David Nobbs - The Second Life of Sally Mottram

She had shaken her head.

Strangely, she had felt nothing. ‘Cry if you want to,’ a female officer had said. ‘Feel free.’ But she hadn’t been able to.

‘I’m afraid nobody can go upstairs,’ Inspector Pellet had explained. ‘It’s designated a crime scene. Purely routine.’

He had made gestures to the female officer to get Sally out of the way. He hadn’t wanted her to be in the house while they examined the rope, tested for fingerprints, searched for minute traces of thread dropped from clothes, or earth brought in on shoes. It wouldn’t be a thorough search, of course – there was really no doubt that he’d killed himself – but things had to be done by the book these days.

The female officer, PC Cartwright, had put her arm round Sally, to lead her towards the door of her own home. Inspector Pellet had turned and said, ‘Thank you, Mrs Mottram. We don’t need to bother you again tonight, and we have no reason to think that this is anything but …’ He had hesitated. He hadn’t wanted to say the word. He’d been to a two-day seminar on Tact and Consideration in the Isle of Wight in 2007, and it had stayed with him. ‘… what it appears to be. However, an officer will want to talk to you in the morning, when you’ve …’ He had been about to say ‘had a good night’s sleep’ but had realized that this was unlikely. He had abandoned that sentence and had asked, uneasily, ‘And … um … we … um … we might have to ask to borrow your computer. So … um … if you’re needing to use it …’ He had let that sentence go unfinished too.

‘I don’t use the computer,’ she had said.

‘Ah!’

Inspector Pellet had winced. He had realized that the emphasis he had put on that ‘Ah!’ might carry with it the implication that, in the knowledge that she would never be able to discover them, it was therefore possible that this seemingly innocent lawyer had thought it safe to save large numbers of horribly indecent photos of young children and domestic pets, or of the wives of fellow lawyers caught in flagrante. Or both. In truth the inspector was a nice, sensitive family man and had driven himself close to depression due to his attempts to follow what he had learnt at the seminar all those years ago.

Luckily Sally had been so shattered and so bewildered, and also so innocent, that she had been completely incapable of picking up any implications, let alone ones so extreme. PC Cartwright had led her out of her own front door, pushing her in such a direction that she would have risked dislocating her neck if she had attempted to turn to take one last look at her husband hanging there.

When they were outside, PC Cartwright had asked her, ‘Have you any children you could go to?’

‘Well, my daughter, I suppose,’ she had said.

‘Right. Good. And where does she live?’

‘New Zealand. That’s the only bugbear.’

PC Cartwright had looked at her in astonishment.

‘I probably won’t,’ Sally had added.

‘No. I meant … now. For a couple of hours like, while they … till you can return.’

‘Oh. Of course. I’m sorry. I was being stupid.’

‘No, not at all, lovey. You’re in shock.’

‘Yes. Yes, I am. No. No, I haven’t. My son’s in Barnet.’

‘Neighbours?’

‘Well … It’s not the most … um …’

‘… sociable street in Potherthwaite?’

‘No. And my husband isn’t … wasn’t … oh God … oh God …’

‘Now now. There there. There … um … surely there must be somebody?’

‘Well, there’s the Hammonds, but … I think they’re in Tenerife. Peter Sparling’s around, I saw him earlier with Kenneth. I could go to them, I suppose.’

‘Oh. Right. Well. Good. I’ll take you. Can you walk it?’

‘Oh yes. It’s only five houses.’

PC Cartwright had led Sally slowly along the road. If there had been any passers-by, they might have thought she was disabled.

‘I’m sure they’ll look after you,’ she’d said, and then she’d lowered her voice, as if she hadn’t wanted her progressive views to be overheard by any colleagues who might be lurking in the bushes. ‘Gays can be very considerate and understanding. It’s with the female hormones, I suppose.’

‘Gays?’

‘Peter and Kenneth.’

‘Oh. No no. Kenneth’s a Labrador.’

PC Cartwright had looked astonished, then shocked, then just bewildered. She had entirely forgotten that she had been to an afternoon seminar on Not Making Assumptions at a moated country house outside Droitwich in 2009. And if she had remembered that she had been, she would still have forgotten what she had learnt.

‘P’r’aps you should just wait a moment at the gate, love,’ PC Cartwright had said, when they arrived at the Sparlings’ house. ‘Best for me to explain, p’r’aps.’

So Sally had stood in the cold at the gate of ‘Ambleside’, and had endured the unpleasant experience of watching two people discussing her, and wondering what had been said when Peter Sparling had shaken his head, and when PC Cartwright had suddenly turned round to have a look at her by the gate.

Then they had shaken hands and Peter had come striding over the cut grass.

‘Sally! Sally! I am so sorry,’ he’d said.

‘Thank you.’

‘Come in. Come in.’

‘Thank you. Thank you.’

‘Will you be all right, lovey?’ PC Cartwright had asked.

‘I’ll be fine. Thank you.’

Sally was going to be brave. She wasn’t even going to be upset by this woman she had never met before calling her ‘lovey’.

‘We’ll come and let you know when it’s all right to go back.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Not long, I wouldn’t think.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Purely routine, lovey.’

‘Thank you.’

Myfanwy and Peter Sparling had made Sally comfortable by the roaring fire, and had plied her with gin and tonic. Myfanwy, who talked like a mountain stream, had found more words for ‘sorry’ than most people even knew. Sally had told them of PC Cartwright’s confusion over Kenneth. They’d had to laugh. In fact Sally had laughed too, and in that charged moment the laughter had become hysterical, and then, just as the laughter had died, Kenneth had farted, and none of them had been able to look at each other. They had controlled themselves heroically, and in the flat silence that always follows hysterics, Peter and Myfanwy had apologized for laughing, and Sally had said, ‘No, please. I wanted you to laugh. That’s why I told you. Life must go on.’

And she had thought, ‘Must it?’ Back home all alone now she recalled that moment and she thought, ‘Must it? But how? How can it?’

After that, they had talked soberly. The Sparlings had raised Barry to something only just short of a saint, the question of why he had done it had been raised but not answered, and Sally had said, ‘But why didn’t he leave a note?’ with such force that even Myfanwy had made no attempt to provide a facile answer. Sally had seen that Myfanwy was very close to tears, the easy yet genuine tears of South Wales. Myfanwy had lowered the emotional tension but only slightly by saying, ‘I can’t believe that only … what would it be? … four hours ago … Peter and you were talking quite casually having no idea what had happened. I can’t get my head round it.’ And then they had reminisced about a trip the four of them had made to Whitby for fish and chips at the Magpie, and they had agreed that they should have done that sort of thing more often, but you don’t know what’s going to happen, do you? That’s right, you don’t. Just as well, perhaps. And Peter had said, ‘I can’t get my head round it either, Sally. There we were, you and I, talking about the weather …’ a frown had passed across his face as he’d remembered Sally’s strange comment about lightning and tsunamis ‘… and we had no idea what had happened,’ and all the time Sally had been wondering, underneath the talk and the socializing and the memories and the gin and tonic and the log fire, how far they had got at ‘The Larches’, whether they had taken Barry down yet.