Emma Page - In the Event of My Death

The college was a large building, put up after the Second World War. Verity was taking a two-year course, begun shortly after her seventeenth birthday, eighteen months ago. She had chosen a somewhat unusual combination of subjects: secretarial skills, cordon bleu cookery and art. She enjoyed them all and was doing well.

At a few minutes after seven she came out of the college, bound for the little basement flat where she lived alone. She had moved there six months ago from the larger flat she had shared with two other girls, both students at the college.

She was slightly built, not very tall, with an elfin face, big brown eyes, a vulnerable look. Her long dark hair hung straight and heavy. Her temperament was highly mercurial; she harboured deep feelings of insecurity, due in no small measure to the abrupt and brutal fashion in which she had been orphaned at the age of nine.

Her parents and maternal grandparents had all been medical missionaries in Africa; the grandmother was a sister of Bernard Dalton. When the grandparents were retiring, they decided to spend a month at the mission station run by Verity’s parents before returning to England for good.

In the middle of their visit, Verity attended a birthday party given for the daughter of friends living some distance away; she was to stay overnight. In the early hours of the morning the mission station was attacked by a roving band of marauders who had slipped over the border from a neighbouring territory under cover of darkness. The buildings were looted and burned, every man, woman and child – black or white – savagely butchered.

A week later, Verity was sent home to England, into the care of her great uncle, Bernard Dalton, and his second wife, Grace.

Now, on this fine February evening, as she set off for her flat, she caught sight of someone standing by the entrance gates, looking across at her. Her heart gave a wild leap of joy. It was Ned Hooper; it was more than a week since she’d set eyes on him.

Then her heart sank. He didn’t come forward to meet her but remained unsmiling by the gates, waiting for her to reach him. It didn’t augur well.

Ned was eighteen years older than Verity. Tall and strongly built, good-looking in a very English way, with fair hair and blue eyes, an open expression. He had studied art at the college and now did occasional supply teaching in the art department, to eke out the exceedingly slender living he contrived to make as an artist.

‘Are you coming along to the flat?’ Verity wanted to know, the moment she had greeted him. Her manner was intense and eager. Her main reason for moving to a flat of her own was so that the pair of them could be together without the knowledge of her flatmates – or her relatives and guardians.

Ned shook his head with resolution. He knew once they were indoors she’d try every trick in the book to get round him. Or else she’d set about creating the kind of scene he couldn’t stomach. He gestured in the direction of a small public garden near by. ‘We can talk over there.’

They walked side by side, in silence, not touching, till they reached the garden. At this time of evening there were few strollers along the gravel paths. They found a seat beside the beds of winter heather; in silence they sat down, a little apart. She sat stiffly upright, gazing straight ahead, waiting for him to begin.

‘We’ve had some good times,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t forget them. But they’re over now, it’s definitely finished.’ Her head came sharply round, she darted a beseeching look at him from her great dark eyes. It was those eyes he had first noticed, fixed on him in class, with that intense, searching gaze, the gaze he had once found so intriguing.

‘It doesn’t have to be finished,’ she declared vehemently.

He didn’t waver. ‘I’m afraid it does. It really is over. You’ll meet someone else, someone your own age. You’ll forget about me in no time at all.’

She clenched her fists. ‘I don’t want anyone else. I want you.’

‘I’m afraid you can’t have me,’ he threw back at her with asperity. ‘I’m bowing out for good.’ With an effort he softened his tone again. ‘You must accept it’s over. It does no good trying to argue about it.’

‘It’s Mrs Bradshaw,’ she said with sudden ferocity. ‘You’re moving in with her, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I am moving in with her,’ he replied brusquely. ‘I’m a free agent.’

Her voice rose. ‘You don’t love her! You can’t! She’s old and fat.’

‘She’s neither old nor fat,’ he retorted. Mrs Freda Bradshaw was in fact forty-two years old. She might carry a little more flesh than was currently fashionable, but it was certainly no hardship to look at her. She had been a good-looking girl and was still an attractive woman. She was the widow of a man more than thirty years her senior, the owner of a chain of cut-price clothing stores up north. She had started out at sixteen as a sales assistant in one of his stores and had early taken his eye. When his wife died, Freda lost no time in stepping into her shoes.

She had played fair throughout the years that followed. She had been genuinely fond of her husband, had looked after him devotedly in his old age, nursed him in his last illness. She had inherited everything. There had been no children from his first marriage, no relatives to argue the toss.

Freda had then set wholeheartedly about enjoying the rewards of her devotion. She sold the business and salted away the proceeds, then she set off for fresh pastures. Some wind blew her before long to Brentworth. She came across Ned Hooper at an art exhibition.

‘I can’t bear to think of you with that woman.’ Verity laid an urgent hand on his arm. ‘If it’s just her money, you know I’ve got money coming to me one day. Quite a lot of money. You can have it all.’

He shook off her hand. ‘I don’t want your money,’ he said roughly. ‘What do you take me for?’

She wasn’t done yet. ‘I’m sure I could get hold of some of the money now. You can have every penny.’

He made a contemptuous gesture of dismissal and got to his feet. She remained seated, looking pleadingly up at him. ‘You’d better get it into your head,’ he said with profound irritation. ‘This really is goodbye.’ He went rapidly off along the path.

She sat biting her lip, staring after him as he plunged out of the garden, disappearing from view along the busy evening pavement.

Shortly before seven-thirty, Esther came out of the Brentworth hospice where she had been putting in a little extra visiting, as she not infrequently did on evenings when James wouldn’t be home before bedtime. She didn’t use her car if the weather was fine, as it was tonight; the walk both ways helped to fill the long stretch of time.

She set off without haste in the direction of Oakfield Gardens and her solitary supper, choosing her usual route that took her through the town centre with its cheerful bustle and brightly-lit shop windows, postponing as long as possible the moment when she must let herself in to the silent house.

As she approached the block where Matthew had his offices, she glanced up to see if any of his lights showed, as they had so often done of late. Yes, light was showing. She slowed her pace to a halt and stood pondering, then she made up her mind and went quickly in through the swing doors, into the deserted entrance hall.

She could hear someone rattling about, along a corridor; the caretaker, no doubt. She wasn’t anxious to encounter him; he was a dour character with a chronically gloomy view of the world. She slipped quietly up the stairs to the floor where Matthew had his offices.

CHAPTER 4

The weather continued mild. On Sunday afternoon, Verity Thorburn sat with Barry Fielding, another of her great uncle’s protegés, in the tea room attached to the Brentworth Art Gallery. They had just made the rounds of an exhibition of late-Victorian watercolours. Barry had cycled over from his boarding school, a mile or two outside Brentworth, to join her for the afternoon; they often went to concerts and exhibitions together.