Instead they offered comfort, encouragement and advice. Sometimes they would let off steam, angrily berating their oppressor’s behaviour. But, in the main, they struggled to remain humorous and detached. What else could you do?
Neither allowed the other to slide into self-pity, or take unnecessary blame. When they had first started meeting Sue had done a lot of that, explaining that Brian only acted the way he did because she was slow and not very bright. Amy had knocked that notion severely on the head.
They had an escape plan, of course. Sue was to become a famous illustrator of children’s books and buy a little cottage with room for just herself and Mandy, if she wanted to come. There would be a garden with space for ducks and chickens. Amy would sell her block-buster and get a house not too far away. It would be spacious, airy and modern, for she had had enough of clanking radiators and stone floors and smelly, mildewed cupboards.
And when they met they would have slow, thoughtful conversations with breathing spaces. Not like now, when they talked and laughed and interrupted each other non-stop but always with one eye on the clock. Amy said they were like two nuns from a silent order vouchsafed a once-a-year speaking day.
‘I keep wishing,’ said Sue - they were still discussing the murder - ‘that I’d looked at my clock when I heard Max drive away.’
‘How were you to know? Anyway I don’t see that it would help the police that much.’
‘It would give them a time when Gerald was still alive.’
‘I thought post-mortems sorted all that out.’
The phrase struck them both with a deep chill and they looked at each other in some distress.
‘I expect they’ll have to talk to him - Max I mean. It’s so embarrassing. Us mixing him up in something like this.’
‘Could be worse.’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘Could have been Alan Bennett.’
They burst into nervous giggles, ashamed at such levity yet also knowing relief. Then, acknowledging that the time had come to put their reflections on death aside, Sue said, ‘Something nice happened yesterday. Did you have the policeman with red hair?’
‘Yes.’
‘“Fox” I called him at first,’ said Sue, for she anthropomorphised everyone. ‘But then I had second thoughts. His lips were so thin and his teeth so sharp that I decided he should be “Ferret”. And the bulky one’s “Badger”.’
‘Oh yes, I agree with “Badger”,’ said Amy. She agreed with ‘Ferret’ as well, for she hadn’t liked Troy much at all. ‘What about him?’
‘He wants to buy a painting of Hector. For his little girl.’
‘That’s brilliant! How much will you ask?’
‘Heavens, I don’t know.’
‘Twenty pounds.’ Sue squealed her disbelief. ‘At least. He’s getting an original Clapton. Tell him one day it’ll be worth a fortune.’
Amy knew she was wasting her breath. Sue would probably just mumble, ‘Oh, that’s all right’ when the time came. Or shake her Greenpeace collecting tin, with soft timidity, in Ferret’s general direction. She was saying something else.
‘I still haven’t heard from Methuen.’
‘But that’s good news.’ Sue had submitted some paintings and a story nearly three months ago. ‘If they hadn’t wanted your book they’d have sent it back straight away.’
‘Would they?’
‘Of course. It’s being passed round to get lots of opinions. Depend upon it.’
‘Amy.’ Sue smiled across at her friend. ‘What would I do without you?’
‘Likewise.’
‘How is Rompers?’ asked Sue. ‘Have you managed to do any more?’
She did not ask out of mere politeness. The immensely baroque structure of Amy’s book impressed Sue enormously and she followed every twist and turn of the narrative with the deepest interest. It seemed to her wonderfully gripping and she was sure that, should Amy ever snatch enough secret moments to finish it, Rompers would be a great success.
‘Well, believe it or not, after such shattering news, I did six pages last night.’
Amy had been quite perturbed on their completion unsure whether writing under such circumstances meant she was a true professional or an amateur with a heart of stone.
‘Has Rokesby,’ Sue was continuing eagerly, ‘discovered that Araminta has the same surname as the Duke of Molina because she is his sister and not, as Rokesby believed when he rejected her, his wife?’
‘He has, yes.’
‘Well?’
‘Too late. Hurt almost beyond human endurance she has fled to the Corsican Riviera with Black Rufus.’