She kept a collection that she thought of as her “ailing parishioner kit.” Through experience, she’d discovered that prayer had its place, but that there was nothing more healing to those who were ill or worried than a good belly laugh. Tonight she’d pulled out two of her personal favorites, A Fish Called Wanda and Waking Ned Devine, plus some old episodes of Fawlty Towers. They were all irreverent, but in her opinion reverence was highly overrated, and she even had a secret fondness for the ecclesiastical absurdities of Father Ted.
“Oh, Winnie.” Fanny seemed to sag in her chair. “I don’t think I could manage it. Could we just have the tea… and chat?”
“Of course. I’ll just help you settle in for the night, shall I?”
Winnie made short work of the dishes, and when she’d put the kettle on she turned to see Fanny fingering the videos she’d left out on the table.
“Elaine would never have watched these,” said Fanny, looking up at her. “Nor my parents. I remember how much my mother hated Fawlty Towers when I was growing up. There’s nothing the Chinese find more offensive than rudeness, and to her Basil Fawlty was the devil incarnate. ‘That awful man,’ she called him.”
Winnie filled their mugs and sat down at the table. “I’ll bet you watched it on the sly, then.”
“I did, whenever I could manage.” Fanny grinned, remembering, and Winnie realized it was the first time she’d ever seen a real, unfettered smile on her friend’s face. The difference it made was astonishing. “And worried about getting caught,” Fanny went on. “It was probably the worst thing I ever did. They had such expectations, my parents, and I never wanted to disappoint them.”
“What about Elaine?” asked Winnie, beginning to see disturbing parallels between Fanny’s home life and her relationship with Elaine Holland. “What did she like to watch?”
“Oh, serious things. Old movies, sometimes. I didn’t like to complain. She…”
“She what?” Winnie prompted when Fanny didn’t continue.
“She – she could be… unkind.” Fanny gazed down at her mug, as if unwilling to meet Winnie’s eyes.
Holding herself very still, Winnie measured her words. “Unkind, how?”
“Oh…” The cat, Quinn, came in through his door and jumped into Fanny’s lap, kneading her with his front paws. “She – she would say I was lucky to have her… that no one else would want to be saddled with me, the way I am.” Fanny stroked the cat’s back and he butted his head against her shoulder, purring loudly. “She would say I was never going to get better, that I was fooling myself. But that was only when she’d had a particularly bad day, and I thought it was all right, really, because she’d had such a hard time in her own life.”
Looking down, Winnie saw that the knuckles on the hand she’d wrapped around her cup were white. “What sort of hard time?”
“I at least had parents who cared for me. I mean, they were strict, but I mattered to them, more than anything else. Elaine… Elaine’s mother committed suicide when she was twelve, in their shower, so that Elaine would find her when she came home from school. What kind of mother would do that to her own child? And after that, her father cared nothing for her, but when he got sick she took care of him until he died.”
“She told you this?”
“In bits and pieces, most of it when she’d been particularly… cross. She was – she could be – she did care for me, in spite of how it sounds.”
“You’re very forgiving,” Winnie managed to say. “But you know that neither of the things she said about you were true.”
Fanny looked down at her body in the chair. “It’s getting harder and harder to imagine anything else.”
“That will change, I promise,” said Winnie, vowing that she would make sure of it.
At least Fanny had begun to speak of Elaine in the past tense, which Winnie could only see as a positive step. Whatever had happened to Elaine Holland, Winnie hoped that Fanny, having made such a confession, would not be willing to take her erring roommate back with open arms. And as much as it shamed her, Winnie found herself wishing, just for a moment, that Elaine Holland would never walk in Fanny’s door again.
Kincaid leaned against the doorjamb, watching Gemma in the bath. The tub, an old-fashioned roll-top, was one of the things Gemma loved most about their house, and tonight she’d made the most of her retreat. Candles flickered, the water foamed with something flowery, and a piano nocturne drifted from the CD player. All were signs that she’d had a particularly stressful day.
“Is this the ritual bath?” he asked lightly.
“It’s much easier on the goat this way,” she said without turning, but he heard the smile in her voice. She’d pulled her hair up on top of her head, and sat with her arms wrapped round her knees, exposing the slender line of her neck and the curve of her back. In the candlelight, her skin looked pale as alabaster. “Are the kids in bed?” she asked.
“I’ve read to Toby, and Kit’s curled up with a book he says Erika gave him.” He’d helped Kit arrange the last of his birds’ eggs and bits of stone and bone in his display case, and had promised to try to figure out some way to light it. “The cabinet’s great, by the way. He seems pleased.”
“He’s had a good day, I think, between that and Erika. He’s quite impressed now with her being a famous historian, with oodles of published papers.”
“Oodles? Is that in the dictionary?” Grinning, he crossed to the dressing table stool and sat down so that he could see her face.
“Do I care?” She flashed a smile at him, then said, “Duncan, do you suppose we’ll be an embarrassment to him one day?”
“What? You think he’ll be apologizing for ‘my parents the plods,’ as he’s accepting his Cambridge degree? Let’s hope he has the opportunity,” he added, sobering as he thought of Eugenia’s custody suit.
“Duncan, this case… you won’t let anything keep you from making the hearing on Monday…”
“Of course not. I’ve discussed it with Doug. He’ll cover for me if necessary.” He took off his watch and began rolling up his shirtsleeves. “Shall I do your back?”
“Please.”
He took her nylon bath scrubby and lathered it with soap. “If I get the DNA results from Konnie tomorrow, we’ll at least be able to narrow things down from there. Maybe then we’ll be able to make some real progress.”
Cullen had taken the samples they’d collected from Chloe Yarwood’s flat back to the station, and had sent them off to the lab immediately, flagged for Konrad Mueller’s immediate attention.
Kincaid had updated Gemma on Michael Yarwood’s identification of the girl in the CCTV image as his daughter, and she’d shared the results of her interview at Guy’s Hospital with him. While interested in what she’d learned, he’d decided there was no point in trying to trace Elaine’s phantom boyfriend until they had the results of the DNA tests, and that copying her photo for the team could wait until the next morning. He had, however, set Cullen the immediate task of trying to find Nigel Trevelyan, the man who had been with Chloe Yarwood on the night of the fire.
Kneeling by the tub, he began soaping Gemma’s neck, working his way down to her shoulders with a circular motion. When he had lather the consistency of shaving cream, he dropped the nylon ball in the tub and began massaging her shoulders and back with his hands.
“Um… can I hire you on a permanent basis?” Gemma asked, leaning into the pressure.
“Depends on the benefits. I’m open to offers.” Her skin slipped like satin under his fingers. He began to think about the possibilities of the bath rug, and whether or not the boys were well and truly down for the night.