Small kindnesses, p.14
Small Kindnesses, page 14
This year Leonard has planned a quiet night in with Pickles, away from the kissing crowds. As he forks out rabbit in jelly for his Valentine, he decides to cook himself a special meal to go with the Western on Channel 4. He’s already bought himself a small bottle of Baileys for later, a real treat. Something delicious to eat and maybe even a cigar… who needs a sweetheart? It’d be better than sitting around feeling sorry for himself, in any case. He tries to work out what he’d like to eat and pictures a plump cut of rump beef smothered in bread sauce. The roast potatoes on the side go without saying. He’s cooked them a couple of times since those ones Lily gave him, but so far he hasn’t come close to hers. She gave him careful instructions on the phone last week involving par-boiling and hot olive oil and he’s keen to try them out. He opens the cupboard door onto three sprouting sorry-looking specimens. It’s too late to have frozen chips instead – his heart is set. It’s also too late for the village shop to be open, so he reluctantly gets in the car, Pickles jumping into the passenger seat. Leonard appreciates the convenience of supermarkets but hates pretty much everything else about them – the too-bright lights, the forced produce from half-way around the world, and all that wasteful packaging. He thinks nostalgically about his old vegetable patch. How wonderful it was to go out into the garden with a fork instead. There’s nothing like the taste of baby Jersey potatoes fresh from the earth, boiled in their skins with a little salt and a little butter.
As he drives a straight stretch of road, he glances across at Pickles. He’s staring out of the window with glazed eyes, his tongue half out of his mouth and his stumpy tail absent-mindedly waggling. What is he thinking about? Is he waiting patiently, twitcher-like, to spot a bird or two? Is he dreaming of springtime, when there’ll be rabbits and longer walks? It’s the middle of February already. Where does the time go? Christmas passed in a blur of mince pies and ripped wrapping paper. This year the twins were old enough to work themselves up into a frenzy of excitement previously unseen in the Wishford household. The most popular presents had been a pair of cheap yellow trucks that Ed had bought at the last minute. The more expensive gifts stayed in their packaging while the boys dragged the trucks backwards on the carpet with a click-click-clicking noise and then let out ‘wheeeee’s as the trucks burst forwards. There were competitions to see who could go the furthest, there was target practise using Leonard’s shoes as targets - the possibilities proved endless.
Raine survived the festivities, but without any obvious signs of enjoying herself. Ed hadn’t confided in Leonard again, even though Leonard asked him leading questions a couple of times when they were alone – ‘so… Raine’s looking well’ or ‘it feels like ages since we had that coffee at the station’. Raine had sat down with Leonard and a glass of red wine on Christmas Day evening, and they did have a reasonably good conversation. She and Ed had been looking into what school to send the children to, and she wanted Leonard’s opinion. It had been a long time since Leonard had felt she needed him, and even though he didn’t know the first thing about schooling, he answered her questions as best he could. It was a shame she couldn’t have had that conversation with her mother.
The middle of February. He’s surprised to still be in touch with Lily after all this time. She’d called him a week after the roast and said she was going to a Christmas market if he fancied going along. Leonard had jumped at the chance of a female opinion on his Christmas shopping. Last year Raine had seemed unimpressed with her set of wooden spoons with carved handles, despite putting on a brave face. The market was disappointing – most of the stalls were selling ‘home-made crafts’ that looked a little too home-made for Leonard’s liking. They’d had a good time anyway, having a good (discreet) laugh about the knitted kittens and the personalised loo-roll holders. They’d met up a few times since then, and seemed to have settled into a little routine of seeing each other every fortnight. Annoyingly, Charlie has started teasing Leonard about it in the pub – having become fond of saying ‘off to see Lily this weekend, are you?’ with an exaggerated wink.
