The Chorister at the Abbey Read Free

I’m still finishing sorting out all the expenses cheques. I can do some later but I need to rush with these for the Music Department. You know what the new boss is like.’
    It was infuriating. This was the first time in ages that Alex Gibson had been invited out for supper. She was almost looking forward to going to the Cliffords’ – though it would be too late for her to get home to Fellside to change, especially as she no longer drove. She was getting a lift there, and she had hoped to grab some time before leaving the college to get washed and changed in the Ladies, and even perhaps apply some make-up and look halfway decent. But work had been piled on. With all these last-minute cheques there wasn’t much chance of smartening up.
    But there wasn’t much chance anyway, if Alex was honest. Dressing up was a joke. Living with her mother had hardly been conducive to wearing high fashion. She’d searched out one of her old kaftans and stuffed it into a bag for the evening at the Cliffords’. It was already creased, because her mum’s ancient iron had seized up with brown lumpy water and spat it out all over the black cotton before blowing up. And she hadn’t bothered to go to the hairdresser’s since her mother’s funeral. Nowadays she just pulled her grey hair back off her face and put it in a clip on top of her head. It made her face look really round, but did that matter? She pushed up her heavy old-fashioned glasses, another legacy from her mother. They kept slipping and had given her an ugly red weal on the bridge of her nose. She knew she was a mess. She had been struggling to get over the disaster of her sordid divorce, when her mother’s death had knocked her back. It was one more awful thing. Had anyone asked, she would have said she was prepared for the death of an eighty-year-old woman with infuriating dementia. But it was the last straw.
    Losing a parent was more universal than having a baby, but no one talked about the devastating effect it could have. Particularly if life had already taken a wrong turn. And though she knew it happened to everyone, Alex felt totally alone. Was it worse for her because she was childless? She was becoming increasingly bitter about it all. With her mother’s death, she felt as if she had lost the one unconditional support she had ever had. Even in her mental decline, her mum had been full of shrewd good sense. Alex had been drinking too much already – but, without Mum to say ‘You’ll be the size of a house if you go on guzzling!’ the wine and spirits in the evening had taken the place of any social life she might have had. Once, she thought ruefully, she had been vibrant, successful, happy. The Golden Age is always over, by definition, she had thought in a moment of insight.
    When her marriage had broken up in disaster and humiliation, Alex had slunk away from London, back to Cumbria, on the edge of a breakdown and desperate to keep a low profile, after more than twenty years away. She had been brought up in Workhaven on the coast, but her mother had retired to Fellside, near Norbridge, a few years earlier. Her sister and brother-in-law lived locally but they were intent on maintaining their own lifestyle without a burdensome relative. Alex knew hardly anyone. The only person she had recognized in Norbridge was someone she had met at a conference years before, in London, and she had no intention of remaking his acquaintance.
    Apart from her sister’s occasional dutiful invitations, the kindly Cliffords were the first people to ask her to their home in ages.
    Her boss’s remarks cut in. ‘The Music Department’s probably deserted. I bet they’ve already left for Christmas. This place is like the Marie Celeste .’
    ‘Well, that’s up to them. But if the new music head has her cheque ready by five thirty, at least she can’t blame me.’
    ‘OK. Suit yourself. But I’m going.’
    Alex was not gifted as an accounts clerk, but she was extremely diligent.