The Son-in-Law Read Free Page B

each step taken cautiously for fear of a slip on the icy path; the other small, plump, with a jerky quick-walk. Flotsam, one of Zoe’s Birman cats, pattered behind, tail high.
    They were letting him out today. He’d probably be free by now. We’d had a letter from the authorities to tell us so. Nice of them, I suppose. I certainly didn’t want to meet him face to face with no warning. I didn’t want to meet him face to face at all; but one day I would turn a corner in the supermarket and there he’d be, bold as brass, leering at me like the psychopath in a bad film. I could feel the familiar hatred stirring inside me. It burned. What would I do, when confronted by my daughter’s killer? Perhaps I’d find his car and cut the brake cable. Nobody would blame me.
    Ben and Frederick burst into the house in a flurry of slush and Tarzan calls, hanging up their coats on pegs, peeling off wet woollen gloves and—in Ben’s case—plonking down onto the doormat and tugging at his wellingtons. His right foot was by his nose. I don’t remember ever having that India-rubber flexibility.
    ‘Put your gloves on the radiator,’ I ordered. ‘And your horrid wet socks.’
    They weren’t listening. They were two artists, planning an installation. ‘So we’re agreed on bottle tops for buttons, and . . . What about eyes, do you think?’ asked Freddie.
    Ben pulled the boot off his other foot. He had a revolting running nose, and squirmed as I wiped it.
    ‘Here—give that snowman one of Gramps’ caps,’ I suggested, taking down an old one from a peg. It was a tweed flat cap, and the silk lining was torn.
    ‘It’s a snow lady ,’ cried Ben, guffawing indulgently at my density. ‘Not a man ! Can we have one of your great big wedding hats?’
    ‘I’m surprised at you, Hannah,’ added Frederick, white brows twitching. ‘Making assumptions based on gender stereotypes.’
    ‘Oh, shut up.’ I stuck out my tongue, and Freddie put his arm around my shoulder, as he must have done a million times over the past forty years.
    I was twenty-four when I met and married Frederick Wilde. I had no intention of falling in love—not then, not ever. I was absorbed in my doctorate in York, and Not the Marrying Type. One evening, a fellow postgrad called Laura talked me into going to the last night of The Caretaker . Apparently the production had garnered rave reviews ( in Frederick Wilde’s hands, humour and darkness intertwine with shocking sensitivity ). I sat through the play, thought it ugly and didn’t care two hoots whether the director was Frederick Wilde or Donald Duck.
    Laura was having a fling with the stage manager, so we were invited to a last-night bash afterwards. They were an entertaining lot, I had to admit, and I began to enjoy myself. A lanky, tweed-jacketed chap seemed to be the centre of attention.
    ‘Who’s that?’ I asked Laura’s boyfriend.
    He glanced around. ‘That’s Freddie Wilde!’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘C’mon, I’ll introduce you. You’re going to love him.’ And with those unwittingly prophetic words, he led me to my destiny.
    It was Frederick’s humility that struck me first. People in the theatre hung on his every word, yet he always seemed to regard their stories as more interesting than his own. I found in him everything I admired, perhaps everything I lacked—creativity and humour and forgiveness of human nature. God knows what he found in me. He was twelve years my senior, though that seemed ludicrously irrelevant. My parents fretted and fussed about the age gap but they soon fell under his spell. We married within a year, and were still married forty years on. Laura and her stage manager parted company a week after The Caretaker closed.
    That wretched letter. The lid of the bin seemed agitated, as though some animal was scavenging in there. Who knew? Perhaps Scott was writing to say he’d never trouble us again. Perhaps the letter was a suicide note—just the kind of thing he’d do, try and