Rosamunde Pilcher - September

A friend.

"I think that you should go at once, Lottie. And please don't ever come back unless you are asked."

"Oh, Miss Hoity-Toity, is it? Am I not good enough for the likes of you?"

"Please go."

"I'll go in my own time when I've said what I have to say."

"You have nothing to say to me."

"But that's where you're wrong, Mrs. Edmund Aird. I have plenty to say to you. Up to high doh you were, when I met you out a walk on the bridge. Didn't like what I had to say, did you? I could tell. I'm not stupid."

"You were telling lies."

"And why should I tell lies? I have no reason to tell lies because the truth is black enough. 'Whore' was what I called Pandora Blair, and you buttoned up your lips as though I'd said a dirty word, pretending to be so pure yourself, and high and mighty."

"What do you want?"

"I want to see no evil and fornicating," Lottie droned, and she sounded like a Wee Free minister promising his congregation Eternal Damnation. "The vileness of men and women. Lustful practices…"

Infuriated, Virginia cut her short. "You're talking drivel."

"Oh, drivel, is it?" Lottie became herself again. "And is it drivel that when your man's away, and you're rid of your wee boy, you bring your fancy men home with you and take them to your bed?" It was impossible. She was making it up. Letting her crazy twisted imagination feast on her own carnal fantasies. "Aha, I thought that would silence you. Mrs. Edmund Aird indeed. You're no better than a streetwalker. "

Virginia took hold of the edge of the table. She said, and kept her voice quite cold and quite calm, "1 don't know what you're talking about."

"And who's lying now, may I ask?" Lottie, with her hands clasped in her lap, leaned forward, her strange eyes fixed on Virginia's •face. Her skin was waxy as a candle and the faint shadow of her moustache darkened her upper lip. "I was there, Mrs. Edmund Aird." Her voice dropped, and now she spoke in the hushed tones of a person telling a ghost story, and making it as scary as possible. "I was outside your house when you came home last night. I saw you coming back. I saw you, switching on all the lights and making your way up the stair with your fancy man. I saw you at the bedroom window, leaning out like a pair of lovers and whispering between the two of you. I saw you draw the curtains, and shut yourselves away, with your lust and your adultery."

"You had no right to be in my garden. Just as you have no right to be in my house. It's called trespass, and if I wanted I could call the police."

"The police." Lottie gave a cackle of laughter. "Fat lot of good they are. And wouldn't they be interested to know what goes on when Mr. Aird is in America. Missing him, were you? Thinking of him and Pandora? Told you about them, didn't I? Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Makes you wonder who you can trust."

"I want you to go now, Lottie."

"And he's not going to be too pleased when he knows what's been going on."

"Go. Now."

"One thing's for certain. You're no better than the rest of them, and don't try to convince me you're not guilty, because your face gives you away…"

Virginia finally lost her cool. Through clenched teeth she screamed at Lottie. "get out!" She flung out an arm, pointing at the open door. "Get out and stay out and never come back, you creeping old bag."

Lottie was silenced. She did not budge. Across the table, she stared at Virginia, her eyes hot with hatred. Virginia, dreading what might happen next, stood, tense as strung wire. If Lottie made one move to touch her, she would turn the heavy table on top of the old lunatic and squash her flat as a beetle. But, far from becoming physically violent, Lottie's face assumed an expression of deep complacency. The glitter went out of her eyes. She had said her piece, achieved what she'd set out to do. Without hurry, in her own time, she got to her feet and neatly buttoned up her cardigan. "Well," she announced, "I'll be off then. Bye-bye, doggies, nice to have met you."

Virginia watched her go. Lottie, on her high heels, tapping jauntily across the kitchen. At the open door she paused to look back. "That's been very nice. No doubt I'll see you around."

And then she was gone, quietly closing the door behind her.

Violet, in her own little kitchen at* Pennyburn, stood, aproned, at the table, and iced her birthday cake. Edie had made the cake, which was large and had three tiers, but Violet had been left to do the decorating. She had made chocolate-butter icing and with this had stuck the three tiers together. Now she was engaged in spreading what remained of the sticky goo over the outside of the cake. She was not an expert at cake decorating and, when it was completed, it had a fairly rough-and-ready appearance, more like a newly ploughed field than anything else, but by the time she had stuck a few brightly coloured Smarties into the icing and added the single candle that was all she allowed herself, it would be quite festive enough.

She stood back to eye the finished cake, licking a few gobs of icing off her fingers. At that moment she heard a car coming up the hill and then turning into her own driveway. She looked up and through the window and saw that her visitor was Virginia, and was pleased. Virginia was on her own, and Violet was always gratified when her daughter-in-law unexpectedly dropped in, uninvited, because it meant that she wanted to come. And today was specially important, because they would have time to sit down and talk, and Violet would be able to hear all about Henry.

She went to wash her hands. Heard the front door open and close.

"I'm in the kitchen." She dried her hands, reached to untie her apron. "Vi!"

Violet tossed her apron aside and went out into the hall. Her daughter-in-law stood there at the foot of the stairs, and it was immediately obvious to Violet that something was very wrong. Virginia was as pale as paper, and her brilliant eyes were hard and bright, as though they burnt with unshed tears.

She was filled with apprehension. "My dear. What is it?"

"I have to see you, Vi." Her voice was controlled, but there was unsteadiness there. She was not far from weeping. "I have to talk."

"But of course. Come along. Come and sit down…" She put her arm around Virginia and led her into the sitting-room. "There. Sit down. Be quiet for a moment. There's nothing to disturb us." Virginia sank into Vi's deep armchair, laid her head back on the cushion, closed her lovely eyes, and then, almost immediately, opened them again.

She said, "Henry was right. Lottie Carstairs is evil. She can't stay. She can't stay with Edie. She must go away again."

Vi lowered herself into her own wide-lapped fireside chair. "Virginia, what has happened?"

Virginia said, "I'm frightened."

"That she will do Edie some harm?"

"Not Edie. Me."

"Tell me."

"I… I don't quite know how to start."

"Everything from the beginning."

Her quiet tones had effect. Virginia gathered herself, visibly making some effort to keep control and stay sensible and objective. She sat up, smoothing back her hair, pressing her fingers to her cheeks as though she had already wept and was wiping tears away.

She said, "I've never liked her. Just as none of us has ever liked her, or been happy with the fact that she's living with Edie. But, like the rest of us, I told myself that she was harmless."

Violet remembered her own reservations about Lottie. And the frisson of panic she had experienced, sitting with Lottie by the river in Relkirk, with Lottie's hand closed around her wrist, the fingers strong and steely as a vise.

"But now you believe that we were all wrong?"

"The day before I took Henry to school… Monday… I took a walk with the dogs. 1 went to Dermot's to buy something for Katy, and then on and over the west bridge. Lottie appeared out of nowhere. She'd been following me. She told me that you all knew- all of you-you and Archie and Isobel and Edie. She said that you knew."