Free Arms and the Women by Reginald Hill Page B

that book she used to be crazy about, whose hobby was abducting young girls? The educational psych, who looks about fifteen and has a stutter, says I shouldn't worry, in fact I should be pleased Rosie's found a formula which enables her to deal with her loss. Like she's bottling it up, you mean? I said. Like she's dealing with it, says this adolescent expert firmly. She'll talk when she wants to talk, just leave the channels open. Just try to let things settle back to what they were before. Routines are more than comfortable, they are essential. Christ, I reckon she must have majored on The Little Book of Psycho-pap or some such thing!'
'You didn't actually say that, did you?'
Ellie laughed and said, 'No. I'm getting soft. In fact, I came home and dug out Nina and the Nix from where I'd hidden it, then I had a drink and a think, and then I went and hid it again. In other words, I've no idea how to cope. So I decided to go with the flow and when Rosie wanted to go back to school, I said, OK, why not?'
'That sounds sensible.'
'Yeah, except I did start wondering if it was just a way of getting out from under this madwoman who'd turned from a straightforward modern laissez-faire mum to an overbearing, over-anxious, ever-present earth mother. OK. No need to say it. That's me all over. Self-centred. Everything comes back to me.'
'You said it. But everything includes all the pain and worry too, so don't whip yourself too hard with them scorpions.'
'My, we are full of literature this morning. Othello again?'
'The Bible. My father was an archdeacon, remember, so you can hardly feel threatened by that.'
Daphne gave as good as she got, thought Ellie, which was one of the reasons she liked her.
She said, 'Listen, can you stay for lunch? I'd really like to talk. Or we could go out and get a sandwich at the pub.'
'Sorry, I'm on my way to the Mossy Bank Garden Centre, would you believe? It's the other side of the bypass and as I was going to be so close, I couldn't resist dropping in to see how you were. Patrick and I are lunching in their caff, God help us. He's been advising them on roses and I think he feels the sight of his expensive wife will help prepare them for the sight of his expensive bill. I'd suggest you came but I think your Save the Peatbogs T-shirt might be counterproductive. I could manage a drink this evening though.'
'Shit. I've got my Liberata group coming round.'
'What's that? Plastic kitchenware or one of those sexy undies groups?'
'No, the Liberata Trust's a human rights organization, sort of Amnesty with feminist attitude . . . oh, ha ha.'
She saw from her friend's face that she was being sent up.
Daphne said, 'Oh well, if you'd rather save the world than have a drink with your friend . . .'
'Yeah, yeah. Truth is, the world's had to look after itself over the past couple of months. I've been feeling guilty - yes, I know; there I go again - so when Feenie rang about the next meeting, I said why not have it round here?'
'Feenie? You don't mean Serafina Macallum, the mad bag lady?'
'That's right. Our founder, chair and driving force. How on earth do you know her?'
'She sold us the bothy. Or at least her lawyer did. We never met her during the negotiations, but I've come close to being run down by her several times, both in that clapped-out Land Rover she drives, and on that ancient bike. You'd think she had something against me.'
Ellie concealed the thought that this was probably truer than Daphne guessed. She knew that what Feenie Macallum resented about the break up of her family estate wasn't losing bits of property but the kind of people she had to lose them to.
Her own ignorance of the details of the Aldermanns' purchase of a country cottage lay in her knee-jerk disapproval when Daphne had mentioned it a couple of years earlier.
'Patrick loves to see the kids and their friends enjoying themselves but he does go white when he sees them turning the garden into a football pitch or a badminton court, so I said, Why