“I’m sorry about that scene,” Stella said suddenly. “ I don’t know what came over me. I was upset, I suppose, about Aunt Alice.”
“That’s all right,” Carolyn said.
“Don’t you want to watch television?” Stella asked. “There are some good children’s programmes on this afternoon.”
“I don’t mind.”
“If you want to go to your room to watch it, I’ll be fine,” Stella said. “I didn’t mean what I said to Daddy. I was just upset. I don’t mind being on my own.”
“Well,” Carolyn said, relieved to be released. “If you’re sure…”
Stella smiled. “Of course.”
As Carolyn was on her way out of the room, Stella stretched out her hand, palm down, like a princess waiting to be kissed. Carolyn took it and held it for a moment, then she ran upstairs. When she came down a little later to fetch a drink from the kitchen, her mother was in the hall on the telephone. Carolyn could not hear what she was saying and as soon as Stella saw her coming down the stairs she hung up.
“Who was that?” Carolyn asked, curiosity overcoming the care that she usually took when she questioned her mother.
“Daddy,” Stella said. She seemed, Carolyn thought, pleased with herself. “ I phoned him to apologise for being so silly earlier.”
“Will he be home soon?”
“I don’t know,” Stella said absently. “I don’t expect he’ll be long.”
James Laidlaw walked to the office. As soon as he was out in the street he realised he was not properly dressed for the weather. The cold took his breath away and he thought he should have put on a warmer jacket. He could not return to the house to fetch one. Stella might not let him out so easily again. He followed the footpath along the river past the abbey. The river was frozen at the banks and a dirty-looking swan moved slowly along a channel in the middle. There might be a story in that, he thought: the effect of the cold weather so late in the spring on wildlife. He’d get one of the youngsters to look into it tomorrow. From the riverbank there were some steps onto the bridge that crossed the Otter and led into the town. The people James passed in the street seemed grey and unhappy, suffering, he supposed, from the unseasonable poor weather. He walked quickly, hoping the movement would fight off the cold.
He looked for Mary Raven’s Mini in one of the spaces along the wide main street, but there was no sign of it. The Express had premises on two floors over the Blue Anchor Inn, and access was by a narrow door by the pub’s entrance. There was a steep staircase, and another glass door at the top led to the office where the receptionist sat and he and the other reporters worked. The receptionist was the wife of the high school’s headmaster, solid and sensible. She supervised the young staff with a motherly compassion.
“Is Mary in?” he asked.
“I haven’t seen her,” she said, “but I’ve just come in from lunch. I was sorry to hear about Mrs. Parry.”
“Yes,” he said. “ It was a terrible shock.”
He walked through into the big room where all the reporters worked, but most of the desks were empty, the computer screens blank. It was the quiet time of the week, despite what he had said to Stella. In a corner one telesales woman was trying to persuade an estate agent to buy advertising. She looked up as he went past and smiled sympathetically. He looked in the small kitchen, thinking Mary might be there making the dreadful instant coffee that she drank black and continuously and that had stained all of the mugs in the place, but there was no sign of her. His office seemed unnaturally cold. He shivered, fetched the electric fire they kept for emergencies, and plugged it in beside his desk. Then he made a cup of Mary’s coffee and stirred in powdered milk and sugar to hide the taste. He began to work.
Mary Raven woke that morning with a hangover to the sound of the independent local radio station on her radio alarm. There was inane music and a breathy reporter talking about the “tragic death of Alice Parry.” She had been out all the day before, drinking with her friends in Newcastle, and it was the first time she had heard the death reported. She switched radio channels for a more detailed review of the local news, then showered and dressed. The flat was a pit. There were unwashed pans in the kitchen and clothes all over the bedroom floor. She had to search through a drawer of laddered tights and single socks to find a clean pair of knickers. But the worst of the hangover seemed to have disappeared and she was left only with a dull, persistent headache.
When she was sitting in her car, trying to coax it to start, she decided not to go into the office immediately. She could not face James until her head was better. Besides, she needed time to work out for herself the implications of Alice Parry’s death. It was the first Monday of the month and the magistrates court would be sitting in Otterbridge. James Laidlaw usually covered the court himself, but Mary thought it unlikely that he would remember it today. It would provide a reasonable excuse for her absence from the office.
The courthouse was a red-brick building between the police station and the cattle market, with the same air of depression as an urban social security office. The waiting room was thick with smoke. There was a queue at the tea bar run by the WRVS and by then she was desperate for coffee. In a corner a well-dressed solicitor was talking to his client for the first time. Occasionally there were shouts of recognition as defendants waiting to go into court called to old friends.
Mary left her coat in the office of a friendly probation officer and slipped into the court, onto the press bench behind the prosecuting solicitor, just as three elderly magistrates came into the room. In the warm, calm, wood-panelled room Mary Raven listened to the cases and dozed until early afternoon. When the court finally rose at two-thirty, she felt she could not put off going to the office any longer. On the way out she was stopped by an anxious businessman who had been convicted of drunk driving and was convinced that he could persuade her to keep his name out of the Express, but she arrived at the High Street at three o’clock.
In the Express office James Laidlaw heard Mary’s car from his desk and walked to the window to watch her arrive. The car’s exhaust had been going for days and she claimed not to have the time or the money to get it mended. He wondered sometimes why he had ever employed her. Her lack of organisation was legendary. He watched her climb clumsily out of the small car and heard her come up the stairs. Then she burst into the office, dropping scarf, keys, files onto the floor.
“Don’t look at me like that, Marg!” she said to the receptionist. “You’ve got to be kind to me. I’ve got a hangover.”
“Where have you been?” James asked, standing in the doorway.
“Magistrates court,” she said. “ It’s the first Monday of the month. I knew you wouldn’t want to do it today. The flasher from Whittingham was up. Otherwise it was all motoring.”
“Oh.” James was momentarily distracted. “ What did he get?”
“Remanded for social enquiry reports,” she said. “ There were a couple of drunk drivings and a strange thing happened-” She broke off, realising that legal gossip was inappropriate. “ I’m so sorry about your aunt Alice, James,” she said. “ Isn’t it awful? She was such a nice lady.”
“Yes,” he said. “ She was.”
“I met her, you know, on the afternoon before she died.”
“Yes,” he said. “ She told me.”
“She was so sympathetic. So easy to talk to.”