Cuthbertina David was a tall, angular woman with wild, white hair and enormous flat feet. She was deaf and her hearing aid seemed little use to her. Annie Ramsay stood in the corridor and knocked on Cuthbertina’s door. She was very excited. There was no answer. She knocked again, growing more and more impatient and frustrated. She knew Cuthbertina was there. If the deaf old bat didn’t come soon she would have to fetch the warden for her key. At last the door opened.
‘Eh, I’m sorry, hinnie,’ the woman said. In contrast to her manic appearance her voice was soft and melodic. ‘I didn’t hear you. Come in.’
‘I’ve come about Mrs Cassidy,’ Annie yelled. ‘You must have heard about the tragedy.’
‘No, hinnie. What tragedy’s that?’
‘Didn’t the police come to talk to you this morning?’
‘I’ve been in all morning and I’ve seen no one. But maybe they knocked and I didn’t hear the door.’
Annie shouted an explanation of what had happened, then came to the point.
‘It was your day for church cleaning yesterday,’ she said.
‘Aye,’ Cuthbertina said. ‘ I can’t do any heavy work now. Not with the arthritis so bad. But they let me do the silver. I can sit to do that.’
‘Did you have to go to the vicarage?’
‘Of course. Like I always do. Even if they’re all out there’s a key to the back door in the vestry.’
‘Were they all out yesterday?’
‘No. I thought someone would be there because Mrs Cassidy’s car was parked in the drive.’
‘Did you see Mrs Cassidy?’
‘Yes. She was in the kitchen with the lad, Patrick. I thought she might give me a cup of tea. She’d just made a brew, but they seemed to be busy, serious, you know. I don’t think the lad saw me even, he was that engrossed.’
‘What were they talking about?’
‘Eh, hinnie, you know what my hearing’s like. I didn’t go into the kitchen, only the scullery. How could I tell?’
‘What was the time?’ Annie Ramsay said. ‘Do you know what the time was when you saw her in the vicarage?’
‘Aye,’ Cuthbertina said. ‘It was half past five. I looked up at the church clock.’
‘Did you go back later to take the cleaning stuff?’
‘No,’ Cuthbertina said. ‘I thought I’d leave it in the vestry just this once. I got the idea Mrs Cassidy wouldn’t want to be disturbed.’
Triumphantly Annie Ramsay scuttled back to her flat to phone her nephew to tell him the news and receive his admiration.
When Imogen arrived in Otterbridge she drove straight to the vicarage. Edward Cassidy had the kitchen door open before she could get out of the car and he walked out on to the square patch of gravel at the side of the house, shielding his eyes from the bright sunlight with one hand, to see who it was. She could tell at once that he was disappointed and they stared at each other, not sure what to say. He was so grey and confused that Imogen wondered if he might be physically ill.
‘I was looking for Patrick,’ she said at last. ‘ I wanted to help. I don’t know …’
He shook his head.
‘He’s not here,’ he said. ‘I don’t know where he went.’ Then plaintively, ‘He’s taken my car.’
‘How is he?’
‘Upset. Dreadfully upset. He was very fond of his stepmother.’
Oh yes, Imogen thought bitterly, we all know how fond he was of Dorothea.
He tried to persuade her to come into the house with him, to take some tea, share the burden of waiting for Patrick, but she refused. She knew Edward wanted to talk about Dorothea and she could not stand that. She almost ran back to her car and drove away too quickly, so that the wheels spun on the gravel and the cats that had been sleeping on the back doorstep in the sun ran into the house.
She drove through the town to her parents’ house. She thought Patrick might try to get in touch with her there. The progress through the crowded streets was slow and she swore to herself and hit the horn with her fist when pedestrians would not move out of her way. In the square by the alms-houses some sort of pageant was in progress. It was full of children in medieval dress. Bloody festival, she thought. The whole town goes mad at this time of the year.
