old people. Designer clothes and techno music were the order of the day, and clubs and theme pubs were the places to be seen, particularly those that stayed open into the early hours to show widescreen satellite feeds of world sporting fixtures.
'Do you get the feeling we've been left behind?' Sam asked glumly at the end of our first week as we sat like a couple of pensioners on the patio of our rented farmhouse, watching some horses graze in a nearby paddock.
'By the boys.'
'No. Our peers. I was talking to Jock Williams on the phone today'-an old friend from our Richmond days-'and he told me he made a couple of million last year by selling off one of his businesses.' He made a wry face. 'So I asked him how many businesses he had left, and he said, only two but together they're worth ten million. He wanted to know what
I took time to wonder why it never seemed to occur to Sam that Jock was as big a fantasist as he was, particularly as Jock had been trumpeting 'mega-buck sales' down the phone to him for years but had never managed to find the time-
'That we'd made a killing on the Hong Kong stock market before it reverted to China and could afford to take early retirement. I also said we were buying an eight-bedroom house and a hundred acres in Dorset.'
'Mm.' I used my foot to stir some clumps of grass growing between the cracks in the patio, which were symptomatic of the air of tired neglect that pervaded the whole property. 'A brick box in a modern development more likely. I had a look in a real estate agent's window yesterday and anything of any size is well outside our price range. Something like this would cost around L300,000 and that's not counting the money we'd need to spend doing it up. Let's just hope Jock doesn't decide to visit.'
Sam's gloom deepened at the prospect. 'If we'd had any sense we'd have hung on to the house on Graham Road. Jock says it's worth ten times what we paid for it in '76. We were mad to sell. You need to keep a stake in the property market if you want to trade up to something reasonable.'
There were times when I despaired of my husband's memory. It was a peculiarly selective one that allowed him to remember the precise details of past negotiating triumphs but insisted he forgot where the cutlery was kept in every kitchen we'd ever had. It had its advantages-he was easily persuaded he was in the wrong-but once in a while it caught me on the raw. At the very least, he ought to have remembered the weeks of abuse that followed the inquest into Annie's death...
'It was my choice to leave,' I said flatly, 'and I don't care if we end up living in a caravan, it's one decision I'll never regret. You might have been able to stay on Graham Road ... I certainly couldn't ... not once the phone calls started anyway.'
He eyed me nervously. 'I thought you'd forgotten all that.'
'No.'
The horses kicked up their heels for no apparent reason to canter to the other side of the field, and I wondered how good their hearing was and whether they could pick up vibrations of anger in a single word. We watched them in silence for a moment or two, and I put money on Sam backing away as usual from the period in our lives that had brought us to the brink of divorce. He chose to follow a tangent.
'In purely financial terms Jock's probably right, though,' he said. 'If we'd kept the house and let it, we'd not only have had an income all these years but we'd have made a 1,000 percent increase on our capital to boot.'
'We had a mortgage,' I told him, 'so the income would have gone straight into paying it off and we'd never have seen a penny of it.'
'Except Jock says...'
I only half-listened to Jock's views on the beneficial effects to borrowers of the galloping inflation of the late '70s and early ' 80s and how the Thatcher revolution had freed up entrepreneurs to play roulette with other people's money. I hadn't had much time for him when we lived in London, and from Sam's reports of the conversations he'd had with him via the international phone network over the years, I could see no reason to change my opinion. Theirs was a competitive relationship, based on vainglorious self-promotion from Jock and ridiculous counterclaims from Sam, which anyone with an ounce of intelligence would see straight through.
I roused myself when Sam fell silent. 'Jock Williams has been lying about money since the first time we met him.' I murmured. 'He latched on to us in the pub for the sole purpose of getting free drinks because he claimed he'd left his wallet at home. He said he'd pay us back but he never did. I didn't believe him then and I don't believe him now. If he's worth ten million'-I bared my teeth-'then I've got the body of a twenty-year-old.'
I was doing Sam a kindness although he couldn't see it because it would never occur to him that I might know more about Jock than he did. How could I? Jock and I had had no contact since our strained farewells on the day Sam and I left London. Yet I knew exactly what Jock was worth, and I also knew that the only person likely to lose sleep over it was Jock himself when his braggadocio lies finally came home to roost.
Sam's gloom began to lift. 'Oh, come on,' he said. 'Things aren't
I gave him an affectionate cuff across the back of the head. 'At least I've still got all my hair.'
POLICE WITNESS STATEMENT
Date: 16.11.78
time: 18:27
Officer in charge: PC Quentin, Richmond Police
Witness: Sam Ranelagh, 5 Graham Road, Richmond, Surrey
Incident: Death of Miss A. Butts in Graham Road on 14.11.78
On Tuesday, 14.11.78, I reached Richmond station at about 7:30. My friend, Jock Williams, who lives at 21 Graham Road, was on the same train and caught up with me as I passed through the ticket barrier. It was raining heavily, and Jock suggested we make a detour to the Hoop and Grapes in Kew Road for a pint. I was tired and invited him back to my house instead. My wife, a teacher, was at a parents' evening and was not due home until 9:30. The walk along the A316 takes approximately 15 minutes, and Jock and I turned into Graham Road at around 7:45.
I have lived in Graham Road for two years and knew Ann Butts well by sight. On several occasions in the last