When the weather was bearable they’d go out - both of them preferred to be out in the fresh air. They’d tried a couple of the walks from Lily’s book, and had visited a country church and wandered around the graveyard seeing who could find the oldest skeleton or the longest name. It had only rained properly once – a dark weekend in January – and they had sat in her house with mugs of cocoa and played cards instead. Leonard had taught her a game he’d learnt from the lads at work. It was called ‘shit-head’, and once each round started you had to get rid of all your cards in the proper order as quickly as you could. The loser had to make the tea, or at least shuffle the pack for the next round. It was fast-paced and frantic, and Lily loved it. She started every game saying that she was rubbish at cards and proceeded to thrash him into the ground.
Twenty minutes later he’s in the bacon aisle trying to decide between the forty two different varieties when someone taps him on the back.
‘Leonard?’
It’s Sue – one of Rose’s old colleagues from the hospital. They’d worked together for years. She’s a substantial lady, with three chins and glossy, dark hair. Her voice is deeper than you’d expect it to be - Leonard is sometimes reminded of her when he sees drag-queens on TV. They rarely saw her socially when Rose was alive, but Leonard used to hear all about her five children and three husbands (she left the first two, who were abusive, and the third had died on her). The last Leonard had heard, she’d been fostering children and was thriving on it. She has a small boy with her now, with curly hair and a chocolaty mouth. He’s hanging onto her skirts and hiding behind her bulk. Leonard smiles.
‘Leonard! My goodness… How are you? Happy Valentines Day!’
They catch up with each other’s news. She tells him about her children – the two oldest have children of their own now, and she makes them call her Aunty Sue, as she can’t quite face being grandma yet. She’s still fostering and has three at the moment. He updates her on Raine and the twins - Sue says she misses hearing about them all, and that she misses Rose. She says she ought to be off, there are two older ones waiting at home for their tea, but if there’s anything she can do to help he should let her know. He thinks for a moment. Rose used to say that there was nothing Sue loved better than helping others out, and he’d like to be able to offer her the chance. As she’s turning to go, he has a thought.
‘Sue? There is something… I don’t know if you’ll be able to help or not…’
She looks expectant.
‘You didn’t hear Rose ever mention Didcot for any reason, did you? I found a train ticket recently, in one of her old handbags, and I didn’t think she’d ever been. I thought it might be something to do with work that she never mentioned.’
Sue thinks for a while. Leonard wonders about all the images she’s having of Rose, flashing though her head one after the other.
‘No, no, we’ve never had to go for Didcot to work. We sometimes got asked to go to meetings, training things, but not there… it’s too far for…’ She suddenly catches herself as a memory gathers momentum. ‘You know, funnily enough she DID mention Didcot once, was it Didcot? It might have been Wantage… no I’m pretty sure… it was when she was off on one of her Tuesdays, she said she was off to Didcot. I remember it because she was always a bit mysterious about her Tuesdays and when I said ‘Didcot?’ she flushed bright red. She mumbled something about needing to visit one of your relatives, Leonard, but I didn’t press her any further. Funny I remembered that – it must have been when I was… gosh, we were at St. Mary’s, it must have been fifteen years ago! Where does the time go? I was with my second husband at the time; we were just going through… anyway, I’m sure you don’t want to hear about that. Is that any help?’
‘What do you mean, Sue, one of her Tuesdays?’
‘You know, her afternoons off. I always admired her for that, for sticking to her guns. She always said “I don’t mind what hours I do, but Tuesday afternoons have always been for me.” She had to kick up quite a fuss when we had our new manager in, that awful Mr. Ritter… she almost got the sack over it. That man must have been born to a monster. She must have told you about him, Leonard…’
‘Did she say anything else about them? Was it all afternoon?’
‘What, her Tuesdays? Yes, she always left about half twelve and always got back to work for six o’clock, she said it made better sense that way. Just in case you decided to pick her up on a whim, so you didn’t have to remember she wouldn’t be there. But you already know that, of course…’
Leonard nods and smiles a fixed smile. Sue continues.
‘I couldn’t see the point in coming back to work again, but it suited you both, I suppose. But something to do with work… No… I can’t think of anything…’
She’s trying to concentrate but the little boy is tugging on her skirt and saying ‘Sue! Sue!’ Leonard sweeps one of his hands through the air and frowns to gesture that she should go.
