Death of a Stranger Read Free Page A

sense of fitness.’’
    â€œI saw it. Tim …’’ She held him back as he started across the road. “I’ve been to the lookout since I was attacked there after Brian’s birthday party, but not at night. Can we go there now? I’m ready.’’
    â€œGood,’’ Tim said, after studying her grave face in the light streaming from the hotel lobby. “ Come on, then.’’
    Anna ran her arm through his as they started along L’Hyvreuse. “How wise and wonderful of you to have been able to take your mother on her own terms even when you were small and keep her as a friend for life.’’
    â€œThat wasn’t down to me in the early days. Darling Mother never spelled security to me, as I’ve told you, that came from my father and my grandmother – Mother’s mother, believe it or not, who used to tell me when I got older that she sometimes suspected her daughter of being a changeling. So when Mother left and Grandma moved in I’d lost a marvellous, glamorous companion, not my lynchpin. I suppose it’s strange, thinking about it now, but I never blamed her, never felt she’d let me down. When Father or Grandma told me she was coming to see us I was so thrilled I could hardly wait.’’
    â€œWhat a disappointment you’d be to a psychiatrist.’’ Anna found it strange, too, that she should be feeling a slight sense of envy of Tim’s unorthodox relationship with his mother. Perhaps it was because, with her own mother’s early death, she had never had a chance to discover what sort of relationship would have been possible between them. She had loved her father but not her stepmother, and had left home as soon as she could to live independently – which might account for the slightly protective feeling that was constantly with her for the more sheltered Tim, a feeling she would never reveal to him.
    â€œIn fact I had a very sheltered childhood.’’ He looked at her as they passed a street light. “Why are you smiling?’’ Anna’s face in repose was serious, and he had discovered that she smiled only with reason.
    â€œBecause I’m happy.’’ It wasn’t a lie, she was as happy as she had ever been. She had married Jimmy as a kind friend who had comforted her when her first love had deserted her, and had known within days the dreadful wrong she had done them both. Their son had kept them together as baby and child, but when he was killed on the road she had left her husband, resumed work as a vet, and re-embraced her independence. Now Jimmy had found his true love she could have enjoyed that independence conscience-free, and even after she had told Tim she would marry him she had waited, her soul shivering, in terror of discovering that she was unable to let it go. But the discovery she had made was that Tim and independence were compatible and that with him she would be more her own woman than she would ever be on her own …
    â€œAll right?’’ Tim was asking cautiously.
    â€œIt makes remembering a bit too easy, but yes, it’s all right.’’
    They had reached the place where the attack had come, the wide low stone wall marking the end of L’Hyvreuse. St Peter Port was spread out below them, stabbed with sharp points of light beyond the immediate descent of old houses which was an impressionist jumble of soft smeared colours. The outlines of Herm and Sark were scarcely distinguishable from the unclouded sky, but the base of each island was defined by a blurred line of lights at the water’s edge.
    They stood in a silence to match the silence surrounding them, Anna routing her bad memories with Tim’s hand over hers where it rested on the brass direction dial which, from her first days on the island staying at the Duke, she knew almost by heart. ‘London 180, Alderney 21 …’ It was only when below them a door opened and