Susie, I know you’ll be on the road south when you get this but I’d really like it if you called. We need to talk. Toby x
I chucked the mobile back and started the car. Oh heck, the engine let out an unpleasant roar as I missed the gear. Grrr, Toby, it’s all your fault, your unbelievably manipulative text has got under my skin.
I looked at the dashboard. It’s just after two. If in a moment of clear thinking he was going to call me, it would have happened in his lunch break, which is over now. Phew, I really don’t want to talk to him and for at least the next three to four hours he’ll be too busy working for anything else.
Radio 4 played for a change. Two theologians were discussing the meaning of Good Friday. Blast, I’d completely forgotten it’s a public holiday…Toby won’t be in the mortuary today. But a split second of thought and I concluded – he was never going to call me. His text was a fine way of turning the tables. The ball was in my court. He’d made darn sure if we never speak again then it’s all my fault.
I give up. Stuff him. I don’t need you in my life, Toby.
I turned the radio off – debating Good Friday isn’t my kind of thing. And as I drove in silence, munching up the miles in the fast lane, I pin-pointed everyone’s reason for being at Auchen Laggan Tosh. I have to make sure no one else was acting with Ewen. I can’t just assume he was in it alone.
I remember a similar case of art fraud I’d heard of before. It happened in Ireland years ago, when a chauffeur faked a Canaletto under his employers’ noses, selling the original and hanging the copy. Not that I think Mhàiri, Donald or Stuart are involved. Employee teaming up with a family member, no, I don’t think so.
Very quickly names began to fall off the suspects’ list. Jane’s mission was to steal the necklace, Felicity her veil. They cancel each other out. Minty was a pawn in her father’s plan and Giles, not the sharpest tool in the box, was sent by his mother to practise his art in the hopes he’d get at least one A at A Level. We can set them both to one side. Shane and Lianne were awarded scholarships so couldn’t possibly have orchestrated their place and had Rupert been involved I have absolutely no doubt he would have accidentally let it slip. So, we can put him to bed too. Fergus has far too much pride in his art collection and surely wouldn’t have risked exhibiting the copies. He’s not a part of it. Louis, I fancied…but now I know he has a girlfriend Toby’s words, ‘I don’t think you should trust that man…he’ll hurt you’, couldn’t be more on message. We are a good team. But I bet you he’d never see it like that. Did Louis really pay over the asking price to get his place? Or had Ewen whispered he was a friend in Zoe’s ear and she accepted him to keep the peace?
Bring, bring. Bring, bring. My mobile rang through the loudspeaker. A Sussex number flashed up, I better answer. I was just passing Birmingham on the M6 Toll, making good progress, well over halfway and predicting I’d be home just before seven.
‘Hello?’
‘Susie, is that you?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Lavender Bell.’
‘Lavender, hello. How nice to hear from you.’
Lavender is a friend, well, an absent friend really, of my mother’s. Going back to when they were teenagers – that period in life when one has a large group of unidentifiable muckers. Mum’s often talked of her but hasn’t seen her for many years, the reason being my parents got married very late for their generation, and by then their contemporaries had drifted away. They were out of step. Almost all of their friends had entered into the complacent stage of marriage, done with popping out children and no longer keen on spending time with those in nappies. When I was born Mum had plenty of eccentric spinsters around to keep her vaguely sane, but I do feel a bit sorry for her, looking back.
Anyway, shortly after I’d made the move to Sussex, three years ago now, Mum told me Lavender lived there too. Something to do with her marrying a banker and bankers apparently – according to Mum – like to settle in Sussex. Property’s expensive, this boosts their image and there’s nothing like a national park to make them feel they own the land. Mum passed on my number to Lavender and ever since she’s invited me for dinner twice annually. Full points to her for trying and nil points to me for genuinely never being able to go.
‘Susie,’ she squawked, ‘I left a message about dinner on your landline. I’m sure you’ve put the date in your diary and just forgotten to let me know?’
One, I don’t have an answering machine, but there was no point going into that right now, and two, I couldn’t possibly refuse again…
‘I’m sorry,’ I said out loud in the car, ‘I’ve been away. But I’m heading home now.’
‘Oh, jolly good. That means you’ll be able to come.’
‘When is it?’
‘Tonight.’
‘Tonight?’ I yelped but it fell on deaf ears. Literally. Many of Mum’s age group are by now.
‘Yes, come for seven forty-five, no need to wear anything dressy.’
‘I might not…’
She cut me short. ‘I know you might not know anyone but don’t worry about that. They’re very nice. There is someone I think you’ll get on particularly well with, a much younger friend of mine, George, Georgina Foss. I’m sure you’ve come across her? She
