Palmer-Jones 04 - A Prey to Murder Read Free Page B

committed. The Trust is holding its Open Day at Gorse Hill tomorrow. She’s making herself very unpopular with the other members because she’s trying to persuade them that all the money they raise at the Open Day should go to pay a warden to protect the peregrines.’
    ‘I’m coming tomorrow,’ he said quietly. ‘To the Open Day. The Trust has asked the Folk Club to do some music. I’ll be singing. You don’t mind?’
    ‘No,’ she cried. ‘ Of course I don’t mind.’
    ‘I was afraid,’ he said, ‘ that your parents might not like me.’
    ‘Of course they’ll like you,’ she said, then added: ‘Besides, it’s not them that matter. It’s Grandmother.’
    She returned to the hotel to find it transformed. A marquee had been erected on the lawn and a man with patched jeans was testing a public-address system. Fanny was in disgrace because she had eaten six meringues which had been prepared for the following day. Eleanor was directing operations and the committee of the Wildlife Trust were gathered around her. None of that mattered. Helen sat by the open window, listening to the unfamiliar shouting and noise in the garden below, then dressed for work in the dining room. All the time she dreamt of Laurie.
    Laurie walked home. His pleasure in the day was spoilt by an unease, a peculiar sense of threat, because an old blue van had been seen near Gorse Hill. His father had driven an old blue van and he had hoped never to see his father again. It was not even that he thought his father was in Sarne. It was that the memory of the van had brought back memories of his father and they made him feel angry and depressed. His father always lingered at the back of his mind as an unresolved and troublesome problem. He tried to bury the memories again and to think instead of Helen.
    He had not let himself believe that Helen would meet him. What could she have in common with him? Her parents were rich, she spoke well, passed every exam she sat. He had not come across her in school until they were both in the sixth form. He had spent most of his childhood in Wolverhampton and by the time he arrived at the high school most of the friendships were already established. He mixed in a different group. She seemed aloof. He had heard of her of course from his mother, but he suspected she would look down on him. They had first become friends the Christmas before during the rehearsals for the school play. It was The Good Woman of Setzuan by Brecht. He was arranging the music. Helen had a small acting part. They sat in a corner of the hall while the others rehearsed and they talked – first about the play and his music and then about other things. He could not think of her without remembering the smell of the varnish on the floor of the hall and of the rubber gym mats piled in the corners where they sat.
    He had come to like her very much. She represented everything he had ever wanted – strength, a real family. He thought about her all the time until he was nearly ill and his mother asked him sharply what was the matter with him. In the end he knew he would have to ask Helen to go out with him even if she turned him down. So the day had been special, unbelievable, until the mention of the old blue van had reminded him of the differences between them.
    He lived on a small council estate on the low damp ground near the river. In the winter the river flooded the opposite bank so that the line of pollarded willows there stood in water, and though the houses had never been flooded it smelled of the river and the walls were damp to the touch. Most of the houses on the estate were well looked after, with neat gardens. Only the Llewellyns, tinkers who had a huge number of children all with lousy, matted hair, had a house in a worse state than theirs. Although his mother complained about the Llewellyns, the piles of scrap in the back yard, the wild and smelly children, Laurie thought she was secretly pleased that they were there. It would