Emma Page - In the Event of My Death

COPYRIGHT

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 1994 by Collins Crime

Copyright © Emma Page 1994

Emma Page asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780008171827

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780008171834

Version [2016-02-18]

DEDICATION

For Kath

with love,

remembering the old days

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

About the Author

By Emma Page

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

The rain had blown itself out in the night and Tuesday morning was fine, unusually mild for the first week in February.

In the spacious front bedroom of his substantial Edwardian dwelling in Oakfield Gardens, in one of the best residential suburbs of Brentworth, a thriving town of considerable size, James Milroy had slept soundly, as he did every night, from very soon after getting into bed. At six-thirty, as every weekday morning, the radio alarm on his bedside table sprang suddenly to life at the start of a news and current affairs programme.

James came awake, as always, on the instant. He threw back his covers and got out of bed, all his movements performed with his habitual minimum of noise. He gave his customary close attention to the recital of events and opinions, overnight market reports.

He was a tall, lean man of forty-nine, he looked fit and energetic. His hair was still thick and dark, he had kept his trim waistline; he could easily pass for ten years younger. He had a high forehead, a quiet face, shrewd and subtle, a penetrating gaze, a controlled manner. He looked very much what he was: a senior partner in a highly reputable firm of auditors and registrars, with its head office in Brentworth.

James had read law at the university, intending to make a career as a solicitor, but had later changed his mind, deciding instead to qualify as a chartered accountant. He had sprung from a background that was far from privileged and had made his way by dint of single-minded determination and unremitting hard work.

In the equally spacious front bedroom across the landing, the insistent trilling of her alarm clock finally roused James’s wife from a heavy, unrefreshing sleep; it was years since Esther had gone to bed without a sleeping pill.

She dragged herself out of bed to make a sketchy toilet before going down to cook breakfast for James. She was five years younger than her husband. She had married at eighteen in a flush of girlish romance; she had borne her first son before the year was out, her second, two years later. She had been very pretty as a girl, with a slender figure, delicate features, curly brown hair and a beautiful skin. Now she was thin and bony, with the look of a trapped bird. The curly brown hair had thinned and was showing threads of grey; the fine skin had developed a pervasive pattern of lines while she was still in her thirties. She appeared now a good ten years older than her husband.

Before she went downstairs, she drew back her curtains and opened wide the casement windows. The birds were astir, the sky was streaked with rose. She leaned out into the gentle air. To be away from it all, on her own, to be done with demands, routine, role-playing, to begin life all over again, in some far off, peaceful place, on her own terms this time – whatever those might prove to be. She drew a long sigh and turned from the window.

As she closed her bedroom door, James came out of his room on his way to the bathroom. She gave him a consciously bright greeting, adding in a rush, ‘It’s really quite warm this morning.’ He responded with detached courtesy. They might have been total strangers making conversation in a station waiting room.

Esther went on down to the kitchen and set about making her husband’s breakfast exactly as he liked it, as she had done throughout the twenty-six years of their marriage. She was an excellent cook, a punctilious housekeeper.

Upstairs, a little later, as James stood before the long mirror of his wardrobe, casting a final comprehensive glance over his reflection, he suddenly remembered the damp patch in the chimney breast in his wife’s bedroom, recently attended to by the local jobbing builder. He went across the landing to see how the repair had withstood the driving rain of yesterday evening.

It had stood up very well, not a sign of water coming through. As he turned to leave the room, he glanced about. He scarcely ever set foot in the room these days.

A couple of books on the bedside table caught his eye. He picked up the top book, looked at the cover, skimmed through the blurb. It was a best-selling blockbuster novel about a woman who left her cold-blooded, overbearing husband to branch out on her own, ending up, it seemed, with a succession of well-heeled lovers, spectacular business success, a sensational wardrobe and a lifestyle that whirled her continually about the globe.

As he picked up the second book, he saw beneath it a number of brightly-coloured travel brochures. His look sharpened. He set the book down again and picked up the brochures. They extolled the charms of distant islands, exotic lands. He glanced swiftly through them before replacing them exactly as he had found them.

He stood for some moments in thought, then he crossed the room to where framed family photographs were ranged on the chest of drawers. He selected one and stood gazing intently down at it: the formal wedding group of Esther’s brother, Matthew Dalton, five years her senior. James had been best man at the wedding, seventeen years ago. His own face looked back at him from the group, composed, faintly smiling, revealing nothing.

His eye travelled on and came to rest on the bride, Nina. Twenty-three years old on her wedding day, nine years younger than her bridegroom. Deliciously pretty, smiling confidently out at the camera.

Esther was there, as matron of honour, expensively dressed, without elegance, her youthful prettiness already fading, her expression anxious, her shoulders a little hunched.