a few
months.'
Fiona didn't seem put out. 'I know that this is the man I'm
certain I want to spend the rest of my life with. Please try to like
him.'
He lives off you, he's rude, he's insincere and cruel, thought Michelle.
He's a liar. These feelings must have shown in her face, though she
expressed none of them aloud, for Fiona had begun to look
distressed. 'When you know him better you'll think differently, I
know you will.'
'All right, my dear, I admit I don't much care for him. No doubt
it's as much my fault as his. Since he's going to be your husband,
I'll try to get on better with him.'
'You're always so reasonable and fair. Have some more wine?'
Michelle let Fiona pour another inch of Chardonnay into her
glass. It was supposed to be fattening but she'd noticed that most of
the people whose preferred tipple it was remained disconcertingly
thin. She'd been strong and not eaten a single one of the salted
almonds in the dish on the table. Resigned, she asked, 'Have you
fixed a date for the wedding yet?'
'Believe it or not, we can't find anywhere to have our reception.
Apparently, everyone wants to get married in millennium year. It
was going to be June but we've had to move on into August. That's
where Jeff is now, trying to find a venue.'
Surely he could have done that on the phone, thought Michelle.
Still, she was delighted the wedding was to be postponed. As for
trying to like him, it was more probable that every week which
went by was likely to begin the eye opening she and Matthew
hoped would enlighten Fiona as to Jeff's true nature. 'Church or
register office?'

88
'Well, it doesn't have to be either now, does it? Jeffs been
married before so it can't be church but the idea might be to have it
in some hotel with the reception there afterwards.' She paused to
listen to the front door opening and closing. 'Here's Jeff now.'
He came through the dining room and down the step. Smiling,
as usual. An honest face like one of those American politicians,
thought Michelle, perfect teeth, earnest frown lines and deep-blue
eyes that looked straight into yours. He bent over Fiona and kissed
her like some film actor coming home to his wife. Michelle, who
didn't want it, got a kiss too, a light peck on the cheek.
'How's the Thin Man?'
'Very well, thank you,' said Michelle, angry but speaking in an
equable tone because she wouldn't for the world offend Fiona.
'I hear he's going to be on TV.' Because there was no glass
provided for him, Jeff took Fiona's almost empty one, filled it and
knocked back half. 'You want to get on it too, Michelle, and see if
you can be the new Little and Large. Oh, don't look like that,
Fiona sweetheart, it's only my way. I ought to know better. Listen,
I've found a wonderful place in Surrey where they'll marry us and
serve a splendid dinner afterwards. Twenty-sixth August - how
about that?'
'It sounds perfect,' said Michelle, thinking it was a long way off.
'I must go, Fiona. Thank you so much for the lovely drinks.'
'I'll see you off the premises.' For some reason Jeff winked
stagily at Fiona. He escorted Michelle to the door and sent, as was
his peculiar habit, his 'kindest regards' to Matthew. The front door
shut rather sharply before she was halfway down the path.
'That', said Fiona, who wasn't usually critical, 'was rather rude.
You can be very hurtful, you know.'
Concern could entirely change his face. It became at once
pained. Saddened, sympathetic. 'I know. I'm sorry, my sweet. I
suppose I can't help thinking that people who allow themselves to
get so fat must be stupid.'
'Michelle's not stupid.'
'No? Oh, well, you know best. Shall we have another bottle of
y
wmer

89
'It won't be cold.'
'Easily remedied by popping it in the freezer for five minutes.'
He remedied it. While waiting for the wine to cool, he decided
to take her out to dinner, spend part of the rather large sum of
money he'd won on a horse that afternoon. He got out two clean
glasses, put them on a tray with the wine and went back. 'How
about I call the Rosmarino and take you out to dinner, my darling?
I mean I take you out.' Pouring the wine, he was inspired. 'I've
been investing in the Net and I'm doing rather well.'
She knew all about that, as of course she would. 'I didn't know
you had shares in anything. How clever of you. But be careful,
won't you, Jeff? We don't know much about these companies yet -
pipedream@bankwell.co.uk and cashflow@marvel.com and whatever.
Their profits may all be on paper.'
He changed the subject fast, veering on to the matter he'd been
thinking of mentioning since Sunday when seeing it in the paper
had given him such a shock. If he could have avoided it altogether
he would have, but he dared not. Still, he must go carefully. 'You
remember that wedding in the paper on Sunday? Front page of the
Mail?'
She never read the news, just the city pages. 'Sorry, I was only
interested in that merger. Why?'
'I feel a bit odd about telling you, though I don't know why I
should. It's not as if I've done anything wrong.' He looked at her,
into her eyes. 'Hold my hand, Fiona. I wouldn't hurt you for the
world.' His voice was solemn. 'Fiona, listen to me. My ex-wife got
married. It was in the paper. She married an MP.'
She took both his hands, pulled him towards her. 'Oh, Jeff. Oh,
darling. Why didn't you tell me at once?'
'I don't know. I should have. Somehow I couldn't.'
'It's made you unhappy, hasn't it? I do understand. I know you
love me, I know that, but you can still be desperately hurt by
something like this. It's absolutely natural. Kiss me.'
They kissed, gently at first, then more passionately. Jeff was the
first to break away. 'I'll phone the restaurant.'
Fiona smiled to herself a little ruefully. It was, as she'd said,

90
entirely natural that he should be a little unhappy. She thought of
various men in her past, two of whom had subsequently married
other women. Unreasonably, she'd been upset, though she hadn't
wanted them, wouldn't have dreamt of remaining with them.
When he came back she gave him a lovely warm smile, almost
maternal. 'D'you want to tell me about it?' She took his hand again.
'You don't have to. Only if you want to.'
'I rather think I do. Her name's Zillah. Z-I-double L-A-H. She's
a gypsy or likes people to think she is, a Romany. We met at
university. Of course, we were both very young. It was the old
story, we grew out of each other. There wasn't anyone else or
anything like that. Well, there was always this chap she's married,
they knew each other as kids, but I used to think he was gay.'
'What about the children, Jeff?'
'I suppose they're with her.' He was wondering how much to tell
her. 'That worries me too. Of course, she's done her best to keep
my children from me.'
'I'd like children,' said Fiona in a small voice.
'Of course you would. Aren't I relying on that? Darling, by this
time next year we may well have our first baby. I'll be the perfect
house husband, stay at home and look after it.'
'What's her name?'
'Whose? Zillah's?' He thought fast. 'Her maiden name was
Leach. The bloke she's married, the ex-queer, is called Melcombe-
Smith. He's the MP for where she comes from down in Dorset.'
Fiona nodded. She didn't say any more but went upstairs to
change. Jeff decided to finish the bottle. They could have a cab to
and from the restaurant. He'd been very shaken by the wedding
picture and accompanying story, so disturbed that now he'd told
her he couldn't stay in the house with Fiona but had to go out and
take himself for a walk up to Fortune Green and back. It was pretty
obvious that the letter he'd written on Matthew Jarvey's computer
and sent to Zillah had been taken seriously. He'd expected Minty
to take hers seriously, she was thick enough, that was the point of
it, but not Zillah. The whole idea had been to give her a signal that
he intended to disappear, she wouldn't be troubled by him again.

9i
He hadn't intended to give her carte blanche to remarry, just as if
they'd been properly divorced or he'd really died. In a few years'
time, maybe, when she hadn't seen him for ages, but not after six
months. Still, in a way, he decided, after he turned in at Fiona's
gate once more, he had to hand it to her. She'd got a nerve
marrying an upper-class rich git like that Melcombe-Smith and
telling the paper she was childless Miss Leach. Or he supposed she
had. They'd had to get it ftom somewhere and where else but her?
Drinking the last of the wine, he reflected briefly on his children
and, as he did so, felt something quite alien to him, a pang of real
sorrow. He'd never seen much of them, particularly Jordan, but
when he'd been with them he'd loved them. It was just that he
couldn't stand that domestic scene, Mr and Mrs, mummy and
daddy sharing the household tasks, the weekly shop, the preparation
of food, the kids always there, always hurting themselves and
crying, making a mess. Being poor, never knowing where the next
penny was coming ftom. Zillah was a good enough sort of mother,
or he'd always thought she was, never going out in the evening and
leaving them on their own, though he'd tried to persuade her. As if
they weren't safe as houses in a country village surrounded by
kindly neighbours. He'd felt quite secure about going off and
leaving them all for weeks on end because he could trust Zillah to
look after his children. But now?
He'd kept the pages of the paper with her pictures but he'd read
the story so many times he knew it by heart. She hadn't told the
reporter a word about being a gypsy - he'd never believed that
anyway - or about a previous marriage or Wading not Leach being
her maiden name. Most troubling of all, she very obviously hadn't
mentioned the children's existence. He knew enough about
reporters - he'd once been involved with quite a well-known
freelance journalist - to be aware that it's useless for an interviewee
to implore the interviewer to keep a secret once disclosed, 'not to
say anything about that'. What you've said is what you get. Leaving
out bits of what you'd said was another matter, taking things out of
context to change the sense. This was different. In a story of this
kind there was no chance that if Zillah had told the Mail she had

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two small children, whether born inside or outside marriage, its
reporter would have meekly agreed to keep quiet. So she hadn't
told them. What had she done with his children?
Fiona came downstairs looking lovely in a white suit with a very
short, tight skirt and high-heeled black patent shoes. He felt the
stirrings of lust. An evening spent in bed would have done a lot to
dispel his anxieties about Eugenie and Jordan, but it wasn't to be.
His fault; he'd suggested dinner.
A taxi appeared, coming down Fortune Green Road. Just as well,
since Fiona couldn't have walked another yard in those heels. He
was going to have to meet Zillah and talk to her, see his kids, he'd a
right to see his kids, they were his. Their paternity was something
he'd never disputed. They both looked exactly like him, as reliable
a guide, he'd always thought, as any DNA test.

'Try not to let it prey on your mind, Jeff.'
For a moment he was afraid she'd read his thoughts. Then he
realised that, of course, she imagined he was brooding on his 'ex-
wife' remarrying.
'You've got me now and we've a new life ahead of us.'
It might not be a bad idea to let Fiona go on thinking he was
unhappy about his final parting from Zillah. In the future, if he
seemed preoccupied or absent-minded or just silent, she'd attribute
it to this. 'I know,' he said. 'Don't think I'm not absolutely content
with that. I'm thinking of my son and my little girl. And it's just
that... well, she was my first love.' He took her hand. 'And you're
my last. First in my heart and last in my life.' The taxi turned into
Blenheim Terrace and he felt in his pockets. 'Have you got any
change, darling? I've only a twenty-pound note.'
Fiona paid the taxi driver. When they were at their table she
asked him a bit more about Zillah. 'If you wanted a meeting with
her, talk it through, that sort of thing, I wouldn't mind.'
In a way this was his opportunity. It would be wiser not to take
it. She might want to come with him or meet Zillah herself. He
nearly shuddered. Fiona, with her house, her money, her inheritance,
her job, was (as he put it to himself) the best woman who had

93
ever happened to him. 'No, my darling. I want to put it all behind
me.'
He studied the wine list. In spite of what he'd told Fiona he
wouldn't use the money he'd made on the horse called Website but
instead would pay with the American Express card he'd found in
another restaurant, fallen on the floor under a table in Langan's,
where he'd been as the guest of a woman he'd picked up on the
Duke of York steps. The card had belonged to onej. H. Leigh and
it was this find of his which led to his assuming the name of Leigh
when he first met Fiona. He was sdll Lewis with funny little Minty
Knox at the time and for a new identity he'd been toying with the
idea of Long or Lane, but Leigh it was to be. He'd used the card
sparingly at first and for small items, always expecting to be told it
had been cancelled. Nothing happened. He paid for meals with it,
even bought clothes for Fiona with it, though he never dared
indulge in jewellery.
Inevitably, he'd speculated as to why. Who was this Leigh who
was so rich and profligate that he not only didn't bother to report
the loss of his American Express card but continued to pay the bills
for it that must arrive at his home each month? Then it came to
him. This wasn't a man at all but a woman kept by a man, a wife or
girlfriend, whose Amex accounts were paid for by husband or lover
with no questions asked. Had she been afraid to tell him she'd lost
the card? Perhaps been in some situation or place she shouldn't
have been in when the theft or loss happened? Or had she so many
cards that she didn't notice the disappearance of one of them?
He thought along these lines because underhand behaviour,
deceit, pulling fast ones and getting something for nothing were
practices dear to his heart. One day the card would be stopped but
that might be a long way off and meanwhile he was cashing in.
'I said, are you going to have the grilled vegetables or the
smoked salmon? Darling, you've not been listening.'
'Sorry,' he said. 'I was thinking - well, you know what I was
thinking.'
Luckily, she didn't. How was he going to get hold of Zillah?
Phone her? It wouldn't be hard to find her number. Call round?

94
Once, years ago, while Zillah was pregnant with Eugenic and they
were living in that dump near Queen's Park station, they'd been
asked round to drinks by this Melcombe-Smith at his place in
Pimlico and they'd gone. Ghastly, it had been and nearly turned
him into a socialist. Jims, as he was called, might still be living
there, it was only six or seven years. Aghast, he realised he didn't
exactly know the age of his daughter. But he loved her, he knew
that, she was his and he had to see her. 'Listen to this,' he said.
'Adam and Eve and Pinch Me went down to the river to bathe.
Adam and Eve were drownded. Who was saved?'
'Come off it, Jeff.' Fiona's patience had snapped. 'Save it for this
baby we're supposed to be having next year. I'm grownup.'

95
Chapter 10

The attention she was getting was in many ways attractive and
flattering. Zillah hadn't expected all that publicity in the Mail on
Sunday, and when she first saw the pictures and read the respectful
story about herself and Jims, she'd been entranced. Other people
had seen it too and rung up to congratulate her. Only one had
asked why Eugenie and Jordan weren't mentioned and this woman
had supplied her own answer: 'I suppose you want to protect them
from media attention.'
That was exactly right, Zillah said. She'd had a few days in which
to relax and enjoy living in Abbey Gardens Mansions, appreciate
the comforts of her new home, so vastly superior even to the
Battersea flat, and to decide it was time to fetch the children.
They'd been staying with her parents in Bournemouth since two
days before the wedding but she was beginning to miss them and
she wanted them back. The publicity was past. She was realising
the truth of what she'd guessed all along, that Jims wasn't famous,
was a mere back-bench MP and an Opposition MP at that, and that
all that had attracted the press were her and Jims's good looks. And
maybe the fact that everyone had thought he was gay and about to
be 'outed'.
The children could come back, go out for walks with her, be
driven about by her in her nice new silver Mercedes, go to school
in Westminster, and no one would take a blind bit of notice. So
Zillah thought -- until the first journalist phoned.
'I'm not disturbing your honeymoon, I hope?'
'We're not having a honeymoon till Easter,' said Zillah, who
wasn't much looking forward to this sex-free excursion to an island
in the Indian Ocean with nothing to do but drink and chat to Jims
all day.
'Not even a tiny scrap of one?' the woman asked. She worked for
a national daily. 'I'm calling to beg for an interview. Our Thursday
slot. I expect you know what I mean.'
Zillah forgot all about Jims's instructions to refer all such
requests to Malina Daz. She forgot her fear of journalists. They'd
been so kind to her in the Mail. Why shouldn't she do it? The
children weren't back yet. This would give her a chance to confirm
everything that had already appeared in print and maybe get some
more glamour shots. 'Will you take photographs?'
She must have sounded apprehensive for the journalist misunderstood.
'Well, yes, of course. A piece about someone as attractive
as you wouldn't be much without photos, would it?'
Zillah agreed to it. Two hours later the features editor of a glossy
magazine was on the phone. They'd left her alone for a few days
but the time had come to have something appear that was more
comprehensive than a few lines about her wedding. Zillah
mentioned the other journalist.
'Oh, don't worry about that. Ours will be very different, I assure
you. You'll love it. You're going to receive a great deal of attention,
I can tell you, especially with the rumour going around that your
husband was going to be outed.'
'There was never anything in that,' Zillah said nervously.
'You cured him, did you? Sorry, that wasn't very PC of me.
Maybe I should say, you brought about a change of heart. How's
that? We'll say Friday at three, then, shall we? The photographer
will come an hour earlier to get set up.'
By the time Zillah got around to telling Jims and, through him,
Malina Daz, two more newspapers and another magazine had
joined the queue. Malina belonged to the school of thought which
holds that all publicity is good publicity. Jims was more cautious,
urging Zillah to deny his reputed orientation as vehemently as

97
possible. The night before the first journalist was due, the two of
them invented a past girlfriend for Jims, her name, her appearance,
her age and Zillah's jealousy of her. At the interview Zillah said this
woman was now married and living in Hong Kong. For obvious
reasons, her present identity couldn't be disclosed. When she
talked to the magazine she forgot the former girlfriend's age and
said she lived in Singapore, but Jims said it wouldn't matter, as
newspapers got everything wrong anyway.
The children were still in Bournemouth. Their grandparents had
agreed, though rather grudgingly, to keep them a week longer. Mrs
Wading said on the phone she thought there was something
ironical about Eugenie and Jordan staying in Bournemouth
'indefinitely' when for the first time in their lives they had a decent
home, while she and their grandfather had never seen them from
one year's end to the next when they'd lived in that dump in
Dorset. Zillah said to bear with her a while longer - a phrase she'd
picked up from Malina Daz - and she and Jims would be down to
fetch the children the weekend after next.
The first interview appeared in print on Friday morning. The
photographs came out wonderfully well and the feature itself was a
chatty piece with nothing in it about Jims's prospective 'outing' and
plenty about Zillah's lovely looks and dress sense. In another
Malina phrase, the whole subject had been 'treated with sensitivity'.
The invented girlfriend was mentioned with a few words about her
'long relationship' with Jims. Altogether it was highly satisfactory.
Two more articles were 'in the pipeline', said Malina and several
more interviews were to come.
Jims was happy with the piece but he knew the ways of the media
as Zillah didn't. He could hardly have been in the Commons for
seven years without knowing their ways. 'Tabloids are often OK
until they've got their knife into you,' he said to Zillah. 'Magazines
are fine, magazines are pussycats. It's national dailies like the
Guardian you want to worry about.'
'It might be useful for me to put in a presence', said Malina,
meaning she ought to be there, 'when Zillah meets with the print
media, especially the quality broadsheets.'

98
'Good idea,' Jims agreed.
Zillah didn't like Malina. She hadn't been told the truth about
the marriage but she guessed. Sometimes Zillah thought she'd
caught her smiling secretly to herself. She was in and out of the flat
in Abbey Gardens Mansions, popping into bedrooms, Zillah
suspected, opening drawers and poking her long, slender fingers
into desk pigeon-holes. Malina had a boyfriend who was a top
cardiologist in Harley Street and she was thinner than Zillah,
maybe two whole dress sizes thinner.
She didn't want Malina present when she talked to The Times
and the Telegraph. It was bad enough having the photographer
there, taking pictures when she was off her guard and had her
mouth open or held her head at an awkward angle. Malina's
secretive little smile and way of contemplating with admiration her
own hands and silver-painted nails would be, in her own word,
'inappropriate'. So Zillah said nothing to her about the forthcoming
interview with a freelance for the Telegraph Magazine. Jims
would be absent too, in the Commons Chamber on that day for the
Local Government Bill.

She was waiting for the photographer to come, standing in the
window looking across towards Dean's Yard, when she saw a car
draw up and park by the kerb on a double yellow line. A newspaper
photographer ought to know better. They'd tow him away or
clamp him. She opened the window, preparing to call out to him
not to leave the car there, but instead of getting out, the driver
stayed where he was behind the wheel. Zillah couldn't see very
clearly, but in spite of the car being a BMW and a far cry from the
ancient Ford Anglia he had driven away in after their last meeting,
she was almost sure the man was her husband Jerry.
She put her head out of the window and stared. He was studying
something, probably a map or plan. It looked a lot like Jerry but
from this distance she couldn't be sure. If this photographer and
journalist hadn't been coming she'd have gone down and made sure
of his identity and, if it was Jerry, confronted him. If they weren't
coming she wouldn't have been all dressed up in skin-tight purple

99
trousers, shoes with three-inch heels and a black and white bustier.
She closed the window. It was too far away to see properly. The
man in the car looked up. It was Jerry. Surely it was. And whose was
the dark-blue BMW? Not his, that was for sure. The doorbell rang.
The photographer had come from the Abbey direction, which
was why she hadn't seen him. He had an assistant with him, the
usual teenager, or teenager lookalike, and the two of them started
setting up, spreading ice-white sheets all over the furniture and
opening and shutting a silver-lined umbrella. Zillah went back to
the window. A traffic warden was talking to the man in the BMW.
She hoped he'd get out so that she could have a proper look at him.
He didn't, but drove off towards Millbank.
Zillah didn't enjoy the interview. The journalist was once again a
woman but serious-looking and austerely dressed in a black trouser
suit. She introduced herself as Natalie Reckman. Her features were
severely classical and her fair hair was scraped back and fastened by
a barrette. She wore no jewellery but a thick, heavy and curiously
sculpted gold ring on her right hand. A businesslike notebook was
taken out of her black leather briefcase and a recording device.
Zillah, who had been feeling glamorously dressed, was suddenly
conscious of the ornate oriental necklace she was wearing,
amethysts in tooled silver, the fashionable dozen or so bead
bracelets and the earrings dangling to her shoulders. And the
questions put to her were more awkward than usual, more probing.
This woman was the first journalist to say nothing complimentary
about her appearance. At first she seemed more interested in
Jims than his new wife. Zillah did her best to talk about him as an
ardent young bride might about her new husband. How clever he
was, how considerate of her and what a wise move it was to marry
one's best friend. As to his political career, he was so dutiful that
they'd postponed their honeymoon until Easter. They were going
to the Maldives. Darling Jims would have preferred Morocco, he
was longing to go there, but he'd deferred to her choice of the
Maldives. They'd go to Morocco in the winter.
Natalie Reckman yawned. She sat up straight and the interview
took a different turn. After trying to find out what Zillah had done

100
for a living before she married and being reluctant to accept her
vague description of herself as an 'artist', she asked with some
incredulity if she was expected to believe the MP's new bride had
really lived by herself in a Dorset village for seven years without a
job, a partner or any friends. Zillah, who was becoming angry, said
she could believe what she liked. She was thinking quickly whether
it was too late to mention the children, to bring them into the
conversation somehow. But how to account for never before
confessing to their existence?
The journalist smiled. She began asking about Jims. How long
had they known each other? Twenty-two years? Yet they'd never
been seen about together before their marriage nor, apparently,
lived under the same roof.
'Not everyone agrees with pre-marital sex,' said Zillah.
The journalist looked Zillah up and down, from the earrings and
the 'big hair' to her stilt heels. 'You're one of those who don't?'
'I really don't want to talk about it.'
'OK- That's fine. I expect you've heard your husband used to be
grouped with several MPs that a rather censorious person who shall
be nameless threatened to 'out'. What do you feel about that?'
Zillah was beginning to regret the absence of Malina. 'That's
something else I'd prefer not to talk about.'
'Surely you'd like to say there was no truth in the rumour?'
'If you print anything about my husband being gay,' said Zillah,
her control going, 'I'll sue you for libel.'
'Now, Airs Melcombe-Smith, or Zillah, if I may, that's a very
interesting thing you've just said. It seems to show you think it's an
insult to suggest someone is gay. Do you? Is it likely to bring the
subject into hatred, ridicule or contempt? Do you believe being gay
is inferior^ Or wrong? Is there a moral difference between being
straight and being gay?'
'I don't know,' Zillah shouted. 'I don't want to say any more to
you.'
Jims and Malina would have known that by now the interviewer
had a wonderful story which she could hardly wait to get down on
paper - or a hard disc. Zillah only wanted her to go and leave her

101
alone. And eventually she did go, not in the least put out by Zillah's
anger and refusal to say another word to her. Zillah felt shaken. It
had all been so very different from the previous two interviews. She
now regretted concealing the children's existence. Could she
possibly leave them with her parents a little longer? They liked
being there, they seemed to prefer it to being at home with their
mother, but her parents weren't, in her mother's phrase, as young
as they used to be, and were growing weary, worn out by Jordan's
night crying. And why had that awful woman asked so many
questions about what she'd been doing before her marriage? Zillah
acknowledged that she hadn't adequately prepared herself.
One consolation was that the Telegraph Magazine wasn't like
newspapers, the article wouldn't appear for weeks and weeks.
Perhaps not even until she and Jims were in the Maldives. And
perhaps it wasn't too late to stop it - if she dared ask Malina to
intervene on her behalf. That would take some thinking about. She
didn't say a word to Jims about it when he came home. That wasn't
until i a.m., anyway. He'd been in the Commons chamber, but
after the seven o'clock vote he'd slipped out and walked a hundred
yards along Millbank where he'd taken a cab to visit his new friend
in Chelsea.

Zillah was beginning to see that getting oneself into the newspaper
might not be all fun and glamour. These journalists were cleverer
than she'd expected. Jims could be left out of it for now but she had
to talk to someone. She phoned Malina and the PR woman came
round. 'I thought maybe you could call the Telegraph Magazine and
say I didn't mean that about libel and I'm sorry I shouted at her.'
Malina was appalled but she didn't show it. 'That would be
inappropriate, don't you think? I would have put in a presence if I'd
only been notified. But you did give the interview of your own free
will, Zillah. No one brought any pressure to bear.'
'I was hoping you could stop it altogether. Suggest I gave her
another interview. I'd be more careful next time.'
'No next time would be the preferred option, Zillah.' Malina

102
seemed to have changed her mind about all publicity being good.
'But I suppose it's too late for that.'
'You could call the other papers and just say I don't want to.'
'They'll want a reason.'
'Say I'm ill. Say I've got - gastroenteritis.'
'They'll think you're pregnant. You're not, are you?'
'Of course I'm not,' Zillah snapped.
'Shame. That would be the answer to all our prayers.'
But Malina cancelled three of the projected interviews and
would have cancelled the fourth, scheduled for the next day, but
the journalist she was trying to reach wasn't answering his mobile,
ignored her e-mail and fax, and responded to none of the messages
she left. In spite of not liking her, Zillah had such confidence in
Malina that she didn't bother to dress up when the visit from the
next broadsheet was due. Malina would have cancelled it. When
the doorbell rang she thought, suppose it's Jerry? She ran to answer
it without, for once, bothering to look in the mirror first.
Charles Challis was the sort of man Zillah would in other
circumstances have described as 'dishy'. But the circumstances
were all wrong because she hadn't been expecting anyone,
particularly a man, and she looked a mess. 'You weren't supposed
to come,' she said. 'We cancelled you.'
'Not to my knowledge. Is the photographer here yet?'
Then Zillah did look in the mirror, at her unmade-up face,
unwashed hair and sweater that was a souvenir of six years in Long
Fredington and had originally come from the British Home Stores.
Numbly she led Charles Challis into the living room. He asked her
nothing about Jims's reputed gayness nor what she did for a living
and made no comment on her appearance. He was nice. Zillah
decided it wasn't journalists she disliked but women journalists. She
asked the photographer if it would be all right for her to put on
some make-up. When she came back Charles, as he'd asked her to
call him, edged his questioning on to politics.
This was a subject of which Zillah admitted to herself she knew
little. She knew who the Prime Minister was and she said she
thought him 'dishy', but she couldn't remember the name of the

103
Leader of the Opposition. The journalist put to her the burning
question of the hour. What was her opinion on Section 28?
She looked blank. Charles explained. Section 28 forbade local
authorities to promote homosexuality; the provision proposed in
the Local Government Bill was to repeal it. Their contention was
that, due to the section, children uncertain of their orientation
were confused and made the victims of bullying. What did Zillah
think about it?
Zillah didn't want to get into any more trouble. Recalling what
the Reckman woman had implied about homosexuals and heterosexuals
being equal with no moral difference between them, she
said hotly that Section 28 was obviously wrong. It should be got rid
of and quickly. Charles wrote it all down and tested his recorder to
check that Zillah's voice was coming across clearly. How about trial
by jury? Was Zillah in favour of shortening court proceedings and
thereby saving the taxpayer's money? The night before, Jims had
been complaining at length about the income tax he paid, so Zillah
said she was all for economy and people on juries weren't lawyers,
were they, so what did they know?
She felt quite pleased with herself. The photographs wouldn't be
too bad. She often thought the casual look suited her better than
formality. Malina phoned after they'd gone and said she'd managed
to cancel everything but Charles Challis. How had the interview
gone?
'It was marvellous. He was so nice.'1
'Good. Well done, you.' Malina didn't say that the journalist in
question was known in the Groucho Club as Poisoned Chalice.
Zillah put the phone down and looked out of the window. Jerry
was standing at the entrance to the underground car park. She
rushed out of the flat and down in the lift but when she came out
into Great College Street he'd gone. He must have put his car into
the car park. She ran down the slope and into the depths. There
was no sign of him and no dark-blue BMW. Perhaps he'd been on
foot because of the difficulties of parking. He could have got on a
bus or walked to the tube while she was leaving the flat. What did
he want? He could be thinking of blackmailing her. Five hundred a

104
month or I tell all. But as far as she knew Jerry had never descended
to blackmail in the past and wouldn't begin with her. She went
back across the road and, because she'd forgotten her key, had to
get the porters to let her in.

The interviews over or cancelled, it was time to fetch the children.
Jims and Zillah drove down to Bournemouth on the Saturday. It
was a pleasant drive, for once the roads not congested and it wasn't
raining. They stopped for lunch at a smart new restaurant in
Casterbridge, down by the river and the millrace, because Jims
didn't want to stay long enough to sample her mother's cooking.
Neither Eugenie nor Jordan seemed pleased to see them.
'Want to stay with Nanna,' said Jordan.
His sister patted him on the head. 'We like the seaside. Children
need fresh air, you know, not traffic plumes.' She meant 'fumes' but
no one corrected her.
'I suppose there's no reason why you shouldn't stay a bit longer,'
said Jims hopefully.
'I'm afraid there is, James.' Nora Wading was never afraid to
speak her mind. 'I'm tired. I need some peace. I've raised one
family and I'm not in the business of raising another at my age.'
'No one wants us,' said Eugenie cheerfully. 'It's not very nice to
be an unwanted child, is it, Jordan?'
Jordan didn't understand but he burst into howls just the same.
When Jims looked at his watch at three thirty and said they might
as well be going, Nora was deeply offended. The children had had
their lunch but she insisted on stuffing them with crisps, ice cream
and Black Forest cake before they left. On the way back to London
Jordan was sick all over Jims's grey leather upholstery.
But once they were home, Eugenie had started at her new school
and a place in a fashionable 'progressive' nursery been found for
Jordan, peace reigned. It was possible to leave Abbey Gardens
Mansions very discreetly by taking the lift down to the basement
car park and driving out by the exit into a turning off Great Peter
Street. A journalist would have had to be very vigilant and an early
riser to spot Zillah taking the children to school at nine in the

105
morning, the silver Mercedes slipping out by the back way. But
there were no journalists. The media seemed to have lost interest.
A couple of weeks went by and the newspapers ignored young Mr
and Mrs Melcombe-Smith. Zillah had expected to be pleased about
that if it happened, but now she began wondering what had
become of the piece that nice Charles Challis was writing. She and
Jims were going on their honeymoon on Easter Saturday. It would
be just her luck to be away when it appeared.
'What do you mean, just your luck?' Jims had been unreasonably
irritable lately. 'I'd say you've been pretty lucky up till now.'

'It was just a figure of speech,' said Zillah pacifically.
'A highly inappropriate one, if I may say so. Have you arranged
with Mrs Peacock yet?'

'I'll do it now.'
But Mrs Peacock wasn't able to stay at Abbey Gardens Mansions
for the ten days Jims and Zillah would be in the Maldives, or
indeed for any part of that time. Zillah, she said, had left it too late.
Only the day before she'd fixed up to go on a coach tour of Bruges,
Utrecht and Amsterdam.
'I hope she freezes to death,' said Zillah. 'I hope she poisons
herself on tulip bulbs.'
'Tulip bulbs aren't poisonous,' said Jims coldly. 'Squirrels prefer
them to nuts. Have you never noticed?'
She had to ask her mother. Nora Wading exploded. The
children had been in London less than three weeks and now she
was expected to have them back again. Hadn't Zillah understood
what she'd said about not wanting to raise a second family?
'You and Daddy could come here. The children are at school all
day. You could do some sightseeing, go on the Millennium Wheel.'
'We haven't been on the wheel,' said Eugenie. 'We haven't even
been to the Dome.'
'Nanna will take you,' said Zillah, covering up the mouthpiece.
'Nanna will take you anywhere you want to go.'
Of course Nora Watling agreed to come. She could hardly do
otherwise. Having remarked scathingly that some people would

106
put their children in a kennel or a cattery if they had the chance,
she said she and Zillah's father would arrive on Good Friday.
'I wish you wouldn't teach them to call their grandmother
Nanna,' said Jims. 'It's highly inappropriate for the stepchild of a
Conservative MP.'
'Not a stepchild, not a stepchild,' screamed Jordan. 'Want to be a
real child.'
On Monday morning, a week later than expected, the Challis
interview with Zillah appeared. Or something appeared. There was
no photograph and the piece devoted to Zillah was about two
inches long. It was part of a two-page feature on MP's wives, their
views and occupations, and it was written in a breezy, satirical style.
She was made to look a combination of feather-headed butterfly
and ignoramus.

Zillah, new bride of James Melcombe-Smith, [Charles Challis had
written] shares her husband's interest in politics if not his persuasion.
Not for her the retention of Section 28 or that ancient bastion of the
law, trial by jury. Sweep them away, is her policy. Where have vie
heard that before? Why, from none other than the Labour Party.
'People on juries aren't lawyers,' she told me, tossing back a lock of
raven hair. (Mrs Melcombe-Smith looks a lot like Catherine Zeta
Jones.) 'My husband would like to see an end to this waste of the
taxpayers' money.' He, of course, is the Conservative Member for South
Wessex, known to his constituents and other pals as 'Jims'. They will be
fascinated by his wife's views.

Jims was less angry about this than might have been expected. He
muttered a bit and predicted he'd shortly be due for an unpleasant
interview with the Chief Whip. But these were not the sort of slips
and revelations he feared and he doubted whether more than a
handful of the landowners and (in his own phrase) peasants, read
'that rag'. Zillah said she was sorry but she didn't know anything
about politics. Was there a book she could read?
Later that day she saw Jerry again. She was in the car, fetching
the children from school and had just turned out ofMillbank, when

107
she spotted him outside the Atrium. Her first thought was for the
children and the trouble that would ensue if they saw him. But both
were looking in the other direction, admiring two orange-coloured
dogs with curly tails like pigs.
'Can I have a dog, Mummy?' asked Eugenie.
'Only if you look after it yourself.' Zillah's mother had said the
same thing to her when she asked that same question twenty-two
years before. She had got the dog and looked after it for three days.
Remembering, she went on, 'No, of course you can't have a dog. A
dog in a flat?'
'We used to live in a house. It was nice and we had friends. We
had Rosalba and Titus and Fabia.'
'Want Titus,' said Jordan, but instead of screaming he began
quietly to sob.
As Zillah waited in the middle of the street to turn right into the
car park under Abbey Gardens Mansions she saw Jerry running
along the pavement towards her. Without looking to her left she
began to turn, causing the van coming from the left to brake
violently and the driver, already galvanic with road rage, put his
head out of the window and let forth a stream of obscene abuse.
Zillah went on down the ramp into the car park.
'Mummy, did you hear the word that man said? Nanna said that
if I used that word I'd come to a bad end. Will the man come to a
bad end?'
'I hope so,' Zillah said viciously. 'Stop crying, Jordan. Do you
think you two could manage to call Nanna Granny?'
Eugenie shook her head slowly from side to side. 'That would
make her into another person, wouldn't it?'
Zillah didn't answer. She was confirmed in her belief that her
daughter would be called to the Bar at an early age.
There was no more sign of Jerry. Jims again came home very
late. In the morning he told her his new friend Leonardo Norton
would also be in the Maldives while they were there, staying, in
fact, in the same hotel.

108
Chapter 11

'You could come with me to the Television Centre,' Matthew said.
'I'd like that.'
But Michelle said no, she wouldn't. 'You'll be better off without
having me to worry about, darling.' The truth was she couldn't face
the stares and surreptitious giggles of all those long-legged girls
and young men in jeans. Jeff Leigh's Little and Large jibe still
rankled.
It was heartening to see Matthew set off for the tube station,
walking along almost like a normal person, his shoulders back and
his head high. Michelle dusted the living room and vacuumed the
carpet. As she lumbered around, breathless, her heart thudding, she
tried to recapture what it had felt like to be a normal person
herself, to have an ordinary body. Not like a model girl, not even
like Fiona, but to be an average rounded woman, wearing a size
fourteen. Usually, when Matthew was there, as he almost always
was, she stifled such thoughts, pushing them away, pretending she
wasn't thinking them. This was the first time in how long - five
years? seven? - that she had been alone in the house. There's nothing like being on your own for having space to think.
Michelle stood still in the middle of the room and felt her body,
really felt what it was like, from her three chins to the cushions on
her upper thighs. First with her brain, then with her hands,
growing at last fully aware of the mountain of flesh in which her
delicate and fastidious mind and her loving heart had their being.

109
She closed her eyes and in the darkness seemed to see Matthew as
he might be if restored to health and herself as she was, or nearly as
she was, when first they married. And into that dream came a hint,
like a winged insect, a fragile wisp, fluttering across her closed lids,
of the old desire they had once had for each other, the passion that
sprang from physical beauty and energy. Could it ever be
recaptured? The love was there, just the same. Surely with that love
present, they could return somehow to making love ...
It was a long time since Michelle had been able to bend down.
They had had to get rid of the vacuum cleaner they used to have,
the kind with a long hose you pull along like a little dog, because
she couldn't bend down enough to fetch it out of the cupboard and
put it back. The upright one they had now was better, but only
marginally, because to connect the attachments, she had to make
the huge effort of lifting the cleaner by its handle on to a chair and
performing this operation at thigh level. Afterwards she had to
stand still for a moment, one hand pressed against the mountain of
her bosom. But once she'd got her breath back, she managed to
screw in the nozzle on the brush hose and finish the cleaning of the
room. Then she went out shopping.
Not to Waitrose this time but nearer home to the Atlanta
supermarket at West End Green. She put kiwi fruit into the trolley,
Ryvitas and a large pack of dry roasted peanuts, but as, almost
automatically, she took a big bag of doughnuts from the shelf, her
hand was stayed in mid-air and very slowly she put it back again.
The same with the thick wedge of Cheddar cheese and the
Cadbury's Milk Flakes. She was bracing herself not to succumb but
to leave the cheesecake where it was in the chilled foods cabinet
when a voice behind her said, 'Stoking up the boilers, are we?
Maintaining the avoirdupois^
It was Jeff Leigh. Strange things were happening to Michelle in
Matthew's absence. Her mind was in a turmoil as she thought
thoughts she hadn't had for a dozen years and looked at people she
was used to with new eyes. For instance, she was seeing Jeff as if for
the first time and perceiving him as very good-looking, that it was
obvious why women found him attractive. And equally obvious that

no
his charm was spurious and his looks skin-deep. Any reasonable
person, not blinded by a love that must be mostly physical desire,
would dislike and distrust him. She didn't answer his question but
asked him where Fiona was.
'At work. Where else?'
'To keep you in the luxury to which you're accustomed, I
suppose.' Michelle surprised herself, for she couldn't remember
saying such a thing or using such a tone in all her life before.
'It always amazes me', he said, smiling genially, 'how you women
scream for equality with men but you still expect men to keep you
and never to keep them. Why? In an equal society some men would
keep women and some women keep men. Like Matthew keeps you
and Fiona keeps me.'
'Everyone ought to work.'
'Excuse me, Michelle, but when did you last set foot in a nursery
for a living?'
After she'd walked off in silence he was sorry he'd said that. It
was cheap. Also it would have been funnier to have said something
more about her shape and weight. Something on the lines of
applying for a post with the Fattist Society, if she was in need of a
job. Jeff bought the half-pint of milk he needed for his morning
coffee and the smoked salmon sandwiches which would be his
lunch and went home to think about the hours ahead before Fiona
came home.
For years now Jeffrey Leach had planned each day with care. He
gave an impression of casual insouciance but in fact he was
meticulous, well-organised and industrious. The trouble was that
he couldn't exactly tell people how hard he really did work, for
most of what he did was dodgy or downright illegal. Yesterday, for
instance, he'd driven himself to an Asda store and, presenting at the
checkout the J. H. Leigh credit card he'd found to pay for their
week's groceries, had asked for cash back. The weary girl who'd
been on for three hours, asked how much and Jeff, who'd been
going to say fifty, asked for a hundred pounds. She handed it over
and he wished he'd asked for two. Yet she'd looked long and hard

in
at the card before giving him the money, so that he'd heard a little
warning bell tinkling.
Now, resolutely but not without regrets, he took the card out of
his wallet and, with Fiona's kitchen scissors, cut it into six pieces.
These he put into the waste bin, careful to cover them with an
empty cornflake packet and a pair of Fiona's laddered tights. Better
safe than sorry even if safety was going to cost him. The card had
served him well as cards go, and as cards go it went. He'd get
another somehow or other. Maybe Fiona would get him one.
American Express were always writing letters telling their clients to
apply for cards for family members. A live-in lover was a family
member, wasn't he? For the life of him he couldn't see how he was
actually to marry Fiona unless he got up his nerve and committed
bigamy like Zillah. He'd give more thought to that when August
approached.
Jeff used his mobile as seldom as possible, making most calls on
Fiona's phone. He lifted the receiver and rang his bookmaker,
placing a bet on a horse called Feast and Famine running at
Cheltenham. His almost uncanny success on the racecourse owed
more to instinct and serendipity than knowledge of horseflesh. It
enabled him to pick up a nice little weekly income. He was in need,
however, of a larger sum immediately. Fiona still hadn't got an
engagement ring and the sort he usually picked up for twenty quid
in Covent Garden market or off a stall outside St James's Piccadilly
wouldn't do for this top-quality woman. Once he'd run a most
successful scam offering, through an advertisement and on receipt
of a five-pound note, a brochure on how to be a millionaire within
two years. He'd made a small fortune before applicants began
writing furious letters asking where their brochure was. But he
couldn't repeat the exercise. Imagine the post he'd get and Fiona's
face when she rumbled him.
Zillah had been right when she'd decided her husband would not
blackmail her. To his credit, demanding money with menaces had
never crossed Jeffs mind. The engagement ring would have to
come from another source. Fleetingly, he thought ofMinty. Funny
little thing. She was the cleanest woman he'd ever slept with. Even

112
if he hadn't met Fiona and quickly picked up on her wealth, he'd
have had to drop Minty. What man would fancy the bed smelling
of Wright's Coal Tar soap every time he'd had a bit of a cuddle?
Still, he might have got her to take out that mortgage on the house
before he left her. Why hadn't he? Because he was a decent bloke
at heart, he told himself, and making one fiancee pay for another
fiancee's engagement ring was too low even for him.
Jeff had a look around the house for money. There never was
any, he knew that by now, but he never quite gave up hope. Fiona
didn't seem to have any cash. It was what came of being in banking,
he supposed, everything on paper, cards, computers. She'd once
told him she dreamed of a day when cash as such would disappear
and be replaced by paying and being paid by Indian means or a
fingerprint. He looked in a tea tin in the kitchen which seemed to
serve no purpose but to contain money, though it never did, and
through the pockets of Fiona's many coats. Not even a twenty-
pence piece. Still, he had enough to get along on and when Feast
and Famine came in first, as it undoubtedly would, he'd net five
hundred.
When he'd drunk his coffee and eaten his sandwiches, Jeff went
out. Even on such a fine day it would take too long to walk to
Westminster but he did get as far as Baker Street before taking a
bus. He had no doubt that the woman he'd seen yesterday, driving
and nearly crashing the silver Mercedes, was Zillah. This was the
first time he'd been sure. The glimpses he'd caught of a dark
woman at a window in Abbey Gardens Mansions might have been
she and might not. When he'd last seen her in Long Fredington
(and bade her farewell, though she didn't know it) her hair was
scraped back and fastened with an elastic band, and she'd been
wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. This woman, the one in Abbey
Gardens, looked like an oriental princess, all big hair and jewellery,
and some kind of low-cut satin top. It was a matter of chance that
he'd seen her the day before. He hadn't brought Fiona's BMW, it
was too much hassle parking it. He'd done it like today on foot and by bus and, after hanging about for a long time, ended up outside

"3
that flash restaurant and been leaning against the wall wondering
what to do next. And she'd come along in that car out ofMillbank.
Of course he'd given chase, trying to see if the kids in the back
were his children. There were two of them, a younger boy and an
older girl, of that at any rate he'd been sure. But they hadn't been
looking in his direction, and they seemed too big to be his Eugenie
and his Jordan. He thought with a pang that it was six months since
he'd seen them and small children alter considerably in six months,
growing taller, their faces changing. It couldn't be, could it, that
this Jims had a couple of kids and it was his two in the car? Gay
men did sometimes have kids before they decided women weren't
for them. He had to be sure. Today he was going to find out.
Getting off the bus at Charing Cross, he went into a newsagent's
and looked through the sort of newspaper that tells its readers
what's happening in Parliament that day.
The newsagent watched him turning the pages, folding back the
sheets. 'Like they say, if you don't want the goods don't mess them
about.'
Jeff had found what he wanted. It was Maundy Thursday and the
Commons sat at eleven. He dropped the paper on the floor, said
like some character from Victorian fiction, 'Keep a civil tongue in
your head, my man.'
The river sparkled in the sun. The spokes on the London Eye
glittered silver against a cloudless blue sky. Jeff walked past the
Houses of Parliament, crossed the road and turned into Great
College Street. From the bus window he'd noticed that The
Talented Mr Ripley was on at the Marble Arch Odeon. He might
pop in later. Fiona wasn't keen on the cinema. He pushed open the
art nouveau oak and glass doors of Abbey Gardens Mansions and
was a little disconcerted to see a porter sitting behind a desk in the
flower-decked red-carpeted foyer. 'Mr Leigh,' he said, 'to see Mr
Melcombe-Smith.'
Zillah wouldn't know who it was but she'd let in a strange man
who came to call on Jims. He hoped. However, the porter didn't
attempt to phone through to her but indicated the lift with a surly
nod. Up Jeff went and rang the bell of number seven. It was the old

114
Zillah who came to the door, the unmade-up, hair-scraped-back,
casual-clothes version, though the jeans were Calvin Klein and the
top Donna Karan. She screamed when she saw him and clapped
her hand over her mouth.

The children's schools had broken up for Easter and Eugenie and
Jordan were out for a walk with Mrs Peacock while their mother
packed for the Maldives. That they weren't there and nor was Jims
gave her courage. 'You'd better come in,' she said. 'I thought you
were dead.'
'No you didn't, my dear. You thought I was telling you I was
dead. It's not the same thing. You're a bigamist, you know.'
'So are you.'
Jeff sat down on a sofa. He lived in comfortable and elegant
surroundings himself so he had no need to comment on hers.
'You're wrong there,' he said. 'I've never actually been married to
anyone but you. Admittedly, I've got engaged to three or four but
marriage, no. You want to remember what they said to the old
person of Lyme who married three wives at one dme. When asked
why a third, he replied one's absurd. And bigamy, sir, is a crime.'
'You're despicable.'
'I wouldn't call anyone names if I were you. How do you and
Jimsy-wimsy get on about a bit of how's-your-father? Or is it a
marriage of convenience?' He looked about him as if hoping for
the missing pair to emerge from out of the cupboard or under the
table. 'Where are my children?'
Zillah blushed. 'I don't think you've any right to ask. If they'd
depended on you they'd be in care by now.'
He couldn't deny it and didn't try. Instead, 'Where's your loo?'
he asked.
'Upstairs.' She couldn't resist saying there were two. 'One's the
door facing you and the other's in my bathroom.'
'Jims, Jims, the rick stick Stims, round tail, bobtail, well done,
Jims.'
Jeff didn't open that door but the one to the right of it. Two
single beds, two bedlamps with coloured butterflies on their shades,

"5
otherwise almost without furniture and very tidy. He nodded. Next
to it was a room the same size but rather austere, not quite a
monk's cell but in that category. The door at the end of the passage
opened on to what he suspected an estate agent would call the
master bedroom. On the double divan were two open suitcases, the
kind that unmistakably come from Louis Vuitton. The crocodile
handbag beside them was also open. Jeff put his hand inside.
Feeling in a side compartment, he came upon a Visa card, still in
the name of Z. H. Leach. Then he went back into the living room
and offered Zillah a Polo mint.
'No, thanks, as always.'
'I see you're packing. Going somewhere nice?'
She told him, adding sulkily that it was their honeymoon. Jeff
burst out laughing, roaring uncontrollably, tickled to death. He
stopped as quickly as he'd begun. 'You didn't answer my question.
Where are my children?'
'Out for a walk.' She invented, 'With their nanny.'
'I see. A nanny. Jims-oh isn't short of a penny or two, is he? And
will you be taking them to the Maldives?'
Zillah would have liked to say yes, but Mrs Peacock and the
children might return at any time. She'd already had enough stick
from Eugenie because she wasn't taking them. 'I told you,' she said,
'it's a honeymoon. My mother will be here to look after them.'
Jeff, who hadn't sat down again but had been roving about the
room, said, 'I won't stay to see them. It might be upsetting for
them and me. But I don't like the sound of what you've been
saying, Zil. It strikes me neither you nor Jims really want my kids.
You didn't say a word about them to those newspapers, not a hint
to that magazine that you'd got any kids - oh, yes, I read it, I made
it my business to read it.' He paused. 'Now, Fiona loves children.'
This casual remark had the effect he hoped for. 'Who the hell's
Fiona?'
'My fiancee.' Jeff smiled wolfishly. 'She's a merchant banker.
She's got a very nice house in Hampstead.' He left out the 'West'.
'I suppose the BMW belongs to her.'
'As you say. Her house would be an ideal home for children.

n6
Four bedrooms, garden, everything the heart could wish for. And
I'm home all day to look after them while she earns the moolah to
keep them in luxury.'
'What are you saying?'
'Frankly, my dear, I'm not sure yet. I haven't thought it through.
But I will and I very likely may come up with a plan. Like applying
for sole custody, right?'
'You wouldn't stand a chance!' Zillah shouted.
'No? Not if the court heard you'd committed bigamy?'
Zillah began to cry. There was a notepad on the table with tear-
off pages in a silver case. He wrote down Fiona's address and gave
it to Zillah, pretty sure he could retrieve any letter that came to
Jerry Leach. Then he left, whistling 'Just Walk on By'. As he closed
the front door behind him he could hear her loud sobs. Of course
he'd no intention of taking the children away from her but the
threat was a useful weapon. And he wouldn't mind getting his own
back on Jims, who was certainly using Eugenie and Jordan as pawns
in the game he was playing to prove himself an exponent of family
values. Should he tell Fiona about it? Perhaps. A doctored version
at any rate.
Still, where were his children? That story about the nanny might
be an invention. If Zillah had dumped them, where had she
dumped them? With her mother? He didn't like it. Perhaps he'd
call again next week when Nora Wading was there and find out the
truth. If she was there, if that wasn't a lie too.
Now for lunch at the Atrium. On Zillah's credit card? A bit
dangerous. She and Jims might be regular visitors. Jeff had an idea
that a credit card had some sort of code on it that betrayed the sex
of the customer using it. In an Italian restaurant in Victoria Street
he put it to the test and had no problem. All was well. Imitating
Zillah's signature was no problem either, he'd often done it in the
past. The Talented Mr Ripley, the three-fifteen showing, had just
begun when Jeff got to the cinema. The small intimate theatre was
almost empty, just himself, two other men on their own and a lone
middle-aged woman. It always amused him to see how they'd
placed themselves, as far apart as possible, one of the men near the

117
front on the extreme right, another, who looked very old, on the
left halfway down and the third in the back row. The woman sat
next to the aisle but as far as possible from the old man. It seemed
to Jeff that human beings didn't like their own kind much. Sheep,
for instance, would all have huddled together in the centre. He
took his seat behind the woman - just to be different.

Matthew came home in the middle of the afternoon. Naturally,
he'd had no lunch. Without Michelle to look after him and coax
him, he'd never eat at all. But he looked well, very nearly a normal
thin man. The recording for the television programme had been
highly enjoyable. 'I loved it,' he said, just like the old Matthew
she'd married. 'I didn't really expect to. I was full of gloomy
forebodings.'
'You should have told me, darling.'
'I know but I can't unload all my burdens on to you.'
She said in an unusually bitter voice, 'You could. My shoulders
are broad enough.'
He looked at her with concern, sat down next to her and took
her hands. 'What is it, my love? What's wrong? You're pleased for
me, I know that. This programme may be the start of many. We'll
be richer, though I know you don't care about that. What is it?'
She came out with it. She could no longer keep it to herself.
'Why do you never say I'm fat? Why don't you tell me I'm gross
and bloated and hideous? Look at me. I'm not a woman, I'm a great
obese balloon of flesh. I said my shoulders are broad enough - well,
I hope yours are for what I'm saying. That's my burden, my size,
my awful, huge, revolting size.'
He was looking at her, but not aghast, not in horror. His poor,
thin, wizened face was softened and changed by tenderness. 'My
darling,' he said. 'My sweet, dearest darling. Will you believe me
when I say I've never noticed?'
'You must have. You're an intelligent man, you're perceptive.
You must have noticed and - and hated it!'
'What's brought this on, Michelle?' he asked seriously.
'I don't know. I'm a fool. But - yes, I do know. It's Jeff, Jeff

118
Leigh, every time I see him he makes some sort of joke about my
size. It was - well, this morning it was "stoking up the boilers?" and
the other day he said - no, darling, I can't tell you what he said.'
'Shall I speak to him? Tell him he's hurt you? I will, I shan't
mind doing that. You know me, aggressive bastard when I'm
roused.'
She shook her head. 'I'm not a child. I don't need Daddy to tell
the boy next door to stop it.' A little smile transformed her face. 'I
never thought I'd say this about anyone but I -1 hate him. I really
do. I hate him. I know he's not worth it but I can't help it. Tell me
about the television.'
He told her. She pretended to listen and made encouraging
noises, but she was thinking how deeply she disliked Jeff Leigh,
how certain she was that he was a petty crook and she wondered if
she could find the strength to warn Fiona. As if she were her
mother. Did people ever heed that kind of warning? She didn't
know. But she wasn't Fiona's mother and that would make a big
difference.
When she had made a meal for Matthew (milkless tea, a ryvita,
two slices of kiwi fruit and twelve dry-roasted peanuts) she went
upstairs, of necessity holding on to the banisters with both hands,
puffing at the top as she always did, and entered the bathroom. The
scales were for Matthew. She had never stepped on them. How
delighted they both were when Matthew weighed himself last week
and the scales registered seven stone two instead of the needle
quivering on the six-stone mark as it once had. Michelle kicked off
her shoes, looking down at her legs and feet. They were beautiful,
as lovely in shape as any of those models', if not as long. Taking a
deep breath, she stepped on to the scales.
At first she didn't look. But she had to look, that was the point.
Slowly she lowered her closed eyes, forced herself to open them.
Her breath expelled in a long sigh, she took her eyes away from
what it came to in kilos, in pounds. She weighed three times what
Matthew did.
What had happened to her to make her do what she'd just done?
Jeff Leigh had happened. That made Michelle smile. It was absurd

119
to think of the person you hated as doing you good. For he had
done her good. She put on her shoes, went down to the kitchen
again and tipped the food she'd prepared for her tea, a big bread
roll (in the absence of doughnuts) with strawberry jam, two
shortcake biscuits and a slice of fruitcake, down into the waste bin.

120
Chapter 12

The horrible thing was that she'd begun to fancy Jims. Really to
fancy him, a different matter altogether from the feeling she'd had
when they were both teenagers. In those days it had been just an
itch, coupled with resentment that here was one boy among all
those she knew who wasn't attracted by her. That in itself was
enough to make her try to seduce him. But now things had
changed.
Paradoxically, as she started to want to go to bed with him, so
she liked him less. When they'd just been seeing each other every
few weeks, having a drink together, talking over old times, Zillah
would have said Jims was her best friend. Sharing a home with him
made a huge difference. His peevishness was apparent, his
selfishness and, when there was no one else present, his absolute
indifference as to whether she was there or not. If anyone called,
one of his parliamentary pals, for instance, he was all over her,
holding hands, looking into her eyes, calling her darling, pausing as
he passed the back of her chair to drop a kiss on the nape of her
neck. Alone with her he barely spoke. But this coldness, along with
his appearance, his grace, his dark slendemess and those large, dark
eyes, fringed with black lashes like a girl's, contributed to his
appeal. Every day, it seemed, she sank deeper into wanting him
very much.
In the Maldives it was worse. They shared a suite in which there
were two bedrooms and two bathrooms, but Jims was seldom

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there, spending his nights in suite 2004 where Leonardo was. Ever
cautious, he would sometimes return at eight in the morning, to be
sitting opposite her at the glass table on the balcony, both in their
white towelling robes, when the waiter brought their breakfast at
nine.
'I wonder why you bother,' she said.
'Because you never know who else may be staying here. How do
you know that red-headed woman we saw on the beach yesterday
isn't a journalist? Or that the very youthful couple, the topless girl
and her boyfriend, aren't media people? Of course you don't. I
have to be ever vigilant.'
Most women would be overjoyed, she thought, if their husbands
could talk about a young girl going topless without a flicker of lust
in their eyes, without the least deepening of their tone. In the
mornings Jims lay on a sun lounger on the silver sands and
Leonardo lay on another sun lounger beside him. But Zillah was
there too on a third one. When she protested, saying she'd rather
go in the pool or take a look at the village, such as it was, he
reminded her of his reason for marrying her. And for giving her
two homes, almost unlimited spending money, a new car, clothes
and security. He'd also, he said, become a father to her children.
Zillah was beginning to understand that she'd taken on a job rather
than a husband, while in exchange for all those worldly goods she'd
abandoned her freedom.
Leonardo worked for a stockbroker in the City and was a high
flyer at twenty-seven. From a family that, on the father's side, had been staunch active Conservatives for the past hundred and fifty
years, he was as mad about politics as Jims and the two talked
Conservative Party history, House of Commons procedure and
personalities all day long, swapping anecdotes about Margaret
Thatcher or Alan Clark. Leonardo was enthralled by John Major's
autobiography and constantly read bits out of it aloud to Jims.
Zillah thought bitterly how unlike their dialogue was to the
received opinion among the party mandarins she'd met, as to the
style in which gay men conversed.
She was worried as well. As to his vaunted role as Eugenie's and

122
Jordan's father, so much for his saying he loved children. He'd
barely spoken to either of them since their return from Bournemouth.
When she'd mentioned this, he said he supposed Eugenie
would be off to boarding school in a few months' time. Then
they'd get a live-in nanny for Jordan and he'd have the fourth
bedroom converted into a nursery. She hadn't said a word to him
about Jerry. How could she? They were supposed never to have
been married and he to have no rights over the children at all.
Suppose Jerry did try to get the children? Suppose he renewed his
threat to expose her as a woman who'd married one man while still
married to another? Oh, it was so unfair! He'd utterly deceived her,
sending her that letter saying he was dead.
And now, just to crown everything, she'd succumbed to Jims's
charms. In the dining room last evening, for the benefit of the
other diners, he'd put his arm round her while they were waiting to
be shown to their table and, once there, when he'd pulled out her
chair for her, given her a soft little kiss on the lips. She'd actually
heard some old woman nearby whisper to her companion how nice
it was to see a couple so much in love. That kiss nearly finished
Zillah off. She'd have liked to go upstairs and have a cold shower
but she had to sit here with Jims looking into her eyes and holding
her hand across the table. Leonardo always took his dinner in his
suite while watching, Zillah suspected, pornographic movies. Or
maybe only videos of some Tory by-election coup.

