REGINALD HILL
DEATH OF A DORMOUSE

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by

Methuen London Ltd 1987

under the author’s psuedonym Patrick Ruell

Copyright © Patrick Ruell 1987

Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780586205464

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2015 ISBN 9780007394739

Version: 2015-09-15

Dedication

This one for Billy and Choc – who else?

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One

1

2

3

4

Part Two

1

2

3

4

Part Three

1

2

3

4

5

Part Four

1

2

3

4

Part Five

1

2

3

4

Part Six

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Part Seven

1

2

3

Part Eight

1

2

Part Nine

1

2

Part Ten

1

Keep Reading

About the Author

By Reginald Hill

About the Publisher

Epigraph

When one subtracts from life infancy

(which is vegetation) – sleep, eating, and swilling

– buttoning and unbuttoning – how much remains of

downright existence? The summer of a dormouse…

BYRON: Journal (December 7th 1813)

Prologue

She was lying on a bare mattress in a darkened room. Her wrists and ankles were bound, but this was an unnecessary refinement. In her mind she had been here many times before and knew there was no escape. One strip of light there was which could not be blinked away. It lay on the floor, seeping in beneath the door, and beyond that door on bare stone flags she could hear the sound of footsteps getting nearer.

She lay as still as the mouse which huddles in its cornfield nest, and hears the approach of the coulter, and knows what it means, but does not know how to fly.

Nothing remained in her life, no spur to action, no prick of hope. Nothing of past, present or future touched her life, only that crack of light beneath the door and the footsteps which were approaching it.

She had been waiting for them all her life. They belonged to the secret police who strike with the dawn; to the cruel rapist who lurks in the shadows; to the man she had loved, come here to kill her.

Now they were close. Now the line of light beneath the door was broken by a growing shadow.

Now the footsteps halted.

Slowly the door handle began to turn. Slowly the door swung open. In the threshold loomed a figure, bulky, still, menacing.

Now it was in the room and advancing.

Her mouth gaped wide as her desperate lungs drew in one last, long, ragged breath …

Part One

Wee sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,

O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!

BURNS: To a Mouse

1

‘Trudi? Trudi Adamson? My God! Trudi, is that really you?’

‘Well, it’s me anyway,’ said Trudi.

‘Where’re you ringing from? Vienna? You’re so clear!’

‘No. Not Vienna. Sheffield.’

‘Sheffield. You mean Sheffield Yorkshire?’

The note of Celtic incredulity made Trudi laugh. Perhaps this had been a good idea after all.

‘If there’s another, please tell me. I’d probably prefer it.’

‘But what are you doing in Sheffield?’

‘Living here, Jan. I’ve been living here for three whole days.’

A silence at the other end as though this were too much to take in; then in a perceptibly casual tone, ‘And Trent?’

Trudi laughed. The second time in a minute. Perhaps in a decade? She said, ‘No. I’ve not run away or anything. Trent’s here too of course. That’s why I’m here. He’s been moved again. I thought when we got to the centre of things three years back, that would be the end of it. But evidently not. And this time, I got two days’ notice, would you believe it?’

‘From what I know of Trent, yes. But at least this time, he’s brought you back to England.’

‘That’s right. And naturally I thought, now I’m here and so close, first thing I’ve got to do is ring Jan and fix to see her.’

It was a lie.

The last time the two had talked had felt like the last time ever. Friends since school, they had seen little of each other over the past quarter century as Trudi drifted across the face of Europe in her husband’s wake. But they had kept in touch with fairly regular letters and cards. Then a year ago Janet’s husband, Alan Cummings, had died. They should have returned to the UK for the funeral, but Trent had pleaded a vital business trip. Trudi had fully intended to travel alone, but night after night she had started waking full of terror at the thought of going all that distance without Trent. Agoraphobia was what they had called it all those years ago when she had refused to leave the house after her father’s death. Twice in her marriage the terror had returned. Drugs and psychotherapy had got it under control. But here it was again and Trent had seemed callously indifferent both to her fears and Janet’s grief.

‘Don’t go then. Ring Jan. Tell her you’re sick. She’ll understand.’

She hadn’t. Grief, tension, drink perhaps, had combined explosively. ‘Neither of you coming, is it? Trent was one of his oldest friends! And you, you cow! Who looked after you at school? Me! Who got you your job? Me! Who got you your sodding husband? Me! And now you can’t stir yourself when I need you! Useless sodding bitch!’

The phone had gone down hard. Trudi had written an apologetic letter. There was no reply, nor had her Christmas card been reciprocated that year.

Trudi had resigned herself to feeling this chill on her one old friendship thicken into permafrost. She regretted it, but lacked the energy or the will to resist it. Had Trent urged her to action she might have made a move. But he hadn’t, becoming more and more distant and self-absorbed in the past twelve months.

But it had been Trent who, in the three days since their return to England, had become a passionate advocate of reconciliation. Ring Jan, he urged. You don’t make new friends so easily you can afford to dump old ones.

This was cruel, but he had compensated by adding with a rare smile, Fix up to meet her one day soon. Tomorrow if she’s free. I’ll drive you over. It’s only thirty miles over the hills. Then I’ll come and pick you up at night.

And again as he had left, he had said, Ring Jan. Arrange to meet. It’ll do you good, you’ll see.

Then he had driven away in his rented car, leaving her in their rented house. What had made Trent pick this place she did not know, but she admitted she was biased against it from the start. The move had been so rapid that her own furniture was still in store in Vienna, and the lack of the familiar sights and smells of her comfortable apartment there was a constant irritation, keeping her from that pleasant supineness which was her normal waking state.

In the end, untypically restless, she had gone to the phone and dialled Jan’s number.

And it had been worthwhile! Trent as usual had been right.

But now her naturally fearful view of life, her sense that cups are generally raised only to be dashed, set out to prove that it was as right as Trent.

Janet was speaking again. Putting her off.

‘Trudi, I’m sorry. But I can’t talk now. I’m sorry, but oh, crazy it is, and I should maybe have written, but it’s all happened pretty quickly, like your move, well, not so quickly as that, but quick enough!’

Janet’s Welshness still broke loose at moments of high excitement and hearing it now took Trudi back thirty years.

‘Calm down and tell me what you’re talking about,’ she said.

‘Well, I’m getting married again, aren’t I? Yes, today! Now! This very minute almost. It’s just a registry office job this time, of course. When I heard the phone ring I thought it’s Frank (that’s the unlucky fellow), the bastard’s ringing to call it off. But if I don’t rush, we’ll lose our place in the queue and then it’ll be off whether I like it or not. Oh Trudi, I’m sorry. No guests you see, but if I’d known you were going to be so handy, you could’ve been matron-of-honour or something!’

Here was a reasonable explanation for any oddity of reaction. A year ago she had been abusing her friend on the phone for not attending her first husband’s funeral; now she was having to apologize for not inviting her to her second wedding!

‘Jan, that’s marvellous,’ said Trudi, straining for conviction. ‘Many congratulations.’

‘Thanks. Look, I really must go. Then straight after the ceremony we’re off to the Costa del somewhere for a week. Ring me then, promise? Oh shit. I won’t be here, we’re moving into Frank’s house in Oldham and I can’t recall the number. Here, give me your address and number. I’ll ring you.’

‘Hope House, Linden Lane,’ said Trudi, adding the telephone number.

‘That sounds posh.’

‘It might have been fifty years ago. Now it’s an ancient monument. Thank heaven it’s just on a short lease,’ said Trudi.

‘Oh, we have become choosy in our old age,’ said Janet. ‘Look, I really must go, girl. I’ll be in touch, I promise.’

After she had replaced the receiver, Trudi stood in a confusion of feeling. Trent had been right. It really had felt good to talk to Janet again. But counterbalancing this was a feeling of illogical resentment at her re-marriage. All that hysteria a year ago, and here she was getting married again! No, it wasn’t some awful moral self-righteousness which was bothering her, Trudi assured herself. It was more like simple jealousy. She could hardly expect to get her friend back when she was just starting to share her life with a new husband.

She made a resentful face in the old pier glass hanging behind the phone. Its chipped and peeling gilt frame was symptomatic of this dark suburban villa Trent had brought her to, but perhaps it was too well suited to the picture it now contained. Viennese cooking had turned her dumpy, forty-five years had turned her grey. Only her eyes, clear and brown, belonged to the girl who’d married Trent Adamson a quarter of a century ago. She almost wished they too had turned dull and old and could no longer see so clearly.

The doorbell rang, distracting her from the displeasing image.

The door opened into a glass-sided storm porch. Through the rippled glass she could see a man, flanked by the two ghastly stone gnomes which guarded the main door of Hope House. The man seemed to be in uniform. She opened the outer door and saw he was a young policeman, with his cap in his hand.

That should have warned her. When policemen remove their hats they don’t bring good news. But his accent was so broad and his face so unrearrangeably jolly that it took a little time to realize he wasn’t simply collecting for something.

Slowly she made sense of him.

There had been an accident.

She knew at once that Trent was dead.

She knew it as she sat in the police car on their way to the hospital.

She knew it as she listened to a staff nurse explaining that someone would be along shortly.

She knew it when a soft-spoken man in a blue suit showed her Trent’s tempered steel identification bracelet.

At last, as if worn down by her silent certainty, they too admitted it.

‘I’m sorry Mrs Adamson. I’m afraid that your husband is dead.’

2

A week in Sheffield had been long enough for Trudi to take a strong dislike to the place.

She found it cold, drab and ugly, and the people were not much better. The north of England was almost more foreign to her than anywhere else in Europe. She disliked in particular the way everyone addressed her as ‘love’ or rather ‘luv.’ It felt like an invasion of privacy.

It was only now that she began to realize just how little in truth her privacy was likely to be invaded.

She knew no one. No one knew her. She went home and sat and waited for tears to come. When they didn’t she tried to induce them by going back over her life with Trent, like a video run in reverse. But nothing happened till she went beyond their wedding day and found herself suddenly three months earlier at her father’s funeral.

Now the tears came close. How regressive a thing was grief, she thought. Then the moment was past and her cheeks were still dry.

She took a strong sleeping pill and went to bed.

She awoke to instant remembrance but when she cautiously explored her feelings she discovered a barrier, thin as cellophane round a packet of biscuits, but irremovable without the risk of damage.

So she turned away from feelings and concentrated her thoughts on the bureaucracy of death.

Another policeman came, a sergeant, older, more solemn.

‘Just a formality, luv,’ he said. ‘Just a few details.’

He noted Trent’s full name, his age, his business.

‘This firm he works for. Silver Rider …’

‘Schiller-Reise of Vienna.’ Trudi spelt it out. ‘It’s a travel company. Reise means “journey”. And Schiller is the name of the man who runs it.’

‘Oh aye? German, is it?’

‘Austrian.’

‘And they’ve got an office here.’

‘Well no, I don’t think so,’ said Trudi hesitantly. She felt the officer regarding her dubiously and she pressed on. ‘They’re in most big European cities, of course. But I’m not sure about the UK. Probably that’s what my husband was doing, setting something up. He travelled a lot in his work, looking at hotels, locations, amenities. He used to be an airline pilot himself.’

She produced this last statement as if somehow it justified the preceding vagueness about Trent’s work. The sergeant looked unimpressed.

‘Is that right?’ he said. ‘Well, I reckon Sheffield’d be as good a centre as anywhere.’

He did not say for what.

There would, he told her, be a post-mortem; routine after any sudden death.

The facts of the accident were tragically simple.

It had happened a few miles south of the city in the Derbyshire Peak District. The car had been parked at the side of a narrow undulating country road. A fertilizer truck moving at speed had come over a rise some fifty yards behind it. It had been raining earlier in the day. There was muck on the road surface which was long overdue for repair after the previous bitter winter. The driver had braked, the truck had skidded, caught the parked car from behind and driven it a hundred yards before slamming it into a telegraph pole. The truck driver had been flung out of his cab.

‘Lucky for him,’ said the sergeant, perhaps in search of some consoling circumstance. ‘Old farmer working in the fields saw it all. Said the car went up like a bomb. Fractured the tank likely. And he seems to have been carrying some spare fuel in a jerry can in the boot. Probably for his scooter.’

‘Scooter?’

‘Aye. We found the remains of one of them foldaway motor-scooters in the boot. Didn’t you know he had one?’

‘No,’ said Trudi. ‘I didn’t know. Perhaps he hired it with the car.’

