The Cat Next Door

by Marian Babson

  ‘See what? What’s up to him?’

  ‘It’s time to bring in the heavy battalions. I can get him the names of some specialists. He’ll have to have Chloe declared unfit to plead. That will stop the trial, too.’

  ‘I can’t ask him to do that!’ The effrontery of what he expected her to do took her breath away. She twisted out of his grasp. One of Uncle Wilfred’s daughters dead – and Kingsley wanted the other declared mad. ‘That would be even worse than Chloe standing trial.’

  ‘Would it?’ He gave her a hard look, then his face softened. ‘You haven’t had time to think it through. I’ve been living with this thing since it happened. I’ve seen what it’s done to Milly – I don’t know how much more she can take. And Lynette … Lynette. She might have to testify – ’

  ‘Surely not!’ Margot was shocked. ‘Didn’t the police take a deposition from her at the time? They’d use that.’

  ‘The police might. But Wilfred has engaged Comfrey QC for the defence. He’s the best in the business, agreed, but he has a reputation for caring about nothing but his client. If he decided that putting Lynette on the stand and tying her into knots to discredit her testimony – ’

  ‘He wouldn’t do that!’

  ‘Wouldn’t he?’ Again Kingsley’s face registered disbelief – perhaps at her naivety. ‘In an ideal world, possibly not. Unfortunately, I no longer believe in an ideal world.’

  And with good reason. That world had been destroyed. He and Claudia had been so happy together, so wrapped up in each other, with every right to expect another twenty or thirty years of happiness and achievement.

  ‘I did once,’ he admitted. ‘I was an idealist. But it’s gone, everything has gone … without sense … without warning … gone …’

  Margot looked away, unable to bear the pain in his eyes. A movement in the shrubbery caught her attention. Someone – or something – was moving stealthily towards them. Then an inquisitive pink nose poked out from beneath a branch to be followed by the lean tawny body.

  ‘Oh, Tikki!’ Margot laughed with relief, bent and swept the cat into her arms, a welcome diversion. Tikki snuggled against her and began purring.

  ‘Margot … Margot …’ The call came from somewhere behind them.

  Margot swung around to see Nan framed in the french window, waving to her.

  ‘Margot … dinner’s ready … come along.’

  ‘Yes.’ Margot started forward, eager to escape. ‘I’m coming.’

  ‘You – not him.’ Kingsley stopped her, reaching for the cat. Tikki mewled a protest, digging his claws into her sweater.

  ‘Believe me, you don’t want to take him in there. It will start Milly and Wilfred arguing again.’ Carefully, Kingsley disentangled the claws from the soft wool.

  ‘Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘They don’t talk to each other much any more,’ he said grimly, ‘but the cat is the one thing guaranteed to set them off. Everybody’s had enough of it.’

  Tikki twisted and protested more loudly as Kingsley carried him away.

  ‘Sorry, old boy,’ Kingsley said, as he dropped Tikki gently beside a clump of winter jasmine, ‘but it’s for the greater good. If it comes to a choice between you or us, I’m afraid it’s going to have to be you.’

  She was conscious of Nan’s approving nod as Kingsley rejoined her and they walked back to the house together.

  Chapter Seven

  She awoke more exhausted than she had been when she fell asleep. A deep lingering depression told her that there had been bad dreams but, fortunately, she did not remember any of them. She had enough to cope with in the real world. She lay quietly, eyes closed, trying to come to terms with her disrupted life.

  She was back in England, in the place that had been home to her since her parents had died in a car crash when she was six. In recent years, home was a small New York apartment – or had been. What was she going to do about that? Could she ever return to it? Or were there too many memories lying in wait back there? All the formerly happy memories that had so abruptly turned into dead dreams. Better, perhaps, to close the door on it all and start a new life here. If only she weren’t so tired.

  Was it possible to start over again and build a new life without the person who had been the centre of the old one? She felt as though she had exhausted the last shred of her frail energy in getting this far.