The Daily Telegraph Magazine, the one with her interview in it,
hadn't yet come out. Unless it had on Easter Saturday. Zillah's
mother had strict instructions to look out for it and keep it if it
appeared while she was away. The day before they left she'd
written to Jerry at the Hampstead address he'd given her, only it
wasn't Hampstead proper but West Hampstead, as she could tell
by the postcode. Obscurely, this discovery made her feel a little
better.
Zillah wasn't accustomed to writing letters; she couldn't remember
when she'd written the last one. It had probably been to thank
her godmother for sending her a five-pound note when she was

123
twelve. The first effort she made looked very threatening when she
read it over, so she started again. This time she threw herself on
Jerry's mercy, appealing to him not to expose her as a criminal, to
remember what she'd been through, how he'd left her alone to fend
for herself. That wouldn't do either. She tore it up and finally
wrote simply that he'd frightened her. She hadn't meant to keep
the children from their father. He could have access and visiting
rights and anything he wanted if only he wouldn't tell anyone she'd
done what he knew she'd done. Without actually writing 'bigamist'
in case the letter fell into the wrong hands, she asked him please
not to use 'that word' any more. It was cruel and unfair. This she
sent.
The trouble with the Maldives was that beautiful though the
island was, it was really only the sort of place you went to with
someone you were having a big, sexy and romantic affair with and
wanted to make love all the time. Like Jims and Leonardo. For
anyone else it was just a yawn. She read paperbacks she'd bought at
the airport, she had a massage and got her hair done three times,
and because Jims, sustaining his role of devoted husband, took
photographs other, she took some of him and a few times included
Leonardo. But it was a relief to be going home on Sunday.
The newspapers that were brought round in mid-air were
yesterday's, thick Saturday papers stuffed with supplements. Zillah
took the Mail while Jims opted for the Telegraph. She was reading a
very interesting piece about fingernail extensions when a choking
sound from Jims made her look round. He had gone dark red in the
face, a change which made him a lot less attractive.
'What's the matter?'
'Read it for yourself.'
He screwed up the newspaper, tossed the magazine at her and
got up, turning right down the aisle and making for where
Leonardo was sitting in the back row.
The article about her filled nearly three pages, the text liberally
interspersed with photographs. At first Zillah concentrated on the
pictures, they were so beautiful. The Telegraph had done her proud.
What was Jims making a fuss about? The big glamour shot really

124
did make her look like Catherine Zeta Jones. Zillah had been
contemplating breast implants now she could afford it, she'd always
felt herself lacking in this area, but this photograph showed her
with a deep cleavage overflowing out of the bustier.

The big headline didn't present her in a light she much liked:
gypsy scatterbrain, it read, and underneath that, 'A New Breed of
Tory Bride'. Then she began to read the text, her heart gradually
sinking and sweat breaking out all over her face and neck.

Gypsy, scatterbrain and firebrand. Carmen to the life, Zillah
Mekombe-Smith belongs to the new kind of trophy wife politicians are
increasingly acquiring. At 28, she looks like a model, talks like a
teenager and suffers, it seems, from various neuroses. Her dark good
looks and fiery eyes support her assertion of having Romany blood, as so
maybe do her wild statements. We had been in her Westminster flat
(suitably close to the Houses of Parliament) for no more than ten
minutes when she was threatening to sue us for libel. And why? Because
we had dared question her astonishing left-wing beliefs, not to say
double standards. Zillah bitterly opposes Tory opinion on homosexuality,
that it isn't equal to heterosexuality and is a matter of choice, yet
calling someone gay is an insult she looks capable of duelling about.
Odd when you remember [Natalie Reckman went on] that
Zillah '$ husband Jims^ Melcombe-Smith had attracted recent speculation
as to his possible sexual orientation. All that, of course, has been
proved wide of the mark by his marriage to the gorgeous Zillah. But if
his past is no longer a mystery, hers may be. The new Mrs Melcombe-
Smith had apparently lived the first 27 years of her life in total
seclusion and isolation in a Dorset village, an existence she made sound
like being walled up in a convent. No job? No training? No former
boyfriends? Apparently not. Strangely, Zillah forgot to mention a few
small interruptions to this cloistered existence, her ex-husband Jeffrey
and their two children, Eugenie 7 and Jordan ^. True, there were no
children about when we visited on a sunny spring day. Where has Mrs
Melcombe-Smith hidden them? Or has their father custody? If so, this
would be a highly exceptional decision on the part of the divorce court.

125
Custody is only given to a father if the mother proves unfit to care for
them, which high-spirited, handsome Zillah very obviously is not.

Zillah read to the end, by now feeling sick. Natalie Reckman
devoted two long paragraphs to describing her clothes and
jewellery, suggesting that Jims ought to be able to afford real stones
if she had to adorn herself in the daytime, not the kind of thing you
could pick up from the souk in downtown Aqaba. Everyone wore
high heels with trousers these days but not stilt heels with leggings.
Reckman had a successful technique of insulting her subject by
levelling at her hurtful abuse and immediately following it up with
a sweetly gentle compliment. So she described Zillah's outfit as
more suitable for hanging about King's Cross station, but added
that even soliciting gear couldn't spoil her lovely face, enviably slim
figure and mane of raven hair.
By this time Zillah was crying. She threw the magazine on the
floor and sobbed in the manner of her son Jordan. The stewardess
came up to her and asked if there was anything she could do. A
glass of water? An aspirin? Zillah said she'd like a brandy.
While she was waiting for it Jims came back, his expression
stormy. 'A fine mess you've made of things.'
'I didn't mean to. I was doing my best.'
'If that's your best,' said Jims, 'I wouldn't care to see your worst.'
The brandy made her feel a little better. Jims sat there, austerely
drinking sparkling water. 'It makes you look all kinds of a fool,' he
continued, 'and by extension, since you're my wife, me as well.
What on earth did you mean by threatening to sue for libel? Who
do you think you are? Mohamed Fayed? Jeffrey Archer? How did
she know your - er, Jerry's name?'
'I don't know, Jims. I didn't tell her.'
'You must have. How did she know the children's names?'
'I really didn't tell her. I swear I didn't.'
'What the devil am I going to say to the Chief Whip?'

Jeff Leigh, alias Jock Lewis, once Jeffrey Leach, read the Telegraph
Magazine by chance. Someone had left it on the bus he was taking

126
back from reconnaissance in Westminster. He only looked at it
because a line in white letters on the cover told him that one of his
ex-fiancees was writing inside, Natalie Reckman Meets a Modem
Carmen. He still had a soft spot for Natalie. She'd kept him without
complaint or resentment for nearly a year, got engaged without
expecting a ring and parted from him with no hard feelings.
She'd been tough on Zillah and serve her right. Why was she
keeping the children's existence dark? During the past week he'd
twice been back to Abbey Gardens Mansions, but there had been
no one there. The second time the porter told him Mr and Mrs
Melcombe-Smith were away but he had no idea where the children
were. Jeff tried to press him but he must have become suspicious
because he wouldn't even say if there were any children living in
apartment seven. Could Natalie be right when she implied Zillah
had somehow disposed of them? Yet in that hysterical letter she'd
written him - he'd picked it up off the doormat in the nick of time
before Fiona got there - said he could have access, see them when
he wanted. The way, of course, to settle all this would be for him to
write to Jims and simply tell him that Zillah's husband was alive
and well, and still married to her. Or even write to that old bat
Nora Watling. But Jeff was reluctant to do this. He was aware of
how much Jims disliked him, a feeling that was mutual, and this
antipathy was shared by Zillah's mother. They might simply
disregard his letters. And if they didn't and everything came out
into the open, Fiona would very probably find out.
For all his wedding plans, organising the ceremony and
reception, talking happily about the forthcoming event, Jeff hoped
not to have to marry Fiona while still married to Zillah. He vaguely
planned putting off the wedding, finding a reason for postponing it
till next year. And although he wanted to know that his children
were safe and, come to that, happy, he shied away from having
them to live with him. That would be too extreme a step. If he
exposed Zillah as a bigamist and Jims abandoned her, as he surely
would, the powers-that-be - police? Social Services? the court? might
well take the children from her. The obvious place for them

127
to go would be their father's home. Especially with a broody future
stepmother pining to look after them.
Jeff remembered the ridiculous promise he'd made to Fiona,
while light-headed on Chardonnay, that he'd be a house husband,
stay at home and look after their baby. That could mean looking
after Eugenic and Jordan too. Closing his eyes for a moment, he
pictured his life, shopping in West End Lane with a baby in a
buggy, holding Jordan's hand, hastening to be in time to fetch
Eugenie from school. Jordan's constant tears. Eugenie's didactic
speeches and general disapproval of everything. Getting their tea.
Never going out in the evenings. Changing nappies. No, having
the children wasn't feasible. He would have to think of a reason for
continuing to live with Fiona without marrying her. Was it too late
to say he was Catholic and couldn't be divorced? But Fiona
thought he was divorced already ...
He got off the bus and walked slowly down Holmdale Road. In
all his six-year-long quest to find a woman who was young yet rich,
a home owner, out at work all day, good-looking, sexy and loving,
willing without demur to keep him, he'd never come across one
who satisfied the criteria as well as Fiona. Sometimes, especially
when he'd had a drink, he even felt romantic about her. So how was
he going to juggle the three slippery balls of keeping her in love
with him, obtaining access to his children and avoiding marrying
her?
He let himself into the house and found her. watching Matthew
Jarvey's television show. He kissed her affectionately and asked
after her parents, whom she'd been visiting while he was out. On
the screen Matthew, looking like a famine victim, was gently
interviewing a Weight Watchers woman who'd lost twenty pounds
in six months.
'Must be nuts, that guy,' said Jeff. 'Why doesn't he just get
himself together and eat?'
'Darling, I hope it doesn't upset you, but did you know there's a
big piece in the Telegraph Magazine about your ex-wife?'
'Really?' This would solve his dilemma of whether to tell her or
not.

128
'Mummy kept it for me. She thought it terribly naff - I mean,
the people who write this stuff! What kind of a woman would be
such a bitch?'
For some obscure reason, this innocent attack on Natalie
Reckman made Jeff angry, but he didn't show it. 'Have you got it,
darling?'
'You won't let it upset you, will you?'
Fiona handed him the magazine and returned to watching
Matthew chatting to a man who failed to put on weight no matter
how heartily he ate. On rereading, the bits about Zillah's
clothes and her souk jewellery restored his good temper and made
him want to laugh. He assumed a gloomy expression. 'I admit I'm
anxious about my children,' he said quite truthfully when the
programme ended and Fiona switched off the set.
'Perhaps you should consult a solicitor. Mine's very good. A
woman, of course, and young. High-powered, doing very well for
herself financially. Shall I give her a ring?'
Fleetingly, Jeff considered it. Not because he had any intention
of involving the law - nothing could be more dangerous - but he
liked the sound of this woman: young, high-powered, rich. Good-
looking? Richer than Fiona? He could hardly ask. Regretfully, he
said, 'Better not, at this stage. I'll fix up a meeting with Zillah first.
What shall we do this evening?'
'I thought we might stay in, have a quiet time at home.' She
edged closer to him on the sofa.

Zillah also had a quiet time at home. Jims had dumped the suitcases
in her bedroom and gone off to spend the night with Leonardo. A
note by the phone informed her that her mother had removed the
children to Bournemouth, being unable to stay in London because
Zillah's father had had a heart attack and was in hospital there.
Zillah picked up the phone and, as soon as it was answered, got a
mouthful of abuse from Nora Watling. How dare she go off
without leaving the phone number of the hotel she and Jims were
staying in? And never to call once from the Maldives! Had she no
concern at all for her children?

129
'How's Dad?' asked Zillah in a small, wretched voice.
'Better. He's home. He might be dead for all you care. I may as
well tell you here and now that I never in my life read anything so
disgusting as that article in the Telegraph. I haven't kept it for you. I
burnt it. More or less calling you a prostitute! A gypsy! When you
know perfectly well your father and I come from good West
Country stock for generations back. And that picture! As good as
topless you were. And calling poor James a pervert!'
Zillah held the receiver at a distance until the cackling ceased. 'I
don't suppose you'll feel like bringing the children back?'
'You ought to be ashamed to ask. I'm worn out with nursing
your father. And I don't know what to do about Jordan's crying. It's
not natural a child of three crying at the least little thing. You'll
have to fetch them yourself. Tomorrow. What do you have a car
for? I'll tell you something, Sarah, I didn't know my luck all that
time we barely had any contact. Since you went to London I
haven't had a moment's peace.'

In Glebe Terrace, in Leonardo's tiny but extremely smart Gothic
house, he and Jims were reclining on the huge bed that filled
Leonardo's bedroom but for a few inches between it and the walls,
listening to The Westminster Hour on the radio. They had eaten
their dinner (gravad lax, quails with quails' eggs, biscotti, a bottle of
Pinot Grigio) in that bed and made some inventive love afterwards.
Now they were relaxing in their favourite way, Leonardo having
comforted Jims by telling him not to worry about the Telegraph.
There was nothing offensive about him in it, rather the reverse. It
was Zillah who got all the stick.
A couple who had been spending the evening in a similar way
were Fiona and Jeff. Their lovemaking had also been inventive and
satisfying, but their dinner had consisted of papaya, cold chicken
and ice cream with a bottle of Chilean Chardonnay. Fiona was now
asleep while Jeff sat up in bed rereading Natalie Reckman's piece.
After a while he got up and, treading softly, went downstairs to find
the address book he kept in an inside pocket of his black leather

130
jacket. Fiona, as she'd no hesitation in telling him, was far too
honourable ever to look in jacket pockets.
There it was: Reckman, Natalie, 128 Lynette Road, Islington,
Ni. She might have moved, but it was worth a try. Why not give
her a ring for old times' sake?

^i
Chapter 13

Nearly a month went by before Minty got to see Josephine's
wedding photographs and then she was expected to pay if she
wanted a set of her own. She hadn't the money to waste on things
like that, but she carefully scrutinised the photos for a hint of Jock's
presence before handing them back. Auntie had had a book with
amazing spirit photos in it, taken at seances. Sometimes the spirits
looked solid like Jock and sometimes transparent, so that you could
see the furniture through them. But there was nothing of either
sort in Josephine's pictures, only a lot of drunk people grinning and
shrieking and hugging each other.
For a week, while Ken and Josephine were on a deferred
honeymoon in Ibiza, Minty had been in charge of Immacue on her
own. She didn't like it but she had no choice. Once, when she was
in the back ironing and she heard a man's voice, or rather, a man's
cough from the shop, she thought Jock had come back again, but it
was Laf, his kind face looking doleful and apologetic.
He was in uniform, an imposing figure, all six foot two of him
and, it seemed to Minty, exaggerating, nearly six foot two round his
middle. 'Hallo, Minty, love. How are you?'
Minty said she wasn't so bad, thanks. Josephine would be back
next day.
'It's not Josephine I want. It's you. To be honest with you, it's no
good me popping in next door with Sonovia the way she is. She's
got a nasty tongue when she likes, as you know. But I thought 132
well, me and Sonny are going to see The Cider Hoitse Rules tonight
and I thought - well, you might like to come along. No, don't say
anything for a minute. I thought, maybe you'd meet us there and
sort of come up to us and say hello or whatever and Sonn would well,
she wouldn't make a song and dance of it in a public place,
would she?'
Minty shook her head. 'She'd ignore me.'
'No, she wouldn't, love. Believe me, I know her. It'd be a way of
putting things right between you. I mean, it's not right the way
things are, never being able to pop next door, me not allowed to
pass on the papers and all that. I reckon if you did that, she'd
apologise and then maybe you would and everything'd be grand
again.'
'I've nothing to apologise for. She ought to be glad I had her
outfit cleaned. I've still got it, did you know that? And I've had it
cleaned again since I wore it. If she wants it back she can fetch it.'
Laf tried more persuasion about the cinema visit but Minty only
said, no, thanks. She'd been going to the pictures on her own lately,
it was quieter and there was no one whispering at her. Because she
had no quarrel with Laf she didn't say anything about the popcorn.
He went off, shaking his head and saying she hadn't heard the last
from him, he'd mend the rift if it was the last thing he did.
Anyway, she didn't want to see that film. She didn't care for the
sound of it. Jock had once bought her a half-pint of cider and she'd
had to leave it, it tasted so sour. Jock. She'd seen him several times
since the wedding, so she knew sticking a blunt knife in him hadn't
got rid of him. Again he came into the cemetery when she was
putting tulips on Auntie's grave, called her Polo and said he
preferred narcissi because they had a lovely scent. All the rest of
that day, though she couldn't see him, he kept whispering 'Polo,
Polo' at her. The next sighting was in her own house. Once more
he was in that armchair. He got up when she came in and, lifting
his shirt, showed her the bruise the dinner knife had made in his
side, a purplish-blue blotch. Minty went out of the room and shut
the door on him, though she knew closed doors couldn't keep him
in just as they couldn't keep him out. But when she went back again

^3
he was gone. She'd been trembling so much she'd been walking
through the rooms touching one colour wood after another but
there weren't enough different colours to do any good.
Bruising him wasn't much use. The knife she carried was too
small as well as too blunt. She needed one of Auntie's long carving
knives. As a police sergeant, Lafcadio Wilson had had to be an
observant man and when he came into Immacue to reason with
Minty he'd noticed something like a bar or wooden baton lying
horizontally across her waist. But it was mostly concealed by the
loose garment she wore and it was only when she was backing away
from him and turning her body round to face the other way that he
saw the end of it push out the hem of her sweatshirt. He thought
no more about it. Minty was eccentric, everyone knew that. He
never suspected the truth, that what he detected was a fourteen-
inch-long butcher's knife with a sharp point and a bone handle.
Minty had sharpened it on Auntie's old-fashioned oilstone and
she was surprised at the edge she'd achieved. She laid it against the
skin on her forearm. One touch and the blood leapt from her arm
in a string of beads. She wrapped the knife in one of Auntie's linen
table napkins, securing it in place with elastic bands, then, with
more bands attached it to the bum bag. Provided she wore really
loose tops, it wouldn't show.
Often now she heard his voice, but it never said more than 'Polo,
Polo'. Not so Auntie's, which had joined his. All the time she'd
been praying to Auntie at the grave she never got an answer and
she didn't now. It seemed to her that Auntie spoke when days
elapsed since she'd been to the cemetery, as if she protested at
neglect. The first time she heard the voice she was frightened, it
was so clear, so plainly Auntie's. But in life she'd never been afraid
of her and gradually she became used to this new invisible visitor
from beyond the grave, she'd even have liked to see her, as she saw
Jock. Auntie never appeared. She only talked. The way she had
when she was alive, about her sisters Edna and Kathleen, about her
friend Agnes who'd brought the baby Minty to be looked after for
an hour and had never come back, about the pureed prunes and the

i34
Duke of Windsor and about Sonovia not being the only person on
earth with a son a doctor and a daughter a lawyer.
Then, one day, while Minty was having a bath and washing her
hair, Auntie's voice came very clearly and said something new.
'That Jock's evil, Minty love, he's really evil. He's dead but he can't
ever come where I am because he's an imp of Satan. If I was back
on earth I'd destroy him but I can't touch him from this holy place.
I'm telling you it's your mission to destroy him. You've been called
to destroy him and then he can go back to hell where he belongs.'
Minty never answered Auntie because somehow she knew that
though she could speak, she couldn't hear. She'd been deaf for a
couple of years before she died. The voice persisted for most of the
evening. From her front room Minty watched Sonovia and Laf go
off to the cinema. The evenings were light now, the sun still
shining. But it had always been rather dark inside this house,
perhaps because Auntie and now Minty only drew the curtains back
halfway across the windows. For inner London and in parts a rough
area, it was also very quiet. Mr Kroot on one side lived in dim
silence while the Wilsons weren't keen on television or loud
laughter. Into the absence of any sound Auntie's voice came back,
telling her to destroy Jock and rid the world of his evil spirit.
Next day the top she put on was tighter and shorter, and the
knife showed through, sticking out like some sort of frame. She
tried other ways of carrying it and finally found that wearing it
under her trousers against her right thigh, strapped in place by a
belt, answered best.

A lecture awaited Zillah in the morning. Jims was dressed as she
hadn't seen him for the past ten days. Perhaps she'd never seen him
so svelte and elegant. He wore a charcoal suit, impeccably cut, for
which he'd paid £2000 in Savile Row, a frostily white shirt and a
slate-coloured silk tie with a vertical saffron stripe. Zillah belonged
to that school of taste which holds that a man is never so attractive
as when dressed in a dark formal suit and gloom descended on her.
She hadn't slept well and her hair needed washing.
'I've something to say to you. Sit down and listen, please.

^5
Recriminations are quite useless, I realise that. What's done is
done. It's the future I'm concerned about.' All of Eton and Balliol
were in his tone. 'I don't wish you to speak to any journalists at all,
Zillah. Do you understand what I'm saying? Not any at all. There
must be no exceptions. Frankly, I had no idea when you began on
your press campaign that you would be as rash and uncontrolled as
you have been. I expected a modicum of discretion, but I've said
there are to be no recriminations, so let that be an end to them.
The key phrase for you to remember is, no contact with the media.
Right?'
Zillah nodded. She was remembering the charming boy of her
adolescence who had been such a sweet and funny companion, and
the gracious man who visited her in her loneliness at Long
Fredington and who always seemed close to her in a happy and
intimate conspiracy, Zillah and Jims versus the world. Where had
he gone? Her heart sank like a stone when she thought: this is my
husband.
'I would like to hear you say it, Zillah.'
'I won't talk to the media, Jims. Please don't be so angry with
me.'
'I shall tell Malina Daz to hold you to that. Now you're off to
fetch the children today, I think you said. It would be a good idea if
you were to stay a few days with your parents.'
'In Bournemouth?'
'Why not in Bournemouth? It's a very pleasant watering place
and the children like it. It will give you an opportunity to check on
your father's health. How do you suppose it would look if it got
about - if it got into a newspaper - that (a) you failed to return
from the Maldives when your father had had a coronary and (b)
you failed to rush post-haste to his bedside once you did return?'
'But I didn't know he'd had a coronary till last night!'
'No, because you didn't once take the trouble to phone your
mother while you were away, although your children were with her.'
It was unanswerable. Even Zillah could see that. 'How long do
you want me to stay there?'

136
'Until Friday.'
It was a lifetime.
The traffic was heavy and it was nearly six by the time Zillah
reached her parents' house. Her father lay on the sofa, boxes and
bottles of medicaments on the little table beside him. He looked
perfectly well, his eyes bright and a rosy flush on his face.
'Poor Grandad fell down on the floor,' said Eugenie importantly.
'He was all alone. Nanna had to bring me and Jordan down to save
his life and I said, "If poor Grandad dies, we must get someone to
bury him in the ground," but he didn't die.'
'As you see,' said Charles Watling, grinning.
'We went to the hospital and Nanna said to Grandad, "Your
daughter's gone to the ends of the earth and I don't know her
phone number."'
Nora Wading had packed up the children's things and prepared
sandwiches for them to eat in the car on the way home. When
Zillah said they would be staying till Friday she sat down heavily in
an armchair and said flatly that they couldn't. Even one more day
of Jordan's crying and Eugenie's officiousness would be too much,
not to mention the presence of Zillah herself.
'No one ever wants us,' Eugenie said calmly. 'We're just a
burden. And now our poor mummy is too.'
Weakening, Nora put an arm round her. 'No, you're not, my
darling. Not you and your brother.'
'If we can't stay here,' said Zillah, 'where are we supposed to go?'
Had she known the passage, she might have said that the foxes have
their holes and the birds of the air their nests, but she had not
where to lay her head. 'To a hotel?'
'Your husband had enough of you, has he? That's a good start, I
must say. I suppose you'll have to stay, if that's what you want. But
you'll have to help me. Do the shopping, for one thing, and take
the children out in the afternoons. Never mind about Eugenie's
schooling. That's the last thing on your mind. But you mark my
words, there's no doubt one never gets rid of one's children. No
matter how often you think they've gone for good this time, they
always come back. Look at me with you.'

^7
'You see, you'll never get rid of us, Mummy,' Eugenic said
happily.
Zillah had to sleep in the same room as the children. Jordan went
to sleep crying and woke up in the night crying. This began to
worry her and she wondered vaguely if she should take him to a
child psychiatrist. In the daytime the three of them spent the
mornings food shopping and fetching prescriptions, and in the
afternoons, because the weather was fine, they went to the beach. It
was as bad as being back in Long Fredington. On Thursday
morning Charles Wading became ill again, breathless and with a
pain down his left side. The GP came and he was rushed into
hospital.
'It's no good, you'll have to go, Sarah. I can't stand the worry and
the noise, not with your father like this. I wouldn't be surprised if it
was hearing Jordan crying all the time that set this second attack
off. You can stop tonight in a hotel. Goodness knows, it's not as if
you were short of money.'
At five that afternoon Zillah checked them into a hotel on the
outskirts of Reading. Eugenie and Jordan were tired and after
they'd eaten pizza and chips, went immediately to bed and to sleep.
For once, Jordan didn't cry but nevertheless Zillah slept badly.
Yawning and rubbing her eyes, she remembered to phone her
mother in the morning, was told her father was 'comfortable' and
would probably be having a bypass at the end of the following
week. At just after eight she started the drive home in heavier
traffic than she'd ever experienced and it was past eleven when she
drove into the Abbey Gardens Mansions car park.
Once in the flat she phoned Mrs Peacock. Would she have the
children? Take them somewhere for lunch and then maybe to the
zoo or Hampton Court or something? Please. She'd pay her double
her usual rate. Mrs Peacock, who'd spent a lot more than she'd
meant to while in the Netherlands, readily said yes. Zillah rang the
porters, told them she wasn't to be disturbed on any account,
unplugged the phones and fell into bed.
The quest for his children Jeff might have postponed for a while
138
had it not been for Fiona's urging. It must have been seeing his
dilemma down in black and white in the newspaper that affected
her, for she'd spent most of Monday evening encouraging him to
arrange a meeting with Zillah, demand to see his children and, if
such attempts failed, consult her solicitor. Jeff knew it wasn't the
plain sailing it seemed to her. Too much of this sort of thing and
his marital status would come out. He couldn't exactly promise
he'd free himself from Zillah, for how could you divorce a woman
who'd already married someone else? How could he say he was a
Catholic when he'd never mentioned it before?
On Tuesday he'd taken the Jubilee Line tube from West
Hampstead to Westminster and walked down to Abbey Gardens
Mansions. No one was at home in number seven and this time the
head porter said he'd no idea where Mrs Melcombe-Smith was.
Someone must have warned him to be discreet, for he denied all
knowledge of any children living in the flat. For all he knew, as he
said afterwards to his deputy, that chap might be a kidnapper or a
paedophile.
It was a lovely day. Jeff sat on a seat in the Victoria Tower
Gardens and called Natalie Reckman on his mobile. At first he got
her voice mail but when he rang again ten minutes later she
answered.
Her tone was cordial. 'Jeff! I suppose you read my piece in the
magazine?'
'I didn't need that to remind me,' he said. ' I think about you a
lot. I miss you.'
'How nice. All alone, are you?'
'You could say that,' Jeff answered carefully. 'Have lunch with
me. Tomorrow? Wednesday?'
'I couldn't before Friday.'
He had the five hundred he'd won on Website. Unashamedly he
said, 'I'll pay. Where shall we eat? You choose.'
She'd chosen Christopher's. Well, he could use Zillah's Visa
card and hope he hadn't already gone over its limit with the
handbag he'd bought Fiona for her birthday and the roses for the
six months' anniversary of their moving in together. These cards

i39
should have their limit printed on them for the sake of people like
him. He'd crossed the street and tried the Melcombe-Smith flat
again but Zillah still wasn't in.
On Thursday, a bit recklessly, he'd backed a horse called Spin
Doctor to win and it came in first. The odds had been long and
he'd picked up a packet. Next day he went back to Westminster
and got to Abbey Gardens Mansions just as Zillah and the children
were coming off the Mq. at Chiswick. He rang the bell, got no
answer, made more enquiries of the porter and was told the man
didn't know, he couldn't keep tabs on all the residents and no one
expected him to. As it happened, Jims had gone down to his
constituency on the previous afternoon, by chance passing Zillah
outside Shaston. Neither saw the other.
Jeff wondered how he could consult a solicitor without its
coming out that he was still married to Zillah. Dared he confess
this to Natalie? Probably not. She was a very nice woman, clever
and good-looking, but she was above all a journalist. He wouldn't
trust her an inch. The only person he could confess to was Fiona.
As he wandered along the Embankment in the sunshine, he
pondered the possibility of this. The danger was that she wouldn't
forgive him, she wouldn't say something on the lines of, 'Darling,
why didn't you tell me sooner?' or 'It doesn't matter but you'd
better set about it now,' but would throw him out of the house. She
was strictly law-abiding, he'd never known such rectitude in a
woman or man either, come to that. Whatever she advised or
whatever she warned him about, she'd want those Melcombe-
Smiths told the truth, she'd want to know his intentions. Jeff didn't
care much for Zillah and he actively disliked Jims but he stopped
short at making her destitute and wrecking the man's career. No,
he couldn't confess to anyone. Except perhaps to a solicitor? What
he told such a person would be in confidence. There might be
some way of serving divorce papers on Zillah without Jims or
anyone else being any the wiser. But what about the children?
Would it be possible to get a divorce without mentioning the
children's existence? After all, they didn't need anyone to support
them, they had Jims. One of those postal divorces. . .

140
With these thoughts rotating in his head, he bought himself a
cup of coffee in the Strand, a half of bitter in a pub in Covent
Garden and arrived at Christopher's at five to one. Natalie came in
at five past. As always, she was severely dressed, this dme in a grey
pinstriped trouser suit, but with her upswept blonde hair - she had
that kind of stripy fair hair, gold and flaxen and light brown, which
no dye can emulate and which Jeff admired - and discreet silver
jewellery, she looked very fetching.
After some small talk and, in Jeffs case, a lot of lies about his
recent past, he grew mildly sentimental about what might have
been.
'I don't know about that,' said Natalie sharply. 'You left me.'
'It was what they call constructive desertion.'
'They call it that, do they? And by that they mean, presumably, a
certain amount of questioning on my part as to why I always paid
the rent and bought the food?'
'I'd explained I was between jobs, you know.'
'No, you weren't, Jeff. You were between women. Just in a spirit
of enquiry, who came after me?'
Minty had. Looking back, Jeff thought he'd never sunk so low.
But he'd been impoverished and desperate, living in that dump in
Harvist Road. The Queen's Head barmaid Brenda had told him
Minty had her own house and a lot of money, her aunt had left her
God knew how much. A quarter of what rumour said, if he knew
anything about it, but as he'd put it to himself, any port in a storm.
He might as well be more or less honest about it with Natalie.
'A funny little thing, lived up near Kensal Green Cemetery. I
called her Polo because of her name.' He hesitated. 'I don't think
I'll tell you what that was. I owe her some money actually, only a
thousand. Don't look like that. I mean to pay her back as soon as I
can.'
'You never paid me back.'
'You were different. I knew you could afford it.'
'You're incredible, you really are. She came after me. Who was
before me?'
The chief executive of a charity and a restaurateur, but he could

141
leave them out. He'd told enough of the truth for one day. 'My ex-
wife.'
'Ah, the tarty Mrs Melcombe-Smith. You should have cured her
of decorating herself like a Christmas tree. I suppose she never had
the chance while she was with you. Funny I remembered your
children's names, wasn't it? I must have been fond of you.'
'I was hoping you still are.'
Natalie smiled as she finished her double espresso. 'Up to a
point, Jeff. But I've got someone, you see, and I'm very happy with
him. You didn't ask, though I asked you. Does that say something
about us?'
'Probably that I'm a selfish bastard,' said Jeff cheerfully, though
he wished she'd told him before he'd asked her to lunch and was on
the way to forking out eighty pounds. One thing about Jeff, as
women were to say later, was that he'd no false pride. He didn't try
to put himself on her level by mentioning Fiona.
'Where are you off to now?' she asked when they were out in
Wellington Street.
'Movies,' he said. 'I don't suppose you'd feeling like coming too?'
'You don't suppose right.' She kissed him on the cheek, one
cheek. 'I've work to do.'
He'd told Natalie he was going to the cinema but this was
because it was the first thing that came into his head. It wasn't what
he'd intended. Revisiting Abbey Gardens Mansions was what he'd
had in mind. But getting back to Westminster wouldn't be easy
from Kingsway. He'd done enough walking for one day and there
was no bus or tube from here that went that way. A taxi with its
light on came along and he almost stepped off the pavement and
put up his hand. The driver began to pull in. Jeff thought of the
money he'd spent on Natalie's lunch and the credit card that was
probably over its limit and shook his head. Thus he sealed his fate.
Or he almost sealed it. The seal was poised and it wavered above
the hot fresh wax and he was given one more chance. At Holborn
he got into a westbound Central Line tube train. As it approached
Bond Street, he thought he might as well get off, change on to the
Jubilee Line and go home. But being at home on his own was

142
something he'd never much cared for. He needed a woman there
and some food and drink and entertainment. The train came into
Bond Street and stopped, the doors opened, a dozen people got out
and much the same number got in. The doors closed. Instead of
proceeding, the train waited where it was. As usual there was no
explanation for the delay offered over the public address system.
The doors opened. Jeff got up, hesitated, sat down again. The
doors closed and the train started. At the next station, Marble Arch,
he got out.
He went up the steps, turned right and made his way to the
Odeon. One of the films showing was The House on Haunted Hill.
He picked it because it started at three thirty-five and the time was
now a quarter past three. For some reason, when he'd bought his
ticket, he thought of what his mother used to say, that it was a
shame to go to the pictures when the sun was shining outside.

i43
Chapter 14

It would have been more interesting, Minty sometimes thought, if
the shirt colours and designs had been more varied. If there hadn't
been a preponderance of white ones, for instance or if more had
had button-down collars and pockets on them. She thought the
white ones were getting more common, there must be a fashion for
absolutely plain white shirts. This Friday morning it had meant
ironing three white ones before she did a pink stripe and two more
before coming to the blue with a navy stripe and button-down
collar. She'd arranged them in order before starting. Just leaving it
to chance was fatal. Last time she'd done that she'd ended up with
six white ones and it was weary work getting through six shirts that
all looked the same. Apart from being, in her estimation, unlucky.
That morning, when she'd had the white ones left over, had been
the last day she'd seen Jock, and it had to have something to do
with the shirts being out of sequence.
His ghost had been in the hall when she'd got home last evening,
standing there looking out for her, waiting for the sound of her key
in the lock. She'd pulled up her sweatshirt, undone her trousers and
tugged the knife out of the strap that held it against her leg, but
he'd slipped past her and run upstairs. Though she was shaking
with fear, she'd run after him, chasing him into Auntie's bedroom.
Just as she'd thought she had him cornered he vanished through
the wall, the way she'd heard spirits could but had never seen
before. Auntie's voice had said, 'You nearly had him there, girl,'

144
and said a lot more while Minty was having her bath, all about Jock
being evil and a menace to the world, the cause of flood and
famine, and the herald of the Antichrist, but it wasn't the first time
she'd said that and Minty knew it already. She was beginning to get
as impatient with Auntie's talking as she was with Jock's appearances.

Drying her hair, strapping on the knife again, pulling on clean
T-shirt and trousers, she shouted out as the voice persisted, 'Go
away! I've had enough of you. I know what to do!' She went on
saying it as she went downstairs and heard the doorbell ring.
Sonovia's younger daughter Julianna, the one who was at university,
was outside.
'Were you talking to me, Minty?'
'I wasn't talking to anyone,' said Minty. She hadn't seen Julianna
for about a year and only just recognised her, what with a gold stud
in one nostril and her hair in about ten thousand braids. It made
her shiver. How often could she wash it and how did she get that
stud in and out? 'Did you want something?'
'I'm sorry, Minty. I know you and Mum aren't speaking, but now
Mum wants her blue outfit back, she'd lost a lot of weight to get
into it, and she's going to wear it to a christening on Sunday.'
'You'd better come in.'
Serve her right if Jock came and talked to her, Minty thought as
she went upstairs. She might be one of those people who could see
him. It would be a relief to get rid of the blue dress and jacket. In
spite of dry-cleaning it twice, she couldn't rid herself of the idea
that it was still dirty and contaminating the house. 'Polo, Polo,'
Jock whispered to her as she went into Auntie's room. He was still
there, then, though she couldn't see him any longer.
She'd zipped the outfit up inside a dry-cleaner's bag, taken it
downstairs and handed it over to Julianna. 'It's a bit gloomy in
here,' Julianna said. 'Why don't you pull the curtains back?'
'I like it that way.'
'Minty?'
'What?'
'You wouldn't come back with me, would you, and say hello to

^5
Mum and sort of make things all right? It'd really please my dad if
you would. He says it gets up his nose not being on good terms
with the neighbours.'
'Tell your mum', said Minty, 'it's her fault, she started it. She can
say she's sorry and then I'll start speaking.'
From the window she watched the girl go. She thought of all this
while she was ironing and Josephine said, 'Did you ever make it up
with what's-her-name that lives next door to you? The one that
made all that fuss about her dress?'
'She's called Sonovia.' Minty slipped the last white shirt but
three into its plastic bag, tucked the cardboard collar round its neck
and took the last striped one from the pile. 'Her husband came in
here begging me to apologise but I said I'd nothing to apologise
about, it was all her. It was all her, wasn't it? You were there.'
'Of course it was. I'd say that in any court of law.' Josephine
looked at her gold and rhinestone watch, a wedding present from
Ken. 'I tell you what, Minty, when you've finished that lot you can
take the afternoon off if you want. And tomorrow morning. It's
only what you deserve, looking after the place while me and Ken
were on honeymoon.'
Minty thanked her and managed a half-smile. She'd rather have
had a rise but thought it was hopeless asking. The last three shirts
were always a drag to do, but she'd finished them by five to one.
At home again, she took her second bath of the day, feeling fresh
resentment against Jock when she thought how he'd done her out
of the money she could have spent on a shower cabinet.
Sometimes, while in the bath, she thought of the dirt that came off
her floating about in the water and getting back on her again. The
dirt from her body into her hair and the dirt from her hair on to
her body. It might be the reason for her never feeling clean
enough. Would she ever be able to afford a shower now?
She ate one of her clean hygienic lunches: carefully washed
chicory leaves, a skinned chicken wing, six small boiled potatoes,
two slices of white bread with good unsalted butter on them. Then
she washed her hands. She'd spend her afternoon off at the cinema.
It was a beautiful, hot, sunny day. Even Kensal Green had smelt

146
fresh and floral as she walked home from Immacue. Beyond the
high wall the trees of the cemetery made it look as if some verdant
park lay behind. Auntie used to say it was a wicked shame going to
the cinema on a fine day, you ought to be outside enjoying it. But
she didn't say it now, though Minty listened for her voice to come.
Should she go to Whiteley's or to the Odeon at Marble Arch? The
Whiteley's complex was nearer, but to reach it she'd have to go
through one of the underpasses below the Westway. An underpass
was just the sort of place Jock might be waiting for her and she
didn't want to see him today, she didn't want him spoiling her time
off. So Marble Arch on the 36 bus. The House on Haunted Hill was
showing there and she quite liked the sound of it. Ghosts in a film
weren't frightening when you had a real ghost of your own.

Ages passed before the bus came, or it seemed like ages, though it
was only ten minutes. As if making up for time, it raced along the
Harrow Road and down the Edgware Road, dropping her off at the
bottom at exactly three o'clock. By this time she was an old hand at
buying her own ticket, showing it to the usher and making her way
alone to a seat. Ten people were sitting in the auditorium. Minty
counted. She sat in a seat at the end of a row, so that no one could
sit next to her on the right, and unless the place filled up, which it
wouldn't, nobody would choose to sit on her left. The present
occupants of the cinema all looked older than she and were isolated
except for a couple of pensioners, man and woman, seated in the
very front row. She was pleased to find herself almost alone in the
whole block of seats on the right-hand side. It was much better
going to the cinema in the afternoon than with Laf and Sonovia in
the evening.
The auditorium darkened and advertisements appeared on the
screen. Minty had often before watched such commercials with
puzzlement, for she understood not a word of them and not an
image. The noise they made was loud and the voices that uttered
incomprehensible words raucous, while music pounded and brilliant
colours and explosive lights flashed across the screen. They

i47
were succeeded by something romantic and dreamy, accompanied
by a soft sonata: the first trailer of films to come.
To her annoyance, a man had come in and was edging along the
row in front of her. He probably couldn't see where he was, the
place was dark as pitch but for the pastel colours on the screen. He
turned light-dazzled eyes in her direction and she saw it was Jock's
ghost. There seemed nowhere she could go where he wouldn't
follow her and haunt her. He wasn't wearing his black leather
jacket today, it was too warm for that, but a stripy shirt like one of
those she'd ironed that morning and a linen jacket that looked new.
Where did ghosts get new clothes from? She'd never thought of
that before.
He sat down, not directly in front of her, but in the seat in front
of the one next to hers, and took a packet of Polo mints out of his
pocket. How long would he stay? Would he get up again and
vanish through the wall as he'd done the night before in Auntie's
room? Minty was more angry than she'd been for a long time,
perhaps than she'd ever been. Fear of him had almost gone, it was
all anger now. He half turned his head, then looked back at the
screen. The romantic film trailer faded away and a violent one
came on, the sort that shows high-powered cars in brilliant colours
and blazing lights crashing into other cars and careering over
precipices while maddened men craned out of their windows, firing
guns. The ghost took a mint out of the packet and put it in his
mouth. Carefully and silently Minty lifted her T-shirt, unzipped
her trousers and pulled the knife stealthily from its plastic
sheathing and the strapping round her leg. She laid it on the seat
beside her, zipped up her trousers and pulled down her T-shirt.
She thought she'd been quiet but she must have made a little
sound.
Jock's ghost turned round again, more fully this time. As he
looked into her face in the dimness and the roaring noise, his eyes
opened wide and he began to get to his feet as if he were afraid of
her instead of her of him. More swiftly than she could have
believed she'd do it, she snatched up the knife and, rising, thrust it

148
into where she guessed his heart was. If a ghost had a heart, if a
ghost could die.

He didn't cry out, or if he did she couldn't hear it above the car
crashes and the guns and the beat of the music. No one could have
heard anything with that noise going on. But maybe he hadn't
made a sound, perhaps ghosts didn't. It took both hands to pull the
knife out. There was something reddish brown on it that
looked like blood, only it couldn't be, ghosts didn't have blood. It
must be whatever ghosts had in their veins that made them able to
walk and talk. Ectoplasm maybe. Auntie had talked a lot about
ectoplasm in her last years. Minty wiped the dirty knife on the
upholstery of the seat next to her. It still wasn't clean, of course it
wasn't, it would have to be put in a pan of water and the water
brought to the boil before it was really clean. But there was no
water here, no stove and no gas. Shuddering, she unzipped her
trousers and pushed the knife back against her leg, thankful for the
plastic wrapping which kept it from contact with her skin.
Jock's ghost had fallen to the floor and disappeared. Or at any
rate, she couldn't see what remained of it. She didn't want to. And
she didn't care to remain where she was with the dirty stuff wiped
off on to the seat next to her, but she did want to see this film.
Fastidiously, shrinking away from contact with that seat as she
passed it, she moved to the aisle end of the row, walked a few yards
up the aisle and picked herself another seat. It was in the central
block and there was no one in front of her and no one behind.
Sleepy Hollow hadn't frightened her and this one didn't. It was a
disappointment. If these film people had had her experience of
ghosts they'd know more about making things frightening. She
wished she'd gone to The Green Mile, but it was too late now.
Anyway, if she had, Jock's ghost mightn't have been there and she
wouldn't have had the chance of banishing him once and for all.
When the film was about three-quarters of the way through she got
up and left. The man in the back row left too, so she wasn't the
only one who hadn't liked it.
Outside it was still hot and sunny. She looked at her hands to see

149
if there was any mess on them but she'd wiped what there was off
on the seat when she'd wiped the knife. Still she shivered because
when she lifted her fingers up to her nose she could smell
something that was like blood but stronger, she thought, more
bitter and unholy. Spots and splashes of it were all over her clothes
but they weren't noticeable to anyone but herself because her
trousers were dark red and her T-shirt was a red and blue and
yellow pattern. Not that Minty much worried about anyone seeing,
it was for herself that she cared. She'd never been concerned about
what other people thought of her. They ought to be thinking about
what she thought of them.
But she didn't want to get on a bus. Sitting with that ghost juice
on her would somehow be worse than walking in the fresh air. For
one thing, it would be all around her, close to her, pressing on her,
and for another she'd smell it more. The stench of it began to make
her miserable, to make her want to tear her clothes off and plunge
into water, any water. That wasn't possible. So she walked. Up the
Edgware Road in the heat and the smell from the Middle Eastern
takeaway restaurants, along the start of the Harrow Road and
through the underpass into Warwick Avenue. There was no longer
any fear of meeting Jock there.
This was familiar territory, home ground. The people you
passed never took any notice of you and they never sniffed, trying
to smell you. Everyone sweated, there was no escaping it, but she
hated it happening to her, the feel of the beads of moisture
breaking out on her upper lip and forehead, the trickle of it
dripping down her chest like tears. It wouldn't smell, not with all
the deodorant she used. But how could you be sure you hadn't
missed out a little bit of skin surface? She imagined the sweat
leaking out of that little bit inside her armpit and that awful meaty,
oniony smell breathing on to the air. Almost crying now with the
filth that covered her, her own perspiration and the splashed ghost
juice, she let herself into the house. She ran upstairs and fell into
the bath. It was half an hour later that she boiled the knife. The
clothes she'd worn were beyond saving, far far beyond washing.
She wrapped them in newspaper, then in plastic, and put them into

150
a black waste bag. Knowing they'd be there, albeit outside, for
another four days, sent her out again. The heat met her, it was like
opening an oven door. She walked slowly, shrinking her body to
keep the sweat in, and dropped the bag into the big council rubbish
bin a few yards up the road.

15I
Chapter 15

Michelle set out wineglasses on the coffee table, a heart-shaped
dish filled with vegetable crisps that would neither thin down nor
fatten up and a rather larger oval one with dry-roasted peanuts.
Fiona had said she liked them and she hoped to persuade Matthew
to eat a few as well. She, of course, would eat nothing, not even the
pink and orange slivers of root vegetable, and would go sparingly
on the wine. After her shower that morning she had stood on the
scales, hardly daring to look, but found she'd lost three pounds.
The week before it had been four pounds. Could there be any
greater tonic to an overweight woman than to find she'd lost half a
stone in a fortnight? She'd been singing while she dressed herself
and Matthew had smiled lovingly at her.
He and she had been out shopping in the afternoon and bought
the wine. Michelle knew nothing about wine but Matthew did - in
her opinion he was an expert on everything - and he'd chosen a
Meursault. Fiona was coming and Michelle knew she preferred
white wine over any other alcoholic drink. There wasn't much food
to buy, just the few things Matthew would eat, and today he'd
agreed to try a bit of chicken, another suggestion of Fiona's, the
kind you get at a delicatessen counter and which looks like a close-
textured white loaf, from which the assistant saws wafer-thin slices.
It would do for her too, along with some green leaves. The
shopping bags were about twenty pounds lighter than usual.
It was such a lovely day that Michelle had suggested she drive

152
them both up to the Heath, where they could sit in the sunshine
and look at the view. So she'd done this and they'd stayed up there
a long time, talking about Matthew's TV successes. He was due to
have lunch with a producer who planned to make a short series on
the lines of the pilot programme.
'When he said "lunch",' Matthew said, 'I started laughing,
darling, I couldn't help it. I thought, me having lunch with
someone. In a restaurant. He thought I was laughing with pleasure
at the idea of a series.'
'Can you do it?' Michelle was all concern. 'Eat with someone in
a restaurant, I mean? I know you can do the series.'
'I'm going to try. Before we start I'm going to remind him what I
am and just why I got the job. And then I'll eat salad and a bit of
dry bread. By "eat" I mean nibble and leave three-quarters.'
When Michelle looked at her watch it was past four and they had
to get back. She hadn't given Fiona a definite time, just said to
come in for a drink when she returned from work. Jeff hadn't been
mentioned but Michelle knew that when people were a couple you
had to accept the uncongenial one along with the one you liked.
'Still, I hope he's out somewhere and not expected home till
seven,' she said to Matthew as she put the two bottles of wine in the
fridge.
Matthew looked up from his computer. 'I don't think he'll be
rude to you in my presence, darling. If he is I shall tell him to watch
his tongue.'
'Oh, Matthew, we mustn't upset Fiona.'

'He mustn't upset you,' said Matthew.
Still, if it hadn't been for Jeff, Michelle thought, she wouldn't be
losing weight now. Every time she was tempted by a croissant or a
slice of quiche she remembered his hurtful words and turned away
from the dangerous food. It was rather odd, to dislike someone yet
feel indebted to him.
A little after five thirty Fiona rang the bell. 'You should have
come in the back way,' said Michelle. 'No need to be formal.'
'All right, I won't next time. Jeffs out somewhere. He's gone for

i53
a job interview. Well, actually, two job interviews, one over lunch
and the other at four this afternoon.'
Michelle said nothing. She didn't believe in these possible jobs,
but she thought Jeff Leigh perfectly capable of saying he'd found
lucrative employment; this in order to get himself out of the house
for regular periods each day while pursuing whatever nefarious
occupations provided him with an income.
'I've left him a note telling him to come in here when he gets
home. I hope that's all right.'
'Of course.'
There was a chill in Michelle's tone and Fiona noticed it. But she
smiled uncertainly, told Michelle she was looking remarkably well
and wasn't she right in thinking she'd lost weight?
'A few pounds,' said Michelle comfortably.
Matthew shut down his computer and poured the wine. He
passed Fiona the dish of peanuts and ate two himself. Michelle had
sparkling water. She watched in amazement as Matthew poured
himself half a glass of wine and sipped it like a person who hadn't
an eating problem, raising his glass to Fiona and saying, 'To your
future happiness!'
The talk turned to Fiona's wedding, who'd be invited, what she'd
wear, where they'd go for their honeymoon. Michelle noticed she
still had no engagement ring and then castigated herself for being a
censorious bitch. Maybe engagement rings were no longer fashionable
or Fiona just didn't like them. Fiona began talking about a
vegan she knew who was bringing up her children as vegans which
she, Fiona, didn't think was right. How could she be sure they'd get
enough protein? But she'd wondered if Matthew would think the
vegan woman suitable to go on his programme.
Matthew laughed and said it was early days yet. 'I haven't got a
programme till I've talked to the producer and perhaps not even
then.'
'Oh, everyone knows you will have. That first one was so good.
Well, I don't know where Jeffs got to. Did you hear my phone
ringing a minute ago? That may have been him.'
Michelle occasionally heard the ringing of Fiona's phone

^4
through the wall but she hadn't this time. She saw Fiona to the
door and kissed her as they said goodbye.
'There you are, darling,' Matthew said. 'He's no more keen on
our company than we are on his.'
Because it was past seven when she let herself into her house,
Fiona checked her answering machine for messages and then she
checked her mobile. Nothing. Jeff might have phoned, of course,
and not left a message. That would mean he'd soon be home. She'd
very little food in the house and didn't feel like going out to buy
some, so she called a restaurant they both liked at Swiss Cottage
and booked a table for dinner at eight thirty.

'Wake up,' said Eugenie, shaking Zillah. 'If you go to bed in the
daytime you won't sleep tonight.'
Zillah opened her eyes sluggishly and sat up with a groan. It was
half past five and she'd slept since eleven. For a moment she hardly
knew where she was or why she was there. Then she heard Jordan
crying. 'Where's Mrs Peacock?'
'You gave her a key and she let us in. If you hadn't I expect we'd
have been out there on the doormat all night. In the cold. Why
don't you give me a key, Mummy?'
'Because seven-year-olds don't have keys. And it isn't cold, it's
probably the hottest day of the year. Where's Mrs Peacock?'
'Out there.' Eugenie pointed to the door. 'I wouldn't let her
come into your bedroom because you might not have any clothes
on.'
Zillah got up and, noticing she was wearing only a bra and
knickers, put on her dressing gown. Outside the bedroom door,
Jordan sat on the floor in tears. She picked him up and he buried
his wet face in her neck.
Mrs Peacock was sitting in the living room, in the window seat
with its magnificent view of the sunlit Palace of Westminster,
drinking from a large glass of what was evidently cream sherry. 'I
helped myself,' she said, not at all abashed. 'I needed it.'
'Mrs Peacock took us to McDonald's and then to a movie,' said
Eugenie. 'We saw Toy Story 2. And please don't say you shouldn't

155
go to the cinema when the sun's shining because we did and we
loved it, didn't we, Jordan?'
'Jordan cried.' He dug his fingers into his mother's neck till she
winced.
'I must owe you a lot of money.'
'Yes, you do rather. I'll just have another Bristol Cream and then
we'll tot it up, shall we?'
Zillah paid Mrs Peacock double her usual rate as well as for the
cinema and the lunch. Somewhat unsteady on her feet by this time,
she meandered into the lift. Zillah shut the front door. Where was
Jims? With Leonardo, no doubt. Or had he gone down to his
constituency? Most likely he was in Fredington Crucis and had
Leonardo with him. She wondered how on earth she was going to
pass the weekend. It was as bad as being in Long Fredington.
Because there was no Annie or Lynn here, no Titus and Rosalba, it
was worse.

The body of Jeffrey John Leach lay on the floor of the cinema, on
the right-hand side between rows M and N, for nearly two hours
before it was discovered. No one leaving a cinema looks along an
empty row even if the lights are on. The next performance of The
House on Haunted Hill was due to begin at six ten and there would
be a final screening, the most popular, at eight forty-five. But the
six-ten showing was fairly well attended - or would have been if the
two eighteen-year-old girls hadn't entered row M at a quarter to.
They told no one what they saw. They screamed.
Immediately the cinema was cleared and patrons' ticket money
refunded. An ambulance came, but it was too late for that. The
police arrived. Jeffrey Leach had taken a little while to die, it came
out later at the inquest, as his lifeblood seeped away into the carpet.
Police noticed the blood all over one of the seats, as if the
perpetrator had wiped the weapon on its upholstery. It was at this
point that the whole cinema, not only this particular theatre, was
closed to the public.
Within an hour they knew that Jeff had died between three and
four thirty. None of the staff remembered who had sat in that row

156
nor any patron leaving early. One said he thought he recalled a
man leaving around five and another vaguely remembered a
woman slipping out at ten past. Both were unable to describe these
people or even make a guess at their ages. The cinema was
searched for the weapon, a long, sharp carving knife. When that
yielded nothing the search was extended and the Edgware Road
closed from Marble Arch to Sussex Gardens, causing the worst
traffic jam in central London for ten years.
The body was removed. The bloodstained seat and those on
either side of it were also taken away for DNA testing, in case the
perpetrator had left behind a hair, a flake of skin, a drop of his or
her own blood. The police might have saved themselves the
trouble. All the hairs that ever fell from Minty's head came out
when she washed it, as she did once or twice a day, and disappeared
down the plughole. Any flakes of skin had been scrubbed off with a
nailbrush and a loofah in hot soapy water. She left no more DNA
behind her than would a plastic doll fresh from its manufacturer's.
The principle that every murderer leaves something of himself
behind at the crime scene and takes some trace of it with him,
Minty had disproved.

When it got to nine and Jeff hadn't come home, Fiona was so
worried she went next door. Not because Michelle or Matthew
would know any more than she did, not that they could give her
any advice she couldn't give herself, but simply for their company,
for the comfort and reassurance they might give her. To have
someone else with whom to share her anxiety. Long before, she'd
cancelled that dinner reservation, made herself tea and tried
unsuccessfully to eat a sandwich.
Afterwards, when they were in bed, Matthew and Michelle
confessed to each other that they'd both had the same thought: that
Jeff had deserted Fiona. Of course, they said not a word of this at
the time. When a woman is out of her mind with worry you don't
tell her that maybe the man she met only eight months before and
of whose past history she knows nothing, has walked out on her.

157
You don't say he's obviously a villain and a conman who's alarmed
by the prospect of marriage. You give her a brandy and tell her to
wait a little and then you'll start phoning hospitals.
Fiona went home twice just to check he hadn't come back in the
meantime. She returned to the Jarveys twice, by now shaking with
fear. It was past ten. If that man's somewhere with another woman,
thought Michelle, I'll find some way to punish him. Never mind
his teaching me to slim, that was me, not him. I didn't have to take
notice of what he said, but I will make life hard for him if he's
betrayed her. I will find him and tell him what I think of him. I will
set a private detective on his track, I will. Her unaccustomed
vindictiveness alarmed her and she forced herself to give Fiona an
encouraging smile. Should she make tea? Another drink? Fiona
stood up and threw herself into Michelle's arms. Michelle hugged
her and patted her shoulder, and held her against her big, soft
bosom while Matthew phoned the Royal Free and the Whitting-
ton, and half a dozen other hospitals. Then he phoned the police.
They knew nothing about a Jeff Leigh. Matthew spelt the name
for them.
'You said Leigh, not Leach?'

'No, Leigh.'
'There's been no accident to anyone of that name.'
For by now they knew whose was the body they had on their
hands. In the breast pocket of its linen jacket they found a
bloodstained driving licence in the name of Jeffrey John Leach, of
45 Greta Road, Queen's Park, London NWio. It had been issued
nine years ago and a long time before new British driving licences
were required to contain their holders' photograph. Also in the
pocket were a photograph, in a plastic pack, of a long-haired young
man with a baby in his arms, a bloodstained letter from a woman
called Zillah, a doorkey of a common kind and unnumbered, three
hundred and twenty pounds in twenty- and ten-pound notes, a Visa
card in the name of Z. H. Leach and a half-used packet of Polo
mints.
It took no more than a few hours to establish that Jeffrey John

158
Leach was married to Sarah Helen Leach, nee Wading, who also
had a driving licence and lived at an address in Long Fredington,
Dorset.

