Fell Purpose

NINETEEN

100-What Brain

The Mossmans lived in Doyle Gardens, between Harlesden and Kensal Rise, areas which were in any case so close together it was impossible to say where one began and the other ended. It was a large semi-detached house in what had once been quite a posh street, but was now creeping arthritically downhill; but the house had a large garden which backed on to the sports ground, which perhaps accounted for the family’s staying put. There was an elderly but well-kept Mercedes saloon on the hardstanding, and a space where the ghostly outline on the paving said another car was customarily parked. Slider, detective faculties working at full tilt, deduced that Mrs Mossman was home but Mr Mossman was still at his place of business.

So it proved. She was a comfortable rather than glamorous woman, upholstered of figure and sensibly dressed, and the house smelled of soup and furniture polish. The motherly and wifely arts were evidently her forte. A dog came bouncing to meet Slider – mongrel, but with a large injection of black lab – and halfway down the passage a cat appeared and wound sinuously round his legs before galloping for the kitchen.

It was to the kitchen that Mrs Mossman led him, excusing herself that she was in the middle of something.

‘That’s all right,’ Slider said. ‘I like kitchens.’

This one looked over the garden, was not newly refurbished, and was full of the clutter of living. On the stove, stock bubbled in a pot. Pastry was lying out on a marble slab waiting to be rolled, and there were cubes of meat and onion seething gently in a frying pan.

‘Steak and kidney pie?’ he suggested.

She gave him a small, brief smile. ‘Steak and onion pie. Cyril doesn’t care for kidneys. I suppose it’s Frieda you want to speak to? It is about this awful business, isn’t it – poor Zellah Wilding?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’

‘It’s so terrible.’ Behind her glasses, her brown eyes were large and moist, as if ready to overflow. ‘I keep thinking how it could have been Frieda – not that we’d have let her roam about the Scrubs alone like that. I can’t think what the Wildings were up to. They were always so strict with Zellah. I don’t understand how they suddenly let her go wandering about in the middle of the night in a place like that. But then you can be killed right outside your own front door these days, in broad daylight, can’t you? Oh, it’s a terrible world! But I try not to frighten Frieda too much. Cyril and I want her to be strong and independent. It’s such a problem, balancing that against keeping her safe. I hate even letting her go to school on her own, but you have to untie the apron strings, don’t you? I don’t want her to be one of those girls who can’t do anything for herself, or find her way anywhere. There are plenty of those at school, I can tell you – get driven to school in the morning and collected at night, and taken everywhere in a car. Their parents are nothing but unpaid chauffeurs, and it’s not good for the girls to be so dependent. When we were seventeen we went everywhere on our own. But then something like this happens, and it makes you pause. You just don’t know what to think, what to do for the best.’

Slider said, ‘I know exactly what you mean. I have a daughter myself.’ He was surprised at himself for offering the fact, but he felt her dilemma acutely. ‘If it helps, I don’t think it was a random killing.’

‘Oh?’ She was surprised, and didn’t know quite how to take it. ‘I thought I read that you’d arrested some awful serial killer.’

‘We have to follow lines of enquiry as they arise. They don’t all lead to the right conclusion. In fact, I believe now that the killer knew Zellah.’

‘They do say,’ she said introspectively, ‘that it’s more often someone the victim knows.’

‘That’s true,’ Slider said.

‘I don’t know that it makes me feel any safer,’ she concluded.

‘I sometimes wonder,’ Slider said, ‘whether feeling safe isn’t a modern luxury we’ve got used to comparatively recently. Historically, life was always dangerous and uncertain.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said with the brief, tight smile again. ‘But the fact is we have got used to it. Well, I mustn’t keep you. You’ll want to talk to Frieda. She’s upstairs studying. I’ll just turn the gas down and go and fetch her. You can talk to her in the lounge – I expect you’d sooner be alone with her?’

Slider was impressed by her understanding and generosity. ‘If you don’t mind.’

‘No, I know there are things girls won’t say in front of their parents. You’ll try not to frighten her, though, won’t you? No gory details or anything?’

‘Of course not; nothing like that. I shan’t mention the murder itself. I only want to talk to her about what Zellah was like.’