  In the distance, a bell rang urgently. She opened her eyes, realising that this was not the first time she had heard it this morning. It had resounded through her uneasy dreams with increasing frequency. Perhaps it had even been what woke her.

  She was not the only one whose life had been completely disrupted. And Claudia had lost her life …

  The thought brought her to her feet, completely back in the present. It was Saturday morning and already clear that there was going to be no peace in the house.

  ‘I’ll be up in a minute,’ she heard Nan call out wearily.

  The bell continued ringing in a petulant, demanding way. Clenching her teeth, Margot hurried towards the sound.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ she called as she passed the top of the stairs.

  ‘Would you? Thanks.’ Nan looked up at her gratefully from the bottom. ‘I know it’s a difficult time for her, but she’s running me off my feet.’

  Lynette had just raised the bell to ring again when Margot appeared in the doorway.

  ‘I’ve-dropped-my-book-on-the-floor-and-I-can’t-reach-it-come-and-talk-to-me,’ she said, all in one breath.

  ‘Not right now.’ Margot bent and retrieved the book, although it did not seem beyond Lynette’s reach. ‘I’ve got to get dressed and go into town. Why don’t you get dressed and come with me? It’s market day.’

  ‘No, I can’t.’ A momentary wistfulness flitted across Lynette’s face before it was replaced by an implacable stubbornness. ‘I’m not well enough.’

  ‘You might feel better if you came out for a little walk and got a breath of fresh air.’ She knew it was a hopeless suggestion, but that momentary wistfulness had betrayed that it was worth a try.

  ‘I’m not well enough.’ Lynette slid down under the coverlet. ‘Stay and talk to me.’

  ‘Later,’ Margot promised. ‘Is there anything I can bring you from the market? Is there anything else you want?’

  Lynette turned away and pulled the covers over her head. A faint muffled cry came from beneath them:

  ‘I want my mother!’

  ‘Best thing you can do,’ Nan approved. Margot had the impression that she would have approved of anything that would get any of them out of the house. ‘Do some shopping, visit your old haunts, get everything done now. There’ll be no chance to move around freely once the trial starts on Monday and the media circus descends.’

  She skipped breakfast. ‘I’ll have lunch in town,’ thereby earning more approval.

  The house was deserted as she slipped out quietly, although she knew that most of the family were around somewhere. Aunt Milly, she knew, hardly left the house at all. Briefly, she considered walking into town, but she had already learned not to expend her intermittent energy on non-essentials and so waited at the bus stop.

  Tikki strolled past on the other side of the street and she called out to him softly. He spared a glance in her direction and then walked on, still huffy from last night’s rejection.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ she said, but he was gone and the bus was there, the door hissing open for her.

  The scene was so familiar, so … welcoming … that she caught her breath as she stepped off the bus, instantly transported back to the laughter and warmth of the past, of her childhood, her teenage years, her youth.

  The long High Street stretched out on both sides from the bus stop, bright and colourful with the stalls strung along it, noisy with the shoppers crowding the pavements, browsing and buying, laughing and gossiping.

  She was standing by the large barrow fragrant with herbs and spices when she realised that she was no longer al
one.

  ‘The junk stalls!’ Claudia cried gleefully and impatiently in her ears. ‘Let’s go straight for the junk stalls. You never know what treasure you might find there. Some day there might be something wonderful!’ That was Claudia’s creed.

  ‘Nan wants us to get cinnamon, celery salt, allspice and peppercorns.’ Chloe had always been the sober and responsible one, that was why she had been given the shopping list. ‘We should get them first, while we’re here. Then we can do as we please.’

  ‘Oh, piffle! Look at that queue – we’ll be standing here all day. We might miss something exciting! Tell you what – ’ Claudia’s eyes sparkled with mischief – and challenge. ‘Why don’t we each palm a different item from Nan’s list and slip away? They’d never be able to catch all of us – if they even noticed what we’d done.’

  ‘That’s shoplifting!’ Chloe’s scandalised gasp and look of horror sent Claudia into fits of laughter.