‘Thank you, Sue, that’s a great help. Look – I’m looking into some things at the moment, making some… well anyway, would you mind if I took a number for you, just in case I want to get in touch again?’
As he writes her mobile number on a scrap of paper the little boy starts pulling on her skirt even more energetically and shouting, ‘Poo! Poo!’ As she rushes off, he hears her muttering to the child that he should ‘say toilet instead, remember what we said?’ He moves towards the check-out, wondering what to make of this new information. It’s too much to process right now. He has potatoes to par-boil. He files it in the back of his brain to get out another time, putting it in a safe-box and turning the key.
That Saturday, Lily has found a village hall sale for them to visit. She tells Leonard it’s in a posh area, one of those villages on the river, so there’s bound to be some quality booty. As Leonard pulls up outside Lily’s house, he takes out what Sue had said from the back of his brain. He knows that Lily is probably the best person to talk to about it. He got the feeling that Charlie didn’t really approve of him digging around into Rose’s past before Christmas, and he wouldn’t dream of speaking to Raine. He thinks he’ll wait for an appropriate moment to bring it up. On the car journey they talk about pensions and then about garden pests. Lily says she’s mastered dispatching slugs with the tip of her spade, which gives her a certain sense of satisfaction after the ‘hostas incident’. She can’t harness a similar blood-lust for snail killing, as she has a soft spot for their little antennae and their ‘shy natures’. She knows that logically they’re just like slugs inside their whorled shells, but even so she can’t bring herself to crush them. Her current method of snail control is to throw them in a high arc over her fence and into her neighbours garden, after checking that there’s no-one at the windows to see her. She asks Leonard if they’re likely to survive their flights, but stops him before he answers her, as she ‘couldn’t bear’ the thought that all her mercy throwings might have been in vain.
The village hall is larger than Leonard thought it would be, with high windows and a circle of tables around the hall. They spend a contented half hour picking through other people’s unwanted belongings. Lily buys some pale blue wool (for a hat for the youngest grandchild) and a black pottery cat that Leonard thinks is a bit naff (but lies about). Leonard finds a few green-glazed pots to house new plants on his strip of concrete outside, and a home-baked cherry cake. There are chairs and tables at the back, and Leonard treats them to a pot of Earl Grey and an impressive slab of lemon drizzle cake each. He asks for a glass of water too – he’s got a terrible thirst. When they’re both settled down and their cake is half-guzzled, Leonard takes a deep breath.
‘I bumped into one of Rose’s old friends last week, in the supermarket. She told me Rose used to go off somewhere every Tuesday afternoon. She did it all the time she’d worked with her, for years and years. I didn’t know anything about it, Lily.’
‘Going where?’
‘She didn’t say; she said Rose was secretive about it. One week it slipped out that it was Didcot, just like that ticket I found in her handbag. What do you make of it?’
Lily licks sugar from her lips and puts her fork down so she can give it proper thought. Leonard is touched by how serious she suddenly looks.
‘Hmm. It could have been anything, I suppose. A class she was doing that she didn’t want you to know about… something medical, to do with her headaches, not wanting to worry you… or she could have been, you know, visiting someone…’
The implied suggestion squats in the air between them and Leonard allows himself consider it for the first time. He lets it enter his mind as if taking a mouthful of something bitter and swishes around carefully. Another man? Could Rose have had someone else for all that time? He holds this possibility in one hand, and everything he knew about Rose in the other. He just can’t make it fit. He can’t imagine it. He shakes his head and takes another forkful of cake.
‘No,’ he says.
Lily nods vigorously in instant agreement. He takes a gulp of his water – it tastes pure, clean, as if it’s from a cold stream. The water at his house is too soft.
‘The trouble is I can’t make anything else fit. It could have been any of those things you said, but why wouldn’t she just have told me about it?’
Lily lifts her chin and her bottom lip juts out.
‘Curiouser and curiouser. What are you going to do?’