‘Aye. Mebbe. Well, one thing, Mrs Adamson, it must’ve been quick.’

In support of this assertion he educed the fact that identification had only been effectable through the number of the hired car and the name on the fireproof bracelet.

Realizing too late that these considerations were as likely to aggravate as to ease pain, the well-meaning sergeant hopped from the past to the future, pointing out that the police would be swift to establish the extent of the truck driver’s responsibility as soon as the man came out of hospital.

‘Shock; broke his collarbone and a few ribs falling out of his cab; and he got pretty badly scorched too. Well, he would. Like an inferno. Burnt the telegraph pole like a Yule log, brought all the wires down, you know. Sorry, luv. All I mean is, you’ll want to get your insurance company working on this. And your solicitor too, I shouldn’t wonder. You’ve got someone to help you with all this, have you? Someone to talk to? Friends?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Trudi, with dismissive certainty.

She thought of Janet in distant Spain. There was no one else to think of, but there was no way of contacting her even if she wanted to. It was bad enough working out who to contact in Vienna. Friends? She couldn’t think of anyone close enough to require a personal notification. Shyness, agoraphobia, call it what you will, but a woman who gives the impression that the end of any social occasion can’t come soon enough doesn’t attract friendship. Consciously or unconsciously, Trent had encouraged her isolation, rarely bringing people home, rarely involving her even in business entertainment. Herr Schiller, the head of the firm, was the only one of Trent’s senior colleagues she had met more than a couple of times socially. She had not much liked the old man, but he had seemed to take a benevolent interest in Trent’s career and for the sake of her husband she had put on her best social face. It seemed to have worked, for Trent had risen close to the top. But Schiller was old now, semi-retired and invalid, and it would be no kindness to contact him direct. In the end, she sent a telegram to Schiller-Reise’s head office and left it to them to pass on the news where and how they saw fit.

By the day of the funeral, there had been no response, and the vicar in the cemetery chapel was clearly disturbed to be faced by a congregation which, bearers apart, was divided evenly between the quick and the dead.

But before the service started, the door opened and a man came in. He had a narrow intelligent face which was hard to put an age on, particularly as the eye was diverted by his hair which in a woman would have been called beautiful, worn rather longer than was fashionable, and swept back in powerful waves of rich black, becomingly tinged with grey. His elegance was underlined by his clothes which were of such immaculate manufacture that the professional bearers shifted uneasily in their shabby mourning.

He came straight to Trudi, stooped over, took her hand and said in German, ‘My dear Mrs Adamson, what a tragedy! What a loss! Believe me, I am truly devastated.’

It was only at this point that Trudi recognized Franz Werner, her husband’s, though not her own, Viennese doctor. She hardly knew the man, certainly did not know his relationship with Trent went beyond the professional to the extent of flying eight hundred miles to catch his funeral.

This was explained to some extent as they followed the coffin out of the chapel. Perhaps aiming at a therapeutic distraction, he told her in a reverential whisper that he had been on the point of departing from Vienna to attend a conference in London when he had heard the news.

‘I admired your husband greatly. I am proud to think I was his friend as well as his physician. So I rearranged my schedule in order to be here.’

‘That was kind,’ said Trudi.

They were approaching the open grave.

‘We will talk later,’ said Werner.

What about? wondered Trudi, who was finding it very hard to believe that this brass-handled box contained her husband. Her husband. Who was he? What had he been? She concentrated hard upon his image but found that somehow her knowledge seemed to stop round about their wedding day. Up till then, there were plenty of people willing to fill in on Trent’s origins. East-ender, orphan, Barnardo boy who had grabbed with both hands the opportunity offered by the war to advance himself. He had made per ardua ad astra his own personal motto, his best man, an old RAF chum, had said at the reception. And he had finished his drunkenly risqué speech by saying, ‘One thing the boys always said about Trent, you might not trust him with your wallet or your wife, but by Christ, old Trent was the chap you wanted to fly with. He always came back!’

Well, old Trent wasn’t coming back this time.

As though in confirmation of her irreverent thought, the vicar was scattering earth on the coffin. She was not listening to his words and it took a slight pressure from Werner’s hand to tell her it was all over.

But not quite. As she turned away, she saw a bright red Fiat Panda, with a long pennant bearing the name of a hire firm streaming from its aerial, come rocketing through the cemetery gates. It halted on the narrow driveway and a long, slim, blonde woman in her thirties got out and came running towards Trudi.

She reached her, embraced her.

There were tears streaming down her face.

‘Oh Trudi, mein’ liebe Trudi! Es ist schrecklich, ganz schrecklich.’

‘Hello, Astrid,’ said Trudi Adamson.

3

Astrid Fischer had been Trent’s personal assistant during the whole of his time in Vienna. She was a striking woman, full of nervous energy. Her bright blonde hair was matched with smoky-blue eyes and the kind of skin which would stick at twenty-nine for at least another decade.

She was the only one of Trent’s colleagues Trudi knew at all well, apart from Manfred Schiller, the head of the firm, and even this closeness was only relative. But a couple of years earlier, perhaps in an attempt to rekindle her own almost extinct emotional fires, Trudi had gone through a period of intense jealousy concerning Astrid. There had been no material cause of it, she had never said anything to Trent, and the flame had died as rapidly as it ignited, dowsed by trust, indifference, or fear, she didn’t care to find out which. But jealousy’s the next best thing to friendship and for a moment she felt genuinely moved by the woman’s appearance.

Werner was shaking her hand.

‘I must go. Already I’m late,’ he said. ‘Again, my deepest sympathy.’

Astrid whispered, ‘Who’s he?’

‘Trent’s doctor. It was nice of him to come. I thought he would stay longer though.’

Astrid seemed to take this as an invitation and accompanied Trudi back to Hope House. Trudi did not mind. In fact she found herself almost pleased at last to have a partner in mourning.

They sat in the kitchen whose gaudy surfaces best reflected the brittle blank of Trudi’s feelings, and drank whisky.

‘I wasn’t really awake when he left that morning, you know. He kissed me goodbye. He didn’t always, sometimes but not always. He said he’d try not to be late. Then he was gone. I heard the car. I didn’t go out to wave or anything. We were past all that. And that was the last I saw of him, alive or dead.’

‘Alive or …’ Astrid hesitated delicately.

‘I never saw him. He was burnt …’

She felt her voice tremble like a rail at the approach of a train. But it was a long way away. She took a deep breath and described the accident as it had been described to her.

‘I don’t even know what he was doing there!’ she concluded.

‘Why he stopped, you mean?’

‘Presumably he stopped to read his map, stretch his legs, something. No, I mean I don’t know why he was driving around Derbyshire. I don’t even know what we were doing in Sheffield. Why did Schiller-Reise send him here, Astrid?’

The girl was regarding her uneasily and Trudi, guessing at the cause of her unease, said, ‘It’s all right. I can talk about him. Really.’

‘It’s not that. No. Trudi, you clearly do not know, but Schiller-Reise did not send Trent here. No. He had handed in his resignation only a week before he left the country. Trudi, he was no longer working for the company!’

Trudi was dumbfounded.

Astrid said, ‘You knew nothing of this?’

She shook her head slowly and the movement brought back her voice. ‘No. We rarely talked about his job. He didn’t want to … or perhaps I didn’t want … but we didn’t talk … The move was sudden, but then we’d made sudden moves before. When we came to Vienna from Milan, that was quick. Well, this was even quicker, but not so quick that … though it’s true when I saw where he’d brought me, I thought of the other places we’d lived, the apartments, the cities, and compared with this …’

Her gesture took in the room, the house, the suburb, the city.

Oh God! she suddenly thought. I’m a widow and I’m complaining about the domestic arrangements.

She said quite sharply, ‘Astrid, if Trent had left Schiller-Reise, what are you doing here?’

Astrid said, ‘I was on holiday in London. I had to ring the firm on a personal matter. When I heard of Trent’s death, I was dumbstruck! I asked about the funeral. They knew when it was, but didn’t seem to know if anyone was going from the company. This made me very angry. It was not a proper way to act. If Herr Schiller had still been in charge … but I’m sure you must have worked out that if Herr Schiller had still been in charge, probably Trent would not have left.’

Trudi shook her head.

‘I didn’t realize Herr Schiller was no longer in charge,’ she said.

‘It’s not official. Technically while he’s still alive … but he’s a very sick man, you knew that?’

‘I know he had a stroke just after we came to Vienna and spent a lot of time at his house in the Wachau. The last time I saw him was there, about six months ago. He looked ill, yes, but still alert.’

‘He’s deteriorated greatly in the last couple of months,’ said Astrid. ‘A second stroke. You didn’t know?’

‘No,’ said Trudi, with an indifference not caused solely by her circumstances. Even if her own troubles didn’t exist, she would probably have felt little sympathy for the old man. She had never liked him, despite the many kindnesses he showered on her as Trent’s wife. Something about the dry voice, the coldness of his skin when he took her hand, the way in which the rarely blinking pale blue eyes never left her face, as though searching for something there that she did not have to give; in short, a sense of a cruelty mingled with his kindness had always repelled her, and she sometimes thought he sensed it though she did her best to keep it hidden.

‘No. I did not know. Trent and I agreed that it was best if he could relax at home and not talk of office matters.’

That was one way of explaining one area of non-communication.

‘Yes. I see,’ said Astrid unconvincingly. ‘In that case, well it’s none of my business, so forgive me for asking, but have you any idea how you stand financially?’

Trudi said in surprise, ‘I don’t know. I’ve not thought. I’ve no idea how much or little there may be.’

‘What I mean is, well, since you do not know about Trent leaving his job, you may be relying on a pension from Schiller-Reise. If Herr Schiller had still been in charge … well, he always seemed very fond of you, Trudi, and I’m sure he wouldn’t have … but it’s the accountants in control now, and I don’t think there will be anything coming …’

She tailed away, embarrassed.

Trudi said brightly, ‘I’m sure Trent made other arrangements. I haven’t looked through his papers yet. Everything will be sorted out eventually, you’ll see. Have some more whisky. You’ll stay the night, of course?’

She tried to make it sound like a casual invitation rather than a plea. This talk of money, or the lack of it, had sent a chill of unease through her which she hadn’t felt before.

‘Of course. You mustn’t be alone …’

‘Don’t let that bother you,’ said Trudi coldly. ‘Please yourself whether you go or stay. It’s not as if we were ever friends or anything … you needn’t feel …’

To her horror she realized she was weeping unrestrainedly, and there were tears too on the perfect skin of Astrid’s cheeks. Now the younger woman took the older in her arms and they wept together. Then they drank some more whisky and wept some more.

When Trudi at last went to bed, she was slightly drunk and the springs of grief felt dried up. She felt as if she had undergone some cleansing, cathartic experience and she would wake in the morning light, calm and resolved and able to cope boldly with the new life that stretched before her.

Instead she woke into a drowning darkness. Gasping for breath, she scrabbled for the bedside lamp, missed it, caught it, knocked it to the floor. Sobbing in panic, she half fell, half crawled out of bed and staggered across the suddenly alien room, crashing into pieces of furniture she could not identify, towards the thick-draped window.

Light! She had to have light! She reached the curtains, flung them apart. Light filtered in, turgid, grey, scarcely able to put an edge on the luxuriant foliage of the neglected garden, but for a moment refreshing and soothing to her desperate soul.

Then she saw him, halfway down the garden, concealed at first by stillness but, once spotted, unmistakable, a solid living presence amidst this rampant vegetation, his face raised towards her window, pale, death-pale in the cloud-strained luminescence from a wild night sky.

She screamed: ‘Trent!’

She tried to raise the window. It was locked. Her strengthless fingers wrestled with the catch. All the time she could hear her voice as though emanating from some separate electronic source in the ceiling screaming, ‘Trent! Trent! Trent!’

The catch moved. But suddenly there was light in the room, bouncing back off the glass and turning the light beyond the window into perfect darkness.

She turned. Astrid stood in the doorway, her hand on the light switch, her face amazed.

‘Trudi, was gibt’s? What are you doing?’

‘It’s Trent: he’s there in the garden. I can see him! I can see him!’

The other woman moved swiftly across the room. Even at this juncture her slim athleticism seemed a reproach to Trudi’s neglected dumpiness. Grasping the window frame, she thrust it upwards and leaned out into the dark night air.

‘See Trudi, there is nothing. There is nobody. See!’

