Free Pleasure and a Calling by Phil Hogan Page B

up, and then returned it to his house – lacked credibility, and one assumes his solicitor wisely talked down the chances of a successful appeal. After all, where was the evidence? Forecourt CCTV cameras, as everyone knows, are positioned to monitor licence plates rather than drivers. There was no sign that anyone had broken into the car – and I had no doubt that the spare keys were still in the top right-hand drawer of the antique French tallboy in the hall where he and I had left them.
    In the spring the Gwyndyrs put their house on the market. Zoe took the call, but of course I was more than happy to handle it myself. I sat on the sofa in their almost familiar sitting room – an invited guest now – with a clipboard folder on my knee. It was a beautiful day. A day for looking forward, I thought. Preece Gwyndyr stared right through me as I prattled on about the buoyancy of the market and how this lovely weather gave one itchy feet. His wife was nowhere to be seen.
    ‘Will you be staying in the area, Mr Gwyndyr?’ I asked.
    He wouldn’t, he said, adding nothing.

I T ’ S EASY TO SAY , now, that I wish I’d drawn a line under 4 Boselle Avenue, but there are some things you cannot let go. Certainly there was something about the man with the small incontinent dog that continued to rankle. Perhaps I felt that my honour – the
town’s
honour – had not quite been satisfied. Or maybe I was still in the grip of excitement after the disappointment of the farcically unreliable Cooksons earlier that day. But in the great chain of things – and in view of what happened afterwards at 4 Boselle Avenue and other sites of disquiet around town – I shouldn’t understate the influence of Aunt Lillian, who has become forgotten in all this talk of property developers, wing mirrors and unwanted rowing machines.
    The last time I’d seen her was some weeks before my twenty-first birthday (and a couple of months before Mr Mower shook my hand and gave me a box of cards printed with my name and the words ‘Sales Consultant’). She wrote to Mr Mower, enclosing my train fare and asking that I come to her house in Norfolk. I hadn’t been there since leaving school, though she had visited me at the office twice in that time, with Mr Mower present,beaming and pouring coffee and relating details of my progress.
    The town hadn’t changed much, though it seemed smaller. She surprised me with a stiff embrace, and we sat in the garden, where she smoked one cigarette after another and looked across the lawn as we talked. The point of my visit seemed to be about my mother’s legacy, though I’d already been contacted by the solicitor and there was little to add. She said she was glad things were turning out well for me at Mower’s, and praised my mature outlook, which was clearly the result of independent living. From this, though, I sensed she wanted me to know that I was on my own now, that her duty in respect of my late parents was discharged. She didn’t actually say it was a relief, but neither had she invited me to stay over. There was an evening train, she said, that should get me back to Mrs Burton’s before eleven.
    We went inside for tea and sandwiches. There was a small gateau from the bakery and she had put out napkins and silver cutlery. Over my teacup I glanced at the windows of the house across the street where the Damatos used to live, and I remembered the kitchen there with its cakes cooling on the wire rack. Aunt Lillian eyed me, and I said she looked well and complimented her on the new wallpaper. She went along with my new-learned charm but her wariness spoke sharply when I asked after cousin Isobel, of whom she said nothing more than that she had married an army officer and was living abroad. She wiped a smear of cream from the corner of her mouth, laid her fork on the plate and reached for her cigarettes. The fork sat gleaming in the soft light. I looked from it to Aunt Lillian. Inevitably it called to mind that