What is he going to do? He looks around at a couple of old ladies haggling over a flowered tea-pot. They’ve dug in their heels over the last 25p, and he’s tempted to jump up and fish some coins from his pocket to stop the back and forth. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do. But he does know that it’ll be harder to live with this one. He could live with the train ticket, the long hair, he could rationalise them away. There could have been a hundred innocent, every-day explanations. And maybe Rose had good reasons to pretend her mother was dead – maybe it was easier for her to leave her unhappy past where it belonged. But this? He can’t just leave this one.
‘I need to know, Lily. I need to know the worst.’
She nods, and puts both of her hands palm-down on the table as if ready for action.
‘Right… we can try to find out… I had some thoughts last time, some ideas, when you found out about… I don’t know if they’d be any… if you want to hear them?’
They all seem like sensible ideas to Leonard. They could get in touch with Rose’s friends and colleagues and pretend they were writing some kind of book of remembrance for her - one of Lily’s friends did one for her husband. They could look into Rose’s surviving family - research her family tree, see if they could find any cousins or friends of the family who knew her when she was younger. And Leonard could do some thinking – go back through their life together and write down anything he can think of that didn’t quite fit. Lily says she’s read thousands of detective novels in her time, and although they’re unlikely to come across any corpses in acid baths or serial killers that target one-legged women with Scottish accents, she’s certainly learnt how to conduct an investigation. He notices how she relishes the word on her tongue – investigation. Lily volunteers to start looking into Rose’s family tree – she knows where to start on the internet after tracking down Rose. And Leonard will do some thinking, and also make a list of all the people Rose knew. They arrange to update each other in a couple of weeks’ time.
Once Lily has written this down in a little red notebook she pulls from her handbag, he’s pleased to notice that he feels lighter. He finds it amusing that she had such a fully-formed plan for how the investigation should go forward. She didn’t need much encouragement to go into detective-mode. As he pours their last half-cup of tea from the pot, he teases her about turning up to his house with a heavy bag full of forensic equipment, dusting the kitchen for finger-prints and questioning Pickles.
‘I need to ascertain your precise whereabouts on the Tuesday in question.’
‘Woof.’
‘I will ask you again, Mr. Pickles, where were you on Tuesday?’
(Note for the record, suspect is licking his private regions.)
By the time they carry their purchases to the car, it’s almost as if the conversation about Rose had never taken place.
Drinking lemonade with Rose
Leonard shuffles about on Pete and Glor’s doorstep on Thursday evening with a ball of nerves in his stomach. He wishes there were someone there with him, to squeeze his hand and tell him everything will be fine. It’s been ages since he saw Pete. He remembers the last time he saw Glor. He hasn’t spoken to her since the day she walked out before the kettle was boiled. Charlie had reckoned that Leonard was best shot of her, if that was the way she was going to behave, but Leonard kept thinking about all she’d done for him when Rose died. It would be cruel of him to let her disappear so easily. Leonard had tried to get in touch with her - she hadn’t returned any of his messages but he’d persevered. He’d finally got through to Pete earlier in the week. Pete had sounded pleased to hear from him and Leonard suspected that Glor hadn’t told him about their falling out. Leonard suggested they get together for a drink sometime.
The four of them used to meet in ‘The Green Man’ - a bit out of the way for both of them, but Rose had fallen in love with their home-made chocolate fudge cake the first time they’d been there and had insisted they make it their ‘Glor-and-Pete pub’. She and Glor always had a pudding before they started on their halves. This time Pete insisted that Leonard come to their house, so he could see their slides from their holiday to Portugal in September. Leonard doesn’t know anyone else who actually has a full-size screen for their slide-shows. Pete had sounded proud about making a social arrangement without Glor’s input, although he did say before he hung up that he’d have to ‘double check with the missus’.
