She sat gazing up at him, her hands tightly clasped. ‘That’s three times this week you’ve been late home.’
He made a comical grimace. ‘Is that so?’ He patted his pockets, checked his keys. ‘You know how it is, the business won’t run itself. If there’s work to do, it’s got to be done.’ He kept impatience from his voice, kept his expression friendly and smiling. ‘Competition’s fiercer than ever these days. If you don’t keep pushing forward you very soon grind to a halt.’ He went round the table, stooped and gave her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, straightened up, turned to go.
She suddenly overflowed with anger and resentment. ‘You’re seeing that girl again! That’s why you’re late!’
The muscles tensed along his jaw. He didn’t turn back to look at her. ‘What girl?’ he asked lightly.
‘What girl?’ she echoed fiercely. She was on the edge of tears, but she kept her voice low because of the children. She had an air of being astounded at her own temerity but she pressed resolutely on. ‘Have you got half a dozen girls on the go, then, that you don’t know who I’m talking about? I’m talking about Karen Boland.’
‘You’re talking nonsense,’ he said soothingly. He half turned, half smiled. ‘You’re upsetting yourself for nothing. I haven’t laid eyes on Karen since she left Wychford, months ago.’
There was a brief silence. ‘Is that the truth?’ She looked beseechingly up at him.
He patted her shoulder. ‘Of course it is.’ He glanced again at his watch. ‘I may have been a fool but I’m not a damned lunatic. That’s all water under the bridge, best forgotten.’ He gave her shoulder another encouraging pat and left the room. She heard the front door open and shut, his car starting up, moving off down the drive.
She got slowly to her feet, shaken and trembling. From force of habit she began to gather up the breakfast things, set them down on the draining-board. She stood beside it with her head lowered and her eyes closed, fighting back the tears.
When the children came running downstairs again a few minutes later she looked her normal self. She cast an eye over them, gathered up her purse and shopping-bag. ‘Come along, then,’ she said in her everyday tones. ‘Mustn’t be late for school.’
In Jubilee Cottage also breakfast was coming to an end. Ian Wilmot was pouring himself a last cup of coffee when he heard the postman. He rose with controlled haste and went into the hall, coming back with a handful of mail which he put down in front of his wife. ‘All for you again,’ he remarked cheerfully.
Christine glanced quickly through the post and laid it aside. All business mail, to be dealt with later. She looked up at Ian. ‘Nothing from your application?’ He had applied for a better job in the South.
He picked up his cup. He remained standing by his chair, drinking the coffee. He shook his head, smiling. ‘No, not yet.’
She continued to gaze up at him. ‘If you’re on the short list, surely you’d have heard by now?’
‘Possibly.’ He kept his amiable look, his light, dismissive tone.
She frowned. ‘You had real hopes of this one.’ Until six months ago he’d been confident of promotion in due course in his own department in Cannonbridge where he’d worked for the last twelve years. He believed he’d given satisfaction, he’d always got on well with his head of department. But six months ago the head had died suddenly and a new man had been brought in. The easy-going atmosphere altered overnight. The new man was a good deal younger than his predecessor, a good deal sharper, far more critical. He began a relentless drive for efficiency, singling out in uncomfortable ways those members of staff whose performance struck him as less than satisfactory. Ian’s name figured well up on this list.
Christine tilted back her head. ‘That’s the fifth job you’ve applied for in the last few months,’ she observed.
He moved his shoulders but said nothing.
‘Is there anything else on the cards?’ she pursued.
He drank his coffee. ‘Not at the moment.’ He smiled again. ‘Something will come along one of these days.’
She made no reply but sat gazing up at him.
He finished his coffee. ‘Are you nearly ready?’ he asked Karen.
She nodded, ate her last morsel of toast, drained her cup.
Ian went into the hall to put on his outdoor things. Christine stood up and began to clear the table.
Karen followed Ian into the hall. She reached down her brown quilted jacket from the hallstand and slipped it on. She gathered up the long tresses of her wavy gold-brown hair, twisting it loosely into a coil on top of her head before pulling on over it a knitted woollen cap of bright daffodil yellow.
Ian took her long matching scarf from its peg. ‘You’ll need this,’ he warned. ‘It’ll be a cold day.’ He draped the scarf round her neck and shoulders, tucking in the ends as if she were a child, smiling tenderly down at her. She stood in docile silence, smiling up at him.
In the kitchen Christine, returning from the fridge, paused by the door leading into the hallway, left slightly ajar. She caught sight of the two of them through the narrow aperture. She stood motionless, watching as Ian adjusted Karen’s woollen cap, touched her cheek, bent his head and kissed her lightly on the lips.
‘Ready, then?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I’m ready.’ She picked up her shoulder-bag, a fashionable affair of cream-coloured macramé, pulled on a pair of woollen gloves. She suddenly paused and exclaimed, ‘Oh–I was forgetting. The theatre scrapbook. I borrowed it from one of the students. I promised faithfully I’d return it today. It’s up in my room. I’ll run up and get it, I won’t be a moment.’
Behind the kitchen door Christine remained silent and motionless, studying the expression on her husband’s face as he stood watching Karen run swiftly up the stairs.
The morning was now a little more advanced. The carriage clock on the study mantelpiece at Hawthorn Lodge showed nine twenty-five. The lodge was a pleasant Victorian villa not far from Overmead Wood, half a mile from the Wilmots’ cottage. It stood in an attractive rambling garden full of twists and turns, unexpected vistas.
The study was a cosy room on the ground floor, furnished with unpretentious comfort and due regard for the period of the house. The walls were hung with old theatrical mementoes; the bookshelves were filled with theatrical biographies, memoirs, reminiscences, histories, texts of plays, postcard albums of the Victorian beauties of the old music halls.
Desmond Hallam stood before his desk with a pen in his hand, nervously glancing through the essay on the nineteenth-century novel he had written yesterday evening, making minor alterations as he read.
Still a few years from fifty, of medium height, sparely built; a mild-looking man with nondescript features, thinning hair of uncertain brown brushed back from a lined forehead, hesitant eyes of the same indeterminate brown. He was nattily dressed, carefully groomed.
He had begun attending classes at the Cannonbridge College of Further Education in September. He had worked as a personnel clerk in the town until the takeover of his firm by a large national group at the beginning of the year. The negotiations leading up to the takeover had been a well-kept secret until the last possible moment and Desmond had been taken totally by surprise when the news broke. Not that he had been harshly dealt with; like all the other redundant employees he had been put out to grass on generous terms.
He