Trudi looked. The trees moved in a gusty breeze, the shrubbery rustled and the long grass on the uncut lawn rippled like the sea. But of any human figure there was no sign.

‘I saw him!’ she insisted. ‘I saw him!’

‘Keep looking, Trudi,’ said Astrid peremptorily. ‘Strain your eyes. Soon you will see anything your mind wants you to see!’

It was true. As she looked the shifting trees and shrubs began to take strange shapes, living, threatening, but none of them human.

Shaken, she turned away from the window.

‘Oh, Astrid,’ she said. ‘I was so certain. I was so certain.’

‘Yes, I know, I know,’ said the Austrian gently. ‘Now you must sleep. Come to bed, come to bed. No, liebchen, do not be afraid. I will not leave you.’

She helped Trudi into bed, then started to slip off her own clothes. She was still fully dressed.

‘I too have been restless, not able to sleep,’ she said. ‘I sat downstairs, listening to the radio. Perhaps it is I who disturbed you. I’m sorry, but now you will sleep. Now you will be safe.’

Stripped to bra and pants, she switched off the light and got into bed beside Trudi whose body tensed at the thought of contact. But Astrid lay quietly on her own side of the bed with a safe space between them. And eventually Trudi fell asleep.

4

Trudi woke the next day to broad daylight and the certainty that something inside her was dead. She must have given an impression of normality for she observed Astrid slowly relax as the morning wore on. The Austrian woman said she would have to go that evening, but meanwhile she offered her services in getting things sorted out. Trudi agreed, for it was easier than not agreeing.

Swiftly and efficiently, Astrid went through Trent’s papers, discovered the name of the solicitor who had arranged the lease on the house, rang him up, made an appointment for that afternoon. Trudi gave thanks, but felt no gratitude. It all seemed to her mere charade, shadow activities in a shadow world.

The solicitor, who was called Ashburton, was almost a parody of his profession. Small, sharp-nosed, birdlike of movement and voice, he wore a disproportionately large pair of spectacles whose round blanks reflected light like Perseus’s shield. He looked to be close to retiring age, but he seemed efficient enough, taking charge of the papers Astrid gave him and assuring Trudi he would put everything in train instantly.

Trudi thanked him indifferently, shook his hand indifferently, and later kissed and thanked Astrid with the same massive indifference. Only for a brief moment, as the little red car turned out of the drive and Astrid raised her arm beside the fluttering pennant in a gesture of farewell, did Trudi feel something stir in that vast ocean of indifference. Then it was still again.

She went back into the house, sat unmoving for four hours, then rose and went to bed.

Up to the funeral her nights had been dreamless, or at least when she woke up from her unrefreshing sleep she could remember no dreams.

Now instantly she was in the living room of their luxurious flat in Vienna. Trent was standing by the window, gazing out towards the distant view of the great plant-house in the Schönbrunn gardens. She knew he was dead. He slowly turned and reached out his hands to her and she knew if she took them they would be chill and stiff and clammy. He began to move forward with slow dragging steps and she fled to their bedroom, slamming the heavy oak door and turning the key. But she knew it could be no barrier to that relentless pursuer and she crouched helpless on the bed as the slow footsteps approached and the handle began to turn.

She awoke in terror, lay in a straining silence, then slowly wrapped the pain-dulling gauze of her waking indifference around her once more.

This rapidly became the pattern of her existence. Waking, she was safe, but dead. She stayed in or went out as the fancy took her. Outside she felt invisible, anonymous. Inside she sat and watched flickering images on the television screen, drank whisky, ate next to nothing, then went to bed to the only real experience left to her.

One day, Mr Ashburton’s secretary rang and asked her if she could come to see him that afternoon at three o’clock. She said yes, but didn’t go. Ashburton himself rang. She listened to him twittering about wills, pensions, insurance policies – or rather the lack of these things. ‘… just over four thousand in your husband’s current account … nine months’ lease on the house but when this runs out … case for compensation …’

She said thank you and put the phone down.

She could have told him Trent was rich, had always been rich, was not the kind of man to be anything but rich. Everything she had wanted she had had, except that there was not really anything she wanted, except to be safe …

Next day a letter came with the firm’s name on its envelope. She let it lie unopened with all the other mail, mainly junk, which had dropped through the letter box. That day the phone rang at regular intervals from morning to night. In the end, she picked it up and let it dangle over the edge of the table without putting it anywhere near her ear.

That night the dream came as usual. Trent turned, she fled, he followed. She crouched on the bed and watched the door handle slowly turn.

She awoke, and lay bathed in sweat, waiting for the terror to recede and the dull, deadening silence to rise around her.

But this time there was a noise, a real noise. Like a door opening below. Still savouring the relief of escape from her dream, her first reaction was to treat it like all the noises of this so-called real world – people talking, cars passing, wind and weather – which to her were an empty buzz.

But now there was another sound, a sound all too familiar to her straining ears, the sound of the slow tread of feet coming nearer and nearer. She knew in that instant that the ultimate horror had been born and the walking corpse of her husband had at last broken through from her sleeping world to her waking.

She lay quite still, not unable to move but unable to think of anywhere to move to. There was only the window and what help lay there? Her cries into the night air would only reach the ears of her unknown neighbours like the high wail of some restless night creature. And in any case she knew with a certainty beyond faith that when she opened the window, Trent would be there already, standing on the unkempt lawn, his pale face raised towards her.

Now the footsteps were at her door. The handle moved fractionally. She put her hands to her ears and closed her eyes and opened her mouth in a silent cry of terror.

When she opened her eyes, it was broad daylight. She had no recollection of fainting, less of falling asleep, but did anyone ever have such recollections? Anyway, it meant nothing. The crisis had come as she had known it must. Her defences had been breached, the barrier of her indifference lay in ruins. Trent had broken through into her waking life, and the consequences were unthinkable. She was not yet mad, but she could go mad. Grief, terror, guilt, she did not know how to itemize her emotions; all she knew was that she was ready now to give anything for peace. Including life itself.

She sat in the lounge and like a little girl with her birthday sweets she considered her tablets. So she had sat at her father’s feet with a teatray before her on which she counted and classified dolly-mixtures, jelly-babies and chocolate buttons.

The supply of sleeping pills she had brought from Vienna was sadly depleted, but there was a good number of Valium and an assortment of other tranquillizers from her old agoraphobia treatments. A mixture of these washed down with whisky, which she had heard intensified the effect, must surely do the trick.

She started off very slowly, thinking for some reason that she ought to savour the experience. Then a sudden fear struck her that this leisurely approach would give the tablets time to put her to sleep long before she had taken a fatal dose. Panic-stricken she began to take them in twos and threes, gulping them down with mouthfuls of raw whisky. Eventually, with most of the tablets gone, she found she could manage no more. Surely she had done enough. Now there would come that delicious, easy, drifting off into oblivion she longed for.

Time passed, perhaps a little, perhaps a lot, she couldn’t tell. Where she was, it was timeless. Something was definitely happening, some great change was about to take place. But it was not going to be easy, it was not going to be delicious! Her body felt as if it were being racked apart. She was leaving not in peace and quiet but in turbulence and agony. But she had to go. She could hear somewhere last night’s noises again: the door opening, the footsteps approaching, a voice calling her name. She looked up and saw the door handle turning and she willed herself to die.

The door opened; a last spasm convulsed her body. In the doorway stood a woman, middle-aged, strikingly good-looking with a full, sensuous figure and shoulder-length black hair framing a heart-shaped face which was wearing an expression of incredulous horror.

‘Trudi?’ she said. ‘Trudi! For God’s sake.’

‘Janet?’ gasped Trudi. The word brought relief. She double up and vomited over the carpet. Her stomach which had received practically no food for days gladly gave up its mixture of bile and whisky in which lay scattered like daisies on a summer lawn a myriad of little white pills and tablets.

Part Two

Thy wee bit housie, too in ruin; Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin’! An’ naething, now, to big a new ane. O’ foggage green! An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin’, Baith snell and keen!

BURNS: To a Mouse

1

Frank Carter was a reasonable man; reasonably tall, reasonably tempered, reasonably good at his work in a Manchester estate agency.

He tiptoed out of the spare bedroom in which Trudi was lying with her eyes screwed up tight as if to keep out more than just the light. And he asked the reasonable question.

‘How long’s she staying?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Janet. ‘Frank, I’m sorry. I know we didn’t plan starting married life with a non-paying guest, but she’s nowhere else to go.’

‘Hospital; nursing home,’ said Carter, moistening his lips as though at the start of a long list.

‘No good. Look, she needs someone she knows, that one. Always has done, though she’s come on a bit since I first met her, I reckon. God, Frank, you should have seen her at school, little Trudi Shoesmith! She never went out at playtime, special medical permission. If it hadn’t been for her funny name, she’d have been completely invisible. It was her name first made me take notice of her. Janet Evans was so ordinary, I thought! I really envied her being called Trudi, especially when I found out it should really have been Trudi Schumacher!’

‘Schumacher? That’s German, isn’t it?’

‘Austrian. Her father was a Jew, non-practising, but that didn’t matter evidently in 1938. He got out, came to England. I gather her mother died giving birth, so her dad brought her up more or less single-handed. That was half the bother, I reckon. Lots of substitute mums, lots of moving about, and a father who never got over his suspicion that everything in uniform was a storm-trooper and every knock at the door was the Gestapo! It’s no wonder she was such a timorous little thing. Her father changed their name to Shoesmith when he was naturalized, but I reckon he never stopped thinking of himself as a refugee. Anyway, I took little Trudi in hand, didn’t I? Looked out for her at school, got her a job later on, even introduced her to Trent Adamson, though that turned out a mistake!’

‘How do you mean?’ said Carter, puzzled.

‘Well, just that if she’d not met and married Trent, she wouldn’t be here now,’ said Janet, not altogether convincingly.

Trudi, half hearing but totally unresponding to this conversation drifting through the open door, could have told Frank Carter exactly what Janet meant.

Most of what her friend said was true. Before the Evanses moved to Surrey from Cardiff, no one had paid any attention to the slight, pale, self-effacing child with the funny name. Janet Evans on the other hand was instantly the centre of interest. Voluble, impassioned, darkly attractive, she was admired or resented but never ignored. There was no shortage of applicants for the position of ‘best friend’ but to the amazement of everyone she plucked Trudi out of obscurity and gave her the job. Trudi was more taken aback than anyone. Nor was she much assured by overhearing a spiteful peer declare, ‘It didn’t surprise me. What else would a cat look to play with but a dormouse?’

Janet had exaggerated when she said she got Trudi her job. School over, Trudi had found employment as a copy typist in a council office at Staines. Janet had sought the lusher pastures of the West End, but after a couple of years, she had returned to Staines to train as an air hostess at nearby Heathrow. And it was now that, hearing of a well-paid secretarial opening in her company’s airport office, she urged Trudi to apply. How much the full beam of Janet’s charm influenced the office manager was hard to say, but Trudi got the job.

A few weeks later, Janet came into the office just as she was preparing to leave.

‘All right, girl,’ she said. ‘Glad rags on, colour in your cheeks, I’ll pick you up at eight. Be ready.’

‘What? Jan, no, I mean, what …’

‘Don’t play hard to get! I’ve got two lovely men lined up but my other lovely girl’s gone down with flu, silly cow. I need you, lovey, so don’t say no.’

‘But I can’t …’ said Trudi, panic-stricken.

‘Can’t what? You can drink orange juice, eat a chop, and laugh politely when I kick you under the table, can’t you? Trudi, I don’t ask much, do I? So, please!’

Trudi had given in. The men had been Trent Adamson and Alan Cummings. Cummings, who worked for Customs and Excise, was the younger and livelier of the two, but it was Trent that Janet had in her sights. An airline captain with the wit and the will to move profitably from air to chair when the time came, he was in Heathrow terms a great catch. It was only to be expected that he would take Jan home.

‘But all he wanted to do was talk about you!’ said Janet the next day in mock pique. ‘Perhaps he’s a secret mouse-fancier!’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Trudi, flustered. She had no desire to be fancied by Trent or any man. The previous night Alan Cummings had made a token pass and she had literally run away from him. It had not been her father’s intention that his distrust of authority and uniform should have been communicated so strongly to and extended so comprehensively by his daughter, but bringing her up single-handed had made his influence paramount and given his over-anxious warnings, both political and sexual, the force of divine law.

A week later Trudi was dumbfounded when Trent came into the office and gravely asked her for a date. She refused. He wasn’t put off. Janet’s pique soon ceased to be mock, but her sense of realism eventually prevailed and she started urging her friend to grab her chance with both hands.

