lovable family life she could feel strong undercurrents of tension and anxiety. Those might be natural, given the Lockes’ current situation, but the impression she got was that they pre-dated the disappearance of Nathan from Marine Villas.
At the top of the stairs she paused, and a weak voice said, “I’m through here.”
Bridget Locke was wearing a plain white nightdress, and was propped up high on pillows in a single bed. But before Jude had a chance to process this information, she was told that this was the spare room. “I’m so uncomfortable in the night that I can’t share a bed with anyone. Rowley wouldn’t get any sleep if I was in our own room.”
Jude, as usual with a new client (she preferred that word to ‘patient’), began by asking a few general questions about Bridget’s medical history. Apparently, back pain was not a recurrent problem for her. This was the first time it had happened, or at least had happened so badly that she needed treatment.
“Why did you come to me? Most people’s first port of call would have been their GP.”
“Yes.” The woman seemed slightly confused by the question. “The fact is, I’ve always favoured alternative therapy over conventional medicine. My experience of doctors has been that, whatever your complaint is, they reckon a drug prescription will sort it out. I’m rather reluctant to cram my body full of chemicals.”
While Jude entirely agreed with the sentiment, she wasn’t convinced that Bridget Locke was telling the truth about her reasons for approaching her. “You said it was Sonia Dalrymple who suggested you call me…?”
“That’s right.”
“How is she?” A bit of general conversation might relax the woman – even, Jude found herself thinking for some reason, put her off her guard.
“She’s fine. Well, I say that…I think the marriage has broken up. Difficult man, Nicky.”
Jude, whose investigations with Carole into a murder at Long Bamber Stables had found out some interesting secrets about Nicky Dalrymple, might have put it more strongly. But she wasn’t about to say more about that. “So, if this is the first time your back’s gone, Bridget, what do you think’s caused it?”
“I don’t know. Lifting something out of the car perhaps? Standing at a funny angle?”
“Was there any moment when you suddenly felt it go?”
“No, it sort of happened gradually.”
“Hmm. You know, a lot of back pain isn’t primarily physical.”
“Are you saying it’s psychosomatic?” The reaction was a common one. No one wanted to have their suffering diminished by being told it was ‘all in the mind’.
“That’s a word you can use, if you want to,” Jude replied soothingly. “The mind and the body are very deeply interrelated. And whether the cause is something mental or something physical, it doesn’t make any difference to how much your back hurts.”
“No.” Bridget Locke sounded mollified.
“What are your normal stress reactions?”
“Sorry?”
“Most of us have some kind of physical response to stress. With some people it’s headaches…stomach upsets…insomnia…”
Bridget Locke seized on the last word. “I don’t sleep that well. I suppose that is my normal stress reaction, yes.”
“And presumably, with your back like this, you’re sleeping even less?”
The woman nodded. She did look exhausted. Under the neatly cut hair, the skin of her face was tight with tiredness and there were dark hollows beneath her eyes.
“You’re worried about Nathan?”
“Oh, you’ve heard about that?” Again something didn’t ring true with Jude. Bridget knew she lived in Fethering, she must have known the level of village gossip that an event like Kyra Bartos’s murder would generate in a place like that. Surely she would have assumed that Jude knew about it.
But this was not the moment for a challenge. “Yes, dreadful business. It must be hard on you…”
“Quite tough.”
“…and of course the rest of the family.” Though from what Carole had said, Bridget was the only one who seemed worried about the boy.
“Yes.”
“Hmm. I gather, Bridget, you’re not Rowland’s first wife?”
“No. How did you know that?”
No point in lying. “A friend of mine told me. Someone you’ve met. Her name’s Carole Seddon.”
“Ah, yes.” Was Jude wrong to detect a note of satisfaction in the response?
“Can I ask you…I’m sorry, you may think it’s being nosy, but it’s a question anyone from Fethering would ask you…”
“Because everyone from Fethering has now become an amateur detective?”
“If you like.”
“Including you and your friend Carole?”
“Maybe. We can’t help being interested.”
“No, only natural. So what was this question that everyone in Fethering would ask me? Do I know who killed Kyra Bartos?”
“No, not that one. They might be intrigued, but the question they’d ask is one that you might be more likely to have an answer to.”
“Which is?”
Jude looked the woman firmly in the eyes. “Do you have any idea what has happened to Nathan?”
This time she had no problem in believing the response. A weary shake of the head and, “No, I wish I did. I feel very close to him.”
“Oh?” As ever the gentle manner promised to elicit confidences. And it did.
“The fact is, this family…I mean, when I met Rowley, it was him I fell in love with. I didn’t realize to quite what an extent by taking him on, I’d be taking on the rest of the Locke clan too…” Jude stayed silent. She knew more would come. “They are very all-enveloping. They see themselves as a kind of coalition against the world. I think it all started when Rowley and Arnold were boys. They were brought up in Cornwall…”
“At Treboddick?”
“Yes. And, you know, they were always playing these fantasy games. There’s one in particular called the Wheel Quest.”
“Oh?” Jude responded as if she’d never heard of it. She’d admitted knowing Carole, but didn’t want to suggest that they’d discussed the Lockes together.
“It’s something Rowley devised. Started off as a role-playing thing the boys acted out, then he turned it into a kind of board game. And a family obsession. I expect Chloe and Sylvia are playing it downstairs right now. Anyway, that stuff was all instigated by Rowley. He was the imaginative one, he invented everything, and Arnold was happy to be his acolyte, to go along with whatever Rowley said. Then, when they got married, the wives became part of the…well, it may be overstating it, but you could almost call it ‘the alternative Locke universe’. Eithne was fine about the whole thing, still is, and of course the children love being part of it. Joan – that was Rowley’s first wife – well, the impression I get is that she went along with it quite enthusiastically at first. She’d been an only child and suddenly being part of this huge, hermetically sealed comfort zone…she loved everything about it. But, as the years went on, I think she got a bit disillusioned with the whole set-up. It can be difficult for an outsider.”
Ignoring the implication about Bridget Locke’s own position, Jude asked, “And was Nathan something of an outsider too?”
She’d got it right. “Yes. I suppose that’s why I bonded with him. Neither of us swallowed the whole Treboddick and Wheel Quest business quite as much as we should have done. We liked it, we loved the individual members of the family, but both of us I guess had a kind of independence in us…something that meant occasionally we didn’t want to do everything as a pack. At times it could all feel a bit claustrophobic. We both liked some level of solitude, which is very difficult to achieve in this family.”
“And that’s the bond between you and Nathan?” Jude was rewarded by a nod. “So is it worry about him that has got you in this state…and probably brought on the back trouble?”
“Maybe. Yes, probably.”
