Shape of Snakes

'I did. You said Dorchester was as good a place as any.'

'You didn't tell me there was a hidden agenda, though, did you?' He was managing to keep his voice under control, but I could feel the tremors of a major tantrum building inside him. And that, of course, is the trouble with people with equable temperaments-once they lose it, they lose it big time. 'I might have felt differently if you'd told me you were planning to resurrect Annie Butts. Jesus! Don't you think we went through enough bloody misery at the time?'

I suppose everyone has a pet subject that triggers their anger-with me it was my mother's wicked talent for stirring, with Sam it was his fear of Mad Annie and everything her death represented: the mask of respectability that overlaid the hatreds and the lies. He always hoped, I think, in a rather free interpretation of the karma principle, that if he refused to look beneath a surface then the surface was the reality. But he could never rid himself of the fear that he was wrong.

I took a moment to reply. 'It wouldn't have passed the 'so what' test, Sam. I'd have come anyway.'

A look of incomprehension crossed his face. 'Without me?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

It was such a little word but its interpretations were endless. Why would I think of deserting him? Why was I being so devious? Why didn't I trust him enough to tell him the truth? If he cared to, of course, he could answer those questions rather better than I could as he'd had a great deal longer to think about them. Admittedly, I'd never challenged him with them directly, but there must have been occasions in the small hours when he prepared his explanations in case I did.

I answered straightforwardly. 'I chose Dorchester because I guessed Sheila had more information than anyone else,' I explained, 'though to be honest, it wouldn't have mattered where we went. The diaspora from Graham Road has been so widespread that we'd have had this conversation whether we'd come here or'-I gave another shrug-'Timbuktu. Paul and Julia Charles are in Canada ... Jock and assorted others are still in London ... Libby remarried and lives happily with her second husband and three children in Leicestershire ... the Stanhopes are in Devon ... the coroner retired to Kent ... John Hewlett, the RSPCA inspector, is in Lancashire ... Michael Percy, the son of Annie's immediate neighbor, is in prison on Portland ... Bridget Percy, nee Spalding-one of the girls who lived opposite Annie-works in Bournemouth...' I ran out of names and turned to plucking the dowdy candlewick bedspread which was part of the fixtures and fittings and filled me with loathing every time I looked at it.

I'd shocked him to the core. 'How do you know all this?'

'The same way you know that Jock lives in Alveston Road. I kept in touch. I have a file of correspondence from my father, who's been writing letters on my behalf for years, and Julia and Libby drop me a line every six months or so to keep me informed about people's movements.'

He looked horrified. 'Does Jock know you've been talking to Libby?' He used the sort of tone that suggested I'd been party to a nasty piece of treachery. Which was pretty rich, all things considered...

'I doubt it,' I said. 'They haven't spoken since the divorce.'

'But he's always believed we were on his side. Dammit, I told him we were.'

'You were half-right then,' I said, absorbed in teasing the bedspread with my fingernails. 'You've always been on his side.'

'Yes, but...' He paused, clearly grappling with some new and unpleasant thoughts. 'Does your mother know your father's been writing letters for you?'

'No.'

'She'll go apeshit,' he said in alarm. 'You know bloody well she thought the whole damn mess was dead and buried twenty years ago.'

I yanked a particularly large tuft out of the candlewick and poked it back again when I realized I'd made a hole. I wondered if he remembered that my parents were coming to stay with us the following day, or whether like all the other disagreeable things in his life he had pushed it out of his mind. 'I wouldn't worry about it,' I murmured. 'She won't be angry with you ... only with me.'

'What about your father?' he demanded, his voice rising in pitch. 'She'll tear strips off him for going behind her back.'

'There's no reason why she should ever find out.'

'But she will,' he said pessimistically. 'She always does.'

I thought of my father's advice on the lesser of two evils. If nothing else, Sam's inability to hide his feelings would start my mother on a hunt for hidden secrets. 'She might be cross for a day or two,' I said, 'until she persuades herself it's all my fault. She's programmed never to blame men for anything. As far as she's concerned, Eve corrupted Adam'-I held Sam's gaze-'when she ought to know that Adam almost certainly took Eve without permission.'

He had the grace to blush. 'Is that what this is all about? Getting your own back?'

I didn't answer.

'Couldn't you have told me?'

I sighed. 'Told you what? That I was pursuing something that was important to me? As I recall, the last time I used those words to you, you accused me of being a neurotic bitch and said if Annie's name was ever mentioned in your presence again, you'd divorce me.'

He waved a despairing hand. 'I didn't mean it.'

'Yes, you did,' I said flatly, 'and if I'd been half as confident then as Tom and Luke are now, I'd have told you where to stuff your pathetic little divorce. I only stayed with you because I had nowhere else to go. My mother banned me from going home and none of my friends wanted a loony parked in their spare bedrooms.'

'You said you wanted to stay.'