The Chorister at the Abbey Read online

  ‘It’s just that we found a couple of things on the passenger seat and we have to be sure there isn’t someone wandering out there with concussion. The glove compartment had sprung open with the impact, so we don’t know what was inside and fell out or what was left by a passenger. Do you recognize this by any chance?’ The police officer held out a scarf in deep red.

  Pat looked at it suddenly very calmly and said, ‘Oh yes, a velvet man-made polyester scarf.’ She sneezed at the thought, but then said firmly, ‘Yes. It’s definitely mine.’

  ‘Hello.’

  Robert was sitting in the Cumberland Hotel looking at his new book purchase, a half-drunk pint of Old Peculier beside him. The voice was the one he was expecting, but when he looked up he had a strange, giddying sensation.

  ‘Sandy!’ he said.

  ‘That’s me.’ Alex Gibson slipped into the settle opposite him. She laughed. ‘Look, I know I’ve gone to seed a bit – but there’s no need to be quite so shocked!’

  ‘I . . .well . . . I don’t know what to say!’

  ‘Try “How about a drink?” In the circumstances I’ll have a malt whisky, please.’

  Robert got up and walked slowly to the bar. Then he turned round and looked back at the woman sitting opposite his seat. It was eight years since he had walked out of the hotel room and left her crying. Now he could see clearly that it was the same person. Sandy McFay. The successful woman author, who wrote well-crafted historical yarns for kids. Like Richmal Crompton and J. K. Rowling, taking refuge in an ambiguous name so no red-blooded little reader would think he was a sissy. They had laughed a lot about that. The hair was no longer raven, and she was certainly bigger, but the smile was the same, the wonderful skin tone and large dark eyes.

  And yet now he could also see that it was same fat, grey woman from the Finance Department. But why should he have known? Context was so important. He thought back to Wanda Wisley’s party. He’d suspected then, hadn’t he? But why would Sandy McFay be at a party in Norbridge, incognito? He just hadn’t wanted to ask the question.

  He put two large whiskies in front of them.

  ‘Thanks for contacting me. Why did you wait so long?’

  ‘Oh Robert, think about it.’

  ‘I have thought about it. When you came back to Norbridge why didn’t you get in touch?’

  ‘Because I was so angry with you! I had thought you might deliver me from that bastard Sam McFay. When we met at that writers’ conference, we had two nights of passion and a wonderful day in London. And then you told me you loved Mary and she needed you, and you were off back up north. Why would I want to contact you after that?’

  ‘But now you have. Why?’

  ‘Because I met your latest girlfriend at a church meeting, of all things.’

  ‘Suzy?’ He was astonished.

  ‘Yes. And I wanted to know how you finally summoned up the courage to leave your wonderful wife. Congrats to you and Suzy, and yet another bucket of cold sick for me!’

  Robert waited before he spoke. ‘No, Sandy. I never left Mary. She left me. She died from cancer five years ago. She was diagnosed a year after we met and died two years later.’

  ‘Oh my God! Robert, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ he said. ‘When I asked you why you hadn’t contacted me, it was because I did contact you. I wrote to you after Mary died. Via the publisher who sent it on to your agent.’

  ‘But I never got it!’

  They looked at each other across the table. Alex felt weak with relief. Robert had hurt her – but he had been true to his word. He had gone back to his wife who needed him. Eight years ago Alex had been the opposite of needy – at least on the surface. The star of the show, she was successful and independent, as well as tall, dark and curvy, with a growing reputation as a writer. She had made the keynote introduction at the conference where they met: a witty, intelligent speech. She had been attracted to Robert’s quiet, good-natured easiness – but it was just weeks after discovering her husband’s duplicity. She was still functioning but the shock was dormant. The nightmare had only just started to close in on her.

  ‘I bet my agent never sent your letter on. He gave up on me because I went to pieces, slowly at first, but when Sam finally asked me for a divorce, after his baby was born, I cracked. I fought it, but then I went completely bonkers. I was in a desperate state for about a year before coming to Fellside. Drink driving, jealous rages, hysteria. I was a nightmare.’

  ‘But you were doing so well with your books!’

