One Last Breath. Stephen Booth

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СКАЧАТЬ as a buyer for a big retail chain had turned her into a formidable young woman.

      ‘Today’s the day he’s coming out, Mum,’ she said.

      ‘Yes, they told me.’

      ‘Aren’t you worried?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘You’re not? But, Mum, what if he comes out there?’

      Rebecca was still looking out of the lounge window. She could see nothing but the flowering cherry tree and buddleias at the bottom of her garden, and a pair of mature lime trees. Red-and-black butterflies fluttered around the buddleias, bright and gaudy in the sun. A flycatcher dipped from his perch on the telephone wire, caught a mouthful of food on the wing, and landed back on the wire in one graceful movement.

      ‘I don’t think he’ll come here,’ she said.

      ‘A change of name isn’t going to fool him, you know.’

      ‘Of course not, Andrea.’

      ‘So what will you do, Mum? What precautions are you taking?’

      ‘Well, I haven’t fed Milly for days,’ said Rebecca lightly.

      ‘Mum, a geriatric Shih Tzu isn’t going to do much to protect you from an intruder, no matter how hungry she is.’

      ‘I was joking, dear.’

      Rebecca moved a little to the right and lifted the curtain aside. Beyond the lime trees, she could see part of the field that backed on to the garden of Parson’s Croft. The field sloped away towards a stone barn where the farmer kept hay as winter fodder for his sheep.

      ‘This is nothing to joke about, Mum. You’re remembering to set the burglar alarms, aren’t you?’

      ‘Oh yes,’ said Rebecca.

      ‘Mum, if you’re not taking any precautions, I’m going to have to come up there and make sure you do.’

      ‘No. I don’t want you to.’ But then Rebecca heard her daughter’s intake of breath, and realized she might have sounded rude and ungrateful. ‘Not that I wouldn’t be pleased to see you. I always am, dear, any time. But I’m all right. Really.’

      ‘What about Simon? He’ll come and stay with you for a while. You know he will.’

      ‘Yes, he offered, but I told him not to. He’s not very far away, and I can always phone him. But I don’t want you or your brother to think you have to drop what you’re doing. You’re both much too busy.’

      She heard her daughter sigh. ‘But, Mum –’

      ‘Look, I’m sure he won’t come here.’

      ‘Mum, remember what happened. You do remember what happened?’

      ‘Of course, dear. I was involved at the time. You weren’t.’

      ‘Not involved? I was twelve years old. You may not have been paying much attention to me, but I knew exctly what was going on.’

      ‘Not exactly,’ said Rebecca. ‘I don’t think you can have known exactly what was going on, can you?’

      ‘Well, OK. Just don’t tell me I wasn’t involved, Mum.’

      Rebecca leaned to the left and let her forehead touch the glass of the window. This way, she could just make out the gable end of her neighbours’ roof. It was another new house, but much bigger than hers, with a fishpond, stone terraces, and a vast billiard-table lawn with sprinklers that ran eighteen hours a day in the hot weather. She rarely spoke to them, but they would occasionally smile and wave if they passed her in their Jaguar as she walked Milly on the lane.

      ‘I’m sorry, Andrea,’ she said. ‘You’re right. It must have been very traumatic for you.’

      Her daughter went away from her phone for a couple of seconds. Rebecca could hear background chatter, and wondered if Andrea was mouthing a commentary at somebody sitting with her, wherever she was, exclaiming in exasperation at the impossible eccentricity of her mother back home in Derbyshire.

      ‘Well, anyway,’ said Andrea when she came back to the phone, ‘what on earth could you have to talk to him about now, Mum?’

      ‘There are things,’ said Rebecca, ‘that you might say were still unresolved.’

      ‘Oh God, Mum. I despair of you.’

      Rebecca smiled. Her daughter really didn’t know everything.

      ‘But, in any case,’ Rebecca said, ‘he won’t come here.’

      With an effort, Raymond Proctor smiled and nodded, forcing himself to be pleasant despite the anxiety in his stomach. These people were customers, after all. And customers were too few these days at Wingate Lees. They were a family from Hertfordshire – mum, dad and two kids. Their car stood near the roadway in front of one of the static caravans, ready to go.

      ‘Where are you off to today, then? Somewhere nice? The weather should be all right for you, I reckon.’

      The woman stopped for a moment, ushering her children ahead of her to the car. ‘The kids want to go to one of the caverns,’ she said. ‘We thought we’d visit the one you suggested to us yesterday, Peak Cavern.’

      ‘Ah. The Devil’s Arse,’ said Proctor, grinning.

      ‘Pardon?’

      ‘That’s what they call it these days. I suppose they thought it would be more marketable.’ Then Proctor saw she wasn’t smiling. ‘Sorry.’

      ‘It’s not the sort of language we think suitable for the children to hear.’

      Proctor shrugged. ‘I’m afraid you’ll see it on the signs.’

      ‘Perhaps we’ll go somewhere else, then. There’s Speedwell.’

      ‘Well, that’s interesting, too. But Peak Cavern’s best. Let me know what you think of it when you get back. Say hello to the guide for me while you’re there. And don’t forget to ask him –’

      ‘Yes, thank you.’ The woman turned to go.

      ‘It’s a pleasure,’ said Proctor, maintaining his smile. ‘Of course, if you’re going underground, it won’t matter what the weather’s like, will it? I said, it won’t matter …’

      But the woman didn’t answer him. She fussed over the children’s seat belts and snapped something at her husband as she got into the passenger seat next to him.

      ‘Unless it rains really, really hard,’ said Proctor through gritted teeth, after they’d started the engine. ‘And then the caves might flood, and you could all drown.’

      He kicked the head off a wallflower growing in a bed near the phone box, and winced at a twinge of pain in his leg. His arthritis was troubling him this morning, which meant it probably would rain later, after all. СКАЧАТЬ