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  ‘Tom!’ she called after him, ‘is this any use to you?’

  He came back and took it from her with his gap-toothed grin, touching one finger to his brow in mock salute.

  ‘Cheers, miss!’ he said, then drawing himself up to his skinny height put his heels together, doffed his disreputable woollen bonnet and bowed. ‘And the compliments of the season to you.’

  Laughing, Margaret watched him execute a comic, Flanagan-and-Allen caper under the battered gamp, and then he shuffled off down the road.

  ***

  ‘Great heavens, do my eyes deceive me? Is that really Lizzie McEvoy buying biscuits? Now I would have sworn that no one in your family would even know what a bought biscuit looks like!’

  There was hardly anyone in the supermarket. It had that wearied, post-Christmas appearance, with the gaps on the shelves left by the Christmas Eve feeding frenzy as yet unfilled, and much of what remained defaced by ‘Reduced’ labels stuck across the improbably merry snow-scenes and the anatomically-challenged robins. It was curious that packaging which days before had looked so festive now seemed as depressing as a shrivelled party balloon.

  Elizabeth had been stowing a box of chocolate biscuits – ‘Price slashed!’ – in her trolley when Patrick Bolton accosted her jocularly from behind.

  She swung round, startled and defensive, and, he noted in horror, with tears in her eyes.

  ‘Well, I do try, you know. But a person can only do so much, and there’s been such a lot with Christmas and everything...’

  ‘Lizzie, stop, please stop!’

  He caught her hands and held them awkwardly, trying to stop the flood of self-exculpation.

  ‘It was a joke, Lizzie, not a criticism, honestly! Stupid, I know, but truly I was only teasing you. It never occurred to me that you would think...For heaven’s sake, you must know that no one would ever reproach you for not taking enough trouble. I thought you would laugh. Oh Lizzie, please don’t cry. It makes me feel awful.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Elizabeth sniffed. She freed her hands, feeling frantically in her pockets for a handkerchief and coming up at last with a rather scruffy pink paper tissue, with which she scrubbed at her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, trying to laugh. ‘What an idiot I am! I don’t know what can have happened to my sense of humour. It’s not you, I think it’s just that I’m so tired, with Christmas and everything, you know...’

  He glanced down at Lizzie, pretty Lizzie, so small and pale and helpless-looking. The tears were still spilling over, and he longed to do something – take a clean handkerchief and wipe them away, put his arms round her in comfort, hit whoever had brought her to this state (as if he didn’t know). It was a long time since he had experienced such a surge of protectiveness; Suzanne needed about as much protection as a porcupine.

  He took charge, enjoying being masterful.

  ‘What you need is a sit down and a cup of coffee and one of those appalling sticky doughnuts they have in the café here. No, don’t look at your watch. If someone has to wait for you, it’ll do them good.’

  ‘It’s just that the children are with Jenny Cartwright this afternoon – oh well, I don’t suppose she’ll mind.’

  ‘Good girl.’

  He walked her off. Their trolleys, abandoned, nuzzled together intimately in the confectionery section.

  By the time they were sitting down, she had recovered her social poise.

  ‘Is Suzanne working today?’ she asked brightly.

  ‘Yes, and I’m doing the shopping, and we had a splendid Christmas, thank you, and yes, I got all the presents I was hoping for. It was a shame the weather was so dismal over Christmas, wasn’t it, but I do think it’s a little milder today, even if there was some drizzle earlier.

  ‘Right, that’s got that out of the way. Now tell me what’s wrong.’

  He smiled at her encouragingly. She had such a soft face, that sweet, slightly drooping mouth and her mermaid’s eyes fringed with silky lashes and still misted with unshed tears.

  Her sigh was so deep that it shook her slight frame.

  ‘Oh Patrick, you’re very kind. Much too kind. But I don’t think I could. I think it would be...disloyal to tell you.’

  Quite unexpectedly, he found himself seized by pure rage. This was, without doubt, Piers’s doing, and if the man had walked in at that moment he would have derived considerable pleasure from smashing his habitual self-satisfied sneer right into his face.