  ‘Not after that! I tried writing after coming back north, but I’d lost it. I just vegetated and looked after Mum for a few years. Actually the truth is that she looked after me at first, but she was already going downhill. When she died I got a job at Norbridge College, in the Finance Department, just to do something. Anything. I remembered that you worked there, but I didn’t think we would ever meet. And we didn’t.’

  ‘But what if we had?’

  ‘Nothing would have happened. I thought you had ditched me so I didn’t want to know you. And to be honest, I realize now we’d have been wrong for each other, anyway. I’ve seen you around at the college since. You’re too comfortable for me. Too settled. I thought that was Mary who made you like that. But it’s Suzy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I think it is.’ Robert smiled. ‘Have another drink, Alexandra McFay? Or Sandy Gibson? So you’re all of those people, are you?’

  ‘It helps to have a name which you can adapt. Alex and Sandy are both diminutives for Alexandra, and I was known by both as a child. After the divorce I ditched the McFay and went back to Gibson and switched from Sandy to Alex. My new agent knows all this of course – that’s why I’m here. She traced me, and wrote asking if she could take me on in January, out of the blue.’

  ‘Was that a turning point?’

  ‘That, among other things. Her letter said they wanted to promote the books in Carlisle so I thought I’d come and see what was going on. Anonymously, of course. And that gave me the idea for contacting you, on neutral ground.’

  ‘Not that neutral actually. I met Edwin Armstrong at Waterstone’s buying The Wizard of Workhaven.’

  ‘Good grief! Did you?’ Robert watched Sandy’s face as she blushed.

  ‘Aha!’ he said, realization dawning. ‘I wondered why Edwin was more cheerful. Have you got over Sam now?’

  She bent her head. ‘Who knows? Stranger things have happened.’

  ‘We can all change. I used to be a hypocritical old fart till I met Suzy.’

  Alex laughed loudly. ‘Hypocritical maybe! Fart certainly. But not old! Suzy is very lucky. But then so are you. She’s great and I’m happy for you. Are you in love?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  That’s true, Robert thought. The Sandy he had met eight years ago had attracted him deeply, but along with the dark good looks she’d had an intensity which reminded him of his wife. Suzy was very different, much easier going. She has a lighter touch and a more gregarious nature, he thought, and I do love her very much. She’s right for me and I mustn’t lose her.

  There would be someone else who was right for Alex, maybe someone not so far away.

  ‘Let’s drink to falling in love!’ he said.

  Alex looked at him archly. ‘But not with each other!’ she said, and they both laughed out loud.

  28

  My lovers and friends hast thou put away from me, and hid mine acquaintance out of my sight. Psalm 88:18

  Rachel Cohen swung the car round the corner yet again in a vain attempt to find a parking space in the middle of Islington. Suzy said breathlessly, ‘I told you not to come and meet me from Euston. I could have got a cab.’

  ‘I was trying to be a good friend, actually. Look, I think that woman is going. If we wait here a minute I can have her space and it’s only five minutes’ walk from the flat.’

  ‘So maybe we can get a cab from here?’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘Rachel, you’ll hav
e to move because there’s a big white-van-man right up your exhaust pipe.’

  ‘I should be so lucky.’ The van behind started hooting. ‘Shit!’ Rachel gunned the accelerator and her little car shot forward.

  ‘Watch out, Rache! This is madness. You must be bonkers to bring the car out in traffic like this. On a Saturday afternoon as well. I’ve seen more cars in five minutes here than you get in Tarnfield in a week.’

  With a snort of anger mixed with contempt, Rachel seemed physically to hurl the little car into a tiny space. ‘Touch parking,’ she snarled as they crunched into the car behind. ‘Suzy, you sound like those awful people from the provinces who blag invitations to London and then spend the whole time telling you how much nicer it is in Netherbuttock or Brigadoon!’

  ‘I’m not like that.’ But Suzy started to laugh. ‘Or maybe I am. I need to get away to know that I’m missing it already!’