I59
Chapter 16

Arriving in his parliamentary constituency late on Friday afternoon,
Jims had first had a meeting with his agent, Colonel Nigel
Travers-Jenkins, and then, accompanied by him, gone as guest of
honour and principal speaker to the annual gala dinner of the
South Wessex Young Conservatives at the Lord Quantock Arms in
Markton. Contrary to Zillah's belief, Leonardo wasn't with him.
While he was speaking, on the subject of the Party's future hope
and inspiration being in the hands of its youth, whose idealism and
fervour had already been manifested to him that evening, Zillah
was sitting in the Abbey Gardens flat watching a Rugrats video with
the children, Jordan grizzling on her lap.
Jims, who had been casually fond of her for years, had always
used her rather as a screen for his natural activities than as a friend.
She was the kind of woman whose appearance led the South
Wessex Conservatives to put her down as a female of loose morals.
Any Fredingtonian seeing him call at Willow Cottage, particularly
in the evenings, believed - again in their phrase - the worst. But
they were the sort of people who held to a double standard,
condemning the woman in this situation but attaching no blame to
the man. Rather the reverse, as Jims well knew, for someone had
reported back to him that Colonel Travers-Jenkins had been
overheard calling him 'a bit of a lad with the birds'. For this reason,
though he used her, he had always felt grateful to Zillah and
persuaded himself this was affection.

160
Now he was married to her he felt quite differently. She was a
nuisance and, if not kept under surveillance, might damage his
career. Jims thought about these things as he drove back to his
house in Fredington Crucis. What a pity it was that once you'd
been through a marriage ceremony, you had to live under the same
roof as your bride! What a misfortune you couldn't give her a lump
sum and a little house somewhere, and never see her again! Still, he
knew this was impossible. He must be married and manifestly be
seen to be married. And his wife must be Caesar's wife. There was
no other way. When he got home on Monday morning he would
set about educating Zillah in her duties as helpmeet to the Member
for South Wessex. He would teach her about the boards and
committees she must chair, the garden parties she must attend, the
baby shows judge, Conservative Women's gatherings address, the
canvassing she must do and the suitable clothes she must wear. No
skirts above the knee, nothing low-cut, no sexy shoes, tight trousers
- maybe no trousers at all - but afternoon dresses and big hats. A
supposed mistress may look like a loose woman but not an MP's
wife.
Jims had phoned Leonardo and then gone to bed. In the
morning he held his surgery at nine sharp in Casterbridge Shire
Hall, where he made earnest promises to his constituents that he
would personally improve the education of their children, the
National Health Service, transport and the environment, while
undertaking to retain at all costs hunting with dogs. Jims didn't say
'dogs', though that was the term that appeared in the tide of the
new Bill proposed on the subject. To please the people in the Shire
Hall he referred always to 'hounds'. Talk of the hunt, a constant
subject of conversation and discussion in South Wessex, reminded
him that on Saturday evening he would be addressing the local
branch of the Countryside Alliance at Fredington Episcopi village
hall. The meeting would be so well attended that the largest hall in
the neighbourhood had been chosen as its venue.
His speech he had brought with him. It was still in his briefcase,
which he hadn't even opened while at Fredington Crucis House. In
calling it a speech, Jims was rather underrating himself, for of

161
course he had no intention of reading to the assembled members.
But there were all sorts of details of a previous Private Member's Bill that he had noted down on paper, along with statistics, reports
on research into cruelty to stags and stress levels in foxes and, most
important, assessments of the hardship which would be suffered by
locals should hunting be banned in what Jims was careful to call
'England' and occasionally 'this blessed plot', but never 'the United
Kingdom'. Also with his notes was the Burns Report in its dark-
blue cover, the findings of Lord Bums's investigation into hunting.
When he was leaving his surgery and was once more in his car, he
opened his briefcase to check that he had it and his notes with him.
Jims intended to have lunch at the Golden Hind in Casterbridge
with a close friend, the predecessor, in fact, of Leonardo. The
decision to end their relationship had been mutual and there were
no hard feelings. Moreover, Ivo Carew was chairman of a charity
called Conservatives Target Cancer, so being seen with him could
only win approval. But he couldn't find his Countryside Alliance
notes. He emptied everything out of the briefcase on to the
passenger seat. Before he started he knew they weren't there and he
also knew very well where they were. Inside a transparent blue
plastic folder which matched the cover of the Burns Report, and he
would have spotted them at once. He knew they weren't there and
he knew where they were: in Leonardo's house.
But precisely where? That he couldn't remember. He did
remember, though, that Leonardo had told him on the phone the
evening before that he was taking Friday off and would be going to
see his mother in Cheltenham. These visits were frequent and
enjoyable, for Giulietta Norton, born in Rome just after the
Second World War and a hippy and groupie in the sixties, was a
fascinating woman and about as unlike a mother as could be.
Leonardo might even decide to stay the night. Of course Jims had a
key to the flat, that was no problem. Even if he could remember
exactly where the blue folder was and could persuade one of
Leonardo's neighbours to let his messenger in, whom could he
trust? Was there anyone he could rely on to go to Glebe Terrace,
find the notes and fax them to him, without thinking it funny,

162
without thinking it suspicious that James Melcombe-Smith MP
left important papers in the home of a young and very good-
looking stock jobber? In, very probably, that young man's
bedroom? Zillah, perhaps. He called his home number on his
mobile. No answer. In fact, Zillah, deeply asleep, heard the phone
ringing in a dream about Jims changing his sexual orientation and
falling in love with her. She thought the ringing was her mother
and she ignored it.
How useless she was! An encumbrance, not even a helpful
companion. Jims called Ivo Carew and cancelled their date.
'Thanks a bunch,' said Ivo. 'Did you have to wait till five to one?'
'It's unavoidable. D'you honestly think I wouldn't rather see you
than drive back to bloody London?'
He stopped en route at a Merry Cookhouse where, shuddering,
he tried to eat chicken in a basket and chips. With plenty of time to
spare, he could have lunched with Ivo and set off a couple of hours
later, but he was becoming nervous about the whereabouts of that
folder. His mind must be set at rest as soon as possible. But not
before he'd complained about the soggy chips and the chicken,
which he was sure was high. The manager was a man with a temper
easily roused and the two of them engaged for a minute or two in a
slanging match.
The traffic was heavy and grew heavier as Jims approached
London. A pile-up near a motorway and a road junction caused a
nose-to-tail queue extending for several miles, while roadworks
near Heathrow airport reduced cars to a single lane. It was close to
eight o'clock before he parked the car in Glebe Terrace. His mind
must be going, he thought. Having mislaid his notes, he was now
unable to find the key to Leonardo's house. He looked on his Abbey Gardens Mansions key ring and his car keys ring, then went
through his pockets. It wasn't there. The woman next door, Amber
Something, had one. He prayed she'd be at home and she was. She
gave him a funny look in which there was a lot of snide amusement
but she gave him the key, saying to be sure to let her have it back in
the morning. He let himself into Leonardo's house.
Mounting the little staircase to the bedroom, he thought how

163
ghastly it would be if he opened the door and found Leonardo in
bed with someone, maybe that guy in the Department of
Education and Employment he said was attractive. A lot of men
wouldn't mind, though he wasn't one of them. But the room was
empty.
Jims searched for the folder. It was nowhere to be found.
Seriously worried, he went back downstairs and after hunting hunting!
- for ten minutes, found it and Burns at the back of a
rather elegant rosewood filing cabinet. Put there, no doubt, by
Leonardo's obsessively tidy busybody of a cleaner.
He'd go out to dinner, then come back here to sleep. There was
a chance Giulietta had a date, in which case Leonardo might come
back. Anyway, he couldn't face his own home, not with Zillah there
and those kids.

While Jims was searching for his notes and Zillah was watching
television in Abbey Gardens Mansions with Jordan on her lap, two
policemen, a sergeant and a constable, were calling at Willow
Cottage, Long Fredington.
After she had left, Zillah's landlord, who during her tenancy had
been afraid she'd never go but stay for ever and eventually establish
children's rights for her girl and boy, had decided to sell the place.
Accordingly, he was having it redecorated and a new kitchen and
bathroom fitted. Although the builders had started soon after
Christmas, their task was still incomplete. Scaffolding covered the
front of the house, the windows were boarded up and a builders'
sign proclaiming the workmen as Construction Designers stuck up
in the garden. The police could see no one lived there. They tried
the neighbours and were told Mrs Leach had left in December and
got married again. The woman next door could even tell them
whom she'd married: the local MP, Mr Melcombe-Smith.

It was, of course, imperative that the late Jeffrey Leach's wife be
told as soon as possible of his violent death. But it now appeared
she was his wife no longer. She had remarried, and into a social

164
class far above what the investigators had calculated was Jeffrey
Leach's.
Zillah had just got up on Saturday morning when the policeman
rang the bell at Abbey Gardens Mansions. It was only half past
eight, an early hour for her, but she'd been unable to lie in, for
Eugenie's prediction proved true, that having slept most of the day
she wouldn't be able to sleep at night. The children were already
up and watching cartoons on television. Zillah came out in her
dressing gown and began making toast and pouring cornflakes into
bowls. She caught sight of herself in a mirror and backed away
from it, she looked so terrible, her hair in rats' tails and dark
smudges under her eyes. A spot, the like of which she hadn't had
for fifteen years, was erupting in the middle of her chin.
'Who on earth's that?' she asked when the bell rang.
'You'll know if you open the door,' said Eugenie. 'What a stupid
question.'
'How dare you be so rude!'
Jordan, who was always upset by shouting, began to snivel. The
doorbell rang again and Zillah went to answer it.
'Mrs Melcombe-Smith?'
'That's right.'
'May I come in? I have some distressing news for you.'
There was no one in the world not in the flat at that moment
whom Zillah cared enough for to mind whether they were fit or
injured, alive or dead. But she couldn't hide her shocked response
when the caller told her of the death of Jeffrey Leach. 'I don't
believe it!'
'I'm afraid it's true.'
'What did he die of? Some sort of accident?'
This may have given the man the impetus to come straight out
with it. 'He was murdered yesterday afternoon. I'm sorry.'
'Murdered? Who murdered him?'
There was no reply to that. The policeman wanted to know
where she'd been between three and four thirty and Zillah, still
amazed at the news, said she'd been here.
'Alone?'

165
'Yes, quite alone. My children were out with their - er, nanny.'
'And Mr Melcombe-Smith?'
Zillah couldn't exactly say she didn't know. It would look very
odd in a bride of two months. 'In his constituency. That's South
Wessex, you know. He's been there since Thursday afternoon. I
can't believe Jerry's been murdered. Are you sure it was Jerry?'
'Certainly it was Mr Jeffrey Leach. Is this him?'
Zillah looked for the first time in nearly seven years on the
photograph she herself had taken in those happier times - though
she hadn't thought them so then - of Jerry with the three-week-old
Eugenie in his arms. 'My God, yes. Where did you find it?'
'That's not important. You identify it as Jeffrey Leach?'
She nodded. 'I'm amazed he kept it.'
Then came the question of questions, the one that brought the
blood to her face and made it recede again as rapidly: 'When
exactly were you divorced, Mrs Melcombe-Smith?'
She knew it would be a mistake to lie but she had to. Still, she
hesitated. 'Er - it must have been last spring. About a year ago.'
'I see. And when did you last see Mr Leach?'
It had been two days before, here, in this flat. She remembered
how he'd called her a bigamist. The time before that had been six
months ago, in October, in Long Fredington, when he'd come for
the weekend. And driven away in the boneshaker, ten minutes
before the express and the local train crashed. 'October,' she said.
'It was while I was living in Dorset with my children.' For the sake
of verisimilitude, she felt the need to insert some circumstantial
detail. 'He drove down on the Friday evening and stayed the
weekend. The first weekend in October. He left again on the
Tuesday morning.'
He held something out to her. It was a Visa card. 'Is this yours?'
'Yes, no, I don't know.'
'The name on it is 2. H. Leach and those are not common
initials.'
'Yes, it must be mine.'
It was the card Jims had arranged for her to have last December
when she'd accepted his proposal. She saw that its starting date was

166
December and expiry date November 2003. After she was married
and Jims gave her two new cards in the name of Mrs Z. H.
Melcombe-Smith, she'd forgotten all about the existence of this
one. How had Jerry got hold of it? That day in the flat he'd
wandered about when he was supposed to be going to the loo, she'd
heard his stealthy footsteps, thought she heard him go into her
bedroom, but attached no importance to it. After all, she was used
to visitors prying into her things, Malina Daz, Mrs Peacock ...
'Did you give it to Mr Leach?'
'No, yes. I don't know. He must have taken it. Stolen it.'
'That's an interesting conclusion to come to, especially since this
card wasn't issued until December and the last time you saw Mr
Leach was in October. Are you sure you haven't seen him since?'
Then Zillah uttered the time-honoured phrase so often on
the lips of old lags up in court yet again. 'I may have done.'
The policeman nodded. He said that that would be all for now
but he'd be in touch.When did she expect Mr Melcombe-Smith's
return? Zillah didn't but she said Sunday evening. Eugenie came
into the room, holding her brother's hand, both fully dressed and
looking clean and neat. The policeman said in the kind of voice
childless men use when talking to children they've never met
before, bluff, interrogatory, embarrassed, 'Hello. How are you?'
'Extremely well, thank you. What have you been saying to my
mummy?'
'It was just a routine enquiry.' The policeman suddenly realised
the late Jeffrey Leach must have been their father. 'I'll see myself
out,' he said to Zillah.

A famous Italian novelist and professor had just published a new
book to great acclaim and Natalie Reckman was off to Rome to
interview him. Her flight left from Heathrow in the late morning.
She bought the novelist's first book in paperback and three
newspapers at an airport bookstall but they told her only that a man
had been murdered in a London cinema and this didn't much
interest her.
While in the aircraft she read her paperback. The Evening

167
Standard was brought round but Natalie shook her head, she'd seen
enough newspapers for one day. She thought she might stay in
Rome till Monday, have a look at a new theatre that was being
built, maybe see what all this fuss was about someone desecrating
the graves in the English Cemetery. With luck she'd get three
stories for the price of one.

When it got to midday on Saturday and Jeff still hadn't come back,
Fiona feared he had left her. She searched the house for a note,
looked under tables and behind cabinets in case it had fallen on the
floor from where he'd left it. There was nothing. To go without a
word was to add insult to injury, but gone he had.
Michelle helped with the search. She pointed out that if Jeff had
really left, he'd taken nothing with him. All the clothes but those
he'd gone out in were in the cupboard, including the black leather
jacket he was so fond of. His four pairs of shoes, apart from those
he was wearing, were in Fiona's shoe rack, his underpants and socks
in the drawer. Would he have gone without his electric shaver?
Without his toothbrushf
'I'm afraid he must have met with some sort of accident,'
Michelle said, her arm round Fiona. 'Now, Fiona darling, was he
carrying anything to identify him?'
Fiona tried to remember. 'I don't know. You wouldn't go
through Matthew's pockets, would you?'
'I never have.'
'No, and nor do 1.1 trust Jeff. D'you think I should now? I mean,
look in the pockets of the leather jacket?'
'Yes, I do.'
There was nothing helpful, only a pound coin, a supermarket bill
for groceries and a ballpoint pen. Fiona tried the pockets of Jeffs
raincoat. A tube train ticket, a button, a twenty-pence piece.
'Where's his driving licence?'
'Where did he usually keep it?'
'I suppose it might be in the car.'
The two women went out to Fiona's dark-blue BMW, which she
was obliged to leave parked in the street. Michelle, who was finding

168
it less difficult these days to climb into a car than it had been, got
into the back and searched the pockets, while Fiona, in the driver's
seat, examined the glove compartment. A road map, a pair of
sunglasses, a comb, all belonging to her. No gloves, of course, there
never are. Michelle found another road map, a half-empty box of
tissues, a chocolate paper and a single Polo mint. This might have
been a valuable clue for the police if they'd known of it and known
how to read it. Fiona dropped it down the drain in the gutter.
Michelle stayed with her, made lunch, salad and cheese and
crispbread. Neither felt like eating. At mid-afternoon Matthew
joined them. Michelle had left his lunch on a tray and to please her
and divert Fiona, he told her he'd eaten it all, three slices of kiwi
fruit, a dozen salted almonds, half a bread roll and a sprig of
watercress. By this time Fiona's mood had changed. They'd been
unable to find Jeffs driving licence, so he must have it on him and
if he'd met with an accident could have been identified by it. The
anger which had been suspended when she realised all his clothes
were in the house, to be replaced by the anxiety of the night before,
returned. He'd left her. No doubt he intended to come back one
day for his possessions or he'd even have the nerve to ask her to
send them on.
The Evening Standard was delivered to the house in the late
afternoon. Matthew heard it drop on to the doormat and went into
the hall to fetch it. Fiona was on the sofa with her feet up, Michelle
in the kitchen making tea. The newspaper had a big headline:
movie murder and under that: 'Man Stabbed in Cinema'. A large
photograph showed the interior of the theatre where the body had
been found, though nothing of the body itself, and there was no
picture of the dead man. His name wasn't disclosed. Matthew took
the newspaper back into the living room but Fiona was asleep. He
showed it to Michelle.
'There's no possible reason to think it's Jeff, darling.'
'I don't know about that,' said Matthew. 'He likes the cinema
and Fiona doesn't. It wouldn't be the first time he's gone in the
afternoon on his own.'
'What shall we do?'

169
'I think I'll call the police, darling, and see what I can get out of
them.'
'Oh, Matthew, what are we going to do if it is Jeff? How terrible for poor Fiona. And why would anyone want to murder him?'
'You can think of a few reasons and so can I.'

Leonardo had returned from his mother's just as Jims was going
out to get his dinner. The two men went to a new and fashionable
Tunisian restaurant together, came home again at ten thirty and
Jims spent the night in Glebe Terrace. Both were far too discreet
to suggest Leonardo accompany Jims to Dorset, so he set off alone
at about ten in the morning.
Once it was possible, when driving to the West Country, to stop
in some little town of great antiquity and beauty, and there eat
lunch in the White Hart or the Black Lion or whatever ancient
hostelry graced the place. But since the coming of arterial roads
that bypassed every urban habitat this pleasant custom had
disappeared, unless you made a twenty-mile detour, and all that
now existed to provide refreshment to the traveller were motorway
cafes and huge complexes of restaurant, shops and lavatories. Into
one of these Jims was obliged to go, having parked his car among
several hundred others, to eat a limp salad, two samosas and a
banana. One good thing: he'd avoided the Merry Cookhouse. By
three he was back in Fredington Crucis where he had a bath and
dressed in his country-go-to-meetings suit, a well-cut tweed outfit
with waistcoat, a tan-coloured shirt and knitted tie. A crowd of
anti-hunt protesters were assembled outside Fredington Episcopi
village hall, all carrying banners with words like 'barbarians' and
'animal tormentors' on them. Dreadful photographs of tortured
foxes in their death throes and stags escaping hunters by plunging
into the Bristol Channel were set up along the short driveway. A
horrible baying sound, not unlike that of hounds in full cry, went
up from the protesters as Jims walked in, but inside he was greeted
by sustained applause. The place was packed, with chairs in the
aisles and people standing at the back.
The chairman of the local branch introduced him and congratulated
him on his recent marriage. The audience cheered. Jims
addressed them as 'Ladies and Gentlemen, friends, Englishmen
and Englishwomen, you who uphold our Dorset way of life, you
the backbone of our land, this land of such dear souls, this earth,
this realm, this England'.
They clapped and cheered. He told them at length what they
already knew; what a glorious sport hunting with hounds was, how
it had been part of English rural life since time immemorial, that it
was a hallowed tradition which preserved the countryside and
sustained thousands in employment. Though in fact he rather
disliked riding, he went on to say what a pleasure it was for him,
toiling all week in the murk and bustle of London, to go out with
the South Wessex on a fine Saturday morning. The fresh air, the
wonderful countryside, the sight and sound, surely the finest of all
rural experiences, of the hounds on the scent. Foxes, he said,
suffered very little in the chase. Lamping by night and shooting by
the unskilled with a gun was far more cruel. In fact, he corrected
himself, hunting wasn't cruel at all, considering that only six per
cent of hunted animals were actually killed. The real pain would be
suffered by those employed in various ways by the hunt - he quoted
the alarming statistics in the notes he'd gone back to London to
find - and who stood to lose their livelihoods if this pernicious bill
became law.
He continued in this vein, though he was preaching to the
converted and had no doubters to persuade. Just before he came to
the end he recalled that he hadn't responded to the chairman's
congratulations on his nuptials, so he finished by thanking him and
saying how much he looked forward to setting his two charming
stepchildren on horseback and introducing them to the joy of the
chase.
The tremendous applause went on for nearly two minutes, with
foot-stamping and shouts of approval. People queued up to shake
his hand. A woman said she'd nearly not voted for him at the
General Election but now she thanked God nightly in her prayers
that she had. The local branch of the Alliance took Jims out to

171
dinner in a horrible little restaurant called the Warming Pan, but
he managed to escape at ten and drove himself home to Fredington
Crucis House, fearful all the way that due to the amount of a rather
disgusting Armenian red he'd drunk he might be over the limit.

Zillah had spent the sort of afternoon that wasn't at all to her taste,
first taking the children to a playground on the south side of
Westminster Bridge, then walking them along the South Bank past
the London Eye and the National Theatre and the bookstalls, as
far as Tate Modem and Shakespeare's Globe. It was sunny and
warm, and it seemed to her as if everyone in London was down
there on the traffic-free embankment. Strange, then, that this walk
reminded her of life in Long Fredington. The loneliness of it,
perhaps, with no one else to talk to but two people under eight, no
man in her life, not even Jerry. She hadn't brought his pushchair,
so after a while she had to carry Jordan. She bought ice cream and
Jordan's dripped down on to her Anne Demeulemeister jacket.
'Sometimes I think I'll still be carrying you when you're eighteen.'
Her cross tone set him off snivelling. Neither child had made
any comment on the policeman's visit, for which Zillah supposed
she should be thankfol. She was praying she'd heard the last of him
and of Jerry. Perhaps, on the next visit he'd threatened, he'd only
want to talk to Jims. Bigamy, she thought, when she was home
again getting the children's tea, bigamy. Why had that policeman
asked her for the date of her divorce? But even though Jerry had
been alive when she married Jims, she reminded herself, he was
dead now. He'd died within two months of the wedding. Hold on
to that, she said to herself, hold on to that, you haven't got two
husbands, you had two for only a few weeks. You can't be a
bigamist when you've only one husband.
At nine thirty that night the police phoned.They wanted her to
identify the dead man and would send a car to fetch her.
Tomorrow morning at nine? Too frightened to protest, she
phoned Mrs Peacock. Could she come in the morning and look
after the children while she went out?
'On a Sunday?' said Mrs Peacock in an icy tone.

172
'It's business. Very important business.' Zillah didn't want to tell
her she was off to identify a corpse in a mortuary. 'I'll pay you
double.'
'Yes, I'm afraid you'll have to.'
Eugenie, who had come out from her bedroom in her nightdress
and overheard this, said in nearly as cold a voice, 'Don't you ever
want to stay at home and look after us?'

The police officer was a woman, plain-clothed. She looked about
Zillah's own age and rather like one of those women detectives in
TV dramas, tall, thin, with long blonde hair and a classical profile,
but her voice was an unpleasant near-cockney, high-pitched and
brisk. She sat in the back of the car with Zillah, who had dressed herself soberly for this solemn occasion in a black suit and white
blouse. On the way to the mortuary there was no conversation
between them.
Zillah had never seen a dead body before. Feeling queasy, she
saw that Jerry looked more like a waxwork of himself than a real
person no longer alive.
'Is that your former husband, Jeffrey Leach?'
'Yes, that's Jerry.'
The woman, who was a detective inspector, asked Zillah in her
strident uncompromising tone as they left the mortuary and walked
across a yard to the police station, why she called the dead man
that.
'He was usually known as Jerry. Some people called him Jeff and
his mother called him Jock. On account of his second name being
John, you know.'
The detective inspector looked as if she didn't know. She took
Zillah into an office, functionally furnished, and asked her to sit
down on the opposite side of the desk from her own. Her dislike
was palpable, it seemed to beam out of her in waves. 'Did you write
this, Mrs Melcombe-Smith?'
She passed across the desk a sheet of paper with writing on it. If
Zillah hadn't been sitting down she thought she'd have fainted. It
was the letter she'd written to Jerry begging him not to reappear

i73
and, above all, not to brand her a bigamist. Her head was
swimming too much for her to read it. Had she used the word
'bigamist'? Had she? She couldn't remember. She closed her eyes,
opened them again and made the sort of effort of will she was
seldom called upon to attempt. A deep breath and she managed to
read the letter. Dear Jerry, she had written,

I am 'writing to you to beg you not to come back, to really go unsay and
disappear out of my life. You did write that letter telling me you were
dead, and though I didn't believe that, I thought you meant me to act
as if you were. Please do that. Please. I thought you were not fond of the
children because you did not want to see them for months and months.
If you want to see them sometimes we could arrange that. I could bring
them somewhere to you. Jerry, I will do anything if you will only not
try to see me or come here and please, please, don't use that word about
me. It frightens me, it really does. You must believe I don't wish you
any harm but rather the reverse. I just want to get on with my life, so
please, if you have any pity for me, stay away.
Yours, Z

'Did you write it?' the detective inspector repeated.
'I may have.'
'Well, Mrs Melcombe-Smith, there aren't many women with
first names that begin with Z, are there? A few Zoes maybe. I can't
say I've ever met a Zuleika but I believe there are some about.'
'Bigamist' wasn't in the letter and nor was 'bigamy'. It didn't
exactly reveal anything, it was quite discreet. 'I wrote it,' Zillah
said.
'To what address? The envelope is not in our possession.'
'I don't remember. Yes, maybe - it was somewhere in NW6.'
She might as well tell her the rest. 'He's been living with a woman
called Fiona. She works in a bank.'
'You were very anxious never to see Mr Leach again. What did
you mean, "to act as if he was dead"?'
'I don't know,' Zillah said in a small voice. 'I don't remember.'
'You write that you were frightened. Had he ever abused you?'
Zillah shook her head. She supposed she must look frightened
now. 'If you mean did he hit me, no, he never did.'
'What was the word you didn't like him using? Some insult, was
it? Some term of abuse? "Bitch" or "cow", something of that kind?'
'Oh, yes, that was what it was.'
'Which one?'
'He called me a cow.'
'Ah. A frightening word, cow. That will be all for now, Mrs
Melcombe-Smith. We'll call in the morning and see your
husband.'

Much as he disliked Jerry Leach on the few occasions he'd spoken
to him, he'd rather fancied him and thought he'd detected an
answering gleam in Jerry's eye, for Jims was one of those gay men
who believe that all men are secretly gay at heart. This, then, as he
said to himself when Zillah told him, was a turn-up for the books.
But he couldn't see how it would affect himself and Zillah, Jerry
being a thing of the past in his life and hers. That the dead man had
also been the father of Eugenie and Jordan didn't at the time cross
his mind. Family relationships meant very little to him. But when
he'd walked into the flat in Abbey Gardens Mansions just after one,
he was quite shocked by Zillah's haggard face and shaking hands.
'The police are coming back tomorrow morning. They want to
talk to you.'
The? Why me?'
'He wanted to know where I was on Friday afternoon when Jerry
was killed. He'll want to know where you were.'

Michelle identified the photograph in the Sunday paper as that of
Jeff Leigh. Hatred, or something approaching it, confers much the
same powers of acute observation as love. When she saw that face,
younger, the features smudged and cloudy, she nevertheless knew
who it belonged to and heard again that voice saying, 'Little and
Large, Michelle, Little and Large. Stoking the boilers, Michelle?'
He was holding a baby in his arms and for some reason that made
her shiver.

i75
To tell Fiona? Matthew phoned the police first. He said he
thought Jeffrey John Leach, so-called, was really Jeffrey Leigh, the
man who'd been the partner of his neighbour. His wife had
identified him from a newspaper photograph. Where did he live,
they wanted to know. When Matthew said West Hampstead they
were interested. They'd come. Would 4 p.m. suit him?
Then Michelle went next door to tell Fiona what they feared,
what they more than feared, and that the police were coming.

176
Chapter 17

Jock was gone. A couple of days passed before Minty could really
believe it. Especially when she'd been out and came back into the
house, she was fearful, always afraid he'd be sitting in a chair or
waiting for her in the shadows behind the stairs. She dreamt about
him. But that wasn't the same thing as a ghost, just someone who
came into your dreams. Sonovia and Laf came into them, and
Josephine sometimes, and Mr Kroot's sister and Auntie, always
Auntie. The dream Jock, not the ghost Jock, walked into a room
where she was and offered her a Polo mint or said 'Good-oh' and
once even said those words that were halfway between a joke and a
tease, about pinch, punch, first of the month. In the dreams he
always wore his black leather jacket.
Auntie's voice she heard much more often than she once had,
but she never saw her. Yesterday she, or her voice, had come in
while Minty was in the bath, which was something Jock's ghost had
never done. 'It's a whole two weeks since you put flowers on my
grave, Minty,' said Auntie. She kept over by the door, not looking
in Minty's direction, which wouldn't have been nice. She was just a
disembodied voice, without eyes. 'It's not very pleasant being dead
but it's worse if you're forgotten. How d'you think I feel with my
last resting place all bare but for a bunch of dead tulips?'
It was no use answering because they couldn't hear you. Jock's
ghost had never taken a blind bit of notice of anything she said. But
that afternoon she'd gone into the cemetery where the evergreen

177
leaves seemed fresher now and the new leaves a dazzling green,
where the grass was bright and glittering with raindrops from a
shower, and taken out the dead flowers, replacing them with pink
carnations and gypsophila. The carnations had no scent but, like
Josephine said, you couldn't expect it, not with plants forced up in
hothouses. Usually, when she'd visited Auntie's grave, Minty had
knelt down on a clean piece of paper or plastic and said a little
prayer to her, but she hadn't yesterday. Auntie didn't deserve it, not
the way she was going on, she'd have to be content with the
flowers.
Sunday was the day Minty did her washing. Her major wash, that
is. A certain number of clothes got washed every day. But on
Sundays the week's sheets and towels were done and considering
no towel was used more than once and no sheet slept on more than
three times, a great quantity mounted up. While the first batch was
whirling and bouncing about in the machine, gladdening her heart
with the soap bubbles and the clean smell - those moments spent
watching the washing were the only time Minty felt really content
with life - she went out into the garden to put up the clothes line.
Some of the neighbours left their clothes lines out all the time, in
all weathers. Minty shuddered when she thought of the black
deposits of diesel fumes that must form on them. Her own plastic-
covered rope was scrubbed and rinsed and dried each time she took
it down. She checked that the posts were firm and attached the
clothes line to the bolt on top of the one at the end of the garden,
unrolling it carefully as she walked across the paving towards the
house.
Next door Mr Kroot's sister was pulling out weeds. His garden
was overgrown with weeds for months, he never did anything out
there, and it was only when his sister came that anyone got rid of
the dandelions and stinging nettles and thistles. She wasn't wearing
gloves and her hands were covered with dirt, the fingernails black.
Minty shuddered. She went indoors and washed her own hands, as
if she'd absorbed some referred dirt from Mr Kroot's sister. What
was she called? Auntie had known. She'd called her by her name
until that day they stopped speaking for ever over something to do

178
with the fence. Minty couldn't remember the name but she
remembered the quarrel and it all came back to her, though it was a
good fifteen years ago.
It was when Auntie had had a new fence put up between their
gardens. Mr Kroot never said a word about it but his sister that
must once have been a Miss Kroot accused Auntie of stealing six
inches of ground from next door. If she didn't move the fence, the
sister said, she'd chop the wire down herself with wire cutters, and
Auntie said not to threaten her and if there was any chopping of
wire, so much as a single snip, she'd call the police. No one cut
anything and the police weren't called but Auntie and Mr Kroot's
sister never spoke again, and Minty was told not to speak to her
either. Then Sonovia stopped speaking to her out of loyalty.
Minty wished she could remember the sister's name. Maybe
Auntie would tell her next time she started talking. Not that she
wanted to know that much, not enough to welcome ghost voices.
She took the first batch of washing out of the machine, put the next
lot in, and carried the damp towels outside in a large basket she'd
lined with a snowy white sheet. Mr Kroot's sister was standing up
now, staring at her. She was a stocky, stoutish old woman with
dyed ginger hair, who wore glasses in violet-coloured frames.
When she put one earth-covered, black-nailed finger up to her face
and scratched her cheek, Minty turned away shuddering.
The morning was bright and sunny but fresh with a sharp wind
blowing. A good drying day. She pegged out the towels, using
plastic pegs she'd scrubbed and dried along with the clothes line.
Mr Kroot's sister had gone indoors, leaving weeds lying about all
over the path. Minty shook her head at such fecklessness. She too
went indoors and started thinking about what to have for lunch.
She'd bought a nice piece of ham at Sainsbury's and she was going
to cook it herself. Buying cooked meat, in her opinion, was very
risky. You never knew where it had been or the state of the pot it
was boiled in. When she'd got the meat on maybe she'd go up the
road and get a Sunday paper now Laf never brought theirs in to
her.
First she went into the front room to look out of the window and

179
see who was about. It was just as well she did, for as she lifted the
half-drawn curtain she saw Laf and Sonovia come out of their
house, wearing the serious expressions they always did when on
their way to church. Sonovia had the blue dress and jacket on with
a white hat and Laf a striped suit. Minty waited a bit to let them get
out of the way, then she went off in the opposite direction to the
paper shop.
It was quite a coincidence, she thought when she looked at the
front page of the News of the World, a man murdered in that same
cinema where she'd got rid of Jock's ghost. The paper didn't say
when it was, only that the man was called Jeffrey Leach.
'There are more and more murders about these days,' Auntie's
voice said suddenly. 'I don't know what the world's coming to.
They're all in gangs, them as get murdered, murdered by other
gangs. You go down Harlesden High Street and it's all gangs when
it's not Yardies.'
Minty tried to ignore her. She sat down in the front room to
read the paper. When she heard the machine stop she went to
the kitchen and took the sheets and pillowcases out. One more
sheet and a duvet cover still remained. She put them into the
machine and carried the damp washing outside to the clothes line.
Mr Kroot was putting a colander full of potato peelings into his
wheelie bin. All unwrapped, they were, just as they came off the
potatoes. It made Minty feel quite sick, thinking of that bin having
to be wheeled through the house in time for Brent Council's waste
disposal men to come and empty it. She kept her own bin in the
front, padlocked to the wall - this was such a rough area, people
were even capable of stealing your rubbish - and having scoured it,
scattered emerald-green disinfectant powder all over the inside.
'The Duke of Windsor's son was murdered,' Auntie said. 'Him
as should have been Edward the Ninth. Only when it's someone
famous they don't say "murdered", they say "assassinated". It was
in France. If he'd been in his rightful place it never would have
happened.'
'Who cares?' said Minty, but knowing it was useless. 'Go away,
can't you?'

180
More boiling water needed adding to the ham in the pot. She'd
have boiled potatoes with it and frozen peas. Once when Jock was
around he'd got her to buy organic broccoli and when she'd washed
it a pale-green caterpillar the same colour as the stems had dropped
out. Never again. She opened the knife drawer and there on the top
was the one she'd used to get rid of Jock's ghost. She'd boiled it and
spoiled the colour of the handle in so doing, it must be as clean as a
knife could be, but somehow she couldn't fancy slicing meat with
it. She'd never fancy it, no matter how long she kept it. It would
have to go. Shame, really, because she thought it was one of a set
given to Auntie for her wedding in 1961.
'Nineteen-sixty-two,' said Auntie.
John Lewis - that had been Jock's name. Just like the Oxford
Street store. How funny, she'd never thought of it like that before.
If he'd lived she'd have been Airs Lewis and it would have been on
envelopes, Mrs J. Lewis. But she need not think of it, for he was
gone. She put on her rubber gloves, washed the knife again and
dried it, wrapped it up in the sports pages of the paper, the ones she
didn't want to read, and then put it in a plastic carrier bag. Better
not leave it in her wheelie bin. If no one could steal the bin they
could steal what was inside it and what those gangs wanted was
knives.
'That's what they use,' said Auntie's voice. 'Guns aren't easy to
get hold of, you have to pay a lot of money for a gun, but knives are
another thing. They all carry knives. That's why there are all these
murders. Gangs going after gangs. Good riddance to bad rubbish,
if you ask me. It was a bomb killed Edward the Ninth, but he was
different.'
'Go away,' Minty said, but Auntie went on muttering.
Maybe she should take the knife up to one of the big bins in the
street. The one where she'd put her stained clothes would do. She
was taking the third batch of washing out of the machine when the
doorbell rang. Who could that be? Now Laf didn't come round
with the papers, no one ever called on her unless it was Jehovah's
Witnesses. Auntie had liked the Jehovah's Witnesses, she'd bought
that Watchtaujer from them and agreed with everything they said,

181
but she drew the line when it came to going about with them,
knocking on people's doors. Minty washed her hands and was
drying them when the bell rang again. 'All right, I'm coming,' she
said, though no one could hear her out there on the step.
It was Laf and Sonovia. Minty stared. She didn't say anything.
'Don't shut the door in our faces, Minty love,' said Laf. 'We've
come in a spirit of goodwill and loving your neighbour as yourself,
haven't we, Sonny?'
'Can we come in?'
Minty held the door open wider. Sonovia tripped as she stepped
on to the mat, her heels were so high. The blue dress that had hung
loose on Minty was still a bit tight across the hips. She and Laf
followed Minty into the front room where it was gloomy as usual,
even on a sunny day.
'It's like this,' Laf began in the tone he used to teenage criminals
who had reoffended. It sounded more like sorrow than anger.
'Neighbours mustn't go on not speaking. It's not right and it's not
Christian. Now Sonn and me have just listened to this sermon all
about loving your enemies, especially your neighbours, and we
reckoned we'd come in here on the way back in a spirit of humility,
didn't we, Sonn?'
'I'm sure I'm not anybody's enemy,' said Minty.
'And we're not. Sonny has got something to say and it's not easy
for her, being somewhat puffed up with pride like the pastor said
some folks are, but she's going to humble herself and say it, aren't
you, Sonn?'
Sonovia said in a low, grudging voice that she hoped things
would be all right now. 'We could let bygones be bygones.'
'Say it, Sonn.'
She screwed up her face in agony at the prospect of an apology
passing her lips. The words came out one by one and slowly. Tm
sorry. About the dress, I mean. I didn't mean to upset anyone.' She
looked at her husband. 'I - am - sorry.'
Minty didn't know what to say. This was a situation she'd never
before been in. Auntie had quarrelled with a lot of people but she'd
never made it up afterwards. Once you stopped speaking to

182
someone you'd stopped for good. She nodded at Sonovia. As if all
the words were new to her, as if in a foreign language she learnt as
a child but never since then used, she said, 'Sorry. I'm the same as
you. I mean, about bygones.'
The two women looked at each other. Sonovia took a step
forward, with a helpful push from Laf. Awkwardly, she put her
arms round Minty and kissed her cheek. Minty stood there and let
herself be hugged and kissed.
Laf gave a sort of cheer and held up both his thumbs. 'Mates
again?' he said. 'Pals? That's the stuff.'
'My deah,' said Sonovia, her normal vitality restored, 'to tell you
the truth, I was actually quite glad to have this outfit cleaned, I
should have had it done myself. After I'd let you have it I
remembered there was this nasty ketchup stain on the hem.'
'That's all right,' said Minty. 'That soon came off.'
Laf smiled broadly. 'So what we want is that you come to the
pictures with us tonight. Not Marble Arch, not after that poor chap
getting murdered, but we thought Whiteley's and Saving Grace.
How about it?'
'I don't mind. What sort of time?'
'We reckoned on the five-fifteen showing and then we can all
have a pizza afterwards. Now, how about a kiss for me?'

The knife she'd wrapped up she put into a carrier bag, one of the
anonymous plain blue ones the corner shops gave you, and walked
the hundred yards to the bin in the Harrow Road where she'd put
her stained clothes. But the bin was full to overflowing, as it often
was on a Sunday, bags of rubbish all round it, spilling out their
contents on to the pavement. Minty wasn't going to contribute to
that, it was disgusting. She went home again and had her lunch,
washing her hands before and after she ate it.
She seemed to remember a group of bins somewhere down
Kilbum Lane and she walked a long way up there looking for them.
In the end she had to make her way quite a distance down
Ladbroke Grove, past the tube station, before she found what she
was looking for: clean bins and no mess spilling from them. She

183
opened the lid of a bin. It smelt nasty owing to people like Mr
Kroot not wrapping their rubbish up properly. On the top was a
bright green Marks and Spencer's carrier with nothing dirtier in it
than something wrapped up in tissue paper, a couple of cereal
packets and an unused loaf of bread still in its cellophane packing.
She didn't too much mind being associated with any of that, so she
thrust the knife in its blue bag in between the loaf and the
cornflakes, and closed the lid.
On the way back she stopped for a while and looked down over
the bridge to the railway track. The tube wasn't really a tube at all
here but underground trains doing this bit of the track above
ground, and it was also the main line to places in the west of
England. Here, she knew, just down there below her, the local train
and the Gloucester express had collided. Many people had died in
that crash, including her Jock. One of the trains caught fire and
that was the one, she supposed, he'd been in.
He'd been visiting his mother. Minty thought of her as very old
and bent, with wispy grey hair, walking with a stick, or maybe
someone like Mr Kroot's sister. She ought to have been in touch
with Jock's fiancee, ought really to have come to see her. Minty
imagined a nice letter from old Mrs Lewis, saying how sad it was
and inviting her to come and stay. She wouldn't have gone, of
course she wouldn't. The house was very likely dirty and without
much hot water. But she should have been asked. Of course, it was
plain why she hadn't been asked. Once she was in that house or
even once she'd answered a letter, Mrs Lewis would have had to
give back the money.
It had begun to rain. Minty shook her head at it, though she
knew it would take no notice. As soon as she got home she ran a
bath. She scrubbed her fingernails and her toenails and Auntie's
voice said, suddenly coming out of nowhere, 'Rain's filthy stuff. It
comes down through miles of dirty air.'
Minty said, 'When I'm in here I'm private. Leave me alone,' but
Auntie took no notice.
'Getting rid of that knife was wise,' she continued. 'It was

184
harbouring untold millions of germs.' Was Auntie actually addressing
her at last? She seemed to be. 'I've just seen Jock's mother. You
didn't know Mrs Lewis was here with me, did you?'
'Go away.' Minty thought she'd die if Mrs Lewis manifested
herself.
The rain was coming down in sheets when she went downstairs.
The house seemed empty. It felt cold, the air grey like twilight. Laf
came round at four under a big umbrella with palm trees on it and
said he'd be taking the car, it was pouring so. God knew where he'd
park but he'd do his best. Auntie's words had upset Minty. Auntie
and Mrs Lewis might come into the cinema. She started feeling
nervous. And there was no wood to touch in a cinema, it was all
plastic and cloth and metal.
Kind and gracious, proud of her new-found humility, Sonovia
went ahead into their row, smiling over her shoulder. 'There you
are, my deah, you sit between us. You got the popcorn, Laf?'
He had and it was clean and dry, quite fit for Minty to eat. The
cinema was filling up, all the seats in front of them occupied. There
was no room for Auntie and Jock's mother. The lights dimmed and
suddenly the screen was filled with the bright flashing colours and
ear-splitting noises she associated with her banishing of Jock.
Minty delicately picked out the smaller pellets of popcorn and
relaxed.
When she did get to see Mrs Lewis she'd ask what had happened
to her money and make the old woman answer. Maybe she'd write
it down. They never answered when you spoke to them but they
might if it was all down on paper. As the big picture started she was
planning what she'd write, how she'd push the paper in front of
Mrs Lewis's face, and it was quite a long time before she lifted her
eyes to the screen.

185
Chapter 18

Jims gave very little more thought to what Zillah had told him of
the police's intention to call on him on Monday morning. He'd be
at home, so of course he'd see them, it was his duty as a citizen;
he'd answer their routine questions and later he'd stroll across to
the Commons. Unaccustomed to spending much time at home, he
found this Sunday evening almost unbearably tedious. Leonardo
had invited him to a gay club, the Camping Ground in Earls Court
Square, and Jims would have loved to accompany him but he knew
where to draw the line. Instead, with Eugenie sitting beside him
making critical comments, he watched as much of a Jane Austen
costume drama on television as he could bear and went to bed
early.
Something woke him at four o'clock in the morning. He sat up
in bed in his solitary and rather austere bedroom, remembering
that he hadn't spent the entire weekend in Casterbridge and
Fredington Crucis, as last evening he had taken for granted and
sent to the back of his mind. Now it resurfaced, but in a different
form. On Friday afternoon he'd driven back to London to recover
the mislaid notes for his hunting speech. And he couldn't simply
tell the police that because the notes hadn't been in his own home
in Abbey Gardens Mansions but in Leonardo's house in Chelsea. A
faint but consistent sheen of sweat broke out across Jims's face,
down his neck and across his smooth golden chest. He switched the
light on.

186
They would want to know why those papers were in Glebe
Terrace and even if he could somehow satisfy them on that point,
would enquire why, having recovered them, he failed to go home
and spend the night with his new wife in Westminster. It wasn't as
if she was away somewhere, they knew she was at home because
they had phoned her there, as she'd told him last night. They'd
want to know why, instead, he'd passed the night under the same
roof as Leonardo Norton, of the well-known London and Wall
Street stockbrokers, Frame da Souza Constantine. Various options
presented themselves. He could omit to tell them he'd returned to
London. Or he could tell them he had returned in the afternoon,
found Zillah asleep and, unwilling to disturb her, had recovered the
papers and gone straight back to Dorset. Or he could say he'd
come home late in the evening, found the papers, spent the night
with Zillah and left again very early in the morning before the
police came. This would necessitate Zillah's lying for him. He
thought it likely she'd agree and the children didn't count since
they'd both have been in bed asleep.
Jims hadn't much in the way of morals; he was generally
unprincipled and unscrupulous and quite capable of telling a 'white
lie' to the police. But when he thought of asking his wife to lie for
him, to tell a detective inspector of the Murder Squad (or whatever
they'd changed its name to) that he had been here when he hadn't,
his blood ran cold. He was a Member of Parliament. Last week the
Leader of the Opposition had smiled on him, patted his shoulder
and said, 'Well done!' Other MPs referred to him in the Chamber
as the Honourable Member for South Wessex. The Honourable
Member. 'Honour' wasn't a word Jims often much considered but
he considered it now. In his position and capacity, honour was
supposed to be attached to him, it was as much invested in him as
in any mediaeval knight or servant of the sovereign. Sitting up in
bed, wiping the perspiration off himself with a corner of the sheet,
Jims told himself he couldn't ask someone else to lie for him.
What he'd do was forget all about having come home for those
notes. Between now and nine when the police were arriving, it
would slip his mind. After all, he hadn't really needed them and

187
could easily have delivered a successful speech without them. It was
only that he disliked going unprepared to any function at which he
had to speak. He made an effort to get back to sleep but he might
as well have tried to turn time back a couple of days, which he
would also have liked to do. At six he got up and found that
Eugenie and Jordan had already destroyed the peace of his living
room by switching on the television to a noisy and very old black-
and-white Western. By the time the police came he was cross and
moody, but he contrived to sit on the sofa beside Zillah, holding
her hand.
The detective inspector was the same woman who had gone with
Zillah to the mortuary. She had another plain-clothes officer with
her, a sergeant. Zillah asked her if she minded Jims's wife being
present and she said not at all, please stay. Zillah squeezed Jims's
hand and looked lovingly into his face, and Jims had to admit to
himself that sometimes she could be an asset to him.
He was asked about the weekend and he said he'd spent it in
Dorset. 'I went down to my constituency on Thursday afternoon
and held my surgery in Casterbridge on Friday morning. At the
Shire Hall. After that I drove back to my house in Fredington
Crucis and worked on a speech I was making on Saturday evening
to the Countryside Alliance. I spent the night there and the
following day, made my speech later on and dined with the
Alliance. I drove home here on Sunday morning.'
The sergeant took notes. 'Is there anyone who can confirm your
presence in your Dorset house on Friday, Mr Melcombe-Smith?'
Jims put on an expression of incredulity. It was one he'd often
worn in the House of Commons when some Government Member
made a remark he thought it would become him to regard as
ludicrous. 'To what are these questions tending?'
He knew the answer he'd get. 'They are a matter of routine, sir,
that's all. Is there someone who can confirm your presence?
Perhaps a member of your staff?'
'In these degenerate days', drawled Jims, 'I do not have a staff. A
woman comes up from the village to clean and keep an eye on

188
things. A Airs Vincey. She provides food in the fridge for the
weekend when I'm going to be there. She wasn't there that day.'
'No one called on you?'
'I fear not. My mother spends part of the summer there but
mostly she lives in Monte Carlo. She was here, of course, for our
wedding' - Zillah's hand received a squeeze - 'but she went back a
month ago.'
The police officers looked rather puzzled by this unnecessary
information, as well they might. 'Mr Melcombe-Smith, I'm not
questioning what you say, but isn't it rather odd for a young and
active man like yourself, a very busy man and newly married, to
pass what must have been about thirty hours on his own indoors
with nothing much to occupy him but the sort of speech he was
well used to making? It was an exceptionally fine day and I believe
the countryside around Fredington Crucis is beautiful, yet you
didn't even go out for a walk?'
'You certainly are questioning what I say. Of course I went for a
walk.'
'Then perhaps someone saw you?'
'I am unlikely to know the answer to that.'
Later in the day Jims was walking across New Palace Yard
towards the Members' Entrance. He felt reasonably satisfied with
what had happened and was sure he'd hear no more. After all, they
couldn't possibly suspect him of making away with Jeffrey Leach,
not him. He had no motive, he hadn't seen the man for at least
three years. In the worst-case scenario, if they found out about his
return to London - and they couldn't - he'd brazen it out, say he'd
forgotten. Or give story number four, the one he hadn't thought of
in the small hours, that he'd returned in the night after Zillah was
asleep, slept in the spare room so as not to disturb her and left
again before she was awake. That would cover everything.

When Michelle told her the murdered man in the cinema was Jeff,
Fiona had suffered that momentary loss of consciousness once
apparently common in women but which is now rare. She fainted.
Michelle, who a few weeks ago couldn't have got down to the floor,

189
did so with ease, sat beside her stroking her forehead and
whispering, 'My dear, my poor dear.'
Fiona came to, said it wasn't true, was it? It couldn't be true. Jeff
couldn't be dead. She'd seen a paper which said it was someone
called Jeffrey Leach. Michelle told her the police were coming.
Would she feel able to see them? Fiona nodded. The shock had
been so great, she couldn't take much else in. Michelle got her on
to the sofa, helped her put her feet up and made milky coffee with
plenty of sugar in it. A better remedy for shock than brandy, she
said.
'Was he really called Leach?' Fiona asked after a moment or
two.
'It seems so.'
'Why did he tell me he was called Leigh? Why did he give me a
false name? He'd been living with me for six months.'
'I don't know, darling. I wish I knew.'
At her interview with the police - the same woman who had
taken Zillah to the mortuary and would speak to Jims next morning
- Fiona suffered the beginnings of disillusionment to add to the
pain of her loss. That his name was truly Jeffrey John Leach was
confirmed, that he was in touch with his former wife and that he
appeared to have had no employment for several years, not perhaps
since his student days. The police asked her where she'd been on
Friday afternoon and to that she gave very little thought. She could
easily name half a dozen people who saw and spoke to her at her
merchant bank between three and five. 'I wouldn't have harmed
him,' she said, a tear running down her face. 'I loved him.'
They examined Jeff's clothes and what they called his 'personal
effects'. As a result of watching television programmes, Fiona asked
tentatively if she would be needed to identify Jeff. They said that
wouldn't be necessary as Mr Leach's former wife had already done
so. Fiona found this more upsetting than anything she'd so far
heard and she began to sob. Through her tears she made it known
that she'd like to see Jeff and they said that could be arranged.
When they'd gone she fell into Michelle's arms. 'There's never

190
been anyone I felt about the way I did about him. He was the man
I'd been waiting for all my life. I can't live without him.'
Most people would say eight months' acquaintanceship wasn't
enough for life, and Fiona's sorrow would pass, but Michelle had
known Matthew for only two when she married him and what
would she have felt if he'd died? 'I know, darling, I know.'
Fiona thought how unkind she'd been to Jeff that evening in the
Rosmarino when she'd told him to save his silly stories for their
baby, she was grown-up. She remembered how she'd reproved him
for not being as nice as he might have been to Michelle. Oh, why
hadn't she loved him as he'd deserved?

Responsibility for the recycling and rubbish bins in the neighbourhood
of Ladbroke Grove station was not Westminster's or Brent's
but that of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The
men who came to empty them on Monday regarded anything in
them worth having as their especial perks and discarded goods were
generally picked over with an eye to unconsidered trifles.
The green Marks and Spencer's bag was still fairly near the top
of one of the bins and the younger of the recycling men spotted
inside it something wrapped in tissue. It looked as if whoever had
used it as a waste receptacle - it was sure to be a she, he said
scornfully to his mate - had forgotten she had left a newly bought
item inside. And so it was. Investigation revealed a pale-blue
cashmere sweater, which would do admirably as a birthday present
for the recycler's girlfriend.
Something else was in the bag. They unwrapped it. By that time
everyone in the country who read a newspaper or watched
television knew the police were looking for the weapon used by the
Cinema Slayer. This might well be it.

The cemetery desecration made an even better story than Natalie
Reckman had expected. Witchcraft appeared to have been
involved, and an interview with an English resident in Rome
revealed the possibility of satanic rites carried out near the burial
place of Shelley's heart. Building a new theatre was a project she

191
thought she might work up into an article if she described what was
happening on the Palatine Hill and recommended something
similar for London as a sort of follow-up to millennium celebrations.
It might be called the Millennium Theatre or even, thought
Natalie, her imagination running away with her, the Natalie
Reckman Theatre.
Before getting on the plane home on Monday morning, she
bought an English newspaper. It was, of course, a paper from the
day before, the Sunday Telegraph, and there she read that the dead
man, victim of a murderer becoming known as the Cinema Slayer,
was Jeffrey Leach.
Most people, however tough and however experienced, feel
some pang, frisson or tremor of nostalgia on learning of a former
lover's death. Natalie had never loved Jeff but she'd liked him,
enjoyed his company and admired his looks, even when quite aware
he was using her. In the prime of life, he had met a horrible death
at the hands of some madman. Poor old Jeff, she said to herself,
what a thing to happen, poor old Jeff.
That horrible death must have taken place no more than an hour
or so after leaving her in Wellington Street. Sitting in the aircraft,
that morning's paper delivered to her and on her lap, Natalie
remembered, as they left the restaurant, how Jeff had asked her to
go to the cinema with him. If she'd gone, would things have been
different? Maybe she'd have chosen a completely different cinema
to go to. But another possibility was that she'd have been killed too.
The someone she'd told Jeff she was very happy with was at
Heathrow to meet her. They had lunch together and Natalie told
him all about it. A journalist himself, though of rather a different
kind, he saw what she meant when she said there might be a story
in it. 'Poor Jeff looked a bit funny when I talked about this Zillah
woman. Guilty, I felt. Well, maybe not so much guilty as having
something to hide. There's been something fishy going on. I'm
wondering if they were never divorced at all. That would be just
like Jeff.'
'It's easily checked.'

192
'Oh, I shall check it. Never fear. I've already put my researcher
on to it. I called her on the flight.'
'You are a fast worker, my love.'
'But first I think I'll be good and contact the Bill and tell them
Jeff had lunch with me last Friday.'
Natalie wasn't alone in believing something fishy had been going
on. The investigating officers had never been satisfied by Zillah's
explanation of the letter she had written to Jeffrey Leach. The
word he had used to her on some unspecified visit he'd paid to
Abbey Gardens Mansions when he'd stolen her credit card wasn't
'cow', whatever she might say. Zillah Melcombe-Smith wouldn't
be fazed by that. And she had been fazed, she'd been very
frightened. Such a woman, doubtless, seldom wrote letters to
anyone, she wasn't that sort; but she had written to Leach under
great pressure of - what? Guilt? Extreme fear? Terror of some sort
of discovery? Perhaps all those.
When they interviewed Natalie they were glad to be further on
with piecing together the ways Leach had spent the day prior to his
cinema visit. And she was able to contribute to the history of him
they were starting to compile, something of his past. That, for
instance, he'd been newly married when he'd first lived in Queen's
Park, that besides his wife there had been many women before her,
all owning their homes and able to keep him. Natalie told them
things they already knew about Fiona Harrington and Zillah
Melcombe-Smith and something they didn't know: that when she
split up from Leach rather more than a year before he had moved
back to Queen's Park, this time to Harvist Road, and there
doubtless had found himself another woman. They returned to
their scrutiny of the letter.
Mrs Melcombe-Smith had remarried in March. Her divorce had
taken place in the previous spring. Or so she said. There were
children involved, questions of custody and child support, so the
divorce could hardly have been a simple quick affair. If the word
Leach had used to her had aroused so much terror, might it not
perhaps have something to do with that divorce, some factor which
had come out in the proceedings or resulted from the process? To

^3
check would be easy and uncomplicated, starting with January
twelvemonth and going on from there.
The sergeant's wife still had a copy of the Daily Telegraph
Magazine in which Natalie Reckman's piece had appeared; she was
one of those people who seldom throw anything away. He hadn't
looked at it the first time round but he did now. He read with
particular interest the passage where Natalie wrote that Mrs
Melcombe-Smith appeared to have lived the first twenty-seven
years of her life in jobless, manless isolation in Long Fredington,
Dorset. No mention of a former husband, no talk of children.
Both those Melcombe-Smiths were behaving oddly, to put it
mildly. No one could be found who had seen the MP in Fredington
Crucis on Friday or Saturday, but two people had told the local
constable that his distinctive car, which he always left parked
outside the front door of Fredington Crucis House, wasn't there
after 9 a.m. on Friday. The postman who delivered a package at
8.45 a.m. on Saturday took it away again because no one answered
the door. Irene Vincey, coming in to clean half an hour later, found
the house empty and no sign that Jims's bed had been slept in.
No porter at Abbey Gardens Mansions had seen him between
midday on Thursday and Sunday afternoon. The most damning
thing for Jims was when the manager of the Golden Hind in
Casterbridge called to say that Mr Melcombe-Smith had cancelled
his table reservation for lunch and someone had told him this was
information to interest the police. The chairman of a cancer charity called Ivo Carew reluctantly confirmed this, using a few
choice epithets about the Golden Hind manager.
With no idea of what might lie in store for him, Jims made a
speech in the Commons about the Conservatives being the party of
old-fashioned values but new-fashioned kindness, consideration
and true freedom. Quentin Letts quoted it in the Daily Mail (wittily
and with a few snide comments) and rumours began running
around the Palace of Westminster that the Member for South
Wessex was tipped for an Under-Secretaryship. Shadow, of course,
which rather reduced the glory.
Jims thought the police fools, anyway, and probably too much in

194
awe of him, landed gentry as he was, to trouble him again. He was
so young, so good-looking and so rich. That night he dreamed a
new version of a dream he'd sometimes had in the past, but this
time when he came down the steps of Number Ten Downing
Street to the waiting cameramen he had Zillah on his arm, the
youngest and most beautiful First Lady in living memory. God was
in His heaven, thought Jims, and everything more or less right with
the world.

i95
Chapter 19

Zillah rather surprised herself by discovering how little she cared
about Jerry's death. Could she ever have loved him? It made the
years she'd spent more or less with him seem a waste of time. Of
course, she'd got the children out of them, there was that. Back
into the routine of driving them to and from their schools, she felt
a sublime indifference towards everyone but herself and them.
With a free morning before her to do as she liked, she put the
police out of her mind, she even forgot Jims and the difficulties he
seemed deliberately to create for her, and revelled in just being
alone for three hours. She celebrated by buying a Caroline Charles
dress and a Philip Treacy hat to wear at a royal garden party.
Whenever she bought clothes, Zillah formed a picture in her
mind of herself wearing the new garment in some particular,
usually glamorous, scenario. Sometimes she would be accompanied
by a man - up until she married him it was often Jims - and
sometimes, very occasionally, by her children dressed in equally
ravishing outfits. It was an innocent form of fantasising that gave
her a lot of pleasure. As she alighted from a taxi in Great College
Street, the rosebud-sprigged dress in a bag in one hand, the pink
straw hat in a bandbox, she was imagining herself on a sunny lawn
with a glass of champagne in her hand. She had just curtseyed with
exceptional grace to the Queen and was listening to the admiring
words of a young and handsome hereditary peer who was obviously

196
deeply attracted by her. The events of the past few days had almost
been erased from her mind.
It was twenty past eleven. She just had time to go up to flat
seven, hang up the dress, put the hat away and have a quick cup of
coffee before driving off to fetch Jordan. She ran up the steps to the
art nouveau double doors, pushed them open and tripped into the
foyer. There, sitting on one of the gilt and red velvet chairs, was
the journalist who had been so rude to her and had written that
horrible piece for the Telegraph magazine.
Zillah could hardly understand how a woman would choose to
wear the same black suit on two consecutive visits to the same
person. And not even vary her shoes or her jewellery. That same
curiously shaped gold ring was on her right hand. 'Were you
waiting for me?' She barely paused in her rush to the lift. 'I have to
go out again immediately to fetch my son from school.'
'That's quite all right, Mrs Melcombe-Smith. I'll wait.'
Zillah went up in the lift. While she was hanging up the dress
she thought maybe she ought to have asked the woman - Natalie
Reckman was her name. How could she have forgotten even for a
moment? - to come upstairs and wait for her. But journalists really
weren't the sort of people to leave alone in one's home. They
might do anything, pry into one's private drawers, read one's
letters. They were worse than Malina Daz or, come to that, poor
Jerry. She no longer fancied coffee. A brandy would have been
more beneficial but she wasn't going to start down that road.
Instead of returning to the foyer, she went all the way down in the
lift to the basement car park, and fifteen minutes later had picked
up Jordan and brought him back.
It was now half an hour since she'd seen Natalie Reckman and
she was tempted simply to carry on with her day as if she hadn't
seen her. She microwaved a couple of chicken nuggets for Jordan's
lunch, poured him a glass of orange juice and sat him at the table.
While she was making herself a sandwich the house phone rang.
The porter's voice said, 'Shall I send Miss Reckman up, madam?'
'No - yes, I suppose so.'
The journalist might not have changed her outfit but her manner

197
had undergone a transformation. Gone was the cool intellectual
approach and in its place a warm friendliness. 'Zillah, if I may, I'm
very anxious to have another chat with you. It's so good of you to
see me.'
Zillah thought she hadn't had much choice. 'I was just going to
have my lunch.'
'Nothing for me, thank you,' said Natalie, as if she'd been asked.
'But I wouldn't say no to a glass of that delicious-looking orange
juice. Is this your little boy?'