Her parents lived in a large semi-detached villa in one of the quiet streets close to the park. She had long since stopped thinking of it as her home, though she had never lived anywhere else, except in a nurses’ home for the first few months of her training. And she’d hated that. All along the street, in the gardens and by the side of the road, trees were in blossom. Much of it was past its best so the pavement and parked cars and the tidy front lawns were covered with the shrivelled pink flowers. Her mother laughed at the neighbours’ attempts to sweep the dead blossom away. ‘ What does it matter?’ she would say. ‘There’ll only be more tomorrow. What tedious lives those people must live if they can think of nothing better to do.’
I expect she considers I lead a tedious life, too, Imogen thought.
She pulled her car on to the pavement, leaving the drive free for her parents’ Volvo and walked down the long, narrow garden to the house. Just inside the door was a pile of post and she stooped to pick it up, absently looking through the envelopes to see if there was anything for her. There was one letter. It was in a cheap white envelope and the address was written in a handwriting she did not recognise. It had been posted locally the evening before. She took it with her to the kitchen and put it on the table while she filled a kettle to make coffee. All the time she was willing the phone to ring, or the doorbell. Patrick would have an explanation for everything, she thought. If only Patrick turned up everything would be all right. She made instant coffee in a mug with a cartoon of Margaret Thatcher on the side and opened the letter.
Dear Imogen, it said. I’m sorry you were so upset today. I think we should meet when I’ve more time. We need to talk. Perhaps we could have a meal together. I’m sure you’ve no reason to worry. I’ll be in touch soon.
It was written in a bold and confident hand and it was signed Dorothea. Imogen could imagine her writing it, dashing it off in a moment, perhaps while she was sitting in her car outside some client’s house. There was nothing new in the letter. It was a gesture, a form of showing off. Look at me, it said, I’m incredibly busy but I can still find time to show my stepson’s neurotic girlfriend that I care about her. It was as if she had seen a ghost. She tore the letter into pieces, then set fire to the paper in an ashtray. She rinsed the mug and the ashtray under the tap and went up the stairs to her room.
She had first suspected that Patrick was in love with Dorothea Cassidy on Easter Sunday. She remembered it vividly. She had been invited to the vicarage for lunch, then she and Patrick had spent the afternoon together, walking along the River Otter. There was a quiet, overgrown place where they knew they would not be disturbed. They lay under the trees and threw stones into the water. She had her head on his stomach and he stroked the hair away from her face.
‘We should elope,’ he had said, ‘ and live here for ever.’
She had moved away from him, so she was face down, watching the dragonflies on the river. She did not look at him because she was nervous about what he might say. ‘ Why don’t you leave the vicarage?’ she asked. ‘Perhaps we could get a flat together.’
‘Perhaps we could!’ he said, apparently enthusiastic, so she rolled back on to her side and took his hand, relieved. But when she went on to make real plans, to discuss where they might live, when he might move, he said it was not something to hurry.
‘There’s plenty of time,’ he said, expansively. ‘We’re all right as we are.’
So she realised that something was holding him at the vicarage. She thought at first it might be his affection for his father. They had been alone for such a long time that there was a special bond. It was only later on that Easter Sunday as they were walking back in the dusk through the trees with the sound of church bells in the distance, that Patrick made some casual reference to his stepmother. The trivial remark was made with such reverence that she saw, quite suddenly, that the real attraction was Dorothea.
Since then she had considered Dorothea a rival. Even when she was most depressed she had never dreamt that there was anything physical between them, but in comparison to Dorothea she felt excluded and inadequate. The jealousy crept up on her without her realising what was happening. At the start it was a minor irritant, almost amusing. Didn’t Patrick see what a fool he was making of himself? she thought. He was surely too old for a teenage crush. It was all the fault of that crazy boys’ school his father had sent him to. But it had steadily become more debilitating, and soon the secret and desperate jealousy was as much a part of her relationship with Patrick as her infatuation for him.
It was a private obsession. She started to count the number of times he mentioned Dorothea in each conversation. She noticed that when Dorothea was alone in the vicarage he made excuses to go home early to see her. Imogen knew that the obsession was destructive. She knew her hostility to Dorothea only increased the likelihood of Patrick leaving her, yet she was unable to stop herself. ‘Why does Dorothea have to run around doing all that social work?’ she would ask, sneering. ‘Hasn’t she got enough to do in the church? Shouldn’t she dress more like a vicar’s wife?’ Patrick seemed so wrapped up in admiration for his stepmother that he did not notice the criticism and was only too glad of the opportunity to talk about her. Soon Imogen knew even the most intimate details about her. Dorothea could never have children, he said melodramatically. It was one of the tragedies of her life. That was why she was so committed to social work. She loved all the children she worked with as if they were her own.
