by Rebecca Tope
‘Like bringing you face to face with Murray-the-stalker,’ laughed Melanie. ‘I bet that’s the first and last time he’s ever going to step inside a flower shop. Did he knock anything over?’
‘The dog did, when it flew at him.’
‘Wow – did it bite him?’
‘No. He wasn’t even scared of it. And nothing actually tipped over. I was exaggerating.’
Ben was ignoring much of this exchange, staring hard at a bucket of lilies, plainly lost in thought. ‘We need to get back to basics. I can’t get some of it straight at all – especially who knew what and when.’
‘Stop it,’ said Simmy again. ‘I’ve had enough. I’m giving it ten more minutes, and then I’m closing up and finishing the wedding flowers in peace. You two can go.’
‘You forgot something,’ said Melanie. ‘I’ve only just thought of it.’
‘What?’
‘You’re meant to deliver flowers to an address in Bowness. Didn’t they ask for Friday afternoon?’
Simmy stared in horror. Never once had she forgotten an order so completely. ‘I haven’t even chosen the flowers for it.’
‘Won’t take long. It’s still the afternoon. You won’t be very late.’ Melanie was briskly reassuring, but showed no sign of lending a hand. ‘Shut the shop and do it now,’ she advised. ‘We’re going.’
They went and eight minutes later Simmy was trotting out to her van with a handsome sheaf of spring flowers for a Miss Lucy Lacey on Longtail Hill. ‘Lucy Lacey,’ Simmy muttered. ‘Must remember to tell Dad that one.’
The delivery took half an hour, from leaving the shop to parking the van back in its customary spot. The drive had cleared Simmy’s head, and she felt reprieved from having to worry any more about murder or arson or convoluted theories. The wedding flowers were all completed over the next hour. It was to be a simple country ceremony, requiring nothing gaudy or complicated, which Simmy found very appealing.
It was a bright evening, and the prospect of simply going home as usual wasn’t very enticing. So she opted to do something she had done a few times before, and pay a quiet visit to the grave which would be piled high with floral tributes, many of them created by her. It was always satisfying to see the results of her labours, and it might give her a moment to say her own few words to the deceased.
She walked up to St Mary’s and let herself into the graveyard. Only when she had rounded the corner, past the big dark church, did she see Valerie Rossiter kneeling by the fresh grave with a large yellow dog at her side.
Chapter Twenty-One
Simmy had every intention of creeping away without disturbing the grieving woman. But the dog heard her and stood up, his tail slowly wagging. Valerie looked round and saw her. ‘Hello,’ she said flatly.
‘I’m terribly sorry. I really don’t want to disturb you. How awful of me.’
‘It’s all right. It’s sweet of you to come. I decided I had to retrieve this, after all.’ She held out her hand, the palm flat. In the middle of it sat the little porcelain flower. ‘After all – what would become of it otherwise?’
‘I’m glad you did. You’re feeling better, then?’
‘Pardon?’ The expression on her face was of sheer disbelief. ‘Better?’
Simmy shook her head. ‘Sorry. That was stupid question.’
‘Oh – you mean because of my ridiculous fainting fit at the funeral. Well, yes, I suppose I can walk and talk again now. I don’t know what came over me.’ She was still kneeling on the grass, and put a hand on the dog’s stalwart back. ‘I suppose I’ve been rather short of sleep for a long time now. I’m planning to spend a week in bed, starting from tomorrow.’
‘Good idea.’
‘You know – I’ve just had enough of all those people. It’s a huge shock to the system for a recluse like me. I thought I was tougher than this,’ she finished miserably.
This time, Simmy thought of Ninian on his little fell, ignoring the phone and forgetting his friends.
‘I should go,’ she said.
‘You don’t have to. You’ve been great, you know. I’m always going to associate you with flowers and nice smells. Roddy likes you too.’
Simmy looked past the woman, wondering who she meant until the dog wagged again at his name. She felt hot and embarrassed at the words of approval.
