Telling Tales Read Free Page A

the time it had been hard to follow what was happening. Perhaps shock had made it difficult to concentrate. Even these days, ten years on, the image of the cold, silent Abigail flashed into her mind when she least expected it. That evening, the evening after the discovery of the body, when they had all sat in the kitchen at Springhead House, it had lodged in her brain, blocking her vision and making all the questions seem as if they were coming from very far away. And now it made the memories jerky and unreliable.
    She couldn’t remember the walk back to the house with her mother, but could see herself, hesitating by the back door, reluctant still to face her father. She always hated to disappoint him. But even if he’d been preparing a lecture when he heard them approach, he soon forgot about it. Mary took him into a corner, her arm round his shoulder, and gave a whispered explanation. He stood for a moment still as a stone, as if it was too hard for him to accept. “Not here,” he said. “Not in Elvet.” He turned and took Emma in his arms, so she could smell the soap he shaved with. “No one should have to see that,” he said. “Not my little girl. I’m so sorry.” As if he, somehow, was to blame, as if he should have been strong enough to protect her from it. Then they wrapped her up in the scratchy blanket which they used as a rug on picnics and there were urgent phone calls to the police. Shocked as she was, she sensed that once he’d come to terms with what had happened, Robert was rather enjoying the drama.
    But when the policewoman arrived to speak to Emma, he must have realized that his presence might make things more difficult and he left the three women on their own in the kitchen. That would have been difficult for him. Robert always felt he had a contribution to make at a time of crisis. He was used to dealing with emergencies: clients who slit their wrists in his waiting room, or had psychotic episodes, or jumped bail. Emma wondered if that was why he enjoyed his work so much.
    Perhaps someone else came to Springhead with the detective and talked to Robert in a different room, because occasionally in the lull in the conversation, while Emma struggled to answer the policewoman’s questions, she thought she could hear muffled voices. Above the wind it was difficult to tell. It was possible that her father was talking to Christopher and she was imagining the third voice. Christopher must have been in the house that day too.
    Mary made tea in the big brown earthenware pot, and they sat at the kitchen table. Mary apologized.
    “It’s so cold in the rest of the house. At least here there’s the Aga…” And for once the Aga behaved itself and gave off some heat. Condensation had been running down the windows all day and had formed lakes on the sills. Mary hated the Aga then, before she got more used to its ways. She faced it every morning as if preparing for battle, muttering under her breath, a prayer, Please get hot today. Don’t die on me. Please stay warm long enough to cook a meal.
    The policewoman, though, still seemed cold. She kept on her coat and clasped her hands round her mug of tea. Emma must have been introduced to her though that bit escaped her memory, escaped as soon as it had been spoken. She could remember thinking that the woman must have been a policewoman although she was wearing her own clothes, clothes which had seemed so smart to Emma that she noticed them as soon as she walked in. Under the coat there was a skirt, softly fitted, almost full length and a pair of brown leather boots. Throughout the enquiry Emma would struggle to remember this woman’s name, although she would become the family’s only contact with the police, returning whenever there was a development in the case, so they wouldn’t have to find out from the press.
    As soon as she sat down the policewoman Kate? Cathy? asked that question, “What were you doing there, out on your own in the storm?”
    It was