She nodded, but with a penetrating look that both sought reassurance and threatened reprisal if he got it wrong. She led him through into the lounge, an expensively, rather heavily furnished room, well-kept and comfortable but not the least fashionable. There were framed photographs on every surface; an upright piano against one wall, open and with music on the stand as if it were regularly used; bright dahlias put, rather than arranged, in a vase on the windowsill. A gas coal-effect fire occupied the grate under the 1930s mantelpiece, and the dog, who followed them in, lay down on the rug in front of it as though it were his habitual spot. The cat pranced in too, sprang up on to the back of an armchair and arched its back, inviting caress. Everything here spoke of a family home, of belonging and care and custom, of a little interknit tribe pursuing its innocent routines. It was so different from the Wildings’ jarring, comfortless mismatch. Here was a small haven of a world, built inside the larger chaos of a great metropolis and the twenty-first century. He hoped desperately that nothing bad would ever come to blast it open.

In a little while Mrs Mossman appeared at the door and ushered in a small, plumpish girl with frizzy hair and glasses, wearing blue cotton Capri pants and a plain white T-shirt. She looked at Slider uncertainly, her bare toes curling for comfort into the carpet pile.

‘This is Frieda,’ Mrs Mossman said. ‘Frieda, this is Detective Inspector Slider. He wants to talk to you about Zellah. You must talk to him absolutely honestly, darling. I shall be in the kitchen if you want me.’ She looked at Slider. ‘Do you mind dogs? Shall I take him away?’

‘I like dogs,’ Slider said. He thought its presence would be comforting to the girl. ‘He’s fine. What’s his name?’

‘Barney.’ The dog looked up and beat his tail at the sound of his name. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ Mrs Mossman said, and departed.

Frieda remained at the door, watching Slider alertly, like an animal poised for flight. She seemed pale, and looked as though she had been crying a lot recently. She appeared younger than seventeen, and there was little under her T-shirt to disturb the shape of it. Her plump face was still a child’s, her whole posture unaware of the power of the female body. He looked with sympathy at the impossible hair and the strong glasses. He imagined Sophy’s cruel remarks and the hurt they had caused: behind the lenses, the eyes, intensely dark as coffee beans, were intelligent. There was nothing wrong with her features: she had good skin, and one day she would switch to contacts, subdue her hair and be as attractive as the next girl, but there was no use in saying that to a teenage girl. His own daughter thought she had a big nose, and when she looked in the mirror that was all she saw. We all have to pin our disappointments on something.

‘Come and sit down,’ he said. He sat himself in one of the armchairs. It was the one the cat was decorating, and it jumped down at once on to his lap and started kneading bread. The sound of its purr filled the room like the sound of a trapped bumble bee.

‘He likes you,’ Frieda said. Her voice was light and small, as though she was trying not to make an impression on the world.

‘I like cats, too,’ he said.

‘People are mostly cat people or dog people,’ she said. ‘It’s quite rare to be both.’ She drifted across the room and perched on the edge of the chair opposite, but only, said her demeanour, so that she could stroke Barney. Barney at once flopped on to his side and presented his belly – the gesture of a nice dog who knew his place in the hierarchy.

‘I like all animals,’ Slider said. ‘My father was a farmer.’ Two revelations in five minutes – what was wrong with him? He was too comfortable here. It was dangerous.

‘I’d have liked to be a farmer,’ Frieda said. ‘But there’s no money in it, and it’s terribly hard work. A lot of the girls want to be vets, but they’re just sentimental about animals. They don’t understand what it really means.’

‘What do you want to do, now you’re not going to be a farmer?’

She looked at him carefully, to see if he was teasing her, and then said, ‘I’m going to be a doctor.’ She said it with unemphatic firmness, as though there were no doubt about it, so no need to be dogmatic.

‘Good for you,’ he said.

‘Why “good for me”?’ Her voice was light and sharp. She didn’t want to be patronized.

‘The country needs doctors,’ he said. ‘Is your father one?’

‘No, Daddy’s in the wine trade. He used to deal futures on Liv-ex, but now he’s a buyer for a big wholesaler. It’s more fun because he gets to go on trips all the time.’ She sat up, abandoning the dog’s belly, and said, ‘But you didn’t come here to talk about careers. You don’t need to put me at ease with small talk, you know. I’m perfectly all right.’

‘I can see that,’ Slider said. Her light, clipped voice said she was at ease, but her eyes said differently.

‘You want to talk to me about Zellah.’

‘Of course. I want to know what she was like.’

‘In what way?’ It was a wary question.

‘I believe she was very bright,’ Slider said, for somewhere to start. ‘Intelligent?’