Trudi was simply bewildered. She did not feel she had anything to offer a man like Trent. More importantly, he had nothing to offer her. She was happy to contemplate a life living at home, looking after her father.

And then one evening everything changed. Walking home from school in the November fog, her father was knocked down by a hit-and-run driver. She sat at his bedside for twenty-four hours and would not believe them when they told her he was dead. She had refused to leave the house after that, even to attend the funeral. There was talk of forcible removal to hospital, but Janet squashed that, moving in with her friend. Then Trent started calling round and it was in his company that Trudi first stepped into the open once more. Few people thought of this as courtship, attributing it to some hitherto unsuspected vein of human kindness in Trent. The question, which only Janet dared put to him direct, was what would happen if and when he withdrew his protective shadow from the little dormouse? Trent’s only reply was a faint smile.

Two months later, he and Trudi got married.

And three months after that, to further amazement, Trent gave up his prestigious job and secure future, and went to work for a Swiss-based charter company trading out of Zürich. The Adamsons moved to Switzerland, the first step in a twenty-five-year separation from England which was to see them living in some of the most glamorous cities in Europe. Not that it mattered to Trudi, not in those early years anyway. Home was where Trent said it was. That was all that mattered.

Janet, meanwhile, lovely, lively Janet for whom the sky always seemed the limit, married Alan Cummings, had a couple of quick kids, and when promotion took her husband up to Manchester’s fast-developing international airport, she settled down stoically to a life of middle-class obscurity in the depths of Cheadle Hume.

‘I think it’s time I moved out,’ said Trudi.

‘Good Lord. Why?’

A month had passed. Slowly Trudi had returned to normality. The bad dreams persisted, but she had begun to feel perfectly safe in the day. Then that same morning, lying in bed enjoying the pale gold of the autumn sunlight on her window, she had suddenly recalled in its entirety that overheard conversation of her first day here. Savage resentment of Janet’s condescending interference had rapidly cooled to a general embarrassment that required instant action.

‘I’ve been here ages. I can’t impose on you for ever.’

‘Impose! We love having you, really.’ She sounded persuasively sincere.

‘You’ve both been marvellous,’ said Trudi. ‘But when Frank married you, he didn’t expect to get landed with another fat old widow.’

‘Another?’

‘Oh God, Jan, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean …’

But Janet was just laughing with the confidence of one who knows that all a few extra pounds have done to her figure is add a certain sensuous roundness to its always attractive contours.

‘Forget old, girl!’ she commanded. ‘We’re in our prime, you’d better believe it. As for fat, well, I can tell what you mean by the size of those clothes of yours. But have you taken a look at yourself lately? You haven’t been eating enough to keep a dormouse healthy! Take that blouse off. It’s like a surplus parachute anyway. Now take a good look in that mirror. Not much fat there, is there?’

Trudi didn’t reply. She was regarding with fascinated horror what she must surely have seen but somehow not managed to register. Her shoulder bones stood out like a fashion model’s and against her louvred ribs hung tiny breasts like deflated balloons left over from some long-forgotten party. This was how she had looked at nineteen. A quarter of a century of crème patisserie had been stripped off her in a month.

‘Oh God, Jan, what a mess I look!’

‘That’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard you say. Right, here’s what we do. You want to leave? OK. As soon as we get you looking like a human being again, you can go. That includes getting you back on a decent diet. We don’t want you putting up two stone overweight again, but we don’t want you anorexic either! Deal?’

‘Deal,’ said Trudi, still staring at herself. For some unfathomable reason, it occurred to her she was now as slim as Astrid Fischer.

It took another three weeks. Frank, with an end in view and perhaps some guilt in mind, was kindness itself, and when the time came Trudi hugged him tearfully in farewell.

‘It’s high time you were going,’ said Janet grimly as they drove away in her Ford Escort. ‘Another week and you’d have been giving that randy old devil ideas.’

Trudi looked down with undiminished surprise and pleasure at her new, slim body clad now in tight-fitting cords and sweater.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘You’ve been right so far, Jan. I’m not fat, and I’m not old, well, not so very, but …’

She felt her brief mood of happiness already slipping from her and when Janet prompted her with a ‘but what?’ she burst out, ‘Yes, that’s it. But what? But what am I? I need a new me inside as well as outside. Inside, I’m just lost. Bewildered. I feel useless. Jan, help me to stop feeling useless, then you’ll really have done me some good!’

Janet slammed on the brakes as she changed her mind about jumping some lights on amber. An old blue pick-up with a long double radio aerial almost ran into her, but the driver with surprising restraint refrained from blowing his horn.

‘For God’s sake!’ Janet exploded. ‘If you’re useless, then what does that make the rest of us? I mean, what’s the difference between your contribution to the big mad world and mine?’

Trudi said with a quiet vehemence, ‘You’ve had a real life, I’ve just lived in a kind of cocoon. You’ve brought up children, worked for a living, and I bet you didn’t need to look back twenty-five years for a friend when Alan died. You had a real life to put back together, family and friends to give it a framework. Me, I’ve been like a dormouse in an old teapot that Trent made comfortable for me. He’s gone, the teapot’s shattered, and there’s no way I can put it together again. That’s what I mean by useless. Kaput!’

Janet did not reply for a while, concentrating on her driving. But when the houses began to fall behind them and they were properly out in the country, she said quietly, ‘Trudi, I don’t want to get into any scar-trading competition with you, but just to set the record straight. All right, I had the kids, but where are they now? Eileen’s settled down in Australia, Tim’s in the merchant navy, sailing God knows where. They came back for the funeral. First time I’d seen them in ages. And I’ve not seen them since. Me and Alan before he died, we were just coasting along, just about tolerating each other. This great useful life you talk about all seemed pretty much of a waste of time, I assure you! Then Alan died. I had friends, OK. And they were kind. But what were they? Couples, mainly. Now I was half a couple. Let me tell you something. Six months go by. After that, if you show any sign of still hurting, you’re a misery guts and ought to pull yourself together. But if you go around smiling, then you’re the merry widow and a menace to all good Christian marriages! So don’t talk to me about a real life. It doesn’t matter what you were before. For most of us, I reckon, being widowed means going right back to GO!’

Trudi considered this.

‘But it was different for you,’ she said obstinately. ‘You did know people, you did have friends, you did have a social life to build on. I mean, you were able to get around and meet people, weren’t you? You met Frank! It wasn’t as if you had to advertise for him, was it?’

Janet glanced assessingly at her friend and then began to laugh.

‘I thought for a second you were being nasty there, but it’s not your style,’ she said. ‘Listen, want to know a secret? Something I’ve not even hinted at to all these so-called friends you’re so envious of? Here goes then. You’re right, I didn’t have to advertise for Frank exactly. But I did the next best thing. I met him through a dating agency, that’s how!’

Trudi regarded her incredulously.

‘What’s up, girl? Cat got your tongue?’ mocked Janet. ‘Let me spell it out. Me with my hectic social life you so envy, I went along and filled in a form, and I paid my money, and I waited!’

‘Oh, Jan.’

‘What’s that mean, disapproval? Pity? I don’t accept either. It was the best move I ever made. I got just what I needed out of it. Frank. We’re going to be very happy.’

‘Yes,’ said Trudi. ‘I can see that.’

She tried to speak brightly, approvingly, but didn’t feel that she succeeded. Janet glanced at her doubtfully, as if already regretting making the confidence.

They drove on in silence. The car was now beginning the winding uphill climb which would take them over the Snake Pass and down into Sheffield.

Behind them, the old blue pick-up drove in silence too.

The house was cold and unwelcoming and smelled of damp. There was a scattering of mail on the hall floor, mostly junk. Trudi went through it as Janet busied herself lighting the central heating boiler and making a cup of tea.

There were two letters from Austria, one from Astrid Fischer saying she had contacted Trent’s Viennese lawyers, but there was no record of a will or of any unrealized assets. She ended with affectionate good wishes and an offer to do anything else she could to help Trudi. The second letter was from the head office of Schiller-Reise. It expressed formal regret at the news of Trent’s death, so soon after the termination of his long and highly valued connection with Schiller-Reise. It made no mention of money, or the lack of it. And it was signed on behalf of Manfred Schiller, the firm’s founder and head.

Janet read it and said, ‘Bastards! I thought you said this fellow Schiller liked Trent and made a fuss of you both.’

‘That’s right,’ said Trudi. ‘But he’s ill. He probably doesn’t know anything about all this. Anyway, I never liked him and I don’t want favours.’

‘Pride is it, girl?’ murmured Janet. ‘You’ll learn.’

There was also a letter from Mr Ashburton, the solicitor. Despairing of ever getting Trudi to his office, he had set out baldly the state of her affairs as he saw them. They were not good. In Trent’s current account, there was about four thousand pounds which, unless there were insurances, bank accounts, or realty so far undisclosed, was the sum total of her inheritance. Hope House was rented on a nine-month lease, he pointed out. At the end of that time she would have to find and pay for alternative accommodation. He ended by suggesting that her main hope of improving her situation probably lay in a compensation claim against the fertilizer company whose truck was involved in the accident. He looked forward to hearing from her.

‘I bet he does!’ said Janet. ‘Leech! Are there any insurances or other accounts?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Trudi. ‘Astrid looked through his papers.’

Janet snorted her Celtic opinion of Teutonic interference and set about examining the contents of Trent’s personal files herself. In fact she soon had to admit that either Astrid or Trent himself had left everything in perfect order, except that everything meant nothing.

‘This is your life, girl,’ she joked finally, pointing at the papers neatly arranged on the dining room table.

It was an unintentioned cruelty, but Trudi’s eyes filled with tears as she looked at the papers. Here was her life, traced in bank accounts. The Midland in Staines where they had lived after their marriage; Neue Bank Schmidt-Immermann of Zürich where they had moved after Trent left his job at Heathrow; Société Générate de Banque in Brussels where they had gone when he had stopped flying and started working full time for Schiller-Reise; and the Banco di Sancto Spirito in Milan where they had been when Herr Schiller summoned Trent back to be one of his close aides in Vienna.

Janet had not noticed Trudi’s tears and she brushed them away furtively as her friend went on, ‘Everything’s in such perfect order there’s not a crack anywhere for a handful of loose change to slip into! See, account closed in Zürich, balance transferred to Brussels, and so on right through to Sheffield. Always about the same, taking inflation into account. Wasn’t much of a saver, your Trent, was he? Long as he had a few bob behind him, he clearly liked to spend the rest!’

‘Four thousand’s more than a few bob,’ said Trudi defensively.

‘Try telling that to the butcher when you can’t pay his bills in six months’ time, my girl!’ said Janet derisively. ‘You’d better go and see this lawyer fellow, Mr Bloodsucker or whatever his name is. Ring him now. No, I’ll ring him and make sure he fits you in tomorrow morning, then I can go with you.’

‘You’re staying?’ said Trudi. She hadn’t dared mention it earlier.

‘Just tonight, girl. After that, you’re on your own,’ said Janet severely.

They dined that night on tinned ham and half a bottle of Riesling which Janet had brought with her. Afterwards, though it was still early, Trudi announced, ‘I’m going to bed.’

As she started up the stairs the phone rang. She turned and looked at it. Janet came out of the lounge but halted when she saw Trudi was still there. The phone rang on.

‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’

With a sigh, Trudi stepped back down and picked up the receiver. Her reflection looked back at her from the gilded pier glass. The peeling frame no longer seemed to fit so well. This was a stranger setting out on a long and difficult journey.

‘Hello?’ she said, and listened.

After a few moments she put the phone down.

‘Well?’ said Janet.

‘Nothing. Must have been a wrong number.’

Trudi walked past her friend with great control and began once more to climb the stairs.

To show anything more, to show her inward agitation to Janet, was impossible. Her reaction, whether of doubt or belief, would certainly be that her friend was not fit to be left alone. Eventually her irritated anxiety might even make her insist that Trudi should extend her stay in Oldham.

That was what was really impossible, the shame and embarrassment of being carried back like a sick child to spoil Frank’s sense of relief and release.

Only time would show whether it was more impossible than remaining here where the phone could ring and out of a great hollow silence like the space behind the stars a voice, faint as a false dawn yet in accents as familiar as day, could breathe, ‘Trudi … I’m watching you …’

2

‘What about personal property, Mrs Adamson?’ said Ashburton. ‘Apart from the usual things like watches, cuff links, I mean. Did your husband collect stamps, for instance? Rare coins? Old china?’