  ‘You could try,’ he said, struggling to keep his voice even. ‘And eat your doughnut. It’s good for you – full of E numbers.’

  He was rewarded with a watery smile, and she obediently cut a small piece off the heavily-iced bun and ate it.

  ‘You’re both so kind, you and Suzanne. I don’t know how either of you has the patience to put up with me. Suzanne’s so good at everything; she never seems to get into the muddles I do, and now I’ve upset her somehow, and I don’t know what I’ve done – ’

  Her eyes brimmed again, and Patrick said roughly, ‘Look, Suzanne’s not angry with you. She’s got one or two problems and she always thinks she can handle them by herself, which is her privilege. But if that’s what’s getting to you – ’

  ‘No, no, it isn’t, really. It’s just one more horrible thing. The real problem – ’

  She paused, torn by some sort of conflict.

  ‘Oh, it seems so – well, underhand, to go talking to you like this. But I don’t know – perhaps it isn’t true anyway, and if I don’t show it to someone I shall go mad. And I can’t talk to Suzanne, and I can’t talk to Laura either just now.’

  She dived into her capacious shoulder bag and after a few moments’ scrabbling produced a white envelope, badly-typed.

  Patrick took it and withdrew the letter inside. As he read it, his face contorted in disgust.

  ‘What a filthy thing. It’s a pity you ever read it. Put it in the bin where it belongs.’

  ‘But do you think it’s true?’

  He paused for that fatal extra second. The suggestion that McEvoy might, given the chance, indulge in an affair was hardly what you could term a surprise allegation; Hayley Cutler was famously free with her favours, and in other company he would have observed cynically that sooner or later the muck would stick together at the bottom of the pond.

  ‘No, I shouldn’t think so for a moment,’ he said heartily. ‘Anyone who could do something as sick as this wouldn’t worry about truth.’

  Her look was direct, and reproachful.

  ‘I know what you’re really saying. And yes, I’m afraid I believe it too. The rest is probably right as well, that I deserve it for being weak and pathetic and useless, but I can’t help it. That’s just what I am.’

  The pink tissue was being picked to shreds now.

  He was ashamed of the disingenuousness of his previous reply, but could be completely honest now.

  ‘As far as that goes, nothing could be further from the truth. Deserve it! The trouble with you is that you’re far too good for him. You’ve been a wonderful wife and mother, and he certainly doesn’t deserve you.’

  They were conventional enough remarks, but his sincerity was transparent. She smiled at him through the tears that welled over once more.

  ‘Thank you for that,’ she said softly.

  He could not help himself. He reached across the table to smudge the tears away with his thumb, then cupped her face with his hand to make her look at him.

  ‘He’s too stupid to realize it, but he’s the luckiest man in the world,’ he said, and their gaze held for a long moment before she shyly lowered her eyes and drew back.

  ***

  Margaret Moon was whizzing round the supermarket, grabbing the ingredients for a quick and easy supper. Robert was going home tomorrow, but she would have to feed him tonight before the parish meeting, and after old Tom’s visit there wasn’t enough left in the Vicarage to satisfy a mouse of normal appetite.

  She had just swept into the trolley half-a-d
ozen cartons of gourmet catfood for Pyewacket – he had gone on hunger strike to get them, after she had foolishly bought him one for a treat on a kindly impulse – when she noticed the couple in the café. They attracted her attention first by the intensity of their conversation, in a setting where most exchanges were obviously desultory. It was a moment later that she recognized them, just in time to see Patrick Bolton’s tender gesture.

  Oh dear, she thought, whisking into the next aisle before they could notice her noticing them. Oh dear, how difficult it was to be a priest nowadays, responsible for the souls of your flock, and yet obliged to watch them head for spiritual shipwreck without so much as firing a maroon. Someone already resented something she had said or done; this would need some serious thought.

  ***

  Old Tom hummed as he lurched along the main road in the gathering darkness. There was a spring in his step now, though for some reason the pavement seemed very uneven, and he was forced to tack from side to side. Shocking, the lack of upkeep nowadays.

