"Does your mother know?" Sarah asked Ruth.
"Jack let me phone."
"Is she happy about you staying here?"
"I don't know. All she said was she'd heard from Miss Harris and then hung up. She sounded furious." Ruth kept her head down and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.
Sarah made a wry face at Jack. "You'll have to be the one to tell her then. I'm not exactly flavour of the month at the moment, and I can't see her being very pleased about it."
"I've already tried. She hung up on me too."
It was on the tip of Sarah's tongue to ask why, before she thought better of it. Knowing Jack, the answer would be as teasingly illusive as the answer to life itself. What puzzled her more was the speed with which events, like the ball in a pinball machine, had taken such an unpredictable course. This morning she'd had only another solitary weekend to look forward to-and now?
"Well, someone's got to tell her," she said irritably, isolating the one fact she could get to grips with. She looked at the Sergeant. "You'll have to do it. I'm quite happy for Ruth to stay but only if her mother knows where she is."
Cooper looked wretched. "Perhaps it would be better if we involved social services," he suggested, "asked a third party to intercede, as it were."
Sarah's eyes narrowed. "I'm an extremely amenable woman on the whole but I do resent my good nature being taken advantage of. There is no such thing as a free lunch, Sergeant, and I'd like to remind you that you have just drunk some very expensive St. Emilion of mine which, at a conservative estimate and allowing for inflation, costs well over seven pounds per glass. In other words, you owe me one, so you will not shuffle your responsibility and this child's future on to some overworked and underpaid social worker whose only solution to the problem will be to place her in a hostel full of disturbed adolescents."
Cooper's wretchedness grew.
"You have also, by underestimating the old-fashioned ethics that still exist within girls' boarding schools, caused a young woman approaching the most important exams of her life to be expelled. Now, in a world where the renting out of a woman's womb is still the only reliable method that men have discovered to replicate themselves, the very least they can do in return is to allow their women enough education to make the life sentence of child-rearing endurable. To sit and stare at an empty wall is one thing; to have the inner resources, the knowledge and the confidence to turn that wall into a source of endless stimulation is another. And that's ignoring the positive influence that educated and intelligent women have on succeeding generations. Ruth wants to go to university. To do so, she must pass her A levels. It is imperative that Joanna finds another school to accept her PDQ. Which means someone"-she cocked her finger at him-"namely you, must explain to her that Ruth is here, that she is here for a good reason, and that Joanna must come and talk it through before Ruth loses her opportunity to take her education as far as it can go." She turned her gaze on the girl. "And if you dare tell me now, Ruth, that you've given up on your future, then I'll put you through the first mangle I can find and, I promise you, the experience will not be a pleasant one."
There was a long silence.
Finally, Jack stirred. "Now you begin to see what Sarah's terms consist of. There's no allowing for human frailty. I grant you, there are pages of subtext and small print dealing with the awful imperfections that most of us suffer from-namely, inadequacy, lack of confidence, seeing both sides and sitting on fences-but they are grey areas which she treats with insufferable patience. And, take it from me, you allow her to do that at your peril. It undermines what little self-respect you have left." He beamed fondly at Cooper. "I sympathize with you, old son, but Sarah's right as usual. Someone's got to talk to Joanna and you're the one who's run up the most debts. After all, you did get Ruth expelled and you did drink a glass of wine that cost over seven quid."
Cooper shook his head. "I hope Miss Lascelles can put up with the pair of you. I know I couldn't. You'd have me climbing the walls before you could say knife."
The "pair" wasn't lost on Sarah. "How come you know so much more about my domestic arrangements than I do, Sergeant?" she asked casually.
He chuckled amiably, pushing himself to his feet. "Because I never say never, Doctor." He winked at her. "As someone once told me, life's a bugger. It creeps up behind you and gets you where you least expect it every time."
Sarah felt the girl start to tremble as she pushed open the door of the spare room and switched on the light. "What's the matter?" she asked.
"It's downstairs," she blurted out. "If Dave comes, he could get in."
"Not my choice. Geoffrey Freeling's. He turned the house upside down so that the reception rooms would have the best views. We're slowly turning it back again, but it takes time." She pushed open a communicating door. "It has its own bathroom." She glanced back at the girl, saw the pinched look to her face. "You're frightened, aren't you? Would you rather sleep upstairs in my room?"
Ruth burst into tears. "I'm so sorry," she wept. "I don't know what to do. Dave will kill me. I was all right at school. He couldn't have got in there."
Sarah put her arms about the other's thin shoulders and clasped them tightly. "Come upstairs," she said gently. "You'll be safe with me. Jack can sleep in here."
And serve the bastard right, she thought. Ho, ho! For once, sod's law was on the side of the angels. She had been toying with the ethics of medical castration but was prepared to compromise on a cold bed and a grovelling apology. It was a very partial compromise. She was so damn glad to have him back she felt like doing handsprings.
Joanna moved to the flat in London last week and for the first time since her abortive attempt at marriage I am in sole possession of Cedar House. It is a victory of sorts, but I have a sense of anticlimax. The game, I fear, was not worth the candle. I am lonely.
It occurs to me that in some strange way Joanna and I are necessary to each other. There is no denying the understanding that exists between us. We do not get along, of course, but that is largely irrelevant in view of the fact that we don't get along with anyone else either. There was some comfort in treading the mill of clicheed insults that trundled us quite happily through our lives, so worn and overused that what we said to each other passed largely unnoticed. I miss the little things. The way she pursued Spede about the garden, taking the wretched man to task if he missed a weed. Her waspish remarks about my cooking. And oddly enough, as they always used to irritate me at the time, her long, long silences. After all, perhaps companionship is less to do with conversation than with the comfort of another human presence, however self-centred that presence might be.
I have a terrible fear that, by pushing her out to fend for herself, I have diminished us both. At least, while we were together, we checked each other's worst excesses. And now? The road to hell is paved with good intentions...
*11*
It wasn't until late the following afternoon, a Saturday, that Sergeant Cooper felt he had enough information on Dave Hughes to make an approach viable. He was pessimistic about bringing charges of theft, but in respect of Mathilda's death there was some room for optimism. Ruth's mention of a white Ford transit had rung bells in his memory and a careful sifting of the statements taken in and around Fontwell in the days after the body was found had produced a gem. When asked if he'd seen anything unusual the previous Saturday, the landlord of the Three Pigeons, Mr. Henry Peel, had said: