Then she developed conjunctivitis in her right eye. From experience she knew that only something on a doctor’s prescription would clear it up, so she made an appointment and sat surrounded by coughs and sneezes and what looked suspiciously like a case of chicken pox, waiting to be seen. She knew the doctor’s receptionist, Gwyneth of the impressive frontage, from the church choir. Ellie smiled at Gwyneth, who looked right through her. Oh dear. Gwyneth must have heard the gossip.
She saw the lady doctor in the practice, who was unexpectedly warm and helpful. Dr Mehta had hawk-like eyes and long, slender hands. Ellie liked her.
How was Ellie coping, apart from the conjunctivitis? Up and down. Only to be expected. A prescription was scribbled, but Dr Mehta seemed in no hurry to let Ellie go. I expect you’re a bit run down, are you? Any problems with anything else? Throat, tummy, periods all finished, no more hot flushes? Perhaps it might be a good idea to have a blood test, rule out anything nasty? Dr Mehta phoned through to the practice nurse to fit Ellie in with that before she left the surgery.
Ellie knew she ought to go and let the busy doctor get on with her day. She had determined not to speak of the letter, but found herself poking around in her handbag and passing it over the desk.
‘Ah! Upsetting.’
‘Yes. But in a way, salutary. I had been receiving a lot of attention from a newcomer to the area – perfectly harmless, I thought, though someone seems to think I’m taking him seriously, which I’m not. I still miss Frank dreadfully.’
Dr Mehta leaned back in her chair, smiled, shook her head, exuded encouragement. Ellie gave her a rather tentative smile. ‘The letter has been weighing on my mind, rather. I was so shocked when I got it. You’re the first person I’ve been able to talk to about it. I haven’t seen Roy since, and I imagine everyone else is gossiping about him. Stupid, really!’
Doctor Mehta pushed a box of tissues towards Ellie, who mopped up tears and blew her nose. She tried on a better smile for size. ‘One solitary little letter, and I’m reduced to jelly!’
Doctor Mehta’s smile widened. ‘You’re lucky only to have had one. I gather they were zizzing around the area like mad. I know Gwyneth had one. Luckily she brought it to me. Some of my other patients have had them, too.’
Ellie sighed. ‘Yes, poor Nora. I wish … but we didn’t realize how bad she was, and then I suppose the cancer was the last straw …’
‘What?’ Doctor Mehta straightened.
Ellie blinked. ‘She said that she had cancer in her farewell letter.’
The doctor leaned forward. ‘Ellie, sometimes people imagine they have terminal diseases when they haven’t.’
Ellie blinked again. ‘You mean, Nora didn’t have cancer?’
The doctor shook her head.
‘Oh. I don’t know whether that makes it better or worse. Poor Nora. I’ve been lumbered with the job of clearing out her flat, you know.’
‘Book yourself onto a cruise, look up friends or family in Australia or somewhere exotic. Isn’t there somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit?’
‘Frank always wanted to go to the Galapagos Islands to see what Darwin wrote about.’
‘But what do you want?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Give some thought to that. A week in Paris? A fortnight at a health farm?’
Ellie giggled. ‘I couldn’t. So self-indulgent.’
‘Perhaps that’s what you need.’ The doctor rose, indicating that Ellie’s time was up. ‘Look after yourself, and if you get any more of those letters, take them to the police.’
Until that moment, for some reason Ellie had not considered the possibility of there being any more letters. The prospect made her feel at once belligerent and afraid. She told herself that if there were any more, they would go straight into the bin. So there!
Manicured hands flicked over the keys on the computer, setting a boldtype message in large capital letters. The nails were painted shell pink, the slender wrists shown off by a matching pink blouse with ruffled cuffs. Short-sighted eyes checked the message on the screen, centred it, and used the mouse to print it out.
The typist hesitated over using an office envelope and finally put her note into a plain brown one. She would post it through the door on her way home. It wasn’t very much out of her way.
