Free The Pure in Heart by Susan Hill

smiled. He liked Shirley, with herslight squint and the gap between her front teeth. One or two of the other carers gave the impression that theend of the shift couldn’t come soon enough and that they did the minimum merely to keep his sister clean, comfortable and fed. Shirley talked to her and spoke of her as an individual whom she knew and liked even though she could find her wearing. He knew it was rare and he was grateful.

    Martha’s room was bright, with buttercup-yellow walls and white-painted furniture, a room for a child; it always cheered Simon as he went in.
    His sister was propped up in bed. Her hair had been freshly brushed and tied back and there was colour in her cheeks and a brightness in her eyes. She sat looking towards the light coming in through the windows and watching the breeze shift the yellow andgreen curtains about.
    ‘Hello, darling. You look so much better!’ He walked in and took her hand. It was soft, the skin like satin; even the bones seemed soft as the hand lay inert between his own. ‘I came over when they said you were back from the hospital and I bet you’re glad. All those tubes and machines meant I couldn’t see you properly.’
    Shirley tucked in the bedclothes at the end of Martha’sbed, and closed the door of the wardrobe. ‘I’ll see you later, sweetheart,’ she said to Martha, waved and went out.
    The room was peaceful. Martha was peaceful. She would lie here like this until someone came to turn her, to clean her, change her, give her physiotherapy, move her into a chair, feed her, hold her drinking cup; she was as dependent as a baby,unable to do the smallest thing, forherself or for anyone else.
    She smelled of soap and clean sheets. There was never any other smell on her, never anything sour or dirty in the air of her room. Her care couldn’t be faulted.
    But he had often wondered how much difference it might have made to her if she had been sitting like this at home, in the middle of the family comings and goings, the stimulus of different people talking andworking and being busy around her, children coming in, Cat’s children, their friends, animals on her lap. She had never known a normal life. He wished he could have given it to her.
    Martha gave a little murmur, half a moan, half a sigh, half a laugh … it was impossible to tell. Her hand moved.
    ‘What is it? Have you seen something?’
    The little noise again. He looked at her face. It registerednothing at all yet he knew she was trying to communicate with him.
    He gave her a drink from the spouted plastic cup on the table and she sipped it, but whether it had been what she had wanted he couldn’t know.
    ‘Little Martha,’ he said, ‘I’m so glad you’re better.’
    He stayed for twenty more minutes, holding her hand, telling her about the squirrel he had seen in the fir tree behind the car park,knowing that it meant nothing to her and yet sure that she liked to hear his voice.
    When he left, her eyes were closing. She was like a baby, soothed into sleep by the softly blowing, bright curtains.
    In the hall, he met Shirley. ‘She seems fine,’ he said. ‘She’s asleep now.’
    ‘She’d better make the most of it then, we’re going to do her bed and then she has to have her chest pummelled otherwiseit’ll be pneumonia again. Thanks for coming. I should think Dr Serrailler will be in later.’
    The squirrel raced up the long trunk of the Scots pine tree as he approached his car but stopped halfway and peered down at him with feverish little eyes.
    DCI Serrailler turned out of the drive and headed for Lafferton Police Station and work. If absence made the heart grow fonder, death did the same.He had no need to take the route through the Old Town side streets to get to the station, though it cut off a couple of sets of slow traffic lights, but as he approached he knew that he had wanted to drive down the road in which Freya Graffham had lived.
    He had not been in love with her – or at least not