Free Saxon by Stuart Davies Page A

investigator who brings the breaking news to CNN.
    Babs and Poppy had been together for twelve years, and the official story for the village was that they were cousins who were widowed young, cohabiting for company and to share expenses. Truth was they were lovers. They met one night in a gay pub in Brighton. Babs was on the prowl and Poppy was waiting for true love to come and tap her on the shoulder. Their ships came in at the same time, to the same mooring. The fact that they both had an interest in horses came as an added bonus.
    Poppy kept the relationship secret from her colleagues, as she would find it too embarrassing if they found out. When the subject of men would raise its throbbing head, as it frequently did in an office full of women and a few gay men, Poppy found it hard-going. It was painful and distasteful to even think of men. She loathed them, not because of some distant trauma from her childhood or bad treatment from a relationship. She quite simply hated men and had long since given up trying to work out how or why she felt that way. She just did.
    Now she was headed home. She knew Babs was taking care of dinner, as she usually did during the week.
    Tuesday, May 14, Anvil Wood House, 5.50PM
    In the kitchen of Anvil Wood House, Babs was preparing the pork chops. She put a small knob of butter on each one, followed by alittle sage. She would add a few onion rings later. The potatoes were nearly done and the French beans lay in wait for a swift steaming. The ladies ate well.
    The kitchen was big and airy with all of the original Victorian features. They both loved it. Over one corner hung a cast-iron and wood-slat clothes dryer, raised and lowered by a rope. Underneath this was a shallow butler’s sink with a wooden plate rack next to it. The floor was small black and white tile, chessboard style, and in the middle was the main work surface, ten feet long by four feet wide. Halfway along one wall was the cooking range and the opposite facing wall supplied the meagre light with many quite small stone-edged gothic-style windows.
    As the chops sizzled under the grill, Babs heard a sound outside the back door. It sounded like a dog, not that they owned one, but sometimes the local farm dogs went walkabout and came sniffing around, knocking the lids off the dustbins. She left her cooking to lean out of the top section of the stable-type back door so she could shoo them away. There were no dogs, it was Poppy, and she had a few harnesses and blanket samples from work to test out and write an appraisal for, and had gone straight to the stables to drop them off, rather than come in the front door.
    She and Babs kissed on the lips, exchanged daily news while the food cooked and when it was time to eat, sat down to enjoy their meal. This was the best moment in their day, relaxing together and exchanging news and views. After dinner, they adjourned to the sitting room for some television and complained about the standard of the programmes. They shared a passion for Felicity Kendal and a disdain for blonde bimbo presenters, particularly the ones who made a media career out of stealing other people’s husbands.
    They talked horses for a while and then retired to bed at about midnight.
    Wednesday, May 15, Brentwood Mansions, 12.30AM
    Kate leaned against the wall as Emma fumbled with the key. Emma had taken over the task of opening the front door once Kate had demonstrated beyond most reasonable doubt that her own efforts to make it somehow fit into the lock were not likely to be successful.
    Fortunately, Emma had more luck and the two of them staggered into the flat, saved from the effort and expense of going down to Claridge’s for the night in the hope that the morning would see them able to operate the damn lock.
    ‘You weren’t serious about going to Claridge’s, were you?’ asked Emma. ‘You can’t have been.’
    ‘Of course I was. You wanted to spend the night on the stairs?’ answered Kate. ‘I’ve done