** * Conjunctivitis pulls you down, so as soon as the eye drops began to work, Ellie started to feel better. She would not be intimidated by one nasty-minded person’s poison. She would be brave and ask her friends if they had received any letters about her, and if they hadn’t, she would think no more about it.
To be on the safe side, however, she refused a further lunch invitation from Roy. She was very busy attending to Nora’s flat, anyway.
The only bright spot in her life that week was a fleeting encounter with Tod, who waved to her on his way home, shouting that his mum had got him a computer with games on it, so he was in a hurry to get back. At least he didn’t seem to have heard any gossip about her.
The second letter arrived by post on Thursday morning. Green paper, untidy handwritten capitals, as before.
SLUT!
SOON EVERYONE WILL KNOW YOU FOR WHAT YOU ARE!
She thrust it into her bag, shaken but determined not to let it ruin the plans she had for that day. Shopping. Library – the last couple of books she had taken out were extremely dreary, leaving her feeling worse than before she started them.
She would get something extremely light. Something to make her laugh. Something by Terry Pratchett, or an old Dick Francis to re-read. Frank had laughed at her for wanting to re-read old favourites. He had been a Bernard Cornwell and Wilbur Smith man himself.
Also, she was due at Nora’s flat. The cleaners had been through the flat and now it was the turn of the decorators, who were complaining because the windows in the old man’s bedroom wouldn’t open, so Ellie had needed to get a carpenter in to deal with that.
She would not let the letters throw her off balance again. ‘Magnolia paint throughout,’ Aunt Drusilla had decreed. ‘It wears better than white. I always have my flats painted in magnolia when a new tenant moves in. After that, if they’ve a long lease – and I don’t like short lets – they can do what they like. Provided, of course, that they pay to have the flat repainted in magnolia before their lease is up.’
Aunt Drusilla had used these painters before. They were the best in the business, or so they informed Ellie. Ellie was inclined to believe them, partly because they appreciated her helping them out in the matter of the windows – which was more, they said, than the usual man did. With the carpets and curtains removed, the flat looked spacious, smelt clean and would undoubtedly be appreciated by the new tenants.
All traces of Nora and her father had gone. It was only in Ellie’s imagination that they lingered in the shadows. While the painters worked away in the sitting room, Ellie carried out a final check to see that the kitchen cupboards had been properly cleaned. She didn’t entirely trust those cleaners. No cockroaches remained, thank goodness.
The bedrooms were bleak on this cold February day. The decorators had obliterated the darker patches on the wallpaper where the old man’s heavy furniture had once stood. She checked that the windows now opened easily. They did. Nora’s father had had rotten taste in wallpaper, anyway.
She thought of all the distress these walls had witnessed. Even Roy had been affected by it as he had helped her to clear out the old man’s clothes. Ellie remembered how he’d talked of clearing out his own family’s things after they died. She sighed. The poor man was completely alone in the world. It seemed harsh to refuse his invitations when all he wanted was a friendly face to chat to. Well, almost all. But that second letter reinforced her resolution to keep her distance from him.
As she left the flat, now busy with decorators clanging around, slapping paint on the ceiling, adjusting ladders, radio blaring on some chat show or other, she ran her finger down the faint traces of lilac paint on the door. What a strange
colour to choose. She wondered why the vandal had used it. It wasn’t as if it were a colour you would come across easily.
She couldn’t remember ever having seen it used, herself. Whatever would you use it for, anyway? A bedroom? Hmm. A front door?
No! Who would want to use that in-your-face colour for a front door? She smiled at the absurdity of it.
Then she paused with her hand on the front door downstairs, that very front door from which a cat had been strung. Something stirred in the undergrowth of what passed for her mind these days. Front door? No, nonsense. Nobody she knew would paint their front door lilac … would they?
She shook her head and stepped out into the cold, adjusting the silk scarf around her throat and putting on her gloves to face the walk back home. She would be glad to see the last of Nora’s flat. If she had another letter, she would take them all to the police. Until then, she would put them out of her mind. She must look forward now, not back.
