“Well…”
“Be good if you do, because Debbie gets such a pittance from that husband of hers that – ”
“Mum…”
“And she’s a very hard worker. Real perfectionist. Gets that from her dad. He never left the shop till the last thing had been put away and the last surface polished. Closed to customers at five-thirty sharp, but he was never home till – ”
“Mum, Carole doesn’t want to hear this.”
Billie Franks took the point, and was silent. Carole smoothed down her skirt. “I’d better be off, actually…”
“Not on my account. I just dropped in on the way to see Debbie’s dad, like I do every morning. Don’t let me disturb you.”
“Well, I…” Politeness dictated that Carole probably should leave. But then again, when would she get a better chance of pursuing her investigation with some of the principals in the case? She relaxed into her chair.
“Is he back?” Billie asked her daughter.
“In the bathroom.”
“Has he told you what the police interrogated him about yet?” The old woman had no reticence about discussing in front of a stranger where Francis had been. Indeed, she seemed to relish the opportunity.
“No.”
“So you don’t know if they’ve asked him about his other women?”
Debbie Carlton shook her head, her expression now indicating that this might not be appropriate conversation. Her mother, undeterred, addressed herself directly to Carole. “I never trusted that young man from the first moment Debbie introduced him. Only ever going to think about Number One, I could tell that.”
“Mum…”
But Billie Franks wasn’t going to be diverted. “And when Debs told me they was going to get married, I couldn’t have been more upset. I wanted her to marry someone nice from round here, someone from Fedborough, who’d care about her and look after her properly and give her lots of babies and – ”
“Carole doesn’t want to hear all this, Mum.”
Nothing could have been further from the truth, but more revelations were stopped by Francis Carlton’s reappearance from the bathroom.
He stood facing his ex-mother-in-law. The temperature in the room dropped by ten degrees. Then, clutching her basket righteously to her, Billie Franks announced, “I’ll give your love to Dad, Debbie,” and left the flat.
Francis Carlton made no reference to what had just happened. Instead, he walked across to a coat rack and said, “Must’ve left the mobile in my raincoat pocket.” He retrieved it, and looked again at his watch. “Still a bit earlyto ring Florida. Want to check how Jonelle is. She’s been feeling pretty ropey in the mornings…you know, with the morning sickness…because of the baby.”
He moved to the door. “I’ll be back later.”
No gesture this time at a polite farewell to Carole. He didn’t want to lessen the impact of his parting shot. Carole felt sure it was the first time the baby had been mentioned, and a look at Debbie’s face confirmed that. She was almost as pale as her hair, her red lips a wound-like gash in the whiteness. Tears sparkled in the dark blue eyes.
Carole had no idea of Debbie Carlton’s gynaecological history, whether she had ever tried to have a child, whether she had been unable to, whether even that had been the reason for the failure of their marriage. All she knew was that Francis Carlton’s announcement had hurt his ex-wife deeply. And also that breaking the news that way, casually, with a stranger present, had been a deliberate act of vindictiveness.
“I’d better be on my way,” she said. She couldn’t think of any help to offer that wouldn’t be emotionally intrusive. Jude would have been fine in such a situation, she’d have found the right words, she’d have provided comfort. But Carole Seddon didn’t have those skills.
Fortunately, Debbie Carlton’s shock and self-pity didn’t last. Quickly, she converted them into anger. “God, he’s a bastard!”
“Well, I’m not really in a position to – ”
“If I’d still had a sneaking residual shred of affection for him, what he just said would have removed it. That was the first time he’d told me Jonelle was pregnant.”
“I rather thought it might have been.”
“He did it simply to hurt me, to see me react with pain.” Debbie rose from her chair, seething. “Well, I’m not going to give him the satisfaction. Francis thinks he’s destroyed me. He hasn’t! I’m a lot tougher – and a lot more determined – than he’s ever imagined. While we were married, I did play the doormat for him – I thought that’s what wives did – but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anything he does get to me now!”
“Good for you, Debbie.”
“I put up with all his arrogance and infidelities…” Casually, Carole picked up the word. “Yes, your mother mentioned infidelities…”
“For a long time I didn’t realize what was going on. Traditional wifely role of ‘being the last to know’. And when I did find out, I even kind of accepted it. He met them in London, didn’t foul our own footpath down here. He wouldn’t have liked that, tarnishing his image in Fed-borough. You know, Francis has always had a rather chilling ability to divide his life into compartments. Me down here, lovers in London, and never the twain shall meet.”
“And what if the twain had met?”
“Sorry?”
“What if someone from his London life had come down here, a woman had appeared, threatening his respectable Fedborough image?”
“He wouldn’t have let that happen. If any woman came down here after him, Francis would have just got rid of her.”
Debbie Carlton’s hand leapt up to her mouth, as she realized the appalling implication of what she had just said.
? The Torso in the Town ?
Eighteen
Jude had suggested that they meet on Fedborough Bridge at twelve. Carole was there first. The water was high, flowing perversely upstream, as the tide from the sea was at its strongest. Occasional spars of wood and plastic bottles swirled on the green-grey surface. What lay beneath was as unknown and secret as Fedborough itself.
She looked upstream to the cluster of boatsheds and the silting-up excavation which Roddy Hargreaves had apparently once envisioned as a marina. The dilapidated buildings looked bleak and hopeless. Surely the local authority wouldn’t allow the site to stay that way much longer, an ugly canker on Fedborough’s ‘West Sussex Calendar’ charm.
The abandoned business brought a sudden chill of melancholy into Carole’s heart.
Then she saw Jude coming down the High Street, her clothes – today a thin Indian print skirt and long chiffon scarf over a blue T-shirt – drifting as ever around her. She looked untroubled, benign, as though living in the world she should be living in. Not for the first time, Carole envied that certitude. For her, life had always been a process of adjustment, trying to match her angular contours to the ill-fitting frame in which she found herself.
Like the child holding the bag of sweets, she decided to ration out her own revelations and hear Jude’s first. “How was Harry?”
“Getting better. Now I’ve given him the freedom actually to talk about what he saw in the cellar, he’s turned into the complete Hercule Poirot.”
“And have his ‘little grey cells’ come up with anything useful?”
“Not really. I’m afraid his theories feature too many aliens for my taste. One interesting thing he did tell me, though…”
“Hm?”
“Well, Harry had been worried about the police. You know, Grant went on at him about how irresponsible
