cast a swift appraising look at Roy, and Agatha was suddenly conscious of Roy's youth and weediness. He had a thin white face and small clever eyes and a thin weedy body which looked as if it needed fattening up rather than dieting.
'Who's the glamour-puss?' asked Roy.
'Some incomer,' said Agatha sourly. 'Get in the car.'
Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she had breakfasted on a cup of coffee and a cigarette.
But there was the carrot held out in front of her of an almost immediate loss of weight.
They drove to Evesham and bought apples, melons, bananas, grapes, pineapples, oranges and a selection of 'yuppie' fruit from an exotic and highly priced variety.
Back home again, they both ate as much as they could and assured each other that they felt terribly well already. Then they went out cycling, Roy borrowing a cycle from the vicarage. It was to be the best part of the weekend as they flew along the frosty lanes in the clear air, returning home under a burning red sun which set the frost-covered grass and trees aflame and made the frozen puddles in the roads burn like monsters' eyes.
But instead of sitting down that evening to a warming meal, there was nothing but more fruit and mineral water.
'What's this proposition you were talking about?' asked Agatha.
'You remember Mr Wilson of Pedmans, my boss?'
Agatha's eyes narrowed. She had sold her PR business to Pedmans. Wilson had gone back on all his assurances that her offices and staff would remain intact, had fired the staff with the exception of Roy, and had sold the offices. 'Of course.'
'He was talking about you the other day. Said you were the best ever. I said I was going to see you,' said Roy, carefully and conveniently forgetting that his decision to visit Agatha had been prompted after he had heard his boss's praise of her. 'He said he would like to employ you as an executive. Pure Cosmetics are playing up. You used to handle them.'
'Bunch of toe-rags,' said Agatha moodily. Pure Cosmetics was run by a temperamental and demanding woman, a modern slave-driver.
'But that woman, Jessica Turnbull, the director of Pure Cosmetics, you could always handle her. That's what Wilson said.'
'I'm retired,' said Agatha. 'Hey, you're spotty.'
Roy squawked and ran upstairs to the bathroom. He returned and said, 'I look like a fourteen-year-old with acne. You're spotty as well.'
'Let's chuck this stupid diet.'
'No,' said Roy firmly. 'It's toxic waste. The impurities are being purged out of our bodies.'
'I agreed to this stupid thing to look better, not to get spotty.'
'But you look slimmer already, Aggie,' said Roy craftily. 'Don't think about Wilson's offer now. We'll watch that video I got and then we'll have an early night.'
Agatha awoke early the next day, hungry and bad-tempered. She went downstairs and gloomily ate six apples, drank a glass of mineral water, and smoked five cigarettes. The doorbell rang. She went to the door and peered through the spyhole. She recognized James Lacey's chest, which was all she could see of him.
She put her hands up to her face. She could almost feel the spots.
Agatha backed away from the door. She longed to open it, but not like this, not spotty-faced and in her dressing gown.
Outside, James turned slowly away. He had just decided it was silly to nourish a childish resentment of Agatha because she had made a rude gesture at him, and all that time ago, too. As he approached his cottage, he saw Mary's blonde head turning into the lane. Without thinking why, he quickened his step and plunged into his cottage like some large animal into its burrow, and when his own doorbell rang imperatively a few moments later, he did not answer it, persuading himself that he needed to get down to work.
He was still working on a history of the Peninsular Wars. He switched on his computer and looked gloomily at the last paragraph he'd written. Then he flicked it off and stared moodily at the screen. There was a heading saying simply, 'Case'. That was when Agatha and he had been trying to solve a murder and he had typed out all the facts and had studied them. That had been fun. It had been exciting. Perhaps Agatha was on to something new. He shook his head. No one had been murdered for miles around. Carsely was still locked in its winter's sleep. He wondered uneasily why Agatha had not answered the door. She must have been home because her car was parked outside and smoke had been rising from the chimney. That fellow Roy was staying with her. He had seen them the day before on their bicycles. There couldn't be any romantic interest there. The fellow was too young. Still, in these modern days of toy boys, one could never tell. They were probably having a high old time, laughing and joking while he sat sunk in boredom.
'I don't like Wilson and I don't like Pedmans,' Agatha was saying sourly. 'I loathe fruit and I could kill for a big greasy hamburger.'
'Take a look in the mirror,' retorted Roy crossly, made bitter by diet and the fact that his mission was to get Agatha back to work. 'You've let yourself go. Okay, so you've had a bit of excitement in this place before, but nothing is ever going to happen here again and you may as well make up your mind to it Think of London, Aggie!'
And Agatha thought of London and thought of how odd and alien she felt now on her infrequent visits - London, which had once been the centre of her universe.
'I'm happy here,' she said defiantly. 'All right, I've let myself go a tiny bit, but I'll be back on form soon enough.'
'But Wilson's prepared to offer you eighty-five thousand a year, for starters.'
Agatha's eyes narrowed. 'Wait a bit. You and Wilson seem to have discussed this thoroughly, and knowing what a weak little creep you are, Roy, you probably said, 'Leave it to me. I'll nip down there for the weekend and get the old girl to come around.' You probably bragged as well. 'Oh, Aggie and I are like
This was so nearly exactly what Roy had said that he blushed under his spots and then became furious. 'No, it's not at all what happened,' he screeched. 'The trouble with you, Aggie, is that you wouldn't know a real friend if you met one in your soup. I'm sick of this, sick of this. I'm going up to shave and get packed.'
'Do that,' Agatha shouted after him, 'but watch your spots. In fact, to help you on your way, I'll run you into Oxford!'
An hour later, they set off together on the Oxford road, Agatha driving in a bitter silence. Her stomach wasn't rumbling, it was letting out moans. She hated Roy, she hated Carsely, she hated James Lacey, she hated the whole of the Carsely Ladies' Society, she hated Mrs Bloxby...
She was driving along the A40 as that last name in the catalogue came into her mind. She swerved off the road and parked outside a restaurant.
'So what are we doing here?' demanded Roy, speaking for the first time since they had left the village.
'I don't know about you, but I am going to eat one great big hamburger smothered in ketchup,' said Agatha. 'You can watch me or join me, I don't care.'
Roy followed her into the restaurant and then watched moodily as she ordered coffee and a 'giant' hamburger and 'giant' French fries. Then, in a tight, squeaky voice, he said to the waitress, 'The same for me.'
When the food arrived, they ate their way stolidly through it. Then. Agatha imperiously summoned the waitress. 'Same again,' she said.
'Same again,' said Roy, through a sudden fit of the giggles.
'Sorry I was so bitchy,' said Agatha. 'Can't stand diets.'
'That's all right, Aggie,' said Roy. 'Can be a bit of a bitch myself.'
'And thank Wilson for his offer and tell him I'll think about it. And' - Agatha leaned back and dabbed at her greasy mouth and gave a small burp - 'tell him I would do it for you if I did it for anyone.'
'Thanks, Aggie.'
'Furthermore, I'll run you all the way to London if you'll join me in ordering a large amount of chocolate cake with chocolate sauce and ice cream.'
'You're on.'
When they left the diner they were laughing and giggling as if they had been drinking instead of eating. They
