Free The Widow's Club by Dorothy Cannell

rice has its place in the scheme of things, but the texture is so often flawed by impetuous boiling. It is at its best when simmered for thirty-two and one-half minutes and served with almond butter.”
    Light dawned—my mind had leapt to the macabre; it had been that sort of day. I saw again the widow going up the church steps, poor woman, so … so …
    “Ellie, do let’s get out of here. This discussion reminds me that our nuptial bash is at the mercy of that woman Dorcas hired to serve, and I keep getting these flashes that something terrible has happened to the lobster aspic.” Ben had his door halfway open when we heard it—a roar, deeper, throatier than the wind and charged with a different kind of energy. We looked at each other.
    We were outside the car, my dress and veil bundled up in my hands, when the motorbike leapt toward us through swirling rain, accompanied by a joyful hoot hoot loud enough and sacrilegious enough to waken all the dead in the churchyard. Bike and rider slithered between the lich-gate, dispersing gravel right, left, and center, and came to a lunging sideways stop millimeters from us.
    “Freddy!” exclaimed Ben, with rather more pleasure than I thought necessary or appropriate.
    “You two sure are my kind of people. Couldn’t hold out till you got home, could you?” Freddy favoured us with his familiar leer. He was now dressed in everyday attire—a black leather jacket, a shirt collar, but no shirt; a weighty tangle of chains flattened the damp hairs on his chest.
    “Sorry to disappoint you, old man, but we were merely seeking shelter from the deluge.” Ben wound an arm round me.
    “Got you!” Freddy lowered an eyelid in a man-to-man wink. “Can’t wait to tell Jill. She was rather concerned,Ellie, that you might suffer from the flannel nightie and woolly bedsocks syndrome.”
    He moved before I could grab hold of his long, untidily plaited hair and wrap it around his throat. A dark huddle of figures was forming outside the church. I could hear the distant murmur of Rowland’s voice, but Freddy wasn’t looking in that direction. “By the way, where is Jill? Don’t tell me the girl who worships the shadow I cast has nipped off to the wedding feast without me.”
    “What did you think she would do, you turnip, stand under a tree until you returned or she got struck by lightning? Don’t worry, Jill is being looked after,” I said benignly. “She accompanied your parents in their car back to Merlin’s Court.”
    “Oh, God!” he groaned. “Mum will have pinched her purse en route, and we all know what Dad will have tried to pinch!”
    Damn Freddy! I watched his eyes, the lids still dusted with neon purple. Should I be held accountable for his romance with Jill simply because they had met at Merlin’s Court? Admittedly, Freddy considers being asked for the time by any female under ninety a romance. But I did suspect that Cupid’s arrow had got him in the aorta this time. Despite all my claims to sanity, I was fond of Freddy, and it was hard not to feel some pity for the person the fates had assigned Aunt Lulu and Uncle Maurice as parents.
    Faking a yawn, Freddy yanked at the chains around his neck. “Okay, love doves, the meter’s running. Afraid I can only manage one passenger, so will it be you, Ellie?”
    Motorbikes terrify me. However, the wedding guests were beginning to prey on my conscience and Ben refused to ride while I jogged home. I gazed into my husband’s face, memorizing every line, as I warned him to keep to the middle of Cliff Road. He tends to daydream while out walking about such things as the ultimate marinade.
    Freddy leaned on the hooter. “Come on! I realise this is the first time you two have been parted since your marriage, but I would like to get there before Mum has nicked half the family heirlooms.”
    One last lingering kiss and I hoisted aboard. The rain was now a gauzy mizzle; the elms were sketched in charcoal. Even though I knew it