you come to Dyrham Park. Just open country. I was thinking about other things. Suddenly Ned had the brakes on and I was jerked forward against the safety belt. What had happened was that this stupid woman – you.’ She pointed at Rose. ‘You had wandered into the road, right in front of us. Thank God Ned saw you a bit ahead, because you would have been dead meat now if he hadn’t. He jammed on the brakes, as I said, and when we hit you we’d slowed right down. Good thing there wasn’t anything close behind us. You still fell across the bonnet and you must have landed awkwardly because you were right out. It was terrifying. We got you off the front of the car and made sure you were still breathing and tried to revive you at the side of the road. Ned was in a state of shock, poor man. He knew he was in deep, deep trouble.’ She looked across the room towards the door. ‘He isn’t coming, is he?’
Rose said, ‘He won’t get past Ada. Go on, please.’
‘He’s been caught before for being over the limit,’ said Pippa. ‘You all know that. One more would do for him. He’d had a couple of drinks in Bristol. It doesn’t affect his driving, not that amount. I tell you, this wasn’t his fault, but it would have been no good arguing. They’d have breathalysed him and taken his licence away, and if it was known he’d hit someone, he’d get sent down for a term. That’s why we couldn’t report it. I knew the hospital wasn’t far away. There’s a road sign along there.’
‘I know it,’ said Frank.
She looked up at Rose. ‘We did what we could for you. We lifted you into the back seat. Cars and lorries were going by, but no one stopped, thank God. Then we drove to the Hinton Clinic, with Ned at the wheel and me beside you in the back seat.’
‘What a nightmare,’ said Keith’s wife.
‘Then we had this problem. We couldn’t take you in as a casualty, or questions would have been asked. To have given false names would have made it worse. So I suggested we put you down in the car park where someone was sure to discover you and get you inside. That’s what we did. We picked a spot under a lamp-post. Then we got the hell out of there.’
‘That’s all?’ said Rose.
‘Well, I called the hospital a couple of days or so later.’
‘That was you. I see.’ Now that the story was told – and told with enough detail to make it credible – Rose was gripped by overwhelming disappointment. She had learned some more about what happened that night, but the overriding question remained unanswered. ‘When you first saw me, I was wandering in the road?’
‘Yes.’
‘In open country?’
‘You came out of nowhere,’ said Pippa. ‘Look, Ned’s going to go through the roof when he finds out I’ve told you all this. We were going to say nothing to anybody. I was just so incensed when Keith started hinting that Ned-’
‘Pippa, darling, what are friends for, if we can’t stand by you at a time like this?’ put in Keith’s wife. ‘It could have happened to any of us.’
Rose turned away. She hadn’t listened to the last exchange.
She wasn’t interested in how Pippa made peace with her husband. The painstaking process of reconstruction, from Mrs Thornton to Percy the car-dealer, to the Dunkley-Browns, had crashed with that devastating phrase: ‘You came out of nowhere.’
Eleven
On Westbury station, Ada found the chocolate-bar machine and subjected it to a series of expert thumps.
When seated with the resulting heap of Cadbury’s bars in her lap, she remarked to Rose, ‘I wouldn’t want to be Pippa when he gets her home.’
Rose hadn’t given a thought to Pippa. Her mind was occupied trying once more to find a way out of her predicament.
Ada chuckled a little and said, ‘While her old man was refusing to admit to anything, she was singing like the three tenors.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Rose, snapping out of her thoughts and turning to face her.
‘Get away. Have some choc.’
‘She didn’t set out to tell me anything. It was only because her friends started winding her up, hinting that her husband was having an affair.’
‘Which he very likely is,’ said Ada. ‘And she very likely knows it.’
‘How do you work that out?’
Ada answered with conviction, ‘They must have got horribly close to the truth. Much more of it, and she would have cracked, and all her friends would know she couldn’t hang on to her decrepit old goat of a husband. Bloody humiliating for a woman as pretty as Pippa.’
‘Maybe. But instead she told them how he knocked me down and failed to report an accident. That’s worse than humiliation. That’s a crime, Ada.’
‘That crowd are boozers themselves, petal. They won’t shop him.’
All of this rang true, but none of it helped Rose. ‘I’m not much further on, am I? We now discover that I wandered onto a main road and was lucky not to be killed. What was I doing there?’
Ada ripped open another bar of chocolate. ‘Buggered if I know. If that’s the stretch I’m thinking of, it’s desolate up there.’
‘Really?’
‘No trees, no houses, nothing.’
‘Ada, I’m going to have to go there and see the place for myself.’
‘What use is that?’
‘I want to find out what I was doing there.’
Ada’s flesh rippled with amusement. ‘A date with a little green man?’
‘Get serious, will you?’ said Rose. ‘It could spark off a memory.’
‘Shut up and eat some chocolate.’
‘I’ve really got to go there.’
‘Tomorrow, petal. Tonight you move into your new place on Wellsway. Remember?’
First, they returned to Harmer House to collect Rose’s few possessions, automatically quickening their steps on approaching the line of parked cars outside. This time they reached the front door without incident. ‘You don’t have to help me with the move,’ Rose said as they started up the creaking stairs. ‘You’ve given up so much of your time already, and I’m really grateful, but I can do this by myself.’
‘Try and keep me away,’ said Ada.
Rose thanked her.
Ada said, ‘Don’t get ideas. I want to see if it’s a better drum than this.’
Rose knew it wasn’t in Ada’s nature to admit to being helpful. ‘I’ve really enjoyed your company. I don’t know how you feel about keeping in touch. I’d like to stay friends if you would.’
They went up four or five more stairs before Ada reacted.
‘Give me a five.’
‘What?’ said Rose.
‘Your hand.’
‘Oh.’ She held out her palm and Ada slapped hers against it in agreement.
‘Whatever, wherever.’
‘Whatever, wherever,’ repeated Rose.
Ada stopped suddenly and lowered her voice. ‘Can you hear anything? I think there’s someone in our room.’
Rose listened. Without question there were voices coming from the bedroom. ‘It sounds like Imogen.’
‘At this time?’
They crept to the top. The door had been left ajar. Rose was right. Imogen’s well-bred drawl was coming