'That's Jordan, yes.'
'He is so exactly like his father, the spitting image.'
Zillah tried to remember if there had been any photographs of
Jerry in the papers, apart from the one she took of him with baby
Eugenie, but she was sure there hadn't been. He'd never allowed
anyone to take his picture. 'Did you know my -Jerry - that is, Jeff?'
'Very well indeed at one time.'
Natalie was sitting down now, nursing her orange juice. Her
tone was subtly changing again and her manner sharpening. She
gave Zillah one of the searching stares that had been so much a
feature of her previous visit. 'How otherwise do you think I knew
you'd been married to him and had two children? You did read my
article about you, Zillah?'
'Oh, yes, I read it.' Zillah took a hold on her courage. 'If you
want to know, I thought it very unkind.'
Natalie laughed. She drank the juice and set the glass on the
table. It was rather too near Jordan for his taste and he pushed it
out of his way with a petulant shove. The glass fell on to the floor
and broke. He let out a howl of dismay and, picked up by his
mother, beat his fists against her chest, shouting an emotional
demand he hadn't given expression to for weeks, 'Jordan wants
Daddy'.'
Rather in the manner of a social worker, a children's officer
perhaps, Natalie shook her head sorrowfully. She got down on her
knees and began picking up broken glass.
'Oh, leave it'.'

198
Natalie shrugged. 'As you like. I only read of your husband's
death yesterday. I've been in Rome, working.'
What did she care? She set Jordan down on the floor with a box
of bricks and two miniature cars but he immediately got up and ran
to her, embracing her knees with sticky hands. Then Zillah took in
what Natalie had said. 'He wasn't my husband.'
'Are you sure?'
Zillah forgot the stickiness on her legs, the pool of orange juice
on the floor, the mess on the table, the time, Jims, her new dress
and hat - everything. A cold shiver, like an ice cube dropped on the
back of her neck, ran down her spine. 'I don't know what you
mean.'
'Well, Zillah, it's a funny thing but I spent a long time yesterday,
I and my assistant actually, looking through quite a lot of records.
We were trying to trace your divorce from Jeff and the extraordinary
thing was that we couldn't find it.'
'What business was it of yours, I'd like to know?'
'Goodness, your teeth are chattering - are you cold? It's very
warm in here.'
'I'm not cold. Oh, for God's sake go and play with something,
Jordan. Leave Mummy alone.' Zillah lifted up a white face in which
frightened eyes glittered. 'I asked you what business you had to go
rooting through my private affairs?'
'Do you really think your affairs, as you quaintly call them, are so
private? You've been in all the papers. Don't you think your
readers have a right to know what you get up to?'
'You journalists are all the same, you'll do anything and say
anything. Now I'd like you to go, please.'
'I shan't be staying much longer, Zillah. I was just hoping you
could help me, perhaps give me a firmer date for when your
divorce actually took place. I - and, incidentally, the police - had
the idea it was some time last spring but that doesn't seem to be so.'
Natalie had no idea whether the police were pursuing the same line
of enquiry as her own and it was only by chance that she was right.
'Still, I'm sure you can set us right. Was it perhaps the year before?'
Jordan sat on the floor and gave tongue, howling like a puppy. 'I

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don't remember the date.' Zillah was driven beyond exasperation
now. She wanted to scream and afterwards hardly knew how she'd
controlled herself. 'You just have to accept it. What's it to do with
you, anyway?'
'It's in the public interest. Hadn't you thought of that? You're er,
married to an MP, you know.'
'What do you mean, "er, married"? I am married. My first
husband is dead.'
'Yes,' said Natalie above Jordan's squalling. 'I'd noticed. I'll get
out of your hair now. There seems to be something wrong with
your little boy. Isn't he well? I'll let myself out.'
Going down in the lift, she remembered how, a few years back,
she'd been in some American city in the Midwest where she'd
interviewed a police chief. She was talking to him about crime
statistics, various kinds of crime, and she'd asked him about some
woman she'd heard of who'd remarried without first being
divorced.
'Lady, we have nine murders a week in this city,' he'd said, 'and
you're asking me about bigamy.'1
But would the police here take the same attitude? Hardly. Jeff
had been murdered and his wife or whatever she was had married
an MP. Natalie decided not to write anything yet, for she was very
much alive to the risks involved in saying in print that Zillah wasn't
legally married, just in case it turned out that she was. Some day
soon she'd write a magazine piece about all Jeffs women, it would
be quite sensational. But first she had to go and talk to the Violent
Crimes Task Force and at the same time make sure she got in with
her exclusive story before anyone else did. In a thoughtful frame of
mind she took a cab home.

Zillah had always deplored and clicked her tongue over those
people who were up in court for cruelty to children. They
belonged, she'd believed, to a different breed from herself. Now,
walking up and down with her heavy, screaming, damp child in her
arms, as if he were three months rather than three years old, she
began to understand. She'd have liked to throw him out of the

200
window. Anything to stop that noise and stem those ever-ready
tears.
As she paced, she told herself over and over that things would be
all right, it was all right now, because Jerry was dead. You couldn't
be a bigamist if your husband was dead and you'd married again. It
was really only a matter of having said she was single when in fact
she was a widow, or was soon to be one. She'd never actually said
she was divorced until today, she just hadn't mentioned Jerry at all
- had she? She didn't have to be divorced if her husband was dead.
Anyway, none of it was her fault. It was these journalists poking
their noses in where they weren't wanted. And the main thing was
she was a widow now, or would have been if she hadn't married
Jims.
To her surprise, Zillah found that Jordan had fallen asleep. He
looked lovely when he was asleep, pink-flushed roseleaf skin,
incredibly long dark eyelashes, damp curls clustering across his
forehead. She laid him down on the sofa and eased his shoes off.
He rolled away from her and stuck his thumb in his mouth. Peace.
Silence. Why had she agreed to get married in that fancy crypt
place? Why had she wanted to? She couldn't remember. Somehow
it wouldn't be so bad if she and Jims had fixed it up in a hotel or a
town hall. In a place like that she wouldn't have had to hear those
awful, or perhaps she should say awesome, words. Yet they hadn't
seemed awe-inspiring at the time, she hadn't really taken them in,
she'd been thinking about her dress and what the newspaper
photographs would be like.... As ye shall answer at the dreadful day
of judgement, when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed, that if either
of ye know any just cause or impediment why ye should not be so joined, ye
are to declare it. And then there came a bit about as many as are
married without declaring it weren't really married at all, neither is
their matrimony lawful. Jims would kill her if he found out his
matrimony wasn't lawful. But it must be lawful, Zillah thought, this
unhappy merry-go-round circulating in her head, because her
husband was dead and if he hadn't been dead in the middle of
March he soon was, only a few weeks later.
She had to wake Jordan to take him with her and meet Eugenie

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from school. He whimpered and whinged. He was wet too. She
took his jeans and underpants off. There was a big smelly stain on
Jims's cream silk sofa. It was terrible having to put a three-year-old
into a napkin but she didn't dare not to. On the way back she'd stop
at a chemist and do something she'd sworn she never would do,
buy a dummy to stuff in his mouth. And then she must phone her
mother.
For once she was early. The school was a big Georgian house in
a lane off Victoria Street. The car parked on a yellow line - but a
single line and she wouldn't be there long - she got out and got
Jordan out, and was leaning against its nearside in the sunshine,
thinking once more about her marriage service and those words,
when a man got out of the BMW behind and came up to her.
'Zillah Wading,' he said.
He was very attractive, tall and thin and fair, with a hooky nose
and a nice wide mouth, and dressed in what Zillah thought the
most flattering uniform a man could wear, blue jeans and a plain
white shirt. The neck was open halfway down his chest and his
sleeves were rolled up. She'd seen him somewhere before, long
ago, but where she couldn't remember. 'I'm sure I know you but I
can't think...'
He reminded her. 'Mark Fryer.' They'd been students together,
he said. Then he'd left and Jerry had come ... 'Is this your boy?
I'm here to pick up my daughter.'
'I'm here to pick up mine.'
They exchanged news. Mark Fryer didn't appear to be a
newspaper or magazine reader, for he knew nothing about her
marriage to Jims. And he didn't mention a wife, partner, girlfriend
or anyone that might be the mother of this child who, by a happy
coincidence, came down the school steps with her arm round
Eugenie.
'Look, we've got so much to say to each other, can't we meet up
again? How about tomorrow? Lunch tomorrow?'
Zillah shook her head and silently indicated Jordan.
'Then say Friday morning. We could have coffee somewhere.'
She'd love to. He pointed across the street. How about that

202
place? Zillah thought it rather too near the school for comfort and
he named another in the Horseferry Road. He waved as she drove
off, calling, 'I'm so glad we ran into each other.'
Eugenie, in the passenger seat, was staring censoriously at her.
'What does he mean, "ran into each other"? Did he hit our car?'
'It's just an expression. It means "met by chance".'
'He's my friend Matilda's father. Did you know that? She says
he's a womaniser and when I said, what does that mean, she said he
chases after ladies. Did he chase you?'
'Of course not. You're not to talk like that, Eugenie, do you hear
me?'
But Zillah was already feeling better. It was wonderful what a
little male admiration could do. As to the other thing that was
always coming back to haunt her, no one can do anything to me, she
said to herself, because Pm a 'widow.

Police officers were back again, talking to Fiona. Although they
never came out and said so, she was sure they thought she couldn't
have been deeply affected by Jeff's death because they hadn't
known each other for very long. It didn't stop them expecting her
to know all about his past, his family, his friends and everywhere
he'd lived since he left art school nine years before.
She'd told them everything she could think of but great gaps
existed in her knowledge. His marriage, as she told them, was a
closed book to her. She didn't know where he'd lived with his wife,
whether or not she'd ever been in Harvist Road or the ages of the
children. She thought it very hard on her that she couldn't be left
in peace to mourn quietly and by herself- or maybe with Michelle.
As for the ex-wife, 'I don't even know where she lives.'
'That's OK, Miss Harrington, we do. We'll see to that.'
Did she imagine the flicker that crossed the man's face at the
word 'ex-wife'? Perhaps. She didn't know. She could never banish
from her mind what they'd told her about Jeff not booking that
hotel for their wedding on the appointed day or any other day.
Why had he lied to her? Was it that he'd never meant to marry
her? She'd tried to talk about it with Michelle but her neighbour,

203
usually so warm and affectionate, grew remote and impenetrable
when expected to reassure her about Jeffs shortcomings. Fiona
wanted excuses made for him, not suggestions, however gently put,
that she should try to look to the future instead of dwelling on a
man who was - well, she'd never even hinted at this but Fiona knew
the missing words were 'after her money'.
'You've told us about friends and family, insofar as you can.
Now, how about enemies? Did Jeff have any enemies?'
She didn't like the way they referred to her as Miss Harrington
but to him as Jeff, as if he were too much of a villain to be accorded
the dignity of a surname. What do they say to each other about me
when they get out of here, she often asked herself. 'I don't know
that he had any,' she said wearily. 'Do ordinary people have
enemies?'
'They have people who don't like them.'
'Yes, but that's different. I mean, my neighbours, the Jarveys,
didn't like Jeff. Mrs Jarvey admitted it. They both disliked him.'
'Why was that, Miss Harrington?'
'Jeff was - you have to understand he'd got an enormous lot of
vitality. He was so full of life and energy ...' Fiona couldn't keep
back a little sob when she said this.
'Don't upset yourself, Miss Harrington.'
How could you help upsetting yourself when you were forced to
talk about things you'd have liked to keep locked up inside you for
ever? She wiped her eyes carefully. 'What I was going to say was,
Jeff came out with things that - well, that sounded unkind, but he
didn't mean them, they just sort of brimmed over.'
'What kind of things?'
'He made digs, sort of jokes, at Michelle - Mrs Jarvey. About her
size. I mean, he called her husband and her Little and Large, things
like that. She didn't like it and her husband hated it. If it had been
left to her I don't think she'd ever have had anything more to do
with Jeff.' Fiona realised what she was saying and tried to make a
better impression. 'I don't mean they did anything about it, they
didn't even say anything. Michelle's been an angel to me. It was
just that they didn't understand Jeff.' She made herself put

204
Michelle's point of view, though she'd never faced up to it before.
The lie Jeff had told about the hotel booking returned to her mind.
'I suppose the truth is Michelle didn't want me to marry Jeff, she
thought he was bad for me. And - well, Michelle thinks of me as a
daughter really, she told me so. My happiness is very important to
her.'
'Thank you very much, Miss Harrington,' said the inspector. 'I
don't think we'll have to trouble you again. You won't be needed at
the inquest. Be sure to give us a call if you think of anything you
haven't told us.'
In the car he said to his sergeant, 'The poor cow's having a rude
awakening.'
'D'you want me to keep on searching for that divorce decree?'
'There are some things you can search for, Malcolm, that you're
never going to find. Because they don't exist, right?'
'So do we do her for bigamy?'
'I reckon we leave it to the DPP to sort out. We've got enough
on our plate without that.'

'I shall be going down to the constituency this afternoon,' said
Jims, 'but I'll delay it till after four so that you have time to fetch
Eugenie from school first.'
Zillah gave him an aggrieved look. 'Don't bother. I'm not
coming.' How could she? She was meeting Mark Fryer for coffee
in Starbuck's at eleven on Friday. 'What made you think I'd be
coming?'
Jims had forgotten that dream of himself as Prime Minister with
Zillah as his consort. 'I'll tell you what made me think it, darling.
We made a bargain, remember? So far you've got everything out of
this marriage and I've got flick-all. You're my wife, at least you're
the ornament I chose to impress my constituents, and if I choose
that you accompany me to Dorset, you do it. In case, as is more
than likely, you never read a newspaper or watch anything on
television above the level of a hospital soap, there's a by-election in
North Wessex next week and I intend to be there on Saturday to
support our candidate. With you. Dressed in your best and looking

205
lovely and gracious and devoted. With the kiddiwinks, trusting that
little devil doesn't bawl the place down.'
'You bastard.'
'The children are yours, not mine, but you'd be wiser not to use
language like that in front of them.'
'What about you saying "fuck-all" then?'
Jordan had taken the new dummy out of his mouth and flung it
across the room. 'Fuck-all,' he said thoughtfully. It seemed a better
panacea to stop him crying than the dummy. 'You bastard.'
'Anyway, I'm not coming. I never want to see Dorset again. I saw
all I wanted to while I was living there. Take that Leonardo. I bet
you were going to.'
'I hope I know something about discretion, Zillah, which is more
than you do. By the by, have you remembered to enquire after your
father?'
Next morning neither of them saw Natalie Reckman's article,
Jims because he woke up late and had to rush to get to his surgery
in Toneborough on time, Zillah because she went off straight from
dropping the children to have a facial and make-up done at the
Army and Navy Stores. At just after eleven, a vision of loveliness in
Mark Fryer's words which didn't sound as if he meant to be
sarcastic, she was drinking cappuccino with him in the Horseferry
Road, where he told her all about his broken marriage, recent
divorce - a sensitive word to Zillah at the moment - and was
disbelieving when she said she had to go and pick up Jordan.
'Let me come with you.'
Afterwards Zillah could never imagine how she'd come to get
out of the car with Jordan and Mark Fryer and, instead of going up
to the flat in the lift, walked round to the front of the block. Could
it have been because the building was beautiful from the front and
a dingy concrete nightmare in the basement? Had she wanted to
impress him? Perhaps. But there it was. They all walked along
Millbank and turned the corner into Great College Street.
A crowd had gathered outside Abbey Gardens Mansions, made
up mostly of press photographers and young women with notepads.
They turned as one when they saw Zillah approaching and closed

206
in upon her, strident voices bombarding her with questions and
bulbs flashing. She tried to cover her face with her hands, then, she
hoped, with Mark's jacket which he'd been carrying over his
shoulder.
He snatched it back, said hastily, 'This is no place for me. See
you,' and disappeared. Jordan began to scream.

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Chapter 20

It was Lafs day off. At eleven in the morning the Wilsons were
sitting outside their french windows, drinking coffee and reading
the Mail and the Express. Sonovia kept her small garden as she
often said a garden should be, 'a riot of colour', in contrast to next
door where everything was neat, sterile and flower-free. Tubs held
shocking-pink azaleas, scarlet and pastel-pink geraniums were
coming into bloom, while trailing plants in Oxford and Cambridge
boat race colours spilled out of hanging baskets and over the rims
of stone troughs. A bright-yellow climber no one knew the name of
blazed against the far fence.
Laf laid down his paper and said appreciatively to his wife that
the garden was a treat to look at. 'Those blue things are a lovely
sight. I don't think you've had those before.'
'Lobelias,' said Sonovia. 'They make a nice contrast to the red. I
got them on the mail order but to tell you the truth, I never
thought they'd turn out like the picture. Have you seen about this
woman who used to be married to that man that was murdered in
the Odeon marrying someone else without being divorced? It says
here she thought she was divorced. I don't see how she could have,
do you?'
'Don't know. There's people about as will do anything, as I have
good reason to know. Maybe he showed her some false papers.'
He wasn't going to let on to Sonovia that this latest bit of news
in the Cinema Slayer case hadn't yet reached Netting Hill police

208
station. The knife was different, he knew all about that, how it was
found in a recycling bin and someone said it looked as if it had been
boiled and the lab couldn't tell if it was the murder weapon or not.
Who'd boil a knife? That was what the DI had said and Laf had
thought, Minty would. He'd had to laugh at the idea of little Minty
harming anyone.
'D'you reckon this Zillah Melcombe-Smith'd done wrong,' he
asked his wife, 'marrying again when she wasn't divorced? I mean,
if she thought she was divorced and she married that MP in good
faith?'
'Oh, I don't know, Laf. Maybe she ought to have checked up
before she actually stood at the altar.'
'Well, d'you reckon anyone does wrong if they don't know it's
wrong?' These matters sometimes troubled Laf as a responsible
policeman. 'I mean like, if you attacked someone, killed them,
because you thought they were a demon or Hitler or something,
really believed it? If you thought you were ridding the world of an
evil - an evil entity? Would that be wrong?'
'You'd have to be nuts.'
'OK, more people are nuts, as you call it, than you'd think.
Would it be wrong?'
'That's too deep for me, Laf. You'd better ask the pastor. D'you
want another coffee?'
But Laf didn't. He sat in the sun, thinking that what he'd
outlined to Sonovia would be wrong for the person who got killed
and all their friends and family, it would be just as wrong if the
killer had meant it. But it wouldn't be wrong for the person who
did the killing, they wouldn't have committed murder like the
Commandment said thou shalt not, they'd be innocent as a lamb;
they'd have nothing on their conscience and perhaps they'd be
proud to have been Hitler's or the devil's assassin.
Laf, who was a deeply religious man and an Evangelical, asked
himself if they'd go to heaven. He -would ask the pastor. And he was
pretty sure he'd say that since it was God who had made them mad
He ought to let them inside the gates of paradise. He looked back
at the garden. Those pale-pink geraniums were a lovely colour. It

209
was a great thing to be a happy man, to sit under his vine and his fig
tree, as the Bible said, under his may tree and his lilac really, with a
good wife and his quiverful of children.
Sonovia had gone into the house to phone Corinne. In the
afternoon they were going to the Dome, taking their granddaughter
with them. He'd wait until a quarter past one, by that time
they'd have had their lunch, and then he'd take the papers in to
Minty. Maybe she'd like to come with them. Mending the rift
between Minty and Sonovia had been the most worthwhile thing
he'd done for a long time, Laf thought. His wife was a good
woman, if a shade quick-tempered. He leaned his head back and
closed his eyes.

Minty wasn't surprised to be haunted by old Mrs Lewis, she'd
expected it. She couldn't see her and she hoped she never would,
but her voice came as often as the other voices. At any rate it
proved she was dead and Jock's words she'd heard whispered in the
night were true. The living didn't come back and speak to you,
they were here already.
She knew the new voice was Mrs Lewis's because Auntie told
her. Auntie didn't introduce her, she didn't bother to, which Minty
thought rather rude. She just called her Mrs Lewis. It was quite a
shock. Minty had been ironing at the time, not at Immacue like
now, but at home in her own kitchen, when Auntie had started
talking to her. She didn't say a word about the flowers Minty had
put on her grave the day before and they'd cost a lot, over ten
pounds, but started criticising her ironing, saying the washing was
too dry, the creases would never come out. And then she'd asked
Mrs Lewis for her opinion. 'What do you think, Mrs Lewis?' she'd
said.
The new voice was gruff and deeper than Auntie's, and it had a
funny accent. Must be West Country. 'She wants one of them
sprays,' it said. 'They've got a lot of it at the dry-cleaners where she
works. She could borrow one of them.'
They knew everything, the dead. They could see into everything,
which made it funnier, really, that they couldn't hear what

210
you said to them. Mrs Lewis had lived in Gloucester, which was
hundreds of miles away, while she was alive and she'd never have
known about Immacue and Minty working there, but she knew
now because she was dead and secrets were revealed to her. The
two of them were talking to each other while she went on ironing,
chattering away about washing powders and stain removers. Minty
tried to ignore them. She couldn't understand why Mrs Lewis had
come back to haunt her. Maybe the old woman had died when
she'd heard her son Jock was dead, given way under the shock. She
needn't suppose Minty was going to tend her grave, wherever it
was. It was bad enough with Auntie's, not to mention the expense.
The ironing was done, everything folded and laid in the laundry
basket on a clean sheet. Minty picked it up.
'You don't need to use that basket,' Auntie said. 'That's not a
very big pile. You could carry it, it'd be easier.'
'Go away,' said Minty. 'It's nothing to do with you and I'm not
putting any more flowers on your grave. I can't afford it.'
'You can understand her feelings,' said old Mrs Lewis. 'That son
of mine got all her money off her. Mind you, he'd have given it
back if he hadn't met his end in that train crash. Every penny he'd
have restored to her.'
'If you want to tell me things,' Minty shouted, 'you can tell me to
my face, not tell her. And it's down to you to give me my money
back.'
But Mrs Lewis never did talk to her. She talked to Auntie. By a
miracle Auntie had got her hearing back and Mrs Lewis had been
talking to her this morning while Minty was ironing for Immacue
customers. They could get anywhere, these ghosts. Auntie said she
was looking pale, been picking at her food no doubt, but Mrs Lewis
intervened then and said her Jock had made Minty eat, he was a
trencherman himself and he liked a girl to be a hearty eater.
'Go away, go away,' Minty whispered, but not quietly enough,
for Josephine came out, wanting to know if she'd been talking to
her.
'I didn't say anything.'
'Oh, I thought you did. Have you seen the papers this morning?

211
There's a woman was the wife of that murdered bloke who's gone
and married someone else.'
'I never see the papers till I get home. Why shouldn't she if he's
dead?'
'He wasn't dead when she did it,' said Josephine. 'And what
d'you think, her and this MP got married on the same day as me
and Ken. Look, I've got the Mirror here. D'you like her outfit?
Jeans can be too tight, I don't care what anyone says. And her hair's
all over the place. That's some guy she was with, it doesn't say who
he is, not the husband, and that's her little boy, sobbing his heart
out, poor mite.'
'It's wicked to murder people,' Minty said. 'Look at the trouble it
causes.' She finished the last shirt and went home.
She'd only been in five minutes when Laf came round with the
papers. He wanted her to go to the Dome with him and Sonovia
and Daniel's little girl, but Minty said no, thanks, not this time,
she'd got too much to do at home. She'd have to have a bath, she
couldn't go out again dirty, and they were off in ten minutes.
Besides, there were the papers to read and the dusting to do and
the floors to vacuum.
'Not in the afternoon,' said Auntie the moment Laf was gone. 'A
good housewife gets her work done first thing in the morning. The
afternoon's for sitting down and catching up on the sewing.'
Mrs Lewis had to put her oar in. 'She'll say she's got her job. You
wouldn't want her cleaning the place on a Sunday, I'm sure.
Sundays are a day of rest or should be. There was some in my day
as would get up at the crack of dawn and get the dusting and
hoovering done before they went to work, but not any more.'
'Go away,' said Minty. 'I hate you.'
For some reason she thought they wouldn't follow her out of
doors and she was right. Maybe it was too bright for them or too
hot or something. Ghosts faded away in sunshine, she'd heard that
somewhere. She got out the mower and cut the little lawn, then the
long-handled shears to do the edges. Mr Kroot's sister came out
into the garden next door, dropping lumps of bread with green
mould on it to feed the birds. Minty wanted to say it wouldn't be

212
birds that would come but rats, only she didn't because she and
Auntie had sworn never to speak to Mr Kroot or the sister or
anyone to do with them again.
Auntie spoke to her at last, the minute she came into the kitchen.
'I'd have had a bone to pick with you if you'd said a word to
Gertrude Pierce.'
That was her name. The dead knew everything. Minty remembered
it now, though she hadn't heard it for a good ten years. She
didn't answer Auntie. The two of them went on muttering somewhere
in the background. She'd just have to put up with it until
they got tired and went back to wherever they came from. They
wouldn't like her hoovering, the noise would drown out their voices.
Let them grumble all they liked. At least she couldn't see them.
She always did the dusting first. While Auntie was alive she'd
had a lot of opposition from her over that. Auntie vacuumed first,
but Minty maintained that if you dusted afterwards all the dust
went on to the clean carpet and if you were thorough you'd have to
hoover it all over again.
Sure enough, Auntie started as soon as Minty took the clean
yellow duster out of the kitchen drawer. 'I hope you're not going to
use that before you've done the floor. I don't know how many
times I've told her, Mrs Lewis. It goes in one ear and out the
other.'
'Might as well talk to a brick wall,' said Mrs Lewis, for by this
time Minty had begun moving all the ornaments on the little table
and spraying the surface with liquid wax. 'That stuff she's using just
swallows up the dirt and leaves a nasty deposit.'
'My very words. I'd like a five-pound note for every time I've
said that.'
'It's not true,' Minty shouted, moving on to the sideboard. 'Not
if you keep the place clean like I do. And it's five-pound notes you
ought to be giving me.'
'She's got a nasty temper, Winifred. You say a word to her and
she bites your head off.'
'I'd like to bite yours off! I'd like to get a big police dog to come
and bite it off.'

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'Don't you speak to Mrs Lewis like that,' said Auntie.
So they could hear her. Maybe it was only when she got angry.
She'd remember that. She cleaned the whole house. Up in the
bathroom she plugged her ears so as not to hear, but she still heard
their voices through the cotton wool. Only while she had a bath
and washed her hair was there silence. Lying in the water, she tried
to picture what Mrs Lewis looked like. She'd be very old. Somehow
Minty had got it into her head Mrs Lewis had been knocking fifty
when Jock was born. Her hair would be white and wispy, so thin
that patches of bald pink scalp showed through, her nose a hook
and her chin another hook coming up to meet the nose, with a
mouth like a crack in a piece of coarse-grained brown wood in
between. She looked like a witch, bent and very small because she'd
have shrunk, and when she walked she took little stumbling steps.
'I don't want to see her,' she said aloud. 'I don't want to see her
and I don't want to see Auntie. They don't need me, they've got
each other.'
No one answered her.

Clean and in clean clothes, light grey Dockers from the charity
shop and a white T-shirt with Auntie's silver cross on the chain
round her neck, Minty sat in the window reading the papers and
from time to time looking up at the street outside. It was after five
and the Wilsons hadn't come back. Gertrude Pierce came out of
Mr Kroot's with a letter in her hand. Her orange hair was quite
white at the roots. She had a purple coat on with a fake fur collar, a
winter coat on a warm summer afternoon. Minty watched her cross
the street and walk down to the postbox on the corner of
Laburnam. Now, returning, she was facing this way and Minty saw
that she'd covered her face with make-up, coats of it, and scarlet
lipstick and black stuff on her eyebrows. It made you shudder to
think of wearing all that muck on your skin, and she must have
been seventy-five if she was a day.
The ghost voices didn't comment. They hadn't spoken for the
past couple of hours. Minty made herself a cup of tea in a nice clean
white mug and had a Danish pastry with it that she'd personally

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watched the man, wearing gloves, pick up with stainless-steel tongs
from under a cover, on a white plate with a white doily on it. Then,
when she'd washed up the mug and the plate and dried them, she
put on a clean white cardigan and went across the Harrow Road to
the cemetery. On the way she passed Laf and Sonovia and the little
girl and Daniel's wife Lauren coming home in Lafs car. They
waved to her out of the open windows. Lauren had her long black
hair done in what they called corn rows and pictures of flowers on
her fingernails, which wasn't right in a doctor's wife.
The cemetery was very green and lush, buttercups and daisies
growing among the grass and fresh gleaming moss climbing over
the old stones. The full gasometer loomed on the far side of the
canal. Sometimes, when it was nearly empty, it was just the bones
of itself, like the skeletons that lay everywhere here in mouldering
boxes under the ground. She went along the path between the
ilexes and conifers where ivy clambered over mossy fallen angels
and lichened mausoleums. Some of the gravestones had stone ivy
carved on them with real ivy climbing over it. No one was about. It
was just here, where the two paths intersected, that she had seen
Jock coming towards her in his black leather jacket. She was sure
she'd never see him again. She'd never pray to Auntie again, not
after the way she'd been treated, and there'd be no more flowers on
the grave.
It was hard because Auntie had been all she'd got, really, until
Jock came along. Sonovia had once said Auntie was like God to her
and Laf, who'd been there, was shocked and said not to talk like
that, Minty didn't worship Auntie, she didn't pray to her. The truth
was she did but she couldn't say so, though when she went home
she got down on her knees and prayed. She was muddled, she
didn't know what to do, to thank Auntie for dying and leaving her
the house and the bathroom or to wish her alive again. Well, in a
way, that second wish had come true.
The carnations and gypsophila she'd put on the grave a couple of
weeks ago were dead now and brown. The water in the vase was
brown too and only about an inch of it was left. She pulled out the
dead flowers, threw the water on the ground and put the vase back

215
where she'd found it, on the slab in front of some old man's tomb.
The sun warmed her and she lifted up her face to its gentle evening
light. She'd expected Auntie and maybe Mrs Lewis to say
something. Auntie must know by now that she'd meant it when
she'd said there'd be no more flowers. Removing the vase would
have told her that. The dead knew everything, saw all. But no
voices came, they'd gone away somewhere, back to where they'd
come from.
That done, she'd go to the pictures. On her own. Walk it, it
wasn't that far to Whiteley's. If she was going to see them
anywhere, she thought, it would be in the underpass by Royal Oak
station, though she'd no special reason to associate either of them
with tunnels under roads. And they weren't there, not even their
muttering voices. Something called The Insider and something else
called The Beach were the choices before her. She chose the latter
and had to sit through a story about a bunch of teenagers in some
foreign place.
A man came and sat beside her and offered her a Polo mint. She
shook her head and said no, but of course it reminded her of Jock,
and when the man put his hand on her knee she remembered how
she'd told Jock she was his and would be for ever. There'd never be
anyone else. It made no difference that Jock had stolen all her
money. She picked up the man's hand, digging her nails into the
back of it until he cried out. Then she moved three seats along the
row and after a minute or two he left.
When she came out of the cinema it was dark and no longer very
warm. She walked up towards the Edgware Road and waited for a
36 bus. It was while she was standing there, quite alone, in a dreary
isolated place near Paddington Basin, that she saw Auntie sitting on
the seat under the bus shelter. She wasn't as clear as Jock had been
but a shape that you could see through, a semi-transparent entity
that was nevertheless unmistakably Auntie from her iron-grey hair
in a coil on the back of her head and her rimless glasses to her
sensible black lace-up shoes.
Minty wasn't going to speak to her, she wouldn't give her the
satisfaction, but she did wonder if taking the vase away and

216
throwing out the dead flowers was what had brought her back in
visible form. Of Mrs Lewis there was no sign. Minty stared at
Auntie and Auntie purposely looked away towards the bridge over
the canal. Within a few minutes the bus came. I'm not getting on it
if she does, Minty said to herself. But when the bus stopped Auntie
got up and went away towards the underpass.
'Good riddance to bad rubbish,' Minty said as she passed her
money to the driver.
'You what?'
A lot of people were staring at her.
'I wasn't talking to you,' she said to the driver, and to the rest of
them, 'or any of you.'
She went upstairs to the top, to escape them.

217
Chapter 21

Never in his life, as far as he could recall, had Jims been so angry,
and his anger was compounded in part of rage and in part of fear.
Up to a point he was an imaginative man and he saw his career
lying in smithereens while ever before him loomed the ogre-like
shape of the Opposition Chief Whip.
He was lying in bed in Fredington Cruets House, having
dutifully listened to an hour of the Today programme on his
bedside radio. At eight thirty Airs Vincey brought him up a cup of
tea - something she'd never done before - and two tabloid
newspapers. They must have been her own, for Jims took no papers
in the country and, if he had, would never have chosen these. He'd
often thought she hated him and now he was sure of it.
This was the day he was supposed to go over to Shaston and
support the Conservative candidate. He pictured the media with
their cameras and recording devices waiting for him and was just
making up his mind not to go because it would do more harm than
good to the Party, when the phone rang.
It was Ivo Carew. 'Look, lovey, I've got a confession to make. I
told the cops about you skiving off our luncheon. I more or less had
to. They asked me.'
How they could have when he hadn't even mentioned Ivo's
existence to them, Jims couldn't imagine. 'Have you seen the
papers?'
'Who hasn't?'

218
'What am I going to do?'
'Well, my old love, in your place I'd pretend I didn't know. I
mean, about the husband still being the husband.'
'I didn't know.'
Ivo plainly didn't believe him. 'I'd simply maintain my innocence. Stoutly maintain it. A bridegroom' - he sniggered nastily at
the word - 'can't be expected to scrutinise his bride's divorce
papers. She said she was divorced and you accepted it.'
Jims said nothing.
'Why on earth did you marry her?'
'I don't know,' said Jims. 'It seemed a good idea at the time.'
'Shall I come over, lovey?'
Get into bed with him, no doubt, and further complicate things,
not to mention old Vincey, downstairs but with her ears on stalks.
'Better not. I'm going home.'
Showered and dressed, Jims felt slightly better, though in no fit
state to eat the plateful of fried eggs, bread, bacon and potatoes
swimming in fat, unaccountably prepared for him. He drank a cup
of Nescafe and reconstituted milk. Were things quite so bad as he'd
thought at first? As a politician, Jims believed that there were few
situations in public life that couldn't be remedied with the right
strategy, few errors that couldn't be made good by (apparent)
frankness, sincere apology and an earnest air of innocence. And he
was innocent. What more likely than that two people like Zillah
and Jerry Leach, feckless and sloppy, had shacked up together and
had two kids without ever marrying? Of course he'd believed her.
He could say something about her first marriage being too painful
for her to wish it commemorated in any document. That would do.
Well, no, it wouldn't do, but it would help.
Probably the best line to take would be that he hadn't known.
Zillah believed herself divorced and, now Jeffrey Leach was dead
he, Jims, would make everything good by immediately remarrying
the widow. Did he really want to do this? Of course not. He'd
rather never see her again. But he didn't have a choice. Needs must
when the devil drives, and the devil had never driven harder and
faster than this. They could always get divorced when the fuss died

219
down. Perhaps he should issue a statement. Call Malina Daz now
and get her to help him word it. It would still be too late for the
Evening Standard. Best go home first, work out the statement in his
head on the way, and talk to that unspeakable little bitch Zillah he
wished he'd never set eyes on in the first place. He'd call Malina on
his car phone and then he'd call Leonardo.
But perhaps he did have a choice. Perhaps there were other
options. He picked up the phone and dialled Ivo's mobile. When
all was said and done, Zillah wasn't very bright.

Michelle didn't much care about her and Matthew being suspected
of murdering Jeffrey Leach, as she'd had to learn to call him. That
was an exaggeration. Of course she would care if they really
suspected them, if all that questioning hadn't been just routine.
They had to ask questions, it was their job. She and Matthew were
still treating it as a joke. They'd even given jokey names to the
principal police officers, calling the woman Miss Demeanour and
the man Violent Crimes. But even if they'd truly put Mr and Mrs
Jarvey ofHolmdale Road, West Hampstead on their list of suspects
and had real suspicions about them, that would be nothing to
Fiona's betrayal.
When they'd called yesterday morning, and wanted to know
where she and Matthew had been a week ago on the day Jeff was
killed, when they'd said she understood they'd disliked Jeffrey
Leach and made it plain they did, she'd asked them how they knew
that. Of course, they wouldn't tell her; they'd said they weren't able
to divulge that information. But she knew and the knowledge
lacerated her. Only Fiona could have told them, for no one else had
heard of their dislike. She and Matthew were barely acquainted
with anyone else, apart from her sister and his brother, whom they
hardly ever saw and would never have confided in. Fiona knew the
Jarveys didn't like her fiance, she and Michelle had discussed it and,
when asked if Jeff had any enemies, named the people next door.
Her friends. The woman who loved her as a mother might and
who thought herself loved in daughterly fashion in return. It was
monstrous. Didn't Matthew think it was, asked Michelle in tears.

220
'You can't be sure, darling. They may only have assumed we
disliked him because it seems that most people did except these
poor women he strung along.'
'No. Fiona told them. How would they know no one liked him?
They don't know anyone he knew. His past life is a blank, Fiona
said. She's betrayed me and I hate to say this, but I can never feel
the same about her again, never.'
'Don't cry, darling. I can't bear to see you cry.'
Miss Demeanour and her twin - it was two women this time wanted
something Michelle had always believed wasn't a real
requirement but only a feature of detective stories and television
sitcoms. They asked her and Matthew to provide an alibi. At first
this shocked her. Living in a sheltered world where honesty was
taken for granted, she believed the senior of the two women would
take her word.
'My husband and I were out shopping together. First we went to
Waitrose at Swiss Cottage and then, because it was such a lovely
day, I drove us up to the Heath.'
'Hampstead Heath?' Miss Demeanour asked this as if there were
dozens of open spaces in London known familiarly as the Heath.
Michelle nodded. 'You parked and sat in the car? Where exactly
was that?'
Everyone must surely know how difficult it was to park
anywhere in the vicinity. You could no longer go where you chose,
as was the case when she and Matthew first came to Holmdale
Road, but had to settle for wherever you could find a space.
'It was by the Vale of Health pond.'
'What time would that have been, Mrs Jarvey?'
She couldn't remember. All she could say was that they'd left and
gone home soon after half past four because Miss Harrington was
coming in to have a drink with them at five thirty.
Matthew said, 'We went out shopping at half past two and were
at the Vale of Health by a quarter to four. We stayed there for
three-quarters of an hour.'
Surely they must have been impressed by his beautiful voice.

221
Was that the voice of a thug who went about murdering people
with knives? Michelle hadn't expected the next question.
'Did anyone see you? Would anyone remember you at Wait-
rose?'
'I shouldn't think so.' Matthew looked faintly amused, his lips
twitching. 'Hundreds of people were in there.' And we don't look
as fanny as we used to, Michelle thought. I'm still fat and he's still
thin, but the contrast isn't so great. Lots of couples look like us. 'I
can't remember seeing anyone at the Vale of Health. People don't
go out for walks any more, do they?'
No one answered him. It was then that Michelle had asked how
they knew she and Matthew had disliked Jeff and the two officers
said they were unable to divulge that information. Matthew said he
couldn't understand this insistence on an alibi. They alibied each
other, they'd been together all the time. Miss Demeanour's
colleague smiled pityingly. Ah, yes, but they were married. The
inference was that each would readily lie to save the other. That
was absurd when you remembered how many husbands and wives
were at loggerheads.
Michelle reverted to the subject next morning. Sleep had been
slow in coming to her last night and when at last it did she dreamt
of her unborn children, those children that would now never be
born. There were three of them, all girls, all clones of Fiona, each
one turning their back on her and walking away, saying they'd
never loved her because her heart was full of hatred.
Wanting to raise the subject again with Matthew, she lighted
upon it obliquely. 'I can't believe they'd seriously think of us as
people capable of murder.'
'Well, if you think that, darling, you've nothing to worry about.
So cheer up. Come and give me a kiss.' Michelle kissed him. 'You
know, you look lovely today, you look years younger.'
Even that was no comfort to her. She could hear Fiona saying
the words. The people next door, she'd have said, we'd got quite
friendly with them, but they made it plain they disliked Jeff. It got
uncomfortable being with them. Sometimes Mrs Jarvey had the
most awful vindictive expression on her face. All Jeff did was imply

222
that she's fat. Well, for God's sake, she is fat and she knows it
perfectly well.
'You can't tell if she said those things, Michelle. It does no good
conjuring up these scenarios. It's a very dangerous kind of
fantasising. After a while you stop distinguishing between the
fantasy and what really happened; you don't know the reality any
more.'
Michelle knew that there could be only one kind of reality, that
Fiona had led the police to believe she and Matthew, the gentlest
and most civilised of men, hated their neighbour's partner so much
that they were capable of killing him. In a neutral voice she said,
'I'd better think about getting our lunch.'
Not that she would eat anything. Since Jeffs death she had lost
her appetite and often felt that food would choke her. In death as in
life, he had given her invaluable help. What would the police think
if she told them that? That she was mad or that she'd killed Jeff to
make sure she'd lost her appetite? Matthew, on the other hand, had
discovered the pleasures of a new food, ciabatta, the best thing he'd
tried for years. Or Fiona had discovered it for him last week.
Before Jeff died, before she betrayed me, Michelle thought, as she
cut two slices of the Italian bread and put them on a plate with
cottage cheese and twelve salted almonds.

For Zillah it had been a terrible day, an awful night and a worse
morning. First, of course, the media crowding her, the flash bulbs
going off in her face, the bombardment of shouted questions.
'How does it feel to be married to two men at once, Zillah?' No
one called her Mrs Melcombe-Smith any more. 'Why didn't you
get a divorce, Zillah? Did you get married in church both times?
Will you and Jims marry again? Properly this time, Zillah? Is this
your little boy, Zillah? What's your name, darling?'
It was then that Mark Fryer, the rat, had deserted her and run
off. Several young women with notepads pursued him. Zillah had
put her hands up in front of her face, leaving a gap in the mouth
area, through which she shouted, 'Go away, go away, leave me
alone!'

223
She'd scooped up Jordan who was crying as usual, and not just
crying but sobbing, bellowing, shrieking in fear. One of the porters
had come down the steps, not looking sympathetic but with a
dreadful expression of disapproval as if he were silently saying, this
isn't the kind of thing we expect in Abbey Gardens Mansions, here
under the shadow of the Houses of Parliament. But he provided
her with a coat to cover herself and escorted her into the building,
the other porter doing his best to keep the crowd back. Zillah was
very nearly pushed into the lift. The doors closed.
The moment she entered the flat the phone started ringing. Ten
minutes later she knew better than to answer it but this first dme
she lifted the receiver.
'Hi, Zillah,' a man's voice said. 'The Sun here. Come out into
the sun, right? Can we have a few words? Now, when did you
first...'
She slammed down the receiver. It rang again. She lifted it
tentatively. It might be her mother, it might be - God forbid -
Jims. But she'd have to speak to him. Jordan sat in the middle of
the floor, rocking from side to side and screaming. This time the
caller was the Daily Star. He must be on a mobile, she could hear
the traffic in Parliament Square, Big Ben chiming.
'Hi there, Zillah. How d'you like being the centre of attention?
Fame at last, right?'
Having unplugged the phone and the one injims's bedroom and
the one in her bedroom, she went to bed with Jordan in her arms,
hugging him close and pulling the covers over her. Later on, she
reconnected her bedside phone and called Mrs Peacock. Would
she fetch Eugenie from school?
'I will this once, Mrs Melcombe-Smith. But I'm not going to be
able to carry on with this much longer. If you're happy with that I'd
like to pop in tomorrow morning about ten and have a frank chat
about things, talk it through.'
Zillah wasn't happy about anything but she felt too broken to say
so.
Eugenie came in half an hour afterwards, saying Mrs Peacock
had brought her to the flat door, rung the bell and gone down in

224
the lift without waiting for it to be answered. 'Why are the phones
all pulled out? My friend Matilda is going to phone me at six and
she won't be able to get through.'

'You can't have phone calls at your age, Eugenie.'
'Why not? I'm seven and seven is the age of reason. Miss
McMurty told us.'
I haven't reached it yet, thought Zillah with unusual humility, and
Til he twenty-eight next month, but she refused to plug in the phones
and Eugenie sulked all evening. That night Zillah was awakened by
Jordan screaming in an apparent frenzy. He was soaked in urine
and so was his bed. She changed his nappy and his pyjamas,
brought him into bed with her. What was wrong with him? She
ought to do something about it, take him to that child psychiatrist.
At his age his sister had left babyhood behind, was clean, dressed
herself, chatted away about anything, only cried if she fell over.
True to her word, Mrs Peacock arrived at ten sharp.
'We're not going to have to be looked after by her again, are
we?'
'No, Eugenie, you're not,' said Mrs Peacock. 'Never again, if I
may so put it. Have you looked out of your window this morning,
Mrs Melcombe-Smith? A rat pack is outside. I believe that's the
current expression.'
Zillah went to the window. The media people looked like the
same lot as yesterday. They were waiting patiently, most of them
with cigarettes and a couple with flasks of something. A lot of
merriment was going on, they all seemed on the best of terms. As if
in protest, Jordan began to cry.
'I brought some papers for you, in case you haven't seen them.
You're in them, on all the front pages.'
'Thank you. I prefer not to see.'
'Frankly, I'm not surprised. May I sit down? It's rather early, but
all this has been a shock to me and if you don't object, I'd like a
glass of Bristol Cream.'
Zillah poured it, a large schooner. She could quite clearly hear
the laughter and chatter from the street two floors below. The

225
phone rang. She pulled out the plug, watched closely by Mrs
Peacock.
'Now, Mrs Melcombe-Smith - though to be honest with you I
doubt if you've any right to that name - when I phoned you
yesterday I was, as you might say, in a state of innocence. Things
have changed. I've read the newspapers. As you may imagine, I
could hardly believe my eyes. Abbey Gardens Mansions is no place
for you, Maureen Peacock, I said to myself.'
'There are two sides to this,' said Zillah. 'I can explain
everything.'
The innocent never utter these words and perhaps Mrs Peacock
knew it. 'We need not go into that. Who touches pitch shall be
defiled. I shall be reluctantly forced to terminate our agreement.
You owe me fifty-seven pounds, twenty-five pee, and I'd like cash.
You never know with some people whether cheques won't bounce.'
A little of her old spirit returned to Zillah. 'Don't you dare speak
to me like that!'
Mrs Peacock ignored this. She got slowly to her feet, emptied
the sherry glass and wiped her lips with a small lace handkerchief.
'Just one other thing before I go.' She pointed to Jordan who, by
this time, was lying on his back, writhing and weeping. 'There's
something seriously amiss with that child. He needs help without
more ado. I knew a child like him twenty-five years ago, always
crying and screaming. And what d'you think? Nothing was done
and he grew up to be a psychopath. He's in prison now, in a
straitiacket, one of those places where they put violent people who
are a threat to the community.'
But Zillah had gone to her bedroom to fetch the money. The
amount was more than she had in the flat and she had to take a
five-pound note out of Eugenie's piggy bank. Eugenie, who was
really a very strange child, perhaps a genius, started laughing as
soon as Mrs Peacock had gone. Zillah could hardly believe she'd
understood what the woman had said but something had made her
laugh and after a second or two Zillah joined in. She put her arms
round her daughter, preparing to give her a hug, something she
hadn't done for a long time. Eugenie stiffened and pulled away.

226
Jims might have been trying to get through to her but it didn't
matter much. She knew he'd be here by lunchtime. He'd have
cancelled his engagement in Casterbridge and driven straight
home. There was very little to eat in the flat and obviously she
couldn't go out shopping. If Mrs Peacock hadn't been so
abominable and rude and defiant, she'd have asked her to get a few
things in. The children could have scrambled eggs, though they'd
had rather a lot of these lately, and Eugenie had already told her
eggs were stuffed with cholesterol and did she know?
It was just after twelve when Jims came. Unlike her, he wasn't so
foolish as to run the gauntlet in Great College Street, he'd have
seen what was going on when driving past in the car, but still there
was no escape for him. Media people were round the back as well.
Zillah, shaking with nerves, heard the lift come up and its doors
open. Malina Daz was with him, wearing a sea-green salwar
kameez and with her hair done like a Japanese geisha's.
Jims opened the living-room door, took a step inside and
surveyed his little family the way uncharitable people look at
asylum seekers. To the children he said not a word. He addressed
Zillah in an Arctic voice. 'Malina and I are about to prepare a
statement for the media. I will show it to you when we've finished.'
Malina brought the statement in to her. It was short, prepared
on a word processor.

My wife Zillah and 1 fully understand the sensation recent circumstances the
tragic death of Mr Jeffrey Leach taken in tandem with our
marriage - have occasioned in the media. While absolutely concurring
in the opinion of national newspaper editors that this matter is in the
public interest and should not be kicked into the long grass but openly
aired, we would nevertheless like to assure those kind enough to take an
interest in us, that we were totally innocent of any offence.
My wife sincerely believed that her marriage to Mr Leach had been
dissolved twelve months ago. She had implicit trust in Mr Leach as did
I. Not for a moment did either of us believe we were guilty of
wrongdoing. If we had, in spite of our love for each other, we would of

227
course have deferred our marriage until we had secured a fonnalisation
of the divorce and could start afresh with a level playing field.
Needless to say, we shall remarry as soon as this is feasible. We would
both like to extend our best wishes to those good enough to be concerned
for us and ask them for their understanding, indulgence and, indeed,
forgiveness.

'It's a bit formal,' said Malina, 'but we deemed that suited to the
seriousness of the subject matter. Jims decided it might be best not
to mention your husband's passing setting you free. It looks bad.
And we were minded not to use the word "bigamy". It sounds
terribly twentieth century, don't you think?'
Because she dared not ask Jims, Zillah asked Malina, 'What will
they do to me?'
'What, for being married to two men at the same time? Not a
lot, I should think. After all, your husband's dead, isn't he? It'd be
different if he were still alive somewhere. They'll be focusing on
the murder.'
Malina went off to do whatever she did to disseminate the
statement. Jordan cried himself to sleep. Eugenie said that if
someone would take her there she'd like to go round to her friend
Matilda's for the afternoon but first she was starving.
'There is no food in the house,' said Jims.
'I know there isn't. I couldn't go out shopping, could I? Not with
all that lot outside.' Zillah very much wanted to placate him. 'I
could now if I go through the basement. They aren't in the back.'
'They are. They nearly flattened my car when Malina and I came
in.'
'Miss McMurty says that if you don't have enough to eat you'll
get a vitamin deficiency. Your eyes will go blind and your teeth
drop out,' Eugenie said.
'I will get one of the porters to shop for us,' said Jims.
Zillah wondered when the showdown would come, when he'd
ask her why she'd deceived him over the non-existent divorce. She
prepared lunch. The porter had bought inferior quality food from
some corner shop, besides getting all the things the children didn't

228
like. The lettuce was wilted and the tomatoes soft. Jordan screamed
when he was expected to eat corned beef.
'Can I phone Matilda and get her to come here?' Eugenie
suggested.
'I'm surprised you condescend to ask.'
'Well, can I?'
'I suppose so. You'll have to play in your bedroom. I've got a
splitting headache.'
Too late Zillah remembered Matilda's father would probably
bring her. But when the child arrived half an hour later she was in
the care of a very young and beautiful au pair. She supposed she
ought to be thankful Eugenie's friend was allowed to come at all,
permitted to associate with the Melcombe-Smiths, after what had
been in the papers.
'I'll come back for you at six, Matilda.'
They'd to have her for three whole hours? That meant Zillah
must find something to feed them on. She watched them go off
towards Eugenie's room, chatting happily, her daughter giggling
like a normal child. The phone began to ring. Zillah lifted the
receiver fearfully. It was her mother, saying nothing this time about
newspapers but asking if she was so indifferent to her father's fate
that she had forgotten he'd had a heart bypass that morning. After
making wild promises she knew she'd never carry out, once Nora
Wading had slammed down the phone she was left alone with
Jims.
He took from the bookcase an as yet unread biography of
Clemenceau, returned with it to his armchair and, in total silence,
opened it at the preface. Zillah picked up a glossy magazine and
tried to read a piece about collagen lip implants. Suppose he never
spoke to her again? What would she do? She remembered, back in
December, how she'd foreseen this marriage as the chaste and
charming companionship of two best friends, two people who
would have fun together, enjoy life and at the last have a greater
affection for each other than either had for any lover.
'What do you want me to say?' she asked him when she could
bear the silence no longer.

229
He looked up, a shade of irritability crossing his face. 'I beg your
pardon - what?'
'I asked you what you wanted me to say.'
'Nothing,' he said. 'There is nothing to say. The newspapers
have already said it.'
'We can get through it together, can't we, Jims? All the fuss will
die down. You've done nothing wrong. The statement will stop it,
won't it? Oh, Jims, I'm so desperately sorry. I'd have died before I
let something like this happen, I'm so sorry.'1
'Don't be ridiculous. Abjectness doesn't suit you.'
She'd have gone down on her knees to him but for the phone
ringing at that moment. 'Don't answer it, let it ring.'
He got up, crossed the room to where the phone was and lifted
the receiver. His expression changed subtly as he listened. 'Yes,' he
said, and 'yes' again. 'May I ask why?' She couldn't remember ever
having seen him dismayed before. 'I would like to phone my lawyer
first,' and then, 'Half an hour, right.'
'What is it, Jims?'
'They want me at the police station. Here won't do. They're
coming to fetch me.'
'My God, Jims, but why?'
Instead of answering he lifted the receiver and dialled the home
number of his solicitor.
Eugenie came in, trailing Madlda behind her. 'You owe me five
pounds, Mummy. You'd better write it down or you'll forget.'

230
Chapter 22

Alone at home, Fiona hadn't set foot in her garden or conservatory
since the news reached her of Jeff's death. Nor had she been back
to work. She had barely been out. When Violent Crimes and Miss
Demeanour weren't there, and their visits grew shorter and shorter
until they no longer happened, she sat in her living room, not
reading, not watching television nor listening to the radio, but just
sitting. Her hands were usually folded in her lap, her knees close
together. It was days now since she'd cried. She'd phoned no one
and when the phone rang she left it to ring.
Michelle, who had been with her every day up until Thursday,
hadn't been back since. She'd have liked to see her, for her next-
door neighbour was the only company she wanted. But Michelle,
she supposed, had grown tired of comforting a grief-stricken
woman and had doubtless run out of things to say.
Fiona marvelled at the intensity of her own sorrow. She was as
wretched as any widow after a twenty-year marriage. Her heart was
broken. In the past she had laughed at the absurdity of this phrase
and others like it: heartbreak, heartbroken. 'You will break my
heart,' her mother had said to her over some minor offence she'd
committed while at university. What nonsense. So she'd thought
then but now she understood. Her own heart was broken, shattered
to bits, and she told herself that since Jeff died she hadn't been able
to feel it beating. When she placed her hand under her left breast
there was no fluttering movement, nothing but a dull ache.