‘Oh dear,’ said Valerie. ‘I’m sorry to discomfit you. You just seemed so kind and understanding when I came about the flowers. And then again today, after the funeral, there you were, all calm and collected. I suppose you just felt like a port in a storm, or something.’
Simmy looked at her more closely. She hadn’t changed, and the funeral clothes were now oddly dark and sinister. Black trousers and a tailored jacket, with a dark green shirt underneath had been perfect for the occasion, but now the jacket was losing its shape, the trousers scattered with dog hairs. ‘Well … I’m glad about that.’
Valerie finally got to her feet. She looked uncomfortable and warm. As if to confirm this impression, she began to fumble uninhibitedly at her chest, tweaking an invisible undergarment impatiently. ‘This bloody bra!’ she complained. ‘How do women wear them all day, every day? This is the first time I’ve put one on for a good ten years. It’s too small for me. I can hardly breathe. It was probably that which made me faint.’
Simmy wished her mother were there, as an ally for Valerie. She too found bras intolerable.
‘Maybe you could slip into the church and take it off,’ she suggested, with a little laugh.
‘No, no,’ said Valerie with a small bitter laugh. ‘I’ll be all right. I’ll go home in a minute.’
‘You live somewhere up past Cook’s Corner, is that right?’
‘Bit further than that, but we enjoy the walk.’ She flushed slightly, and Simmy wondered whether she was reproaching herself for using the word ‘enjoy’. She remembered in her own case that any hint of lightness or optimism brought waves of guilt with them, in the first days after losing baby Edith.
She instinctively sought to reduce the pain by keeping the conversation going, focusing on mundane details. ‘Have you got people staying?’
‘Actually, no.’ Valerie laughed again, more sadly than before. ‘And that’s even worse. I’m a mess, as you can tell. They did try to warn me. There was a lovely Macmillan nurse who told me I should make plans for when all the caring stopped. I did most of it, you know. Lifting Barb in and out of bed, taking her to the loo, pushing the wheelchair. Just being with her all day. It’s like losing half of my body with her gone.’
The silence was palpable, and she sighed. ‘Sorry. That sounds like self-pity, doesn’t it? The great British taboo. And it’s not even entirely true. I should be thinking about getting my life back. All I’ve done for ten years is try to keep another woman happy. I’ve almost forgotten I’m a separate person.’ She sighed deeply. ‘Maybe I’m not, after all this time.’
‘Of course you are. But it’ll take a while before you believe it.’
‘You sound as if you know what you’re talking about.’
‘Sort of. I lost a baby.’ The words never came easily. She never knew how to arrange her face as she said them. ‘She was stillborn.’
‘You poor thing.’ The words were uttered with evident sincerity, and Simmy warmed to the woman as a result. ‘I’ve never been pregnant. It’s always struck me as terribly dangerous.’
‘It was for me, I suppose. I never thought of it like that.’
‘I grew up in Poland, you know. Even in the sixties, everything felt precarious. Life was cheap.’ She paused. ‘No, that’s not right. But life had to be earned. We all knew we were survivors, and that meant we had to justify ourselves. It was a huge relief to come here when I was twenty.’
‘Your English is perfect.’
‘Thank you. I don’t feel foreign any more. Barbara helped with that.’ Her face changed as she spoke, turning grey and pouchy. ‘God help me, whatever am I going to do now?’
‘Take it a d
ay at a time,’ said Simmy. It was a platitude, but she knew it carried its own small wisdom. ‘Be nice to yourself.’
Valerie gave a brief rueful smile. ‘Easy to say.’
Simmy looked at her watch, letting the woman see what she was doing. ‘I’m sorry, but I should be going now. I really am sorry I disturbed you.’
‘You didn’t. It was just what I needed – a little chat with somebody so well balanced and understanding.’ She bent down to grasp the dog’s lead, her features still tragic. ‘Thanks for listening.’
They parted company with Simmy thinking how likeable the woman was, and how it might even be possible in the future to approach her again with a view to forging a friendship.
