Gulliver had a bandage round the thick end of his tail, but Jude knew this wasn’t the moment to enquire what had happened to him. There was another, more demanding, priority.
“I know it’s because of Zed,” she announced. “That didn’t work out, and you feel really low as a result. We’ve all been there.”
“I haven’t been there as many times maybe as you have.”
It was a sharp line, which might have offended someone less easy-going. But Jude just gave a warm chuckle. “Fair criticism. Carole, I know you think everyone in Fethering’s laughing behind their hands at you, but they’re not. Only about half a dozen people knew there was anything between you and Ted, and none of the ones who did are the sort to gloat over someone else’s misfortune.”
“I just feel I’ve made a fool of myself, said Carole, and turned pointedly away to make the coffee.”
But Jude recognized it as a start, the first hint of thaw in the frost.
“I know you don’t commit yourself easily, and I know how much your husband walking out hit your confidence.”
“You don’t know that. We hadn’t even met at the time it happened. Anyway, so far as I’m concerned, I’m well shot of him.”
“I don’t doubt that’s true, but I’m sure his leaving you made you withdrawn, unwilling to engage with other human beings.”
“David said I had always been like that. He said it was one of the reasons why he did leave me.”
Slowly, the thaw was continuing. Very slowly, but then a quick thaw was not in Carole’s nature. With an easy laugh, Jude took her coffee cup and sat down at the kitchen table. Gulliver, besotted, nuzzled into the back of her knee.
For a moment Carole was tempted to insist they take their coffee through to the sitting room, but instead she sat edgily on a chair opposite Jude.
“Ted just wasn’t the right person for you, Carole. God, people spend their whole lives searching for the right person, it’s no surprise the process can take a long time.”
“It’s a process I’ve never completed. David turned out to be a complete disaster. Then Ted…” The pale blue eyes focused on Jude’s brown ones. “Has it ever happened to you?”
“Hm?”
“Have you ever found the right person?”
“I’ve thought I have a few times…” Carole wanted more detail, but before she had a chance to put a supplementary question, Jude went on, “Ted’s a nice guy. Not an evil bone in his body.”
“I know that, but…”
“But?”
“He’s terribly…scruffy. He really doesn’t care what he looks like…or what kind of conditions he lives in. He doesn’t have any standards. He actually doesn’t seem to notice things like that.”
“Ah.” Jude pictured Ted Crisp, landlord of Fethering’s only pub, the Crown and Anchor. He was a large man with straggling hair and beard, whose idea of a fashion statement was a clean sweatshirt. Though his pub was not dirty, it did express a raffish untidiness which Jude found rather comforting, but Carole apparently didn’t.
Jude looked round the antiseptically gleaming surfaces of the kitchen, and could not even imagine Ted Crisp in such an environment.
The relationship had always been an unlikely one, a surprise to both participants when it started, and for the two months of its duration. What effect the affair’s ending had had on Ted was hard to estimate. Never one to wear his heart on his sleeve, he remained the same bear-like presence behind the bar of the Crown and Anchor, ready with an endless supply of jokes remembered from his days working the stand-up circuit. Whether he was putting on the brave face of the suffering clown, who could tell?
The effect on Carole was much more overt, at least to the eyes of her neighbour. It was entirely in character for Carole Seddon, as a civil servant retired from the Home Office, to withdraw into what she thought of as anonymity; though, perversely, such behaviour had the effect of drawing attention to what she was doing. Carole had taken to shopping at times when she was unlikely to meet anyone she knew, even avoiding Fethering’s Allinstore and driving in her trim Renault to distant supermarkets. With the light mornings, Gulliver’s compulsory walks on the beach had been getting earlier and earlier.
At that moment Jude resolved to get Carole functioning properly again. Though the two women were polar opposites, there was potentially a strong affection between them. Jude even made a resolution to get Carole back into the Crown and Anchor.
But any realization of her ambitions would be a long way ahead. With Carole, she knew, she’d have to proceed with caution and circumspection.
“But you already knew Ted well enough,” said Jude gently, “to
“No, I fell into that even older female error of having a template for what a man should be and trying to fit one into it.”
“Ah.” Jude shook her head sagely. “We’ve all been guilty of that.” Then, with a toss of the blonde bird’s nest on top of her head, she moved the conversation on. “I didn’t just come here, however, to commiserate with you about the end of your affair…”
Even in her current mood, Carole couldn’t suppress a little glow from Jude’s use of the word. Although it had ended in disaster, the fact that she was a woman who had had an ‘affair’ seemed to her slightly daring, even rather grown-up. Which, she knew, was a ridiculous thought to be entertained by a woman in her fifties.
“I came because last night I saw a dead body.”
Jude didn’t get the reaction she’d been hoping for. On two previous occasions she and Carole had got caught up in solving murders and their enthusiasm for the challenge had been mutually infectious. This time all she got was a glassy stare from the pale eyes.
“What, was this a road accident or something?”
“No, Carole. The dead body had been hidden in the cellar of a friend’s house. It must have been a murder.”
“Not necessarily,” said Carole, doggedly contrary. “Could have been an accident.”
“I think it’s quite difficult to have an accident in the course of which both your arms and legs get cut off.”
Carole was silent, unequipped with a riposte to this argument. Then she said lightly, as if nothing in the world could have mattered less to her, “Well, I’m sure the police will sort it out.”
“I’m sure they will, but you can’t deny it’s intriguing, can you?”
Carole shrugged, and reached down to ruffle Gulliver’s ears. Her body language was trying to say, Yes, I can see it might be mildly intriguing to some people – not to me, though. But Jude was heartened to see a new alertness in her neighbour’s eyes.
This was confirmed when, for the first time that morning, Carole – albeit grudgingly – asked for further information. “Where did you see this body then?”
“In a house in Fedborough.”
“Oh.” There was a wealth of nuance in the monosyllable. At one level it said, Oh yes, well, that’s what you’d expect from people in Fedborough. At another level it said, If the body’s in Fedborough, then that’s none of our business. And, encapsulated in ‘Oh’ too, was the conviction that, though only eight miles up the River Fether from Fethering, Fedborough was another – and undoubtedly alien – country.
“I didn’t know you knew any people in Fedborough.” There was almost a hint of affront in Carole’s voice. She was constantly reminded how little she really knew about Jude’s life and background. But the longer their friendship continued, the more difficult became asking the basic questions that should have been settled on first introduction.
“Not many. These are some not-very-close acquaintances who’ve just moved down from London.” This reply seemed subtly to reassure Carole, so Jude, still working to thaw the frostiness, went on with humility, “You know a lot of people up there, though, don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t say a lot. And none of them are that close.”
“No, but you said you’ve often been to see shows and concerts in the Fedborough Festival.”
“I may have done in the past.” The implication was that Carole never intended to have any kind of social life,