231
Sometimes, sitting alone, she worried over this and took her own
pulse, not knowing whether to be relieved or not at its gentle
regular throb.
Every day the newspapers had a fresh story in them about Jeff.
His marriage, his idle life. Fiona swore not to look at these articles
but she couldn't help herself. They'd said everything they could
about the murder and now they were on to Jeffs womanising
activities, his failure ever to have worked for his living, the base
advantage he took of women who kept him and were then
abandoned. Reading about this brought her an intense physical
pain, which fetched little sobs and moans from her. One woman
he'd moved in with five years ago had parted with her savings
amounting to two thousand pounds, had later lost her job and was
living on the benefit. Fiona, still believing herself the great love of
Jeffs life, the one to change him, felt she ought to compensate this
woman for her losses.
All this added to her grief. Next week she would have to go back
to work. She had grounds no longer for staying away. It wasn't a
close relative she had lost, not a husband or partner in a long,
steady relationship, not even really a fiance. That word had become
a dirty one to Fiona, who would never again read it on the page or
hear it spoken without recalling how Jeff had not given her a ring
and had lied to her about their wedding date. That knowledge did
nothing to reduce the strength of her love, but it tinged that love,
loss, sorrow, with bitterness.
At work they would all, of course, say they were sorry about her
boyfriend, what a shock, what a ghastly thing to happen, and that
would be it. Until the police caught the person who'd done it,
when their sympathy would be revived and her boss would tell her
to take the day off. She'd be a curiosity, to be pointed out as the
woman whose boyfriend had been murdered. For ever, probably.
Fiona imagined herself at fifty, still single, of course, still alone, the
middle-aged solitary whom people got to know, wherever she
might live, as the cinema victim's girlfriend.
She forgot to eat. Having shared an almost nightly bottle of wine
with Jeff, she could no longer bear the pain of tasting it. A woman

232
who lost weight easily and quickly, she felt her hip bones
protruding, her elbows sharp. At this rate - and she managed a wry
joke with herself - Matthew would want her on his programme. If
only Matthew would come to her! If only Michelle would come!
The phone had stopped ringing. Something hindered her from
lifting the receiver and making a call herself; she couldn't physically
perform the actions. As for going to them, she had a vision of
herself stepping out of her front door, ringing their bell and, when
the door opened, two people staring at her as if they'd never seen
her before, as if she were some stray caller wanting to promote a
product or give away a tract.
At night she took sleeping pills, Temazepam. They sent her to
sleep but it was an uneasy sleep and full of dreams. Always of Jeff.
In one he came back from some foreign trip he'd been on. She'd
thought he was dead and felt boundless joy at their reunion, as he
promised he'd never go away again. Waking to reality was one of
the worst experiences of her life.
The newspapers continued to be delivered and thrown into the
recycling bin. She'd need to take it out to the street one day before
it got too heavy to lift, but she'd have to leave the house on
Monday anyway, somehow get herself to the tube and the City and
London Wall. Taking the papers from the doormat on Saturday
morning, though hating them, though determined as ever not to
look, she caught sight in the front-page photograph of a woman
she recognised. It was, surely it was, Jeffs ex-wife.
Only she wasn't his ex-wife. They'd never been divorced. Fiona
felt a shaft of intense pain run through her body as if she too had
been stabbed with a long, sharp knife. She was indifferent as to
whether Zillah Melcombe-Smith had knowingly committed big
amy or not. Jeff had lied again and this lie was infinitely worse than
telling her he'd booked a wedding date when he hadn't. He
couldn't book a date, he was married already.
Fiona dropped the paper. She lay face-down on the hall floor in
an agony of grief and, strangely, shame.
'I shall sue these trashy rags for libel,' Jims said when, for five
233
minutes, Violent Crimes left him alone with his solicitor. He had
completely forgotten deriding Zillah for making much the same
threat.
'Have you got a million pounds to spare?' Damien Pritchard was
a little older than his client, but not unlike him to look at, being
also tall, dark, classic-featured and gay. 'A million you wouldn't
mind dropping down a drain or giving to a beggar?'
'Of course I haven't. I wouldn't need to. I'll win.'
'Oh, please. Do me a favour. Let me tell you something. A
solicitor came to live next door to my parents when I was a kid. I've
always remembered my father saying to my mother, he's a lawyer,
don't touch his ears. Actually, I think it had a lot to do with making
me want to be one. Well, the same goes for newspaper editors.
Don't touch their ears.' Damien shook his head in exasperation.
'And now, can't you really come up with a better alibi than what
you expect the Plod to swallow? Oh, God, here they are, coming
back.'
Jims could, of course, improve on his alibi. He could have told
the truth. But that seemed almost the worst thing he could do and
its results the worst that could happen to him. Once more he sat
down at that bare table with Damien next to him and Violent
Crimes and Miss Demeanour facing them. They all sat in the kind
of chairs Jims wouldn't even have had in his garden shed. At least
they were still calling him by his surname and style, though he
wondered how long that would last.
'The difficulty is that no one confirms your presence at
Fredington Crucis House during Friday afternoon and evening, Mr
Melcombe-Smith. Two callers at the house noticed that your car
was absent.'
'Who?'
'You know I'm not at liberty to tell you that. You still maintain
you spent Friday evening there? And stayed over Friday night?'
'My client', said Damien, 'has already told you so. Several times.'
Jims was starting to get cross. 'Why would I have killed the guy,
anyway? For what possible reason would I have stuck a knife in
him?'

234
'Well, Mr Melcombe-Smith,' said Miss, or Detective Inspector,
Demeanour, 'he was married to the lady with whom you'd been
through a form of marriage.' She smiled very faintly as Jims
winced. 'It would have been very much in your interest to have him
out of the way, especially if he'd threatened to reveal the truth to,
say, a newspaper.'
'So what? Everybody else reveals it. Anyway, he wasn't blackmailing
me. I thought Zillah and he had never been married. I
hadn't seen him for years.' Like many in his position, Jims was
anxious to be scrupulous about telling the truth in every area of
questioning except one. 'Well, two years.'
The words 'so you say' were plainly written on the woman's face.
'You came back to London on Friday afternoon, didn't you, Mr
Melcombe-Smith?'
Jims was silent. He was hesitating. He could feel doubt, a loss of
confidence in his friend and client, by some strange means
emanating from Damien. Violent Crimes was looking at him.
Behind them, on the ochre-coloured wall, a crack in the plaster ran
from ceiling to skirting board. It was shaped, Jims thought, like the
silhouette of a man with an erection. He looked away.
Damien, who was a good guy, a real friend in need despite his
wavering trust, said softly, 'If you don't mean to charge Mr
Melcombe-Smith, and I don't think you do, you're obliged to let
him go home now.'
Violent Crimes knew a trick worth two of that. 'You drove back
to London to fetch something. Something you'd forgotten. I've
been wondering if it was the notes for your speech to the
Countryside Alliance. It's a coincidence, but the Chief Constable of
Wessex happened to be there.'
Jims tried to remember if he'd referred to the missing notes and
his return to retrieve them when he was making that speech. He
couldn't remember. And it wouldn't matter -whether he'd referred to
them or not. It was enough that this policeman had the sense, the
skill, if you like, to suggest that he had. It didn't even matter
whether it was true about the Chief Constable. He looked at
Damien in despair and Damien said nothing.

'35
'Mr Melcombe-Smith?'
They contrived by the tone of their voices to make his name
ridiculous. Jims thought of appealing to them to keep what he
might confess to them a secret. Would they agree? Or should he
trust to luck? He considered the procedures he read about in the
newspapers which preceded murder trials, or any court cases come
to that. The police never told the media how they arrived at
arresting someone or charging someone or how they agreed to or
exploded alibis. There must be something in law which forbade
their doing so. Not for the first time he wished he'd read law
instead of history and practised for a while at the criminal bar.

'Mr Melcombe-Smith?'
'All right, I did come back to London.' He dared not look at
Damien. 'I had, as you say, forgotten my notes. I started the drive
back soon after one and had something to eat at a - well, a sort of
cafe on the A30.' A sound, something between a sniff and a grunt,
came from Damien. Or maybe not, perhaps he'd imagined it. 'I'm
not sure where. They might remember me. The traffic was bad. I
didn't get - home till seven.'
It was interesting, it was almost disconcerting, the way they
accepted that up till now he'd lied. They didn't comment. Neither
said, 'So you've been lying to us' or 'Why didn't you tell the truth
before?' It was as if they were entirely used to a kind of endemic
mendacity, it was what they expected. Jims began to feel sick.
'So you went home, Mr Melcombe-Smith?'
Nothing but the truth would do now. 'I'd left the notes at a
friend's house.'
'Ah,' said Inspector Demeanour. 'And where might that be?'
He gave her Leonardo's address. Beside him Damien seemed to
swell and palpitate, though when he turned to look at him the
solicitor was sitting there, immobile and calm. Jims wanted to fall
on his knees before them and beg them to say nothing, to tell no
one, to accept his word, just as Zillah had wanted to kneel to him.
He stayed where he was, his face expressionless.
'And Mr Norton will confirm what you say?'

236
The truth once told starts a train of truth. 'I didn't see him until
eight thirty. As I was going out to eat I met him coming in.'

'So you left Casterbridge at - what? Half past one?'
'About that,' said Jims.
'And you reached Glebe Terrace at seven? Five and a half hours
to drive a hundred and fifty miles, James?'
Something he'd said, or simply because he'd admitted to lying,
had reduced him in their eyes. He'd taken away his own dignity
and thereby lost the privilege of being treated courteously. 'I know
it took a long time,' he said. 'I've never taken so long before. There
were miles of roadworks. That bit took me nearly an hour to get
through. Then there was a pile-up near Heathrow.'
They would check, of course, and find it was true. It hardly
helped him. 'The Merry Cookhouse' - it pained him to utter the
words - 'where I had lunch was just before the roadworks, if that's
any use.'
'It may be. The relevant time is between 3.30 and 4.30 p.m. Did
anyone see you enter the house in Glebe Terrace?'
How could he have forgotten, even for a moment? Relief flooded
him. It was like drinking something warm and sweet when in a
state of shock. 'The woman next door - it's ^6a, I think - she gave
me her key.'
'And now', said Damien, 'perhaps you'll let Mr Melcombe-
Smith go.'

When the phone rang or when someone came to the front door,
every time these things happened, Michelle thought it was the
police. The joke aspect of being treated with suspicion had gone.
She'd got it into her head it would be impossible to find witnesses
to her and Matthew's whereabouts that Friday afternoon and,
though she wasn't usually a nervous woman, she saw them both
high on the list of suspects. Miscarriages of justice did happen,
people were mistakenly tried and falsely imprisoned. She'd only
once encountered the police before and that was when the Jarveys'
car was broken into and the radio stolen.

237
Matthew did his best to reassure her: 'Darling, I think you must
believe that when they say an enquiry is routine it is routine.'
'I hated being questioned like that. It was the worst thing that's
ever happened to me.'
That made him laugh, but not unkindly. 'No, it wasn't. The
worst thing that's ever happened to you was when you thought I
was going to die through my stupid food fads.'
'Not stupid,' Michelle said hody. 'You don't mean that. You
mean your illness.'
'Well, it's not really fear of being arrested that's upsetting you, is
it? It's not being suspected of a crime or interrogated, it's
indignation at Fiona's behaviour.'
'More than that, Matthew.' She went close behind the chair
where he sat reading the Spectator, and put her arms round his neck.
He looked up into her face. 'It's real pain over what she did. I'll
never be able to think of her, let alone speak to her, without
remembering what she did.'
He said very seriously, 'You'll have to get over that.'
'Yes, but how? I wish I weren't the sort of person who
remembers for ever hurtful things people have said or done. But I
am. I do. I don't like it, I know I ought to forgive and forget. If only
I could. I remember unkind things people said to me when I was at
school. I mean, thirty years ago, darling. The words they used are
as fresh in my mind as when they first said them.'
Although he knew it already, she'd told him before, he said to
her in a light amused tone, 'I shall have to be very careful what I say
to you then.'
She was vehement, intense. 'You never never say those sort of
things. You never have. It's one of the reasons I love you and go on
loving you, because you never hurt my feelings.'
Again he lifted to her his wizened, skeletal face. 'Not because I'm
so sexy and charming?'
'That too. Of course.' She was entirely sincere, unsmiling. 'And
the thing about Fiona is, it was true what she told the police, that I
disliked Jeff, that I hated him, if you like. I hated him because he
said those cruel things. He's dead and he died in a horrible way, but

238
I don't care. I'm glad. It won't matter how I try, I shall never forget
the things he said.'
Matthew covered her hands with his. 'Not even if you get thin
and I get fat?' He knew now that she was trying to lose weight and
he supported her, though without admonition for the past or
congratulations for the present. 'Not even when I'm Large and
you're Little?'
As she was trying to answer him the doorbell rang. Michelle put
up her hands to her face, her eyes suddenly bright and staring.
'They've come back. On a Sunday. They don't care when they
come, they don't even let us know they're coming.'
'I'll go,' Matthew said.
He walked quite quickly these days and could stand almost
upright. The bell rang again before he got there. Fiona was on the
doorstep, a new unattractive Fiona, her dirty hair in rats' tails, her
face swollen from weeping and her eyes red. The trousers she wore
were several sizes too big for her and looked like a man's. A shirt
which should have been white, tucked into the waistband, showed
how thin the past week had made her.
'Come in.'
She put her face close to his and kissed him on both cheeks. It
was the kind of kiss the recipient isn't required to return. 'I have to
see you. I can't be alone any longer. I'm going back to work
tomorrow. I think it will kill me.'
Michelle blushed brightly when they came into the living room.
She got up and took two, then three, awkward steps towards the
visitor. Matthew wondered what she'd say, if she'd even refer to her
contention.
Fiona stepped towards her, they met, and the bereaved woman
threw her arms round Michelle, breaking into sobs. 'Why haven't
you come to me? Why have you deserted me? What have I done?'
The silence was profound. Then Michelle said, in a voice
Matthew had never heard before, 'You know what you've done.'
'I don't, I don't. I needed you and you left me alone. I've no one
I care about but you. What have I done? Tell me, you must tell me.
I swear I don't know.'

239
'You don't know that you told those police people that Matthew
and I disliked Jeff? You told them that and now they suspect us?
You don't know that?'
'No, darling, they don't suspect us,' Matthew said firmly. Fiona
had broken into fresh tears. She threw out her arms wildly, her face
streaming. 'Sit down, Fiona. Come on now, calm yourself. I'll make
some tea.'
'Not until Michelle says she'll forgive me. I didn't know what I
was doing or saying. I said anything that came into my head. I'd
give everything I've got to take it back now.'
Michelle was looking at her sadly. 'The difficulty is that you
can't take things back.'
'Then say you'll forgive me. Say it can be as if it never
happened.'
'I've forgiven you already,' Michelle said drily and went into the
kitchen to switch on the kettle. But I haven'1! forgotten, she thought.
Why is it so much easier to forgive than to forget^

Violent Crimes interviewed Leonardo Norton on Sunday evening.
He was very shocked that Jims, whom he thought the most discreet
and laid-back of men, had given them his name. A sense of
grievance sounded in his voice. 'It was at least eight thirty before I
saw him, probably nearer nine. I'd spent the day with my mother in
Cheltenham.' This rang in his own ears as the most innocent and
blameless of ways to spend a day. 'I really can't account for what
Mr Melcombe-Smith may have been doing in the afternoon.'
They didn't ask him where Jims had spent the night. Presumably,
they hadn't much interest in what happened after 4.30 p.m.
The next question was rather near the bone. 'Did he have a key
to this house?'
'To my house? Certainly not.' Jims, after all, would never admit
to such a thing.
'But the lady next door has?'
'Amber Conway? Yes, she does. As I have a key to hers. It
seemed wise. I understand Mr Melcombe-Smith borrowed her
key.'

240
According to her sister, whom they tracked down, Amber
Conway had gone to Ireland but not until Saturday. She had been
at home on Friday night but the sister knew nothing about a key.
Violent Crimes told Leonardo they'd come back. Leonardo
phoned Jims at home. When the receiver was lifted he could hear a
child screaming, another one laughing and something that sounded
like a Disney video bleating and crooning from the television.
'You are a one,' said Leonardo when he heard Jims's morose
tones. 'Quite a little devil when you like. Did you really stick a
knife in your wife's husband's guts?'
'Of course I fucking didn't.'
'You'll be taking bribes in brown envelopes next.'
'I don't allow even you to say that.'
Leonardo laughed. 'Want to come over?'
Jims told him coldly that he didn't think so. He'd had a grilling
that had lasted most of the day and he was tired. Besides, he'd have
a fresh confrontation next morning.
'Nothing to worry about,' said Leonardo. 'The papers will only
say a Westminster man has been helping them with their enquiries.
Or maybe "a well-known Tory MP".'
'Leave it out, would you?' said Jims.

241
Chapter 23

On the opposite side of Glebe Terrace to Amber Conway and
Leonardo Norton lived a woman Natalie Reckman had got to
know. She was the sister of her boyfriend's flatmate's girlfriend, a
rather distantly removed relationship but one whose branchings
were instantly simplified by most of the parties meeting for a
dinner arranged and cooked by the flatmate. His sister-inlaw-to-
be told the company how the peace of her street had been
disturbed all day by the comings and goings of the police, some in
uniform and some, she was sure, plain-clothed. Their quarry
appeared to be the woman opposite or it might instead be this
woman's neighbour, a young banker or stockbroker or something
whom she'd always supposed perfectly law-abiding. Someone had
told her that a frequent visitor to his house - and she'd seen him
call there herself - was that MP whose wife was a bigamist. She
recognised him when she saw his picture in the paper.
Natalie was so excited she could barely eat her dinner.
Unfortunately, she had to eat it and she was going to have to stay
the night there too or put her relationship with her boyfriend in
jeopardy. He'd already complained she was always away and
thought more of getting a scoop than of him. Anyway, there wasn't
much that could be done before the morning. But by nine next day
she was in Glebe Terrace, her car in the underground NCP to
avoid all risk of towing away or clamping, and Natalie was ringing
the bell on a pretty little house which was the right-hand half of a

242
joined-up pair. No police were about. Just as it began to look as if
Amber Conway was still away and Natalie had rung the bell three
times, the door was opened by a half-asleep woman with tousled
hair and sleep dust in her eyes, wearing a short dressing gown over
baby doll pyjamas.
'Amber Conway?'
'Yes. Who are you? I only got home at three this morning. Are
you the police?'
'Certainly not,' said Natalie. 'What an idea.'
'They've been phoning me. I told them not to get here till ten.'
'That's why I got here at nine.' Natalie put one foot over the
threshold. 'Can I come in?'

Jims had spent the evening lecturing Zillah on what he called her
'disgusting and criminal behaviour'. If he was to continue to share
his life with her it must be on the strict understanding that she did
what she was told, starting with a marriage ceremony, quietly
carried out this time at an hotel or some such place, anywhere
licensed for weddings. After that it would be more sensible for her
to live permanently at Fredington Crucis House, only coming to
London when her presence was required at some Conservative
function, say a party hosted by the Leader of the Opposition.
Eugenie must go to boarding school and Jordan follow her in three
years' time. Meanwhile he would attend a nursery school ofjims's
choosing.
'I won't,' Zillah said. 'I've only just left the bloody place and I'm
not going back.'
'I'm afraid you must, my dear. If you don't I shall have no option
but to leave you, or rather, turn you out. Because if we aren't
married and haven't even lived together for more than two months,
I shall be under no legal obligation to support you. Jerry can't, if he
ever did to any extent. He's dead. So you either toe the line or go
on the benefit. I don't know where you'll live but I dare say
Westminster would put you in bed and breakfast accommodation.'
'What a bastard you are.'
'Calling names won't help. Thanks to some crafty string-pulling,

243
I've arranged for us to be married on Wednesday. All right with
you?'
That had been Monday. Neither of them had much sleep that
night. Even though he hadn't revealed his state of mind to Zillah,
Jims was seriously worried about the police investigation. One
never knew when they would pounce again, for pounce he was sure
they would. The Chief Whip had as yet said nothing to him and
neither had the Leader of the Opposition, but from each he fancied
he'd received chilly looks. The idea that they were biding their
time was inescapable.
Zillah, too, lay awake but, oddly enough, her state of mind was
far more cheerful and forward-looking than his. That afternoon,
before he came home, she'd had a phone call from a television
channel called Moon and Stars asking her if she'd be willing to go
on their A Bite of Breakfast show and talk about her experiences.
She'd said she'd think about it and get back to them on Tuesday. If
she played her cards right, she could maybe have a career in
television. It might be wisest to get married first, just to be on the
safe side. She'd ring Moon and Stars in the morning and ask them
to wait just one more day when she'd be able to give them a
positive answer.
Jims worried also about the newspapers. That remark of
Leonardo's about describing the man who'd been 'helping the
police with their enquiries' as a well-known Tory MP still rankled.
He was pretty sure they couldn't do that, they wouldn't dare, it
would be sub jvdice or whatever the term was, and once again he
wished he had some legal training. Probably there would be
nothing anyone could link with him - but when would they come
back for him? Could he find the courage to make an appointment
with the Chief Whip before the tiresome man sent for him? Once
he'd have said his nerve was limitless, but now he wasn't so sure.
He couldn't understand why he'd had no invitations from the Today
programme or Jeremy Paxman's Start the Week. They came fast
enough when he had nothing to say.
The newspapers flopped on to the mat at six thirty in the
morning. Jims had only slept for about an hour. He was up

244
drinking coffee. If he grabbed the papers with unseemly haste,
there was no one to see him. He sighed with relief for there was
nothing more about him than the usual 'man helping'. So far, so
good. A pity, really, that there was no point in going back to bed at
this hour. He could have slept at last.

The manager - he called himself the chief executive - of the Merry
Cookhouse on the A30 remembered Jims, identifying him from a
photograph without any trouble. Indeed, he'd already known who
he was when first he entered the restaurant, the MP husband of
that woman who'd married him while married to someone else. It
had been all over the newspapers. Then when he'd come into the
Merry Cookhouse all problems of recognition, if there'd been any,
disappeared. He was the rudest and most difficult customer the
man behind the counter had come across for some time. When
he'd finished insulting the decor and the service, he'd said the food
wasn't fit for pigs, it was a suppurating sore on the fair face of
England and the staff were morons who couldn't tell a chicken
breast from a pig's balls.
That had been at three o'clock on the Friday afternoon. Violent
Crimes reasoned, rather to their disappointment, that with the
state of the traffic, Jims couldn't possibly have got from this point
in Hampshire to Marble Arch in under two hours, more likely
three. They didn't bother to tell him so. Why not let him sweat for
a bit? He was obviously guilty of something, if not murder. Once
they'd got the evidence of the Merry Cookhouse man, they didn't
take the trouble to call on Amber Conway, though they might have
done so if they'd known Natalie Reckman had forestalled them.

'This MP chap, he was a mate of Leonardo Norton, was he?'
Natalie was asking this question at the very moment Violent
Crimes's visit was due. 'What you'd call a close friend?'
'More than that,' said Amber. 'You won't mention my name, will
you?'

'Absolutely not.'

^5
'I suppose I'm naive, but I thought for a long dme it was politics.
We're all very political in Westminster, you know.'
Natalie switched off the recording device Amber hadn't noticed
she was using. 'Often borrowed your key, did he?'
'I've never known him do it before. He had a key of his own.'
Back at home, Natalie found a message waiting for her on her
answering machine. It was from Zillah Melcombe-Smith and for a
start it sang, rather well and in tune: 'I'm getting married in the
morning.' This was followed by spoken words: 'Sorry if I wasn't
very nice to you last time. I was under a lot of pressure. Once I'm
legally married to that sod I'll have a story for you. Would you like
to come round on Wednesday afternoon, say about three?'
Natalie put everything on hold. The inquest having taken place
and been adjourned, Jeff was getting himself cremated that
afternoon at Golders Green. She might as well go. After all, she'd
been attached to him for longer than most of his other women and
though she'd finally thrown him out, their parting had been as
amicable as possible in the circumstances and her fondness for him
had endured until his death. That was probably because she'd never
been under any illusions about him.
At two o'clock she dressed herself in a black skirt and jacket.
Some precept lingering from years ago when she'd lived at home
with her mother made the idea of a trouser suit worn to a funeral
seem indecent. Natalie didn't like hats and only had one, an
unbleached straw with a big brim she'd bought for a holiday in
Egypt. It wouldn't do, so she went bare-headed. So did Zillah
Melcombe-Smith, whom she hadn't expected to see. She smiled at
her across the chapel, and waved in a discreet and funereal way,
suitably subdued to be appropriate for the occasion. Zillah had a
child with her, the little boy who was always crying and was Jeff
Leach's son. No doubt, there was no one around for her to leave
him with. The voluntary set him off and he was screaming at the
top of his lungs by the time the coffin was carried in.
The weeping woman in deepest unrelieved black must be the
current girlfriend, or rather, the most recent past girlfriend. Fiona
Something. Blonde, as usual, with the exception of the one he'd

»/i/»
married. She cried all through the perfunctory service. The fat
woman who'd come with her put an arm round her shoulders, then
pressed her to the biggest bust - you couldn't call it 'breasts' -
Natalie had ever seen. That man who'd made such a success of a
TV programme about anorexia was with them, singing hymns in
rather a good baritone. Natalie hadn't sent any flowers. She'd been
feeling guilty about that, but now felt worse, there were so few
wreaths. Those there were lay on a paved courtyard outside the
crematorium, gerberas and lilies and ranunculus mostly, and
Natalie thought how flowers sold in Britain had changed in the
past ten years. Before that, it would have been all roses and
carnations. A card on the biggest sheaf read: In adored memory of my
darling Jeff, Your Fiona. Next to it was a wreath of white dianthus,
tightly packed, that looked uncannily like a large Polo mint. The
'In loving memory' card said, From Dad and Beryl. Nothing from
the widow. No other former girlfriends there.
Natalie, who'd split up from Jeff just after the Christmas before
last, found herself wondering who had come between her and this
Fiona. There must have been someone - or had he made do with
his wife? She couldn't imagine Jeff being content for sex and
comfort and a roof over his head, not to mention money, with a
woman who lived in the depths of Dorset. If she was going to write
an intimate story about all of them she'd have to discover this
missing woman's name as well as that of the girlfriend who came
before her and maybe the one before that.
The mourners had all left the chapel by this time and were
standing about admiring the flowers, some of them tearfully. Not
one among them looked even remotely likely to have been her
successor and Fiona's predecessor. The plump lady with the pretty
face was impossible - too old and the wrong shape. A blonde, not
unlike Fiona to look at, she recognised as a detective inspector.
Natalie introduced herself to a tall thin woman of sixty who said
she'd been Jeffs landlady in Harvist Road, Queen's Park.
'He was a lovely man, dear. Never gave a moment's trouble.'
'I bet he got behind with his rent.'
'There was that. Fancy his wife going and marrying someone

247
else while she was still married to him. Is that her? I think I've seen
her somewhere before.'
'Was he away much overnight while he was living in your
house?'
'For days on end and often at weekends, dear. But it was all
above board. He used to go to Gloucester to see his mother. I was
ever so worried he might have been on that train that crashed.'
Not likely, thought Natalie, considering he was driving his old
banger back from Long Fredington at the time. JefPs mother, she
knew for a fact, had died in 1985 and his father was living in Cardiff
with a woman Jeff disliked, the Beryl of the Polo mint wreath.
They hadn't spoken for years. 'That was at weekends. Was he away
much in the week?'
'In the summer he was and maybe September too. "I think
you've found yourself a lady friend," I said and he didn't deny it.'
Natalie went over to have a word with Zillah. 'Congratulations
on your impending nuptials.'
'You what? Oh, yes. Thanks.'
'I'll see you tomorrow.'
Who could the other woman, the intervening woman, be? Well-
off, naturally, either with money or in a well-paid job. Owning her
home and that home somewhere in London. North London,
Natalie thought. Jeff had been one of those people who treat south
London as alien territory for which you probably needed a
passport. Once he'd boasted that he'd never even crossed a river
bridge. That made her wonder what had become of his car, that
twenty-year-old Ford Anglia he'd never cleaned while he was with
her. She imagined it in a pound somewhere, having been clamped
or grabbed from wherever he'd abandoned it in one of the myriad
interlaced streets that He between the North Circular Road and the
Great Western line.
Back home, she made a few phone calls to check that Zillah (aka
Sarah) Leach and James Melcombe-Smith were indeed due to be
married in the City of Westminster next morning, but found
nothing. Jims must be doing the deed in South Wessex. She
wondered what chance she had of securing an interview with

248
Leonardo Norton but decided to wait until she'd talked to Zillah,
who might have revelations for her beyond anything she'd yet
dreamt of.

Compared with her last one and even her first, the wedding was a
drab affair. When the new rule or law had come in, Zillah had
thought it a brilliant idea that you no longer had to be married in a
church or register office but could fix things up in a hotel, a
country house or anywhere, really, provided it was licensed for the
purpose. She changed her mind when she saw the place Jims had
chosen, a 1930S roadhouse just off the Aio near Enfield. Dressed in
the white suit and wearing a new cloche hat with curly black and
white feathers, she thought she might as well not have bothered but
stayed in jeans and sweater.
The ceiling was half-timbered in black faux beams and the walls
hung with equally faux linenfold panelling. Rustic chairs and tables
stood about, and sofas upholstered in chintz covered in half-blown
pink and red roses. Zillah had never before seen so much harness or
so many saddles, bridles, spurs and horse brasses, not even in the
depths of Dorset. She was introduced to the owner of the place, a
slightly superannuated pretty boy with a cockney voice who had
once been Ivo Carew's lover. Saying he was pleased to meet her, he
winked rudely at Jims over her shoulder.
The registrar was a woman, young and good-looking. Zillah, for
once anti-feminist, wondered if she'd feel properly married with a
woman performing the ceremony, though she knew registrars were
mostly female these days. Ivo and the pretty boy were witnesses,
and the whole thing passed off swiftly. Zillah had expected lunch
even in this dump, some kind of celebration, but Jims, who hadn't
spoken to her except to say 'I will', quickly said goodbye to
everyone and drove her back to Westminster.
At last he addressed her. 'Now we shall have to make
arrangements for you and your children to decamp to Fredington
Crucis.'

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Chapter 24

This week, though Josephine wouldn't remember, Minty would
have worked at Immacue for twenty years. The end of May, it had
been, and she was eighteen. As she started on the shirts, she tried to
work out how many she must have ironed in those years. Say three
hundred a week for fifty weeks a year, two being taken off for
holidays, times twenty made a hundred thousand shirts. Enough to
dress an army, Auntie had said when she'd done ten years. White
ones, blue and white striped, pink and white, yellow and white,
grey and blue, there was no end to it. She picked the first one off
the pile. It was light and dark green, a rare combination.
As often happened when she let herself think about Auntie, the
ghost voice spoke to her. 'It's not a hundred thousand, you're
wrong there. You never did shirts on a Saturday, not when you first
went there. Not for a good two years. And there was days when you
never did fifty on account of there wasn't fifty to do. That figure's
more like ninety thousand than a hundred.'
Minty didn't say anything. Answering Auntie relieved her
feelings but it caused trouble, too. Yesterday, when she'd shouted
back, Josephine had come running out, wanting to know if she'd
burnt herself. As if a person who's ironed a hundred thousand shirts
would bum herself.
'She ought to have a celebration for you just the same. She's
bone selfish, never thinks of anyone but herself and that husband of
hers. If she has a baby you'll find yourself looking after it. She'll

250
bring it in here and ask you to keep an eye on it while she goes to
the shops or pops round the Chinese. That Ken, he may be over
the moon, but he'll not babysit. Men never do.'
'Go away,' said Minty, but very quietly.
'Now Mrs Lewis knows more about these things than me. She's
had the experience. Giving birth, I mean. I had all the trouble and
expense of rearing you but I never had the labour pains. If Jock
hadn't been killed in that train crash you'd maybe have had a baby
yourself. You'd have liked to be a grandma, wouldn't you, Mrs
Lewis?'
This time Minty couldn't restrain herself. 'Will you shut up? I
wish you'd stayed deaf. She's not going to have a baby and neither
am I. Take that old woman out of here. I don't want her near me.'
Josephine came out, as she was bound to. 'Who were you talking
to, Minty?'
'You,' Minty said boldly. 'I thought you called me.'
'When do I ever call you when you're doing the ironing? Now
look, I'm going to nip out for a while and I'm leaving you in
charge, right? I want to have a bit of lunch with Ken. Can I bring
you anything back?'
Minty suppressed a shudder. She eat food someone else had
touched? Food she hadn't seen being bought? Josephine would
never learn. 'No, thanks. I've got my own sandwiches.'
She didn't start on them till she'd finished the shirts. They were
chicken sandwiches, made with white bread she'd sliced herself you
could never tell who or what had done the slicing with cut
bread - fresh Irish butter and chicken she'd cooked and carved
herself. She'd used the remaining big knife, twin of the one she'd
had to get rid of because you could never tell how clean boiling
made anything. If she ever saw that Mrs Lewis she might need to
use the big knife as she'd used the one that got rid of Jock's ghost.
But she'd never seen Mrs Lewis. Auntie manifested herself every
so often, though she was never as clear and solid as Jock had been.
Furniture and doors were always visible through Auntie. Sometimes
she was no more than an outline, the middle part of her just a
watery shape that shifted and waved like the mirage on the road

251
she'd seen from the bus last week. Minty thought she might go
away altogether if she resumed putting flowers on her grave. If she
went back to praying to her. But why should she? She'd never
defied Auntie while she was alive but she thought it was time to
assert herself. Why should she be tied to that for the rest of her life,
spending all that money and arranging those flowers, just to please
a ghost?
She wasn't even particularly afraid of Auntie. That must be
because she'd known her so well and known, too, that Auntie
wouldn't do her any harm. Jock, after all, had already harmed her,
helping himself to her money like that. And when he came back as
a ghost he'd sometimes glared fiercely at her, opening his eyes wide
and baring his teeth. But it was Mrs Lewis showing herself that she
really feared and she didn't know why. If the old woman ever
actually addressed her instead of always speaking to Auntie, she felt
she might not be so alarmed by the thought of it. Mrs Lewis had
never done this, but attached herself to Auntie like her shadow and,
like a shadow, was only there at certain times and on certain days.
For instance, this morning there had been no word from her and
when Auntie asked her a question she hadn't replied. That might
mean she wasn't there and Auntie, for purposes of her own, had
been speaking to the empty air. On the other hand - and this was
what frightened Minty in a way she couldn't have entirely
explained - she might have accompanied Auntie from wherever
they lived, a heaven, a hell or an unknown, unnamed abode of
shades, yet kept silent. This was hateful to Minty, who imagined
her lurking unseen behind Auntie, taking Auntie away from her,
noting everything Minty did, making judgements on her appearance
and her home. Biding her time, but for what she couldn't tell.
With the arrival of Josephine in the ironing room Auntie had
disappeared and she hadn't come back. Minty finished her
sandwich and went to wash her hands. She washed her face as well
because she couldn't be sure she hadn't got an invisible smear of
butter on her chin. While she was in the washroom the bell rang on the outer door. She could hardly believe her eyes. Mr Kroot's sister

252
was standing in the middle of the shop, clutching an armful of dirty
clothes she'd pulled out of a very old and worn carrier bag.
Gertrude Pierce - was that her name? - was as surprised to see
Minty as Minty was to see her. 'I'd no idea you worked here.'
Implicit in her remark was the unspoken, 'If I had I'd never have
come in.' Her voice was low, with a sort of growl in it and an
accent Minty couldn't place. Very recently, perhaps on the way
here, she'd had her hair colour touched up and it was as red and
glossy as the scarlet satin jacket she deposited on the counter along
with a green woolly jumper and a pair of purple trousers. Minty
could smell them from six feet away. She wrinkled up her nose, a
change of expression Gertrude Pierce wasn't slow to notice. 'If you
don't want to do them I'll take them elsewhere.'
Josephine wouldn't like her to turn away business. 'We'll do
them.' Minty had to answer her but the thought of Auntie finding
out that she'd actually spoken to Mr Kroot's sister made her
tremble. Her hand shook as she worked out the cost of dry-
cleaning, wrote the sum down on a card and the name 'Mrs Pierce',
and passed it across the counter. 'Ready by Saturday.'
Gertrude Pierce studied the card with suspicion and something
like wonder. It was as if she speculated as to what divining powers
or superhuman insight Minty must possess to have known her
name. 'I'll have my carrier back, thank you.'
It lay on the counter, a black bag bruised and scratched by the
hundred occasions on which it had been used since the assistant at
Dickins and Jones put newly bought goods into it for the first time.
Minty pushed it an inch or two nearer Gertrude Pierce. Mr Kroot's
sister waited, perhaps for her to bring it over and curtsey, Minty
thought. She went into the ironing room and slammed the door.
Presently she heard heavy footsteps and the exit bell ring.
'I told you not to speak to her,' said Auntie. 'I could hardly
believe my ears. You should have pretended she wasn't there, not
given her the satisfaction.'
'I'd like to pretend you're not there.' With Josephine absent, she
could answer back as much as she liked. 'I want you to go away for
good and take Jock's old mum with you.'

253
'You put nice flowers on my grave like you used to and I'll think
about it. Tulips are over, whatever the florist may say. I suppose
roses are too much money.'
'Nothing'd be too much to get rid of you,' said Minty rashly.
And when she left for home at five thirty she bought roses, a
dozen white ones, expensive enough but cheaper than they would
have been at the cemetery gates. It was a dull evening and just
inside the gates, the building she'd never noticed before with its
pillars and porticos in weathered grey stone looked as if it had been
there for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years. Minty, who'd last
week seen a television programme about ancient Rome, wondered
if it dated from that time. It was a smaller version of the great
gloomy crematorium and, like it, its doors were shut. Inside, the air
would be dark and smelly and always cold. She shut her eyes and
turned her back on it. She didn't know why she'd come down this
way at all, this wasn't the way to Auntie's grave.
That was because she'd come in by the eastern entrance instead
of the western. She'd never done that before. For once, she'd
bought flowers at a shop, not at the gates. Suddenly it seemed very
important to her to 'give' Auntie the flowers. Auntie had asked for
them and specifically for roses. Was the grave up along this aisle or
that? The cemetery was so big with so many paths, some of them
winding, so many tombs that looked the same. Some of the trees
were evergreens that might more suitably have been called
everblacks, their leaves were always dark and dull. Others had limp
green leaves hanging down. Only the grass and the tiny flowers in
it, yellow and white, were bright and varying from season to
season.
It was still broad daylight and would be for hours, even if that
light was half obscured by cloud. She should be heading for the
crematorium and the western gate but she didn't know how. She
walked down one aisle and up another, turned right and then left
again. She'd know the grave when she saw it, by the name on it of
course, but first by the angel, covering his eyes with one of his
hands and in the other holding the broken violin. The trouble was
that the cemetery was full of stone angels, every other tomb

^4
seemed to have an angel on it, some holding scrolls, some stringed
instruments, though these were mostly harps, some on which the
angel wept with bowed head. Minty began to feel like weeping
herself. She knew she ought to go out of the gate she'd come in by
and re-enter by the other, but that would mean passing the man
who sold flowers. He might think she'd stolen hers when he wasn't
looking or even taken them from someone else's grave, a not
uncommon proceeding, she'd heard.
Maisie Julia Chepstvw, beloved wife of John Chepstotv, who departed
this life December the i^th, i8()j, aged j^. Asleep in the arms of Jesus.
She knew the inscription by heart and she remembered telling Jock
the corpse or the bones or the dust which lay below had been those
of Auntie's grandmother. None of that mattered. All that did was
that she had buried Auntie's ashes in that grave. By now she was
down by the canal with the small Roman place ahead of her, and
she turned once more. There were so many graves in here and so
few people to look after them that grass and moss and ivy crept
over and covered everything, hiding stone and obscuring engraved
names. She had never seen a cat in here, though she imagined them
invading the place by night, but now one appeared, long, thin and
grey, picking its way delicately over anonymous mounds, diving
into an ivy-tangled cavern between the roots of a tree when it saw
her.
An angel holding something loomed ahead of her at the point
where the aisle met a path at right angles. This must be it, this was
where, kneeling on the earth, she had looked up and seen Jock's
ghost approaching. Even before she had reached it she saw that the
angel was the same, with the same covered eyes and holding the
same broken violin. But when she pushed aside ivy tendrils and
read what was engraved on the stone she saw that it was different.
This wasn't Maisie Julia Chepstow, beloved wife of John Chep-
stow, but Eve Margaret Pinchbeck, only daughter of Samuel Pinchbeck,
fled to her Saviour, October the z^rd, z<?^p. Adam and Eve and pinch
me, thought Minty. Have a Polo, Polo. How could two graves be
so alike yet not belong to the same person? Maybe the person who

255
made statues all that long, long time ago, maybe in those Roman
times, made lots of them the same.
Perhaps it would do. And if Auntie's ashes weren't here that
might not be so important. Something different on this woman's
grave was the stone vase that was part of the moulding round the
base of the platform the angel stood on. It was dry and green moss
crept close up to its lips. As she had done before, Minty found
flowers on a nearby grave, flowers that were withering, threw them
into the bushes and used the water they had been standing in to fill
the mossy bowl. She arranged the roses, breaking off their stems to
shorten them, and in doing so tore her hands on their thorns. The
blood-letting relieved her in a strange way she hadn't experienced
before, though the dirt that must be on the rose stems was
distressing. There should be a water tap somewhere in here, there
probably was, but she didn't know where.
She stood up and turned round, walking on, away from the
gasometer. That must be the right direction for the western gate.
Yet it wasn't. She began to be frightened. Suppose she could never
find the way out, but must wander on for hours, searching
searching for years maybe, for ever among the overgrown graves
with cats walking over them and making live people shiver. This
was surely a place of ghosts, with the myriad dead lying everywhere
beneath the ground, but hers weren't here. There was only dimness
and a kind of heavy peace, and in the distance the hum of traffic on
the Harrow Road. No other people, alive or phantom, no birds
singing. She came suddenly into an open place with the huge
colonnaded temple that was the crematorium before her. It was
always frightening but from this angle more so with its high blank
wall and the gathering grey clouds behind it, the wilderness of the
neglected place coming close up to its footings. Minty imagined its
great door swinging open, its stained-glass window shattering and
ghosts coming blindly out, their hands upraised and their robes
streaming. She began to run.
Notices directing you were everywhere but they never seemed to
point to what she wanted, never to Auntie's grave. She read the one
ahead, she didn't know why, as she pounded along, afraid to look

256
back in case she was pursued. It said: Exit. The relief was
enormous. She knew where she was now, approaching the western
gate that was opposite her own street and where the flower seller
was. By the time she reached it she was walking quietly, managing a
smile and nod for the flower man. And there was no one and
nothing behind her.
It was rare for Minty to feel happy. Fear drives away happiness as
much as sorrow does and she was mostly afraid. She lived in a
climate ofunnameable fears, terrors that could only be kept within
bounds by strict routines. Something else had allayed them, had
once or twice entirely banished them, and that had been what she'd
never known in her first thirty-seven years, the feeling she'd had
for Jock. When she'd told him, after he'd made love to her, that she
would never be like this with another man, for she was his for ever,
she was expressing for perhaps the first time in her life her true and
honest feelings, unaffected by cleanliness or tidiness or eating
prejudices. And what he gave her back, or she thought he did, had
given her a strange unfamiliar sensation she didn't know how to
name. Happiness. She felt it now, returned in some small measure,
as she left the cemetery and walked towards Syringa Road.
With Jock it had been relatively long-lived. If he hadn't died, she
sometimes thought dimly, not knowing quite what she meant or
wanted, if he'd stayed alive and with her, those feelings she'd had
and he'd inspired might have changed her into a different woman.
This present scrap of happiness was doomed to be short, she knew
it while it was with her, succeeding raw terror, for fear was
returning as she approached her front door. She was afraid of what
awaited her inside and she even thought of knocking on the
Wilsons' door, spending half an hour with them, having a cup of
tea, a chat, maybe telling them about her experience looking for
Auntie's grave, of which, now it was over, she could see the funny
side. What, a woman who'd lived a stone's throw from the
cemetery all her life, unable to find her own auntie's grave! If she
went into Sonovia's house she'd only have to come out again and
enter her own. She couldn't stay in next door all night.
She put the key in the lock and turned it. Although it wouldn't

257
be dark for hours, she switched the hall light on. Nothing.
Emptiness. She went upstairs, fearing to meet Auntie on the way,
but there was no one, nothing. Very faintly, through the dividing
wall, she could hear music, the kind of music very young people
like. That wouldn't be Mr Kroot's radio, it must be Gertrude
Pierce's. A strange woman she was, playing teenager's music.
Minty ran a bath, using the kind of gel that makes foam, washed
her hair in it, scrubbed the blood off her hands with a nailbrush.
The punctures the thorns had made were a hundred tiny wounds.
The music was turned off and silence followed. Minty dried
herself, dressed in her usual clean T-shirt, clean trousers, socks.
She never wore sandals, even in hot weather, because the streets
were dirty. Things could burrow their way into your feet and give
you a disease called bill-heart-something, she'd read about it in
Lafs newspaper. That was in Africa but she couldn't see why it
wouldn't happen here.
She wasn't hungry. Those sandwiches had been very filling.
Maybe later she'd have a scrambled egg on toast. You never knew
where the egg came from but it must be out of a chicken and,
anyway, she'd cook it very thoroughly in a clean saucepan. Out of
the kitchen window she could see washing sagging on the line in
Mr Kroot's garden. It looked bone dry, had probably been there
since before Gertrude Pierce came into Immacue. Minty went
outside. It hadn't been hot all day, there was too much cloud for
that, but it had been gently warm and still was. She studied next
door's washing. So much sagging had taken place, one of the poles
that supported the line leaning over at an angle of forty-five
degrees, that the edges of the sheets and towels were on the
ground, actually touching the dry, dusty grass. Minty was shocked
but there was nothing she was prepared to do about it.
Sonovia's voice called to her over the other fence, 'Minty! Long
time no see.'
In fact, it wasn't very long. No more than two or three days.
Knowing it would please, Minty told her, with many glances over
her shoulder, about Gertrude Pierce coming into the shop, not
realising she worked there. Sonovia laughed, especially at the bit

258
about her being amazed Minty knew her name. Some twenty years
ago Mr Kroot was reputed to have made a racist remark, though
where and to whom he'd made it no one seemed to know, but it
was enough for Laf who'd never addressed a word to him since.
Sonovia was often heard to say that she wished it hadn't been so
long ago but now instead and she'd have him up in court.
'Someone told me she's going home on Saturday week. We'll all
be glad to see the back of her.' She listened, smiling, while Minty
told her what had happened in the cemetery. The smile didn't
waver but when Sonovia went back into her own house, she said to
Laf, 'If Winnie Knox is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery it's the
first I've heard of it.'
'She isn't buried at all. She was cremated. You ought to
remember that, you and I were there.'
'Of course we were. That's why I said that was the first I'd heard
of it. Minty had the ashes in a box on the shelf for months, but I
noticed they'd gone. She's just told me she got lost in the cemetery
looking for Winnie's grave. White roses she'd bought because she
said her auntie was fed up with tulips. What d'you make of that?'
'We've always said Minty was peculiar, Sonn. Remember all that
stuff about ghosts?'
Minty had for a moment forgotten all that stuff about ghosts.
She went back into her kitchen and through to the living room
thinking about Gertrude Pierce and the washing and the evil-
smelling clothes she'd brought to be dry-cleaned. In the doorway
she stopped. Two women were standing between the fireplace and
the sofa, Auntie and an old bent person with a humped back and a
witch's face. Minty couldn't speak. She stood there on the
threshold, still as one of the cemetery statues, and closed her eyes.
When she opened them again they were still there.
'You know very well that wasn't my grave, was it, Mrs Lewis?
You put those roses on a stranger's grave. How d'you think that
makes me feel? Mrs Lewis was disgusted.'
Auntie had never talked like this to her while she was alive,
though Minty had often thought she'd like to but for some reason
had resisted. There had been anger in her eyes, this anger that was

259
now coming out, while she said nice things. Mrs Lewis stood quite
still, not looking at Auntie nor in Minty's direction, staring at the
floor, her gnarled old hands clasped.
'Can't even manage a word of apology. She never could say she
was sorry, even when she was little, Mrs Lewis. There was never a
word of regret passed her lips.'
Minty found a voice. 'I'm sorry. It won't happen again. There,
will that do?' Her tone strengthened, though her fear hadn't
lessened, and the words came out in a throaty croak. 'Go away, will
you? Both of you. I don't want to see you again. You're dead and
I'm alive. Go back to where you came from.'
Auntie went but Mrs Lewis stayed. Minty could see Jock's face in
hers, the same features but wrinkled and aged as if by a thousand
years. His eyes had looked like hers, defeated and tired, when
they'd been to the racing and the dog he'd put money on came in
last. One day he might have come to look like her if the train crash
hadn't taken him. The old woman raised her head. She was less
solid than she'd been when Minty first saw her and again she was
aware of that mirage effect, the watery waviness that made Mrs
Lewis's loose cardigan and floppy skirt shiver as in a breeze. They
stared at each other, she and Jock's mother, and she saw that the
eyes were not blue as she'd first thought but a dull, cold green amid
the wrinkles, each one like a bird's egg in a nest.
If she turned and walked away the old woman would follow her.
For the first time, she wanted a ghost to speak, in the midst of her
fear she wanted to hear what kind of a voice Mrs Lewis had. 'Say
something.'
As she spoke, the ghost vanished. Not immediately but like
smoke disappearing into the neck of a bottle. And then she was
gone and the room empty.

260
Chapter 25

When Jims arrived in Glebe Terrace, Natalie was waiting for him
in a bedroom in a flat on the other side of the street. It belonged to
Oria Collins, whom she'd met at the dinner party. Oria had had
some qualms at first but these vanished when Natalie explained she
was spying on a Member of Parliament who'd married his wife
bigamously while at the same time carrying on an affair with a man
on the opposite side of Glebe Terrace. Thursday was the third
evening she'd been there, but she wasn't surprised he hadn't turned
up the previous night. Even Jims might jib at making an assignation
with a lover on his wedding day.
In her own words, Zillah had spilt the beans. When Natalie
arrived on Wednesday afternoon she was still in the white suit she
had worn for her wedding. 'I thought you might not be able to take
a photograph of me,' Zillah said, 'on account of your union or
whatever, so I did a polaroid.' As Natalie was looking at it, she said,
'And now I'm going to tell you everything.'
She had. It was the best story Natalie had secured in fifteen years
of journalism. For all that, she didn't quite dare take Zillah's word
for Jims's adventures with Leonardo Norton. That would have to
be confirmed. She sat in a wicker armchair by the window at Oria
Collins's, eyeing, not for the first time, the photographs Zillah and
Jims had taken on their honeymoon. His were of little use to her,
for they were only of island views but for a single shot of Zillah
bathing in the Indian Ocean. Hers, on the other hand, were a

261
revelation. She admitted to having taken them because even then
she felt jaundiced by this mock marriage. Jims and a young man
whose face was turned away lay on adjoining recliners, they sat side
by side on spread towels on a beach and, best of all, most damning
of all, sat at a table alfresco, Jims's hand resting on the young man's
thigh. It was interesting that Jims was always smiling at him and
once into the camera, while Leonardo contrived to hide his face
from view. These photographs would make it an easy matter to
recognise the MP when he came down Glebe Terrace or stepped
out of a car. How would he come? As time passed, as her watch
told her seven thirty, eight, eight fifteen, Natalie considered the
possibilities. Sloane Square was only three stops on the Circle Line
from Westminster. He could take the tube and then a cab. Or a cab
all the way. Reputedly, he had a large private income. He could
drive himself and, since it was past six thirty, park anywhere on a
single yellow line. The idea of a bus Natalie dismissed as too
plebeian for the likes of Jims. As for a bicycle...
At twenty minutes to nine he came by the only means she hadn't
considered. On foot. He was even better-looking in the flesh than
in the Maldives pictures. Natalie, like many women taking a view
never shared by homosexual men, said to herself, what a waste! To
her delight, he produced a key from his pocket and unlocked
Leonardo Norton's front door. A blind was down in the window
she took to be that of a living room but an upstairs window was
uncovered except for an inch or two of curtain showing on either
side. Any picture she might take Natalie had grave misgivings
about, but she was ready with her camera. Within minutes she
almost wished she hadn't brought it with her, for the shot she got
no newspaper editor would dare to use. In the two-foot-wide gap
between the curtains Jims and Leonardo were locked in a
passionate embrace.
Almost immediately Leonardo, dressed only in a pair of red and
white candy-striped briefs, drew the curtains. Natalie remained.
She was resolved to stay the entire night in that chair if necessary,
eating the sandwiches she'd brought and sipping from the half-
bottle of Valpolicella.

262
But at eleven thirty Oria wanted to go to bed. 'There's no point
in you staying,' she said. 'He always stops the night.'

If the police had never reappeared in Holmdale Road, Michelle
might have extended her forgiveness of Fiona to forgetfulness. She
might have taken the advice Matthew gave her and excused her
neighbour on the grounds of her grief, her shock and the almost
unbearable pressure she had been under. After all, she and
Matthew had shown their support by accompanying Fiona to the
funeral of a man they had both disliked and distrusted. But the
police came back on Friday morning to say they'd been unable to
find any confirmation ofthejarveys' presence on the Heath on that
crucial afternoon. On the other hand, a car of the same make and
colour as theirs had been seen parked on a meter in Seymour Place,
Wi at the relevant time and Seymour Place, as they must know,
was only a short distance from the Odeon, Marble Arch.
Matthew said, in a cool, almost detached voice, 'That was not
our car.'
'The witness wasn't able to take the number.'
'If he or she had, it would not have been the number of our car.'
Michelle, glancing at her husband and then down at her own
plump hands that lay in her bulky lap, marvelled that anyone
looking at the two of them could even momentarily suspect them
of committing a crime. A fat (if no longer obese) woman of forty-
five who couldn't climb half a dozen steps without gasping and - as
much as she loved him, she had to put it like this - a poor skeleton
crippled by his own grotesque phobia. That was the last realistic
and level-headed thought she was to have for days.
She drew in her breath when the woman asked her, 'Can you
give us something firmer to establish that you were in your car on
the Heath at that time?'
'What kind of thing?' She heard her own voice grown thin and
hoarse.
'Or even in Waitrose? The staff don't remember you there.
Well, they remember you' - Michelle thought she detected the

263
suspicion of a grin - 'but not which day. Apparently, you often go
there.'
The implication was plain, that she and Matthew had purposely
planned frequent visits to the supermarket in order to confuse
witnesses about the only day they weren't there.
'And about the Heath, Mrs Jarvey?'
'I told you, there were other cars there with people in them, but I
didn't know any of them and they didn't know us.'
After the officers had gone, she clutched hold of Matthew and
looked piteously into his face. 'I'm so frightened, I don't know what
to do. I thought - I thought, Fiona's got us into this, she ought to
get us out.'
'What does that mean, my darling?'
'I thought, we could ask her to say she saw us on the Heath, she
drove up there as soon as she got home -1 mean, she could say she
got home an hour sooner than she did - and saw us and spoke to us.
Or - and this would be better - she could get a friend of hers to say
she saw us, someone from down the street, she knows the woman at
a hundred and two, I've seen them together, and she could '
'No, Michelle.' Matthew was gentle as always but tough too, as
he used to be long ago. 'You'd be inciting her to perjury. It would
be wrong. And apart from the morality of it, you'd be found out.'
'If she can't do a little thing like that for us I'll feel like never
speaking to her again.'
'You don't know. Maybe she would do it. You haven't tried her and,
Michelle, you're not going to.'
'Then what will become of us?'
'Nothing,' he said. 'Innocent people don't find themselves in
court on a murder charge,' though he was by no means sure of that.
'You're being silly. This is simply hysteria.'
'It is not!' She began sobbing and laughing at the same time. 'It's
not, it's not!'
'Michelle, stop it. I've had enough.'
She looked up at him, the tears streaming down her face. 'And
now she's made us quarrel. We never quarrel.'

264
Fiona had returned to work on the previous Monday. People said
how sorry they were about Jeff, but those who couldn't remember
his name referred to him as 'your friend', and Fiona thought this
reduced him to the status of someone she'd happened to know at
college. But she faced more curious glances and inexplicable
silences than she would have done if Jeff had died of cancer or a
heart attack. Murder marks its victim's loved ones for ever. Fiona
knew her name would never again be mentioned among acquaintances
without some qualifying phrase defining her as the woman
'who lived with that chap who was murdered in a cinema'. Added
to this was her bitter regret that she'd mentioned the Jarveys'
names to Violent Crimes. She no longer knew why she had and was
driven to the conclusion that, as is often the case in these
circumstances, she had come out with it because she had nothing to
say, knew nothing and could think of no real help to offer.
Michelle's declaration of forgiveness hadn't been accompanied
by much warmth. This quiet, sad woman wasn't the affectionate
and demonstrative maternal creature she'd known, but subdued,
retired into herself. Fiona had been into the Jarveys' house three
times since Sunday's contretemps, so often, she now believed, in
the ever-renewed hope that this time Michelle would have changed
back into her familiar self, but though perfectly courteous and
hospitable, she never had. This Friday afternoon Fiona was there
again, using the back door to demonstrate an intimacy she
desperately wanted to re-establish. And for a moment it looked as
though she was approaching it, for Michelle came out to meet her
and kissed her cheek.
Matthew's manner seemed heartier than usual. It was Michelle,
not he, who generally offered her a glass of wine. He fetched a
bottle he'd had on ice, filled a glass for her and one for his wife. To
her dismay she saw that Michelle's eyes had filled with tears. 'What
is it? Oh, what is it? If you cry you'll have me crying too.'
Michelle made the effort. 'The police were here this morning.
They don't believe we were where we said we were that - that day.
Someone saw a car like ours parked near the cinema. They want us

265
to prove we were up on the Heath and we - we can't, we can't.
We'll never be able to.'
'Yes, you will. I'll help you. It's the least I can do. I can't say I
saw you there because the people in my office have already told
them I was there till five. But I can find someone who'll say it. I
know someone -1 mean, I know her well - who lives in the Vale of
Health, and she'll say you were there, I know she will. She's just the
sort of person who'd go to the police and tell them she'd come to
offer evidence to support your story. Let me do it, please. I know
it'll work.'
Michelle was shaking her head, but Matthew had begun to laugh
as if he hadn't a care in the world.