She should be finishing off the bouquets and table pieces for the wedding next day, but she felt too weary. She could find time next morning, if she got up half an hour early. The simple ceremony planned for the next day was a relief after the complicated funeral. The couple were realistic in their expenditure, and probably in their expectations. The sort of wedding, she fantasised, that she would have herself if there was ever to be a second time around. A few well-chosen guests, everything over with by suppertime, and on with the much more important business of living with another person.
She sighed. It felt so unlikely as to be the wildest of dreams. Even if matters progressed with Ninian, they were highly unlikely to lead to marriage. What would they do for money? How would he incorporate a wife into his ascetic lifestyle? And why, for heaven’s sake, was she thinking about marrying anybody anyway?
She made her way on foot down a small street towards Lake Road and her parents’ house. She hadn’t consciously intended to go back there, but when she caught herself heading that way, she realised she was still worried about her father. Presumably she would have been told if he had been taken to hospital after all, but there was still a worry over his health. Besides, her car was somewhere near Beck View. For the moment, she couldn’t recall exactly where she’d left it so many hours before. Juggling the florist’s van and her own car regularly meant that neither vehicle was quite where she wanted it to be.
The front door was locked again when she tried the handle, so she rang the bell. Her mother appeared quickly, looking unflurried.
‘Is everything all right?’ Simmy asked.
‘Absolutely fine. Don’t worry about us. Get home and have a quiet evening. That’s what we’re going to do.’
‘Aren’t there any guests?’
‘Yes, but we’ve told them not to bother us unless the house is on fire. They thought we were joking,’ she added darkly. Simmy understood that matters were not entirely calm, after all. Her mother was doing her best to ensure that Russell had no further disturbances that day, including further discussions about murder with his daughter.
‘Okay,’ she agreed. ‘I might call in tomorrow, after I close up. You can give me some lunch.’
Angie sighed. ‘If we must,’ she said, with characteristic lack of hospitality. Simmy sometimes wondered just how it had ever come about that this woman not only ran a bed-and-breakfast service, but that she had made such a massive success of it. When it came to visits from friends and family, she could often be decidedly unwelcoming.
‘Where did I leave my car, I wonder?’ she mumbled as she turned away. Her mother either didn’t hear her, or saw no reason to reveal her ignorance of the answer. Instead she closed the door with a snap.
Her vehicle was not visible in the road running past the house, and Simmy racked her brains as to where she’d parked earlier that day. She’d left it in some small street without any conscious thought, being so completely occupied by the funeral to come. It must be in one of the streets on either side of the library, she supposed, and set out to track it down, feeling a familiar panic that she might never find it. She even had dreams now and then, where she combed the streets, with their tree names, vainly searching for her car.
She had begun to wonder whether it could possibly have been stolen, when a man called her from behind. Surely it couldn’t be, she thought. Was he never going to leave her alone? She turned impatiently at the unmistakeable, ‘Mrs Brown. Hold on a minute.’
It was Detective Inspector Moxon, of course. He looked heavy and weary and at least as surprised to see her as she was to see him. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t sure it was you at first.’
‘I can’t find my car,’ she complained. ‘I left it here somewhere.’
‘It’s over there, look. Right behind mine.’ He pointed a few yards ahead. ‘I recognised it.’
She didn’t pause to ask how in the world he knew her vehicle. It was months since he’d last seen it, as far as she was aware. But he answered anyway. ‘The broken wing mirror. Someone’s done a good job with the duct tape.’
‘My dad,’ she nodded, with a pang. Would Russell ever again be competent to fix such problems? The very question brought a lump to her throat.
‘I’ve just popped out for a bit of shopping,’ he explained, waving a white plastic bag in the air. ‘I’m taking the evening off.’
‘Good for you. Thanks for pointing out the car. It’s daft of me to lose it.’
‘Come in for a minute,’ he invited, astonishingly. ‘This is where I live.’ He tilted his head at the house adjacent to them. ‘Have a cup of tea or something.’