‘Yes, she was. She and I did classes together. We were both doing science A levels. That’s not popular, you know. The popular girls do arts, and non-subjects like media and fashion.’ She mentioned them witheringly. ‘Nowadays it’s more important to be pretty and fashionable than clever. Even those that have a brain try to hide it. It’s so stupid.’

‘Even Zellah? Did she try to hide it?’

‘Not at first,’ Frieda said. ‘Frankly, she was even more intelligent than me. She was brilliant. And not just at academic subjects. She could draw, too, and she did music, and ballet.’ She saw Slider’s glance towards the piano and said, ‘Yes, I can play. I’ve taken piano since I was six. But I’ll never be any good at it. A lot of music is mathematics, and I can do that side of it all right, but I don’t have the artistic talent. I can’t put the feeling into it.’

‘And Zellah could?’

‘Yes. She was artistic and academic. It’s very rare.’

‘Like being both a cat person and a dog person.’

She looked at him with something like scorn, as if he just didn’t get it. ‘She was a polymath,’ she said sternly.

‘So what changed?’ he asked.

Her mouth turned down. ‘Boys,’ she said witheringly. ‘She started to get silly about boys. That’s all they think about, the popular girls – people like Chloë Paulson and Sophy Cooper-Hutchinson. Always preening themselves and wearing make-up and hanging around waiting for the St Martin’s boys to come out. It’s so stupid.’ She looked at him sharply as if he had said something. ‘Oh, I know what you’re thinking – that it’s just sour grapes? It’s not. I know what I look like. And I know I’m never going to look any different. But it’s not that. I don’t care, you see. I’ve got a brain, and that’s worth any amount of good looks. Good looks go off, you know, but your brain lasts your whole life. I mean to do something with mine. And before you ask, no, I’m not worried about getting married. I don’t care about it. Not now. I’ve got too much else to think about. Anyway, I expect in the end I’ll marry one of my cousins – I’ve got hundreds, and they all seem to marry each other. But not until I’ve excelled in my field.’

‘Have you chosen your field yet?’ he asked, hoping to get back in her good books with an intelligent question.

‘Genetics,’ she said with the same light sureness. ‘There’s the potential to cure every known disease, condition and syndrome through genetic manipulation. The possibilities are literally endless. All the great medical discoveries of this century are going to be in genetics.’

‘I see you set yourself high standards,’ Slider said. ‘And I can understand how you felt Zellah had let herself down.’

‘She did,’ Frieda said hotly. ‘She had everything – brains, talent. She was even beautiful. I mean, she really was – ten times more beautiful than those other girls, if that means anything, which it doesn’t. But she never seemed to know how lucky she was. Suddenly she wanted to be popular, and hang around with the in girls, no matter how vapid they were.’

‘You didn’t understand it,’ Slider suggested.

‘Not from her. I mean, when we were younger, we all used to hang out together, and it didn’t matter. Sophy and Chloë and Zellah and me, and another couple of girls, Matilda and Polly, but they’ve left now. And then it all changed.’

‘When did it change?’

‘About eighteen months, two years ago. It used to be that ballet and ponies were the thing, and then suddenly it was nothing but boys. I stopped really liking Sophy and Chloë, but I thought Zellah was different. But she seemed to want to be in with them, so I stayed with her too, for a while. But it all got too silly.’

‘In what way?’

‘Sophy and Chloë were obsessed with sex,’ Frieda said scornfully. She clasped her hands between her knees, her toes pointing away from each other. A child’s unselfconscious pose. ‘It was all they talked about. It was like a competition between them over who could be most outrageous, have the most boyfriends, be the first to go all the way. It was just pathetic.’

‘Do you think they did go all the way?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said shortly. ‘The thing was, Zellah went along with it, competed with them, boasted even worse than them. I’m sure they were convinced she had. They thought she was terrific for it. For being the first. How could anyone be so shallow? I couldn’t understand why Zellah did it.’

‘Maybe she just wanted to be liked.’

‘For that? Why?’ She seemed angry about it.

‘Did she have a lot of other friends?’

‘Not really. I was her best friend, up till then. She wasn’t allowed to have girls home, or to go out much after school, so it made it difficult for her. She was always a bit of a loner.’

‘Well, doesn’t that explain why she might want to try to fit in with girls like Sophy and Chloë?’ Slider said.

He was also thinking puberty, but the onset of that was not something he could or would discuss with Frieda, who didn’t look as if she was much bothered with it yet.

‘But she had me,’ Frieda said. ‘Or she did until she took up with that awful Mike.’

‘Was he awful?’