  Rachel had recently moved from a smaller two-bedroom flat to a wonderful attic ‘space’ with a huge through dining room and living area. It was all very contemporary and minimalist; Suzy gasped in genuine admiration. She was glad, too, that it was a different flat from the one where she and Robert had stayed with Rachel for a traumatic weekend eighteen months earlier. It really was easy, she thought ten minutes later, drinking cappuccino from Rachel’s all-singing-all-dancing coffee machine, to put Tarnfield in another place in her head.

  ‘We’re staying in tonight and I’m cooking,’ Rachel said decisively. ‘No negotiation on that one. I’m going to start preparing artichokes and washing the mung beans just in case you forget where you are! Have a look at the roof garden. And when you’ve filled your lungs with top quality toxins, come back in and tell me everything from the beginning.’

  Suzy went out through the new sheer french windows, on to the decking that flanked Rachel’s apartment. Rachel had put pots of various evergreen shrubs in the corners, and along the top of the grey metal parapet were shallow boxes with tiny daffodils bobbing in the wind. It was bright and dry, much warmer than in the north. Suzy caught the scent of a tub of fat blue and pink hyacinths placed by the door. She looked over the edge, down to the rows of Georgian houses, the gastro-pub on the corner and in the distance the tower of University College Hospital and the ever-present cranes at building sites in the city.

  It didn’t help. Her mind seemed to be in constant transit, ricocheting from the past to the present, Newcastle to Tarnfield, Tynedale TV to Norbridge College, Nigel to Robert. And now London.

  She went and sat down on the slimline sofa with little wooden legs which Rachel had positioned tastefully in front of the kitchen area where she was chopping crazily.

  ‘That’s enough of that,’ Rachel announced. ‘It’s packet opening from here on. So now tell.’

  And Suzy did so, recounting everything that had happened since the week before Christmas. As she talked, she surprised herself by how often Morris Little’s murder featured. It was the murder which had upset Robert in the first place, making him think about the Frosts and worry that Jake needed a stepfather. And then Robert’s solicitous visits to the Little family had wrecked all her Christmas shopping plans and led to so much tension. Since Morris’s murder Robert had been less keen on the Chorus, and he’d been so preoccupied, writing away in his study. I wonder, Suzy thought . . .

  ‘You’ve stopped talking.’

  ‘Yes. I just thought that maybe one of the things on Robert’s mind is this murder. Maybe that’s what he’s writing about!’

  ‘But I thought you said two local lads had been charged with that.’

  ‘They have. But Robert seems to think there’s more to it. He’s spent a lot of time talking to Norma, Morris’s wife. She says there’s no way the lads are responsible. Morris would have run a mile rather than confront them. It was quite an elaborate murder, really. The Frosts have confessed but they were so drugged up, who could know what they thought they were doing?’

  ‘Aren’t you being melodramatic? Aren’t they the obvious suspects?’

  ‘But the timing doesn’t fit! First, Morris was killed. Then there was a power cut caused by the Frosts in the plant room. Then the murderer or murderers escaped. Then the light came on and the next person along the corridor found the body.’

  ‘Couldn’t it just have been an opportunist killing? Kids can be pretty vicious these days.’

  ‘But why was Morris Little in the college anyway? I can’t help feeling there’s more to it and I’m not the only one. It makes everyone more uncomfortable. Everyone seems destabilized. My friend Lynn the rector’s wife is having awful trouble with her daughter, whose friend found the body. It’s as if everything has been a bit off key since. And it certainly hasn’t helped me and Robert.’

  ‘Maybe it brought things to a head. Have some wine . . .’

  While Rachel fussed in the kitchen area, Suzy got up and walked on to the roof garden again. Below her, Islington went about its business. It was just getting dark. People were hurrying back from Sainsbury’s or unpacking cars. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a flock of nuns, three or four or them, hurrying down the road, habits billowing. Then she refocused. They weren’t nuns at all, but Muslim women. Of course. There were so few nuns now. She thought suddenly of the only conversation she’d had with Morris Little, about the derelict convent.

  ‘Rachel,’ she said, going into the flat, ‘I really do think there was something weird about Morris Little’s murder. He was a spiteful man. He upset everyone. He even said something offensive to me about that derelict convent and the old nuns. Lots of people must have been relieved when he died. And now those boys are being blamed.’

