So, she invited Jeremiah to join her for coffee at Woodside Cottage. He was going to be away for most of the next week but they fixed a date after that.
‘As you know, I don’t like gossip,’ Carole lied.
‘No?’ said Jude. ‘The only gossip you don’t like is the kind someone else heard before you did.’
Carole didn’t think this childish (if accurate) barb was worthy of response, so she just listened as her neighbour went on, ‘I’m surprised you haven’t heard, though. It’s been round Fethering for months. The woman you met at the garage is called Malee. She’s Bill Shefford’s second wife. They married … I don’t know, eight months ago … might even be a year now.’
‘And where does she come from?’
‘Thailand.’
‘Good heavens. A “Thai Bride”?’ Carole breathed the words with appropriate tabloid awe.
‘If you want to call it that, I suppose she is, yes.’
‘Well …’
They were sitting in the cluttered front room of Woodside Cottage, a nest of soft furnishing, of rugs and throws. For her clients, Jude’s healing process started the moment they entered the nurturing ambience of her home.
‘What you’re saying,’ Carole went on, ‘is that Bill Shefford’s got a “Mail Order Bride”?’
‘You may be saying that. I’m not. Bill did actually meet Malee when he was on a trip to Thailand.’
‘So, what difference does that make?’
‘I think a “Mail Order Bride” is generally considered to be someone who registers themselves with an international marriage agency, hoping to attract a husband from a wealthier country. That’s not what happened with Bill and Malee. They met socially while he was on holiday in Thailand.’
‘When you say “socially”, you don’t mean they met at a cocktail party, do you?’ asked Carole beadily.
‘No, probably not. Bill went out to Thailand on a group tour. He met Malee. A few weeks later she came to England and they got married at the registry office in Fedborough.’
‘So, what was Malee doing in Thailand at the time they met?’
‘I think she was a waitress in the hotel where he was staying.’
‘Then it’s the same difference really, isn’t it, Jude? She might as well have been a “Mail Order Bride”. She was on the lookout for a wealthy Englishman to get her out of poverty, and he was looking for a continual supply of subservient sex.’
For an intelligent woman who did The Times crossword, Carole often came across as surprisingly Daily Mail. ‘From all I can gather,’ Jude said, ‘it’s turned out to be a very happy marriage.’
‘Huh,’ said Carole, as only she could say ‘Huh.’ She went on, ‘Well, I didn’t get the impression Bill’s new bride was spreading much sweetness and light into the next generation.’
‘Billy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hm.’ Jude nodded. ‘Billy’s a man with problems.’
‘Oh? And, incidentally, how is it that you know so much about the Shefford set-up?’
‘I’ve been doing some work with Billy’s mother-in-law.’
‘By “work”, I assume you mean “healing”?’ Carole could never keep a shade of contempt out of her pronunciation of that word. But then again, she didn’t really want to keep it out. To her, any form of medical procedure that didn’t involve an NHS GP was deeply suspicious. The very word ‘healer’ carried with it an ineradicable whiff of charlatanism.
‘Shannon Shefford’s mother, Rhona, is dying.’
‘Oh, and you can heal her of that, can you?’
It was a cheap shot, but Jude didn’t rise to it. She just said, ‘I can perhaps make her last months less stressful.’
‘Huh,’ said Carole. But she did feel slightly guilty for the cynical line she had taken. She often made pronouncements that came out sounding more callous than she’d intended. She envied her neighbour’s skill for saying the right thing at the right time.
A sudden twinge of pain in her right knee distracted her. She adjusted her position in the armchair as subtly as she could, but Jude still noticed.
‘Something wrong with your leg?’ she asked.
‘No, no,’ Carole responded hastily. ‘Just a touch of cramp.’ The last thing she wanted was her neighbour offering to heal her.
Jude didn’t believe the answer. She’d noticed Carole limping slightly the last few weeks. But she moved the subject on. ‘Oh, incidentally …’ said Jude, ‘sorry about your car.’
Carole was incensed. ‘How did you know about that? Did you see it down at the parade this morning?’ That seemed unlikely. She knew Jude did not share her strict regime of early rising.
‘No, no,’ Jude replied. ‘I heard about it from a friend in the village.’
Carole curbed the instinctive urge to ask which friend. Though she did very much want to know, she didn’t wish to sound needy. In all areas of her life, she expended a lot of energy in trying not to sound needy. Also, there was an element of jealousy in her reaction. Jude found meeting new people so much easier than she did. Carole didn’t want to hear further proof that her neighbour was friends with more Fethering residents than she was (even though Jude hadn’t lived in the village nearly so long).
‘Yes, it was unfortunate,’ said Carole. ‘There’s far too much random vandalism around these days.’
‘Surely better to have random vandalism than targeted vandalism.’
Carole looked sharply at her neighbour. Jude couldn’t be implying …? But the brown eyes looked so innocent, she knew the remark had had no hidden agenda.
For a moment, she felt strongly tempted to tell Jude about the note that had been shoved under her kitchen door. Its appearance had affected her more than she cared to admit to herself. And Jude always offered a sympathetic ear – indeed, much of her job description required offering a sympathetic ear. But no, Carole didn’t want to involve her. Some illogical voice within her said that if she told no one about what had happened, the threat would go away.
‘Anyway, I’ve had it repaired,’ she announced briskly. ‘The Renault is safely back in the High Tor garage.’
‘Good. And presumably, everything was covered on your insurance?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Carole airily.
‘Of course, Shannon should have gone to university,’ announced Rhona Hampton.
‘Uhuh,’ said Jude, only half concentrating on her client’s words. Her main focus was on healing, channelling its power into the frail body lying on the bed. The covers had been pulled back but Rhona had kept her nightdress on, accentuating the pathetic thinness of her mottled arms and legs. Jude just ran her hands slowly along the body’s contours, not touching, translating the energy into comfort.
Both women knew there was no hope of a cure for Rhona’s liver cancer. Jude’s mission was palliative care. That was accepted between them. The old woman never talked of death, so Jude didn’t either. Some people in the last stages of her life, she knew, were terrified, some remained endlessly curious, others ignored their situation. Her job was to adjust to the needs of the individual client.
The request for her services had come from Shannon who, it turned out, was a great believer in alternative therapies. And Jude reckoned it must have taken quite a bit of persuasion for Rhona to agree to the treatment. Shannon’s mother seemed very old-school and traditional, probably of Carole’s view that all medical needs could – and should – be supplied by the NHS. And Shannon said she’d tried to get another alternative therapist to work with her mother, but after ten minutes he’d been denounced by the old woman as a ‘snake-oil salesman’.