Emma Page - Element of Chance

‘Not just yet,’ she said. ‘I mustn’t be rushed. Be fair, you have rather sprung this on me.’ Marriage hadn’t taken long to turn him from a moderately open-handed lover into a tight-fisted husband – probably, she judged now, his natural attitude. The idea of reunion seemed likely to release his purse strings once more.

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Of course you must take what time you need.’

She glanced at her watch. ‘I must ring off. I have an appointment.’

‘Oh – yes – certainly,’ he said at once. He felt great, marvellous, as he put down the receiver. He left the kiosk, went back to the car, shoved the bottles aside in a rush of disgust. He didn’t need any booze now, he was on top of the world, reborn.

He set the car in motion, headed towards home. His brain was full of plans, moves, applications, interviews, in a fierce resurgence of hope.

CHAPTER 5

SHORTLY AFTER half past five Alison put on her coat. The sky had grown leaden, it promised to be a chilly evening. As she opened her office door she saw Hazel Ratcliff going briskly by with a handful of papers. Hazel paused and gave her a sharp look.

‘You won’t forget about the meeting, Mrs Rolt?’

‘Of course not,’ Alison said. ‘Half past seven, I’ll be there.’

Hazel’s features relaxed slightly. ‘I hope it doesn’t rain,’ she said in a more affable tone. ‘But it seems as if it’s going to.’

‘You’ll have your work cut out to get home and back again for half past seven,’ Alison said.

‘I shan’t even try,’ Hazel said with energy. ‘It would be impossible with the buses as they are now.’ She jerked her head in the direction of her own room. ‘I’ve brought extra sandwiches. I’ll stay on here and catch up with a bit of work till it’s time for the meeting.’

I do believe I detected a faint increase in warmth in her manner, Alison thought with satisfaction as she went off down the stairs. She paused for a moment. Perhaps she ought to ask Hazel to join her for a meal, it might be a good move.

But she wasn’t going to eat at home herself. There was hardly any food in the flat and she didn’t in the least feel like battling round the streets in a last-minute effort to shop. She was going to call in at the Mayflower café for a snack and a chance to sit back and draw her breath before the rigours of the evening.

No, she would eat alone. She set off again down the stairs. It really would be altogether too much to ask that she should take Hazel along to the Mayflower and sit opposite her while she chomped her way through a mountain of baked beans.

Large drops of rain were starting to fall as Colin Viner pushed his way out of the supermarket. Still undecided how to deal with the flatness of the evening opening out before him, he took a firmer grip of his shopping bag and began to mooch along the pavement.

A flurry of rain drove him into a doorway; he turned and glanced at the shop window and saw that it was in fact a café. His spirits rose fractionally. He could go inside and have a cup of tea, give himself time to consider how to kill the next few hours.

The place was almost full but there was a table for two over against the wall with one empty chair. The young woman occupying the other chair leaned forward to pick something up and Viner saw her more clearly. A good-looking girl, long dark hair gleaming under the light. She sat back in her chair again and looked idly out at the street. A slightly olive skin, large dark eyes.

He felt a stir in some quarter of his brain, a teasing half-recollection. Oddly combined with a strong flavour of distaste. He frowned. Had he seen her before? Here, in Barbourne? No, surely not, for that would mean he had come across her in the last week or two and he couldn’t have forgotten her so soon.

He pushed open the café door. Half-a-dozen people came towards him from the direction of the cash desk, anxious for buses and home. An elderly woman, hurrying a little too fast, caught the heel of her shoe against a chair leg and almost fell to the floor, saving herself at the last moment by clutching at the trim waist of a very tall upright old man in front of her.

‘God bless my soul!’ the old man said in loud clear tones, feeling himself encircled for the first time in twenty-five years in a powerful feminine embrace. Tins and packets cascaded from the woman’s holdall, rattling and bouncing between the agitated feet of customers pressing towards the exit.

‘I’m ever so sorry,’ the woman said in a deeply humiliated voice. Viner bent down to pick up the groceries. A small cardboard drum had rolled under one of the tables so that he had to kneel and fish it out, murmuring apologies to the occupants of the table, who continued to consult their menus without paying the slightest attention to either himself or what they clearly considered an ill-bred little uproar.

I suppose I’d better be going, Alison thought, roused from her reverie by some minor commotion at the other side of the tearoom. She looked about, gathered up her things. Rain no longer blew against the window, the sky was beginning to clear. She wouldn’t bother taking a bus, she had time to walk.

As she came away from the cash desk she became aware of a tall young man getting up from his knees a couple of yards away, giving her a rueful grin. He was helping some old duck with her gear. He shepherded her to the door and then turned back into the café, looking over at Alison, almost as if he knew her.

She was faintly puzzled. Was he someone she ought to recognize? Some client from the agency – or from her days at Tyler’s perhaps? Then all at once she knew him. Good heavens! Colin Viner! After how many years?

She swung round to face him, laughing. ‘Colin!’ she said. ‘It is Colin Viner, isn’t it?’ It must be twelve or thirteen years since she’d last seen him. He’d been a couple of forms above her at Chaddesley Grammar School; she’d had to leave, had been transferred to the Barbourne school when her father had taken a post as art lecturer at the Barbourne College of Art. It was just herself and her father by then; her mother had died during an influenza epidemic three years before.

He was beside her now, smiling down at her, striving to recall her name. Just when he thought he’d have to confess he couldn’t remember it, his brain flung up the long-ago syllables.

‘Alison!’ he said in triumph. ‘Alison Lloyd!’ It came to him in the same moment that he hadn’t known her all that well, she was a couple of years younger than he was. And it came to him also that he hadn’t much liked her. But the reason for his dislike – that eluded him.

‘I’m not Alison Lloyd any more,’ she said. ‘I’m Alison Rolt. I got married a few years ago.’ She pulled a face. ‘Not a very good idea, it came unstuck.’

People began to push past them. ‘We’d better move,’ he said. He walked beside her to the door, came out and stood on the windy pavement.

‘What are you doing in Barbourne?’ she asked. ‘Do you live here now?’

‘I was transferred here a few weeks ago. I’m in the police. A detective sergeant, to be precise.’

She made a little grimace of affected awe. ‘Fancy!’ She scrutinized his face with a candour left over from the shared days of childhood. ‘You haven’t really changed all that much.’

‘Come and have a drink this evening,’ he suggested. Infinitely better than sitting alone in his lodgings. ‘Or dinner,’ he said. ‘We could have a good old gossip.’

She shook her head. ‘This evening’s no good. I have a committee meeting.’ She laughed. ‘It’s not really my style. I’ve been roped in to help with the Charities Fair. But I could make it another evening. Tomorrow – or Wednesday.’