  ‘So if you think that, why don’t you do something? Like you did before?’

  ‘But look what happened last time. My children were in danger!’

  ‘Yes, and as a result you’ve been frozen ever since!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Suzy, you’re stuck in time! You’re not yourself. You had a terrible experience and as a result you can’t move on.’

  Suzy thought about it. After the deaths in Tarnfield which had brought her and Robert together two years earlier, she had been unnerved by any hint of violence. It was like being post-natal, when your sensitivities are raw, as if your organs were on the outside. Nature’s way of making you care for your tiny child. Since the murders, there had been some aspects of the ‘chat show’ side of her TV job which she had only been able to do after shutting herself in the ladies’ loo, and forcing herself to face whoever was ‘victim du jour’. Was she in any fit state to take on more horror?

  ‘So you think I should get involved in this murder? But I hardly knew the man.’ Yet as she said it, the nuns drifted through her mind, habits flowing. Morris had been a misogynist.

  ‘Yes! Go for it! Toughen up again! You’ve not been yourself, Suzy. You’ve been living in another woman’s house with another woman’s husband, scared to put your head above the parapet, living on hold. But Jake and Molly are fine. Get on with your own life now.’

  Suzy remembered the stupid row she and Robert had had about Mary’s rug. It was true. Another woman’s home. The subtext was that Robert saved me, and then gave me a place to live, she thought. As always, Rachel’s sharp mind had got down to the root of the trouble. And hadn’t Lynn hinted at something similar? It was a sense of inequality – a suspicion that Robert cared for her because he had rescued her and her children.

  ‘You’re right. That’s why I prickled so much when Robert talked about Jake needing a stepfather. I thought he loved me because I was a flake and he was Mr Perfect.’

  ‘But when you first met, there was nothing needy about you, was there? You were little Miss Dynamite, at least by Tarnfield standards. You need to get beyond this idea that you’ve been rescued, Suzy. You haven’t. Have you ever thought that it might be Robert who’s really the needy one?’

  It was an odd idea. Suzy glanced outside at the everlasting glow of London. It was beautiful and it
had made her see more clearly – but the bright lights were not for her. She suddenly wanted to go back to Tarnfield to try and sort this out.

  ‘So would things be better if Robert were Mr Imperfect?’ Rachel prompted. ‘And you were Miss Dynamite again?’

  If only, Suzy sighed. But what had Rachel said? ‘In another woman’s house, with another woman’s husband.’ Was that what was holding her back? She shook her head fitfully. That was ridiculous. Mary was then. This was now.

  ‘Rache,’ she said slowly, ‘you’ve put your finger on it. I need to get my confidence back. And to accept that perhaps Robert isn’t quite as sanctimonious as he seems!’

  ‘It isn’t easy for him either,’ Rachel said gently. ‘How can he know where he stands with the kids?’

  ‘You’re right.’ Suzy looked out over the rooftops. ‘I hadn’t thought of it from that angle. Maybe he needs Jake as much as Jake needs him! Thanks, Rachel.’

  ‘Don’t mention it. Just eat your kalamati olives with ariago shavings! Bet you don’t get much of that in Netherbuttock. Or Brigadoon.’

  Alex Gibson, alias Sandy McFay, had been invited out again. Not as exciting as her date to hear The Dream of Gerontius coming up the next week with Edwin, but not bad. Until recently she had spent every evening comatose in front of the telly, or painstakingly sorting out her mother’s possessions. Even at her lowest, Alex’s ability to be thorough had not deserted her. Much of her mum’s stuff was boxed up now – there were cartons and black bags all over the bungalow marked with labels like Nighties – winceyette or Rufflette tape and summer curtains. It was mostly useless, she knew, but it seemed to bring Mum back for a while and to pay respect to a generation that saved silver paper.

  In the past, Christine and Reg Prout had invited her round to their house, but it had always been at the last minute and out of a sense of family solidarity. This time, her sister’s invitation to a local gathering had been genuinely enthusiastic.

  ‘Do come. It’s a wives’ do.’

  ‘But I’m not anyone’s wife, Chris.’