once.'
'I'd have expected you of all people to care about words.' With no lessening of reproachfulness Ellen said 'I was the one who looked after you. Shall we walk?'
Charlotte couldn't help peering at the grass as she followed Ellen. She recalled how a slab of it had risen in her dream, and felt as if the memory wouldn't go away until she identified the spot. Of course she was on edge only because of the funeral, and at first she was glad to be distracted when Hugh spoke. 'We had a bad night too.'
'He means we kept waking each other up. We were asleep when you girls were on the wander, though.'
'Good gracious,' Ellen said as their aunt used to. 'What were you boys up to in your bags?'
'Just dreaming,' said Hugh.
'Nothing to blush about, then.'
'It wasn't,' he said, though her question had mottled his cheeks. 'Just I couldn't find my way somewhere.'
'I couldn't see where I'd got trapped somehow,' Rory offered. 'Might have been a house with no lights in.'
'It's not like you to be so unobservant.'
'He said I was asleep,' Rory retorted, though Ellen's comment had been affectionate. 'Your turn.'
'I was saving Charlotte, if you remember.'
As Charlotte thought the answer had been too quick and glib, a mass of blackness seeped out of the earth all around them. Although it was the shadow of a cloud, it made her feel shut in. 'We're heading back, yes?' she said and set out for the gate through the distant hedge. Even when sunlight washed away the shadow, she could have fancied that darkness was pacing her and her cousins under the earth.
TWO
'You may call your witness, Miss Lomax.'
Just one, Ellen thought as she pushed back her chair – just one former inmate of the Seabreeze Home had agreed to testify on her behalf. She didn't blame the others for refusing. They'd been through enough, and so many were living on little but memories that she didn't want to make them recollect the bad ones. At least they weren't speaking up for the Cremornes as Peggy appeared to have promised she would, if she wasn't playing one of her wily games. As Ellen opened the door of the committee room she was eager to read her face.
Six straight chairs kept company in the corridor, beneath an interbellum photograph of Southport Pier, but only two were occupied, by Muriel Stiles and a nurse. 'Thanks so much for coming, Muriel,' Ellen said.
The old woman took some moments to tilt her head up, which failed to unwrinkle her neck. Her wide loose faded face was so preoccupied that Ellen had the fleeting fancy that the crowded photograph of sedate revellers, an image of enjoyment curbed by moderation and flanked by wars, could be a childhood memory that Muriel was reliving. It reminded Ellen of a flashback inset in a panel of a comic. She would have scribbled down the image if she'd had a notebook, but Muriel was giving her a shaky smile. 'Don't worry, Muriel,' she said. 'I won't let anyone upset you. Just say what you remember.'
She held the door open as the nurse ushered Muriel into the room. The tribunal was seated at the far end of the long table, on the left side of which the Cremornes guarded their lawyer. To Ellen's and quite possibly to Muriel's dismay, the nurse steered his charge in that direction. 'This side,' Ellen told him in less of a murmur than she would have preferred.
Virginia Cremorne interlaced her fingers and sat forwards with a prayerful expression on her small sharp face as Muriel sank onto the chair opposite. 'How are you keeping, Muriel? You're looking as fit as ever.'
Jack Cremorne pinched his shiny brown moustache between finger and thumb as if he meant to remove a disguise from his large perpetually suffused face, then fell to gripping his chin as he said 'Nice to see you again, Muriel. A pity you felt you had to leave us, but we hope you're managing to settle in where you are now.'
Surely they shouldn't be allowed to speak to her that way. When Ellen sent the tribunal a glance that was rather more than enquiring, the chairman said 'Is Miss Stiles ready to proceed?'
Ellen turned further towards Muriel. 'Can I just ask you –'
Both women on the committee parted their lips – like a ventriloquists' contest, Ellen might have noted – but it was the chairman who said 'Miss Stiles will need to take the oath.'
'You'd think someone didn't want people telling the truth,' Jack Cremorne suggested to his wife.
Ellen would have expected the chairman to issue a rebuke, but he only held a Bible out to her. She handed the diminutive book to Muriel, who extracted the card that bore the oath and performed it with such force that Ellen was reminded how she'd often told tales of her days in amateur dramatics. Muriel carried on pressing the Bible to her bosom until the chairman had to ask for the book. 'By all means proceed,' he said.
'I'm just going to ask you a few questions about things Mr and Mrs Cremorne have been saying about me, Muriel. Did –'
'We aren't the only ones that say them,' Virginia Cremorne said.
'They were said to us,' her husband amplified.
'That will be addressed,' said their lawyer.
'May I speak now?' When the chairman delivered a weighty nod of his saturnine squarish head, Ellen asked Muriel 'Did you ever see me steal from any of the residents?'
'I certainly never did.'
'Did any of the other residents?'
'Objection,' the lawyer said. 'Hearsay.'
'Now, Mr Bentley, you know that isn't how it's done,' the heavier and more plainly dressed of the committeewomen said. 'You'll have your turn.'
'If I may be allowed to finish my question,' Ellen said, starting to feel like a lawyer, 'did any of the other residents say they had?'
'Had what?' Muriel said and glared at the Cremornes. 'We didn't have much. I didn't get half of what I paid for. Cold in bed and starved at dinner.'
As Virginia Cremorne opened her outraged mouth, Ellen tried to retrieve her theme. 'I was asking if they said they saw me steal.'
'She'll be tying her tongue in a knot if she carries on like that, won't she?' Muriel said to the chairman. 'They said they saw me steal,' she repeated and attempted to do so at speed. 'I used to be able to say those,' she conceded at last. 'The things you miss at my age.'
'Miss Stiles,' the chairman said, 'if you could do your best –'
'Only trying to cheer the show up. You three look as if you could do with it or you'll be as bad as this pathetic pair.' To Ellen she said 'Nobody saw you because you never did.'
'Thank you, Muriel. And as far as you know, was I ever drunk on the job?'
'You had a glass of wine at my eightieth, didn't you? Everyone did except for this pair, who couldn't be bothered to come.'
'It should be in the records that I wasn't on duty that day,' Ellen said to the tribunal. 'I went in for Muriel's party.'
'Some of the staff that were on had a lot more to drink. Pam was so squiffy she dropped Hilda in the bath.'
'The person concerned is no longer employed by us,' Jack Cremorne informed the panel.
'How about bullying, Muriel? Was I ever guilty of that to your knowledge?'
'You were not. You were the one who cared for us most and that's why you said what you had to. Standing up to people isn't bullying.'
Though Virginia Cremorne uttered less than a word, it was enough to provoke Muriel. 'I'll tell you an example,' she declared and turned from the panel to Ellen. 'What was the blackie's name again?'
Ellen thought it best not to draw attention to the term. 'Daniel, you mean.'
'That's him. A big black buck, that's what they used to call them,' Muriel said with some defiance. 'Doris kept saying he'd sneak into her room at night and do things to her, but he made out she was imagining it and this pair