‘No way!’ said Janet confidently. ‘But I’ll be going through everything with Mrs Adamson before I go back this afternoon.’

Janet had done most of the answering but Ashburton had courteously persisted in directing his questions at Trudi.

She felt stupid to be letting her friend answer for her, but her thoughts kept on drifting elsewhere. The truth was that it was not till here and now, listening to the little solicitor drily outlining her puny resources as he saw them, that she had really begun to understand the truth of her position. She had never thought of Trent and herself as wealthy, but she realized now this was because she had never had to think about such things at all. Not once from the start of their marriage had he ever denied her anything she wanted on the grounds of expense. Not that she had been extravagant, but as even the gentlest of streams where it finds no resistance will over time carve itself out a wide and wider bed, so her expenditure over the years had spread and never found a limit.

Now it sounded as if she was going to be penniless. This was a dawn knock she had never even imagined in her most fearful wakings. She felt panic fingering her throat and desperate to deny it she cut right across Mr Ashburton’s next sentence, saying, ‘He collected books.’

‘Books?’ echoed the solicitor.

‘Trent?’ exclaimed Janet.

‘Yes. Well, not books generally. George Orwell’s books.’

‘Orwell? What did Trent have to do with Orwell? I never saw him reading anything thicker than a newspaper, and then he was usually doing the crossword!’

Her friend’s incredulity was easy to understand. Trent was not a bookish kind of man in any sense, but at some point during his RAF career when he had run out of crosswords to while away pre-sortie longueurs, he had picked up something of Orwell’s and been hooked.

‘I asked him once why he liked Orwell,’ said Trudi. ‘He said he was a man who understood the rottenness of things. I’m not sure what he meant.’

Janet shook her head in disbelief, but Ashburton was not to be diverted from the point.

‘You say, collected? First editions, you mean?’

‘Yes. I don’t know. I expect so.’

‘They should be worth a little,’ said the solicitor, making a note. ‘Now, is there anything belonging to you still in Vienna?’

‘Only our furniture,’ said Trudi. ‘The move happened so quickly, we just put it in store.’

‘Aha. Valuable, would you say? Antique, perhaps?’

‘There are some nice pieces. I liked to buy nice things and Trent …’

Her voice broke. Janet looked indignantly at Ashburton. He went smoothly on. ‘Then it seems that we must look to the courts for any substantial increment to your income. On the surface we have a good case. Stationary car, speeding truck, an independent witness. Unfortunately there has been a development. The witness, Mr Harold Brightshaw of Six Mile Farm near Grindleford, Derbyshire, has had a stroke. He is an old man, almost eighty, and it is possible he will not recover. He made a statement of course, but there is a vast difference between a statement in the hand and a witness in the box.’

‘What about the truck driver?’ demanded Janet.

‘Still in hospital. The police have not yet decided what to charge him with. In any case, he will certainly not be keen to give evidence against himself, and his firm can afford excellent legal advice.’

‘They can afford excellent damages too, then!’ exploded Janet.

‘No doubt. But litigation is costly, Mrs Adamson. As things stand, I would recommend looking for an out-of-court settlement.’

‘Would you?’ said Janet. ‘Mrs Adamson doesn’t actually need to instruct you in this matter, does she?’

‘No, of course not,’ said the solicitor, unoffended. ‘Mrs Adamson?’

He regarded her with the alertness of a sparrow waiting for a crumb. He was in many ways a slightly ridiculous figure, but she sensed in him a sparrow’s strength and tenacity too.

‘How did you come to act for my husband?’ she asked.

‘I was recommended, I believe.’

That decided Trudi. No one made recommendations lightly to Trent.

On the way back, Janet said, ‘Are you sure about that little creep, girl? He looks as if a good belch would blow him away.’

‘I like him,’ said Trudi. She felt quite proud of her certitude, but her pretensions to self-reliance quickly evaporated as they started going through Trent’s things and she recognized there was no way she could have done this without Janet’s presence.

Janet knew someone who ran a nearly new shop in Manchester and she offered to take Trent’s clothes and also a large proportion of Trudi’s which were untake-inable.

‘Pity he didn’t spend more on the life cover and less on the mohair,’ observed Janet as they sorted out the suits. ‘Hello, this is a bit out of character, though. Gardening clothes, is it?’

She held up an anonymous brown Terylene suit which bore the label of a down-market chain store. She went through the pockets swiftly and efficiently.

‘Keys,’ she said, producing a ring. ‘Spares by the look of ’em. Bright and shiny. Small change. Two pounds sixty p. But hello! This is better.’

‘This’ was a wallet.

‘Fifty quid in notes. Handy. And a couple of bankers’ cards. Better chop those up when you’ve a moment.’

She laid the money on the dressing table and tossed the keys and wallet into the shoe box which contained items like watches, cuff links, etcetera.

‘Now. What else? Shoes. Plenty of those. We’ll give ’em to Oxfam. Hand made by the look of them. Strange to think some poor sod out in the bush will probably end up with more than a year’s income on his feet. Now, what’s that leave?’

‘There’s the books,’ said Trudi.

She led the way downstairs into the lounge. The Orwell volumes were in a glass-fronted cabinet. Janet peered at them dubiously.

‘Can’t imagine that lot being worth much.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Trudi. ‘That last night he was talking about having them valued. He said there was a dealer in Manchester he’d heard about and he might take them across when he drove me over to see you. He was very keen for me to see you again.’

‘Was he now?’ said Janet neutrally. ‘At least it shows he really was hard up if he was thinking of selling. Shall we take a look?’

She tried the door. It was locked.

Trudi went on as though her friend had not spoken. ‘And later that night, or rather early in the morning, I came downstairs. Trent had been sleeping badly since we came here. He often got up during the night and usually I pretended to be asleep. This time I came downstairs myself after a while and he was sitting with one of his books on his lap. Perhaps he was worried about money and thinking of selling. All he said was that he couldn’t sleep.’

‘Are you going to unlock this thing or not?’ said Janet brusquely, attempting to interrupt the growing melancholy of the mood.

‘No!’ said Trudi with sudden spirit. ‘I’m not. I’ve got nothing of Trent’s that’s really personal except these books. I haven’t even got a photograph. He hated having his picture taken. So I’m not going to part with the books unless I have to.’

Her spurt of independence was short-lived, and when the time came for Janet to leave she was hard put to conceal the depth of her panic.

‘Chin up girl,’ said Janet, trying to be businesslike. ‘I’m just at the end of the phone. And we’ll meet every week on Wednesdays like we arranged. I’ll drive over in the morning, it’s only a step.’

Trudi clasped her tearfully and said, ‘Oh Jan, thank you, thanks for everything.’

Alone in the house, she waited for the tears to flow freely. To her surprise they didn’t. Now she realized how excellent Janet’s psychology was in arranging a regular meeting. Wednesday was already feeling like an oasis, distant but reachable. Anything vaguer and she would have felt totally adrift.

Curiously, the first week ran by quickly and easily. She spoke with Janet on the phone nearly every night, going over her progress through the timetable which she and her friend had worked out. Interviews at the DHSS and at a job centre were large single features, brisk morning walks and the pursuit of a diet which would build her up without fattening her up were part of the regular pattern which was aimed at holding her life together. The officials at the DHSS made it quite clear that she was entitled to nothing until she became destitute; her interviewer at the job centre was not sanguine at the prospect of finding work for a middle-aged typist who had not been employed for twenty-five years. Not even Trudi’s claim to have fluent German and French and passable Dutch and Italian impressed him. ‘Not much call up here,’ he said dismissively.

Time passed. So did her money and there was still no sign of a job. Soon it was November. But it was not till the tinsel glitter of Christmas began to brighten the shops that she realized how quickly the weeks had gone. It had been high summer when Trent was killed. She had been a widow for nearly four months.

This awareness of the passing of time was not sudden, but it was significant. It brought new pain which made her realize how much she had been flying, to use Trent’s phrase, on automatic pilot. It also brought her new life into sharper focus in all kinds of ways.

Not the least significant of these was the certainty that she was being watched.

She glimpsed him twice, once reflected in a shop window, and the second, confirming time when she suddenly turned in mid-stride and retraced her steps and saw him plunge into a shop doorway.

He was youngish, balding slightly, with a blond moustache. After that she did not see him again. Her previous indifference to her surroundings must have made him careless till he learnt his lesson.

But she knew he was still there.

She told Janet about him at their next Wednesday meeting, and immediately wished she hadn’t.

‘You don’t believe me!’ she said.

‘Yes, of course I do, girl. I mean, I believe you believe you. But listen, in your state you’ll get ideas … I mean, well, take me, good old solid-state-nerve-circuit me. After Alan’s death, the police asked a lot of questions and some guys from his department came round and I began to feel pretty persecuted I tell you! So I went down there and gave them a row. Christ, they must have wondered what had hit them! Anyway, I must have got a lot of tension out of my system ’cos I went away feeling really good. Only thing was, as time went by, I stopped feeling good and started feeling really stupid! Now the very memory of it makes me blush. What I mean is, if insensitive old me can get neurotic …’

‘Then it’s not surprising that little me who’s halfway there to start with should be positively paranoiac, is that what you mean?’

Janet was taken aback by the vehemence of the response.

‘No, I’m sorry, girl, that’s not what I mean …’

Trudi, suddenly enjoying her insurgency, said briskly, ‘By the way, I may have got a job.’

‘What?’

‘Mr Ashburton rang this morning. Despite what you said about him, he’s really been most helpful. He wants to see me. Something about the case. But he also said he had a client who might be able to use a typist with good linguistic skills.’

‘Well done, girl. But you be careful. Don’t be taken advantage of. Top rates, luncheon vouchers, ask for the lot.’

Janet was seeking to re-establish her ascendancy and Trudi found she didn’t mind too much. Like many a colonial state in the past, she suspected she was in danger of making emotional demands for an independence she did not yet have the resources to support.

‘We’ll see,’ she said, gathering her things together.

‘Hold on, girl. It’s early yet!’ protested Janet in alarm. ‘I’ll give you a lift home, shall I?’

Trudi laughed and said, ‘I’m not walking out in a huff, Jan. It’s just that I’ve got this appointment with Mr Ashburton, remember? I’ll tell you all about it next week.’

She rose and left swiftly. Her appointment was not in fact for another hour, but she felt an irresistible urge to get out of the restaurant and be by herself.

As she left, she had a sense of eyes focused upon her. She didn’t think they were just Janet’s.

3

‘First the bad news,’ said Mr Ashburton. ‘Harold Brightshaw is dead.’

‘Who?’

‘Mr Brightshaw of Six Mile Farm, Grindleford, the witness in the accident case. I told you he had a stroke shortly afterwards. He never recovered, poor chap.’

‘I’m sorry. Does it make a difference?’ asked Trudi.

‘Oh yes. He made a statement but now he can’t be cross-questioned on it. It’s my information that the police will be charging the tanker driver with one of the lesser offences, driving without due care and attention perhaps. That won’t help us, even if he’s found guilty.’

‘Even if?’ exclaimed Trudi. ‘Surely there’s no defence!’

‘There’s always a defence,’ said Ashburton drily. ‘Mud on the road left by Mr Brightshaw’s tractor – a hint there that Mr Brightshaw’s statement might be a little biased. And they’ll use the post-mortem findings too, I’ve no doubt.’

‘What findings? And I thought that the fire …’

She didn’t finish.

Ashburton said gently, ‘Yes, I know. Beyond recognition; but an internal examination was still possible. Would you like some more coffee, Mrs Adamson?’

‘No thanks. Go on,’ said Trudi.

‘Two things then. There was a fairly high alcohol level in the blood stream, just about on the legal limit. And there were present in the coronary arteries, let me see, atheromas, lesions in the arterial wall. In a phrase, coronary arteriosclerosis which eventually could lead to your husband having a heart attack.’

‘But Trent died of his injuries, not a heart attack!’ protested Trudi indignantly.

‘No one will contest that. What the defence will be looking for is some way of suggesting that there was contributory negligence on your husband’s part. If for instance a sudden spasm of pain caused him to stop unexpectedly or a sudden dizziness, say, leaving his car not parked safely on the verge, but slewed across the road …’

‘Because he was drunk, you mean, or sick? I never saw Trent drunk in his life! As for being ill, he was always in the best of health. Surely Mr Brightshaw’s statement doesn’t say his car was slewed across the road?’