  ‘These aren’t shops,’ she crowed. ‘They’re only stalls, probably half the stuff on them has fallen off the back of a lorry, anyway.’

  ‘That’s a terrible thing to say!’ Predictably, Chloe was indignant on behalf of the stall-holders. ‘You shouldn’t – ’

  She might have known the ghosts would be with her. Claudia and Chloe had been so much a part of her life, how could she have thought she might escape them? They were – they had been – so alive and lively.

  Margot took a deep breath and tried to recapture her first feelings at the sight of the market, but the brief bouyant sparkle had gone out of the day. The faint echo of Claudia’s laughter took on a mocking note as it faded away. Chloe’s consternation at her twin’s antics was no longer amusing.

  Hindsight. All these years farther on, knowing what had finally happened between them, turned the memories dark and bitter.

  Chloe, so solemn and strait-laced; Claudia, delighting in teasing and provoking her sobersides twin. Had she finally teased her just too unmercifully? Taunted her an unforgivable step too far?

  Other people were able to retreat into a merciful amnesia, Margot reflected wistfully, why couldn’t she? Even Aunt Milly had found a way of escape with her endless Regency romances.

  All she had was exhaustion. Gravity – or was it emotional pain? – dragged at her, weakening her knees, threatening to pull her to the ground. Not here. Not now. She forced herself to straighten her back, stiffen her knees and move along the row of enticing stalls.

  The overpowering, not-so-enticing – at least, to her – smells from a pet food stall nearly finished her. The stallholder stared at her uneasily, as she swayed and rested a hand on the edge of the barrow for support.

  Giving the woman a reassuring smile, Margot picked up a catnip mouse and paid for it. Perhaps it would help her make her peace with the offended Tikki.

  A gust of wind carried the odour of frying onions to mingle with that of bonemeal and dried offal. Margot tried to hold her breath as she moved away hurriedly, not pausing until she had reached one of the flower stalls where a profusion of blooms promised her that it was safe to breathe again. That was the trouble with markets – parts of them were picturesque only so long as you couldn’t smell them.

  There was still so much of the market to explore; she had not yet reached the Market Square itself, where the street divided and the stalls followed both byways down to the old bell tower. If only she weren’t feeling so increasingly weak.

  Food! Although her throat closed against the thought, she recognised that she needed food. And a place to sit down for a while. She had skipped breakfast, after all. At the back of her mind, another memory had hovered, of another familiar place she wished to revisit. The short walk to get there would help to clear her head and her lungs and she might be able to manage more than a cup of tea when she got there.

  She crossed the street determinedly and headed for the medieval tithe barn that had been moved close to the city centre and transformed into a self-service restaurant, popular for lunch and teas.

  ‘Oh, yes, let’s go to Waterend Barn!’ Claudia was back. ‘They have the best loos in town.’

  ‘The food is good, too.’ Chloe followed in her wake, disapproving, distrusting, suspecting her twin was just going to use the loo and not patronise the restaurant.

  What must it have been like for Chloe to be linked for life by an accident of birth to a twin she must inescapably love, but largely disapproved of? Would life have been easier for her if she had inherited the same bubbly personality? Or would that have led to even greater sibling rivalry?

  Margot took a tray from the rack and joined the queue moving slowly along the counter. She hadn’t thought she’d be able to eat anything but, suddenly, everything looked tempting. In a fit of nursery nostalgia, she chose roast lamb with bubble-and-squeak. Deciding that nostalgia bestowed the right to be gastronomically incorrect, she indicated a Yorkshire pudding to be added to her plate and nodded for gravy to be ladled over all. She exercised restraint by taking a cup of black coffee and carried her tray the length of the long vaulted room to one of the tables by the great fireplace at the end.