Because he was holding his surgery in Toneborough on Saturday
morning instead of Friday, Jims had postponed his trip to his
constituency by twenty-four hours. In spite of an announcement of
his marriage appearing in Thursday's newspapers and the evident
loss of police interest in him as a murder suspect, a good many of
his fellow Conservatives in the Commons still cold-shouldered
him. But the Chief Whip had said nothing more. That morning,
the Leader had nodded to him and even managed a slight smile.
Jims was beginning to be confident that the people who mattered
believed he'd been ignorant of his wife's marital status when first
he married her.
His drive down to Dorset was uneventful. All the roadworks had
been completed and the cones and speed limit signs taken away. He
reached Casterbridge in time to have a reconciliation lunch with
Ivo Carew. Ivo's sister Kate joined them for a drink and had a good
laugh over a little bit of help the two of them, with Kevin Jebb, had
given Jims on the previous day. Jims spent the afternoon visiting a
retirement home, housed in a neo-Gothic mansion, where elderly
gentlefolks of his own political persuasion ended their days in
luxury suites. There, he talked to each resident in turn, toured the
library and the film theatre, and made a little speech - not to
encourage them to vote Conservative, which exhortation would be

266

unnecessary, but to vote at all, and he assured them of the
comfortable transport available to take them to the polls. Before
they sat down to their four-course dinner, he drove to Casterbridge
station on the Great Western line, where he picked up Leonardo
off the London train.
This was indiscreet. He'd never done it before, but he told
himself no one could possibly find out. Of course they wouldn't
dine out together. Jims had brought a cold chicken, a game pie,
some asparagus and a Livarot with him. Fredington Crucis House
was always plentifully stocked with drink. By the time he got home
the cheese was stinking the car out, for it had been a warm day, but
this only served to make them laugh companionably. On the
following afternoon, after Jims's surgery was over, they thought
they might drive down to Lyme where Leonardo, ajaneite, wanted
to renew his acquaintance with the spot from which Louisa
Musgrove jumped off the Cobb.
There was no need to be in Toneborough next morning until ten
thirty, so they stayed in bed till nine and would have stayed later
still but for sounds from outside which alerted Jims. Leonardo slept
on. He was accustomed to hearing traffic noise from his bedroom,
to voices shouting, taxi engines pulsing and lorry drivers applying
squeaky brakes. So was Jims but not here, not in the grounds of
Fredington Crucis House where, if anything awakened him, it
would be birdsong. He sat up and listened. Mrs Vincey's radio? But
no. He'd expressly told his cleaner not to come. Besides, the noise
was coming from outside. It was a mingling of voices with a
crunching on the gravel drive. A car door slammed. Jims got up,
put on a dressing gown and went to a window. The floor-length
curtains were drawn but there was a gap perhaps half an inch wide
between them. He put his eye to the gap and leapt back with an
exclamation. 'Oh, my God!'
Leonardo stirred, turned over, muttered sleepily, 'What is it?'
Without replying, Jims threw off his dressing gown, pulled on
the jeans he'd changed into the night before and a dark sweatshirt.
He went upstairs to the second floor where, at these smaller
windows, the curtains remained undrawn. Jims knew that, unless

267

you are staring purposefully, it is almost impossible to see anything
from a distance through a window with no light behind it. He
advanced on all fours and pushed his head above the sill, up to the
level of his nose.
About fifty men and women were outside, some wielding
cameras, others with notebooks and recording devices. Their cars
were there too and they were leaning against them or sitting inside
them with the doors open. A woman, accompanied by two others
and a young man, was pouring something from a flask into plastic
cups. All were chattering and laughing. Even from this distance
Jims could see his drive was already littered with cigarette ends.
It was a dull morning but by no means dark. These small rooms
up here had once been servants' bedrooms and were always rather
dim. Still, there was no excuse for what Leonardo did. Entering the
room behind him, dressed only in boxer shorts and exclaiming,
'What the hell are you doing, crawling about like a dog?' he
switched the overhead light on.
A roar went up from the crowd, bulbs flashed and the whole mob
surged forward as one, towards the front steps.

The newspaper which had bought Natalie's story was not one that
was normally delivered to 7 Abbey Gardens Mansions. Zillah had
put in a special order for it. She woke up very early on Saturday
morning, about two hours earlier than usual, happily anticipating
the arrival of the papers. On the previous afternoon, having
checked that her generous monthly allowance from Jims had been
paid into her bank account, she had phoned Moon and Stars
Television. They would send a car for her first thing on Monday
morning so that she could appear on A Bite of Breakfast. Mrs
Peacock having dismissed herself, Zillah had made an arrangement
with the young Iranian girl who cleaned at number nine to stay
over Sunday night and be there for Eugenie and Jordan in the
morning. At the same time, putting her house entirely in order,
she'd fixed an appointment with a child psychiatrist.
Thinking about Jims being stricken by disaster brought her a lot
of pleasure. She knew for a fact he had no morning papers

268

delivered to Fredington Crucis House and wouldn't, in any case,
have seen this one, which he habitually referred to as a 'backstreet
rag'. The likelihood was that he'd be ten minutes into his surgery
before he found out. Some hard-done-by citizen of Toneborough,
anxious about his council tax, his hound puppy-walking or his
incapacity benefit, would be bound to bring a copy of the rag with
him. She hadn't felt so happy since she walked up the aisle to marry
him at St Mary Undercroft.
Just as the newspaper dropped on to the doormat at seven
o'clock, Jordan woke up and started crying. Zillah picked him up,
stuck him in his high chair - surely he shouldn't still be in a high
chair? - gave him orange juice and what he ought not to have, what
would rot his teeth and set him on the path to obesity, a chocolate
bar. Then she lay on the sofa and looked at the paper.
The front page almost frightened her. A very large headline
read: the gay mp, two weddings and a funeral. The picture of
her was one she hadn't seen before. It must have been taken in
those halcyon days when she was being photographed all the time
and had perhaps been previously rejected because it was unflattering.
For once, Zillah didn't mind. She looked distraught, as if she
hardly knew which way to turn. Her face was half covered by one
hand and stray locks of hair, greasy looking, protruded between the
splayed fingers. That was the day, she remembered now, when she
hadn't been expecting the photographer. To the left of it, in a kind
of 'before' and 'after' arrangement, was the pre-first wedding
picture of her and Jims, both of them smiling, relaxed, happy.
There was virtually no text. For that she had to turn to page
three. There, too, was one of her own Maldives shots, Jims
unmistakably Jims, his hand on the bare thigh of an unrecognisable
young man with his face half turned away and in shadow. The
trickle of fear returned. What would he do when he read it? What
would he do to her? Was he reading it now or was he still blissfully
asleep at Fredington Crucis House, unaware of what awaited him?
She read her own words: 'I honestly thought I was free to remarry. Poor
Jeff - she'd never called him that in all their life together 269

''told me we were legally divorced. Then when he was killed and I found
out my mistake I realised I was - tragically -freed by his death. Our
marriage had not been a happy one, down to his frequent affairs with
other women. Just the same, his murder was a devastating blow, as was
discovering the other side to Jameses nature. That happened when he
brought his lover on our honeymoon. . .'
Mrs Mekombe-Smitb cries a lot these days. She was once more in
tears when I asked her what she thought the future held for her and the
MPfor South Wessex. 'All this has been horrendous but I will stand by
him,7 she said. 7 don't care what he's done. I love him and I truly
believe that in his heart he loves me.'

There was a good deal more but that line about standing by Jims,
words she had certainly uttered to Natalie Reckman, she now
reread with new eyes. When she said them she hadn't given much
thought to what she meant. It was just what wives in her sort of
position traditionally said. She'd read it repeated in newspapers
many times over the years. But now she thought of the reality. She
rather liked the idea of seeing herself in the role of devoted and
supportive wife, a woman who has been bitterly ill-used but who
forgives and pours out renewed love. Not that this new part she
contemplated playing would deflect her from appearing on A Bite of
Breakfast. She wasn't bound to forgive immediately ...
In the few short months that had passed since her first wedding
to Jims she had almost entirely lost her ignorance of how the media
operate, but she still wasn't aware that the newspaper she didn't see
until 7 a.m. might be read by rival journalists the night before. So
she believed she had several hours in which to prepare herself
before the pack of reporters and photographers presented themselves
on the doorstep of Abbey Gardens Mansions. Jordan was
crying again. She gave him cereal and a mug of milk. He put his
hands into the milk as if it were a finger bowl and began a low
keening that was halfway between a moan and a song.
Eugenie came down from her bedroom, demanding to know
why everyone was up so early and what were all those people doing
outside in the street. Zillah went to the window. They were here

270

already, waiting for her. She wouldn't attempt to exclude them this
time, she wouldn't hide herself or escape via the garage. They were
welcome. She thought of all the women she'd heard of recently
who'd broken into television or modelling careers or simply
become celebrities of unspecified talent, through nothing more
than getting themselves into the media for taking their clothes off
in public or demonstrating against something or being victims.
How much more success could a beautiful bigamist, widow of a
murderer and wife of a newly outed gay MP, hope to enjoy?
But the pack mustn't see her yet. Give her an hour in which to
transform herself. Zillah ran her bath and took Jordan into it with
her to shut him up.

271

Chapter 26

All Saturday morning Sonovia kept her eye on the street and Mr
Kroot's in particular but Gertrude Pierce didn't go home. She kept
darting into her front room to look in case she missed her.
Laf came, carrying a mug of coffee. 'Why are you sitting there
looking out of the window?'
'Nothing exciting ever happens in Syringa Road.'
'You should be thankful. What d'you want to happen?'
Sonovia ignored him. Mr Kroot's front door was opening. The
old black cat came out and the door shut.
'D'you want to go out tonight?'
'Anything you like, only don't bother me now, you're spoiling
my concentration.' Sonovia often reproached herself for not having
been more vigilant when Jock Lewis was on the scene. How she
regretted not ever seeing his face!
Laf looked up films in the paper. There was nothing on he and
Sonovia would fancy. Besides, though he'd been a few times, he'd
never enjoyed the cinema like he used to since the Jeffrey Leach
murder. It was a funny thing for an officer of the Metropolitan
Police to think, he ought to be hardened and indifferent, but the
fact was that he always expected the flash of a knife when the
person in front of him or behind got up, or thought he might trip
over a body in the dark. Why not go to the theatre instead? Laf had
only been twice in his life, once to The Mousetrap when he was a kid
and later on, for his fortieth birthday, to Miss Saigon. How about

272

An Inspector Calls! It sounded as if it might be about the police and
therefore he'd get irritated if they got the police procedure wrong.
On the other hand, he'd be able to tell Sonovia afterwards just how
inaccurate it had been. There were little bits of description of the
play for each theatre. Laf read that this one was an 'acclaimed
psychological thriller'. It didn't sound bad. He got on the phone
and booked three seats for eight fifteen. Sonovia would be amazed
and as for Minty ... Laf looked forward to seeing Minty's face
when he told her.
Just as Sonovia was on the watch for Gertrude Pierce, so Minty
was waiting for the reappearance of Mrs Lewis. She was ironing.
The light-green and dark-green striped shirt was on the top of the
pile. It couldn't be more than ten days since she'd ironed it. The
man it belonged to must be very fond of it, maybe it was his
favourite. She spread it out on the ironing board, feeling the
cotton. It was just damp enough but not so damp that steam rose
from it when she applied the iron.
She'd ironed shirts for Jock, not many and not often, but when
he'd stayed the night she wouldn't let him put the same one on in
the morning. Next time he'd come over she'd handed him the
clean shirt and he'd said he'd never seen such good ironing as hers.
That was the day he'd taken her bowling. It was the most amazing
evening of her life. She slipped the cardboard collar round the neck
of the green shirt and as she slid it into its cellophane bag, a tear
slipped down her cheek and splashed on to the shiny transparent
stuff. Minty wiped it off and washed her hands. On second
thoughts, she washed her face as well. The poky little room smelt
of detergent and heat, a scent she couldn't define because it wasn't
a burning smell but something like a really hot summer's day. She
was alone, there was no one watching her and arguing about her.
The ghosts had been absent all the morning. She started on the last
shirt but two, a white one with a very pale pink check.

Sonovia got bored with waiting. It wasn't as if anything else
happened down the street that was worth looking at, apart from
those two yobs revving up their motorbikes for an unnecessarily

273

long time and that Iranian woman coming out in the chador that
enveloped her from head to foot in black folds, leaving only her
tired eyes free. Her three children looked like anyone else's,
dressed in jeans and T-shirts and sandals. Sonovia couldn't
understand it.
'When in Rome do as the Romans do,' she said when Laf came

in.

'Pardon?'
'Our mothers never got themselves up like that after they came
here. They adapted.'
'Your mum never dressed like a nun either,' said Laf sarcastically,
'so far as I recall. In case it's of any interest, Airs Pierce is
sitting in the old man's back garden in a deckchair. So you can
come off watch. Want a beer? I'm going to have one.'
Sonovia accepted the beer but sat there ten minutes longer, just
to prove she was relaxing, not waiting for Gertrude Pierce. She was
just getting up, thinking about making lunch for her and Laf, when
Minty came along. The last thing she wanted was for Minty to find
out for herself Gertrude Pierce was still here, which she would do
as soon as she looked out of her kitchen window, so she waved and
mouthed, 'She's not gone. She's in the back.'
Minty nodded and made a face, a sympathetic face that
registered disgust and fellow feeling at the same time. Inserting her
key in the lock, she felt the usual apprehension and braced herself.
There was no one and nothing there. It was funny, she was getting
to be able to tell if the house was empty of them the minute she
came into the hall. Anyway, they weren't her immediate worry. For
some reason, Josephine had kissed her when she left and she could
still feel her scent on her skin and the smear of her lipstick as well
as her own tears. But first she went through to the kitchen and
looked out of the window at the two of them next door, Gertrude
Pierce and Mr Kroot in old-fashioned striped deckchairs. They'd
put a rickety table with a green baize top between them and on it
they were playing cards. The black cat with its aged grey muzzle
lay on the grass, looking as if it were dead. But it often looked like
that and it never was dead. Minty could hardly remember a time

274.

when that cat hadn't been there, its face like an old whiskered
person's, its walk growing stiffer. A bumble bee drifted down close
to its ears. They twitched and its tail flicked. Gertrude Pierce swept
up the cards into a pack and shuffled them.
Had Mr Kroot's cat been in the cemetery again, walking over
where her grave would be? Or trailing arthridcally over Auntie's
two graves? Upstairs now, Minty ran her bath. She hardly ever had
a bath these days without thinking about her money and how she
could have bought a shower with it. She dropped her clothes on to
the floor in a heap. They'd been clean on that morning, of course,
but to her they smelt of Josephine and the litter-strewn street and
the diesel fumes from lorries and taxis and all the cigarettes people
smoked between here and Immacue and the fag ends they left on
the pavement. She scrubbed herself with the nailbrush, not just her
hands but her arms and legs and feet as well. The skin was bright
pink under the water. Then she used the back brush. She dipped
her head in and shampooed her hair, digging into her scalp with
her fingertips. Kneeling up, she rinsed her head under the running
tap. If only she had that shower!
As she was drying herself, another towel wrapped round her head
turban-wise, something told her they were back. Not in here. To
do her justice, Auntie wouldn't bring a stranger in, she had her own
ideas of modesty and Minty hadn't been seen without her clothes
since she was nine. They were outside the door. Let them wait.
Minty used her deodorant not just under her arms but on the soles
of her feet and the palms of her hands, because it was summertime
now. She dressed in white cotton trousers and a white T-shirt with
pale-blue stripes. Both were 'left-behinds' from Immacue, among
those garments which their owners for some reason failed to collect
and which, after six months, Josephine sold at two pounds apiece.
Minty got a discount and only paid two for both. She wouldn't
have dreamt of doing it if they'd only been dry cleaned but these
were washable, had many times been washed and the trousers she'd
boiled, which reduced their size and made them fit better. She
combed her hair, wrapped up her soiled clothes in the towels and,
drawing a deep breath, flung open the door.

^5

They were outside, a couple of yards away in the doorway of
Auntie's bedroom. Minty touched all the wood she could reach,
pink wood and white wood and brown, but they didn't go away.
Mrs Lewis was much clearer and more solid today than Auntie was.
She looked like a real person, the sort of old woman you might see
in the street, coming back from the shops. In spite of the warmth of
the day she wore a winter coat of dark-red wool, a colour Minty
particularly disliked, and she had a dark-red felt hat jammed down
over her ears. So they could change their clothes wherever it was
they came from, Minty thought, marvelling.
Auntie, behind Jock's mother and much taller than she was,
appeared rather shadowy, something you only thought you saw and
had to look at again to make sure. But she thickened and grew
sharper as Minty's eyes fixed on her. Minty remembered once,
when she was a child, some relative or friend, it might have been
Kathleen's husband or Edna's, who took photographs and developed
his own films. It was Edna's, she remembered now, recalling
him for other mysterious, never fully understood reasons. She'd
seen him develop the films and watched the blank sheet in its pool
of liquid gradually turn into a picture. Auntie was like that, growing
from a vague shapelessness into a picture of herself.
Her arms full of damp towels and clothes, Minty stared at them
and they stared back at her. This time she was the first to speak.
She addressed Auntie. 'You wouldn't have anything to do with her
if you knew what she owed me. Her son borrowed all my money
and yours too, what you left me, and she could have paid it back;
she had the time, but she never did.'
Auntie said nothing. Mrs Lewis went on staring. Shrugging,
turning away, Minty went downstairs. She put the clothes and the
towels in the washing machine, started it and washed her hands,
thinking how she'd have held that stuff at arm's length if it hadn't
been for encountering those two on the landing. Mrs Lewis had
come down behind her, but she'd come alone. Auntie was gone.
Had she taken Minty's words to heart?
Minty wasn't going to eat her lunch with that old woman
watching her. She'd rather starve. Mrs Lewis moved about the

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kitchen, looking down at the cupboards and up at the shelves. If she
was thinking Minty wasn't a good enough household manager,
wouldn't have made a suitable wife for her son, she had another
think coming. Everything in that kitchen was spotless.
Mrs Lewis lifted the lid off the teapot and looked inside the
bread bin. 'She keeps it nice, I will say.'
'Say what you like,' said Minty. 'I couldn't care less. Why didn't
you give me back my money?'
No answer, of course. The old woman was close beside her now.
Minty had a brilliant idea. She pulled open the cutlery drawer and
seized the knife, the twin to the one she used in the cinema. The
knife in her hand, she drew back her arm and lunged, but Mrs
Lewis had gone, faded into the wall or been swallowed up by the
floor.
It seemed then that just threatening got rid of them. But Minty
didn't immediately put the knife back. She washed the blade
because she felt it was contaminated, though it had touched
nothing. Then she carved some slices from a piece of ham and
chopped some lettuce and tomato. The knife needed washing again
and this time she put it right into the sink with plenty of hot water
and detergent. It might be necessary, she thought as she dried it, to
carry this knife with her as she had the one she'd used, find a more
efficient way of carrying it, though wrapped up and laid along the
side of her leg under her trousers would do. She poured herself a
nice fresh glass of cold milk.
Her lunch was just finished and all the crockery in hot water
when the doorbell rang. Laf, it would be, with the papers. 'You
want a cup of tea?' she asked, letting him in.
'Thanks, love, but I won't stop. Where d'you think we're going
tonight, me and Sonny and you? We're going to a show. In the
West End.'
'In a cinema, d'you mean?' She wasn't going back to that Marble
Arch one, whatever he said. That was just the place Mrs Lewis and
Auntie were likely to be, haunting the spot where Jock had last
appeared. 'I don't know, Laf.'
'In a theatre,' he said. 'It's a thriller about the police.'

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'Well, I can't say no, can I?'
'Of course you can't. You'll love it.'
She wouldn't be able to wear those clothes, that was for sure.
Not after carrying those dirty towels and the trousers and top she'd
taken off. Shame, because these white trousers were really nice.
Anyway, she'd have to undress to put the knife down the side of her
leg and once she'd got that far it was only another step to have a
bath. She washed the dishes, took the papers outside and sat in a
clean cane chair she'd scrubbed, and with a cushion whose cover
she'd washed and ironed. This made her feel very superior to Mr
Kroot and Gertrude Pierce who'd stopped playing cards and eaten
their lunch on the green baize table, sandwiches and Fanta by the
look of it, for they'd piled up the dirty dishes on a tray and left it on
the grass right by the cat's nose, a real magnet for flies. Minty
looked once but never again.

It would have been nice to go in the car, but Laf said where was he
supposed to park? Down there, finding somewhere to put your
vehicle was a nightmare. Taking the tube to Charing Cross meant
you'd nothing to worry about. But the Bakerloo Line train was
jam-packed and the streets were almost as bad.
Like many suburb dwellers, though their suburb wasn't far out,
Sonovia and Laf had only a sketchy knowledge of inner London.
Laf occasionally drove through the Park to Kensington or even
past Buckingham Palace. He knew roughly where the big streets
led, while she had her shopping trips to the West End, and both, as
inveterate picture-goers, visited the Odeon Metro and Mezzanine.
But Sonovia had no idea of the way places linked up and couldn't
have told you how to get from Marble Arch to Knightsbridge or
Oxford Street to Leicester Square. As for Minty, she hadn't been
down here for years, she'd had no occasion to come, and the big
buildings of Trafalgar Square intimidated her with their rows of
tall pillars and flights of stairs. It was as if she'd never seen them
before or that she'd found herself transported to some foreign city.
At the same time they reminded her of those Roman temples in the
cemetery.

278

'Why is he up there?' she said to Laf, pointing to Nelson on his
column. 'He's so high up you can't see what he looks like.'
'I don't know why, love. Maybe he wasn't much to look at and
it's better not to see him close to. I like the lions.'
Minty didn't. Crouching there like that, they reminded her of
Mr Kroot's cat. Maybe in the middle of the night they got up and
walked about, treading on tall buildings and stamping on trees. She
was glad when she and the Wilsons had pushed their way through
the crowds and were seated in the Garrick Theatre. Laf bought a
programme for her and one for Sonovia and a box of Dairy Milk.
Minty didn't want a chocolate, it stood to reason they couldn't
come in those shapes unless someone handled them, but she took
one so as not to be rude and felt funny for the next half-hour as the
germs ran about inside her stomach.
An Inspector Calls wasn't a bit like they'd imagined, though there
was a policeman in it, or perhaps not a real one, perhaps a ghost or
an angel. Minty didn't want it to be a ghost, she had enough of
those in reality, and sometimes she had to shut her eyes. The set
was the best thing, they all agreed on that, not like something made
to be the background to a play but like a real house in a real street,
transported inside the stage. When it was over and Minty got up to
go the point of the knife pushed against the stuff of her trousers at
the knee, but she adjusted them quickly before Laf or Sonovia saw.
It was quite late but cafes and restaurants were open everywhere;
she had never seen so many all together and it made her wonder
how they could make enough money to exist on. They went into a
little one in a side street and ordered pizzas. Minty wouldn't have
had salad or cooked meat or anything she couldn't see being
cooked but a pizza was all right, you could watch the man take it
out of an oven with a pair of tongs on to a clean plate. And he was
wearing gloves. They had a couple of glasses of wine each and that
reminded her of Jock.
'Adam and Eve and Pinch Me,' she said.
'You what?'
They'd never heard it before. 'Adam and Eve and Pinch Me

279

went down to the river to bathe. Adam and Eve were drownded.
Who was saved?'
'Well, Pinch Me, of course,' said Sonovia and Minty pinched
her.
Laf laughed uproariously. 'You had her there, Minty. I didn't
know you had it in you.'
'Yes, well, the joke was on me,' said Sonovia and, in a patronising
tone, 'But it's not "drownded", my deah. You're wrong about that.
"Drowned" would be correct.'
'Jock said "drownded".' Minty finished her pizza. 'It was him
told me.'
She shivered. Thinking about him often had that effect.
'Not cold, are you? It's very warm in here. I've been asking
myself why I didn't put a thinner jacket on.'
But by this time it was growing colder outside, whatever Sonovia
said. They passed a pub and then another, and Laf asked if they
wanted a drink, one for the road, a nightcap, but Sonovia said no,
enough was enough and it'd be one in the morning before they
were in their beds as it was. The tube train came and it was so full
that Laf said, 'Let's wait for the next one, it's due in one minute,' so
they waited and it came and it was nearly empty. A lot of people
got in at Piccadilly, a lot got out at Baker Street and one old
woman got in. It was Mrs Lewis.
The empty seat nearly opposite Minty was one of those intended
for the old or disabled. Not that many took much notice of that,
but it happened to be empty and Mrs Lewis sat down in it. She was
still in her dark-red coat and hat. Auntie was nowhere to be seen.
Evidently she'd taken to heart what Minty had said about not
associating with Mrs Lewis on account of her being Jock's mother
and never paying Jock's debts. Minty stared fixedly at Mrs Lewis,
who refused to meet her eyes. She had settled herself carefully to
avoid sitting on the knife, though it was wrapped first in plastic and
then in a clean white rag, but she was very aware of it now.
'What are you staring at, my deah? You're giving me the creeps.'
'She's not real,' Minty said. 'Don't you worry, she's only a ghost,
but she's got a nerve coming after me here.'

280

Sonovia looked at her husband, shaking her head.
Laf raised his eyebrows. 'Must be the wine,' he said. 'She's not used to it. They gave you really big glasses in that pizza place.'
Mrs Lewis got up to go at Paddington. For the first time Minty
noticed she had a holdall with her. She must be catching a train to
Gloucester, back to the old home she'd had when she was alive.
'Can you get a train to Gloucester at this time of night?' she asked
Laf.
'I shouldn't think so. It's gone half past midnight. What d'you
want to know for?'
Minty didn't reply. She was watching Mrs Lewis leave the train
and make her way along the platform. A bad walker, shuffling more
than walking. Then she remembered some of the money Jock had
borrowed had been to pay for his mother's hip operation. 'She
never had it,' she said aloud. 'I don't reckon she lived long enough
to have it.'
Again the Wilsons exchanged glances. As Laf said to his wife
later, all the people in the train were looking uneasily at Minty.
You got used to seeing some funny sights in the underground -
he'd once seen a chap racing maggots across the floor - but Minty
looked crazy, her face as white as chalk and her wispy hair standing
on end. Besides, anyone could tell she'd been talking to the empty
air. They got out at Kensal Green and walked home; it wasn't far.
The only people in the streets were groups of young men, black
and white and Asian, all around twenty years old, all looking
somehow like a threat.
Sonovia put her arm through Lafs. 'I wouldn't feel all that
comfortable if you weren't with us, love.'
'Well, I am,' said Laf, gratified. 'They won't mess with me.'
On the corner of their street was a seat with a sort of flowerbed
behind it. The flowers had to compete with empty beer cans, fish
and chip paper and fag ends, and the rubbish was winning. Mrs
Lewis hadn't gone home to Gloucester. She was sitting on the seat,
the holdall open beside her. Laf and Sonovia probably thought she
was the old bag lady who sometimes sat there at night, but Minty
knew better. In the ten minutes since Mrs Lewis had left the tube

281

at Paddington she'd changed her clothes again for a black coat and
headscarf, and somehow got up here. But ghosts could do anything,
get through walls and floors, travel long distances at the speed of
light. She was here now but before Minty could get there she'd be
in her house, waiting for her.
Down here there was no one else about. The boys in gangs stuck
to the Harrow Road. Sonovia and Laf said goodnight and see her
soon. Minty was so preoccupied with Mrs Lewis that she forgot her
manners and all the things Auntie had taught her, and didn't say
thanks for taking me to the theatre or anything. She didn't even say
goodnight.
The Wilsons went indoors and Sonovia said, Tve never known
her so peculiar. Talking to herself and seeing things that aren't
there. D'you reckon we ought to do something?'
'What can we do? Send for the men in the white coats?'
'Don't you be silly, Laf. It's not funny.'
'She just had too much wine, Sonn. People can have hallucinations
when they've had too many. If you don't believe me you can
ask Clan.'
Mrs Lewis wasn't waiting for her. Minty searched the house. She
wasn't anywhere and nor was Auntie. She'd still be on that seat,
rumbling about in that holdall, planning something, laughing
maybe because she'd managed to die before she had to pay that
money.
Minty knew what she had to do. She patted the knife, opened the
front door and closed it quietly behind her. The street was
deserted, silent. The lamps were out. Only in the flat opposite was
there a light, a gleam in one of the windows like a candle flame. It
looked as if the Wilsons had gone straight to bed, for their
bedroom light went out as Minty looked upwards. She walked up
to the corner, suddenly sure Mrs Lewis would have gone and the
seat be empty.
But she was still there. She'd decided to sleep there, Minty
couldn't think why. She'd put the battered holdall under her head
for a pillow. What did a ghost want with a holdall? The flowers
behind her had closed up for the night, their leaves faintly
gleaming from among the crumpled cartons and polythene bags
and cigarette packets. Mrs Lewis would never give her back her
money now, it was gone for ever. Minty, drawing out the knife
from its strapping, was suddenly consumed with righteous anger.
This would show Auntie that she meant business, teach her to be
more careful in future.
It was quite silent in the street now. Mrs Lewis didn't make a
sound. If she'd been real Minty would have thought her heart had
stopped the minute the point of the knife touched her.

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Chapter 27

Alone in the car, Jims escaped from Fredington Crucis House,
pursued for several hundred yards down the lane by reporters and
photographers. Leonardo he had left behind to fend for himself.
They had had a row.
Half an hour had passed before he understood why the reporters
and cameramen were there. During that time, having berated
Leonardo for being such a fool as to put the light on, he had
showered, shaved and dressed, and braced himself to go outside
and meet them. But that had to be postponed, for first he looked
out of a window. The eyes and cameras of the crowd were turned
on to the front door and he was able to observe them for a moment
or two without being seen. 'Predators,' he said to himself,
'vultures,' and, rather outmodedly, the legacy of a classical
education, 'harpies.'
Then, as one, they turned towards the gates. Mrs Vincey was
shutting them behind her and had started up the drive. The
reporters closed in upon her, but not before Jims had seen she was
carrying a newspaper, the only word of which he could read from
this distance in the large-lettered headline was 'MP'. Since he'd
asked her not to come this morning, the idea was inescapable that
the newspaper and curiosity had fetched her. He could see she was
quite willing to talk to them and if they weren't all that anxious to
take her photograph this wasn't for her want of readiness to pose

284

for them. What was she saying? And what was it all about, anyway?
He soon knew.
She let herself in, and herself alone, by the front door. Jims met
her in the hall and found himself in a situation comparable to that
Zillah had experienced with Maureen Peacock. Mrs Vincey held up
the newspaper's front page in both hands and told him she'd never
been so disgusted in all her life. For the first dme, she didn't call
him Sir or Mr Melcombe-Smith. In the words of Cleopatra when
her power is waning, he might have asked, 'What, no more
ceremony?' Instead, he stood in silence, reading the headline over
and over: the gay mp, two weddings and a funeral.
'Aren't you ashamed of yourself? A Member of Parliament! I
wonder what the Queen thinks about you.'
'Mind your own fucking business,' said Jims, 'and get out. Don't
come back.'
He went upstairs. At that moment, immediately, he couldn't
bring himself to read more. But he had seen the photographs on
page three, notably the one of himself and Leonardo in the
Maldives, and he blamed Leonardo for all of it. Leonardo had
talked, gossiped perhaps, at any rate told someone, had given their
picture to a gutter rag. He found him in the bedroom, sitting on
the bed fully dressed but looking very hangdog and, tojims's mind,
guilty as hell. Jims began to shout and rave at him, waving the
newspaper, accusing him of treachery, perfidy and barratrous
betrayal - his once successful career was in part due to his
command of language - and not listening to his indignant defence.
Leonardo stood up. 'I haven't talked to anyone. You're mad. I've
got my career to think of as much as yours, remember. Let me see
that.'
They struggled with the paper, pulling it this way and that until
the front page was torn in half. Leonardo finally got possession of
it. 'If you'll read it instead of ranting like a maniac you'll see it's
your precious wife who's been talking, not me. And talking, my
God!'
Jims half believed him but he refused to look in his presence. He
grabbed the paper and shouting, 'You can get yourself back to

285

London. Walk to bloody Casterbridge, it's only six miles,' ran
downstairs.
Mrs Vincey had gone. The pack was still outside. Jims put the
newspaper in his briefcase, his wallet and car keys in his pocket and,
like General Gordon solitarily confronting the Mahdi's soldiery at
Khartoum, opened the door and stepped outside. The pack roared
with pleasure and flash bulbs popped.
'Look this way, Jims!'
'Give us a smile, Jims!'
Td like just two words, Mr Melcombe-Smith.'
'Is it true, Jims?'
'If you'd like to make a statement...'
Jims said in his patrician tones, 'Of course it isn't true. It's all
lies.' He embroidered, recalling Leonardo's words, 'My wife is
having a mental breakdown.'
'Did you know you were a bigamist, Jims? Will your wife stand
by you? Where's Leonardo? Do you expect to lose your seat?'
This last, which they all seemed to take as some sort of ghastly
and obscene pun, raised a roar of laughter. Jims, in what was nearly
a reflex because he'd felt his face grow hot and therefore red, put
up his briefcase to hide it. Bulbs flashed. One exploded almost in
his face. He tried to grab the camera, failed and plunged for his car.
They were all over it, he thought, like monkeys in a safari park. He
pushed a girl off and she fell over, shouting she'd get him for
assault. He got the door open, squeezed in and shut it, hoping to slam a man's fingers in it but the hand was snatched back in the
nick of time. As he drove down the drive he could see ahead of him
that the gates were closed. That bitch Vincey had shut them after
her on purpose, he thought, when nine times out of ten she left
them open, in spite of his admonitions.
'Open the bloody gates!' He shouted it out of the window but
they took no notice. Or rather, one of them stuck a camera in
through it.
He got out and they clustered about him, plucking at his clothes,
cameras in his face. Someone was actually sitting on the top bar of
the left-hand gate.

286

'You off to London, Jims?'
'What'll you say to Zillah when you get there?'
'Was it a contract killer murdered Jeff Leach?'
'Will Zillah stick by you, Jims?'
Jims pulled open both gates. The reporter sitting on one of them
tumbled off and lay on the ground, shouting that he'd broken his
leg. He shook his fist and said he'd get Jims for that if it was the last
thing he did. While they were trying to bar his exit Jims, resigned
to sacrificing his expensive oak gates if necessary, drove straight at
the pack and forced them to jump out of his way. Most of them
pursued him into the village, only giving up when they saw that the
Crux Arms was open. He drove through Long Fredington, eyeing
with bitterness Willow Cottage, where his courtship, such as it was,
had begun, and then with a glimmer of interest, for he saw it was
up for sale. He was reminded of what Leonardo had said about his
'precious wife' talking. There was nothing for it but to stop being a
coward and read that newspaper. He pulled off the road at Mill
Lane where Zillah, on her way to Annie's house, had once dreamt
of her future with him, its affluence and its glamour, and read the
story.
It was even worse than he'd expected, but now, after making his
getaway from the pack and, thanks to them, becoming somewhat
inured to a rain of onslaughts on his privacy, his proclivities and his
reputation, he was more able to take it. Plainly, Zillah was entirely
responsible. He had underrated her, had treated her in a way he
thought she would tolerate but had not. This was her revenge.
There were imponderables in the story, though, things for which
she could surely not be blamed. He turned back to page one and
saw Natalie Reckman's byline. It was she who'd done that snide
article about Zillah in the early days of their marriage! Jims could
easily imagine her watching Leonardo's house, spying on his
arrival, probably bribing the neighbours. Ah, the world was a
wicked place and those caught in the fierce light that beats upon its
high shore, exposed to perpetual threat and peril.
For all that, everything was over between Leonardo and him. If
he'd fancied himself in love for a few short weeks, all that had

287

vanished in the blink of an eye. He never wanted to see Leonardo
again. Jims was nothing if not a snob and he asked himself what
sort of a fool would walk about a gentleman's house wearing only a
pair of vulgar underpants from Cecil Gee. And not have the sense
to know a light in an uncurtained room showed up the occupants
clearly to anyone outside? He wouldn't be at all surprised if
Leonardo's mother lived on a council estate. That it was in (or
more probably well outside) Cheltenham meant nothing. Congratulating
himself on his escape, both from Fredington Crucis and
Leonardo, Jims drove eastwards and left the road to mount the
steep escarpment that rises out of the Vale of Blackmoor and on
which Shaston stands. Even today the view from Castle Green over
'three counties of verdant pasture' is almost unchanged from
Hardy's time and still a sudden surprise to the unexpectant
traveller, but Jims didn't linger to look at it. He put the car in
Shaston's pay-and-display car park and walked along Palladour
Street to an estate agent's. The woman seated behind the desk was
probably the only person in the United Kingdom, thought Jims,
who hadn't read the story in the newspaper and who didn't
recognise his name when he gave it. That was all to the good. His
business transacted, he returned to the car and headed back to the
London road.
On the journey he turned over the facts in his mind and saw that,
come what might, his career was in ruins. There was nothing left to
salvage from the wreck. He was branded a bigamist, which he could
perhaps feebly deny, and a practising promiscuous homosexual,
which he couldn't and no longer wanted to. And he had been
questioned as a suspect in a murder case. All those years of
campaigning, accepting the offer of a hopeless candidature in the
industrial Midlands before getting at last a safe seat, all those
Fridays or Saturdays spent in his surgery, all that rattling about the
county in a Winnebago, all that speech-making and fete-opening
and baby-cuddling - how he disliked children! - and lying to
pensioners and huntsmen and pro-vivisectionists and hospital
patients and schoolteachers, all of it an utter waste of time. The
Party would probably expel him, take away the Whip, send him to

288

Coventry. There was no possibility of his ever making his way
back. He was done for. He could only be thankful that he had an
unbreakable alibi for the Friday afternoon when that miscreant
Jerry Leach was killed. And that, whatever she might think, he'd
pulled a fast one on Zillah.
At an exit leading to a couple of villages he pulled off the main
road. It was three-quarters of an hour past noon. He drove to an
hotel he knew - in the days when he was carefree, he and Ivo
Carew had once spent a pleasant weekend there - and ordered
lunch. But his appetite failed him and he couldn't eat a thing.

Before she went down to the reporters Zillah had dressed herself
and the children with great care and forethought. She'd devoted a
lot of time to planning it the night before. Eugenie and Jordan
wore the uniform of fashionable upper-middle-class children in
summertime at the turn of the millennium: white trainers, white
shorts, white T-shirts, with stripes in Jordan's case and modish
spots in Eugenie's. Zillah herself was in white trousers and a blue
shirt with plunging neckline. Remembering what some awful
journalist had said about her shoes, she'd put on flat sandals.
Eugenie hadn't wanted to wear shorts and at first had refused
flatly: 'I'm not that sort of girl. You ought to know by now. I either
wear long trousers or a dress. You ought to know.'
Til make it worth your while,' said Zillah recklessly. 'Five
pounds.'
'Ten.'
'You'll come to a bad end.' Zillah used the same words her
mother had used to her twenty years before.
Jordan snivelled. Zillah had thought of quietening him in some
positive and dramatic way, such as by giving him a tot of whisky,
but she'd lost her nerve and had resorted to junior aspirin instead.
It had had no effect.
She smiled charmingly at the reporters and posed, holding a
hand of each child, for the photographers. Jordan stopped crying
for five minutes, fascinated by the biggest dog Zillah had ever seen
that one of the cameramen had brought with him. She said she'd

289

something for them all and passed over copies of a statement she'd
done onjims's computer the night before. It said that everything in
that morning's paper was true and she'd only like to add that she'd
be standing by her husband and supporting him through thick and
thin. She and he had spoken several times on the phone that
morning and she'd assured him of her devotion and her determination
to be a rock for him to cling to. She answered only one
question before retiring into the building with dignity.
A young woman with a Yorkshire accent asked her if Jims was
bisexual.
'I'm sure he won't mind my saying that yes, he is. Everything has
to come out into the open now.' In one of Malina's favourite
phrases, she added that trust and caring 'must be the building
blocks of our new relationship'.
Jordan burst into fresh tears. Satisfied with what she had done,
Zillah carried him up in the lift. After the interviews and the
photographs she felt rather flat. She was in the position of having
absolutely nothing to do. When would Jims get back? It was a lie
she'd told the newspaper people when she'd said she and Jims had
spoken several times that morning. She knew he wouldn't phone
and she'd no intention of phoning him. But he'd be home and she
wasn't going to be there when he came if she could help it. When
she'd rejected the idea of the cinema, swimming pools and the
various entertainments on offer at the Trocadero, she took the
children out to lunch at McDonald's and then on a river boat to the
Thames barrier. The water was calm and the motion slow, but
Jordan was sick and he cried all the way home.
They returned to the flat at six and Jims still wasn't back. Unless
he'd come in and gone out again. She suspected this wasn't so and
was proved right within ten minutes. By that time she'd changed
into a pair of beach pyjamas she'd bought at a shop at The Cross,
remembered her father was ill but didn't phone her mother and put
both children in the bath. The front door opened and closed.
When she turned round she saw Jims standing in the doorway. His
face was pale and he looked racked with anxiety.
'I'm just going to phone my mother,' she said nervously.

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'Not now,' he said, and 'May I get you a drink?' in the silky tones
he used when he was either very pleased or very angry.
She didn't know whether to say yes or no. She rinsed her hands
under the tap and dried them. 'A gin and tonic, please.' Her voice
came out rather timidly. She followed him into the living room.
He brought her the drink and stood over her for a moment or
two. There was nothing threatening in his stance but he himself
was a threat to her and she flinched. He laughed, a bitter, dry
laugh. 'I've seen the newspaper,' he said, sitting down. 'I suppose
it's a newspaper, I don't know what else to call it. And I've talked to
the media. A bit OTT, wasn't it?'

'Wasn't what?'
'The things you said to La Reckman. And the photograph you
gave her. Did I really deserve that?'
'Of course you did, the way you've treated me.'
A wail came from the bathroom and Eugenie walked in, wearing
her nightdress and dressing gown. She looked at Jims as a
householder might look at a dog turd on the doorstep but said
nothing. 'I'm not getting him out of the bath,' she said to Zillah.
'He's your responsibility, as I keep telling you. He says his tummy
hurts.'
Zillah went. So, after a moment or two, did Eugenie, returning
in a few seconds with a book. Jims's world had ended but he
meant to die bravely, triumphantly exacting vengeance. He took
out of his pocket a packet of cigarettes and lit one. It was the first
he'd had for six months and it made him feel a bit faint, but he
savoured it and thought he might start smoking seriously again.
Nobody would admonish him now, no one would ask questions in
the Commons Chamber about disgusting habits, no one would
suggest he set a good example. He inhaled and his vision swam. If
he hadn't been sitting down he'd have fallen over. Jordan's yelling
heralded his entry into the room.
Zillah came after him. 'Why are you smoking?'
'Because I like it,' said Jims. 'Put that child to bed.'
'There's no need to talk like that. He hasn't done you any harm.'

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'No, his mother has.' He got up and switched on the television.
A cartoon happened to be on and for five minutes Jordan was quiet.
'Give me a cigarette, please.'
'Buy your own. God knows, I give you enough money.' Jims
drew showily on his cigarette, blowing smoke into Zillah's face. 'I
don't expect you to be out of here until Friday,' he said. 'I am, in
fact, giving you a week's notice.'
'Now, wait a minute. You can't do that. If anyone goes, you do.
You're married to me, remember? I'm your legal wife. I've got
children and therefore a right to your home.'
'You didn't really believe in that marriage ceremony, did you,
my dear? I wouldn't have credited that the wool could so easily be
pulled over your eyes. You believed Kate Carew was a registrar?
You actually swallowed Kevin Jebb as a witness? You and I haven't
even been cohabiting. Neither of our so-called marriages was
consummated. You're just a friend I've taken in when you hadn't a
roof over your head. Out of the goodness of my heart.'
Zillah stared at him. She couldn't speak.
'But I grant you've grounds for expecting some sort of
maintenance from me. So I spent the morning negotiating a
purchase with an estate agent. I've also had a pleasant chat with the
owner. That's why I was so late back. And I'm glad to say the sale's
been agreed. I've bought Willow Cottage for you. Aren't you
pleased?'
As Zillah began to scream, Eugenie looked up from the floor and
said, 'Mummy, do you mind? I can't hear the TV.'
Chapter 28

A boy delivering papers found Eileen Dring's body at six forty-five
on Sunday morning. He was just sixteen and it gave him a bad
shock. The body was sdll on the seat where Eileen Dring had
settled for the night. But for the blood which had soaked through
her clothes and the blanket with which she had covered herself, she
would have seemed asleep. Perhaps she had been stabbed in her
sleep and had known nothing about it.
The police knew her. There were no problems of identification.
For several years she had had a room in Jakarta Road off Mill Lane
in West Hampstead, paid for by Camden Council, but she had
seldom lived in it, preferring to wander the streets and sleep out of
doors, at least in summer. Kilburn and Maida Vale and Paddington
Recreation Ground were among her haunts. They had never
known her to come as far west as this. But Eileen was known to
love flowers and had once been observed sleeping in the doorway
of an empty building that had formerly been a bank, on the corner
of Maida Vale and Clifton Road. It happened to be very close to
where the flower and plant seller would pitch his stall in the
morning, and perhaps she'd chosen it in anticipation of waking up
to the scent of carnations and roses in the morning. The site of her
death, the seat on which she was lying, was just in front of a
crescent-shaped flowerbed, at present red, white and pink with
geraniums, among which lay the detritus of meals and drinks
consumed on the street.

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It took only a short time to establish that the knife used to stab
her was very similar to the one which killed Jeffrey Leach. Similar
but not identical. Possibly one of a pair bought at the same time. So
advanced are forensics by now that investigators can tell precisely
the shape and size of a weapon used in these circumstances, the
nicks, if any, on its blade, any minuscule unevenness in that blade's
surface, for the knife itself is unique. So they knew it wasn't the
knife but its twin.
The motive for the killing of Jeffrey Leach remained obscure but
the motive for this one at first seemed transparent. The holdall
Eileen carried with her and which lay under her head, usually held
a blanket and a cardigan and scarf, a can of fizzy drink - she was
strictly teetotal - a sandwich or two as well as her pension book. It
was empty. There should also have been money, for Eileen had
drawn two weeks' pension the day before and had spent only a little
of it on the food and drink. Does anyone do murder for a hundred
and forty pounds? Violent Crimes know it's done for half that, for a
quarter; it's done for the price of ten grammes of cannabis.
On the other hand, they were sure Eileen was the victim of
Jeffrey Leach's killer and the question of financial profit hadn't
entered into that. So were there any links between the two victims
apart from the close similarity of the weapons used? How about
West Hampstead?
Leach had been living there for the six months prior to his death.
Jakarta Road was two streets away from Holmdale Road, running
parallel to it but linked by a cross street, Athena Road. Although
they were yet to discover whether Eileen had ever frequented
Holmdale, West Hampstead police - the police station was in
Fortune Green Road - knew Athena Road to be a favourite pitch of
hers. Twice they'd moved her on when she'd been found sleeping
on someone's front lawn between the flower borders. Had she tried
the same experiment in camping in the gardens of Holmdale Road?

Sunday had passed without Jims addressing a word to her. He
stayed at home, but in silence. It was as if he'd lost the use of his
tongue. Zillah wouldn't have believed until she experienced it that

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anyone could behave like that, not simply not speaking, but acting
as if he were alone in the place. The children and she might have
been inanimate objects or pieces of furniture for all the notice he
took of them. It was as if they had become inaudible and invisible,
and she'd hardly have been surprised if, seeking a chair to settle
himself into, he'd sat on one of them or on her.
This policy of ignoring them made her, against her will and
determination, conciliatory towards him. She prepared quite a nice
lunch of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon with a salad, offered
him the dishes, poured him a glass of wine. He took no notice of
any of it but went to the kitchen, returning with a sandwich he'd
made himself and beer which he drank out of the can. She found
herself looking wistfully at him and forced her head to turn away.
The afternoon he spent at his desk, apparently writing letters. She
couldn't help thinking that if only he'd been of a different sexual
orientation she could have won him over, seduced him, charmed
him, but if he'd been different she knew very well she wouldn't
have been with him in the first place.
At about five Moon and Stars Television rang. Eugenie answered
and gave the response she always did if Zillah failed to get to the
phone first.
'She's not available.'
Zillah snatched the receiver from her. The woman at the other
end wanted to say that they were afraid they couldn't send a car in
the morning after all. Of course she could still come under her own
steam if she liked. Zillah, sensing she was no longer the attraction
she once had been, thought she did like, though she was longer
quite sure. At any rate, she agreed. It would mean getting up at five thirty in the morning but it would be worth it. She could charm
them, she could bewitch her audience. The phone rang again
almost immediately. It was the cleaner from number nine to say
she couldn't manage babysitting in the morning after all.
Zillah looked at Jims. He appeared to be signing his letters. She
was afraid to ask him. She'd just leave the children in the flat. After
all, he'd be there, and with luck no one would wake up until she

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was back home again. Eugenie wouldn't leave her brother to
scream, would she?
Jims turned on the television news at five-thirty-five, sat
inscrutably through items about floods in Gujarat, ongoing strife in
Zimbabwe and the murder of an old woman in Kensal Green,
before seeing himself scarlet-faced, then sheltering his flush behind
his briefcase, as he emerged from the front door of Fredington
Crucis House. The children watched it and so did Zillah,
occasionally turning her eyes to cast fearful glances in Jims's
direction. He wasn't blushing now but had become even whiter.
The pictures weren't new, they'd previously appeared the evening
before, but now they were followed by comments from all sorts of
Party dignitaries including the Chairman of the South Wessex
Conservatives who said stoutly that he had complete confidence in
Mr Melcombe-Smith and in his shortly being able to give clear
replies to all the questions that still remained unanswered.
'Why is my stepfather on the TV?' asked Eugenie.
No one answered her. The phone rang, Jims answered it, put the
receiver back without a word and pulled out the plug. Unnerved,
Zillah went into her bedroom, taking the children with her. Jordan
had begun to whimper.

She dressed with great care. If real work came out of this interview,
if it led to celebrity and getting her own television show, she
wouldn't have to leave London and go back to Willow Cottage.
Jims had said, in a nasty sarcastic tone - on Saturday night, when
he'd still had a tongue - that she'd like the cottage very much now,
the new decorations made all the difference. 'Especially the lovely
contemporary fitted kitchen,' he'd added, as if that kind of
language were habitual with her. But she wouldn't like it and wild
horses would have to drag her there.
She put on her favourite white suit with a coral-red shirt because
she'd heard that bright colours do best on television. Would they
make her up or expect her to have done it herself? Zillah couldn't
contemplate going out into the street in London without makeup
on. Long Fredington was another matter and the very thought of it

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made her shiver. Once she was back from Channel Four and had
taken Jordan to the child psychiatrist, she'd find herself a solicitor
and see what could be done to force Jims out of the flat. Something
must be possible.
It was pouring with rain. She'd left the flat on tiptoe, putting her
key in the lock to close the door silently. She couldn't go back for a
raincoat or an umbrella. Fearing for her hair and her flimsy shoes,
she tried to shelter under an overhanging portico while hailing a
taxi but the result of this was that other people got there before
her. She had to come out and get wet. The cab driver who finally
stopped grinned at her rats'-tail hair.
But Zillah soon discovered that she need not have worried.
Another woman going on the programme looked, in her tracksuit
and unmade-up state, as if she'd just got out of bed. The makeup
department dealt with all that, dried Zillah's hair, cleaned her
shoes, redid her face. The other woman told her confidingly that
she'd been appearing on shows of this kind for years. She'd go
along wearing laddered tights, knowing they'd give her a new pair.
Zillah was shocked but delighted to learn these tricks of the trade.
She'd begun to feel a lot better.
But when the programme began and she was able to watch it,
sitting with the other interviewees-to-be in a waiting room, she
realised something she must have been told but which hadn't sunk
in. It was live. There would be no rehearsal, no preparation and no
chance to say she hadn't meant that, cut that, please, or can we go
back? The questions were very searching and even the inexperienced
could tell they weren't kind. A young man, who looked very
young, put his head round the door and beckoned to the tights
woman. She would be the next - Zillah found herself using the
word 'victim'.
It was a strange feeling watching the screen and seeing her walk
on to the set. Zillah suddenly felt naive and rather helpless. The
woman, whom she hadn't recognised, turned out to be a pop singer
of the seventies trying to make a comeback. The presenter, an ugly
man with a beard and the rasping voice that had made him famous,
asked her if she didn't think she was 'a bit over the hill' for what she

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had in mind. She wasn't exactly Posh Spice, was she? Maybe she'd
like to sing for them now. They'd an accompanist on hand. The
singer answered the questions bravely and sang not very well.
While she was singing the young man came back and beckoned to
the teenage boy who was there because he'd got into Oxford at the
age of fifteen. Zillah would be the last.
'They always save the best till last,' said a girl who'd come in to
see if she wanted more coffee or orange juice.
After the singer came a woman reading the news, then a weather
forecast, then advertising of the programmes for the day ahead. She
thought the singer might come back but she didn't. The boy came
on and was interviewed by a kindly woman presenter who treated
him as if he'd won the Nobel Prize. Zillah had been told the man
with the rasping voice would be talking to her but she found herself
hoping that plans had changed and she might get this woman who
was now telling the boy that his family must be enormously proud
of him. And he wasn't even very good, but shy and tongue-tied.
Zillah was called. The girl who'd enquired about coffee and
orange juice led her along one passage and then another and on to
the edge of what seemed like theatre-in-the-round, a circular
platform, partly screened and curtained, thick with cameramen and
soundmen and electricians. The brightly lit area she'd seen on the
screen could just be seen in the centre.
'When I give you a sign, I'll lift my finger like this,' whispered
the girl, 'you walk on from here and sit in that chair opposite
Sebastian. OK?'
'Yes, that's fine,' said Zillah loudly.
Everyone in her vicinity turned and shushed her, fingers on lips.
Such confidence as she had left began to ebb. Her heels were too
high, she knew that now. Suppose she tripped? The boy genius
came off and so did the kindly woman interviewer. The man called
Sebastian told viewers they were now to expect the guest of the
day, Zillah Melcombe-Smith, bigamist, wife - or was she? - of the
disgraced MP James Melcombe-Smith, and widow - or was she? of
the 'Cinema Slayer's' victim. Zillah suddenly felt very cold. That
kind of introduction wasn't at all what she'd expected. But the girl

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who'd brought her here was holding up one finger, so she had no
option but to set off on what seemed like the longest and slowest
walk of her life to the chair opposite Sebastian.
He stared at her as if she were something peculiar in a zoo, an
okapi or echidna. 'Welcome to A Bite of Breakfast, Zillah,' he said.
'Tell us what it feels like to be a widow, a wife and a bigamist all at
once. It can't happen to many women, d'you think?'
Zillah said, 'No,' and, 'No, it can't,' but could think of nothing
else.
'Well, let's start with the bigamy, shall we? Maybe you're one of
those people who don't approve of divorce. A Catholic, are you?'
Her voice came out thin and hoarse. 'I'm not.' Suppose her
mother was watching! She'd only just thought of that. 'My husband
- my first husband - said we were divorced. And my husband - my
present husband, I mean - he said I was.' Whatever she didn't do,
she had to stick to that. 'I thought I was divorced.'
'But when you married James in the House of Commons
Chapel' - the way he said it made it sound like St Peter's in Rome 'you
told the vicar you were single. A single girl and fancy free, that
was about it, wasn't it?'
Why had no one picked on that till now? Her tone trembled:
'James - James thought it best. James said - I didn't know I was
doing wrong. I thought I - I '
'Well, never mind. It all came right for a while with your first
husband's tragic death in the cinema. A terrible thing, of course,
but in some ways it happened at just the right time. What was your reaction?'
Her reaction in the here and now was to burst into tears. She
couldn't help it. She felt driven into a corner from which the only
escape was to be led away to prison. Falling forward, anything to
stop looking into his awful bearded face, she put her head on her
knees and sobbed. What he was doing, saying, what all those
cameramen and soundmen were doing she didn't know. She felt a
touch on her shoulder, jerked up, put her head back and howled.
The kindly woman presenter took her arm, helped her up. She
couldn't really tell because of the beard, but Sebastian seemed to be

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smiling. Behind her, she heard him say something for the benefit of
viewers about her being overcome with grief. Still on camera, she
did what she'd feared to do, tripped and nearly fell over. As she left
the set, crying and limping, a cameraman whispered, 'Great
television. It's what presenters dream of.'

That programme was really the end of the battle for Zillah. She
went back to Abbey Gardens Mansions in a cab. It was still only
nine o'clock. The children were watching television and she
recognised the same channel as that on which she'd just appeared.
'Did you do that on purpose?' asked Eugenie. 'That crying and
falling over?'
'Of course I didn't. I was upset.'
'When he said about your first husband's tragic death, what did
he mean?'
Zillah had never thought about that, about the children watching
the programme and in this way, this terrible way, learning about
their father's death. Looking into Eugenie's beautiful, troubled,
reproachful face, she could tell that the child knew, but still she
couldn't answer her. Not now, not in the midst of all she was going
through.
'That's why we never see him,' said Eugenie.
'I'll tell you later, I promise I will.'
'Your mascara has run all down your face.'
Zillah said she was going to wash. 'Where's Jims?'
'In bed. He didn't go out and leave us alone, if that's what you
think.'
She wanted to tell the child not to speak to her like that but she
was afraid. It was a dreadful admission to make, that she was afraid
of her own seven-year-old daughter. Nevertheless, it was true.
How would it be when Eugenie was a teenager? She would be able
to do exactly as she liked with her mother, she would rule the place.
Willow Cottage, Long Fredington, Dorset. Zillah realised she was
resigned to returning there. Consulting lawyers was no longer
feasible. Jordan was crying again. He'd probably been crying since
before she came in and while she was talking to Eugenie, but she

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hadn't even noticed, she was so used to it by now. They were due at
the child psychiatrist's in an hour's time.

'We've never even seen her,' Michelle said indignantly. 'We don't
know who you mean. We've never had an old homeless woman
sleeping in our front garden.'
'Not homeless, Michelle,' said Violent Crimes. 'She had a home.
That's the point. Her home was in Jakarta Road. What about you,
Matthew? Do you remember her?'
Matthew had been writing his column when they came. They
hadn't phoned first. The thought was inescapable that they had
hoped to catch the Jarveys unawares. Plotting their next crime
perhaps or disposing of the weapon. 'I am old-fashioned,' he said,
'but I would prefer you not to call my wife and me by our Christian
names. You didn't when you first spoke to us, so I can only think
that since then, for some reason, we've forfeited your respect.'
Violent Crimes stared. 'Well, if you feel like that, of course.
Most clients say it establishes a friendlier relationship.'
'But we're not clients, are we? We're suspects. In answer to your
question, I don't remember Mrs Dring. To my knowledge, I've
never seen her. Now will that do?'
'We'd like to search this house.'
Michelle shouted, 'No!' almost before she knew what she was
saying.
'We can get a warrant, Mrs Jarvey. All your refusal does is delay
things.'
'If my wife will agree,' said Matthew wearily, 'I will.'
Michelle shrugged, then nodded. From believing, a week ago,
that no one could suppose a couple like themselves guilty of
violence, she had come to understand, only too easily, how Violent
Crimes must see her and Matthew. Already she could imagine their
photographs, their rogues' gallery death-row portraits, in some
true crimes collection of the future. A sinister pair, he cadaverously
thin with the skull-like face of an Eichmann or a Christie, a man
who purposely starved himself and made a living out of writing
about anorexics, she a waddling tub of lard with a deceptively

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pretty face sunk in pillows of fat. It made no difference to this
picture Michelle had of herself, and the husband she adored, that
since he embarked on his television programme he'd been steadily
eating a little more every day and that she had done no more than
nibble at a piece of fruit or a slice of chicken since the investigation
began. She still saw them as grotesque.
The searching began. Four officers worked over the house. They
didn't say what they were looking for and neither of the Jarveys
would condescend to ask. After the early rain the day had become
warm and sunny. They went out into their garden, which, front
and back, was no more than a lawn surrounded by flowerless
shrubs, sat on the swing seat, silent but holding hands. Both were
thinking of Fiona.
Their neighbour had gone off to work at eight thirty as usual.
Carefree was how Michelle saw her, for though she and Matthew
had fallen in love at first sight, she found it hard to believe in the
passion Fiona claimed to have had for a man she'd known for such
a short time. And such a man! She'd gone off to work, no doubt
making money hand over fist for herself and her clients, with never
a thought for the people she professed to be her friends but whom
she'd made the police suspect. She must have more money than she
knew what to do with if she was talking, as she had last time they
saw her, of compensating two of those women of Jeffrey Leach's
for what they'd lost through him. Michelle no longer believed she
was sorry for what she'd done. She wouldn't have put it past Fiona,
once she'd seen of the murder of Eileen Dring on television last
night, to have phoned the police and told them the Jarveys had
known the dead woman. Wasn't it rather too much of a
coincidence that they'd known both murder victims?
They went indoors again after the search was over. Of course,
nothing incriminating had been found. But, 'We shall be in touch,'
Violent Crimes said. 'We shall want to talk to you again.'
Michelle felt as some people do after their homes have been
burgled. Not just an intrusion but a violation, a desecration. She
imagined the officers going through her underwear drawers,
sniggering at the size of her bras and knickers. Finding those X-

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rays of Matthew's spine and pelvis, which had been taken when a
specialist suspected his bones were becoming brittle. Marvelling
and exchanging amused glances over their wedding photograph
album. She'd never feel the same about her house again. She and
Matthew had begun their married life there in such an ecstasy of
joy and hope. In the kitchen she began to prepare his lunch. For
herself, she felt less like eating than ever.
He came out to her. 'I love you.'
'I love you too, darling,' she said. 'Nothing makes any difference
to that.'