‘No, but it doesn’t say it wasn’t.’

‘But the truck driver …’

‘Hitherto I gather his memory of things has been vague. It would not surprise me, however, if now it began to sharpen up,’ said Mr Ashburton. ‘I fear that our hopes of a good out-of-court settlement are fading, Mrs Adamson. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s not right, Mr Ashburton,’ said Trudi angrily. ‘It’s not just the money, though I could do with it, but it’s just not right that people should be able to get away with this sort of thing. What can we do to stop them?’

‘Not much, I’m afraid. Evidence of your husband’s excellent state of health could be useful. Perhaps his last doctor could help there. Why don’t you contact him and get a certificate of some kind? Now, on a happier note, as I told you on the phone, one of my clients, Mr Stanley Usher, a man of many interests, mentioned to me the other day that he’d taken over a small export business and felt in need of some bilingual secretarial help. I mentioned your name to him. It would be part-time and it wouldn’t make your fortune, but if you’re interested …’

‘Yes, I am,’ said Trudi firmly.

‘Good. Here’s the address. Mr Usher will be there now. It’s just a short walk. Down past the cathedral, turn left down the hill, then left again and there you are.’

He handed Trudi a business card. On it was printed in bright red letters CLASS-GLASS with the address underneath in blue and Stanley Usher: Director at the bottom in a flowing black script.

The building she arrived at was under multi-commercial occupancy. Class-Glass was on the first floor. She knocked at the door. A voice called, ‘Enter.’ She turned the handle, stepped inside and stopped dead.

It was like being in a funfair Hall of Mirrors except that here there was no distortion. There was however a fragmentation almost as disturbing from the mirrors which covered every inch of the walls. They came in all shapes and sizes and they all had pictures and words printed on them, some advertising old drinks which had disappeared years ago, others referring to new and up-to-date products.

‘Mrs Adamson? Come in, have a seat. Don’t worry, you’ll soon get used to the mirrors, unless you hate the sight of yourself!’

Stanley Usher was a tall dark man with a spare lean frame and a rather cadaverous face. She put his age at about forty. He was expensively suited in traditional charcoal-grey worsted and the only touch of colour about him came from the two rings he wore on his left hand, one a ruby, the other an emerald. His voice had a slight under-accent which might have been Australian.

Trudi sat on a hard office chair on one side of a typist’s desk which carried a gleaming new electronic typewriter, the sight of which filled her with dismay. She was definitely pre-microchip. Usher sat on the typist’s swivel chair opposite her. The only other furniture in the room was a filing cabinet.

‘Let me explain the set-up, Mrs Adamson,’ said Usher. ‘This job might be owt or nowt, as they say in these parts. Probably the latter. These are hard times. Little businesses are going down like ninepins. What I do is buy them as they tumble, and their prices tumble too, of course! Then I use my own cash and know-how to see if anything can be retrieved from the wreck. If it can’t, tough. I usually make as much as I put in. You follow me?’

‘I think so,’ said Trudi.

‘Great. Class-Glass exports mirrors, these kind of mirrors, ornamental advertising. Only it didn’t. Export many, I mean. So it failed, I bought it. Now I’m using my know-how and continental contacts to see if there’s any life in the corpse, right? What I need is someone who can deal with the mail, in and out. I’ve got a smattering of Frog and I can buy a drink in Kraut, but that’s it. So what I want is this. You come in on Mondays and Thursdays. Open the mail. Translate it. Deal with anything you can deal with. Leave a note and translation with anything you can’t. I’ll be in from time to time. You’ll find letters from me to be translated into the appropriate language, typed, dispatched. OK?’

‘OK. But …’

‘Let’s say forty pounds for the two days, see how we go from there? I’ll get Ashburton to deal with the payment and any paperwork. Let’s see how we go, then even if this folds, there may be something else. Right! Now, let me show you round, not that there’s much to show except for these bloody mirrors!’

‘And what did he show you?’ enquired Janet. Trudi, feeling she had been rather rough on her friend, and also having a favour to ask, had phoned her that same evening.

‘Nothing much. There’s a tiny washroom. A storeroom full of all kinds of mirrors. A filing cabinet, almost empty. And that damned typewriter. I noticed an instruction book in the desk drawer, thank God. I’ll need to spend my first couple of days learning how it works!’

‘You’ll cope, I’m sure,’ said Janet.

For the first time, a certain strain in her friend’s voice registered with Trudi.

‘Jan, are you OK? I mean, you’re not still annoyed about lunch time?’

‘Of course not. No, you’re the one entitled to be annoyed. I know I’m too pushy sometimes. No, the thing is, when I got home this afternoon, I found the house had been broken into.’

‘Oh Janet! How awful.’

‘Well, I’m trying not to make too big a thing of it; I mean, the place was a bit untidy, but he wasn’t one of the dirty ones, thank God. Doesn’t seem to have taken anything either, the police reckon he was looking for money. But even so, it shakes you up a bit.’

‘I bet it does. And me rabbiting on about my job. I’m sorry.’

‘No. That’s really good news, that cheers me up a lot. I look forward to hearing about your new exciting commercial life next Wednesday.’

‘Yes. Oh by the way, I wondered, well, would you mind going for a drive next week? Down into Derbyshire? I thought we could have a bar lunch, my treat.’

‘Why, yes, of course,’ said Janet, slightly puzzled. ‘That would be nice.’

‘Lovely. See you next Wednesday then.’

The following Wednesday was a bright but chilly December day. Janet picked her up at midday and by one o’clock they were tucking into a substantial bar lunch in the small village of Grindleford.

‘I hope you’re not planning an afternoon’s hiking,’ said Janet, refilling their glasses from the bottle of hock Trudi had insisted on buying.

‘No,’ she assured her.

‘Good. Now tell me about the House of Usher!’

There wasn’t much to tell.

‘I spent my first day, last Thursday that was, working out that damned typewriter. On Monday, Usher showed up. There were a few letters to translate and type. And that was it. Fortunately I’d taken a good book along.’

‘And Usher? Did he pounce?’

‘No! He bought me a drink at lunch time though.’

‘Aha!’ said Janet gleefully. ‘You want to watch him!’

‘I don’t think he’s interested in me like that,’ said Trudi slowly.

‘What other way is there?’ mocked Janet.

Trudi smiled but didn’t answer. This time she didn’t need her friend to suggest that she was being neurotic.

After lunch, Trudi surprised Jan by taking charge of navigation, using an os map. Janet followed, with puzzlement which might eventually become protest, the uncertain route laid out for her along a skein of narrow roads, many unclassified. The sun was still bright, but low now in the winter sky, sending long shadows from leafless trees.

Suddenly Trudi said, ‘Stop here!’

Janet brought the car to a halt and Trudi was out of it before she could speak. They were on a straight and undulating stretch of narrow road running between thick hedgerows of hawthorn and blackthorn, alongside which marched a spindly line of telegraph poles. About a hundred yards ahead one of the poles looked newer than the rest and there was a long gap in the hedge, repaired with stakes and wire. Beyond the hedge to the left was a ploughed field rising diagonally with the swell of the ground, like the birth of a wave caught with an artist’s brush.

Trudi walked along the road a little way till she came to an old wooden gate, badly in need of repair, set between two pillars of rough-hewn stone which looked as if they could have been raised there by Druids. She pushed back the gate far enough to let her through and set off across the field, following the rising diagonal.

From time to time she stopped and looked back. The first time she could not see Janet’s car at all. The second time she could see the line of its roof and Janet’s face regarding her with what she guessed was bewilderment. And on her third stop, high up the field, she could see the car and also the long line of the road where it continued its arrow-straight run on the far side of the ridge to another distant crest.

A truck coming down there would be able to reach a tremendous speed, she told herself. Downhill, an empty road ahead, foot on the accelerator, and then the exhilaration of the sudden upward swoop apparently into nothingness over the brow of the ridge on which she stood.

And immediately, panic! No longer an empty road but not very far ahead a stationary car leaving only a narrow passage. The foot instinctively hitting the brake pedal, the wheels locking, the tyres starting to skid across the gleaming muddy surface, and suddenly the steering wheel as useless as a broken rudder in a storm-tossed sea.

She looked up to the sky. It was a mistake, the world began to reel, she felt herself in danger of being shaken off into that cold blue emptiness and her atoms, each one printed with her terror and loss, scattered forever through the universe. She closed her eyes and dug her nails deep into her palms till the earth stood still. Then she turned and walked back down to the car. Janet’s face was full of questions, but when Trudi got in and said, ‘Let’s carry on. Over the hill there should be a track to the left,’ she obeyed silently.

The track was there, a farm road signposted Six Mile Farm.

The track’s surface was rutted and pot-holed and Janet had to concentrate to pick out the least damaging line. Trudi was mentally doing the same and finding it even more difficult. The woman she was going to see would be grieving with a nearer and probably deeper grief than her own. Trudi was suddenly astounded at her arrogance in even thinking of intruding on her at this time. The car was entering a farmyard. She wanted to tell Janet to turn straight round and head back for the road, but it was already too late. The tall stone building had an abundance of small narrow windows, as though the builder lacked the art to make them double and had compensated by making them frequent. As they drove through the entrance, Trudi glimpsed a face pressed against one of these and before the car had come to rest on the cobbled forecourt, the farmhouse door was open and a woman emerged.

Saying to Janet, ‘I won’t be long,’ she got out.

The woman remained in the doorway, for which she was grateful. She wanted to explain her business out of Janet’s hearing.

‘Mrs Brightshaw?’ she said.

The woman nodded. She was tall and muscular, with a weather-beaten face, a sharp chin and nose, steely grey hair and deep-set, watchful eyes. She looked about sixty, or perhaps a well-preserved seventy.

Trudi said, ‘I’m sorry to trouble you at this time, Mrs Brightshaw. I was sorry to hear of your husband’s death.’

‘You knew Harold?’ she said in a flat Derbyshire accent.

‘No,’ Trudi said. ‘Not personally. My name’s Adamson. Trudi Adamson. I don’t know if you recall the accident on the road back there in the summer. Mr Brightshaw was a witness. It was my husband who was killed.’

The woman considered this, then, ‘You’d better come in,’ she said, stepping aside, adding as Trudi went by, ‘What about her?’

Presumably she was referring to Janet.

Trudi said, ‘No, no. She’ll be all right.’

Mrs Brightshaw closed the front door and ushered Trudi into a long, high living room.

Sitting down in an old wing chair before a huge fireplace in which flickered a tiny fire, Trudi said, ‘Look, Mrs Brightshaw, if you don’t feel like talking about your husband, please say so and I’ll go.’

The woman answered, ‘I reckon if you can talk about yours, I can talk about my Harold. And if I don’t feel like it, I’ll shut up. What do you want to know?’

Trudi began to explain and found herself rambling.

Impatiently Mrs Brightshaw said, ‘Let’s get it straight. These lawyers are trying to say your man might’ve had a bad turn and stopped his car sudden like, so it was blocking the road?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And if the court believes that, it’ll affect your compensation?’

Trudi had not mentioned money, and now she reacted against the imputation of a merely mercenary motive.

‘I just want the truth, Mrs Brightshaw,’ she said firmly.

‘Truth! Aye. That,’ said the woman. ‘Did he leave you all right, your man?’

Belatedly, Trudi realized this was the key to whatever the woman could tell her. Shared grief could not bring them together; shared poverty might!

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘He left very little. I’ve taken a job again after twenty-five years.’

‘Oh yes?’ said the woman with a slight sneer. ‘That’d be hard for you!’

‘Yes,’ said Trudi seriously. ‘Not working, but finding work, that’s what’s hard. At my age, in these days.’

The farmer’s widow nodded as if she had at last heard a potent argument. Then she blew her nose, picked up a poker, stirred the tiny fire.

Finally she said, ‘Well, you needn’t worry. He was parked proper all right. As tight up against the hedge as you could ask.’

Trudi found herself as much puzzled as pleased by her emphasis.

‘You’re certain?’ she asked. ‘Your husband told you that?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He did.’

‘And would you make a statement to that effect?’ asked Trudi. ‘In writing I mean.’

Mrs Brightshaw looked suddenly uneasy.

‘Would I have to go to court?’

‘I don’t know,’ Trudi said. ‘To be quite frank, Mrs Brightshaw, I’m not really sure about the law as it applies here. But it would be a great help to me personally, that’s quite certain.’

