Killings on Jubilee Terrace Read Free

back.’
    Winnie’s voice suddenly failed her. By the time she did get out ‘Oh no, not Cyril’ Reggie was in full flood of enthusiasm.
    ‘Yes. Isn’t it a great idea? Back from San Francisco. Big mystery. Why has he come home? And you know why? He’s got tuberculosis. Come home to die. Isn’t that a fabulous plot-line? Noneof the other soaps has woken up to the resurgence of tuberculosis. We’ve all had tactful looks at senile dementia. And of course there isn’t a soap that hasn’t done AIDS. But all the time TB has been staging a comeback.’
    ‘Is tuberculosis rife in San Francisco?’ Winnie asked faintly. But Reggie was edging away.
    ‘Who cares? We’ll have got in first. It’s a plotline to die for, and a real trail-blazer.’
    To his departing back Winnie Hey wailed: ‘Not Cyril. Please Reggie. Not Hamish Fawley.’
    But by then Reggie had disappeared through the swing doors. It was some time before Winnie thought of a crumb of comfort: if this was to be the story-line that brought him back, it was likely that his reappearance would be terminal.
     
    Bill Garrett had phoned his wife from the car, so when he arrived home she already had her coat on and they did no more than pass in the doorway.
    ‘Angela’s out, Debbie and Rosie are in their rooms. You can fucking babysit – I’ve had them all day.’
    ‘They’re not babies, and they’ve been at school most of the day. Where are you going?’
    ‘What do you care? Anyway, you’re not my fucking probation officer.’
    And she breezed out.
    Bill went to the kitchen and made himself acup of tea. Upstairs he heard his two younger daughters shouting between bedrooms. They always gave him a bit of time when he got home – to stop being Bob Worseley and to start being Bill again was how they put it – and he appreciated their consideration. They were lovely girls, all three of them, the centre of his life. It was as if nothing of their mother had gone into their making. They were kind, concerned, intelligent – none of those words you could apply to Bet.
    Sipping his tea, Bill considered his resolution to divorce his wife. Certainly she had given him more than enough reason, and she gave him almost daily evidence that she only stayed with him for materialistic reasons – food, drink, heating, lighting, pocket money and a degree of local cachet as the wife of a television personality.
    There was, in fact, nothing left of the marriage, not for her and certainly not for him. He had no doubt she would prefer him to have custody of the children. Why had he not cut the knot years ago? He could only assume it was the pull of habit, a fear of having full responsibility for the girls. But that wasn’t something he feared – more something he desired. He would protect them from the contamination of contact with their mother. He concluded it was his habitual lethargy that held him back, just as it had held him backfrom quitting Jubilee Terrace and entering the unknown, terrifying world of being a jobbing actor, one with no clear idea of where the next job, and the next money, was going to come from. He had been guilty of lethargy – lethargy and cowardice. Well, no longer.
    ‘Daddy,’ said Rosie, as she and Debbie and the returned Angela – nine, twelve and blooming fifteen – sat on or around him on the sofa half an hour later. ‘Did Mummy tell you?’
    ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Bill. ‘We didn’t have time for many words.’
    ‘She’s going back into Jubilee Terrace. Three weeks’ work.’
    ‘They might have told me. When’s this?’
    ‘Early next month.’
    ‘So soon. Why didn’t they let her know earlier?’
    ‘I don’t know. She seemed pleased.’
    I bet she seemed pleased, said Bill to himself. Bet loved her occasional sorties into the Terrace. They were a heaven-sent opportunity to humiliate him. Who would it be this time? Reggie? James? No, not the latter. He couldn’t see the suave young man courting sneers by going with a