Before the Poison Read Free Page B

to behold, and a long way from being an old fuddy-duddy. An attractive woman in her early forties, I guessed, tall and slim, with curves in all the right places, and looking very elegant in a figure-hugging olive dress and mid-calf brown leather boots. She was almost as tall as me, and I’m six foot two in my stockinged feet. She also had a nice smile, sexy dimples, sea-green eyes with laugh lines crinkling their edges, high cheekbones, a smattering of freckles over her nose and forehead, and beautiful silky red hair that parted in the centre and cascaded over her shoulders. Her movements were graceful and economic.
    ‘How much do I owe you for the groceries?’ I asked her.
    ‘All part of the service,’ Heather said. ‘Consider them a welcome-home present.’ She dropped two teabags from a box of Yorkshire Gold into a blue and white Delft teapot and poured on the boiling water, then she turned to me. ‘England is your home, isn’t it? Only you were never entirely clear.’
    Sometimes I wasn’t too sure, myself, but I said, ‘Yes. As a matter of fact, I’m a local lad. Leeds, at any rate.’
    ‘Well I never. My mother came from Bradford. Small world.’
    She pronounced it ‘Brad-ford’. Everybody from Leeds pronounces it ‘ Brat -ford’. ‘Isn’t it, just?’
    ‘But you’ve been living in America for a long time, haven’t you? Los Angeles?’
    ‘Thirty-five years, for my sins.’
    ‘What did you do over there, if it’s not a rude question?’
    ‘Not at all. I wrote film scores. I still do. I just plan on doing more of my work over here from now on. After I’ve taken a bit of time off, that is.’ I didn’t tell her what I hoped to do during my time off. Talking about a creative project can kill it before it gets off the ground.
    ‘Film music? You mean like Chicago and Grease ?’
    ‘No. Not quite. They’re musicals. I write the scores. The soundtracks.’
    She frowned. ‘The music that nobody listens to?’
    I laughed. ‘That’s probably a good way of putting it.’
    She put her hand to her mouth. ‘I am sorry. That was so rude of me. I mean, I . . .’
    ‘Not at all. Don’t bother to apologise. It’s what everybody thinks. You’d miss it if it wasn’t there, though.’
    ‘I’m sure I would. Might I have heard any of your music?’
    ‘Not if it’s the kind you don’t listen to.’
    ‘I mean . . . you know . . .’ She blushed. ‘Don’t tease. Now you’re embarrassing me.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’ I named a couple of the more famous recent films I’d scored, one a huge box-office hit.
    ‘Good Lord!’ she said. ‘Did you do that ? Really?’
    I nodded.
    ‘You worked with him ? What’s he like?’
    ‘I don’t actually spend much time with the director, but Mr Spielberg is a man who knows what he wants, and he knows how to get it.’
    ‘Well I never,’ she said. ‘Pinch me. I’m talking to someone really famous, and I didn’t even know it.’
    ‘Not me. That’s one of the advantages of what I do. I don’t get famous. People in Hollywood, in the business, know my name, and you see it in the credits. But nobody recognises me in the street. It’s sort of like being a writer. You know the old joke about the actress who was so dumb she slept with the writer?’
    Heather smiled. The dimples appeared. ‘No,’ she said. ‘But I do now.’
    ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be crude. I’m just . . . you know, sort of anonymous.’
    ‘But surely the money must be quite good? I don’t mean to be even more rude and pry, but I do know that this house certainly wasn’t cheap.’
    ‘The money’s good,’ I agreed. ‘Enough so I don’t really have to worry too much, though I do need to keep working for a few more years yet before I can even consider retirement.’
    ‘If I may say so, you haven’t picked up much of an accent in your time in America.’
    ‘I suppose not,’ I said. ‘I never really thought about it. Maybe I spent too much of my time in the