The woman continued to look so doubtful that Trudi’s surprise began to turn to suspicion.

‘You are quite certain that’s what your husband told you?’ she asked.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t like to think you were just trying to cheer me up,’ said Trudi hesitantly. ‘And …’

‘And, come to think of it,’ said Trudi in a rush, ‘it does sound rather an odd thing for Mr Brightshaw to have been so emphatic about, particularly as he doesn’t seem to have felt it was worth mentioning in his statement.’

The old woman nodded and said, ‘That’s the kind of thing them fancy lawyers would say, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose so. If it came to questioning.’

‘I don’t doubt it would,’ she said fiercely. ‘And I’d have to take an oath?’

‘In court, yes,’ said Trudi, bewildered and by now a trifle uneasy.

‘Then you’d better hear what I would have to tell them, Mrs Adamson,’ she said with an air of decision. ‘Then you can make up your mind. What my husband told me wasn’t what he told the police. Don’t misunderstand me, he didn’t lie, he just kept it simple. He told them he’d no idea how long your man’s car had been stopped on the road when he noticed it. And the crash happened shortly after.’

Trudi’s uneasiness was now a constricting pain beneath her breast bone.

‘Truth was,’ Mrs Brightshaw continued, ‘he’d noticed the car arrive twenty, thirty minutes earlier. Then another car came and stopped behind it. He heard doors slamming. Then he saw someone move from the second car to the first. It was a woman. Harold was working with his tractor you understand, not just standing gawking. But a bit later on, he saw the second car move off. And it wasn’t long after that that the accident happened.’

Trudi made two false starts before she could speak.

‘Why didn’t he say anything about this in his statement?’ she managed in the end.

‘He was a kind man, my Harold,’ said the older woman softly. ‘He reckoned that if there was nothing in it, the other driver would come forward soon enough. But if it was what it looked like, there was no point in adding to your troubles by letting all and sundry know your husband was parked out in the countryside to meet his fancy woman.’

She raised her eyes and regarded the younger woman steadily.

‘But there’s one thing for sure,’ she said. ‘A man doing that doesn’t leave his car lying halfway across the road.’

Trudi took a deep breath. She was almost too bewildered to be distressed. She heard herself saying wretchedly, ‘It was definitely a woman, was it?’

‘It was,’ said Mrs Brightshaw. ‘He told me he could see her head clearly above the hedge. She must have been a tall lass. Blonde hair he said, I remember that. Bright blonde.’

A tall lass. Bright blonde hair. Trudi felt the information register. Then she asked, ‘And her car? Did he say anything about that?’

‘Yes, he did, as a matter of fact. He said it was a little red thing with a kind of flag on its aerial. He mentioned how small it was, particular, because that seemed likely the reason this blonde lass went to the other, which was bigger. More room for that sort of meeting. He wasn’t making a joke, just giving me his reason for keeping mum. When the police came for his statement, he asked if there was a wife and when they told him yes, that made up his mind. He thought you’d be hurt enough. Like I say, he was a kind man.’

‘Yes, yes, he sounds like a kind man,’ Trudi echoed, rising. She now felt surprisingly calm. ‘How will you manage now that you’re by yourself?’ she heard herself asking, calm and concerned as the vicar’s wife on a parochial visit.

Mrs Brightshaw let the question hang, smelling more patronizing by the second, till she had shown Trudi to the door.

‘I’ve been managing ever since Harold took his stroke,’ she said finally. ‘Managing’s easy. It’s wanting to manage that’s the hard bit. But you’ll have found that out yourself, I daresay.’

The door closed behind Trudi and the bolt rattled home.

Slowly she returned to the car, moving in time to the childish jingle which had risen unsummoned into her head.

Three blind mice … see how they run … they all ran after the farmer’s wife … she cut off their tails with a carving knife …

‘OK?’ said Janet, compressing a whole catechism into the question.

‘Fine,’ said Trudi. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You don’t look fine. You look terrible,’ said Janet. ‘Come on, what do you really feel like?’

‘I feel like a widow,’ said Trudi savagely. ‘I feel like a fucking widow!’

4

Trudi told Janet nothing of her discovery about Astrid Fischer till they got drunk together on Boxing Day.

She had made a token protest when Janet invited her to spend Christmas in Oldham.

‘It’s your first Christmas together,’ she said. ‘And it’s a family time.’

‘Family! What family? Mine’s halfway across the world, and Frank’s good for half an hour of Santa Claus with his grandkids, then it’s King Herod time. He’ll be glad of an ally.’

This had turned out to be true. And on Boxing Day, Frank had taken further advantage of her presence by going off to play golf with a clear conscience.

‘Fair dos,’ said Janet. ‘He put golf at the top of his interests on the bureau form. I don’t mind. Golf’s good for a marriage. Man with his eye on the ball doesn’t have much time to look at anything else.’

She grinned broadly as she spoke. Their lunch of cold turkey washed down with a bottle of hock was being rounded off with liqueur chocolates and brandy.

Relaxed but not yet somnolent, Trudi said, ‘I think you did well there, Jan. Mebbe mail order’s the best way!’

‘You didn’t think so at first,’ said Janet slyly.

‘Didn’t I? I don’t know what I thought. I wasn’t quite right in my mind for a while you know. I mean, it’s hard. You don’t know what you’re like till you’re not like it any more.’

She giggled and held out her glass for a refresher.

Janet said, ‘Dormouse philosophy is it now? Not to worry. Another shot of this and I’ll be able to pour you back in the teapot!’

‘No, I’m serious,’ said Trudi. ‘And it’s not just the drink. I woke up this morning feeling it might not be so bad to be me after all. I can’t remember the last time I felt like that, Jan.’

Janet looked at her disbelievingly.

‘But you’ve had the life of Reilly!’ she protested. ‘Highflying husband, glamorous cities, no kids to weigh you down. Don’t imagine I didn’t lie in bed many a night and think, that bitch is living my life!’

‘I certainly wasn’t living my own,’ said Trudi.

‘What’s this? Self-pity? I thought we were past that stage.’

‘Oh no. I may get maudlin later but right now I’m stuck at honesty. Let me tell you about my life, Jan, if you’ve a moment to spare. I married Trent and went off to Zürich. Only I didn’t really go to Zürich. I just stayed inside the private little atmosphere that existed for me round Trent and it went to Zürich. We had an apartment, lovely views, a skyful of Alps. I hated those mountains. All that space threatening to suck me away, to steal my private atmosphere. But I’d have climbed them with Trent. When he was with me, anything was possible. When he was away, which in his job was often, I never stirred from the flat. I’d stock up the larder in advance and just not budge. He never knew till one time he was delayed an extra week with engine trouble and came home to find me starving.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Got angry. Told me not to be stupid. Made me go out by myself.’

‘Great therapy,’ said Janet angrily. ‘Didn’t you talk to anyone else? Friends? A doctor?’

‘A doctor? Not that time. As for friends, how should I make friends? I didn’t want to make friends. We hardly ever entertained, thank God. When we did, it was disastrous. He brought Herr Schiller to dinner once. Trent was still working for the charter company then. I suppose he wanted to make a good impression with a view to getting more work through Schiller-Reise. Everything went wrong! We had burnt salad and raw trout I seem to recall. Trent said it didn’t matter. In fact he seemed to find it rather amusing. I thought I’d ruined his future.’

‘But you hadn’t.’

‘No,’ said Trudi sadly. ‘I should have known even then that ruining his future wasn’t an option Trent left open to anyone, especially me. Schiller came back several times, but just for drinks! Eventually Trent announced he was taking a job full-time with Schiller-Reise and we were moving to Brussels. I was delighted. Trent was giving up flying and becoming an executive. I thought he’d be home every night. It didn’t work out like that. If anything, he travelled abroad even more. So the old pattern reestablished itself. And Trent found out and got angry and ordered me to go out. And I did and it seemed to be all right. At least there weren’t all those mountain peaks threatening me. Till one day I was sitting in the Gran’ Place feeling rather proud and woman-of-the-worldish when a storm blew up. The sky went dark and swirly, there was a tremendous wind, the air seemed lurid. Everyone ran for cover, everyone except me. I couldn’t move. I knew it was me they were after …’

‘They?’

‘Them. Whatever’s outside wanting to get inside and destroy us,’ said Trudi calmly. ‘I just sat there paralysed with terror. No one paid much heed till the rain came. But after a while the sight of a woman sitting under a deluge attracted first attention, then concern. When Trent came back from that trip, he found me in hospital.’

‘What did he do? Command you to take up your bed and walk?’

‘He got me the best medical treatment money could buy,’ said Trudi, smiling. ‘I loved it. Suddenly I was the centre of Trent’s attention. When I was declared cured we moved to Paris. I felt so happy! But Trent’s job took him away as often as ever, so when one day I felt the old terror returning, I almost welcomed it! Wouldn’t it put me back at the centre of Trent’s life? Well, for a time I thought it had. But this time after the treatment was over, Trent started wondering whether it might not be better if we bought a house back in England where I wouldn’t feel so isolated. It might mean our separations would be longer, but at least I’d be among “my own folk”. I don’t know if he meant it as a threat or a genuine kindness. All I know is that it was the last thing I wanted. So I took it as a threat and became a changed woman!’

‘How the hell do you change something like that?’ asked Janet.

‘Don’t forget, I had medication, I had relaxation exercises, I had self-help psycho-programmes too. I put up a pretty good show of normality.’

‘But if you were cured, you were normal!’

‘Oh no. Normal people look at relationships critically. All I wanted was to make sure I stayed with Trent. He was my atmosphere. Take him away and there was that awful vacuum waiting to suck me up. So I took great care of myself. When I went out, I was always ready to head for home at the first hint of fear. I refused to even try to make friends. All I wanted was to please Trent when he was home and not to displease him when he was away.’

‘But you never hinted at any of this when you wrote,’ said Janet. ‘Your letters were …’

‘Dull? Just what you expected from me, I bet. I was leading a dull life, remember.’

‘But all those years! What did you do? How did you pass the time?’

Trudi laughed and drank some more. ‘Come on Jan. Add up the individual bits of your own life – anyone’s life – and you’ll find the majority of it is dull, routine, mechanical stuff. But there were things I did, partly to keep Trent happy that I wasn’t drifting around like a zombie and partly to stop me doing just that. Like you said, we lived in some pretty glamorous places. I did go out to the theatre, cinema, galleries, museums. I even took courses, pretty basic O-level type things at first, but eventually I aimed higher. History, literature, whatever was available wherever we were, by correspondence mainly, though I did occasionally have discussions over the phone. Eventually I got up to degree level; there, that surprises you!’

‘My God, you’ve got letters after your name!’

‘Oh no. I never actually took the final exams. I set out once, but halfway there I changed my mind. I don’t think it was agoraphobia, just a terror of finding out how thick I really was.’

‘Come off it. Thick you’re not.’

‘Oh yes I am,’ said Trudi grimly. ‘I managed to lead this odd half life for more than twenty years and kid myself I was happy. And for what?’

‘For … well, for happiness!’ urged Janet. ‘Everyone compromises. Don’t exaggerate your own compromise. You’d have gone on with it, wouldn’t you? You’d have lived happily ever after if that dreadful accident hadn’t happened, wouldn’t you? All right, now you think you’re awake. But the thing is, was the other state totally bad?’

‘I think so. But the thing really is, how much longer was I going to be allowed to stay what you call happy, anyway?’

‘What do you mean?’

Trudi hesitated, then thought: come on, don’t be coy, you’ve gone too far to head back for home this time!

She said baldly, ‘Trent was having an affair. I think he was planning to leave me.’

‘Good God, girl! What are you saying? I mean, why are you saying it?’ said Janet in an agitated tone.

‘Lots of reasons,’ said Trudi. ‘Lots and lots of reasons.’

It was rather pleasant, she discovered, to have Janet’s undivided attention and she paused, savouring the feeling as her friend regarded her with an expression of surprise bordering on shock.

‘I should’ve guessed,’ she resumed. ‘But I never looked beyond the nose on my face, did I? Quitting his job without telling me and bringing me back to England! It’s obvious he had something better to go to and he wasn’t taking me with him. He was kind enough to think I’d be better off being dumped here than back in Vienna. Or perhaps he planned eventually to go back to Vienna and didn’t want me still to be there. Yes, I bet that’s it. Not kindness. I mean, it was hardly kindness to leave me with a measly four thousand pounds. The rest of the money’s probably been transferred somewhere. I wonder if that bitch has managed to get her hands on it!’