He takes a deep breath before he knocks. They have a huge gold knocker in the shape of a bear’s head - classic Pete-and-Glor. Glor opens the door to him in full make-up - her hair is set into a smooth ‘hat’ which reminds him of the removable plastic hair on the twin’s Lego men. She makes all the right ‘ooh-ing’ noises about the Belgian biscuits he’s brought. Relief sweeps through him, and he feels glad to see her. He’s ushered into the living room, de-coated and handed a glass of sparkling white wine by Pete, ‘to keep you going until you choose what you’d like’. There is a rash of little bowls of peanuts and crisps on the tables in the front room, and he’s offered his ‘next drink’ from a list of pretty much everything he can imagine. He’s always treated like royalty at Glor and Pete’s. And as always, Glor is the one who does most of the talking. She bombards him with questions about what he’s been doing at work, how Pickles is, how Raine and the family are, what his Christmas was like, how he’s finding the weather… He settles back into the over-soft armchair with his bitter in one hand and his wine in the other and submits.
As he drives a straight stretch of road, he glances across at Pickles. He’s staring out of the window with glazed eyes, his tongue half out of his mouth and his stumpy tail absent-mindedly waggling. What is he thinking about? Is he waiting patiently, twitcher-like, to spot a bird or two? Is he dreaming of springtime, when there’ll be rabbits and longer walks? It’s the middle of February already. Where does the time go? Christmas passed in a blur of mince pies and ripped wrapping paper. This year the twins were old enough to work themselves up into a frenzy of excitement previously unseen in the Wishford household. The most popular presents had been a pair of cheap yellow trucks that Ed had bought at the last minute. The more expensive gifts stayed in their packaging while the boys dragged the trucks backwards on the carpet with a click-click-clicking noise and then let out ‘wheeeee’s as the trucks burst forwards. There were competitions to see who could go the furthest, there was target practise using Leonard’s shoes as targets - the possibilities proved endless.
Raine survived the festivities, but without any obvious signs of enjoying herself. Ed hadn’t confided in Leonard again, even though Leonard asked him leading questions a couple of times when they were alone – ‘so… Raine’s looking well’ or ‘it feels like ages since we had that coffee at the station’. Raine had sat down with Leonard and a glass of red wine on Christmas Day evening, and they did have a reasonably good conversation. She and Ed had been looking into what school to send the children to, and she wanted Leonard’s opinion. It had been a long time since Leonard had felt she needed him, and even though he didn’t know the first thing about schooling, he answered her questions as best he could. It was a shame she couldn’t have had that conversation with her mother.
The middle of February. He’s surprised to still be in touch with Lily after all this time. She’d called him a week after the roast and said she was going to a Christmas market if he fancied going along. Leonard had jumped at the chance of a female opinion on his Christmas shopping. Last year Raine had seemed unimpressed with her set of wooden spoons with carved handles, despite putting on a brave face. The market was disappointing – most of the stalls were selling ‘home-made crafts’ that looked a little too home-made for Leonard’s liking. They’d had a good time anyway, having a good (discreet) laugh about the knitted kittens and the personalised loo-roll holders. They’d met up a few times since then, and seemed to have settled into a little routine of seeing each other every fortnight. Annoyingly, Charlie has started teasing Leonard about it in the pub – having become fond of saying ‘off to see Lily this weekend, are you?’ with an exaggerated wink.
When the weather was bearable they’d go out - both of them preferred to be out in the fresh air. They’d tried a couple of the walks from Lily’s book, and had visited a country church and wandered around the graveyard seeing who could find the oldest skeleton or the longest name. It had only rained properly once – a dark weekend in January – and they had sat in her house with mugs of cocoa and played cards instead. Leonard had taught her a game he’d learnt from the lads at work. It was called ‘shit-head’, and once each round started you had to get rid of all your cards in the proper order as quickly as you could. The loser had to make the tea, or at least shuffle the pack for the next round. It was fast-paced and frantic, and Lily loved it. She started every game saying that she was rubbish at cards and proceeded to thrash him into the ground.
Twenty minutes later he’s in the bacon aisle trying to decide between the forty two different varieties when someone taps him on the back.
‘Leonard?’