'Thanks,' said Jims, 'that's very kind of you.'
He'd been astonished when Eugenie brought him a cup of coffee
in bed. It wasn't very good, being made from less than boiling
water, instant coffee and dried milk. Nevertheless he was touched
and vague thoughts fluttered through his mind of how, had things
turned out differently, he and his stepdaughter might one day have
become friends. At least, unlike her mother, she had a brain.
'She's gone to do some interview,' said Eugenie.
'So what's new?'
Eugenie laughed and then, to his surprise, so did he. And there
he'd been thinking he'd never smile again. So Zillah had gone out no
doubt to bad-mouth him - leaving him to look after her kids
without first asking him. And he'd do it. He hadn't much choice. It
would be the last time.
He heard her come back. Because he'd known her so long, he
could tell from the way she shut the front door and walked across
the hall what kind of a mood she was in. A desperate one, by the
sound of it. He lay in bed for a further half-hour, then got up and
had a bath, a long, hot soak. Where she was going with the kids this
time he neither knew nor cared, but he waited until the door had
closed and he heard the lift move before emerging into the living
room. He had dressed with care, but then he always did. What sort
of a mess had he got himself into that he was being driven out of
his own home by that woman?
He walked for a while. It was a beautiful day now, the rain clouds

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swept away by a high wind, which had since dropped and the sun
had come out. He found himself in South Kensington outside the
Launceston Place restaurant where they were happy to let him
lunch, though he hadn't booked. His thoughts drifted from Zillah
to Sir Ronald Grasmere and the terms they had agreed on for
Willow Cottage, then to Leonardo. Jims hoped he'd been unable
to get a taxi and been forced to walk to Casterbridge, that the train
had been cancelled or that weekend works on the line had
necessitated part of the journey being made by bus.
A cab took him back and Big Ben showed twenty minutes past
two as he went into the Commons by way of Westminster Hall.
Two messages awaited him. The one from the Leader of the
Opposition was peremptory and cold. No messing, thought Jims.
He'd see him at three sharp. It was a command. The Chief Whip's
message was couched in rather more wistful terms. Would Jims
like to come and 'meet with him' - why did even his own party use
this awful language? - in his office for a pre-dinner drink and
review of 'the situation'? Jims threw both into a waste-paper bin
and, drawing in his breath, remembering how he'd confronted the
press on Saturday morning, he strolled into the Commons
Chamber.
All eyes were immediately on him. He had known it would be so
and was careful to meet no one's gaze. Two members sat near
where he always sat, on the second from the back of the back
benches. With assumed nonchalance, though his heart was pounding,
he moved to sit between them. One ignored him. The other,
whom Jims of course knew but whom he'd never thought of with
anything like friendship, leant across and gave him a small fatherly
pat on the knee. It was so unexpected and so bloody kind that Jims,
grinning at him and saying, 'Thanks,' felt something happen that
hadn't occurred for twenty years. Tears came into his eyes.
They never fell. Jims didn't give them the chance. He remained
in the Chamber for twenty minutes, apparently listening but in fact
hearing nothing, and then he rose to his feet, looked one by one at
such members as were present, then at the Speaker ('We who are
about to die salute you') and walked towards the door. There he

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paused and looked back. He would never see this sight again. It was
already receding into his past, like the fading memory of a dream.
The Central Lobby was almost empty. Yesterday he had sent his
resignation to the Chairman of the Parliamentary Conservative
Party and his relinquishment of the whip to the Chief Whip. There
was nothing to stay for except one small consultation. A Member
who'd been in here for forty years and who knew all about
procedure was expecting him in his office with helpful hints on
ceasing to be a member. It couldn't be done as easily as leaving the
Party.
'The Chiltern Hundreds,' said Jims.
'Pity about that, old man, but it's taken. You remember - well, a
little contretemps in the matter of the former Member for...'

'Oh, yes,' Jims cut in. 'Paederasty, wasn't it?'
'Possibly. I try to put a distance between myself and that kind of
thing.'
'There must be other offices of profit under the crown. What
about the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports?'
'I'm afraid His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales has that.'

'Of course.'
A ledger was consulted. 'There's the Stewardship of the
Tolpuddle Marshes. It carries a nominal annual stipend of fifty-two
pence and acceptance of it would of course disqualify you from
membership of the House of Commons.'
'Sounds perfect,' said Jims. 'I've always wanted to have my say in
the fate of the Tolpuddle Marshes. Where exactly are they? Wales,
isn't it?'

'No, actually it's Dorset.'
The aged Member afterwards remarked to a crony of his that
Melcombe-Smith had laughed so much he was quite concerned,
supposing that the shock of the wretched man's recent experiences
was bringing on some kind of breakdown.
Jims wasn't going to hang around for any scoldings, reproaches
or impertinent enquiries. He walked out into New Palace Yard as
Big Ben struck twice for'three thirty, an awesome sound to which,

305

for the first time in years, he gave his full attention. The afternoon
was beautiful, sunny and hot. What should he do now?

The child psychiatrist told Zillah he was also a doctor of medicine.
She didn't know why he bothered, she hadn't brought Jordan all
the way to Wimpole Street because he had a sore throat. Jordan
hadn't stopped crying since they got into the taxi. Just before they
left he'd been sick. It wasn't surprising, she thought and told the
psychiatrist, that a child who was always crying should also be
frequently vomiting. Eugenie, who had to come because there was
no one to look after her at home, sat on a chair in the consulting
room, wearing the wry and cynical expression of a disillusioned
woman six times her age.
When he'd talked to Jordan, or tried to, the psychiatrist said he'd
like to give him a perfunctory physical examination. Zillah, who
was nothing if not a child of her times and was in a nervous state
anyway, immediately envisaged sexual abuse, but she nodded
miserably. Jordan was stripped and examined.
It took two minutes for the psychiatrist to sit him up, give him a
pat on the shoulder, and covering him with a blanket, say to Zillah,
'This child has a hernia. Of course you must have a second opinion
but I'd be very surprised if that's not what's wrong with him. And
another may be forming on the other side.' He gave her what she
interpreted as a nasty look. 'If he's been crying and vomiting he's
had it for a long time. Pain doesn't start until the hernia's reached a
critical stage. It may even be strangulated.'

In newspapers a tremendous story is always followed by a period of
anticlimax. The tension cannot be sustained. Some cataclysmic
revelation has burst upon the world and there can be followups,
but sometimes these are unusable, due to the principal being dead
or due to appear in court or missing. But something must be found
to fill the gap between the shock and triumph and the next amazing
journalistic coup. Natalie had 'outed' Jims and ruptured his
discretion, but was chary of writing much more about him while he
seemed to be suspected of Jeff Leach's murder. The time had come

106

to produce a history ofJefPs life, a catalogue of his women. So far
only his wife and the woman he was living with had been publicly
named. A stunning move might be to acknowledge that she herself
had been among his lovers. She had no inhibitions at all about
doing this and her boyfriend was as hard-headed about things as
she. But who else should feature in her story?
She had often thought of 'the funny little thing' he had
mentioned at lunch the last time they'd met, a woman with a
peculiar name. He'd called her Polo and she lived near Kensal
Green Cemetery. It might be a good idea to hunt this woman
down. An interview with Fiona Harrington was a must and maybe
another with Natalie's own predecessor. She knew very well that
hadn't been Jeff s ex-wife but a woman called - she tried for a while
to remember her name. It would come back to her. Jeff had talked
of her frequently enough, and mostly with bitterness, while he and
she were together.
A restaurateur? A doctor? The chief executive of some agency or
charity? She'd let her memories of Jeffs references to this woman
and the few sentences he'd spoken about 'Polo' lie at the back of
her mind. There was no hurry. One day soon she'd delve down into
the jumble in there and maybe some interesting things would come
to the surface.

307

Chapter 29

House-to-house enquiries were conducted in the neighbourhood
surrounding the spot where Eileen Dring had died. Officers called
at the Wilsons but left as soon as they discovered who Laf was.
He'd already told them of his trip to the theatre on Saturday night
with his wife and their friend from next door, had sent in his report
by Sunday evening, as soon as he heard about Eileen's death on the
radio. In it he described how he and Sonovia and Minty had seen
the old woman alive, well and awake at five minutes to one on
Sunday morning. He talked in more detail to the superintendent in
charge of the case, but he said nothing about Minty's curious
behaviour in the tube on the way home, her hallucinations and
talking to herself. After all, as he said to Sonovia later, she was a
friend and you didn't say things about a friend behind her back.
You didn't, for instance, say she'd had too much to drink.
Minty was at work the first time they called. Sonovia had told
them over and over that she would be, but they still called. Getting
no answer, they went to the next house, and Gertrude Pierce came
to the door. As soon as they told her who they were and what they
wanted she called her brother. 'Dickie, there's a woman been
murdered at the end of the street.'
Mr Kroot appeared, hobbling on two sticks. His already pale face
drained of colour. He had to sit down. Gertrude Pierce gave him
something to inhale and something else to swallow for his angina
and the police officers wondered if he was going to drop dead in

308

front of them. But after a minute or two he rallied. 'You want to
put that woman next door through the third degree,' he said in his
wavering old voice. 'She's a funny one. Her and her auntie, they've
not spoken a word to me for twenty years.'
'That's right, Dickie,' said his sister. 'I wouldn't have been
surprised if she'd murdered we.'

Jims had taken a taxi up to Park Lane. There he sought out a
prestigious West End estate agent, handed them the keys to the
Abbey Gardens Mansions flat and those to Fredington Crucis
House and requested them to sell both properties. His agent would
handle everything. He was going abroad for an indefinite time.
This idea for his future had come into his head on the spur of the
moment. In fact, he had no plans and could hardly see beyond the
present. He strolled down to Hyde Park Corner and decided to
return to Westminster, as he had read MPs living in north London
used to do, by walking on grass. Once you could have come all the
way from Bayswater through Hyde Park, Green Park and St
James's Park, and barely set foot on stone or tarmac. This was no
longer quite possible but still he managed to walk on turf and
under trees as far as the Palace and, having crossed a couple of wide
thoroughfares, was once again in a cool and leafy paradise. No one
recognised him, no one stared. He thought about never having to
set eyes on Zillah again. He thought about the very large sums of
money that would accrue to him through the sale of his houses,
something in the region of three million. Jims wasn't in need of the
money, he had plenty, but it was nice to know it was there and
more of it coming in.
After a while he set foot on the bridge that spans the lake and,
pausing in the middle, looked from Buckingham Palace on his right
to Whitehall, Horse Guards and the Foreign Office on his left. It
hadn't changed much in a hundred and fifty years, apart from the
addition of the London Eye, the great wheel that rolled across the
sky behind Downing Street, silver and shining, all spokes and
capsules like big glass beads. The sunlight glittered on the water,
the weeping trees made deep shadows, swans glided under the

309

bridge and the pelicans gathered on their island. But the idea of
leaving had begun to take hold. He would go abroad. It might be
years before he returned. How long before he saw that view again?
On the move once more, he recalled a story he'd heard about a
chamberlain at some oriental court who, inadvertently breaking
wind in the presence of the potentate, was so stricken with shame
that he fled immediately and wandered the earth for seven years.
Jims, however, felt not in the least ashamed, he simply wanted to
avoid the argument, recriminations, inquests, speculation and need
to defend himself. 'Must', said the first Queen Elizabeth, 'is not a
word to use to princes.' Well, 'why' and 'explain' and 'justify' were
not words to be used to him. He'd go tonight. The car, of course,
must be left for his agent to garage somewhere or sell. He didn't
want to be encumbered by it. The same applied to his clothes. It
occurred to him that if he ever wore a suit again it would be purely
for the pleasure of admiring the look of himself in the mirror. But
really he preferred his appearance to be admired by someone else.
Morocco, he thought, he'd always wanted to go there and for
some reason never had. New Orleans, Santiago, Oslo, Apia - all
places he hadn't yet been to. Politics had enslaved him, kept him to
the grindstone, stolen all his time. It was over now. As he entered
Great College Street from the northern end Big Ben was striking
five. He had never before noticed how sonorous and deep-throated
were its chimes and how forbidding. The porter who had done
their shopping was standing behind the desk.
'Is Mrs Melcombe-Smith back yet?' He thought this a cunning
way of phrasing it.
The porter said she'd just gone out again. To take 'Master
Jordan' to an appointment in Harley Street, he thought. Relieved,
Jims thanked him. Was there anywhere else in the world where a
child of three would still be referred to in these terms except this
tiny spot of England, London, Westminster, the environs of
Parliament? Pity, really. He liked feudal ways and would soon be
leaving even their vestiges behind.
Not quite convinced, he entered the flat cautiously and, finding
it as empty as he'd hoped, threw essentials into an overnight bag

310

along with his passport. The estate agent had promised a valuation
of the place by the following afternoon. His garage, which had his
car keys, would pick up the car at much the same time. They could
get on with it, he wouldn't be here. Quietly, he went down by the
stairs and out into the street by the car park. There he hailed a taxi
and asked the delighted driver to take him to Heathrow. The
first flight going somewhere he'd never been he would take.
As he sat back in the cab, all his worries, his real anguish at hopes
blighted and ambition wrecked, vanished like smoke in the wind.
At first he couldn't define the source of his sudden surge of
happiness and then, all at once, he could. It was called freedom.

Minty had just got out of the bath at six fifteen when the police
came back. The police are nearly as likely to be favourably
impressed by cleanliness, neatness and respectability as anyone else.
In almost everyone's mind, crime is associated with dirt and
squalor, with late rising and late retiring, a routineless existence,
head lice, drugs of all sorts, blocked drains and unidentifiable
smells - and with bizarre dressing, too, punk hairstyles, body
piercing, an excess of leather, boots and fingernails painted
anything but red or pink.
Minty smelt of soap and lavender shampoo. Her fine soft hair,
the colour of dandelion down and fleshly washed, looked windblown.
The bath hadn't cleaned make-up off her face because she
had never worn it. She was dressed in pale-blue cotton trousers and
a pale-blue and white striped T-shirt. The house was no less clean
than its owner and flench windows were open on to a neat if sterile
garden.
The police, who were the same pair that had called next door,
remained uninfluenced by the ramblings of a paranoid old man.
They found Minty transparent and saw that answering the
questions put to her gave her no problems. She seemed conspicuously
innocent and she was, for the only old women in the
neighbourhood she'd been interested in were Auntie and Mrs
Lewis. One of them had apparently disappeared and the other she
had herself got rid of. The name Eileen Dring meant nothing to

311

her, but when they asked if she remembered seeing her on the seat
by the flowerbed just before one on Sunday morning, she nodded
and said yes, because Laf had told her yesterday he and Sonovia
were going to say yes, they'd seen her, and she, Minty, had been
with them. As it happened, she couldn't remember at all well just
what she had seen at that point, she'd been so angry and at the
same time so determined, now that at last she had Mrs Lewis in her
grasp. But if Laf said this Eileen Something had been there, no
doubt she had been.
'And then you said goodnight to your friends, went home and
maybe straight to bed?'
'That's right. I locked up and went to bed.' She wasn't telling
them how she'd gone straight out again and found Mrs Lewis and
dealt with her once and for all.
'Did you look out of your bedroom window at all?'
'I expect I did. I usually do.'
'And did you see anyone in the street?'
'Not in the street, I didn't. Her from Iran opposite, the one who
wears the black thing covering her up, all her lights were still on.
That lot never go to bed.'
'Thank you, Ms Knox. I think that's all. Unless you can think of
anything we ought to know.'
She couldn't, but still she added a word or two about how wicked
murder was and people who committed it ought to be put to death.
She was all for bringing back hanging, she said. And that was all.
There was no point in telling them about Mrs Lewis, they wouldn't
believe her, they'd be like Laf and Sonovia. Apparently they were
satisfied because they soon went away.
After she'd come back that night, the first thing she'd done had
been to wash the knife and her own hands at the same time. Of
course she'd had a bath afterwards, but she'd have done that
whatever time she'd got in. The knife still worried her. It was back
in the knife drawer but she couldn't get it out of her mind, she'd
been thinking about it on and off all day while she was ironing
those shirts. She pictured it contaminating all the other knives in
the drawer. That she'd scrubbed it in detergent and disinfectant,

312

the whole place smelt of TCP she'd used so much - made no
difference. She'd have to get it out of the house. The bins in the
Harrow Road were full again, she'd noticed on her way home, and
the idea of carrying it up Western Avenue or all the way down
Ladbroke Grove made her feel nauseous. She remembered how it
had been last time, having to wear that dirty knife next to her skin.
In fact, the way she thought of it now, she not only didn't want it
near her, she didn't want it anywhere near her own property, let
alone in her clean knife drawer. She wanted it miles away. But
could she bear to carry it for miles?
She'd have to. As Auntie always said, the world was a difficult
place to live in but it was all you'd got. In some ways she was rather
sorry Auntie had gone away. Without Mrs Lewis, Auntie was OK
to have around. She was company. Maybe she'd come back one
day. Minty opened the knife drawer and took out the fateful one.
She'd thought so much about it and it now loomed so large and
important in her consciousness that, like Macbeth, she fancied she
saw 'gouts of blood' on its blade and dried blood in the crevices
where blade joined handle. Ghost juice, that was, not real blood. It
couldn't be so, she'd scrubbed it too thoroughly, but it was as if her
eyes knew nothing of what her hands had done. With a little cry of
disgust she dropped it on the floor. This only made things worse,
for she had to pick it up again and then scrub the floor where for a
few seconds it had lain. Everything in that drawer would have to be
rewashed and the drawer itself washed, of course. There seemed no
end to it and she was already weary.
She wrapped the knife in newspaper, inserted it into a plastic bag
and strapped it against her leg. With no idea of where she was
going, she left the house and walked up the street to the Harrow
Road. It was a fine, sunny evening and a lot of people were about.
But not in the vicinity of the seat by the flowerbed which was
cordoned off with blue and white crime tape. Minty, who had never
seen this sort of thing before, supposed it was something to do with
the council clearing up the flowerbed, getting rid of all that filthy
greasy paper and the fried fish skins and chocolate bar wrappers. It
was time it was done. People lived like pigs.

3t3

An 18 bus came and she got on it. At the Edgware Road crossing
she got off and changed on to a 6 which took her to Marble Arch,
and a number 12. At Westminster, though she had no idea where
she was, she could see the sparkle of sun on the river. She walked
towards it. The traffic was heavy and the crowds huge. Most of the
people were young, a lot younger than herself. They surged, but
sluggishly, along the pavements, taking photographs of the tall
buildings, stopping to stare over the parapet of the bridge. She'd
thought, when first she saw that flash of water, that she could drop
the knife into the river, but now she was near it she saw how
difficult that would be. And it might be against the law. Minty was
always threatened by two disasters when she thought of breaking
the law. One was the loss other job and the other that it would cost
her money. Also, lately, she'd been very conscious of people
thinking there was something odd about her. Looking at her as if
she weren't normal. Laf and Sonovia had looked at her that way
when she'd talked to Mrs Lewis in the Underground. Of course
they couldn't see Mrs Lewis, she'd known that. They hadn't been
able to see Jock. It was a well-known fact that some people couldn't
see ghosts. But that was no reason to treat a person as if she were
mad. If she went on to that bridge and dropped a long, funny-
shaped parcel over and into the water, that was what onlookers
would think, that she was odd, crazy, mad.
She wandered along in a westerly direction where the crowd had
thinned to not more than a couple of people going into the Atrium
and a couple more waiting on the steps of Millbank Tower. It
wouldn't do to get lost. She must stick close to a bus route. At
Lambeth Bridge she turned up the Horseferry Road. Traffic was
dense but the pavements were deserted. Finding herself quite alone
and unwatched beside a litter bin, Minty dropped the knife into it
and walked quickly away towards the bus stop.

That evening, while Minty was roving Westminster, the police in
Kensal Green caught two boys climbing through a window into an
abandoned shop. Once it had sold crystals and flower remedies and
substances used in ayurvedic massage, but custom had never been

3^

good and it had closed for ever more than a year ago. The windows
at the front had been boarded up and so had the door at the back.
This led to a little yard enclosed by a high wall, the rear of the
house in the street behind and a temporary structure of chipboard,
corrugated iron and two doors from a demolished house. Although
the only access to this yard was by way of a narrow alley blocked by
a locked gate, it was full of rubbish, cans and broken bottles,
newspapers and crisp bags. Across the back doorway itself a board
had been nailed diagonally with another pinned across it but a
small window had been left unbearded and had long since been
smashed. The only law-abiding tenant among twelve in the house
behind had seen the boys climb in through this window and had
phoned the police.
They were children, both under ten. When the two officers
found them they were upstairs in a dark little hole of a room where
they had lit a candle and spread a brightly coloured crocheted
shawl on the floor. This served both as something to sit on and
keep them off the rough and splintery wood floor, and as a
tablecloth. Laid out on it, as for a picnic, were a can of Fanta, two
cans of coke, two cheeseburgers, two packs of cigarettes, two apples
and a box of Belgian chocolates. Although still warm outside, it was
cold in here, and the younger of the boys had wrapped a woolly
scarf round his neck. Neither officer recognised it but one of them
remembered that a long red scarf was missing from the holdall
found beside the dead woman. It had been such a feature of Eileen
Dring's habitual winter dressing that a lot of people identified her
by it. They took the boys out of the house and back to their homes.
At first neither would say where he lived. A difficulty was that
the police are not permitted to question children below the age of
sixteen except in the presence of a parent or guardian. Eventually,
after a lot of nudging and kicking from his friend, one of them gave
his name and address and then, rather defiantly, the name and
address of the other. Home for Kieran Goodall was half a housing
association house in College Park and for Dillon Bennett a flat in a
block on a council estate on the banks of the Grand Union Canal.
No one was at home when they reached the street at the

3i5

intersection of Scrubbs Lane with the Harrow Road, but Kieran,
aged nearly nine, had a key. The place was dirty, untidy and
furnished with grocer's boxes, two ancient leather armchairs and a
card table. It smelt of marijuana and the centimetre-long stubs of
two joints, still transfixed by pins, lay in a saucer. The woman
officer stayed with Kieran while the man phoned for assistance and
then drove Dillon home.
Two more officers from Violent Crimes were waiting for him
when he got to Kensal Road. Dillon's mother was in and with her
were her teenage boyfriend, her fourteen-year-old daughter, two
other men in their twenties and a child of perhaps eighteen
months. Everyone but the baby was drinking gin with beer chasers
and the men were playing cards. Ms Bennett was rather the worse
for drink but she agreed to accompany Dillon and the officers into
the bedroom he shared - when he slept there - with his sister, the
baby and a brother, aged thirteen, who was out.
Dillon, who hadn't said a word in the car and had left what
talking there was to Kieran, answered the first questions that were
put to him with 'Don't know' and 'Don't remember'. But when
asked what he and Kieran had done with the knife he shouted
loudly enough to make everyone jump that they'd dropped it down
a drain.
Back in College Park reinforcements had turned up. They and
the woman officer and Kieran waited. They were unable to talk to
him and he said nothing to them. In silence they wondered. Was it
possible that these two children had killed Eileen Dring for a
shawl, a scarf, a can of drink and £140?

It was Lafs birthday and the whole family were gathered in Syringa
Road. Julianna was there, her university term having just ended,
and Corinne had come over with her new boyfriend. Daniel and
Lauren had brought their daughter Sorrel and brought, too, the
welcome news that Lauren was pregnant. The Wilsons' youngest
child, Florian the musician, would look in some time after supper.
A question of some importance to them was whether or not

316

Minty should be invited. For the sake of everyone's working hours,
the party had to be in the evening. Minty would be at home.
'I thought it was supposed to be just family,' Sonovia had said.
'I think of Minty as family.'
'If I didn't know you inside out, Lafcadio Wilson, I'd sometimes
think you fancied Minty.'
Lafwas shocked. A man with a rigid moral code, he was horrified
by even the fringes of adultery. His biggest nightmare (after
untimely death) was that one of his children should be divorced. A
bit premature, as Sonovia always said, since so far only one of them
was married. 'Don't you be disgusting,' he said severely. 'You know
how I hate that kind of talk.'
Sonovia always realised when she'd gone too far. She said rather
huffily, 'It's your birthday. You do as you like. Maybe you'd like to
ask Gertrude Pierce as well.'
Not deigning to reply, Laf went next door with the paper and
invited Minty to his party.
She responded in her usual way, without enthusiasm, without
saying thank you: 'All right.'
'It'll be just the family but we think of you as family, Minty.'
She nodded. It was as if, he thought, she accepted these things as
her right. But she offered him a cup of tea and the kind of biscuit
that brought the adjective "clean" into his mind, it was so pale, thin
and dry. Rather like Minty herself, in fact. It had worried him in
the past that she seemed to see things that weren't there and to talk
to unseen people. Now she was calm, like an ordinary person. And
when she arrived at the party she was the same, saying a cheerful
'hello' to everyone, helping herself, if cautiously, to food from
Sonovia's lavish buffet, and when Florian turned up an hour earlier
than anyone expected, greeting him with 'You are a stranger.
Haven't seen you for a long time.'
The conversation turned to the murder ofEileen Dring. Laf had
known it would and hoped it wouldn't. He refused to take part in it
and thought his children ought to have known better than to
speculate about one rumour that the chief suspects were a married
couple in West Hampstead, and another that two young kids were responsible. He deflected Daniel away from it by reverting to the

3i7

problem he'd first raised with Sonovia weeks before. Ever since
then he'd been thinking of it on and off without coming to any
conclusion. 'Suppose you killed someone without knowing it was
wrong? I mean, suppose you had a sort of delusion that someone
wasn't what they are but was - well, Hitler or Pol Pot, someone like
that, and you killed them. Would that be wrong or wouldn't it?'
'What's brought this on, Dad?'
Why did one's children, better-educated than oneself, always ask
that question if one ever dared say something out of the ordinary?
Why did they always expect their parents to be mindless idiots? 'I
don't know,' he said. 'I've been thinking a lot about it lately.'
' Did he know what he was doing,' asked Corinne, 'and if he did,
did he know it was wrong?'
'Eh?' Laf said.
'It's a sort of test applied to defendants.'
'But is it wrong?'
'These days a psychiatrist would be called to examine him. And if
he hadn't known what he was doing they'd put him away
somewhere in a hospital for the criminally insane. I'd have thought
you knew that, Dad. You're a police officer.'
Exasperated, Laf said, 'I do know it. I'm not asking if he'd have
committed a crime. I know about crime. I'm asking if what he did
would be wrong. What they used to call a sin. Morally wrong.'
His younger daughter, attracted by something more interesting
than the conversation her mother had been having with Minty on
the subject of spray starches, had been listening. He turned to her.
'You're doing philosophy at university, Julianna. You ought to
know the answer. Would it be wrong?'
'That's not philosophy, Dad. That's ethics.'
'OK, but would it be wrong? Would it be a sin?'
Julianna looked as if the word embarrassed her. 'I don't know
about sin. You'd have to know you were doing something against
your moral code for it to be wrong. I mean, an Aztec who sacrificed
a child to please his god would think he was doing right because it
would be in accordance with his moral code, but the Catholic
conquistador would know it was wrong because it was against his.'

318

'So there's no such things as absolute wrong? It just depends on
when and where you live?'
'Well, and on whether or not you're schizophrenic, I should
think,' said Daniel.
It was to everyone's surprise that Minty spoke. 'Murder's wrong,'
she said loudly. 'It's always wrong. It's taking away someone's life.
You can't get round that.'
'If there was ever a gloomy subject for a birthday party', said
Sonovia, 'this crowns it all. Open another bottle of wine, for
goodness' sake, Laf.' She was at the window, where she'd moved
when everyone converged on Laf and his problem in ethics.
'Minty,' she exclaimed. 'Look at this. There's an ambulance next
door. It must be for Mr Kroot.'
Though midsummer, it was quite dark by now and raining, but
they all crowded to the window to see the paramedics come out,
not with a stretcher, but a wheelchair in which the old man sat, a
blanket over his knees and another over his head.
'Heart attack or stroke,' said Sonovia. 'Take your pick. It could
be either.'
Julianna was coming round with freshly filled wineglasses when
the doorbell rang. The paramedic on the doorstep handed Sonovia
a key and said, 'He says, will you feed his cat? There's tins in the
cupboard.'
'What's he got wrong with him?'
'I couldn't say. There'll have to be tests.'

Kieran Goodall's mother Lianne finally came home at midnight.
Though not verbally reproached for her absence from the house,
she obviously believed that the best form of defence was attack.
First she told the police officers that she wasn't Kieran's mother
but his stepmother, so couldn't be held responsible for his
behaviour. His mother had disappeared years ago and having
married Lianne, his father also had gone. He and she, without
claim on one another, had lived here for the past five years. Maybe
she was his guardian, no one had made her so, it had just happened.
Having asked, 'What's he done?' she hadn't waited for an answer

W

but had launched into a tirade against the Social Services who, <
said, had been only too pleased to 'dump' him on her and had
even tried to find his natural parents. Told about the mor
missing from Eileen Dring's holdall and the money found
Kieran and Dillon, she said that crazy old people ought to
stopped from carrying large sums about with them. It was
temptation to young kids. Kieran was asked about the knife. H»
put it in a litter bin, he said, and began shrieking with laught
'If you've had one of my knives, Kieran,' said his stepmother,ii.
knock the living daylights out of you.'
Half a mile away in Kensal Road, Dillon Bennett had withdraw
his remark about putting the knife down a drain. He'd never seel
knife. By now, sitting in one of the battered leather armcha
squeezed up against his sister who had one arm round him, he t<
his questioners Eileen Dring had been dead when he and Kier
came upon her.
'How did you know she was dead, Dillon?'
'She was all over blood. Buckets of it. She had to be dead.'
His head drooped and he fell asleep.

320

It seemed to Michelle in vain that she told Violent Crimes she and
Matthew scarcely knew where the site of the murder was. This part
of London was unknown territory. Like all Londoners, they had
heard of the cemetery, but that was all.
' "Before we go to paradise,"' quoted Matthew, ' "by way of
Kensal Green."'
They gave him uneasy smiles but Michelle thought they didn't
believe her. An alibi? They no more had one for this killing than
for the one in the cinema. As always, they could only alibi each
other and what was the use of that? They'd been in bed, asleep.
When they'd arrived this time, Matthew had just come back
from the studios where he'd been making the first in the next series
of his programme and she'd been in the kitchen chopping mint for
sauce. Matthew had progressed with such leaps and bounds that
though he wouldn't, of course, eat lamb, which mint sauce
naturally accompanied, he was growing quite fond of having it on
potatoes and last week had even eaten a miniature Yorkshire
pudding. Violent Crimes fixed his eyes on the knife in her hand, a
big thing like a butcher's cleaver that could only be used to kill
someone if you chopped their head off. But she had put it down
md covered it and the mint with a sheet of kitchen roll as if she
ivere guilty of the crime they seemed to suspect her of committing.
As usual these days she'd only been able to pick at the meal she'd
prepared. But Matthew, by his standards, had eaten heartily of the
potatoes and mint sauce, several slices of chicken, with caramel
custard to follow. Six months ago he'd have thrown up at the sight
of caramel custard. He talked about the programme, that this first
one concentrated on how taking on a new interest in life, earning
money and meeting new people could have a beneficent effect on
the anorexic and citing himself as an example. Michelle always saw
him with the eyes she'd seen the thin young man she'd fallen in
love with, but even she, once she'd struggled to look at him as a
stranger might, could make herself aware that he was very different
in appearance from what he'd been the year before. This question
of the images a woman might create of others and of herself
interested her. She knew now that she'd always seen herself as fat,
as a child, as a teenager, all through the years when she was normal
sized, and she did so now after all the weight she had lost. Did
Matthew always see himself as emaciated?
She went upstairs and mounted the scales. They registered a
weight loss so dramatic that it would have been frightening in
anyone who didn't know the reason for it. Stepping off, she looked
at herself in the mirror and tried to apply that 'stranger's eyes' test.
Up to a point she succeeded and for a moment or two the woman
of twenty years ago looked back at her, a woman with just one chin,
with a waist and a stomach which, though hardly flat, no longer
made her appear in the seventh month of pregnancy. Once she'd
turned away the fat lady was back. But what did it matter? What
did any of it matter compared with their situation as suspects in
two murder cases?
Matthew was washing the dishes. Or, rather, he had reached the
stage of drying them. The mirrored woman, though not truly
believed in when her reflection was gone, had just the same given
Michelle the kind of self-esteem she hadn't known for a long time.
She physically trembled when she realised what it was: sexual
confidence. She put her arms round Matthew from behind and laid
her cheek against his back. He turned round, smiling. It was years
since she'd seen that particular look on his face. He put his arms
round her and kissed her the way he'd kissed her the second time

322

they'd met, and with a tremor of joy and pain she understood that
after the years of terror he was courting her all over again.

Jims had arranged everything, from his solicitor's letter requesting
Zillah to quit Abbey Gardens Mansions by the end of the week to
the removal van which arrived at eight sharp on Friday morning.
Another letter, this time from Jims himself and couched in the
coolest terms, informed her she could keep her car. He would pay
for Jordan's operation to be carried out privately in a Shaston
nursing home. Sir Ronald Grasmere, for old friendship's sake,
would permit her to move into Willow Cottage before completion
of the purchase. He had already signed the contract.
A man who called himself Jims's agent (he seemed to have so
many) came in and labelled every piece of furniture in the flat
either 'for store' or 'for Long Fredington'. Even Zillah had to
admit Jims had treated her handsomely. By now she was resigned
to the end of those dreams of TV stardom or fashionable life,
Buckingham Palace garden parties, the Royal Enclosure at Ascot
and cruises on a peer's yacht. It was over and the crunch had come.
But this time things would be very different. Her native optimism
reasserted itself. She had the car. She had a vast wardrobe of new
clothes. Willow Cottage was no longer rented from the wicked
squire, it was hers.
Letting herself and the children in, she found the place even
better than she'd been led to believe. The whole house carpeted
and curtained, everything new in the bathroom and kitchen, gold
taps and marble counter tops, built-in cupboards in all the rooms, a
huge television and video. Almost with enthusiasm she arranged
the furniture and made up the beds. She picked up the new phone
and called her mother.
Eugenie surveyed the place without fervour. 'I liked it better the
way it was.'

'Well, I didn't,' said Zillah.
'Want to see Titus.' On painkillers, Jordan was bemused but
he'd stopped crying. 'Want Titus and Rosalba and Daddy.'

323

Zillah's eyes and Eugenie's met, as if they were the same age.
'Perhaps Annie will bring Titus and Rosalba round later.'
Annie didn't come round later but someone else did. He tapped
on the back door at eight o'clock, just after Zillah had put Jordan to
bed. Zillah had no idea who this very tall, rather good-looking man
in his fifties might be and she stared at him, smiling uneasily.

'Ronald Grasmere. I live up at the big house, pal of old Jims.'
Zillah introduced herself by her Christian name alone. She was
vague about what her surname might actually be these days. 'Sir
Ronald, please come in.'
'Call me Ronnie. Everyone does. I've brought you a few
strawberries from the kitchen garden and the last of the asparagus.
It's not what it was a month ago but I think it's still worth eating.'
So this was her bogeyman, the slum landlord, the grinder of the
faces of the poor, the fascist beast, as Jerry used to call people of his
kind in their student days. The strawberries he'd brought were
crimson, glowing, dewy and firm, rather different from what was
on sale in Westminster shops. Eugenie appeared in her dressing
gown.
'There's nothing to drink,' Zillah said. 'You could have a cup of
tea.'
Sir Ronald laughed. 'I think you're wrong there, my dear. Just
take a look inside that cupboard.'
Gin, whisky, vodka, sherry, several bottles of wine. Zillah gasped.
'Don't look at me. Nothing to do with me. That chap of old Jims
saw to it when he came in the other day. Now what do you think of
this little place? Not bad, is it, though I say it myself.'

The begging letter that came through Fiona's letter box, along
with a flyer for a restaurant in West End Lane and her American
Express monthly account, was from a woman she'd never heard of,
someone called Linda Davies. As soon as she realised what it was
she recoiled from it, screwed it up and was on the point of
throwing it away. Then she remembered a resolve she'd made
when first she'd read in the newspaper about Jeffs past. Slowly and

324

with a certain amount of distaste, she retrieved it, smoothed out the
creases in it and read to the end.
Linda was one of the women Jeff had lived with and used.
'Preyed on' was the expression she employed. She wrote that she
had taken out a mortgage on her Muswell Hill flat so that he and
she could start a business together. Soon after she handed him the
money he'd disappeared. Then followed a tale of disaster piled on
disaster: Linda Davies's loss of her job, her struggles to pay her
now huge mortgage, her succumbing to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
She'd read about Fiona in the newspaper, that she'd been
living with Jeff when he died, was well-off and successful. All she
was asking was for a thousand pounds to pay off her debts and
enable her to make a new start.
Fiona felt physically ill when she read it. There seemed no end
to Jeffs perfidy. How many other women had he wronged? Did the
police know? One of them might be guilty of his murder.
Throughout the investigation she had never really thought about
who might have killed Jeff. She had given the police the names of a
few possible enemies but not with much conviction. It didn't
matter to her. If she had considered it at all it was some semi-
underworld character that she'd vaguely settled on. Now she
thought it might have been one of these women.
But when there was a second death, an old woman murdered by
the same means, she revised her view. The perpetrator must be
someone who knew both victims. And who fitted that description
better than a woman from his past? Who better than herself? She
phoned Violent Crimes as soon as she thought of this and before
he had a chance to fasten on to her. But she didn't mention Linda
Davies.

By now the police had dismissed the idea of Kieran Goodall and
Dillon Bennett as Eileen Dring's killers. But they were useful
witnesses. If their fantasies of how they disposed of the knife had
varied and changed from hour to hour, their separate stories of the
time they arrived at the murder site and what they saw when they
got there tallied in every detail. They had arrived on the scene at

3^

one thirty on Sunday morning, a fact both knew because Dillon
was wearing his new watch. This watch was another cause of
speculation, dismissed for the time being on the grounds of there
being more important things to attend to. It was stolen, that went
without saying, though Dillon's stepmother swore she'd given it to
him for his birthday the previous month. Wherever it came from, it
showed exactly one thirty. Both boys had looked at it. Watching
videos had taught them the significance of noting the time at crime
scenes, for they knew this was a crime, though they weren't
frightened. Another interesting - and appalling - factor was that
neither saw anything out of the way in being out in the streets in
the middle of the night. Nocturnal wanderings were what they did.
They slept half the day and mostly missed school.
Kieran and Dillon had lifted Eileen Dring's head, remarking that
it had felt warm to the touch and not stiff, pulled out the bag,
emptied it on to the pavement and helped themselves to its
contents. The money was an unexpected windfall. They took
everything but Eileen's cardigan for which they had no use, and
carried off their haul to the abandoned shop where they had a
sanctuary they called their 'camp'. If they'd seen anyone on the
streets in those small hours they hadn't noticed or weren't telling.
The police were done with them. It was now a case for the Social
Services.
The two police officers sat in Fiona's living room, listening to
the history of her encounters with Eileen Dring through the years.
Too late, Fiona understood what she'd done in volunteering
information that might have remained undiscovered. Gradually it
seemed to dawn on these two officers that here was a prime
suspect, a woman who'd been living with one victim and been
friend and benefactor to the other.
'You mean she sometimes slept in your garden?'
'No, but I offered her the use of my shed. Only I felt awful about
it. I thought I should have said to come inside and sleep in the
house and I said that to her. But she told me she'd got a room of
her own if that was what she wanted. Sleeping indoors didn't suit
her and she wouldn't have my shed either.'

326

'Why did you make these offers, Miss Harrington?'
'I suppose I was sorry for her.'
'Did you ever give her money?'
'She wasn't a beggar.'
'Maybe not but did she ever try to get money from you?'
Were they implying Eileen had blackmailed her? Fiona felt
herself trapped in a snare of her own devising. She remembered
various occasions of quixotry, a handful of change here, a five-
pound note there, and Jeffs indignation.
'Jeff told me not to give her anything, but I did sometimes. I
tried not to do it near here. I'd give her money if I came upon her
somewhere else - near a flower shop, I mean. She told me a lot
about herself. Her children had died in a fire. They got her out but
hadn't been able to save the children. That turned her brain, I
think. She'd been strange ever since.'
She could tell by their faces that these facts were already known
to them. They asked her if she could account for her movements
on Saturday night but she could only say she'd been in bed asleep.
With Jeffs death, she said, staying up late, going out in the
evenings, had come to an end for her. They told her to phone the
bank and say she wouldn't be in and they asked her to accompany
them to the police station. She was too horrified to argue, too
aghast even to ask for an explanation. There she sat on a hard chair
in an interview room for several hours, answering a string of
questions but turning over in her mind how she could prove she'd
been at home on Saturday night.
Then the answer - or an answer - came to her. She hadn't slept
well. She never had since Jeff died and her dependency on sleeping
pills troubled her. Night after night she tried to sleep without
taking one and almost always she succumbed. So it had been on
Saturday. Some dme after midnight, nearly an hour after, she
thought, she had got up and gone to the window, hearing as she
crossed the floor a door closed in the house next door. That was all
you ever heard, the shutting of a door or a light being turned on or
off. And when she drew back a curtain she saw the light from
Michelle's and Matthew's bedroom window go out. It had shed a

327

bright rectangle on to their front lawn, a light that was abruptly
withdrawn, she told Violent Crimes.
And she saw at once that they doubted her. 'We'll see if can get
some other neighbour to corroborate that.' It would let you and
those Jarveys off the hook, she could tell they were thinking. She
clasped her hands together, almost praying. If she could undo the
harm she'd done to Michelle and Matthew she'd be as happy as if
she'd exonerated herself.
Calling next door when they'd let her go brought fresh
unjustified guilt. She felt the police must be watching her. Who,
for instance, was that boy on the other side of the street? He looked
no more than eighteen but he was probably twenty-five. He was
sitting on a garden wall, apparently reading the Standard. Fiona
thought he could be a policeman who had been sent to follow her
home and see what she did. She was looking over her shoulder at
him when Michelle opened the door. He'd think she and the
Jarveys were in some sort of conspiracy together.
When Michelle heard Fiona's story of her day, she couldn't help
feeling a flash of exultation that her neighbour, who had brought
all this trouble on Matthew and her, was now in the same jeopardy
as themselves. And even as she thought this she reproached herself
for her mean-spiritedness. It was such a far cry from the way she'd
felt about Fiona a month ago. Michelle took Fiona's hand and
kissed her cheek to make things better but still they weren't better.
Matthew opened a bottle of wine and Fiona drank hers greedily.
'I'm sure he's a policeman on surveillance.'
Michelle went to the window, noticing as she did so how easy it
was now for her to get up out of soft cushions and how lightly she
walked. 'It's not a policeman,' she said. 'He's the nephew of the
woman who lives there. He hasn't a key and he's waiting for her to
come home.'
'You don't think I'd have harmed Jeff or Eileen, do you?'
Michelle didn't answer. It was Matthew, always brave and always
one to speak his mind, who said, 'You thought ive had.'
Fiona said nothing. She walked to the window, stood by
Michelle and gazed out into the street. Suddenly she wheeled

328

round and said, 'I've had a begging letter. From a woman Jeff - got
money out of.' Michelle laid a hand softly on her shoulder. 'Oh, I
know what he was. I've learnt a lot since he died. She wants a
thousand pounds.'
'You're not going to give it to her, I hope,' said Matthew. 'She's
hardly your responsibility.'
'I am going to. I've just decided, just this minute. I can afford it. I
won't even notice the difference.'

329

Chapter 31

Mill Lane was a very different place in July from what it had been
in December. Or perhaps it was that Zillah was a different woman,
for the weather was cold for the time of year and this was the kind
of day when an anticyclone would as likely create a misty chill as
warm sunshine. She was coming back from the Old Mill House
where she'd left Eugenie and Jordan playing on Titus's new
climbing frame, while she drove to the supermarket. Jordan was
due to go into hospital for his operation in four days' time but these
days only cried when he fell over. Zillah was dressed in the new
natural-coloured linen trouser suit she'd bought in a boutique in
Toneborough and, though she wasn't quite warm enough, she
knew you had to suffer to be beautiful.
Treading carefully, watching her feet on the flat stones of the
ford so as not to wet her narrow-strap sandals, she looked up to see
Ronnie Grasmere approaching down the lane, accompanied by an
enormous dog like an animated black hearthrug. For a moment she
thought the dog was going to leap on her and, more to the point,
on her suit. Ronnie, who was carrying a gun, said a quiet but
commanding, 'Sit,' and the animal immediately did so, its forepaws
straight, head held high. Zillah was impressed and said so.
'No point in having a dog if he's your master.'
Zillah nodded. Never before had she known a voice to be so
plummy and old Etonian. 'And where are you off to, my pretty
maid?'

33°

Resisting an impulse to say she was going a-milking, Zillah told
him.
'I say, d'you have to do your own shopping? What a shame.'
'Most people do, don't they?'
His answer was hearty laughter. 'Shoot, do you?'
She was more than ever aware of the gun sort of folded over his
arm. Broken, did they call it? 'I never have.' Sensing it was the kind
of thing he'd like a woman to say, she added, 'I'd be scared.'
'Not you. I'll teach you.'
'Would you really?'
'Look, I have to take this great beast walkies, so alas I must leave
you. But why don't you have dinner with me one night? Tonight?'
'I couldn't tonight.' She could have but playing hard to get was
never wrong.
'Tomorrow, then?'
'That would be nice.' It would be her twenty-eighth birthday.
Ronnie said he'd pick her up at seven. They'd go to a pleasant
little unpretentious place outside Southerton called Peverel
Grange. Zillah knew its reputation as the best restaurant in South
Wessex. She walked back to Willow Cottage feeling better than
she had for months. Annie would probably babysit for her or she'd
know someone who would.

None of the neighbours in Holmdale Road had been able to
confirm Fiona's story. They were Londoners and took very little
notice of what the people next door or the people opposite did.
Their requirement in the neighbours was that they should keep
from playing music at night, control their children and keep their
dogs in. Only one couple had even known the Jarveys' name. All of
them knew more about Fiona, whose notoriety came from her
having been the murdered man's partner. But where she had been
that Saturday night, home or away, no one could tell. On the
subject of cars they were more vociferous. Violent Crimes and Miss
Demeanour had nothing to do with motor vehicles, except the ones
they drove themselves, and were uninterested in the conduct of
users of the two train stations who clogged West Hampstead

33i

streets with their parked cars. When would Camden Council
introduce residents' parking was the question four out of five
householders asked. Violent Crimes neither knew nor cared. They
were no nearer having a clue where the Jarveys and Fiona
Harrington had been that night than when they started.
Newspapers had begun asking when the Cinema Slayer would
strike again. It would have been easier for them if the two victims
hadn't been such disparate characters, if they'd been, for instance,
young women. Then the stories they carried might have included
warnings that no girl was safe on London's streets. But what had a
young, good-looking, comfortably situated man in common with
an elderly female vagrant, except that neither had any money or
owned property? All they knew was that there was nothing rational
about this killer, no plan of action and apparently no particular
category of victims he or she targeted. Not politicians or
vivisectionists, prostitutes or rich old women, capitalists or anarchists.
What did the killer get out of it? No financial benefit, no
sexual satisfaction, restored security or freedom from menaces.
Newspapers started calling the murderer the 'mindless' or 'aimless'
killer.
The neighbours in Holmdale Road had known Michelle and
Matthew only well enough to say 'Good morning' or 'Hi'
(according to age) and Fiona only as the woman who had lost her
fiance in a very dreadful way. Being questioned as to these people's
movements on the night Eileen Dring was killed changed their
attitude to this no longer harmless couple and this no longer
blameless young woman.
There was no concerted campaign of ostracism and no dramatic
shunning. But the woman whose nephew Fiona had suspected
might be a detective began looking the other way when she passed
her and the man next door to her, who'd always looked up from his
weeding to comment on the weather, now kept his head down. The
red graffiti that appeared on Fiona's gateposts might have nothing
to do with the murders, it might be coincidence, but, if it was, the
aptness of the graffitist spraying Kill, Kill on the stucco wasn't lost
on her.

332

Fiona thought it was the police back again when the doorbell
rang on a Saturday morning at about ten. She felt like telling them
to arrest her and have done with it. A point had been reached when
she was beginning to understand how people made false confessions
of murder so that they would be left alone and have a little
peace. She opened the door to a woman about her own age. It
wasn't Miss Demeanour but someone of similar build, age and
dress. Another police officer?
'Good morning,' the woman said. 'My name is Natalie Reek-
man. I'm a freelance journalist?'
Fiona said, rudely for her, 'What do you want?'
'They've made a real mess of your gateposts, haven't they?'
'They're brainless morons. I don't suppose it's personal.'
'No? May I come in? I don't want to talk about Jeffs murder or
who did what to whom. I was once his girlfriend too.'
'When?' Fiona's mouth had dried. She felt a frisson of terror.
'Oh, long before you. Don't worry. A woman from Kensal
Green came between me and you.'
Fiona had to know. She couldn't resist it. 'Come in.'

Though the feature on the women in Jeff Leach's life had been
shelved, Natalie hadn't been able to put it into the back of her
mind as she had hoped. It kept surfacing. And one morning, when
she woke after a dream in which she was hunting for the missing
Jims Melcombe-Smith in Guatemala, the name of her predecessor
came back to her. There it was, absolutely clear as if her memory
had never mislaid it: Nell Johnson-Fleet and she'd worked for a
charity called Victims of Crime International or VOCI. Of course,
Johnson-Fleets are not exactly thick on the ground, and Natalie
soon found her address and phone number in the phone book.
Perhaps something was telling her the time had come to
concentrate on this story. She made herself recall that last
conversation she'd ever had with Jeff. In Christopher's in Covent
Garden it had been and when she'd asked who came after her he'd
said, 'A funny little thing who lived opposite Kensal Green
Cemetery. I don't think I'll tell you her name. I called her

333

Polo ...' Knowing Jeff as she did and in possession of this limited
information, had she a chance of finding this woman? For a start,
he probably hadn't meant she lived precisely opposite the cemetery
but on the other side of the Harrow Road in one of the streets that
lay behind it. Natalie got out her London atlas and turned to page
56. There was a positive web of little streets in that hinterland.
Instead of making a list of them, she photocopied the adas page. At
a cost of £200 you could buy a CD to put on the Internet which
would give you the names, addresses and a dossier of every single
citizen of the United Kingdom. Or so she'd read in some
cyberspace magazine. But would it help? She thought she still
preferred the old-fashioned electoral register.
Why would he have called the woman Polo? He had that
peculiar addiction to Polo mints, chewed up a tube of them every
couple of days, so this woman must have had something in
common with them. Incongruously, she remembered Jeff's funeral
and the wreath of white rosebuds his father and the person called
Beryl had sent. It had looked just like a mammoth version of a mint
with a hole in it. Mint, she thought, mint, hold on to that, as she
consulted the voters' list for the London Borough of Brent.
A woman called Minton was perhaps what she was looking for.
Could you be called 'Peppermint'? She turned page after page.
Those eligible to vote are listed in the electoral register according
to street, not name. If she was very young or a lunatic or a peer she
wouldn't be listed, but she couldn't be under eighteen, could she?
Jeff had surely never gone for very young girls. If she wasn't a
British citizen she wouldn't be there either. Natalie thought that a
distinct possibility as she ran her finger down the side of the pages.
A lot of immigrants settled in this area, many of them waiting for
naturalisation. Surely, when he'd briefly talked of 'Polo', said
where she lived and that he owed her money, he'd have mentioned
that she was Asian or African or from Eastern Europe.
She'd started a long way back, almost as far as the North
Circular Road, the borough limit, and now she'd come close in her
search to the Harrow Road and the cemetery. Only Lilac Road
remained after Syringa and then she'd have to acknowledge that

334

this line of investigation had failed. Her finger on the left-hand
margin stopped. Here, at number 39, was something. Knox,
Araminta K. No one else in the house, apparently. Just this one
single woman.
'Minta', she probably called herself. That would be a gift to Jeff
who would immediately have thought of his Polos. She could hear
him saying it. 'I shall call you Polo.' Polo, Polo, the rick stick Stolo,
round tail, bobtail, well done, Polo. She lived alone, so very likely
owned her house. Natalie remembered Jeff trying to make her take
out a second mortgage on her flat to start some business he
enthused about. By then she knew him well enough to be quite sure
he'd do no such thing, but spend the money on horses and other
women. Was that how he came to owe this Polo a thousand
pounds? Because he'd got her to mortgage her house?
It was a bit far-fetched, perhaps. Certainly a woman living in that
neighbourhood, in Syringa Road, wouldn't be well-off; she
wouldn't be able to afford to lose such a sum.
'I don't want to hear this,' Fiona said, wishing she'd never asked
this Reckman woman in and determined not to mention Linda
Davies.
'Well, no, it's not very pleasant for me either. I was fond of Jeff
myself. But I knew what he was.'
Like a child being told frightening things, Fiona covered her
ears. Not usually timid or shy, she found this woman overwhelming.
The trouble was that even with her hands over her ears she
could still hear.
'It was a thousand pounds. He told me himself. As I'm sure you
know, he had lunch with me on the day he was killed. I'm certain
this Araminta Knox couldn't afford to lose that amount. Not living
in a little backstreet in what's practically Harlesden. Did he have
money off you?'
'We were going to be married!'
'Well, hardly, my dear. He was married to Zillah Melcombe-
Smith, aka Wading, aka Leach. I'll tell you frankly that while he
was with me I paid all the bills and let him have the use of my car.
And gave him pocket money. He called it loans but I was never

335

under any illusions of that sort. I suppose it was the same thing
with you. When did you think your wedding was going to be, may I
ask?'
'August,' said Fiona, 'and no, you may not. I'd like you to go
now, please.'
Natalie was quite willing to comply. She'd got a great deal: the
furnishings of the house, the carpets and paintings, Fiona's clothes
and her general appearance, as well as a lot of admissions as to her
feelings for Jeff. 'You really ought to be gratified,' she said as a
parting shot. 'He must have left this Araminta for you, you know.'

'For my money,' said Fiona bitterly and then wished she hadn't.
Once Natalie had gone, she began to cry. Ever since Jeffs death
her illusions, as that woman called them, had gradually been
stripped away. She would soon be left with nothing but her bare
love, bruised and scarred as it was. After a while she dried her eyes,
washed her face and looked for Araminta Knox in the phone book.
There she or someone called Knox was, at 39 Syringa Road,
NWio. Why are we such inquisitive beings that even in great
despair and sorrow curiosity impels us to seek answers that probe
into old wounds?
She went next door, passing, of course, the offending gateposts
on her way out. The informality of using the back door was gone,
she was sure, for ever and she was back to ringing the bell. They
still kissed, she and Michelle, lips not quite touching cheeks. 'I
really came to ask you both to come in and have a drink with me.
There's something I have to tell you. Do come.'
They hadn't done so for a long time. Not since, like a crass fool,
she'd said that stupid thing to the police about their disliking Jeff.
Michelle hesitated. Perhaps there was something in Fiona's face, a look of beseeching, of tears hardly dried, that made her say, 'All
right. Just for half an hour.'
The first thing Michelle noticed when she came into Fiona's
living room was that there was something different about the
mantelpiece. An expensive-looking alabaster and silver um had
joined the clock and the candlesticks. She said nothing. Fiona had

336

put champagne on ice. 'Is there something to celebrate?' Michelle
asked.
'Nothing. When you're feeling really down, you put out more
flags, don't you?'
Matthew extracted the cork skilfully, without spilling a drop.
Raising her glass, Fiona said, 'I want to ask your advice.' She told
them what she knew of Araminta Knox.
'Have you told the police about her? Have you told them about
the one who wrote you the begging letter?'
Fiona looked at Matthew in surprise. 'Why would I do that?'
'It's another suspect, isn't it? Someone else for them to persecute
instead of us.'
'I did what I told you I'd do about Linda Davies. I sent her the
money. And it made me feel better, a bit better.'
Looking down at the glass in her hand, watching the bubbles
rise, Michelle said, trying to keep her tone equable, 'You sent her a
thousand pounds? You sent her a cheque?'
'I thought she might not have a bank account so I sent notes,
fifty-pound notes, packed into a padded bag. And I felt I was well,
righting the wrongs Jeff did. I'd begun to do that. I know
what he was now, you see. I know he preyed on women' - she used
Linda Davies's expression, her voice rising - 'and had no
compunction about it. Rich women and poor women, it didn't
much matter to him so long as they kept him and put a roof of their
own over his head. His death was a lucky escape for me, wasn't
it?'
'Oh, Fiona, I'm so sorry...'
'Perhaps that was my motive for murdering him. What do you
think? A means of escape I hadn't the courage to take any other
way. The trouble is I still love him, just as much as I did when I
thought he was honest and decent.'
After they had gone Fiona sat for a long while staring at the urn
on the mantelpiece. She had thought of scattering Jeffs ashes
somewhere nearby, perhaps on Fortune Green, but these latest
revelations about his life had changed her mind. The urn had cost
her a small fortune, which was quite funny, really, if you were in

337

the mood to be amused. She took it off the mantlepiece and,
crawling on all fours, put it at the back of the dark cupboard under
the stairs.