Oh, Frank. Why did you have to go away and leave me? At this time of the year we’d be planning our summer holidays, and … enough of that! Yes, but who does a widow go away on holiday with? Answer: other widows. Or spinsters.
She sighed. She couldn’t think of a single person with whom she would like to go away on holiday. Not anyone compatible, anyway. Except perhaps her next-door neighbour Kate, who was not only much younger but also married. What an absurd thought. Of course Kate wouldn’t want to go away with her, for all sorts of reasons. Not least of which was that she appeared to have tamed her delightful husband’s habit of knocking her about whenever he felt threatened by his wife’s superior earning ability and – let’s face it – brains.
Ellie decided that on the way home she would call in at the travel agency and get some brochures for holidays in exotic places. Singapore, perhaps. Hong Kong? The Great Wall of China? Well, why not?
She treated herself to lunch at the Sunflower Café, served by Mrs Dawes’s granddaughter, Chloe. Chloe was dressed from head to foot in denim today, with five gold earrings in one ear and a dangler in the other. Colourful. Ellie liked Chloe and, remembering her ambition to travel for a year round the world, gave her a big smile and said, ‘I expected you’d be off to Australia before now.’
Then she recalled that Chloe might have heard some gossip about her, and might not respond. To her enormous relief, Chloe beamed back. ‘I’ve got my ticket, leaving end of April. It’s nice to see you again, Mrs Quicke. Thought you might be laid up with flu, with your not being around lately.’
Ellie grew voluble with relief. ‘I was kept up at my daughter’s after Christmas – they had flu, you know – and now I’m having to clear up after our organist’s death.’
‘Yes, poor thing. Gran told me about her falling from the gallery in church. She said she didn’t know what she’d have done if she’d been by herself, but being with you, she was all right. I said it was just like a film, where the person dies in the place they used to be happy, but Gran said I was talking nonsense as usual. Fish and chips is best today.’
‘Fish and chips it is, then. And I agree with you. Nora was happy playing the organ at church. Thanks, Chloe.’
The café was popular, as always. A sudden shower of sleet drove in a married couple whom Ellie knew slightly. They hesitated in the doorway, since all the tables were taken. Mr and Mrs … Ward? Lock? Key? Ellie cleared away her brochures and asked if they’d like to sit with her. Then she worried that they might have had a letter about her, and would refuse.
‘Thanks,’ said the man, helping his wife off with her mac and putting their dripping umbrellas in the stand. ‘Thought we might be turned away.’
‘How are you, Ellie?’ asked the woman. ‘Planning a holiday, I see. Where are you going?’
‘Trying to decide.’ Ellie felt the need to blow her nose. Absurd to want to cry just because someone was nice to her.
‘Best to keep busy.’ The woman nodded. Ellie noticed that she looked very frail.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Mustn’t grumble!’ said the man, in a warning tone of voice.
The woman grimaced. ‘I’ve decided not to have any more treatment, so we’re taking each day as it comes.’
Ellie glanced at the soft woollen scarf the woman was wearing around her head, noted the absence of eyebrows and eyelashes, and remembered. Cancer. Inoperable. Oh. There were lots of people worse off than she was. Another salutary lesson. Mr and Mrs Guard, that was the name.
The ever-efficient Chloe materialized at their elbows. ‘Fish and chips is best. Or stew of rabbit. He calls it friccy-something, but that’s what it is. Very tasty, too.’
The Guards ordered one of each, and conversation lapsed. Ellie couldn’t think of anything to say which wouldn’t be tactless.
‘Bad business, that,’ said Mr Guard. ‘Your organist.’
Ellie nodded. Chloe delivered the fish and chips, which were excellent.
The man sighed. ‘We had a couple of letters, too, some months back. Wish now we’d taken them to the police, but we had more important things on our minds.’
‘I was in hospital at the time,’ said his wife. ‘I did think of going round to see Nora when I heard, after I came out, but I didn’t get a chance.’
‘Oh, you!’ said her husband, with affection. ‘Always thinking of others, never of yourself.’
Mrs Guard laughed, and shook her head at him.