‘What?’ The rudeness was unavoidable. Since when did senior police detectives invite women they’d been questioning on criminal matters in for tea? Although, she supposed, she wasn’t actually accused of anything criminal. She wasn’t even much of a witness. If any testimony was still regarded as meaningful, it was that of her father.
‘It’s all right. My wife’s at home. You’ll be perfectly safe.’ He smiled ruefully and all her assumptions about him fell to dust.
Chapter Twenty-Two
She followed him into the house in a daze. How had she failed to be aware that he lived so close to her parents? Hadn’t he told her, months ago, that he lived in Bowness? Perhaps, at a stretch, this could just qualify as being on the boundary between the two towns, but she suspected that he had at the time simply wanted to deflect any personal questions. How had she persuaded herself that he was single, probably divorced, and quietly but desperately in love with her? Embarrassment began to flood through her. The house was handsome but an ordinary semi-detached. The front garden was a plain display of pruned rose bushes, tulips and a healthy looking clematis twining between the struts of a trellis. Built of stone, most likely in the nineteenth century, it was well maintained. Simmy supposed a detective inspector’s income was reasonably good. If Moxon was too busy to paint his own woodwork, he could pay someone else to do it.
‘Sue?’ he called gently. ‘We’ve got a visitor.’
The woman who appeared from a back room was in her mid forties, with faded fair hair and a modest amount of spare flesh around her middle. ‘Hello,’ she said easily.
‘This is Mrs Persimmon Brown. She runs the florist shop in town. We’ve had a few encounters over the past months.’
‘Of course.’ She chuckled, as if he’d made a particularly good joke. ‘I’ve been hoping to meet you. I suppose I could simply have come in to buy some flowers, but somehow I didn’t think of it.’
‘Oh?’ said Simmy faintly.
‘Of course,’ said the woman again. ‘You saved my husband’s life. I should have made a proper effort to thank you.’
‘I didn’t,’ said Simmy forcefully. ‘Is that what he told you?’
‘You certainly helped,’ said Moxon. ‘You can’t deny it.’
‘Never mind. We’re embarrassing her,’ said Mrs Moxon. ‘Would you like a drink? I was going to have a gin any minute now.’
‘Oh! Well … no thanks. I’m driving.’
‘Now you’ve found your car,’ said a weirdly jocular policeman. ‘She was outside our house searching for it,’ he explained to his wife.
‘I lose mine all the time,’ smiled the woman. ‘I’m always thinking about somethi
ng else by the time I’ve parked it. Sit down, do. Should I call you Persimmon?’
‘Simmy.’ She sat on a squashy sofa, and was instantly joined by a tabby cat.
‘Push him off if he’s a bother,’ said Sue. ‘Tea, then? Or coffee?’
Simmy accepted coffee and stayed for twenty minutes enjoying the relaxed normal banter of a comfortably married couple. It transpired that the Moxons had two sons, both away at college. They had lived in the same house for twelve years and Sue worked as a credit controller for an insurance company. Simmy was convinced that nobody in a million years would guess what DI Nolan Moxon did for a living, if they were observing the scene.
When his phone rang, he left the room with it, and Sue leant towards Simmy confidentially, mere seconds later. ‘That business in Coniston saved our marriage, you know,’ she whispered.
‘Oh?’
‘We’d been drifting apart, usual story, not paying attention. Then he nearly died and I remembered why I loved him.’ She smiled sentimentally. ‘He has so many virtues in a quiet way. Don’t you think he’s changed dramatically?’
Simmy reproached herself fiercely for taking so little notice. But she could hardly say – yes, he’s cleaner, and shaves more often. The impression of a shabby, neglected man had taken root many months ago, and remained well rooted. But on reflection, she realised that he was no longer like that. The greasiness of his hair had gone, and his head was not so sunk between his shoulders.
Although he still gave her the same soulful looks, with the same mixture of puzzlement and concern, it still felt as if he had feelings for her beyond those of a normal police officer for a member of the public. And she could hardly give voice to that, either.
