Free Secret of the Dead by Michael Fowler Page B

going to put things right, did he say how he was going to do that?”
    Katherine tightened her mouth and shrugged her shoulders. “Sorry. I feel terrible. I wish I’d have listened better to what he was saying.”
    “Don’t worry about it. It’s one of those things. You weren’t to know this was going to happen. Would there be anyone else he might have talked to about this? Any other visitors? Close friends?”
    For a couple of seconds she stared at the ceiling, as if searching for the answer. Then she returned. “I’m not quite sure. I know he kept in contact with a couple of his ex-colleagues. I’ve turned up a couple of times with bits of shopping for him and he’s been on the phone. I picked up on him reminiscing about jobs he’d been involved in and just guessed it was people he’d worked with. I know he was particularly close to someone from the old days. It’s a good eighteen months ago now, but there were a couple of times when he’d mentioned he’d had a run out in his mate’s car and they’d stopped off at a pub and had a couple of beers and lunch. I think he said his name was Alan, I’ve never met him. Other than that, he seemed to keep himself very much to himself. I’ve only really got to know him since I moved back here five years ago.” She looked up, swallowed hard and returned her gaze. “He’s been living alone since he and mum got divorced back in nineteen-eighty-four. I don’t think there was anyone else in his life, but to be honest that’s not something I would discuss with him. It’s taken quite a lot of time getting to know him again. It’s not been easy for him or me. I went with mum when she left him. We moved to Skegness. We had a caravan there and lived in it for a while. Mum wouldn’t talk about why they’d split up and so I just shut myself off from it all. I was seventeen at the time. I swapped schools for a year, got my A levels, and then I went to uni, where I made a new life. While I was away mum met Derek, my stepfather, and moved in with him and they married. I went back to Mum’s for a short while but it just didn’t feel right. Not that I didn’t get on with Derek or anything, but being away for three years you know I’d moved on. Then I got a job as a sports injury physio at Skegness hospital and moved out. I met Sean, he was a colleague in the same department. It was a bit of a whirlwind romance. We were married within eighteen months. Amy, our daughter, came along a few years later and that was it, I had my own family to focus on. Dad never seemed to feature. He never came to the wedding and never saw his granddaughter until five years ago. Quite sad really. It’s taken a lot to get to know each other again. I only came back this way because Sean and I separated and I saw a job advertised at Barnwell General. It just seemed right to return to my roots.” She stirred her tea, licked the spoon before setting it down and took a long sip of the hot drink. “We’ve never really picked up on the lost years. I had my new job and new house. Don’t get me wrong, I did nip round a couple of times every week and he would have Amy quite a lot when I did my private work in the evenings. And he did my garden regularly. I returned the favour with some home cooking. But whenever I’d raise anything to do with mum or the divorce, he’d just say he’d rather leave that alone. After a while, I just stopped asking him questions.” She switched her gaze between the two detectives. “Don’t we all lead such complicated lives?” It was a rhetorical question. “If only we could go back eh? The sad thing is I was always going to ask why he never came to my wedding and why he never acknowledged the birth of Amy his granddaughter but it never seemed to be the right moment. Even when I knew he was going to die with cancer.”
    She took another sip of her tea.
    “Sorry to push you Katherine. Just to take you back a little to where your dad mentioned about putting things