  She unloaded her tray and placed it on an empty table, as the others were doing, sat down and looked around with satisfaction. It was as she had remembered it. Oh, perhaps the flags and banners had been replaced – the colours looked brighter – but they were still suspended from the dark beams. A comforting sense of history and continuity enfolded her; the babble of familiar accents soothed her. So much had changed, it was good to find something that had remained the same. Including the familiar comfort food. She cut a piece of lamb, piled some bubble-and-squeak on the back of her fork, added a dollop of gravy and closed her eyes to savour the blend of flavours melting in her mouth. She was beginning to feel stronger again. She had needed this opportunity to sit down, the hot comforting meal, the chance to be alone and have some time to herself.

  ‘Margot, I thought I’d find you here.’

  The voice was crisp, self-assured and self-congratulatory. Margot heard a tray being set down opposite her, a chair being pulled out, the soft thump and gasp of satisfaction as someone invaded her privacy. No friendly ghosts here, but a solid corporeal presence determined to make itself felt.

  ‘Verity’ She did not need to open her eyes to know that she was right. She opened them to arrange another mouthful on her fork, but the flavour had gone from her meal, she was no longer hungry.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind my joining you.’ Verity didn’t care what she minded. Verity was going to do just as Verity pleased.

  Margot remained silent, but Verity was unconcerned.

  ‘I’m so glad we have this opportunity to talk,’ she said, arranging her glass of white wine and plate of prawn salad in front of her. ‘Away from the family, I mean. So that we can be sure we won’t be disturbed.’

  ‘Interrupted,’ Margot corrected, she was already disturbed.

  ‘Whatever.’ Verity gave an indifferent shrug. ‘Kingsley told me he’d spoken to you last night. I hope you’re going to be reasonable about his request. You know he has the family’s best interests at heart.’

  ‘Chloe is part of the family, too,’ Margot pointed out. Kingsley seemed to have overlooked that.

  ‘I’d say Chloe has resigned from the family – if not from the whole human race!’ Verity allowed a glimpse of her claws. ‘Fratricide has to be even worse than ordinary murder. I don’t see how she could have done it.’

  ‘Neither do we.’ But aren’t you glad she did? Otherwise, you’d never have stood a chance with Kingsley. ‘That’s why the trial will go ahead. We might find out why – ’

  ‘You’ll find out nothing! Chloe was always a bit strange – you don’t need a trial to tell you that. It will only stir up terrible memories, provide a field day for the media – and throw Milly and Lynette over the edge into complete madness!’ Verity glared across the table before realising that her voice had risen and several people at surrounding tables had stopped their conversations and
were avidly eavesdropping. She raised her gaze to the tapestry scene over the fireplace and took a deep draught of her wine.

  She was making a scene – the one thing well-brought-up girls dreaded and had been schooled to avoid. The chilled wine brought a red flush to Verity’s cheeks – or could it be embarrassment?

  ‘I’m afraid Kingsley overestimates my influence.’ Margot spoke quietly. ‘I’ve been away from the family for years now. I can’t walk back in and begin telling Uncle Wilfred what to do. Even if I tried, he’d pay no attention to me. And quite rightly.’

  ‘You don’t intend to try.’

  ‘No.’ Margot met the accusing gaze. ‘I wouldn’t be so presumptuous.’

  ‘You think I’m presumptuous?’ The ugly flush was spreading.

  ‘Did Kingsley ask you to speak to me about this?’ Margot countered with a question of her own, suspecting she already knew the answer. Verity had always been one for taking things on herself.

  ‘What difference does it make? You know he’s right. You’re just a coward! You’re afraid of your precious family. Perhaps you think they’ll throw you out if you don’t toe the party line!’

  ‘Verity!’ Margot sent a warning glance towards their eager audience.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m leaving!’ The childish petulance was offset by the oddly adult way she drained her glass before pushing back her chair. ‘Just remember, I tried.’

  ‘I’ll remember.’ Margot wondered if it was the first drink Verity had had today.

  ‘And remember you’ll be sorry.’ Verity moved off unsteadily, the final words drifting back over her shoulder. ‘Very sorry.’

  Margot watched her picking her way carefully through the chairs and tables and wondered. Perhaps life with Kingsley wasn’t the rapturous experience they had imagined it would be in their moonstruck youth.

  Or was it just that Claudia was a hard act to follow?