It’s Sue – one of Rose’s old colleagues from the hospital. They’d worked together for years. She’s a substantial lady, with three chins and glossy, dark hair. Her voice is deeper than you’d expect it to be - Leonard is sometimes reminded of her when he sees drag-queens on TV. They rarely saw her socially when Rose was alive, but Leonard used to hear all about her five children and three husbands (she left the first two, who were abusive, and the third had died on her). The last Leonard had heard, she’d been fostering children and was thriving on it. She has a small boy with her now, with curly hair and a chocolaty mouth. He’s hanging onto her skirts and hiding behind her bulk. Leonard smiles.
‘Leonard! My goodness… How are you? Happy Valentines Day!’
They catch up with each other’s news. She tells him about her children – the two oldest have children of their own now, and she makes them call her Aunty Sue, as she can’t quite face being grandma yet. She’s still fostering and has three at the moment. He updates her on Raine and the twins - Sue says she misses hearing about them all, and that she misses Rose. She says she ought to be off, there are two older ones waiting at home for their tea, but if there’s anything she can do to help he should let her know. He thinks for a moment. Rose used to say that there was nothing Sue loved better than helping others out, and he’d like to be able to offer her the chance. As she’s turning to go, he has a thought.
‘Sue? There is something… I don’t know if you’ll be able to help or not…’
She looks expectant.
‘You didn’t hear Rose ever mention Didcot for any reason, did you? I found a train ticket recently, in one of her old handbags, and I didn’t think she’d ever been. I thought it might be something to do with work that she never mentioned.’
Sue thinks for a while. Leonard wonders about all the images she’s having of Rose, flashing though her head one after the other.
‘No, no, we’ve never had to go for Didcot to work. We sometimes got asked to go to meetings, training things, but not there… it’s too far for…’ She suddenly catches herself as a memory gathers momentum. ‘You know, funnily enough she DID mention Didcot once, was it Didcot? It might have been Wantage… no I’m pretty sure… it was when she was off on one of her Tuesdays, she said she was off to Didcot. I remember it because she was always a bit mysterious about her Tuesdays and when I said ‘Didcot?’ she flushed bright red. She mumbled something about needing to visit one of your relatives, Leonard, but I didn’t press her any further. Funny I remembered that – it must have been when I was… gosh, we were at St. Mary’s, it must have been fifteen years ago! Where does the time go? I was with my second husband at the time; we were just going through… anyway, I’m sure you don’t want to hear about that. Is that any help?’
‘What do you mean, Sue, one of her Tuesdays?’
‘You know, her afternoons off. I always admired her for that, for sticking to her guns. She always said “I don’t mind what hours I do, but Tuesday afternoons have always been for me.” She had to kick up quite a fuss when we had our new manager in, that awful Mr. Ritter… she almost got the sack over it. That man must have been born to a monster. She must have told you about him, Leonard…’
‘Did she say anything else about them? Was it all afternoon?’
‘What, her Tuesdays? Yes, she always left about half twelve and always got back to work for six o’clock, she said it made better sense that way. Just in case you decided to pick her up on a whim, so you didn’t have to remember she wouldn’t be there. But you already know that, of course…’
Leonard nods and smiles a fixed smile. Sue continues.
‘I couldn’t see the point in coming back to work again, but it suited you both, I suppose. But something to do with work… No… I can’t think of anything…’
She’s trying to concentrate but the little boy is tugging on her skirt and saying ‘Sue! Sue!’ Leonard sweeps one of his hands through the air and frowns to gesture that she should go.
‘Thank you, Sue, that’s a great help. Look – I’m looking into some things at the moment, making some… well anyway, would you mind if I took a number for you, just in case I want to get in touch again?’
As he writes her mobile number on a scrap of paper the little boy starts pulling on her skirt even more energetically and shouting, ‘Poo! Poo!’ As she rushes off, he hears her muttering to the child that he should ‘say toilet instead, remember what we said?’ He moves towards the check-out, wondering what to make of this new information. It’s too much to process right now. He has potatoes to par-boil. He files it in the back of his brain to get out another time, putting it in a safe-box and turning the key.
