Chapter Five

Tuesday night. Annie was ready to go next door for the drinks party. They were supposed to take it in turns to host, but somehow they usually ended up at Nigel and Lorraine’s house. And this was unusual, a midweek celebration because it was Lorraine’s birthday. Sam had made a rabbit terrine and a pudding, a chocolate tart that managed to be rich but not too sweet. One of his signature dishes from the old days. He’d much rather cook than have his home invaded. The food was standing on the bench in the kitchen, and Sam was in the kitchen too, waiting for her. Annie wasn’t sure what he made of their Valley Farm social whirl. When they’d had the restaurant she’d always done front-of-house and Sam had never seemed to need friends. Now every week it seemed there was an excuse for a party. She knew she should go downstairs to see him, because he fretted about being late. Waiting made him nervous.

Instead she went into Lizzie’s room. Lizzie would be home soon, but they didn’t talk about her. The silence had become a wall between them. Their daughter had been the only cause of stress in their marriage. Now, Annie thought, Sam preferred to pretend that she’d never existed.

It was almost dark and there were lights in the valley. Strong white lights, which enabled her to see that there were cars parked along the lane close to the entrance to the Hall. Annie thought the others at Valley Farm would be interested to know about that. In the quiet days of their retirement they all loved a drama. She took Lizzie’s last letter out of her bag. It was written on cheap lined paper, with the name of the prison stamped on the top. It would have been an ugly object, but for Lizzie’s writing, which was strong and rather beautiful. Annie read it again. There was nothing much of significance. News from the farm, which was more like a smallholding, where the prison grew vegetables for its own use and kept a few rare breed pigs. Then: I’m looking forward to seeing you both. Had she ever expressed any affection for her parents before? Annie certainly couldn’t remember. Lizzie had been prickly even as a baby, turning her head away when they tried to stroke her hair to make her sleep, lying rigid under the pretty quilt when they leaned over the cot to kiss her goodnight.

‘Are you ready?’ Sam had moved to the bottom of the stairs and was shouting up. Wanting information, not grumpy or impatient. He was the most patient man Annie had ever met.

‘Just coming!’ She returned the letter to her bag. When it had first arrived in the post she’d left it on the kitchen table for him to read, while she went out into the garden. If he had read it, he hadn’t said. Perhaps he was still angry about the way Lizzie had behaved. Perhaps he only contained the fury by shutting down all his emotions.

He’d packed the food into a wicker basket and covered it with a clean tea towel. Very WI. Annie thought he’d make a much better member of the institute than her. There was a bottle of good red under his arm. Outside in the clear air they heard distant noises, shouted voices from the cars on the track.

‘What’s going on?’ Sam sounded mildly curious.

‘I don’t know. I saw it from upstairs. Perhaps some TV company filming?’

‘Don’t tell Nigel,’ Sam said. ‘He’ll drag us all down to be in it. You know how he loves to be the centre of attention.’ He had the slow, soft accent that belonged to that part of Northumberland; sometimes she thought his voice was unique to the valley, and that he was the only one of them who truly belonged here.

They paused for a moment outside the farmhouse window and looked inside. Nigel and Lorraine were already playing host, pouring Prosecco into tall fluted glasses. They did love their fizz. The professor, another of the neighbours, was there already. A big presence. Hair still mostly dark, despite his age. Eyes that were almost black. Lorraine had once said, ‘John O’Kane looks like a poet, don’t you think?’ Speaking with something like admiration in her voice. Annie had wondered if there could be an attraction there. Nigel was lovely to Lorraine of course, but certainly not poetic. You certainly couldn’t describe him as soulful.

As they watched, the professor’s wife Jan appeared in the room. She must have come in through the back door. She was wearing a dress that she might have owned when she was a student: long, with flowery prints in blue and green, frilly at the neck and very Laura Ashley. Now it didn’t suit her. Her hair was wiry and curly and streaked with grey and she looked like an eccentric Edwardian grandmother. John looked at her, not exactly with disdain; more like disappointment. Annie wondered how she would feel if Sam looked at her like that.

Sam had already knocked at the door. He wasn’t comfortable with the Valley Farm residents’ habit of letting themselves into each other’s houses. Nigel Lucas came to answer. He was a short man. Of all of her neighbours, Annie thought he was the hardest to get to know and wasn’t sure how else to describe him. She thought he was ambitious and a social climber, but very kind.

‘Come in!’ Below the voices in the room beyond there was music. Jazz. A double bass, insistent like a heartbeat. ‘You know you’d be welcome, even without Sam’s delicious offerings.’ It seemed Nigel couldn’t speak without flattering, and it came to Annie that he was less confident even than Sam. Nigel was desperate to please, but Sam didn’t really care what other people thought.

As they walked into the living room a phone rang in the distance. Lorraine Lucas went to answer it, shimmying to the music, the silk of her loose trousers catching the candlelight.

When she returned she stood inside the door. They fell silent and looked at her. She had that kind of presence.

‘You’ll never guess.’ Her eyes were huge. ‘That was Susan. She heard it from her father. There’s been a murder in the valley.’

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