Ann Cleeves - Hidden Depths

‘If someone came while you were at work, Luke would have mentioned it?’

Julie considered that. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t keep thoughts for very long in his head. He couldn’t pin them down. He wouldn’t mean to keep it a secret, but it just might not occur to him.’

‘Might Laura know?’

‘Luke was less likely to talk to her than to me.’

There was a silence. She could tell the inspector wanted to get off, but after resenting Vera turning up, now she was reluctant to let her go. ‘If you have any news,’ she said, ‘you will come and tell me? Straight away?’

Vera stood up and took her mug to the sink to rinse it.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Straight away.’ But she had her back to Julie while she was speaking and Julie wasn’t sure she could believe her.

Felicity saw James onto the school bus and walked slowly down the lane towards Fox Mill. Since Peter’s birthday nothing concrete had changed. She still washed and shopped and cooked every night. She made sure James did his homework and over dinner she asked Peter if he’d had a good day at work. She lay beside him in bed.

She’d tried the night before to talk to him about the dead girl. Through the open window came the smell of the garden, but underneath cut grass and honeysuckle was an imagined hint of the sea. In her head she was taken back to the watch tower, to the clean salt air, the seaweed and the flowers floating on water.

‘Do you think they know yet who killed her?’ she asked.

She was lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling. She knew he was still awake, but he took so long to answer that she wondered if he was pretending to be asleep.

‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t think they have a clue. They came to talk to me today. That woman inspector and a younger man.’

‘What did they say?’ She turned so she was facing him, could just make out the shape of his face. At one time she would have reached out and stroked his forehead, his eyelids, his neck. His lips and inside his mouth. She’d loved the intimacy of his skin on her fingertips. Now, not even their feet were touching.

‘They asked if I could identify the flowers. I’m not sure… That could have been an excuse.’

‘They can’t think that one of us had anything to do with it.’

‘No,’ he said easily. ‘Of course not.’ And he’d gathered her into his arms as he might have done when they were first married. A father comforting his child. She’d lain quite still, pretending to be comforted.

Walking down the lane, in and out of the shadow thrown by the elders, she thought that while on the surface everything seemed the same, in fact it never would be. Immediately after the idea came into her head she dismissed it as melodramatic nonsense. The trouble was that she had nobody to talk to about it. Of course she’d told her friends about finding the body, in fact over the last couple of days she’d described the incident so often – on the telephone, in different kitchens over mugs of coffee and glasses of wine – that she was no longer quite sure what was true. Had she embellished it slightly for effect? But what she couldn’t share with her friends was the suspicion, right at the back of her mind, that someone she knew might be a murderer. Just as she had confided in none of her friends about her relationship with Samuel.

In the empty house, she thought what she needed was company. Peter’s birthday had been ruined by the murder. She should organize a party, a barbecue, bring the boys back to do it properly. But she recognized an edge of desperation in the plans and knew that if she did go ahead with them the evening would be horrible, worse than the last time. A failure. Then she thought she would invite her daughters to stay, with their partners and families. They could have a grand family celebration. At least in her role as mother and grandmother she felt secure. She would talk to Peter that evening. It would be something to discuss. It would fill the deadly silence over dinner.

When Joanna, her youngest daughter, came to visit she and her husband always stayed in the cottage. It was a tradition which had started when Joanna first went to university. She’d come back one weekend with a group of friends and Felicity had thought they’d cause less fuss there. They could stay up all night drinking and listening to music without disturbing Peter or keeping James awake. Now Felicity decided she would prepare the place for their stay. She put cloths, a dustpan and brush, dusters and polish into a bucket and walked through the meadow to the cottage. Her mother, kneeling on cold stone to polish pews on which nobody would ever sit, had talked about the therapy of cleaning. She would put the theory into practice.

She hadn’t been in there since the weekend, when Vera Stanhope had asked to see inside, and nobody had stayed since Christmas. Despite the weather it smelled damp and musty. She hadn’t noticed it so strongly before. Perhaps that had put Lily Marsh off renting. Perhaps that was why she had rushed off without giving Felicity an answer. She propped the door ajar with a pebble and opened all the windows. With the door open the mill race seemed closer. As she worked she could hear the water outside.

She stripped the bed and put the sheets and pillow cases in a pile at the foot of the stairs, dusted the chest of drawers, polished it with beeswax. Then she stood on a chair to clean the bedroom window, lowering the sash so she could reach outside. Her mood was lifting already. She caught herself humming the snatch of a song which James had brought home from school. She fetched a broom from the cupboard in the kitchen and swept under the bed, pushing the dust ahead of her over the bare wooden boards into a pile. She gathered the pile into the dustpan, realized she hadn’t brought bin bags with her and carried it carefully downstairs.

She washed the tiles in the bathroom, scrubbed the top of the oven and inside the kitchen cupboards, brushed more dust into a pile. Then she decided she needed coffee. There was a jar of instant in the cottage and some powdered milk, but she deserved better than that. She left the cottage open to air and went back to the house. The long grass was feathery against her bare legs as she walked across the field.

She put the kettle on and checked the phone. One message. It was Samuel. Bland and distant as he always was. Perhaps you could phone me back if you have a minute. Nothing urgent. But even that contact thrilled her. She thought he wanted to meet, imagined walking into the house in Morpeth, him greeting her. She dialled his direct line. No answer. She was disappointed, but pleased too. She’d try again later and it would be something to look forward to. Delayed gratification. She poured the coffee into a Thermos mug. She thought she would take it to the cottage, drink it sitting on the step looking out over the water. She recognized how childish the morning had been. Mary Barnes would have spring-cleaned the cottage a few months ago, would do it again if Felicity told her Jo was coming to visit. This morning she’d been behaving like a little girl playing house. At the last minute she remembered she’d need a bin bag and went back to fetch it.

Drinking the coffee she thought of Samuel, his long bony spine and his slender back. Behaving like a girl again, she thought. Really, it’s time I grew up. But she smiled to herself. She went back into the cottage and closed the windows. She flushed the toilet to wash away the bleach. She scooped up the dust in the pan and tipped it into the bin bag. And saw something glittering. She set down the pan, stooped and picked the object out. A ring. Very attractive. Blue-green stones in an oval silver setting. An art deco design. Vaguely familiar. It must belong to one of the girls, she thought, pleased to have rescued it. Joanna probably. It was the sort of thing she’d love. How careless of her not even to realize it was missing.