That Saturday, Lily has found a village hall sale for them to visit. She tells Leonard it’s in a posh area, one of those villages on the river, so there’s bound to be some quality booty. As Leonard pulls up outside Lily’s house, he takes out what Sue had said from the back of his brain. He knows that Lily is probably the best person to talk to about it. He got the feeling that Charlie didn’t really approve of him digging around into Rose’s past before Christmas, and he wouldn’t dream of speaking to Raine. He thinks he’ll wait for an appropriate moment to bring it up. On the car journey they talk about pensions and then about garden pests. Lily says she’s mastered dispatching slugs with the tip of her spade, which gives her a certain sense of satisfaction after the ‘hostas incident’. She can’t harness a similar blood-lust for snail killing, as she has a soft spot for their little antennae and their ‘shy natures’. She knows that logically they’re just like slugs inside their whorled shells, but even so she can’t bring herself to crush them. Her current method of snail control is to throw them in a high arc over her fence and into her neighbours garden, after checking that there’s no-one at the windows to see her. She asks Leonard if they’re likely to survive their flights, but stops him before he answers her, as she ‘couldn’t bear’ the thought that all her mercy throwings might have been in vain.
The village hall is larger than Leonard thought it would be, with high windows and a circle of tables around the hall. They spend a contented half hour picking through other people’s unwanted belongings. Lily buys some pale blue wool (for a hat for the youngest grandchild) and a black pottery cat that Leonard thinks is a bit naff (but lies about). Leonard finds a few green-glazed pots to house new plants on his strip of concrete outside, and a home-baked cherry cake. There are chairs and tables at the back, and Leonard treats them to a pot of Earl Grey and an impressive slab of lemon drizzle cake each. He asks for a glass of water too – he’s got a terrible thirst. When they’re both settled down and their cake is half-guzzled, Leonard takes a deep breath.
‘I bumped into one of Rose’s old friends last week, in the supermarket. She told me Rose used to go off somewhere every Tuesday afternoon. She did it all the time she’d worked with her, for years and years. I didn’t know anything about it, Lily.’
‘Going where?’
‘She didn’t say; she said Rose was secretive about it. One week it slipped out that it was Didcot, just like that ticket I found in her handbag. What do you make of it?’
Lily licks sugar from her lips and puts her fork down so she can give it proper thought. Leonard is touched by how serious she suddenly looks.
‘Hmm. It could have been anything, I suppose. A class she was doing that she didn’t want you to know about… something medical, to do with her headaches, not wanting to worry you… or she could have been, you know, visiting someone…’
The implied suggestion squats in the air between them and Leonard allows himself consider it for the first time. He lets it enter his mind as if taking a mouthful of something bitter and swishes around carefully. Another man? Could Rose have had someone else for all that time? He holds this possibility in one hand, and everything he knew about Rose in the other. He just can’t make it fit. He can’t imagine it. He shakes his head and takes another forkful of cake.
‘No,’ he says.
Lily nods vigorously in instant agreement. He takes a gulp of his water – it tastes pure, clean, as if it’s from a cold stream. The water at his house is too soft.
‘The trouble is I can’t make anything else fit. It could have been any of those things you said, but why wouldn’t she just have told me about it?’
Lily lifts her chin and her bottom lip juts out.
‘Curiouser and curiouser. What are you going to do?’
What is he going to do? He looks around at a couple of old ladies haggling over a flowered tea-pot. They’ve dug in their heels over the last 25p, and he’s tempted to jump up and fish some coins from his pocket to stop the back and forth. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do. But he does know that it’ll be harder to live with this one. He could live with the train ticket, the long hair, he could rationalise them away. There could have been a hundred innocent, every-day explanations. And maybe Rose had good reasons to pretend her mother was dead – maybe it was easier for her to leave her unhappy past where it belonged. But this? He can’t just leave this one.
‘I need to know, Lily. I need to know the worst.’
She nods, and puts both of her hands palm-down on the table as if ready for action.
‘Right… we can try to find out… I had some thoughts last time, some ideas, when you found out about… I don’t know if they’d be any… if you want to hear them?’