‘She didn’t think so. She was mad for him. Sophy hated him. After that they didn’t hang around together so much. Oh, but then she remembered she did have another friend,’ she added with a hint of bitterness. ‘When it was convenient to her.’

‘You?’

‘I covered for her. When she wanted to see Mike, I let her pretend she was visiting me. It was one of the few things her father let her do. She’d say she was coming to see me after ballet on Saturday, or after school, but really she was seeing Mike.’

‘Do you think she was in love with him?’ Slider asked, stroking the cat. It had settled, couching on his lap, eyes closed with bliss.

She considered carefully. ‘I think she was infatuated,’ she said decidedly. It was almost comical, the contrast between the adult vocabulary, and the little-girl form before him. ‘She thought she was in love, but when the real thing came along, she realized it was different from what she felt for Mike.’ She looked at him sternly, determined to keep him straight. ‘She didn’t say all this to me, you understand. It’s what I deduced. She never spoke much about her feelings. She was a very private person, really. But she was mad about Mike, but when she met the new man, she dropped Mike like a hot potato. I almost felt sorry for him – not that I think he was the type to care. But she really, really loved the new man. It was different. I could see it was different.’

Slider was almost holding his breath. ‘And who was the new man?’

‘I don’t know,’ Frieda said.

Well, what had he hoped for? It was never that easy.

‘All I know,’ she went on, ‘is that he lived not far from here, because she spoke once about walking from here to his house. And he was a lot older than her. She said something about it being nice to be with a real grown-up and not just a boy like Mike. She went all dreamy-eyed when she mentioned him. But if ever I asked who he was, or anything about him, she clammed up. I got the impression,’ she said in her careful way, ‘that there was something wrong.’ She stared down at the dog for a moment, who wagged hopefully back, but her mind was elsewhere. ‘I know it’s a terrible thing to say,’ she said at last, looking up at him, ‘but I’ve wondered if . . . well, if he was married.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. But if he wasn’t, why did it all have to be such a secret?’

‘Because her parents wouldn’t have liked her to have a boyfriend?’

‘Oh, I don’t mean secret from them. Obviously it had to be a secret from them,’ she said, shaking her head at his stupidity. ‘But why keep it a secret from me? She didn’t keep Mike a secret from me. Or from Sophy and Chloë. But I don’t think they even knew she had a new boyfriend.’

‘I don’t think they did either,’ Slider said encouragingly. ‘I think you knew Zellah much better than they did.’

‘I was her only real friend,’ she said bleakly, ‘but still she didn’t trust me enough to tell me about him. I wish I knew why. Nothing’s ever so bad if you can understand.’

‘Can you think of anything, anything at all, that she told you about the new boyfriend? Anything that might help us find him.’

Now her gaze sharpened behind the glasses. ‘Why do you want to find him? Do you think he was the one that . . . that killed her?’

‘I don’t know,’ Slider said, glad to be able to fall back on that. ‘But obviously we want to talk to anyone who knew her well, particularly in the last two or three months.’

‘Well, I can’t think of anything she said, apart from what I’ve told you. Mostly she just said how wonderful he was. And how he understood her. She said that a lot.’ She nodded at Slider emphatically. ‘She really thought he was her soul-mate. She didn’t like her parents much. They were always fighting over her. I’ve seen them with her, at parents’ day, and it was true. Everyone says how proud they were of her, but I don’t think they actually really saw her, as a person. They just wanted to own her. For reflected glory. You know,’ she added seriously, ‘I don’t think it could have been the new man that killed her. I mean, she loved him. And I suppose he must have loved her. So why would he?’

For all her intellectual maturity, she was still untried where emotions were concerned. She couldn’t conceive why love might lead to death.

Atherton was still there when Slider got back to the station, sitting on his windowsill.

‘I thought I told you to go home.’

‘With my boss going solo, risking his all out in the wilderness? No way,’ said Atherton. ‘You might have needed rescuing, and who else was going to go out with the barrel of brandy round his neck? Besides, you’ll want to hear this. Connolly?’

Connolly came in from the CID room with a piece of paper in her hand. ‘I got the gen on the car, sir,’ she said. ‘Two-year-old Toyota Corolla, colour sapphire black.’ She looked up from the paper. ‘That’s—’

‘I know what that is, thank you, Constable,’ he said. ‘I had a lecture earlier today from a career TDA artist.’

