Free The Sculptress by Minette Walters

attractive red-brick building, set back from the road with the car park in front. Leaded bay windows curved out on either side of a solid oak door and wist aria heavy with buds, grew in profusion across the whole facade. Like St. Angela’s Convent it was at odds with its surroundings.
    The shops on either side, both apparently empty, their windows a repository for advertising stickers, complemented each other in cheap post-war pragmatism but did nothing for the old faded beauty in their midst. Worse, a thoughtless council had allowed a previous owner to erect a two-storey extension behind the red-brick frontage, and it gboomed above the restaurant’s tiled roof in dirty pebble-dashed concrete. An attempt had been made to divert the wist aria across the roof but, starved of sunlight by the jutting property to the right, the probing tendrils showed little enthusiasm for reaching up to veil the dreary elevation.
    Roz pushed open the door and went inside. The place was dark and deserted. Empty tables in an empty room, she thought despondently.
    Like her.
    Like her life. She was on the point of calling out, but thought better of it. It was all so peaceful and she was in no hurry. She tiptoed across the floor and took a stool at a bar in the corner. A smell of cooking lingered on the air, garlicky, tempting, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten all day. She waited a long time, unseen and unheard, a trespasser upon another’s silence. She thought about leaving, unobtrusively, as she had come, but it was strangely restful and her head drooped against her hand. Depression, an all too constant companion, folded its arms around her again, and turned her mind, as it often did, to death. She would do it one day. Sleeping pills or the car. The car, always the car. Alone, at night, in the rain. So easy just to turn the wheel and find a peaceful oblivion. It would be justice of a sort. Her head hurt where the hate swelled and throbbed inside it. God, what a mess she had become. If only someone could lance her destructive anger and let the poison go. Was Iris right?
    Should she see a psychiatrist? Without warning, the terrible unhappiness burst like a flood inside her, threatening to spill out in tears.
    “Oh, shit” she muttered furiously, dashing at her eyes with the palms of her hands. She scrabbled in her bag for her car keys.
    “Shit! Shit! And more bloody shit! Where the hell are you?”
    A slight movement caught her attention and she lifted her head abruptly. A shadowy stranger leant against the back counter, quietly polishing a glass and watching her.
    She blushed furiously and looked away.
    “How long have you been there?” she demanded angrily.
    “Long enough.”
    She retrieved her keys from the inside of her diary and glared at him briefly.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    He shrugged.
    “Long enough.”
    “Yes, well, you’re obviously not open yet, so I’ll be on my way.” She pushed herself off the stool.
    “Suit yourself,” he said with supreme indifference.
    “I was just about to have a glass of wine. You can go or you can join me.
    I’m easy either way.” He turned his back on her and uncorked a bottle.
    The colour receded from her cheeks.
    “Are you Sergeant Hawksley?”
    He lifted the cork to his nose and sniffed it appreciatively.
    “I was, once. Now I’m just plain Hal.” He turned round and poured the wine into two glasses.
    “Who’s asking?”
    She opened her bag again.
    “I’ve got a card somewhere.”
    “A voice would do just as well.” He pushed one of the glasses towards her.
    “Rosalind Leigh,” she said shortly, propping the card against the telephone on the bar.
    She stared at him in the semi-darkness, her embarrassment temporarily forgotten. He was hardly a run of the mill restaurateur. If she had any sense, she thought, she would take to her heels now. He hadn’t shaved and his dark suit hung in rumpled folds as if he’d slept in it.
    He had no tie and half the buttons on