  He wasn’t feeling cold now. There was fire in his belly, and plenty more where that came from.

  ‘God bless you, miss vicar,’ he murmured. But for her, he would never have found this lovely place with all these people who were generosity itself.

  ‘Gener-generosity itself!’ he repeated aloud. ‘God bless them all!’

  In this benevolent mood he staggered a little further. But he wasn’t as young as he used to be, and sometimes his legs got tired, very very tired. Surely one of these lovely people wouldn’t mind if he borrowed somewhere to rest them, just for a minute or two. Have a bit of a picnic, maybe. Too cold now for picnics out of doors. He looked about him.

  Like a dark cavern, the door to the garage he was passing gaped wide. There was a car in it, but nobody about. He was sure they wouldn’t mind if he found a corner to rest these tired legs just for a little bit.

  Clutching the neck of the bottle in a lover’s grasp, he shambled up the path and was swallowed up in the yawning blackness beyond.

  6

  Missy was angry. Missy was really angry. Missy was so angry, it made a sort of fire inside her. Stupid Dumbo, who kept fighting against her when all that Missy wanted was to make things better for both of them. Dumbo’s problem was that she hadn’t the sense God gave little green apples, and being forced to watch helplessly while the stupid cow screwed up made her rage.

  And she was very angry about the keys. She would have revenge for that. Things which had been easy before were risky now, and she mustn’t be found out. Certainly not yet, before...

  Breaking out had been a real tussle tonight. Still, at least she was able to do it now; it made her feel sorer than ever when she thought back over all the years that Dumbo had kept her imprisoned, able to do no more than peer out through the bars of the body-cage she had to live in. But she was getting stronger now, day by day, and times they were a-changin’...She hummed the tune softly under her breath.

  Anyway, it was her time now. Her anger forgotten, she felt the familiar sense of exhilaration, more strongly than ever before, till she was quivering like an animal with its force. This was the biggest, most exciting adventure so far...This was the first step on the way to the real thing, the big thing. She drew a deep breath to steady herself. Nothing must go wrong tonight.

  She made her preparations quickly and effectively, filling the pockets of her dark hooded coat, then putting it on and pushing her bare feet into the boots that stood beside the door. She opened it and slid into the darkness outside, testing the air for sound or movement as warily as an animal, before melting into the shadows at the back of the house.

  Reaching her objective, she felt in the coat’s capacious pockets. There were the newspaper balls and the sticks, the box of firelighters; swiftly and soundlessly she built up the kindling against the wooden wall of the building, then reached into an inside pocket for the plastic bottle she had tucked away there.

  She squirted its contents all over the wall, and it clung there in crazy lacy patterns, lovely sticky jelly stuff with an intoxicating fuel smell. It was a big bottle; she squeezed it till it was empty, her nose wrinkling with relish as she sniffed it. But there was no time to waste.

  Matches! Surely she couldn’t have forgotten – but then her scrabbling fingers closed on the box in the corner of another inside pocket. She struck one, and briefly allowed herself to watch the magic of the obedient flame, as it flickered and grew.

  Then she bent to her satisfying pile of kindling and touched a match to the corner of the paper. It caught immediately; swift, eager tongues leaped up, licking greedily at the fuel gel.

  Just for a moment she thought she heard some sound, some movement, and her eyes narrowed as she listened, poised for instant flight. But the movement she sensed was inside the building, not outside. It could be a cat, a dog...

  Or something else. For a second she was distracted, her eyes cold and bright and hard with interest.

  She would have liked to stay to see, liked to watch the flames catch, take hold, and finally engulf the walls and roof in the searing, satisfying fire. But it was a risk she dare not take. Regretfully, with no more than a lingering glance over her shoulder, she stepped back into the shadows again and was gone.

  ***

  It was some kind of sound that brought Suzanne into full consciousness – a cry from outside in the street, perhaps, or Tigger the dog chasing rabbits in his sleep downstairs. She wasn’t quite sure what it was, but it was enough to rouse her from her broken and unrestful sleep. With a sort of weary exasperation she snapped on the bedside light.