‘What bitch?’ asked Janet, her voice still faint from surprise.

Now Trudi told her about Astrid Fischer. Her friend sank back into her chair.

‘So that was what that trip was all about!’ she said. ‘What a nerve, turning up at the funeral like that!’

‘I suppose Trent dying was as big a shock for her as it was for me,’ said Trudi. ‘Not as big a shock as I’m going to give her, though.’

Janet said, ‘You’re going to see her?’

‘Why not?’ said Trudi. ‘I’ve got to go back to Vienna. I want to get a certificate of health or something from Trent’s doctor and I’ve got to sort out the furniture in store there. I’ll sell most of it, I think. I need the money. And I think I may just call in on Fraulein Fischer and see what she has to say for herself. At the very least, the bitch can be a witness that Trent was parked safely off the road!’

If she expected applause from Janet, she didn’t get it. She poured herself another drink and said, ‘What’re you looking so disapproving about?’

‘Not disapproving. Just wondering if it’s worth the hassle, girl. Trent’s dead. Either she loved him, in which case she’s had her share of pain too. Or she didn’t. In which case, what’s the point of dragging it all out now? Forget it. You’ll just upset yourself.’

Trudi burst out, ‘What do you mean, forget it? If it was you, would you forget it? No! It’s just that you reckon I’m not up to it! Well, I’ll show you. You’re not the only one who can make decisions, girl! I might even give that dating agency of yours a go while I’m at it!’

She tossed her drink back dramatically and began to cough.

‘Take it easy,’ laughed Janet. ‘I don’t think you’re ready for the Lewis Agency just yet.’

‘Why?’ coughed Trudi. ‘How long did you wait?’

‘Not long,’ admitted Janet. ‘But it was different. Alan and I had been drifting apart for years.’

‘And Trent and I hadn’t?’ said Trudi bitterly.

‘Had you?’

‘I don’t know! That’s the dreadful thing, Jan. I really don’t know anything about our relationship. I don’t know what he saw in me, why he wanted to marry me, why he stayed married to me! All these things I ought to know better than anyone. I don’t! I bet you know more about me than I do myself, Jan! What does that make me? Where’ve I been? What sort of life have I led?’

For a second it looked as if Janet might be ready to take her question seriously. But then she smiled wryly and swung her legs off the arm of the sofa and on to the floor.

Standing up, she looked down at Trudi and said, ‘Not one where you got used to drinking, that’s clear. A little lie-down’s the best thing for you. Go on now! I’ll see to the clearing up.’

Trudi protested but Janet bossed her out of the room. In a last assertion of independence she paused in the doorway and said, ‘But I will go to that agency, you’ll see.’

‘All right, we’ll see,’ grinned Janet. ‘Now you sleep on it.’

So Trudi slept on it. In her sleep for the first time in weeks the dream came: the flight from Trent, the slow footsteps to the door, the handle turning; and the locked door slowly opening to admit her death.

She awoke, sweating and trembling. Why had the dream come back now? For the first time she also asked herself, Why should I dream of Trent at all in this way? Why would he hurt me in death when he never hurt me in life!

And then she remembered and thought, oh yes, you did, you bastard. Yes, you did!

Part Three

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste, An’ weary winter comin’ fast, An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,

Thou thought to dwell,

’Till crash! the cruel coulter past

Out thro’ thy cell.

BURNS: To a Mouse

1

The Sheffield branch of the Lewis Agency was situated at the top of a time-blackened building in a tall Victorian terrace not far from the squat Victorian cathedral.

There was no lift, and Trudi laboured up the stairs passing other offices en route, a debt collecting agency on the first floor, an insurance broker’s on the second, a typing and secretarial bureau on the third. Two girls were standing outside this door, chattering like house sparrows, but they fell silent at her approach and did not resume their giggling conversation till she went by, face burning with the certainty that they had guessed her destination. Only pride prevented her from retreating there and then. It was pride, or rather a kind of stubborn pique, that had brought her here in the first place. There had been no more mention of the dating agency till Trudi had been packing to leave. Then Janet had casually tossed her a slim brochure and said, ‘You were asking about this, remember?’

It had been the Lewis Agency’s hand-out. It was a smallish northern business, limited mainly to large towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire. The Sheffield address had been underlined in red.

The blurb claimed that the agency was based on sound scientific principles but it still relied on human judgment rather than computer print-outs for matching its clients. While not specifically a marriage bureau, it aimed at a clientele who were looking for serious relationships, rather than just casual dates.

Trudi and Janet weren’t meeting till the first week of the New Year. Determined that her friend should not have the satisfaction of getting the expected negative response to her casual enquiry if the brochure had been of any use, Trudi had rung up the agency on New Year’s Eve. A woman called Fielding had answered in a most businesslike way and Trudi’s vague general enquiries had been swiftly translated into a firm appointment the following Wednesday morning before her lunch date with Janet. She had sat up alone that night, toasted the New Year and gone to bed, hopeful that she would wake up in the morning a new woman.

Now here she was, the same old nervous neurotic, labouring up the last flight of stairs and wondering what the hell she was getting into.

A few minutes later she felt rather better, mainly because Mrs Fielding was such a pleasant surprise. A comfortably plump woman of perhaps sixty with rosy cheeks and white, uncontrollably curly hair, she sat behind a desk even more untidy than her hair and cheerfully proffered a cup of tea just brewed with the help of an electric kettle and an old brown teapot. If this was a demonstration that new scientific methods had not been introduced at the expense of the personal touch, it worked.

After some preliminary chat which may or may not have been searching, Mrs Fielding said, ‘Shall we get down to it, Mrs Adamson?’ and extracted a blank form from the autumnal heap of papers before her.

It all proved very painless. When she hesitated about her age, Mrs Fielding said cheerfully, ‘Knock a couple of years off. Everyone does it, so if you don’t, you’ll just end up being taken for two years older than you are.’

After her own details came the details of what she was looking for. These seemed to form a fairly bland recipe when Mrs Fielding checked through them with her.

Age, forty-five to fifty-five. Height, not less than five feet nine inches. Build, preferably well made but not fat. Non-smoker. Social drinker. Professional man. Generally middlebrow. Should like plays and music, but not too abstract or intellectual; town dweller, country lover; knowledgeable about food and wine, but not pretentious …

As Mrs Fielding droned on, Trudi found herself thinking with amusement how fussy a penniless widow in her mid-forties imagined she could be! She was able to feel amused because none of this seemed real, it had all assumed the dimensions of a game.

Even when she handed over the registration fee and signed a form agreeing to the payment of a further sum for each introduction that went beyond a first meeting, she could not feel it was real.

It was only when she had descended the now empty stairs and regained the open air that the sound of traffic and the sight of people walking along the busy pavements brought back reality. She felt a sudden inrush of panic at what she had done. What if somewhere out there was a man who fitted the pattern of her imagined requirements exactly? What if there were dozens of them?

She didn’t have to meet anyone, she told herself firmly. That was quite clear. She didn’t have to meet anyone.

That stemmed the panic for a moment but it came back tenfold as she walked away, running over in her mind what had been said and written during the interview, and suddenly it dawned on her with terrifying clarity that what she had drawn in the limits of that stereotyped form was a blueprint for Trent.

Janet’s unconcealed amazement almost made it all worthwhile. Typically, however, once she got over the surprise, she launched an armada of good advice.

‘First time, always meet somewhere public. Don’t let him pick you up or anything like that. I did that with one and he was over the doorstep, flashing his teeth and God knows what else, before I could say hello!’

‘Oh Jan! Not really?’ said Trudi, amused and horrified at the same time.

‘No, not really,’ Janet reassured her. ‘But really enough to be worth taking care over. So, somewhere in public. Inside, not out. You don’t want to risk hanging around in the rain, catching cold. Somewhere that you can sit around without attracting notice. Hotel bar rather than a pub, perhaps, though either’s a bit chancy.’

‘How?’

‘Well, I was approached by this chap in a hotel bar when I was waiting once; he fitted the general description, so I gave a big smile and chatted away merrily and thought that maybe I’d struck lucky till he suddenly produced the key of his room, asked me how much and whether I took American Express!’

‘Janet!’

‘Sorry. Joking again, but it was almost like that. Hey, what are we worrying about? Here. Here’s the ideal place! Lots of people, but wide open, very mixed population. And it’s familiar ground.’

‘Here’ was the open-plan bar-foyer of the Crucible, Sheffield’s civic theatre, where the two friends often came either for coffee or for a lunch-time drink and snack.

‘Now, one thing you’ve got to recognize, Trudi, is that men lie. Even more than us. We may trim our ages a bit, but men lie about everything. So you’ve got to use your eyes and your ears. He may say he’s a brain-surgeon on eighty thousand pounds per annum basic, but check his shirts for frayed cuffs. Have a close look at his shoes. Big money buys real leather. Check his mouth. If his dental jobs have been done by some NH jockey on piece-work, it shows. Ask him to spell pericranium. Tell him you’re doing a crossword or something.’

‘But what if he’s a radical brain-surgeon who likes gardening, has no interest in clothes and can’t spell?’ said Trudi.

‘Drop him,’ said Janet with a shudder. ‘You’re like me, dear. Too old for radicals. Next thing. No body contact. Shaking hands is the limit. Nudges, squeezes, accidental brushes, they deserve one warning. Hand up your skirt or erection against your bum, that’s it. Walk away.’

‘With his hand up my skirt?’ said Trudi. ‘That could be awkward.’

She was still surprised to discover how lively she could be in Janet’s company. The renewal of their girlhood friendship had not after all simply meant a renewal of the dormouse – cat relationship. Perhaps those years of catatonic domesticity had been a necessary fallowness rather than a needless waste.

Janet said, suddenly serious, ‘Trudi, joking apart, are you sure this is for you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The agency. Meeting men like this. It’s a step in the dark in a way. Are you sure you’re ready for it? I mean, it’s really no time at all …’

‘You mean it’s only five months since Trent died, and am I really such a callow, unfeeling cow as to put myself back on the market so quickly?’

‘No! I didn’t mean that, you know I didn’t,’ Janet protested.

‘Yes, I know,’ said Trudi. ‘But I wonder about it myself, Jan, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t wonder it too. The way it seems to me, looking back, is that it was almost inevitable, like a good play I mean. If it had happened while I was still in Vienna, comfortable, secure, almost torpid, God knows what the effect would have been. But I’d been suddenly uprooted and dumped here at a moment’s notice, in a strange town, in a strange house, without even my own furniture to keep me company. It was like being woken up out of hibernation to find it’s still winter! And then, Trent’s death. It was as if I had been nudged towards it somehow. God help me, it almost nudged me over the edge. If you hadn’t come along …’

‘You’d still have spewed up and been all right,’ said Janet sensibly.

‘Perhaps. But it wasn’t grief that got me to that point; it was selfish terror, I think. Just as violent in its effect, but not so long-lasting.’

She fell into an introspective silence and Janet said, ‘Well, that wasn’t what I meant anyway. I just meant that maybe you’re not, well, tough enough to be doing this. I mean, it’s all right for the bold, brash types like me …’

‘But I thought that the whole idea of marriage agencies was to help the shy, the timid, the socially static?’ said Trudi ironically. ‘What you really mean is, if things go disastrously wrong, you don’t want to feel responsible.’

‘All right. That’s what I really mean.’

‘You won’t be,’ said Trudi. ‘Janet, don’t take me wrong, but a good reason for me to do this is that I want to be responsible for myself. Or rather, I can feel something in me that’s crying out desperately to find someone else who’ll take the responsibility off me, and I’ve got to be careful not to let that happen, not like it happened before. I can’t afford another twenty years, not at my age!’

‘But I don’t understand. Why go looking for another man at all if you’re so worried about someone taking over and making your decisions for you?’ queried Janet.

Trudi smiled and took her friend’s hand.

‘Darling,’ she said. ‘At the moment I haven’t got another man, and sufficient be the evil, etc. At the moment I’m afraid I’m talking about you!’

She squeezed Janet’s hand to remove any offence and went on, ‘And to start with, in this bold new bid for independence, I’m breaking our date on Saturday.’

‘Oh, hoity-toity! The Lewis Agency have fixed you up already, have they?’

‘Nothing so dull,’ said Trudi, smiling. ‘And I did tell you. I’m spending a couple of days in Vienna, that’s all.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.