Towers of Silence

Chapter Six

“Poor woman.” My friend and confidante Diane generally got to hear about my cases and could be trusted never to breathe a word to anyone else. “Imagine jumping. I’d take pills if I ever got to that point.”

“How do you know, though? If you’re so distressed that all you want to do is stop the pain.”

“But you’d do whatever was easier, near at hand.”

Farmers cradling shotguns, men sitting in fume-filled cars, lads hanging by a belt. ‘Time for tea, Gary…’ I shuddered.

She changed the subject. “Stuart?” Reached out and poured herself some more wine.

“Is back from Fuerteventura.”

“Tanned?”

“Mmm. All over.”

She giggled. “Are you going to thank me now, Sal?”

“Thank you? No way! I still haven’t forgiven you. You should have asked before doing your matchmaking number.”

“But it’s obviously a great match.”

“It’s still so new. Strange. It’s nice but who knows…” I took a drink, Tempranillo, savoured the berry rich taste.

“Did you miss him, though?” she probed.

Did I? “He was only gone a week. Sometimes we don’t see each other from one week to the next. He has his kids every weekend and then he has to go into the bar some nights and sort things out, if there’s any problems or staff off. It’s a long slow process. I don’t know if we’re right for each other.”

She tilted her head, narrowed her eyes.

“You can’t rush these things,” I protested. “I like him but…”

“What?”

“Just but… there shouldn’t be a but should there?”

“-but there is.”

“When I work it out I’ll let you know.”

“What are his kids like?”

“Still not met them. Feels too soon. I’ve not told Maddie about him either. We agreed at the start that we’d keep the families to one side until we knew whether things would develop. I can imagine it being quite hard for Maddie, me having a boyfriend, she’s not exactly had to share me before, I didn’t want to involve her when it might just be a short-term thing.”

“You said Tom’s all right with Laura.”

“Tom’s not Maddie.” The children were opposites. In everything from colouring to character. “And I’m not Ray.”

As if on cue we heard Ray come in the front door and peer round into the lounge, his dark curly hair glistened with rain drops. He’d grown a neat goatee in the last few weeks, along with his moustache it made him looked like some spaghetti western bandit. “Hiya, Diane. Everything okay?” he asked me.

“Yep. Your mum rang I told her you’d be late.”

“Ta.”

“And Digger’s been out in the front garden.”

“Oh, great. It’s like a monsoon out there without the heat.” Diane groaned. She’d come on her bike.

“See you later.” Ray left us.

“I’d better make tracks.” She stood up and stretched, filling the space in front of the fireplace. Diane was a big woman with a flamboyant dress sense, an artist who experimented with colour and shape on her clothing and her hair as well as in her work.

“I won’t see you till New Year, will I?” I said.

“That’s ages.”

“Well, you’re off to Ireland tomorrow…”

“Back Thursday, then Bristol, there’s a couple of nights after that, I don’t go to Iceland till the 20th.”

She survived by combining her own art work with commissions and running workshops and courses. She’d had a burst of success in the last eighteen months and was enjoying the chance to exhibit more widely and to develop new projects. The Iceland work sounded wonderful, a winter school entitled Ice, Glass and Ink. People were to spend Christmas week in the land of reindeers working on sculptures, stained and etched glass, print and paint with several European tutors. Diane was the Ink woman. In between classes there’d be the northern lights, skating and sleigh rides, and a traditional Icelandic feast for Christmas. Certainly sounded more fun than turkey and tinsel.

“I’ll ring you,” she said, “we’ll do one of those nights.”

In the hall she wriggled into a cycling cape and switched her bike lights on. Digger hovered nearby on the off-chance that a walk was coming. Futile hope. I could see he knew this too by the half-hearted thump of his tail. Ray equalled walkies, no one else. I held him back while Diane manoeuvred her bike out and down the steps. It was truly wet. Manchester does rain in a thousand varieties; this was the heavy sort, large, fat, plopping drops, drenching everything. Filling the potholes in the road, the gutters and the drains, saturating the grass and the gardens, drumming incessantly on the roofs and windows, making the red brick and slate slick and shiny, raising the level in the canals, swelling the banks of the River Mersey.

You can’t live in Manchester and not know rain.

I listened to it in bed. Heard the board by the roof rattling too. Tried to imagine living somewhere dry; East Anglia, the Sierra Madre, Nevada. Parched. Day after day. Clear skies. Wind and sand and dust, cracking and bleaching and desiccating everything. Wouldn’t you long for rain, crave a sky of leaden cloud, the deluge, the fresh scents after the rain had been? The cleansing power. Wouldn’t you pray for rain? Well, maybe.