Not once since Easter Sunday had Imogen actively blamed Dorothea for what was happening to her. She had too little confidence for that. She blamed herself, bottled things up, and grew thinner and more frail and beautiful. She just wanted Dorothea out of the way.
Now she had got what she wanted and there was nothing left but this dreadful panic. She lay on her bed and stared up at the ceiling, at the cracks in the plaster she remembered from childhood illnesses, when fever had made the patterns dance in front of her eyes.
I didn’t really want her out of the way, she thought. Not literally. Not like that. She would have been able to handle the situation, she thought. Patrick would have seen sense in the end. She would have come to terms with it, if only Dorothea hadn’t decided to meddle, if she had not turned up at the hospital with her unendurable compassion and her pretensions to sainthood.
Dorothea had arrived on the ward without warning the afternoon before. She had run up the stairs from the radiotherapy out-patients’ waiting room and looked glowing, radiant. It was a quiet time and the other nurses were in the canteen having lunch. Imogen was on her own in the office. She had looked up from the desk and there was Dorothea, smiling, slightly out of breath.
‘I’m worried about you,’ Dorothea had said, coming straight to the point. There was never any small-talk with Dorothea. She despised it. ‘ You haven’t been looking well lately. I never get a chance to see you on your own at the vicarage. Patrick keeps you all to himself.’
‘I’m fine,’ Imogen had said, looking blankly out of the window.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Dorothea had said and sat down on the visitors’ chair, frowning slightly to show her concern. ‘You’ve been miserable for months. Look at all the weight you’ve lost. What’s Patrick been doing to upset you? Or is it work?’
And then, despite herself, Imogen had blurted it all out, and Dorothea had listened, fixing Imogen with such a concentrated look that it seemed that nothing in the world mattered more to her than Imogen’s happiness. And she had promised to put everything right.
Imogen had gone home from work that night not sure what to expect. She had wanted to believe that Dorothea had a magical power to arrange things, but was afraid that the meeting between them might provoke some crisis. She had shut herself in her bedroom. Her parents were preparing to go out and she could hear them calling to each other between the bathroom and their bedroom about what earrings went best with her mother’s dress. Then the doorbell had rung with an unusual ferocity and she had fled down the stairs to answer it. Patrick stood on the doorstep, as he had on the night they met, but he refused to come in.
‘I want to talk to you,’ he said.
‘Come in. My parents are going out soon.’
‘No. Not here. Get your things. We’ll go to the pub.’
She did not know what to make of him. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. He seemed angry, restless, embarrassed.
They had walked down the road, scattering the dead blossom with their feet, not speaking. There was a pub on the corner of the next street and they stopped there. The inside had been ripped out to make one huge bar and there was juke-box music and flashing one-arm bandits. At the door Imogen hesitated. Usually he hated places like this. She expected him to walk out and find somewhere else, but he went straight to the bar and bought drinks for them both without even asking what she wanted. He led her to a corner.
‘What have you been saying to Dorothea?’ he said.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘The truth. That you care about her more than you care about me.’
She realised at once how childish that sounded but it was too late.
‘You’re mad,’ he said, but he was starting to blush. The colour spread from his cheeks to his neck and even to his hands. He drank the beer very quickly, tipping back his head to pour it down his throat. ‘ She’s almost old enough to be my mother.’
‘What has that got to do with anything?’ she said impatiently.
‘You shouldn’t have spoken to her,’ he cried. ‘It’s upset her. She doesn’t trust me any more. She thinks I should leave the vicarage.’
There was a pause and the fruit machine beside them clattered and spewed out brass tokens into a dirty metal tray. The skeletal young man who was playing the machine left them where they were and impassively pulled the handle again.
Patrick turned to her and took her hand. ‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ he said, trying to convince himself as much as her. ‘ It’s you I care about. You know that.’