River Deep Read Free

Martha wondered whether they would ever stop quarrelling.
    “There are some telephone messages for you both. I’ve written them on the pad and left them on memory. And … ,” she hesitated, “I’m going to have to take a couple of calls before tea. And possibly go out later.”
    Immediately they both shot the same swift, guardedglance at her. It took her aback. She knew they knew a little about her work but she wasn’t always quite so aware of its effect on them. It wasn’t something you readily shared with a pair of twelve-year-olds.
    “I’ll take the calls in the study.”
    “What’s for tea?” Sam again, ever conscious of his stomach. He’d finished his peanut butter doorstep.
    “Pizza.” She felt apologetic.
    As she closed her study door behind her she heard them whispering to each other, their differences forgotten. She hated it when they whispered. She felt so excluded – so lonely – so aware that they were twins and had each other whereas she had no one. When Martin had been alive it had not mattered. She had him – they had each other. Nicely paired. But since he had died she was very aware that they had shared her womb for nine long months. They were bonded. She was alone. The outsider. And her job isolated her even more. She’d had to tell them so much when they had been so young. That anything they heard in connection with her work was secret. That they were never to talk about it outside this house. That on the other side of the whispered conversations and scribbled names on the telephone pad was often suffering and grief, bewilderment and loss. Sometimes terrible violence and dark secrets. Headlines too. Whatever they overheard – through half-open doors, or extension phones accidentally picked up, or the answering machine, or on stray papers – they must stay silent. They had known this for all their conscious lives. She closed the door behind her.
    The study had been Martin’s. Nine years ago it had been unmistakably a masculine retreat. But she had changed it, with plainer, lighter paper, a few good paintings battled over at Halls, the local auction house, different curtains with an abstract design and bold soft furnishings. She haddeliberately opted for feminine design yet somehow, subtly, the room still reminded her of him so when she entered it she sometimes wondered,
if
Martin returned from the dead how much would he recognise?
    It was not simply the furnishings of the study which reminded her of him. It was in the proportions, the structure. She crossed to the french windows, mentally sweeping aside the curtains and seeing the lawn stretching towards the apple tree like a carpet of the brightest green. Of the room? He would know it. The house? He would recognise
most
of it. There had been only cosmetic changes. Superficial titivation. Nothing structural. Of her? She was different. Older. Thinner, more careworn. Quieter. More subdued.
    Sam and Sukey? In nine years they had completely metamorphosed from plump toddlers to skinny children and now were on the verge of another huge change – becoming adults. Surely he would not know them. Or would he? They were flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. Genetically linked. Does one recognise the gene?
    She closed the tiny gap in the curtains, sat down at the desk, switched on the reading light, stared at the wedding photograph and waited for the inevitable phone calls.
     
    There were three things she appreciated about the Police Force. The first was their punctuality – their very adhesion to the clock. It made life so organised. If rigid. The second was their ability to relate salient facts concisely. And the third was their seductive politeness. Particularly in the case of Detective Inspector Alex Randall who would almost certainly be the Senior Investigating Officer.
    Bearing out her thoughts the phone rang at exactly five o’clock, the telephone bell and the chiming of the hour from the clock on the mantelpiece indistinguishable.