‘Registered keeper is a Miss Stephanie Barstowe, address 6 Shirland House, Bravington Road, Kensal Town. Bought new on finance from Kensal Motors, Harrow Road – payments all up to date so far. You asked about tickets – there’s half a dozen outstanding, all around London. No other violations. Insurance is with Liverpool Victoria, fully comp, fifty-pound windscreen excess, self and named driver covered. And,’ she looked up here, with an expression of triumph, ‘the named driver is Alexander Markov of the same address.’

Slider sat down behind his desk. ‘Go on.’

‘I got talking to another nurse in the same unit, and they are married, but she uses her maiden name. I suppose that’s because of her career – she’s manager of the intensive-care unit, so she’s a bit of a player. Also, I asked did Stephanie drive the car to work. Apparently she drives in when the weather’s bad, otherwise she cycles.’

‘The weather was fine on Sunday,’ Atherton said.

‘And I did a bit of checking with the management about her shifts. The parking tickets are all at times Stephanie was working. So someone else was driving the car at those times.’

‘You said the car under the railway bridge was a Toyota Corolla,’ Atherton said to Slider. ‘But I’m not sure where you’re going with this, or what made you connect the two. There must be hundreds of Corollas in the area.’

‘Just as there are Focuses,’ Slider replied, ‘but you were happy for it to be Wilding’s.’

‘Well, obviously, because it belongs to someone connected with the victim,’ he said, and stopped abruptly.

‘Sir,’ Connolly said, frowning as she tried to catch up, ‘I thought Markov said Zellah was a lezzer. It said in your notes—’

‘Classic misdirection,’ Slider said.

‘Hey, I said that,’ Atherton protested.

‘About a completely different subject. Markov threw out the suggestion about Zellah in the hope that I wouldn’t make a connection between him, Zellah and sex. He didn’t say she was a lesbian. He said he wondered if she had doubts about her sexuality, as many young girls do. He also told me that he didn’t own a car. And then he said it was hardly worth it in London. And he said his wife cycled to work. Every one of those statements is true. But he didn’t say he never drove a car, though that was the impression he hoped to leave.’

‘Misdirection,’ Connolly said. ‘I see. So you think . . .?’

Slider turned to Atherton. ‘Emily said Carmichael’s account of the last meeting with Zellah was so dumb it could almost be true.’

‘The thing about having two dates?’ he remembered.

‘It was school holidays. She couldn’t use the after-school activity excuse. The sleepover with Sophy and Chloë was her one chance to get in touch with the father of the baby,’ Slider went on. ‘She must have been desperate and terrified by then. Imagine if you were her, having to tell that father you were pregnant.’

‘Yes,’ Atherton said. ‘That would frighten a triple DSO.’

‘She couldn’t ring Markov from home. I don’t know if she tried to ring him from Sophy’s house. Maybe she did, and he wasn’t in, or his wife answered. I suspect she felt she had to see him face to face to tell him – it’s not something you can do over the phone.’

‘So where did Carmichael come into it?’ Atherton asked. ‘Was she really just using him for transport?’

‘I think she thought of him as a friend – someone she could talk to. She must have felt lonely, isolated with her problem.’

‘You got that right,’ Connolly said. ‘Couldn’t talk to her parents. And nobody would confide something like that to Sophy Cooper-Hutchinson.’

‘And I’ve learned enough about Frieda Mossman today to know she wouldn’t have confided in her, either,’ Slider said. ‘Not about that. At least Mike wouldn’t be shocked or disapproving. Probably she hoped to be able to talk to him. But he quickly showed he was just interested in sex,’ he said sadly. ‘So all that was left was to get in touch with Markov. Now, the scenario I’m working on is that she phoned Markov from Mike’s flat – he says she made a phone call. She told him she must see him. They agreed a time and a place – the fairground, ten o’clock. She had time to kill, so she got Mike to take her to the fair, and tried to have a good time.’

‘The condemned man eating a hearty meal?’ Atherton said.

‘Something like that.’ He thought of her going on the rides and screaming, hugging Mike’s arm to her, being a normal girlfriend for the last time in her life. He couldn’t blame her for using Carmichael. Hadn’t he used her? ‘But then she told Mike she was meeting someone else, and naturally enough he didn’t like that and they quarrelled.’

‘But,’ said Atherton, ‘the fat lady said the quarrel was later, near midnight.’

‘I’ve looked at the write-ups. She said there was a quarrel. The rifle-range man’s description matches Carmichael all right, but the fat lady said a tall man – Carmichael is not notably tall – older than Zellah – Carmichael doesn’t look particularly older than her – and she said he had brown hair, where Carmichael is notably dark. When Emily said that thing about the dumb excuse being true, I started to wonder if Zellah didn’t meet two men after all, and have two quarrels: one at ten, and a second, serious one at twelve.’

