You know how good he was with the children.’
‘Yes,’ Edith said. ‘He was the same with Kenny and Lawrence and then with our two. Perhaps it was because he’d never quite grown up.’
‘Why did you suggest Mr Wilding live there?’
‘Willy had moved out and I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t want to sell. Not while Willy was alive. I always told him it would be there for him to move back when he felt more himself. And I suppose I hoped Roddy would want to settle in Shetland one day. It would be a good home for him to start with. Then I had the email from Peter Wilding asking if I knew anywhere he could rent for a short while. He’d not been well and he needed somewhere quiet to stay. I thought why not?’ She paused. ‘Besides, he was a fan. As you get older, it’s good occasionally for the ego to have an admirer close at hand.’
‘How did Roddy get on with him?’
‘I don’t think Roddy liked him particularly. Sometimes he took against people for no reason. Roddy said it always made him feel sad to think of that house without Willy in it, but that was hardly Peter’s fault. Roddy loved the old man and visited there whenever he came home from tour. Take a bottle of whisky and stay up half the night talking about old times. He said he’d heard Willy’s stories hundreds of times but he never tired of them. He still kept in contact even after Willy moved into the sheltered housing. That’s a part of his life the press never picked up on.’
Suddenly she got to her feet, more sober than she’d seemed throughout the rest of the encounter. She carried the whisky bottle to a sideboard and put it away. ‘I’m going to make coffee,’ she said. ‘Would anyone like one? Edith, you don’t need to stay, you know. I’m quite used to being on my own.’
Chapter Thirty-two
The appointment Perez couldn’t miss was the final performance on
He collected them from Ravenswick. Cassie was wearing a new pink cardigan and Fran had put on make-up and the earrings he’d given her for her birthday. I should have made more of an effort, he thought. It seemed as if he’d been wearing the same clothes for days. The show took place in the saloon below deck, so the audience were crammed into seats very close together. As Lucy Wells had said, it was packed. Mostly families, mostly visitors. It still smelled of a boat, wood with a hint of tar. And they could feel the movement of the water under them.
The show was an environmental piece aimed mostly at the children. There were songs about the rainforest and melting ice floes, but enough of a pacy story to keep Cassie enthralled. Lucy played a green fairy, dressed mostly in emerald Lycra with a couple of wispy wings. Perez found his eyes drawn towards her, became lost for a moment in a sexy fantasy, thought of the possibilities that would be closed to him if he was committed to Fran.
After the show the actors jumped down from the low stage and mixed with the audience, following up some of the issues raised in the piece. Lucy came up to Perez.
‘You made it,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think you would.’ She seemed extraordinarily pleased to see him. Perhaps that’s what actors do, he thought, disconcerted. They exaggerate without meaning to. She was playing with some green glass beads she wore round her neck and he saw that her hands were plump and soft.
‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘Very much.’ He paused and saw that a compliment was in order. ‘You were very good.’
‘It’s not a role that requires much characterization,’ she said, smiling. ‘Fun, though.’
He was flattered by her attention. There were all these people to speak with and she’d chosen him. Beyond her, he could see Cassie and Fran chatting to friends.
‘When do you leave?’ he asked.
‘Tomorrow afternoon.’ Something in her reply made him think that if he suggested they might spend the evening together she would agree. That she’d be delighted. He was horrified that the thought had even crossed his mind.
‘Good luck,’ he said to Lucy. ‘I hope everything goes well for you. When you’re famous, I’ll be able to tell folk I met you.’
He moved away from her and put his arm around Fran’s shoulder, asked her in a whisper if she was ready to leave. Later, he wondered if it was a good thing he’d done, walking away from a lonely young woman who wanted his company, or if he was just a coward.
That night he stayed at Fran’s place again. While she prepared supper he sat on Cassie’s bed and read her a story. She was asleep by the time it was finished and he stayed for a moment, thinking how it must be for her, having a new man in her mother’s life. And how it would work for him, sharing her with Duncan Hunter, her father, a man he didn’t much care for, though once they had been best friends.
Back in the kitchen Fran was draining rice. Her face was flushed. She’d taken off her jacket and was wearing a sleeveless white T-shirt. He could see the lacy pattern of her bra in relief through the fabric. Distracted, he returned to the subject of her ex-husband.
‘What will Duncan make of us seeing so much of each other?’
She tipped the rice into a brown earthenware bowl.
‘I like everything I’ve seen of you. If you’re talking literally…’
‘I’m being serious.’
‘You’re way too serious. It’s my mission to get you to lighten up. Anyway, who cares what Duncan thinks? It’s none of his business.’
‘Cassie’s his business.’
‘I’d never stop him seeing Cassie and neither would you.’
He could tell she thought he was making difficulties where none existed. In London she’d been surrounded by unconventional families. She’d told him about close lesbian friends who’d fostered a son; many of her colleagues were divorced and remarried, and for them weekends had been a time of shared parenting, the entertainment of visiting stepchildren. He was used to more traditional ways, but didn’t want to question her judgement. He didn’t want her to think him narrow-minded.
The subject must have been on her mind throughout the evening, because at the end of the meal she returned to it. She reached across the table and took his hand.
‘It was because of Cassie I didn’t rush into this. We come as a package. You understand that, don’t you? If you want me, you take her on too.’
He said that of course he understood. He wanted to tell her that he wanted above all things to make a family with her and Cassie, but he thought that would have sounded sentimental. She hated it when he was soppy.
He left early the next morning to go into Lerwick, to his narrow house on the waterfront. Despite the weather, he could smell the damp as soon as he unlocked the door. It was as if he’d been away for weeks. He loved the house, which was just as well, because no one else would be foolish enough to pay good money for it. He opened all the windows to let in the salt air, and checked his answer machine. There was a message from his mother, easy and chatty with news of Fair Isle. He wondered when he should take Fran home to meet his folks and what they would make of her. They didn’t have much experience of people who’d grown up in the city. He made a jug of coffee and sat by the open window, watching the terns diving into the shallow water.
Later he went into the station to check if they’d had any report back on the bag belonging to Jeremy Booth, which had been recovered with Roddy Sinclair’s body from the Pit o’ Biddista. Sandy was on his way out, scrubbed and smart. Every week he went home to Whalsay to take Sunday lunch with his parents.
‘Have you seen the TV news?’ he said. ‘Roddy Sinclair was all over it.’
‘No.’ Perez didn’t keep him. He knew Sandy would be on his way to Vidlin for the ferry, and anyway he wasn’t the best person to ask about the bag. He was never brilliant at detail.
