some suffering children, then what harm was done? It wasn’t as if Nicky couldn’t afford it.
“Just to the N.S.P.C.C. then, please.”
Nicky filled in the cheque, pulled it out of the book and handed it across with a flourish. “But don’t you want to talk about the details of the event…because I’ve got some papers I should be going through, so if you want to be on your own…?”
“No, really. I’d better be on my way.” Jude had an instinct that, even if he were not in the same room, her husband’s presence in the house might inhibit Sonia from saying what she really wanted to.
“Well, I’ll say good-bye then. Pleasure to meet you, Jude. Jude…what? I don’t know your surname.”
“Everyone just calls me Jude.”
Nicky stayed in the sitting room, and Sonia closed the door against the potential draught as she led the way to the front door.
“What did you want to see me about?” Jude whispered.
“I just wondered if you’d heard anything from the police…you know, about what evidence they have against Donal?”
“No more than anyone else has. What I’ve heard on the news bulletins.”
Sonia looked disappointed, but not surprised at being disappointed. “You haven’t any idea what he’s said to them…?”
“How could I? I’m afraid it’s only in crime fiction that the police share all the latest developments on a case with nosey local spinsters.”
She’d said it as a joke, but Sonia didn’t smile. Instead, she whispered, “But if you do hear anything about what Donal’s said, you will let me know, won’t you, Jude?”
Odd. Two women, thought Jude as she walked along the towpath towards Fethering, both deeply concerned about a vagrant Irishman. For the same reason? Or for different reasons? More important, for what reason?
The weather had suddenly turned very cold. After a few mild days that had held the promise of spring, winter had reasserted its icy grip. The waters of the Fether, rushing fast past the towpath, looked icily uninviting, and the leaden sea beyond held no element of welcome. Jude’s hand, nestling for warmth into the pocket of her fleece, encountered something unexpected, and closed around Nicky Dalrymple’s cheque. She looked at it. A hundred pounds for the N.S.P.C.C. Oh well, it’s an ill wind. Who was it who had ever said that lying was a bad thing?
11
The Seaview Cafe on Fethering Beach was, surprisingly, open all the year round. In the summer, the tall windows at the front were concertina-ed back and the concrete floor was so covered with sand that it seemed like a continuation of the beach. The cafe was open from eight in the morning till eight at night. Then the space was loud with the shrieks of children, and the blue-overalled women behind the counter were kept busy all day supplying pots of tea, fizzy drinks, hamburgers, chips, crisps and ice creams.
In the winter everything was different. All the windows were shut, and the place steamed up like a huge terrarium. Wind wheezed through ventilation grills and the odd cracked pane. Opening hours were eleven to five, and the average age of the winter population trebled that of the summer. The occasional child whose route from school passed the beach might drop in for a Coke and a bag of crisps, but generally speaking, the customers were well past seventy, and usually sitting on their own. The women behind the counter had plenty of time to peruse their Sun s and Daily Mail s, and amongst the clientele pots of tea were made to last a very long time.
Carole Seddon usually avoided the place. In the summer it was too noisy, in the winter too dispiriting. But that Wednesday afternoon she’d had no choice. She’d got delayed shopping and, as a result, started late for Gulliver’s afternoon walk. Because of her rush, she had omitted to have a pee when she got back to High Tor, and on the beach, feeling the sudden drop in the temperature, she found herself desperate for a restroom. The toilets on the front were locked against vandals throughout the winter, so the Seaview Cafe was her only option. Also, dogs were allowed in there.
Carole was by nature a law-abiding soul, and she could no more have gone into the cafe to use its facilities without making a purchase than she could have dismembered someone with a chainsaw. So, with mounting discomfort, she ordered a pot of tea at the counter and waited while it was prepared. She then took the tray with obsessive concentration across to a table and tied Gulliver’s lead to a convenient radiator pipe, before rushing off to the ladies’.
When Carole returned, considerably relieved, she noticed a woman she vaguely recognised, zipped up into an anorak and sitting at an adjacent table. Whether she had been there earlier, Carole couldn’t say-taking in the other customers had not been her primary priority-but the laying out of her tea things and the half-eaten doughnut suggested she had.
“Looked like you were in rather a hurry. It’s the cold weather.”
The woman’s smile identified her to Carole, and allayed any resentment she might have felt about public discussion of her bladder. It was Hilary Potton, who clearly didn’t think Carole remembered their previous encounter. “We talked in Allinstore. I was on the till.”
“I recognised you.”
“I do four to eight every weekday except Wednesday. This is my day off.”
“Not a very nice one. Freezing out there, isn’t it?”
“Certainly is. Handsome-looking dog. Labrador?”
“Mm. Called Gulliver. Extremely good-natured, but not very bright.”
“Oh, they’re good family dogs. We had one…in happier times.” Hilary sighed rather dramatically. She indicated the plastic seat opposite her. “If you’d like to join me…?”
It went against Carole’s every instinct to start fraternising with people she didn’t know. But this was different. She had been trying to find out more about Hilary Potton, she had made the initial contact, and now she was being offered a second opportunity on a plate. “Well, if you don’t mind,” said Carole, moving her tray across to the other table.
“I’m just here waiting for my daughter. She’s at the house with her father. Things are easier at the moment if we don’t meet.”
“Yes, I gathered from what you said at Allinstore that all was not well.”
Hilary Potton snorted at the inadequacy of this description. “All not well? What we’re actually talking about here is a state of total war. I’m afraid my husband and I just do not communicate. I’ve tried to build bridges, but he’s tried even harder to destroy them. Are you married?”
“I’m not wearing a wedding ring.”
“Doesn’t mean anything these days.”
“All right. I’m not married. I’m divorced.” Carole still had difficulty in saying the words.
“So will I be soon-thank God!”
“Oh yes,” said Carole, casually probing, “you implied when we spoke in Allinstore that all wasn’t well with your marriage.”
“You have a gift for understatement…I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
They quickly established their identities and addresses. Carole was cautious not to reveal that she already knew Hilary’s details. She thought further prompting might be needed to get back to the subject of the Pottons’ failing marriage, but it proved unnecessary.
“So was your story the same as mine? Husband couldn’t keep his hand out of other women’s knickers?”
“No. No.” David may have had many shortcomings, but that wasn’t one of them.
“Well, in my case, Alec-that’s my husband-so far as I can gather, he’d been at it with various women virtually from the moment we got married. And I, trusting little domestic idiot that I was, never suspected a thing. He’s always travelled a lot-he’s a salesman, so I believed all his stories about having to work late, having to stay over for conferences…and all the time…” She seethed like a kettle boiling dry. “Let me tell you, it’s going to be along time before I ever trust a man again. I think most women would be a darned sight better off without a man in their life.”
