o o
near the market square. They were probably weighing up the prices of properties in Catch Wind and Pysenny Banks, the more picturesque and desirable parts of old Edendale, where the stonewalled streets were barely wide enough for a car and the river ran past front gardens filled with lobelias and
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to
lichen-covered millstones. Diane shee wondered why the couple had chosen to visit the estate agent’s at night. Where were they aoing, where had they come from? What intimate plans were they making for themselves, the two of them together?
She had to stop at the lights at the far end of the square. On her right, running down the hill, were steep cobbled alleys with names like Nimble John’s Gate and Nick i’th Tor. Narrow pubs and tea rooms and craft shops filled the corners of these alleys like latecomers crowding round the edges of the main shopping area. Of course, they really were latecomers — attracted by the twentieth-century influx of tourists rather than by the traditional trade of a market town.
Fry had researched her new area, and knew that a fair share of the Peak District’s twenty-two million visitors found their way to Edendale each year, in one form or another. By day, the market square was frequently impassable because of the volume of traffic passing through or seeking parking spaces on the cobbles near the public toilets and the recycling skips.
A huge Somerfield’s lorry rolled slowly across the junction, heading for the back of the supermarket that had recently opened on Fargate, replacing a derelict cotton mill. Beyond the junction, the Castleton Road began to climb past rows of pebble-dashed semis. On either side, close-packed residential areas spiralled up the hillsides, houses lining narrow, winding roads that took
i ‘ O ‘ O
sudden twists and turns to follow the humps and hollows of the underlying contours. The roads were made even narrower up
^ O I
there by the cars parked nose to tail at the kerb, except on the worst of the bends. The bigger houses had made room for short
oo
drives and garages, but the humbler cottages had not been built for people with cars.
Further out, the houses became newer as they got higher,
‘ J O O
though they were built of the same white stone. On the edge of
O J O
town were small council estates where the streets were called ‘Closes’ and had grass verges. Finally, there was an area where
O O J ‘
the housing petered out in a scattering of smallholdings and
or o o
small-scale dairy farms. In some places, it was difficult to see where town became country, with farm buildings converted into homes and mews-style developments, lying shoulder to shoulder
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with muddy crewyards, fields full of black and white cows and pervasive rural smells.
Eventually, the pressure for more housing would force up the price of the farmland, and the town would continue its spread. But for now, Edendale was constrained in its hollow by the barrier of hills.
Turning from Castleton Road into Grosvcnor Avenue, Fry finallv pulled up at the kerb outside number twelve. The house had once been solid and prosperous, just one detached Victorian villa in a tree-lined street. Its front door nestled in mock porticos, and the tiny bedsitters on the top floor were reached only by hidden servants’ staircases.
Her own flat, on the first floor, consisted of a bedroom, sitting room, bathroom with shower cubicle and a tiny kitchen area. The wallpaper was striped in a faded shade of brown, and the pattern on the carpet was a complicated swirl of washed-out blues and pinks and yellows, as if designed to hide any substance spilt on it. Judging by the background smell, there must have been many things spilt in the flat over the years that she would not have liked to name. Most of the other occupants of the house were students at the High Peak College campus on the west side of town.
Fry made herself cheese on toast and a cup of tea and took a Muller low-fat yoghurt from a fridge that smelled suspiciously of rotting fish and onions. No amount of cleaning had removed the smell, but in any case she intended to keep only a minimum amount of food in the fridge, preferring to visit the shops as often as required, glad to take any excuse to be out of the flat. There was an Asian corner shop a quarter of a mile away where the young couple behind the counter had seemed pleasant enough. A friendly greeting over the sliced bread and gold top could be welcome at times.
After her meal, she spent ten minutes poin? through some
‘ 1 O O O
gentle exercises, winding down from the day as she would after a practice session at the dojo, flexing her muscles and stretching her joints and limbs. Then she showered and put on her old black silk kimono with the Chinese dragon on the back and the
O
Yin and Yang symbols on the breast.
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Tomorrow, she decided, she would make a point of getting hold of the Yellow Pages and looking up names and addresses of local martial arts centres. She would not find an instructor quite like her old shotokan master in Warley, and she would have to adapt to new techniques. But she could not let her skills go rusty. The ability to defend herself had become