338

Chapter 32

With Jock gone and his mother gone, Minty grew more confident.
Coming into the house gradually ceased to be an ordeal. When she
went upstairs to bed or to have her bath, she no longer feared
seeing Auntie and Airs Lewis in a bedroom doorway. Auntie's
absence had by now been of long duration. She hadn't seen her
since June - or was it May?
Like a member of a tribe placating the god, she faithfully put
flowers on Auntie's grave, though since confusing the original one
with another, she had become much freer about where her
offerings went. Any grave with an angel playing a musical
instrument would do. The dead were everywhere, could go
anywhere and, now Auntie had left the house, Minty had no doubt
she ranged the cemetery from resting place to resting place. She
was always careful, though, to choose a woman's. Auntie, who had
so much disliked marriage, would never lay herself down in the
neighbourhood of a man's bones.
While she kept up the practice of bringing flowers every week,
ranunculus and zinnias, carnations and by now chrysanthemums,
she knew Auntie would be pacified. It was with a little shiver that
Minty sometimes remembered how indignant she'd been at past
failures in this particular regard. Never again. A life free of ghosts
would be a life of peace.
The weather had become hot and sultry. Sometimes a thick mist
of fumes and emissions hung over the Harrow Road. Everything

339

seemed dirtier and smellier than in winter and taking two baths a
day was a regular thing for Minty. Fourteen months had passed
since first she met Jock and nine since his death. Having barely
thought of him for a long time, she was aware that he had reentered
her mind so that she wondered how it would have been if
he'd lived. Would she have been happy? Would she have got
pregnant like Josephine? It gave her something of a shock when she
realised she'd have been Mrs Lewis too. All the baths she took
reminded her how he'd taken her savings and when he died, let his
mother inherit them. What had become of that money now? She
was as far off getting a shower installed as ever and now she began
to wish she'd used the money for that purpose so that there had
been nothing to give Jock.
Then, one warm morning that promised another hot day, when
she'd had her bath and was dressing to go to work, she heard his
voice. She heard him singing at her out of her bedroom wall. Not
'Walk On By' this time but 'Tea for Two'.
'Tea for two and two for tea ...'
She was too frightened to make a sound. Then, as the phrase was
repeated, followed by the next line, and he broke off to laugh, she
managed to whisper, 'Go away, go away.'
He seemed to take notice of what she said, for instead of
addressing her again, he began talking to other, equally invisible,
people: a group of nameless friends, with voices she'd never heard
before and which mingled, indistinguishable from each other and
uttering a rattle of meaningless words. Then Jock intervened,
offering them a mint or making one of his strange jokes, the like of
which Minty had never heard elsewhere. If she were to see him she
thought it would be the death of her but she didn't see him. She
saw none of them and what made her more terrified than she'd ever
been was a sudden easily identifiable voice replying to him. His
mother's.
Like her son, she'd been banished only for a while. Minty
shivered, touching wood, doing more than that, clutching it,
holding hard on to the edge of a table, the frame of a door. She
ought to have known you can't get rid of ghosts so easily, you can't

340

stab them and kill them like those gangs killed real people. It
wasn't the way. Were they with her for life, these men and women
she didn't know? Jock's family? That ex-wife of his, his relatives?
The post coming, the rattle of the letter box, the thump of
something falling on the doormat and the crash of the lid closing
again, distracted her. A welcome interruption that sent her
downstairs, still combing her wet hair. She never got much post.
What came was mostly services bills and advertisements from
estate agents wanting to sell her houses in St John's Wood. Like
Auntie, when an unfamiliar envelope arrived she spent a long time
scrutinising it, studying the postmark, deciphering the handwriting
or frowning over the printing, before putting her thumb under the
flap and opening it. Here was the usual junk mail and with it a
mysterious package. It was a thick, padded brown envelope, the like
of which she'd never received before, and her name and address
were written on a white label. It had cost more to send than
ordinary first-class mail. Carefully, she slit the flap and opened it.
Inside was money. Twenty fifty-pound notes, held together with
an elastic band. No letter, no card, nothing else. But she knew who
it was from: Mrs Lewis. She was dead but there must be someone
still on earth she could get to do this for her, someone else she'd
haunted and spoken to. Maybe Jock had had a brother or sister;
he'd never said he hadn't. Minty decided that was who it was, a
brother who'd inherited the money Mrs Lewis left. She'd not
ignored the things Minty had said about giving back her money,
they'd gone home and when she appeared to her son she'd asked
him what she ought to do.
Maybe that's what they'd been talking about, that crowd whose
anonymous voices had jabbered and whispered in the bedroom.
Give her back the money, Mother, they'd been saying, and though
she'd argued and perhaps Jock had argued too, the brother and his
wife had told her it was only right to return the money. It was the
only explanation. Not all Jock owed, though, only a thousand.
Minty could hear - in her mind's ear, not ghosts talking - that
mean old Mrs Lewis insisting on the smaller sum and winning her
son over.
*

34i

Mr Kroot's old cat was asleep in one of Sonovia's armchairs. As
usual, because it never sat sphynx-like as most cats do, but lay
stretched out and slack, it looked dead. You had to examine it
closely to discern the minuscule rise and fall of its thin side.
'It's moved in, my deah.' Sonovia contemplated the cat with
detachment. 'It turned up on the doorstep and that was that. I must
say, it's easier giving it its food in here than going round to that
dirty place. Ooh, the smell in that kitchen, you wouldn't believe it.
What Gertrude Pierce did with herself all the time she was here I
never will know. Laf went in to see the old man, you know. Went
into the hospital, I mean. I said not to. What have they ever done
for us, I said. But he would do it.'
'Let bygones be bygones,' said Laf, the peacemaker. 'I mean, I
don't know for a fact if he said that about going back to the jungle.
It was repeated third-hand to me. It might have got sort of
distorted on the way. He's in a bad way, Minty. I took him a half- bottle of Scotch, he's not supposed to have it in there, but you
should have seen him. His whole face lit up. It's a terrible thing to
be old and alone.'
'I'm alone.' As she spoke Minty heard the voices returning, at
first like the murmur of a crowd a long way off, then jostling each
other and interrupting and sometimes laughing so that she couldn't
make out a single word. As if Laf and Sonovia weren't there or
didn't matter, she said, 'Well, I suppose I've always got people with
me. Wish I didn't. You can have too much of that.'
The Wilsons exchanged glances and Laf went to get the drinks.
Sonovia and Minty went into the garden and sat down in the patio
chairs, and Minty admired her neighbours' hanging baskets. The
garden was all dahlias and hollyhocks now, the lawn yellowing
from the drought. Not a breath of wind stirred the boughs of the
cherry tree. The sky was colourless, a sheet of unbroken whitish
cloud in which the sun showed like a pool of dull yellow. Laf came
out with a tray on which were tall glasses filled with amber liquid
surfaced by maraschino cherries and chunks of apple and cucumber.
Pimms was his summer craze. He offered the drinks proudly
and handed round a dish of macadamia nuts.

342

'Not cold, are you, my deah?' Sonovia said to Minty who had
shivered. She'd just heard Jock's voice say, 'I can tell you're an old- fashioned girl, Polo. There aren't many around like you.'
'Something walked on my grave.' Minty was afraid to say it. She
made herself, as if it were a way of forcing the ghost voice to go
away. 'Or maybe on Auntie's, over in the cemetery.' She saw
Sonovia and Laf exchange glances again but she pretended she
hadn't. It couldn't have been Jock's voice; she'd banished him and
he'd gone. She'd imagined it or the drink had brought it on. She
shivered again and remembered what she'd come for in the first
place. 'You had the builders in last spring, doing something in the
kitchen.'
'That's right, Minty.' Laf was always relieved when she said
normal, ordinary things, when she talked your language. He smiled
encouragingly. 'It was when we had the new units put in.'

'Will you do me a favour?'
'That depends on what it is,' said Sonovia, but Laf said, 'Of
course we will. That goes without saying.'
'Well, then, will you tell them to come next door and look at my
bathroom and work out what putting a shower in would cost?'
'Nothing easier. And when he comes Sonny will let him in and
keep an eye on him while he's there.'

When she'd first seen him - that is, seen his ghost - he hadn't
spoken. He'd been silent and somehow menacing, so that he'd
frightened her the way he never had done when he was alive. She
remembered very clearly how she'd come home from work and
seen him sitting in that chair with his back to her, his hair dark-
brown, his neck brown and his leather jacket black. His feet had
shuffled back as if he'd meant to get up and that was when she'd
shut her eyes because she was afraid to see his face. When she
opened them again the ghost was gone but she knew he'd been
there because when she felt the seat of the chair it was warm. She
thought he might follow her upstairs but he hadn't, he hadn't been
upstairs, not that rime. Later on she saw him in that room again

343

and in the hall and in her bedroom. She saw him in the shop. He'd
never spoken.
Most people would say it was worse to see a ghost than to hear
one. She wasn't so sure. Auntie and Mrs Lewis had chattered away
and been very clearly visible. When Jock spoke to her it was against
a background of voices muttering and whispering but only his
words were understandable. The rest of it was like a twittering in a
foreign language, it was like those Iranian people talked when they
came out of the house opposite in a crowd. She'd rid herself of
Jock's ghost and his mother's ghost by stabbing them with those
long knives. But you couldn't be free of sounds that way. You'd
somehow have to block your ears.
Like the ghosts she could see, the ghosts she could hear weren't
there all the dme. At night there was peace. Then she had silence
in which to think. Stabbing the ghosts had maybe only got rid of
the sight of them but she now knew it wasn't permanent. It worked
for a while but only a while, and when the ghosts came back they
let their voices come first to warn her that soon she'd see them.
Putting flowers on Auntie's grave had been even more effective
than the stabbings, for she'd never seen or heard Auntie again. Jock
must have a grave somewhere, his mother must have a grave. If she
could find out where those graves were she could put flowers on
them as well.
When the voices had been with her for a week and Jock had said
all the things to her that he used to say - Adam and Eve and Pinch
Me, you're an old-fashioned girl, Polo, it's only April Fools' Day
till twelve and after that it's Tailpike Day, only two thousand,
Minty, it's our future that's at stake - she went into the cemetery by
her usual gate, stopping on the way to buy flowers from the man
with the stall. It was a Saturday but there was hardly anyone about.
This time she'd brought a bottle of water, cold from the kitchen
tap, to refill the vase. She bought pale-yellow chrysanthemums, the
kind that have short petals in their centres and long thin ones on
their rims, and white gypsophila like snowflakes and alstro-
somethings that she couldn't pronounce.
Maisie Julia Chepstow, beloved wife of John Chepstovj, who departed

344

this life on December ifth, i8p^, aged ^. Asleep in the arms of
Jesus. Auntie's grandmother. Minty had told herself this so often
that now she believed it. She pulled out the dead flowers and
poured away the smelly green water that had petals and a dead snail
floating in it. There was enough fresh water to rinse the vase out
before filling it. When the yellow and white and peach-coloured
flowers were arranged, she knelt down on Maisie Chepstow's grave
and did something she hadn't done for a long time. She prayed to
Auntie to take away Jock's voice and the voices of the crowd that
accompanied him wherever he was.
A bath when she got home. Laf didn't come in with the paper
until quite late in the afternoon. She hadn't heard the voices since
she offered up that prayer but she was still going to ask. 'How can
you find out where someone's grave is?'
'You'd have to know where they died. Maybe you could get the
death certificate. People don't have graves much these days, Minty.
They get cremated so they'd be ashes. Why do you want to know?'
That business about the death certificate confused her. She knew
she'd never be able to do those things, go to the right place, talk to
the right people. Perhaps Laf would do it for her. 'It's Jock's grave I
want to find.' She wasn't going to mention his mother. Not yet,
anyway.
'Oh, right.' Laf was embarrassed.
'D'you think you could?'
'I'll see,' he said. 'It might not be possible.' He was moved by
pity for her. 'Minty, wouldn't it be a good idea to - well - put the
past behind you? Try and forget him? You're young, you've got
your whole future before you. Can't you forget the past?'
She shook her head. 'I can't,' she said and, in a burst of frankness,
'I keep hearing his voice talking to me.'
Saying he'd see what he could do, Laf went home. Daniel was
there. He'd been visiting a bed-bound patient in First Avenue and
had called in for tea.
'I suppose it's time someone told her the truth,' Sonovia said.
'I don't think so, Mum. I wouldn't.'
'She could go right over the edge.' Laf cut himself a slice of a

345

very sticky banoffee pie. 'I mean, what's best? To believe your
boyfriend loved you and met his death in a train crash? Or that he
deceived you rotten and is still alive and kicking somewhere, living
off some other woman?'
'You checked up, did you, Dad?'
'I was always more or less certain. That letter she had was an
obvious con. Then I checked when the inquiry into the crash was
on back in May. Thirty-one people died. They thought at first it
was hundreds but it was only thirty-one. I say "only", that was bad
enough, my goodness.'
'And there was no Jock Lewis among them?'
'You should think of your heart before you eat that stuff,
Lafcadio Wilson.'
'Who put it on the table, I'd like to know?'
'It was meant for me, Dad. No Jock Lewis?'
'No Jock or John Lewis. And what's more, no man not
accounted for. Every man on that list had a name and an address
and age and dependants or whatever, and not one of them could
have fitted him. And now she wants me to find his grave.'
'Just say you can't, Laf. Pass it off. She'll soon forget about it.'
'What does she want his grave for?'
'What d'you think, Clan? To put flowers on like she does on her
auntie's faithfully every week.'

Mrs Lewis had only sent her half what she owed her. Or Jock's
brother had. If she'd had his address she'd have written to him and
asked for the rest. Still, she'd got enough for what she really
wanted, the only thing she wanted when you came to think of it.
The man hadn't come yet but Laf said she'd easily have it done for
a thousand pounds and he'd picked up some brochures for her from
a builder's merchant in Ladbroke Grove. Looking at the pictures,
she could see she'd never afford a separate shower cabinet, the kind
you walked into. Laf had been wrong there. Still, having one put in
over the bath and a glass wall with hinges built to keep the water
off the floor, that would be )'ust as good. Better, really, because a
cabinet meant one more thing to clean every day. So long as there

346

wasn't a messy shower curtain that would get splashes of dried soap
all over it.
The voices crowded in on her while she was studying the one
she'd have installed. Jock and Mrs Lewis and another that must be
Jock's dad. It couldn't be his brother. His brother was still alive. He
must have been to send her the money. Maybe the ex-wife was
dead too and the brother's wife. Were they all there because she'd
never visited Jock's grave?
They never answered but she asked just the same. 'Where's he
buried? Where have they put Jock?'
Silence. It wasn't a reply, more a piece of knowledge that
suddenly appeared inside her head. No one said it, for the voices
had once more gone away. The thought, the fact, came in and she
knew absolutely that it was true. He's in the one by Chelsea
football ground. As if she hadn't understood, it came again. The
one by Chelsea football ground.
Edna had lived down there. When she was a little girl and Edna
was still alive, had another ten years to live, Auntie used to take her
over there to Edna's for tea. She had a little grey house, one of a
long, flat-fronted row, with a front door opening on to the
pavement. Minty went over there in the evening after work and she
took a knife with her. One of the smaller ones from the drawer.
She went by bus, or rather a series of buses, ending up on the n,
which took her to Fulham Broadway.
It was years since she'd been there, twenty-five years. Even then,
the football hooligans used to break the place up if their team got
beaten by Chelsea. Auntie had pointed out smashed shop fronts to
her and turned the demonstration into a lesson on the wickedness
of destroying property. No smashed windows now, none of the old
shops. The place had been smartened up. She went to look at
Edna's house. It was as bright and fresh now as the Wilsons', with a
red front door and carriage lamps, frilly curtains inside the
windows and window boxes full of flowers outside them. All the
houses were like that, only the flowers were of different kinds and
the doors blue or yellow. Edna always wore a crossover overall and
slippers, and a turban like she had on the production line during

347

the war. Most of the time Uncle Wilfred was in his darkroom
developing his photographs. He wanted Minty to go in there with
him but Auntie wouldn't let her, not unless the door was left open,
which it obviously couldn't be in a darkroom. She didn't know why
it was forbidden, hadn't then and didn't now, though she could still
remember the meaningful glances Auntie and Edna exchanged
when Uncle Wilfred shrugged and turned away.
She entered the cemetery from the Old Brompton Road end.
Although she had often gazed at it from Edna's windows - there
was little else to do - she'd never been in before. And she found it
frightening in a way Kensal Green never was. This had something
to do with the eight-sided chapel and curving colonnades you had
to pass by or between, something perhaps with the gloom of the
evening, a typical London summer evening of heavy cloud and
excluded sun and windless thick air, though it was still a long way
off twilight. There was a tomb with a lion on it like the lions in
Trafalgar Square and another piled with black cannonballs. As she
walked she was sure she would meet her ghosts, or some of them,
or one. Jock himself frightened her more than the others. With old
women, even with their shades, she could cope. But she sensed in
Jock a violence she had never known from him in life. It was as if,
in death, he was slowly realising his full potential of savagery and
malice.
As she looked to the right and left of her for his grave, for a new
grave, perhaps only a mound with as yet no memorial stone, she
tried to comfort herself with the thought of the new shower that
was coming, that Jock's brother or sister-in-law had been considerate
enough to pay for. But the distraction barely worked. She knew
by this time that there were no recent burials in this dark, forlorn
cemetery, which had an atmosphere about it of having been
forgotten and abandoned. For the first time she noticed there were
no people about, no visitors apart from herself. This made it seem
as if the place were not really there at all but belonged in another
world, empty of anything, men and women, animals, even ghosts.
And somehow this was more frightening than the ghosts themselves,
for she might be trapped in it, caught up in a timeless

348

deserted waste for ever. She looked at the ground, at blades of
grass, at the grey, still air, and saw not even a bird, not even an
insect. Then she started to run, away from the colonnades, the
immovable, eternal grey stone pillars, down, down, down to the
gate and the street and houses and people...

349

Chapter 33

In the course of her work Natalie had often thought of how she
would handle the press should a journalist contact her. The advice
she gave herself was much the same as that offered by a lawyer to
his or her client in confrontations with the police. Say nothing, or,
if you must speak, use monosyllables. Like most reporters and most
policemen, she seldom encountered members of the public who
took this advice. Nell Johnson-Fleet was the exception.
Opening the door of her Kentish Town flat, she looked straight
into Natalie's face but said nothing. Natalie, who was looking
straight into hers, said who she was and might she have a word.
'No,' said Nell Johnson-Fleet
Like all Jeffs women - Zillah had been the odd one out - she
was a tallish, thin blonde and dressed as he liked them to be, in
trousers and a sweater. Natalie well remembered his preferences. 'I
was one of his girlfriends too. Victims, if you like. It might be a
help to talk about it, don't you think?'
'No.'
'Perhaps you prefer to put it all behind you? Try to do the
impossible and forget it ever happened.'
Gently, Nell Johnson-Fleet closed the door. Natalie wasn't one
to give up as easily as that. She rang the bell again and, getting no
answer, went round the corner of the street where she sat down on
a wall and dialled the woman's number on her mobile. The call was
answered with a curt, 'Yes?'

350

This, at least, was different. 'It's Natalie Reckman, Nell. I hope
you're going to let me in for just five minutes.'
'No,' and the phone went down.
You had to admire it, Natalie thought, returning to her car just
as the traffic warden was approaching. It was a wonderful
technique. A good thing most of the public weren't like that. On
the other hand people went through moods, they had good days
and bad days, and this might be a bad one. Nell Johnson-Fleet
might have had a row with her boyfriend or seen him with another
woman; the way she happened to be this evening was no guide to
her normal behaviour. She'd try again tomorrow, give her a chance
to regret passing up her opportunity. Now for Kensal Green.

The police had left them alone for nearly two weeks. They had
threatened to come back but they never had. Michelle had begun
eating again, not much and sensible food, but she no longer felt as
if every mouthful would choke her. Her weight had gone down to
what it had been ten years ago. And while she was quite content
with a salad and single slice of bread for lunch, Matthew was
regularly eating a two-egg omelette. He'd begun to drive the car
again, uncertainly at first, like someone who has just passed his test,
but with increasing confidence. When they hadn't seen or heard
from the police for long enough to feel safe, they did something
they hadn't done since they were first married. They went away
together for the weekend.
For the first time since she'd known her, Michelle fancied she
saw envy of her in Fiona's eyes. This didn't please her, it was the
last thing she wanted to excite in anyone, but she noted it because it
was so unusual.
Fiona envied her for having a husband who loved her and wanted
to be alone with her in an hotel in the countryside. 'I hope you'll
have a lovely time,' she said. 'You deserve it.'
They did. But the lovely time was very different from what Fiona
(and anyone else who saw them and thought about it) envisaged,
imagining gentle walks, quiet drinks in little pubs, a visit to a
beauty spot and perhaps some candlelit dining. It was much more

35i

like a honeymoon. In Matthew's arms, having a late lie-in, Michelle
went back in time to their early days and felt no older than she had
seventeen years before in the first bliss of their passion.

The Kentish Town block of flats had been grim in Natalie's
estimation, but was nothing on Syringa Road, Kensal Green. That,
she decided, parking her car without difficulty in this non-
restricted zone, must be the seat on which Eileen Dring had been
killed. Or a replacement seat, surely. It looked new. The flowerbed
behind it had been dug up and now showed a healthy growth of
young weeds. Something of a coincidence, she thought, that one of
the murder victims had died within a stone's throw of where the
other victim's girlfriend - or one of them - lived.
Two rows of squat Victorian houses, with mostly neglected and
very small front gardens, some of them packed full of bicycles,
pushchairs, the occasional motorbike, rolls of wire netting and
pieces of broken furniture. Disproportionately large bay windows
jutted out downstairs, dusty plaques under their eaves were
engraved with names such as Theobald Villa and Salisbury
Terrace. One house only had been smartened up and to an extent
which offended Natalie's taste. This was number 37, whose front
had been refaced with blocks of (probably fake) grey granite, whose
paintwork was white and front door a deep rose pink. Multicoloured
dahlias and dark-blue Michaelmas daisies filled the
garden. Next door, Natalie's goal, was neat but dowdy, the garden
paved over, the paintwork worn though clean. Jeff must have been
on his uppers to come looking for succour down here, she thought.
And then she recalled the leaps-and-bounds increases in London
house prices, that this place was not so very far from fashionable
Netting Hill and a tube stop on the Bakerloo Line was just a little
way down the Harrow Road. If he could have got his hands on a
house here ...
She rang the bell. A woman came to the door and stared at her.
It wasn't a stare like Nell Johnson-Fleet's and she wasn't at all like
Nell Johnson-Fleet, not Jeffs type except insofar as she was fair
and thin. A little wispy woman, very white-skinned with pale, no352

colour eyes, thin lips, hair like a baby's. But what startled Natalie,
what almost frightened her, was that she looked mad. Natalie would
never have used this politically incorrect word except to herself, in
her own thoughts. No other really described Araminta Knox's wide
stare, her large pupils, the tiny smile that came and went.
'Ms Knox?'
A nod and the smile flickering.
'I'm called Natalie Reckman and I'm a freelance journalist. I
wonder if I might talk to you about Jeff Leach.'
'Who?'
She plainly didn't know what Natalie meant. There had been not
the faintest flicker of alarm or memory or pain or anger in those
glassy eyes. And there would have been, for this was the sort of
woman unable to conceal what she felt, unaware, showing every
nuance of emotion in her expression. She'd either come to the
wrong place, got the wrong woman, or Jeff had used one of his not
very subtle aliases. 'Jerry perhaps? Jed? Jake?'
'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'You didn't have a boyfriend who was murdered in a cinema?'
Natalie never minded what she said to anyone. She couldn't, not in
her job. 'Jeff Leach or Leigh?'
'My fiance died in the Paddington train crash,' said Minty and
shut the door much more sharply than Nell Johnson-Fleet had.
It was possible she was on the wrong track. Natalie remembered
that she'd assumed this was the right woman only because Jeff had
said she lived near Kensal Green Cemetery and had called her
Polo. Polo was a mint and the one person in the whole area with
the right kind of name was Araminta Knox. But he might have
called her Polo for any number of other reasons. Because she liked
those mints he ate, for instance, or even played polo. Just the same,
she rang the bell of the gaudy house with the pink front door.
The occupant was a big, handsome woman in a tight black skirt
and scarlet shirt, technically black but in fact almond-coloured with
a Roman nose and full lips. Natalie said who she was and what she
wanted.
'Would you mind telling me your name?'

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'Sonovia Wilson. You can call me Mrs Wilson.'
'Have you ever heard of a Jeffrey or Jeff or Jerry Leach or
Leigh?'
'No. Who is he?'
'Well, I thought he'd been your neighbour's boyfriend.'
'She's only had one and he was called Jock Lewis. Or so he said.
He said, or someone did, that he died in that train crash, but he
never did and I know that for a fact. What d'you want him for?'
'I don't want him, Airs Wilson. It wouldn't be much use if I did,
seeing he's most likely the Jeffrey Leach who was murdered in the
Marble Arch Odeon. J. L., you see, it was always J-something and
L-something with him. May I come in?'
'You'd better talk to my husband. He's in the force.'

In a quandary, Laf didn't know what to do next. What to do at all,
come to that. He and Sonovia watched Natalie Reckman cross the
road and get into her car.
'It's only what she thinks,' Laf said. 'We've known since the
beginning Jock Lewis wasn't killed in that train crash. The only
evidence she's got for thinking Minty's friend was this Jeffrey
Leach is that they've got the same initials.'
'Well, not really, Laf. She seems to know Leach had a girlfriend
who lived round here that he called Polo.'
'Jock Lewis never called Minty Polo, so far as I know.'
'We could ask her,' said Sonovia. 'I mean, I could. I could say
something casual, like "Didn't you tell me Jock was fond of Polo
mints?" or get the conversation on to pet names and ask if he had
one for her. And then, if she came out with it, I'd tell her. I mean,
she ought to know, Laf, you've got to admit it.'
Laf turned away from the window, sat down in an armchair and
motioned Sonovia to another, with the masterful gesture and
wearing the steady frown he used only on the very rare occasions
when he thought his wife had worn the trousers long enough. 'No,
I've not got to admit it, Sonovia.' He called her by her full name
only in his severer moments. 'You're not to say a word to Minty. Is
that understood? This is one of those times when we've got to heed

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Daniel. You remember what he said? It was the last time you asked
if she should be told about Jock. "I wouldn't," he said. "I wouldn't."
You told me yourself what he said. Now when our son became a
doctor of medicine I made up my mind I'd take his word on
medical matters like I take Holy Writ. And you've got to do the
same, right?'
Meekly, Sonovia said, 'Right, Laf.'

Dressing to go out on her fifth date with Ronnie Grasmere, Zillah
thought it was the babysitter when the doorbell rang. She zipped
up her new black dress - tight but not too tight, low-cut, flattering
- slipped her feet into her Jimmy Choo shoes and ran downstairs.
Two men were on the doorstep. Even if one of them hadn't been in
uniform she'd have known they were police officers - she could
detect them from a distance now. Immediately, with a lurch in her
lycra-controlled stomach, she concluded they were here to arrest
her for bigamy.
'Mrs Melcombe-Smith?'
One thing that phoney marriage had done for her: everyone
assumed it had been genuine. 'What is it?'
'South Wessex Police. May we come in?'
They'd found Jerry's car. The boneshaker. The twenty-year-old
Ford Anglia. That was all it was about, his old banger. In Harold
Hill.
'Where?' said Zillah.
'It's a place in Essex near Romford. The car was parked by the
side of a road in a residential area where there are no parking
restrictions. A resident called us to complain about it. He said it
was an eyesore.'
Zillah laughed. 'What am I supposed to do about it?'
'Well, Mrs Melcombe-Smith, we thought you might know how
it came to be put there.'
'I don't know but if you want my opinion, Jerry -1 mean, Jeffrey
- dumped it there because at last he'd found a woman with a nice
car who'd let him have unlimited use of it. For the first time in his
life probably.'

355

They exchanged glances. 'He didn't have any particular associations
with Harold Hill?'
Eugenie had come into the room. 'Who's Harold Hill,
Mummy?'
'It's a place, not a person.' Zillah said to the policeman who'd
asked, 'He never mentioned it to me. I should think he just used it
as a rubbish dump. He was like that.'
'Who was like that?' Eugenie asked after they'd gone and the
babysitter had come. 'Who used a place as a rubbish dump?'
'Just a man,' said Zillah.
Neither child had once referred to their father after Eugenie first
asked and got no reply. Accomplished at putting off unpleasant
things until tomorrow or next week, Zillah sometimes wondered if
she would ever need to tell them any more. Or did Eugenie already
know ftom the newspapers, from gossip, from words overheard? If
she did, had she told Jordan? Zillah certainly wasn't going to say
anything in front of the babysitter, a woman who hadn't yet got
above herself as Mrs Peacock had. This time, when the doorbell
rang, it was Ronnie Grasmere.
'I don't like him very much,' said Eugenie as Zillah got up to let
him in. 'You're not going to marry him as well, are you?'

Minty didn't think much about the woman who'd called once she
was gone. Maybe she'd been from the police and knew Minty went
to the cinema a lot. She hadn't noticed that the woman had gone
next door and she went to call on Laf and Sonovia herself to ask
about the shower man. Although they'd been out in the garden,
having a glass of wine and a late snack, they'd heard the bell. Laf
plied her with Chilean Chardonnay and Duchy Original ginger
biscuits, and seated her in one of their white patio chairs - the
fourth one was occupied by Mr Kroot's old cat - but she thought
they'd given her funny looks. She asked Sonovia about the shower
man and Sonovia said he'd promised her to come at the beginning
of next week.
'When it's builders,' said Laf, 'the beginning of the week is
Thursday morning and the end of the week is next Monday.'

356

Sonovia laughed but Minty didn't like it much. Jock had been a
builder and Laf ought to have remembered. Still, she told them
about her search for his grave. They might have some advice.
'What makes you think he's in Brompton?' Sonovia asked in the
kind of smiley way she talked to her four-year-old granddaughter.
'I had a feeling. Not voices telling me, it wasn't that. I just knew.'
'But you didn't know, my deah. You just thought. I don't trust
these feelings. It's the same with premonitions. Nine times out of
ten what you've felt isn't true at all.' Laf gave Sonovia a warning
cough but she went on just the same. 'You have to find out these
things for sure. With certificates and - and things.'
Minty looked helplessly at Laf. 'Will you do it for me?'
He sighed but he said in a hearty voice, 'Of course I will, you
leave it to me.'
'What does she mean, "not voices telling me"?' Sonovia said
when Laf had seen Minty out. 'She really is going crazy, she's
worse than ever.'
Unhappily, Laf shook his head, then nodded. 'It'll be easy
finding out where Jeffrey Leach is buried, it's done in five minutes,
but do I want to, Sonn? I mean, what am I going to tell her? "Oh,
yes, he's up in Highgate or whatever but he wasn't really Jock, he
was the one murdered in the cinema and his name was Leach"? As
I've said, that I won't do.'

'You'll just have to pass it off.'
'That's what you always say but it's not so easy. She'll ask me
again, won't she?' And then, he thought, but didn't say aloud, am I
going to say anything to the DP I mean, the guy was stabbed,
murdered, and she'd been his girlfriend, she'd been or thought
she'd been, engaged to him. But she's my neighbour, she's my
friend, I can't do that to her. She's not right in the head but as for
murder, well, she'd no more do murder than I would. He shivered.
'Not cold, are you?'
'I'm getting that way. And the mosquitoes are coming out.'
Sonovia gathered the sleeping cat up in her arms. 'Dear God,
I've forgotten to tell you. Mr Kroot's dead. He passed over this

357

morning. It went straight out of my head. Picking up the cat
reminded me.'
'Poor old boy,' Charitable Laf looked doleful. 'I dare say he's
better off where he is. Keep Blackie, shall we?'
'I wouldn't leave him to the tender mercies of Gertrude Pierce.'
When Minty had let herself into it, her own house had a ghostly
feel. Perhaps any empty house is like that at dusk, until the lights
are on, until the curtains are closed or laughter breaks through. No
laughter but such silence, such stillness, such a sense of waiting for
things to happen. The house is holding its breath, bracing itself for
what will come in.
Instead of switching the hall light on, any light on, Minty walked
slowly about, challenging the house to show its ghosts. She was a
little afraid to turn round but she did, walking back the way she had
come, going round and round. At the foot of the stairs she looked
up them, as up a well by night, for there was no light at the top.
Out of the deep shade Jock came down. He was just the same ghost
as he'd been when she first saw him. It was as if she'd never got rid
of him. It only worked for a little while. For three or four months,
she thought, as she met his pale, stony eyes.
She closed her own eyes and slowly turned round so that her
back was towards him. There was absolute silence. If he touched
her, his hand on her neck or his breath cold against her cheek, she
thought she would die. Nothing happened and she turned round
again, forcing her eyes open as if strength were needed to push the
eyelids up. No one was there, he had gone. From outside came the
sound of a car moving along the street, its windows open and rock
music thudding out. She thought, he comes back because I can't find his
grave, because I can't put flowers on it like I do on Auntie's.

'Now listen, Minty,' Laf said when he'd brought round the papers.
'I've done that bit of detective work you wanted. Your Jock wasn't
buried. He was cremated and his ashes scattered.' Up to a point,
this was true. Laf always tried very hard not to tell lies, only
straying from the straight and narrow path when the truth was too
cruel. For instance, Jeffrey Leach had indeed been cremated but his

358

ashes had been collected from the undertakers by Fiona Harring-
ton who had told a police officer acquaintance of Lafs what she
intended to do with them. 'Somewhere in West Hampstead,' he
said, and was disappointed to see Minty's face fall.
'Where could I put my flowers?'
Laf had a picture of a cellophane-wrapped bunch of chrysanthemums
lying isolated and forlorn on the pavement in West End
Lane. It would be as if someone had died there. Though he wasn't
usually so cynical on the subject of human nature, he wondered
how long it would be before a dozen other similarly wrapped
bouquets joined it, the 'mourners' having no idea to whom they
were paying homage.
'Well, Fortune Green was what she said.'
A sort of green triangle with trees, he thought vaguely. He
expected more requests or even demands from Minty but when one
came it was very different from what he anticipated.
'Will you get Sonovia to phone the builders again?'
'Give them time, Minty,' he said, rather taken aback.
She seemed to be listening for something as she stared into a
corner. Then she shook herself like someone coming out of a daze.
'You said the beginning of the week is Thursday and the end of the
week next Monday but Monday's gone and they haven't come. I'm
never going to get my shower at this rate.'

359

Chapter 34

One of the last sightings of Jims was in Le Tobsil restaurant in
Marrakesh. A Liberal Democrat MP, visiting that city with his wife
as part of a Moroccan tour, saw him through the window. He
couldn't have afforded to eat there himself. The MP wouldn't have
been surprised to have found him with a young and handsome male
companion, but Jims was alone. He mentioned this interesting
glimpse to a friend in an e-mail and the friend told a newspaper.
That was the beginning of the ongoing and endlessly fascinating
'Disappearance of Gay MP' story.
In late August a journalist claimed to have encountered him in
Seoul, where Jims granted him an interview. But everyone who
knew Jims was highly sceptical about this as none of them could
imagine him setting foot in Korea, while the text itself with its
admissions of shame, regret and contrition sounded very unlike
him. Neither his agent nor, naturally, his bank was prepared to
divulge anything of his whereabouts, though presumably they had
some idea. Attempts were made to get the truth out of Zillah,
though it took a while to find her as by this time she had let Willow
Cottage on a year's lease to an American novelist and moved into
Long Fredington Manor with Sir Ronald Grasmere.
'I've always wanted to come back here,' said Eugenie, 'and now
we're moving out again.'
But no one took any notice, as usual.
Zillah had no idea where Jims was and cared less. From now

360

onwards all her efforts were to make Ronnie happy and convince
him he was mistaken when he said that, following his recent
divorce, he was done with marriage for ever.

From time to time Violent Crimes or Miss Demeanour appeared
on television - the only slot they got was two minutes at the end of
Newsroom Southeast - to tell an apathetic public that they would
never give up the hunt for the Cinema Slayer and killer of Eileen
Dring. An arrest would be made in the not-too-far-distant future.
They had many leads on which their team was working day and
night. Fiona and Matthew and Michelle sometimes watched these
programmes but without much anxiety or sense of involvement.
Their ordeals were over. The police had shown no interest in any
of them for weeks now. Their neighbours once more passed the
time of day with them, no one crossed the street when they
approached and Fiona had had the graffiti on her gateposts
removed and painted over.
Gradually, she was recovering. She no longer expected it to be
Jeff when the doorbell rang or to find him waiting for her when she
came home. The time was past when she woke from her sedative-
induced sleep to wonder why he wasn't lying there beside her.
These days she could agree with friends she had thought unkind
that after all, she'd only known him for eight months. It wasn't
really long enough to be sure of one's feelings. Knowing what she
now knew of him, she'd never have been able to trust him, he'd
deceived her so often and told so many lies. Sometimes she asked
Michelle if she was forgiven for categorising her and Matthew as
among Jeff's enemies, and although Michelle always said yes, of
course, and to forget all about it, Fiona went on asking her as if she
doubted the sincerity of her replies.
Michelle had lately been rather quiet and thoughtful so that
Matthew often asked her if anything was wrong. She smiled and
said, 'Far from it. Everything is fine,' and with that he had to be
satisfied. He wanted to repeat their weekend away, perhaps abroad
this time, and Michelle said she'd love to, but could they postpone
it for a few weeks? He'd met quite a lot of new people through his

361

television programme and they'd done an unheard-of thing and
had a dinner party for eight, a number which included Fiona and a
personable man in his thirties Michelle thought might do as Jeffs
replacement. Matthew said not to matchmake, it never worked, and
Michelle promised she'd do no more.
One evening, when they and their next-door neighbour had met
for drinks, Michelle made something very close to a little speech of
thanks to Fiona: 'It was your food ideas which really started
Matthew eating properly. It came out of your inventive mind. And
it was poor Jeff' - she could call him that now - 'who taught me to
lose weight. He didn't know that's what he was doing but he was.
Those taunts of his didn't make me do what those stupid police
seemed to think I'd done, they changed me from a great, gross, fat
woman into a - well, a reasonable size sixteen.'
'You were always beautiful to me,' said Matthew.
She smiled at him and squeezed his hand. 'It did make me hate
him for a bit. I can admit it now I don't think anyone will mind.'
But although she saw as much of Fiona as she had ever done,
though she kissed her affectionately and constantly reassured her,
she remembered what she had said to Matthew at the time of the
betrayal: 'I can never feel the same about her again, never.' It was
still true, though she hid it and would always hide it, even from
him.
She was healthier than she'd been for more than ten years or she
looked healthier, so Matthew was concerned when she said at eight
in the morning that she was off to their GP's morning surgery.
She'd made an appointment and told him she wouldn't be long.
He felt a sudden surge of terror. 'What's the matter with you,
darling?'
'I won't know till I've seen the doctor, will I?'
It was then that he thought he saw bewilderment in her face and
some apprehension of misfortune. She decided against telling him
her symptoms, said only that she wouldn't be long and he mustn't
worry.
The story Natalie concocted out of her hopeless encounter with
362
Nell Johnson-Fleet and her second abortive attempt on her, the
troubling meeting with Linda Davies, her sad interview with Fiona
Harrington and her incomprehensible confrontation with Ara-
minta Knox were, she had to admit, something of a failure. None
of the newspaper editors to whom she offered it was interested.
Other stories had replaced the Cinema Slayer and the Old Bag
Lady in the public consciousness. It might be another matter if all
that talk of clues and leads on the television last night led to an
arrest, but otherwise ...
Natalie had done her best with it. She had even had one more go
at the voters' list, widening her search, just in case another woman
with something that might be construed as 'mint' in her name
turned up. She even went back to Laf and Sonovia, and tried to dig
deep into their memories but all they said was that they couldn't
describe a man they'd never seen. After that she followed the
modern procedure that used to be known as 'spiking' the story and
kept it on a floppy disc for what she thought of as the unlikely event
of the murderer being found.
The Wilsons had been dismayed by this further visit. Laf saw it
as an attempt to implicate Minty in something she couldn't
possibly know anything about. It never crossed his mind that she
might be the killer, not gentle, quiet Minty with her strong moral
sense and horror of violence. How many times, for instance, had he
and Sonovia heard her say she was in favour of a return to capital
punishment? But it was strange about Jock Lewis. No evidence that
he could find had linked him with Jeffrey Leach until the police
found the 'boneshaker' in Harold Hill. Nothing had been in the
newspapers about that, it was hardly a newsworthy item, but Laf, of
course, knew it. Without saying a word to Sonovia or his children,
without telling any of his fellow officers why, he managed to get a
look at the car himself. The trouble was he simply couldn't
remember. Several times he'd seen the 'boneshaker' outside
Minty's house but he'd never taken much notice of it beyond
remarking to Sonovia that since the MOT test came in you saw far
fewer old bangers about on the roads. He couldn't even remember
whether it was dark blue or dark green or black. The Harold Hill

363

car was dark blue but so dirty, so encrusted with dead leaves, smoke
deposit and squashed insects, that it would have been hard to say if it was the car or not, even if he'd remembered more about it.
'I wish I'd seen him from the window,' Sonovia moaned. 'I can't
understand why I didn't persist. It's not like me.'
It was coincidence that Jeffrey Leach and Jock Lewis both had
twenty-year-old cars, shared a pair of initials, had both once lived
in Queen's Park, but no more than coincidence. Jock had
disappeared out of Minty's life a year ago while Jeffrey Leach
wasn't killed dll April. He wasn't going to mention it to the DI,
who'd only think he was getting above himself. Besides, Minty was
a friend.
But she was getting more and more peculiar. It was only the
other day Sonovia had said to him that if you didn't know she was
on her own you'd think she was surrounded by crowds of people all
the time. Invisible people, that is. You could never hear much
through the walls, these old houses were well-built, whatever they
said about the neighbourhood, but she'd heard Minty shouting to
go away and leave her alone and only the other day she'd been
sitting in the garden when Minty had come out to hang up washing
and was talking nineteen to the dozen to some old woman and a
man she called Wilfred, and Winnie Knox who'd been dead three
years. It made Sonovia's blood run cold to hear her.
The police couldn't make up their minds whether Leach had
dumped the car himself when Fiona told him to use hers or
whether his killer had done so. Only his fingerprints were on the
inside of it, his and those of an unknown woman.

Six weeks had passed since Sonovia first asked the builder for an
estimate for Minty's shower. When he didn't come she complained
and he said he'd been ill with 'summer flu'. Sonovia wondered if it
was a good idea for him to come at all, if any stranger should be
allowed at number 39 when Minty was so odd, talking to people
who weren't there, always looking over her shoulder and shivering.
'She's harmless,' Laf said, on his way next door with the Sunday
paper.

364

'I know that, my deah. It's not him I'm thinking about, it's her. I
mean, people getting the wrong impression. It's enough to get the
whole street a bad name.'
'You get that shower done for her. It'll be a tonic. Lift her out of
her depression.'
Laf went next door. Minty still had her latex gloves on, she'd
been scrubbing the kitchen floor. On an impulse, Laf asked her if
she'd come to the cinema with him and Sonovia next day. In her
characteristic way she said she didn't mind and could she make him
a cup of tea? Not once while he was in there did she seem to hear
voices or talk to invisible people or look over her shoulder.
They'd gone. It was because she'd done it. She'd been up to
Fortune Green that morning with a bunch of flowers, a nice clean
bowl that Auntie'd once used for her Christmas puddings and
water in a fruit juice bottle with a plastic screw top. The bottle had
been washed out when she'd drunk the juice and put in Dettol with
the hot water to make sure it was really clean. It was easy getting to
West Hampstead on the tube from Kensal Rise. She'd bought the
flowers from outside the cemetery in Fortune Green Road.
Why hadn't his brother put Jock's ashes in there? Come to that,
why West Hampstead at all? So far as she knew, Jock had never
lived there, never even been there. The answer must be that the
brother did. The flowers she'd bought were Michaelmas daisies
and golden rod, there wasn't so much of a selection at this time of
the year. It wouldn't be long before the leaves began to fall. She
could feel a nip in the air. On the green she stood under a tree and
looked about her, wondering where the ashes had fallen. She
squatted down and examined the ground, not actually touching it
because that would have dirtied her hands, but just peering about
her, searching. A woman passing with a dog stopped and asked her
if she'd lost something. Minty shook her head fiercely, though it
was true, she had lost something, or someone, and she was looking
for what was left of him.
Her scrutiny eventually rewarded her with the sight of something
pale sprinkled over a patch of bare earth where for some
reason the grass didn't grow. A cigarette had been stubbed out

365

close by. This she kicked out of the way with the toe of her shoe.
She put the bowl precisely where the greyish powder lay most
thickly, poured in the water and arranged the flowers. They looked
very nice. She could almost fancy she heard his voice say, 'Thanks,
Polo. You're a good girl.' It was only her imagination, the result of
her thinking what he might say, not his actual voice speaking. She
put the bottle along with the wrapping from the flowers into a litter
bin and walked back down the hill to West Hampstead station.

Matthew was opening his letters. His post increased almost daily.
Fifteen had come that morning, some sent on by BBC Television,
others from the agent he'd been obliged to engage. A lot of them
were straightforward fan letters, some included questions about
health and eating habits their writers expected him to answer, some
- a very few - were abusive, asking him who he thought cared
about a man too stupid to eat wholesome food when half the world
was starving or wanting to know where he found 'the obscene
freaks' who appeared on his programme. There was an invitation
from the Eating Disorders Association asking him to become one
of their patrons. He answered all his letters except the abusive ones
and these he threw away quickly lest their contents prey on his
mind.
Today there were no nasty letters. He almost wished there had
been, for a few insults might have temporarily taken his mind off
Michelle's health or its reverse. Twice he typed in her name
instead of that of the recipient and once, instead of 'cancel' - this to
a man wanting to know if he should keep going his subscription to
a slimmer's magazine - he wrote 'cancer'. Before pressing the back
space, he looked at the word and shuddered. Using the euphemism
he despised when others uttered it, he asked himself what he'd do
'if anything happened' to her. The bald term he couldn't use, not
even in his thoughts. And as he excised the letter which made all
the difference, the 'r' that changed an innocuous word into one of
foreboding and dread, he spoke her name in a whisper and then
more loudly. 'Michelle,' he said. 'Michelle.'

366

She answered him. She'd just that moment let herself in by the
front door. 'I'm here, darling.'
Her face was flushed and she looked excited. 'I've something to
tell you. It's good news - can't you tell? Well, I think you'll say it's
good. I did the test at home, I did it a month ago but I still didn't
believe. I thought my hormones were all confused, I thought
maybe it didn't work on someone of my age, but the doctor says yes
and I'm fine. I should be fine, there's no reason why not...'
He'd gone as white as in the worst days of his starvation. 'What
are you saying?'
She stood in front of him and he got to his feet. He put out his
arms and she moved slowly into them. 'Matthew, he or she will be
born in March. You are pleased, aren't you? You are glad?'
He held her and kissed her. 'When I can truly believe it, this will
be the happiest day of my life.'

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Chapter 35

The crowd of people were invisible but they were there in force.
They thronged through her head, their voices audible as soon as
she was alone and sometimes when she wasn't. Jock wasn't there.
Minty hadn't heard him since she put those flowers on his ashes.
The last time was when he came walking down the stairs, but she
heard his voice, clearer and louder than the others. These were
people she knew and people she had never met or even heard of.
Not Auntie, never her, and not Mrs Lewis any more, but Bert
who'd married Auntie and Jock's brother's wife, Auntie's sisters
Edna and Kathleen and their husbands, and more whose names she
didn't know. Yet.
She hadn't known Jock's sister-in-law's name until Bert told
Kathleen. 'This is Jock's sister-in-law, Mary, Kathleen,' he'd said
and Auntie's sister said she was pleased to meet her.
Then it was Edna's turn to meet this Mary. At least Auntie's
voice wasn't among theirs and Minty knew this was because of the
praying and the flowers on her grave. Jock's wasn't, for the same
reason. She couldn't do those things for the others, she couldn't
spend her life hunting for graves of dead people, which might be
anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world. Their invisibility
was only temporary. After a while they began to take shape and
form, Bert first, thin and insubstantial, not much more than a
darkness that shouldn't have been there. How did she know it was
Bert? She'd never seen him, never heard his voice, she wasn't even

368

born when he came into Auntie's life and went out of it, but she
knew.
Kathleen and Edna were weak and transparent, and sometimes
she saw them as shadows only. Mary too, another inhabitant of her
life she'd never seen and one she'd never even heard mentioned.
The daughter-in-law Mrs Lewis loved and welcomed when she
came to join her. Sunlight had penetrated the gap between the half-
closed curtains and on to its brightness their three shadows fell, but
without bodies to cast them.
The evening she went to the cinema with Laf and Sonovia their
first visit for a long time - all the ghost voices stayed at home
or went away to wherever they lived when they weren't bothering
her and all the ghost shapes were swallowed up by the night and
the bright lights. It might be because she was with real living
people that they left her alone. On the other hand she'd seen
Kathleen several times while she was with the Wilsons and there
was the time when Jock had actually followed her into Sonovia's
bedroom when she'd tried on the blue dress. It was hard to know.
Most of the time she was confused and bewildered.
She had other worries to plague her. Josephine had started
talking about giving up the shop and being a full-time housewife
and mother, though there was no sign as yet of motherhood. Ken
had been offered a partnership in the Lotus Dragon and had
accepted it. There was no real need for her to work. Minty wasn't
to trouble her head about it. Whoever took over would be bound to
keep her on. 'No one can iron shirts the way you do, Minty,' said
Josephine. 'They'd be mad to let you go.'
That word 'mad' always made Minty nervous. Someone had said
it to her on the bus when she'd told the voice that was hissing and
whispering at her to go away. 'I don't know,' she said, trying to
ignore Mary Lewis who had her ghost lips to her ear and was
saying she'd have to have computer skills and business qualifications
for them to keep her on. Being skilled at ironing wasn't
enough these days. 'I don't know. Suppose they give up the shirt
service? Suppose they just do dry-cleaning.'
'They'd have to be mad.' Josephine was very keen on that word.

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'Don't worry. I may decide to stick it out a few more years. Till I
fall for a baby, anyway.'
Minty ran her hand down the length of the new knife she still
wore strapped to her right leg. She'd have felt half-dressed without
it now, though she sometimes wondered what she was going to use
it for. Mary would have been a good candidate, only Minty had
only seen her shadow, a thin woman with long hair and long legs.
But she no more appeared in the shape of a real human being than
the aunts did or the uncles. They just chattered away among
themselves, the best of friends, when they weren't talking to her.
Except for Mary who was always rowing with Kathleen.
She didn't know which was better, seeing them and hearing them
or just hearing them. She tried to find things to do that they'd hate,
walking the streets, getting in a jam-packed tube train, going down
to Oxford Street where there was always such a dense crowd
strolling aimlessly along the pavements that you could lose yourself
among the people. For a while their voices would go away but they
always came back to persecute her. The evening she went out with
Sonovia and Laf the cinema was full of people; it was a good job
Laf had booked, there wasn't an empty seat that she could see. The
ghost voices who talked to her when she went alone to the pictures
in the afternoon had disappeared. Every time this happened she
couldn't cure herself of hoping they were gone for ever. She sat
listening for them, savouring the quiet, oblivious to what was
coming out of the screen, until Sonovia asked her in a whispered
hiss if she was in a trance.
When Josephine was in the shop and when Ken dropped in,
when one customer after another came in, her head was mostly
silent. That was why she'd stopped going home at lunchtime. She
knew they'd be there and it would be like walking in among a mass
of chattering people, all expectant, all waiting for something, like
the theatre audience before the curtain went up on An Inspector
Calls. She didn't want to be their play, their show, but over that she
had no control.
Food was the reason she went home that Thursday lunchtime.
She'd forgotten her sandwiches, though she'd made them, chicken

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and lettuce and tomato on white bread, wrapped them in
greaseproof paper and polythene, and put them in the fridge. Left
them in the fridge. It was something she'd never have done
normally but that morning she'd rushed out of the house to escape
Mary's voice and Uncle Wilfred's. She walked, though she'd gone
to Immacue on the 18 bus. It was a nice, sunny day, autumnal
though and with a nip in the air. A year ago she'd have been
looking forward to going out with Jock in the evening, not
dreaming that the train he was coming on from Gloucester would
crash and kill him. He'd be saying his funny things to her. I went
into the garden to fetch a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie and
there I met a great she-bear who said, What, no soap? And
promptly married the barber. There, she'd remembered it word for
word.
It was a long walk and being used to it made it no shorter. Past
the Flora pub and the Church of the Redeemer of God, past the
eastern entrance to the cemetery, Kensal Green tube station, the
garage, the boarded-up shops, the seat and flowerbed where she'd
got rid of Mrs Lewis. She turned off the Harrow Road before the
western gate of the cemetery was reached and into Syringa Road.
Her key went into the lock and she turned it, knowing what she'd
find inside, voices and the sounds as of a crowd jostling each other.
The hall was still and, for a moment, she thought the whole
place was silent. She closed her eyes, enjoying the peace. Then the
voices began as whispers, Mary and Edna arguing, as they always
did, Kathleen muttering about Jock's ashes being in Brompton
Cemetery. Just because Laf told her that story about Fortune
Green didn't mean they weren't in Brompton. They were up in the
far north-east corner and she could see the gravestone, Kathleen
said, she could see his name on it and the dates of his birth and
death. Edna broke in and said it was morbid living by a cemetery,
she knew the effect it had had on her. If she had her time over
again she'd move somewhere else.
Minty took a few steps towards the kitchen. Then she stopped,
listening. A terrible thing had happened, the thing she knew

37i

couldn't happen. From upstairs, she heard Jock singing.

'Just walk on by
Wait on the corner ...'

His voice had lightened and risen a little. Perhaps that was what
happened when ghosts sang. Their voices thinned and blurred as
their bodies did. This time, she was sure, she'd see him. Maybe
he'd come walking down the stairs, the way he had before. It
hadn't worked, the giving him flowers, he hadn't liked them or
it was the wrong place. She'd chosen the wrong place, armfuls of
flowers should have been scattered everywhere on the grass, on the
earth, on the paths, it wasn't like a grave. She began touching
wood, the banisters, the doors, the door frames, white wood and
pink wood and brown wood. Her hands were shaking and she
sobbed.
The singing stopped. He called out, 'Are you there?'
His voice had changed. It was lighter and quicker, not chocolate
mousse any more, but it was his voice. And at last he was talking to
her. While he was alive she thought she'd never want him to stop
talking, she couldn't get enough of his voice, but now she could.
Not for the world, not for rest from all the other voices, could she
have brought herself to answer him. How could you love someone
so much and then hate him if it was the same person? She'd die if
she answered him or the house would fall down or the world end.
Perhaps this was the beginning of his moving back with her,
speaking to her, taking shape when he chose or being a shadow on
the wall when the sun shone.
She held on to brown woodwork with both hands. The flowers
hadn't worked, only one thing really worked, at least for a time.
Slowly she took her hands away, they were icy cold against the bare
skin of her waist. She lifted up her T-shirt, undid the waistband of
her trousers and withdrew the knife from its wrappings, holding it
dagger-wise. Her whole body was trembling now.

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Perhaps because she hadn't answered him, he called again. The
same words: 'Are you there?'
She turned round and stepped back to stand at the foot of the
stairs, holding the knife behind her. This time she'd do the job
properly, even if she had to do it every few months ... When he
appeared at the top, the shock, though she expected it, was almost
too much for her. Her vision blurred and she stared upwards into a
dark fog through which he came walking down the stairs. And
then, with a shaking hand, she stabbed haphazardly at his body,
again and again, wild thrusts and glancing blows. At his first scream
the doorbell rang, a long, imperious, shattering ring.
Minty dropped the knife and gave a whimpering cry. Very
quickly it came to her what she'd done. The man was real. He wore
jeans and a black leather jacket but he wasn't Jock. Real blood was
coming from his body, seeping bright scarlet through his blue shirt.
He lay half on the floor, half on the two lowest stairs, groaning and
holding with a cut hand a wound just below his waist and exposing
another on his upper arm. She'd tried to kill a real man. No voice
had told her to do it, she'd told herself.
The bell rang and rang, and someone was kicking at the door
panels. If Minty waited a moment before opening the door it was
because she couldn't move, she couldn't walk. But she did walk, she
staggered and fell against it, she fumbled at the doorknob and at
last it came open.
'What's happening here? What's going on?'
And then Sonovia saw the wounded man and the knife which had
fallen across his thighs. She let out a series of short sharp screams,
her hands up as if warding off blows. Laf came running out from
next door. Minty was too afraid to think of anything but escape.
Her strength came back, running through her like some fiery
drink, she jumped over the little low fence between her garden and
the Wilsons', and ran down the road just as Laf had turned in
through her gate.

He called for help. He phoned 999 and his own DI. It was a piece
of luck for the man on the floor that Laf was at home, on a day off,

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for Sonovia, usually so calm and practical, was in the throes of fullblown,
old-fashioned hysterics. What was needed now, more than
the police, was an ambulance. It arrived within four minutes and
the man who had come to give Minty an estimate for her shower
was carried out on a stretcher. This was a routine, not a necessary,
measure. Shock, more than his superficial wounds, had laid him
low.
But the police knew now, Laf knew, who was responsible for the
cinema death and that of Eileen Dring.
'You couldn't really call them murders,' Laf said to Sonovia later
that day, when she'd calmed down and they were having a shock-
remedy drink. 'Not really. She didn't mean to harm real people.
She didn't know
'I just hope the doctors realise that. Thank the Lord, poor Pete's
going to be OK.'
'What made you ring her doorbell, Sonny? Some sixth sense?'
'Not at all, my deah. I couldn't claim to have that. I was at the
window and I saw her come home, which was most unexpected,
and I thought I'll just pop in and tell her Pete's there in case it gives
her a shock.'
'What did she come home for?'
'It breaks your heart, it really does. After the ambulance had
been and gone I was dying for a drink of cold water and that stuff
that comes out of the tap - well, you don't know what it's been
through, do you? I looked in her fridge and there were her
sandwiches, all nicely wrapped up and waiting for her to fetch
them. It brought the tears to my eyes, Laf.' And Sonovia began to
cry, sobbing against Laf's shoulder.
'She'll be all right,' he said. 'It'll be best for her this way,' though
he was by no means sure of this, any more than he had been when
they found Minty three hours before.
It was Sonovia who'd said where she might be found.
'Her auntie's grave is in there.' It couldn't be, but what was the
point of showing the poor thing up as a liar now?
Daniel and his wife and child had come over by then, to be with
Sonovia and comfort her. So Laf had gone out with the DI and a

^74
detective sergeant and two women officers to search for Minty.
The afternoon had grown very warm, sultry and amber-coloured,
the air heavy and dusted with gold, as it sometimes is in September.
They went into the cemetery by the western gate half an hour
before it was due to close. The man selling flowers said he'd seen
Minty hours ago, she'd come running, out of breath and shivering,
but she'd bought more from him than ever before, and she was a
regular customer. Chrysanthemums she'd had and Michaelmas
daisies, pink and purple asters, and the most expensive things he
had, white lilies and pink ones. He'd never have believed she could
afford them ...
It took only about ten minutes to find her. When they did she
was fast asleep. She was lying curled up like a child amid bunches
and bunches of fast-withering flowers, on the grave of someone
called Maisie Julia Chepstow who'd died a hundred years before.
No one knew why she'd picked that one. The only man who knew
and could have told them was dead, his ashes in an alabaster um,
forgotten at the back of a dark cupboard.

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