‘Edith Thomson speaking.’
He could picture her in her office, behind her desk, with the photo of Ingirid and Eric on the windowsill behind her. The photo of him which she said she liked the best, pushing his boat into the water.
Now, he wasn’t quite sure what to say.
‘I wondered if you might like to have lunch with me.’ Suddenly he wanted to see her. He felt like a young man asking a woman out for a date, all shaky and nervous. He’d felt a little that way around Jimmy Perez’s mother.
‘What’s happened?’ Her voice was alarmed. He had never before offered to take her out to lunch when she was working. Not even on her birthday or their anniversary. He knew she liked to eat with the people who used the centre. She said it kept her in touch with how things were going there.
‘Have you not heard the news on the radio?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve been very busy today. I’ve hardly moved out of the office.’ He could imagine her, frowning with concentration, tapping away on her computer.
‘There’s been another body,’ he said. ‘An old one.’
There was a pause at the end of the line.
‘And you think it might be Lawrence?’
‘I think it must be.’
‘I can’t get away,’ she said. ‘You can come here if you like, though. Of course you must come here.’
But just having spoken to her had calmed him. ‘Maybe later. I know you’re busy at lunchtime.’ He replaced the phone, thinking there was nothing after all to be anxious about. Nothing had changed, except his idea of what might have happened to Lawrence. He looked in the fridge for something to have for his lunch, but there was nothing there that he wanted to eat. He thought he would go to the shop and buy something. A pie or a burger, and a cake. Aggie didn’t close until one and he would get there just in time. It would do him good to get away from the croft, even if it was only for a while.
The shop was empty and Aggie sat reading, just as she always did if she was on her own. She was surprised to see him.
‘Kenny. What can I do for you?’ They’d known each other since they were babies and yet she always kept her distance from him. A certain formality. Had she been that way even when she was a child?
‘I fancied something tasty for my dinner,’ he said. ‘Edith buys all the healthy food. Today I thought I’d like something a bit different.’
‘Comfort eating,’ she said, and smiled.
He knew then that she’d been thinking exactly the same thing as him about the bones the police had found.
She looked at her watch. ‘There’ll be no one else in the shop now. Why don’t you come next door with me? I could do you sausage, egg and chips. Would that suit you?’
The invitation shocked him. She’d come to Skoles when they’d had a bit of a party at Christmas or New Year, but she’d never invited them into her house. Aggie and Edith had got on well enough when they were young, but the women had never been great friends, at least not since Lawrence had gone. Lawrence had seemed to hold the whole of Biddista together.
‘I’d like that very much,’ Kenny said. ‘If it’s not too much trouble.’
‘Not at all.’ She smiled, and he saw that she had quite a pretty face. ‘I like comfort food myself.’
She brought up the subject of Lawrence while she was cooking the chips. She cooked them the old-fashioned way, with oil in a big pan and a basket, so there was the noise of them frying. She had her back to him, so it was hard to tell what she was thinking. The sausages were in a frying pan and they smelled very good. She’d made him a big mug of tea as soon as they got into the kitchen and he sat with his boots off at the table, drinking it. He was just thinking it was a pity she’d never remarried when she started speaking.
‘Have the police been in touch with you?’
‘About the bones in the Pit? No. I phoned Jimmy Perez this morning but he was out.’
‘You think it’s Lawrence?’
‘I think it was too much of a coincidence for it not to be.’
‘I suppose they’ll be able to tell,’ she said. ‘All those things you read about. Forensics.’
‘I just want to know,’ he said.
She cracked three eggs on the side of the pan and added them to the sausages, lifted the chip basket so it rested just above the oil, then turned round to him.
‘I felt that way when Andrew drowned,’ she said. ‘But sometimes I think hope is better.’
‘Do you remember that summer when Lawrence disappeared?’ he asked. ‘I wasn’t here. I was away in Fair Isle, working.’
She took two plates from the warming oven at the bottom of the Rayburn, carefully lifted out the eggs – two for him and one for her – and the sausages, then shook the oil from the chips and tipped them on to the plates.
‘I wasn’t here then. I was in Scalloway.’ She pushed a knife and fork across the table to him. He couldn’t tell what she made of the question. He didn’t know what she was thinking at all. ‘Eat up while it’s hot.’
‘But you’d hear what was going on. What were folks saying?’
‘Just what they’ve been saying ever since. That he asked Bella Sinclair to marry him and she turned him down, so he took a great temper on him and left the islands.’ She picked up a chip with her fingers and blew on it before putting it into her mouth. Then she frowned. ‘He did have a temper, Kenny. You know he did. You remember when we were children, him scrapping in the schoolyard. The teacher having to pull the boys apart. He always had to be the best, the strongest. Always in competition, even with you.’
Kenny thought of the two of them racing to finish singling the neeps. Lawrence was the quickest, but his own rows were the neater. He wasn’t sure there was much of a competition, but it was true that Lawrence always wanted to win.
‘You never heard anything else? That he’d picked a fight over work? Fallen out with anyone?’
It occurred to Kenny that he might have to apologize to Bella when all this was over. Perhaps she’d had nothing to do with his brother’s disappearance after all.
‘No,’ Aggie said. ‘I heard nothing like that.’
Chapter Forty
Back in the house, Kenny sat in his chair in the kitchen and dozed. He wasn’t used to eating such a big meal at lunchtime. The telephone woke him with a start. He rushed into the hall, thinking it would be Jimmy Perez, but it was Edith. He looked at his watch and saw that it was three o’clock.
‘Are you OK, Kenny? Is there any news?’
He felt guilty then. He should have phoned her. She’d have been worrying about him all afternoon.
‘No news,’ he said. ‘But I’m fine.’ He didn’t tell her about the big fried meal Aggie had cooked for him. He’d enjoyed the meal so much that it seemed like a guilty secret. He knew Aggie wouldn’t tell anyone about it.
‘Do you still want to come over?’
‘Yes,’ he said. He didn’t feel panicky any more, but the lunch with Aggie had given him a taste for company.
When he walked into the care centre through the big double doors and saw the people sitting in the sunny room, dozing or chatting, he thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to end his days here. He would be with people he knew, people he’d grown up with. He waved to Willy, who sat a little apart from the others, staring out of the window. Willy waved back at him with a great silly grin, and Kenny gestured with his hand to show that he’d come back to chat to him later.