‘I was up north staying with my daughter,’ said Ellie. ‘I did go to see Nora when I got back, but she was too far gone to be helped.’
‘We do hope it’s stopped now. The letter-writing. Very nasty.’
Ellie forced herself to be brave. ‘I’ve had a couple and yes, it is nasty.’
Two pairs of eyes eyed her in silence while Chloe delivered their food. Then Mr and Mrs Guard consulted one another wordlessly. ‘You’ve taken them to the police?’
‘I was ashamed.’ Ellie felt herself redden. ‘The letter-writer said I was far too friendly with men.’
Their eyes were kind. ‘You must take them to the police. This simply must be stopped before any more harm is done.’
Ellie tried to smile. ‘I’m not likely to commit suicide. Although I must admit it has shaken me. I never thought that going out with this man – he’s a newcomer to the parish and he’s lonely – I never thought it could be misunderstood.’
Mrs Guard was toying with her food. ‘This fish is good.’
‘Eat as much as you can, dear.’
Mrs Guard laid down her knife and fork. ‘I can’t bear to think of it all starting up again.’
‘Don’t upset yourself, dear.’
When the Guards said they’d had a couple of letters, Ellie had thought they meant they were about Nora. But they might not have been.
‘You mean, the letters you had …?’
‘… said my wife had cancer because she married me. She was married to my brother first, you see, but after he died she did me the honour of marrying me.’
Ellie protested. ‘Surely no one thinks that’s wrong, nowadays!’
‘Someone does.’ He pushed back his plate and gazed out of the window.
Mrs Guard touched a tissue to her eyelids. ‘We’re not going to let it upset us all over again. Are we, dear?’
‘No. We are not.’
Neither of them made a good job of eating their meal, though. They left without having a coffee, but Ellie sat on to drink hers, trying to think. When Chloe came to clear the table, Ellie asked her if she was still going out with her policeman friend, Bob.
Chloe pulled a face. ‘Yes and no. He’s on a course this month, which gives me a bit of space. I’ve told him I’m too young to commit myself, but he won’t listen. So sometimes I go out with other people, just to make the point, you know.’
Ellie had no further questions for Chloe – which was rather a pity, as it turned out.
7
The second post had come by the time Ellie returned home. Before she could collect the mail from the
mat, however, Midge arrived and banged against her shins until she picked him up and stroked him. He smelt of fish.
‘You awful cat, you!’ she said. ‘Where have you been stealing from? I didn’t give you any fish this morning.’
He purred even harder, and rubbed his head against her jaw. When she put him down, he made straight for the big chair in the living room, to give himself a good wash and enjoy a doze.
Ellie opened the mail, dreading to find another poison-pen letter, but there was none. Notification about an investment due to mature – she must try to get through to Bill; it was ridiculous that he hadn’t fixed her up with an accountant yet. Seed catalogue. Estimate for building on a conservatory at the back, with a drawing which made her gasp.
She had asked for a plain lean-to right across the back of the house, using part of the existing patio as a base. They had drawn a semicircular rotunda which would take up far more space than the patio occupied, and which took no account of the steeply sloping garden.
She could almost hear the man saying, ‘She’s only a woman, doesn’t really know what she wants. We’ll give her our usual.’ That went straight into the bin.
There was a note from Timothy the curate about having tried to contact her several times and would she ring him, please, it was urgent. There was also a note from Roy.
Hi, partner …
That made Ellie smile. ‘Partner’ indeed. What a flatterer the man was! … I’ve tried ringing you, but you never seem to be in. What a busy little person you are! I hope you’re getting paid for the work you’re doing, clearing out that awful place. How about supper tonight? I’ve got some good news to report on the housing scheme we discussed. Ring me?
Ellie sighed. It would be pleasant to dine with Roy and talk houses, but she had made up her mind to keep her distance in future, and so – no dinner. Besides, she had other things to do. She tried phoning her solicitor, but Bill was busy and unable to take her call. His secretary promised he’d ring back, but he didn’t.
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