Emma Page - Last Walk Home

‘No, thanks,’ she said abruptly. ‘I don’t see why I should go running after Janet if she can’t even be bothered to answer my letters. And anyway,’ she added with a return to her childish manner, ‘I don’t need her now I’ve got Carole.’ Carole was fifteen years older than Lisa and so fitted comfortably into the mother/older sister slot that Lisa was accustomed to. She much preferred the company of people older than herself, she hadn’t kept up with any of her schoolfriends.

And Carole always had plenty of money, was always happy to pay for the steak dinners and wine, tickets for a show, drinks at a club.

‘Then if you won’t come, I think I’ll go over to Longmead on my own,’ Derek said. ‘I’ll ask Janet what she’s going to do about the holidays. I’ll explain that you’re upset she hasn’t written – ’

‘Don’t you dare!’ Lisa said with force. ‘I will not go running after her and I won’t have you going running after her either!’

‘I don’t for one moment think she’d see it like that,’ he said mildly. He gave a joking smile. ‘Of course she may have more ambitious plans for the holidays, she may be going off on a luxury cruise.’

She could certainly afford it. She’d been teaching for seven years now and she was the type to save. She’d been left some money in her father’s will – a sore point with Lisa who’d been left nothing; when her father breathed his last he had no idea that he’d begotten a second child.

Mrs Marshall made her will twelve months before she died and she had divided her estate between her two daughters with scrupulous fairness. The house and its contents were left to them jointly and her investments were split in two, Janet’s share to be paid over without delay as she was already of a sensible age, but Lisa’s to be withheld till she was twenty-five.

‘Promise me you won’t go over to Rose Cottage,’ Lisa insisted.

He moved his shoulders. ‘All right then, if that’s what you want.’

She sank back against the pillows with a satisfied air. ‘I’m hungry,’ she said suddenly, like a child.

‘I’ll make you some breakfast,’ he offered. ‘I’ve plenty of time. What would you like?’ He removed the little glass from the tray and set it down on the bedside table.

She put out a finger and touched the rosebud. ‘What a pretty colour.’ She gave him a delicious dimpled smile and he had a sudden sharp memory of North Africa, the golden idle days, the starry, scented nights. ‘I’ll have some toast and scrambled eggs,’ she said. ‘Some of that lime marmalade. And lots of coffee.’

‘I’m yours to command, Princess.’ He bent down and kissed her, picked up the tray and went briskly down again to the kitchen. The bills were still on the table but he gave them barely a glance as he swept them up into a pile and thrust them back into the drawer of the dresser.

The morning session at Longmead school ended at noon. At five minutes past twelve Janet Marshall walked up Mayfield Lane and pushed open the little wooden gate of Rose Cottage. A trellis brilliant with the full flush of pale pink roses arched over the gate, scenting the air with their delicate perfume. She went up the path to the front door which was exuberantly garlanded on either side with great swags of climbing roses, red and white. She took a key from her shoulder-bag and let herself in.

The cottage was a good two hundred years old; it was small and set well back from the lane, a situation that gave it plenty of privacy without making it in any way isolated. It had a long narrow garden in front and an even longer strip at the back. The cottage belonged to Oswald Slater, the owner of Mayfield Farm, and stood upon his land. It had been allowed to lie empty for many years and had fallen into sad disrepair, but after the spectacular rise in property values in recent times Slater had considered the dwelling worth restoring and modernizing, and it was now a comfortable little residence with a new lease of life ahead of it. It suited Janet very well, standing as it did only a couple of hundred yards from the school.

She hung her bag on a hook just inside the front door. The tiny hall led into the single living-room which was simply and pleasantly furnished with pieces she had brought from Ivydene, pieces she remembered from her childhood in Ellenborough; they gave her an agreeable sense of continuity and tranquillity.

She switched on the radio which began to play light music, but she gave it no more than a fraction of her attention as she set about preparing her lunch.

She shook out a clean cloth and put it on the table in the centre of the room. She took out a jug of goat’s milk, butter and cheese from the fridge, reached down a beaker from the open dresser and brought a tin of crispbread from the pantry. At the sink she carefully washed a fine Cos lettuce she had grown in the garden and made it into a salad with cucumber and tomatoes she had bought on her Saturday trip into Cannonbridge. All her movements were quick, neat and methodical.

Before she sat down to eat she crossed to a small desk that stood against one wall and took out some opened letters. She began her lunch, looking over the letters again as she ate, frowning as she glanced through them. One letter was untidily written in Lisa’s small backward-sloping hand. ‘I’ve been expecting to hear from you,’ Lisa wrote. ‘To say when you’re coming to stay.’ To spend a couple of weeks acting as confidante and general dogsbody, Janet thought without enthusiasm; she’d had more than enough of that in her life.

Her father had died when she was ten years old and her mother, never the most independent and strong-minded of women, had immediately cast Janet in the role of man of the family. Her childhood seemed to end overnight. Her mother took to discussing every problem with her – and there was an endless succession of problems; Janet was called on to offer advice, weigh up situations, make decisions.

She sighed and glanced up from the letter and her gaze fell on a picture over the mantelpiece, a landscape, one of half a dozen watercolours on the cottage walls, executed by her father with considerable skill. He had owned and run an artists’ supply shop in Ellenborough and had cherished artistic ambitions of his own.

Janet resembled him in appearance, unlike Lisa who took after their mother. Janet was tall and had an exceptionally fine figure, slim and supple. Her head was set with particular grace on a long slender neck; her skin was a delicate olive and her large eyes a clear light hazel. Her naturally curly hair, thick and dark, was cut short and covered her head in close tendrils.

She stood up and took an apple from the bowl on the sideboard, and began to pace about the room as she ate it. She was strongly tempted to let Lisa get on as best she could with the life she had so defiantly chosen for herself. But then again, a young girl in her first pregnancy, no mother to turn to . . . She paused by the table and took a long drink of the delicious goat’s milk, creamy and icy cold. It was difficult to break the habit of shouldering responsibility, she had acquired the habit so young and had practised it so long.

After her father’s death her mother had put the shop up for sale, together with the house where they had been living; the house stood on the outskirts of Ellenborough. ‘What would you think of our buying a larger house and taking in lodgers?’ she asked Janet. Mrs Marshall rather inclined to the idea of businessmen, preferably transients, with whom it would be possible to preserve some distance. ‘I’m not a bad cook,’ she added on an increasingly hopeful note, ‘and I know you’d help me all you could. Do you think we could manage?’ After a semi-sleepless night Janet had decided they could manage and a search was immediately put in hand for suitable premises near the business area of Ellenborough.