‘Yes,’ said Atherton, staring at nothing, ‘it works. She fights with Markov. She runs off across the Scrubs weeping, thinking her world is at an end. But after a while and some walking, she wonders if there isn’t still hope. She sees the Snogging Couple and asks to use their phone, rings Markov again, he comes to meet her.’

‘Meet, you see, not fetch,’ said Slider.

‘They have another row, she jumps out of the car, he chases her and kills her.’

They were silent.

‘But, sir,’ said Connolly, ‘if she told him she was up the pole the first time they met, why would he come to see her a second time? Why did they quarrel again? And why did that quarrel lead him to kill her?’

‘And why,’ Atherton said, ‘did he take a pair of tights with him when he went to meet her the second time?’

‘That,’ said Slider, ‘is something I think we’ll have to ask him.’

‘But first we need the phone records,’ Atherton said. ‘If it wasn’t Markov she phoned, the whole theory is a crock.’

‘We can’t expect to get them tonight. I think we should all go home and get a good night’s sleep.’

Atherton cocked his head. ‘Dollars to doughnuts you won’t sleep tonight.’

‘That’s entirely my problem,’ Slider said with dignity.

Joanna, holding Slider in bed, could feel both his weariness and his tension. The intense sympathy he always felt with a murder victim, even when it was a low-life scumbag, was partly what made him a good detective, but it also wore him out. He would find it hard to get to sleep tonight. He was keeping quite still, so as not to disturb her, but it was not a restful stillness. She sought for something to take his mind off the case.

‘Your father rang again this evening,’ she said, quietly, so as not to wake the baby.

‘Hmm?’

‘He sounded wistful.’

Slider sighed. ‘I’ll ring him tomorrow. I’ll make time. I’ve got him on my conscience.’

‘You haven’t got room on your conscience for anything else. I looked at more flats today.’

‘Oh?’

‘Nothing we could afford. You wouldn’t believe what a broom-cupboard costs these days. The only thing in our range was a lock-up garage. But it had no plumbing.’

‘What about . . .?’

‘I looked at rentals, too,’ she anticipated. ‘The rents are as much as a mortgage would be. The only reason I can afford this place is that I’ve been here so long the rent’s protected.’

‘I’ve let you down.’

‘Don’t start that. I’m not your dependant. But I just can’t think of a way out. We can’t increase our incomes, and we’ve nothing to sell. Unless . . .’

‘Unless what?’

‘Well, I did think perhaps we could sell George and lease him back. You get a big tax advantage with lease-back.’

‘I’m glad you’ve still got your sensa yumour,’ he said. ‘You’ll need it, living with me. We can’t even get a council flat, since I was foolish enough to marry you. They only give them to unmarried mothers.’

‘I was just wondering about your dad, though. If he’s selling his place, perhaps we could pool our resources and live together.’

‘You wouldn’t mind?’ Slider was amazed and touched.

‘I love your dad.’

‘But it’s different having him to live with us.’

‘Well, it’d be the other way round, really, since the money would be his.’

He kissed her brow tenderly. ‘Thank you for the thought. I’m glad you like the old man that much. But you don’t know that he’d want to live with us.’

‘I think he would. He was hinting that he’d like to move closer to us.’

‘Closer and with aren’t the same thing. But anyway, that cottage can’t be worth much – not enough to buy somewhere in London, let alone something big enough for the four of us.’

‘Oh well,’ she said comfortably, ‘we’ll just have to stay put. At least we’ve got a roof over our heads. People in past times lived in small spaces and shared rooms.’

‘People in past times had surgery without anaesthetic.’

‘Not the same thing. I think we’ve just got too nice. We’re all going to have to trim our nails if the recession gets bad.’

‘Hmm.’

She could feel he had relaxed, and the ‘hmm’ was much more contented than the first one. They were silent a moment, and then she thought of something that infallibly relaxed him and put him to sleep afterwards. She laid her lips against his ear, and whispered, ‘How would you feel about a close encounter of the marital kind?’

‘Hmm,’ he murmured into her neck. And one second later she felt the infinitesimal thud as he fell off the cliff of consciousness and into the void of sleep. It was that quick when you were as tired as he was. Smiling in the darkness, she held him until he was deep enough under for her to release herself without waking him, then turned over into her own sleep position.