A Place Of Safety(37)

The woman with all the dogs at Mulberry Cottage stood outside. She was wearing an extraordinary outfit and her wildly snagged hair was full of pollen and leaves and seeds and even a couple of blackberries.

It took Valentine a moment to collect his wits and a moment more to grasp what she was saying. It was some garbled tale about a motor car that would not reverse, yet another injured dog and someone called Piers who needed to be let out on the stroke of twelve if he was to maintain his natural position as team leader.

Valentine went to get his jacket. Whatever the drama actually involved, sorting it out would help pass the time until evening - when dusk would fall and he could once more present himself at the blue painted door.





Being invited to the Old Rectory for coffee, though not a rare occurrence, did not happen all that often. When Ann had rung up yesterday evening and suggested it, Louise had said yes straightaway although she had planned that morning to drive to the library at Causton. She could do so later in the day and was unhappy to find herself seeing this as ‘filling the afternoon up’. Needing to kill time was an unpleasant novelty. When working she had frequently prayed for a forty-eight-hour day.

She spent the time before leaving attempting to assess her relationship with Ann Lawrence honestly. Almost testing it for strength. As terms of friendship went, she hadn’t really known Ann very long. Their mutual confidences were not what some women might call intimate. But Louise had experienced a genuine degree of warmth in these exchanges and also felt that Ann would prove to be both discreet and loyal.

The fact of the matter was that she was longing to share with someone sympathetic her worries about Valentine. There were other friends she could have talked to, but none nearby and no one who had actually stood face to face with the individual at the heart of the matter. She knew Ann loathed Jax, although this had never been put into words, and also suspected she was afraid of him.

For a while, sleepless in the middle of the night, Louise toyed with the idea of ringing the Samaritans. The service was confidential and perhaps it would be easier to talk to a kindly, anonymous listener, especially by telephone.

But Louise had no sooner started to dial than she had second thoughts. What could she say? My brother is homosexual and is seeing a man I believe to be dangerously violent. What would they say? Are you quite sure about that? No. How well do you know this man? Not at all. What age is your brother? Forty-three. Have you tried to talk to him about this? Once. It caused such a rift in our relationship I swore I’d never try again. Do you think he might be persuaded to talk to us himself? Under no circumstances.

End of story.

Now she checked the clock. Almost eleven. Louise got ready to leave in a half-hearted way, not bothering with make-up, just pinning her hair loosely on top of her head. She put on a loose-fitting, long-sleeved apricot linen dress and some dark glasses. The day was not really sunny enough to merit them but lack of sleep had left bruised-looking smudges beneath her eyes.

When no one appeared at the front of the Old Rectory, Louise made her way round the side of the house, relieved to see the garage door wide open and the car missing.

The back entrance was reached through a conservatory. Very large and very old, it held garden paraphernalia. Wellingtons, old jackets, a couple of straw hats and dozens of flowering plants. A well-established Hamburg vine as thick and tough as a man’s arm and planted directly in the earth twined, pale and splintery, across the roof. The whole place had a rich earthy fragrance that was very pleasant. Louise lingered a moment, taking pleasure in the dense almost oppressive silence broken only by the hiss and trickle of a garden hose.

She pushed open the back door and called, ‘Hello?’ There was no reply. Louise wondered if Ann had simply forgotten her invitation and gone out, leaving the door unlocked. She often did this, to Louise’s city-bred incredulity.

But although Ann proved to be in the kitchen, it was plain she had indeed forgotten the invitation. When Louise put her head round the door, Ann stared blankly across the room as if at a complete stranger - only for a fraction of a second but long enough for Louise to recognise that this was not going to be the person to whom she could unburden her heart. Driven by need, she must have been fantasising earlier, investing what she saw now was merely a pleasantly amiable acquaintance with qualities it did not have. Louise, even while recognising how unfair this was to Ann, was surprised by how disappointed she felt.

‘Louise! Oh, I’m sorry. I quite - Oh dear . . .’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Of course it does. Please, sit down.’

Ann, surely more distressed, it seemed to Louise, than the occasion warranted, started to hurry about, collecting the cafetière, washing out the grounds, finding some deep yellow breakfast cups. And all with a flurried unhappy air of determination that seemed further to demonstrate just how unwelcome the interruption actually was.