They all seem like sensible ideas to Leonard. They could get in touch with Rose’s friends and colleagues and pretend they were writing some kind of book of remembrance for her - one of Lily’s friends did one for her husband. They could look into Rose’s surviving family - research her family tree, see if they could find any cousins or friends of the family who knew her when she was younger. And Leonard could do some thinking – go back through their life together and write down anything he can think of that didn’t quite fit. Lily says she’s read thousands of detective novels in her time, and although they’re unlikely to come across any corpses in acid baths or serial killers that target one-legged women with Scottish accents, she’s certainly learnt how to conduct an investigation. He notices how she relishes the word on her tongue – investigation. Lily volunteers to start looking into Rose’s family tree – she knows where to start on the internet after tracking down Rose. And Leonard will do some thinking, and also make a list of all the people Rose knew. They arrange to update each other in a couple of weeks’ time.
Once Lily has written this down in a little red notebook she pulls from her handbag, he’s pleased to notice that he feels lighter. He finds it amusing that she had such a fully-formed plan for how the investigation should go forward. She didn’t need much encouragement to go into detective-mode. As he pours their last half-cup of tea from the pot, he teases her about turning up to his house with a heavy bag full of forensic equipment, dusting the kitchen for finger-prints and questioning Pickles.
‘I need to ascertain your precise whereabouts on the Tuesday in question.’
‘Woof.’
‘I will ask you again, Mr. Pickles, where were you on Tuesday?’
(Note for the record, suspect is licking his private regions.)
By the time they carry their purchases to the car, it’s almost as if the conversation about Rose had never taken place.
Drinking lemonade with Rose
Leonard shuffles about on Pete and Glor’s doorstep on Thursday evening with a ball of nerves in his stomach. He wishes there were someone there with him, to squeeze his hand and tell him everything will be fine. It’s been ages since he saw Pete. He remembers the last time he saw Glor. He hasn’t spoken to her since the day she walked out before the kettle was boiled. Charlie had reckoned that Leonard was best shot of her, if that was the way she was going to behave, but Leonard kept thinking about all she’d done for him when Rose died. It would be cruel of him to let her disappear so easily. Leonard had tried to get in touch with her - she hadn’t returned any of his messages but he’d persevered. He’d finally got through to Pete earlier in the week. Pete had sounded pleased to hear from him and Leonard suspected that Glor hadn’t told him about their falling out. Leonard suggested they get together for a drink sometime.
The four of them used to meet in ‘The Green Man’ - a bit out of the way for both of them, but Rose had fallen in love with their home-made chocolate fudge cake the first time they’d been there and had insisted they make it their ‘Glor-and-Pete pub’. She and Glor always had a pudding before they started on their halves. This time Pete insisted that Leonard come to their house, so he could see their slides from their holiday to Portugal in September. Leonard doesn’t know anyone else who actually has a full-size screen for their slide-shows. Pete had sounded proud about making a social arrangement without Glor’s input, although he did say before he hung up that he’d have to ‘double check with the missus’.
He takes a deep breath before he knocks. They have a huge gold knocker in the shape of a bear’s head - classic Pete-and-Glor. Glor opens the door to him in full make-up - her hair is set into a smooth ‘hat’ which reminds him of the removable plastic hair on the twin’s Lego men. She makes all the right ‘ooh-ing’ noises about the Belgian biscuits he’s brought. Relief sweeps through him, and he feels glad to see her. He’s ushered into the living room, de-coated and handed a glass of sparkling white wine by Pete, ‘to keep you going until you choose what you’d like’. There is a rash of little bowls of peanuts and crisps on the tables in the front room, and he’s offered his ‘next drink’ from a list of pretty much everything he can imagine. He’s always treated like royalty at Glor and Pete’s. And as always, Glor is the one who does most of the talking. She bombards him with questions about what he’s been doing at work, how Pickles is, how Raine and the family are, what his Christmas was like, how he’s finding the weather… He settles back into the over-soft armchair with his bitter in one hand and his wine in the other and submits.
