about murder, the law still takes a pretty dim view of postmortem mutilation of corpses.”
“So what do you think we should do about it?”
“Ooh, nothing. When you’ve got a favourable wind, you don’t sail in the opposite direction.”
But inside the Coach and Horses, they found their favourable wind had dropped. Roddy Hargreaves wasn’t there.
They walked further along Pelling Street to Pelling House. Jude stepped up the stone steps between the white pillars and raised the large brass doorknocker.
Grant and Kim Roxby didn’t agree about Harry. That was clear as soon as Carole and Jude arrived. They were ushered into the room where the dinner party had taken place. The remains of a large Sunday lunch were on the table. There was no sign of any children.
“Jude you remember…?” said Kim.
“Of course.”
“And this is her friend Carole.”
Grant reached across to shake her hand. He was polite, but there was a tension between husband and wife, as if they had been interrupted in the middle of a row.
Grant had just opened a second bottle of red wine. He waved it as an offering to his guests. They both refused. He topped up his glass, and sat back in his fine old carving chair. He had the look of a man who intended to drink through the afternoon. His face looked tired, and the dyed chestnut hair accentuated its paleness.
“I know why you’ve come, Jude,” he said, “and I can’t pretend that I’m very much in favour of the idea. If Harry does need help, counselling, whatever – and I’m not sure that he does – I think it should come, with no disrespect to you, from a professional.”
“I’m just going to talk to him, Grant. It can’t do any harm. And if it doesn’t do him any good, then you still have the option of consulting a professional.”
He didn’t look convinced. “Oh, come on,” said his wife. “Remember those group sessions Jude conducted out in Spain. You found those really helpful.”
“Yes, perhaps, at the time.” The way he spoke made it clear that, even though his wife was still intrigued by the idea. New Age consciousness-raising was another enthusiasm Grant Roxby had put behind him. “But we are dealing with one of our children here. We want the best for him.”
“Are you suggesting Jude wouldn’t provide the best?” Carole was no more an advocate of alternative therapies than Grant was, but she objected to what she felt was a slight to her friend.
Daunted by the sternness in her pale blue eyes, he backtracked. “I’m sorry. Do what you think’s right, Kim,” he said with a resigned shrug and a long swallow from his wine glass.
His wife took Jude off to find the troubled teenager. Grant still looked rather petulant, a spoilt child whose request had been refused, but he had sufficient mannersto gesture Carole to a dining-room chair and wave the wine bottle again. “Are you sure?”
“Quite sure, thank you. I’ll be driving later.”
“Oh, right.”
There was a silence between them. Grant Roxby was having difficulty hiding displeasure at this interruption to his Sunday afternoon. But he managed to dredge up a bit more conversation. “Are you a therapist like Jude then, Carole?”
“Good heavens, no.”
The vehemence with which she spoke gave him hope. Perhaps she was on his side after all. “When I was growing up,” he said, “the first port of call wasn’t a therapist or a counsellor or a psychologist. If you’d got a problem, you sorted it out for yourself.”
“That’s how I was brought up too,” Carole agreed.
“Built up self-reliance, that approach.” He gestured round the splendour of Pelling House. “I wouldn’t have all this if I’d gone running for help every time I hit a problem in my professional life – or in my private life, come to that. God helps those who help themselves.”
Carole nodded. She’d forgiven Grant his rudeness now. He was talking an awful lot of good sense.
“So I don’t think God’s likely to do a lot for my son.”
“Oh?”
“Harry couldn’t help himself in an unmanned sweet shop.”
“Ah.”
Harry’s bedroom contained everything thought essential by a privileged teenager in the early twenty-first century – television, CD and minidisk players, computer, DVD player, mobile phone. All the equipment looked brand-new, as though it had been bought at the time of the move to Pelling House – perhaps even as some kind of bribe or compensation for moving the boy away from his friends to Fedborough.
To Jude’s mind the room looked distressingly tidy for a fifteen-year-old’s. Not that Harry looked that old. “He’s rather a young fifteen,” Kim had confided as they went up the stairs.
He was hunched in front of a computer game, his whole body a stiff line of resentment. He didn’t look round when his mother knocked and entered. Though he had been told Jude was coming and couldn’t do anything to stop that happening, he was damned if he was going to be cooperative.
“Harry. Harry, don’t be rude! You have a guest.”
“No, Mum. You have a guest. I wouldn’t invite anyone down to this scummy place. Nobody I know’d want to come.”
“That is not the point, Harry. There is a guest in your room and I will not have you behaving – ”
“It’s all right, Kim.” Jude had been frequently struck by the way parents attracted to alternative lifestyles tended to be extremely traditional and proscriptive with their children. “Harry,” she went on, “I just wanted to talk to you about…you know, what you found in the cellar. It must have been a terrible shock for you.”
“I wouldn’t have found it if we hadn’t moved to this piss-awful place!”
“Harry! How dare you use language like that?”
“Why? Dad uses it all the time.”
“That is not the point.”
“I’d have thought it was exactly the point. When Daddoes something, it’s all fine and wonderful. When I do exactly the same thing, it’s crap.”
“Harry! You just – ”
“Kim. If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to Harry on his own.”
“Well, I’m not sure if – ”
“You asked me to do this. I think I should be allowed to choose the way I do it.”
The calmness with which the words were spoken did nothing to diminish their power. Kim Roxby’s head bowed acceptance. “I’ll be downstairs if you…” She trailed out, closing the door behind her.
A long silence reigned in the room. The boy, determined to make no concession to Jude’s presence, stabbed at the controls of his computer game.
“All right,” she said, “so you hate Fedborough.”
“Wouldn’t anyone? It’s the arsehole of the world.”
“And you’re just passing through?” The line was an old one, but he couldn’t have given her a more perfect cue for it.
A moment was required for the joke to register, but then Harry couldn’t help himself from giggling. He turned towards her. The spots on his face were new and shiny, the kind that would reappear almost immediately after being squeezed away.
Jude felt deep sympathy for the awfulness of adolescence, but that didn’t stop her from pressing home her advantage. “No surprise you hate being transplanted down here. No one likes being taken away from their friends.”
“No.” A moment of potential empathy came and went. “If you’re about to tell me all the benefits of living in Fedborough, forget it.”
“I’m not. I wouldn’t like to live here.”
He was thrown. “I thought you did live here.”
“No. I’m in Fethering. Down on the coast.”
“Oh. Well, it’s not that different. Still not London.”