  These unsatisfactory nights – tossing wakefully, or half-asleep, or troubled by strange and unpleasant dreams – were of recent date. Before that, she had slept as efficiently as she did everything else: half an hour with her current novel, light off, then oblivion until five minutes before the clock-radio came on in the morning. Patrick used to joke that if he could just persuade her to sing as she woke up, they wouldn’t need one.

  Patrick was asleep now, with his face buried deep in his pillow. He was usually a restless sleeper, but tonight he looked provokingly comfortable. A small, genteel snore escaped him, and he twitched slightly, like Tigger.

  She cast him a look of resentment, as if she felt her loss was his gain, then swung herself out of bed and put on dressing gown and slippers. Perhaps if she made herself a cup of tea she might be able to get back to sleep.

  Suzanne did not like moving round the house at night. It had a different atmosphere when everyone else was asleep, and being by temperament unequivocal, she was uneasy with the ambiguity of darkness and shadows. She switched on each light as she came to it, but even so found herself glancing sharply around, as if with a swift turn of the head she might surprise a table moving stealthily, or a chair inexplicably out of place.

  She crossed the hall, sensitive to the black opacity of the uncurtained window by the front door, through which she must appear spotlit on her domestic stage. She hurried to open the kitchen door.

  For a horrified instant, she thought that the room itself was ablaze. It was bathed in a lurid orange glow, and she could hear the frightening crackle of flames and smell smoke without being able to identify their source. But never mind that – she must wake the others, get them outside...

  Just then the phone began to ring. It disorientated her, and instinctively she spun round to answer it, then heard a frantic ringing on the front door bell, and her own name, and Patrick’s, being shouted from outside. There were three imperatives now; it was only when a pounding on the front door was added to the shrill demand of the bell that she managed to break the paralysis of indecision.

  Patrick, pale and groggy from sleep, was staggering down the stairs as she opened the front door. Ben, rubbing his eyes, had appeared on the landing. The telephone was still shrilling its summons.

  It was their next-door neighbour, plump and agitated, and bundled up in an old woollen robe, who stood on the doorstep, his rou
nd kindly face contorted into an expression of tortured anxiety. He spoke his breathless message to a background of sirens, rapidly approaching.

  ‘It’s your garage, your garage! You must get out, now – that car could explode at any moment! I thought you’d never answer. Come on, come on!’

  He was plucking at Suzanne’s sleeve, poised ready for flight himself. His neighbourly duty had been an unconsidered action, whose bravery was only now becoming apparent.

  Idiotically, Suzanne demurred. ‘The phone –’

  ‘That’s only Isabel. She was to phone after she’d rung the fire brigade, to wake you up while I came across. Come on, come on!’

  Despite being so violently awakened, it was Patrick who seemed less confused. He took control.

  ‘Ben! Downstairs, and out. Here you are – wellies and a coat. Now across the street as fast as you can, and stay there. Go on, Suzanne. What’s the matter with you?’

  As Suzanne, still looking dazed, went out, there was a wail from Ben.

  ‘But – Tigger! I’ve got to get Tigger!’

  ‘I’ll fetch Tigger. Just go.’

  He plunged through to the small scullery at the back where the dog slept. When he opened the door, it was painfully bright, so bright that he had to shield his eyes to see out.

  Theirs was a wooden garage, old, but sturdily built, with space only for one car – Suzanne’s. His own was mercifully out in the road.

  Now the garage was a raging hell of flames, and through the burnt-out side he could see that the fire was beginning to lick at the metal frame of Suzanne’s car, the chemicals in the paint producing extraordinary tints of turquoise and lilac.

  The petrol tank was probably full; Suzanne had a habit of keeping it topped up. He grabbed the terrified animal which was cowering and whimpering in its basket, and ran outside.

  The first fire engine had just arrived, with a police car in close attendance. The officers were out already, ringing the bells of houses which might be in danger as the first hose the firemen had run out filled with water. The reassuring sound of sirens in the distance told of other engines on their way.