She looked wildly around the kitchen. “Where is he! Please tell me what’s going on, Father!” He did not look at her, but continued to fill the teapot.
Desperate now, Enid walked quickly over to the passage and into the hall. Before her father could stop her, she was knocking at her mother’s door. “Mother!” she shouted. “Let me in,
“Enid! Come back here!” shouted her father.
But Enid continued to knock, hurting her knuckles, until she heard a voice from inside the room.
“It’s not locked.”
She stopped knocking, her heart pounding. Very gently she turned the doorknob and stepped gingerly into the dark interior. A figure sat at the small table where Mother wrote her notes to the outside world. Enid peered through the gloom. “Mother?” She could see the old cardigan over bent shoulders and a tousled head turned away from her.
“Mother?” she repeated.
Suddenly the figure whipped around. And laughed.
Enid screamed. From under the unkempt hair a white face with burning dark eyes looked out at her. “Edward!” screamed Enid. And then: “Where’s Mother! What have you…”
She fainted then, and between them Walter and Edward picked her up and laid her gently on her mother’s unmade and unsavoury bed.
? Weeping on Wednesday ?
Thirty-Five
Lois drove slowly towards Bell’s Farm. She had arranged to clean today, not Enid’s usual day but the best she could do under the circumstances. Rosie had said the afternoon was not very convenient, but in a saccharine voice had sympathized with the difficulties Lois must be having. Lois bit her tongue, and set off early, planning to stop by the bridge over the mill stream and think. It was quiet and cool there, and she could watch the moving water and try to work out what Edward Abraham would be likely to do if he needed to vanish for good.
Bright sun percolated through the newly leafed trees, and the stream, now tamed and sparkling, flowed gently under the bridge. It was a lovely place, Lois reflected. The mill, too, could have been idyllic. The Abrahams must have had high hopes when they arrived here from Edinburgh. Lois had never been to Edinburgh, but imagined it as a cold, northern, granite city, with its castle looming over the columns of bagpipers she had seen on television, marching and playing their haunting music for shivering tourists.
Why had the Abrahams chosen Cathanger? Hadn’t Enid said something about her mother coming from round here? She stared down into the water, running clear now over mossy stones, and guessed it was because Cathanger was comparatively remote. Nowhere in the middle of England was really remote, but this was a place you could certainly keep yourself to yourself. If nosy neighbours had been the problem, then Cathanger was the answer. It had obviously worked, too, for years. Stories about the Abrahams had circulated, but nothing really worrying. A spot of embezzlement, a reclusive woman and an unfriendly old man.
No, it had all gone along smoothly until Enid had decided to join New Brooms. Lois could see that clearly. The poor woman had finally made a stand, and in opening up the closed world of the Abrahams, had landed herself in this mess. Lois turned away from the bridge. Then the night of the flood came back to her, and she looked again at the stream, with its dam of thicket and undergrowth. She had been terrified that night. That rolling
Time to get going. She drove on to Bell’s Farm, scarcely glancing at the mill, certain that Enid was not there.
¦
“Ah, there you are, Mrs Meade.” Rosie was bright and forgiving, relieved to see Lois. After all, she would be getting extra service from the boss. “No news of Enid?” she added.
Lois said she’d heard nothing, but asked if Rosie had seen any sign of activity at the mill, anything odd going on.
Rosie shook her head. “It’s difficult to see down there,” she said, “with all those trees and the hedges allowed to grow so high.”
“How about Anna?” Lois knew the girl took the new puppy for walks. “Is she around?” She might have seen something, without knowing it was important.
“Gone to college, I’m afraid,” Rosie said, “but I’ll ask her when she comes back. Really, I don’t know why she bothers to go to English classes. Her English is nearly perfect now.”
“Love,” said Lois flatly. She had heard through the grapevine that Anna the au pair had an Italian boyfriend from college.
“What? Did you say ‘love’!” Rosie was all ears. This would jolly up things a bit. She had always heard that au pairs were a danger in the house, seducing the husband and causing ructions, but so far Anna had seemed bloodless, uninterested in men or boys. Now this was more like it!
Lois told her what she knew, and they agreed it was a promising development. “She’s been altogether too shut in on herself. Spends hours in her room, brooding. You know the sort of thing, Mrs Meade.” Rosie went off to make a cup of tea, humming happily to herself.
Lois carried on cleaning. Upstairs, she adjusted the curtains in Rosie’s bedroom and looked out. She could see over the field and high hedges towards the mill. The roofs of house and barns were visible, but the yard and the mill pond were hidden. A dark, private place.
Then it struck her. A dark, private place, and the perfect spot to hide. A double bluff, then? She hadn’t even bothered to look down the track when driving past, sure that Enid was not there. But supposing she was, still held captive?
Lois flew downstairs, and, yelling as she passed Rosie that she’d be back shortly, she ran as she hadn’t run for years, out of the farm gate and down the lane towards the mill. As she approached the track, she slowed down. Nearly there, now. No good storming in, all guns blazing. She would make it a normal, reasonable call to enquire after Enid’s health, checking that she really did not intend to return. Yes, that would be best.
She walked briskly, and just as she was about to turn down the track, a car came up it towards her, going fast. It was a dull blue, patched clumsily here and there with paint that did not quite match.
She realized in time that it was not going to stop. Jumping on to the verge, she looked as closely as possible through the dirty windows. She was almost sure it was Mr Abraham in the passenger seat, and probably Edward driving. On the back seat she caught a brief glimpse of a woman huddled in the corner, looking out at her. It was Enid. Her expression was blank, her face dirty, and tears made tracks down her pale cheeks.
? Weeping on Wednesday ?
Thirty-Six
The rest of the afternoon went slowly. Lois determined not to say anything to Rosie Charrington, and invented a fairly plausible excuse for running off. She thought she saw Douglas on a bike, she said, and since he should have been at school, she had rushed out to catch him. But it hadn’t been him, and she was sorry for the interruption.
Rosie accepted this without question. She was chiefly concerned with the news that Anna had a boyfriend. At coffee time, she pestered Lois with questions that she could not answer, and in the end, Lois said why didn’t she wait until Anna returned, when she could have all the juicy details straight from the horse’s mouth? This had caused a small chill to descend, but Rosie quickly forgot, and the afternoon ground on.
At last it was time to leave, and Lois drove slowly and carefully down the mill track, pulling up outside one of the barns and looking around to make sure the car had not returned. A terrible din came from the chicken shed, and a cow contributed to the chorus from the barn opposite. Good God, thought Lois, they’ve gone off and left the animals shut up! Well, she had a remedy for that. Bill, farmer’s son, would know exactly what to do. But first, the
