The Food Detective Read Free Page B

and a spot of colour. Was it her dog-collar that stopped her, making her eschew the pleasures of the flesh, as it were, or lack of cash?
    ‘What did you make of him?’ I asked, when we were safely on the straight again.
    Yes, straight but still narrow. And deep – we were probably eight feet below the level of the fields. No room for mistakes.
    ‘Boorish.’
    Sometimes her choice of word surprised me. ‘Boorish?’
    ‘I was driving back from Evensong at Abbots Duncombe last night in the pouring rain and found him in the hedge. So I offered him a lift.’
    My face pulled itself. ‘Sue! A complete stranger! Was that wise? OK, OK! I’ve read my Bible too, but – anyway, what was he doing in the hedge, for goodness’ sake?’
    ‘He said something about an unlit lorry. He’d jumped into the hedge to avoid it. And he’d got scratched to bits. And all he’d talk about was car maintenance and driving techniques. Mine. Boorish.’
    Biting the hand that drove you. I couldn’t fault his intentions, just his tact. ‘He fetched up in the bar last night. Gave Lindi quite a turn, I can tell you.’
    ‘I don’t know why. He was quite presentable by the time I’d finished.’
    ‘You’d done a good job with the first aid, but he still didn’t look very well.’
    She stared at me, not reducing her speed. The car slewed towards the hedge. ‘Is that why you went to see him?’
    ‘I didn’t go to see him,’ I lied flatly. Close as the grave Sue Clayton might be, but my past was mine and mine alone, and Nick might feel the same. ‘I met him on my morning walk, that’s all. He seemed better. I gave him the name of a doctor, just in case.’
    ‘It must be strange, living in a mobile home. Especially at thistime of the year, when all the other caravans on the site are locked up for the winter.’
    This was the closest you got to girlie talk with Sue. All my life I’d had at least one decent woman friend, often two or three, the sort you can share that day I described or just ring up when you want to let your hair down. I’d never have got through all Tony’s years of bird without Claire and Nesta, and then his McMillan Nurse Nell had become a mate – we still emailed each other at least once a week for a good natter. Sue didn’t seem to have a natter -mode.
    ‘Strange – and very lonely.’ I thought about my early days in the village. ‘Why don’t you rope him in as a bell ringer?’
    ‘What if he isn’t a churchgoer?’
    ‘Ringing bells would certainly make him one. Go on – it’s hard to make friends in a community like this if you’re not a playgroup parent or doing our sort of job.’ I could feel her eyebrows shoot up. I didn’t pursue images of the confessional and counselling, tasks shared by priests and publicans alike. ‘You know: working with people.’
    ‘What about his new colleagues?’
    Talk about stony ground.
    ‘He can’t be at work all day every day. Any idea what he does, by the way?’
    She shrugged. ‘He didn’t say.’
    How could anyone be so incurious? Someone in her line of work, too. Tired of pushing on closed doors, I sat back and watched the countryside go past, the little I could see, that is, through the foul windscreen. So Nick had told her off for bad driving, had he? Ten out of ten for good intentions, zero for tact. He used to have something very like charm. What had changed him? I couldn’t see him surviving very long in a job like this new one unless he mended his ways.
    Sue dropped me not at the pub but at the vicarage, because I’d insisted I wanted to go to the village shop and an extra quarter of a mile would be good for me. I was glad, all the same, when she pulled off the main street into the road leading to her house. She mistimed the turn: if she often cut it as fine as that, in her placeI’d have moved the terracotta pots a bit. In any case, they weren’t bringing much beauty to the garden – whatever the plants still growing in them had been, now they