Free Seven For a Secret by Judy Astley Page B

her mother and grandmother on a visit to the dying uncle later that afternoon.
    Heather was amazed. ‘There’s no end to how much they can surprise you when they’re completely and utterly bored,’ she told Tom, who barely glanced up from the Test Match on TV.
    Heather had an idea that Uncle Edward wouldn’t have changed a bit, that she’d have no trouble recognizing him. He’d seemed old enough in her childhood for there to be no scope in the process of ageing for him to look any greyer or frailer. He wasn’t in a hospital, it was more of a nursing home with medical facilities added on, perhaps in much the same way as the sauna and spa option in a luxury hotel. She wondered if he’d remember her; the last time she had seen him had been at her wedding to Tom, when Delia had rounded up as many relations as possible to bulk out their side of the family and make the register office seem respectably full. Delia had spent that day beaming determinedly at everyone with an expression underlying the smile that challenged its startled recipients to dare, just dare, to mention Heather’s elopement. She’d overheard, at one point, the words ‘unfortunate mistake’ and she’d had to be firmly reassured for a good fifteen minutes that the speaker was referring to a guest’s choice of hat. Delia felt that Iain had been present at Heather and Tom’s wedding like Banquo’s ghost, and she was only truly happy that day when she packed them both off to New York for the honeymoon.
    Heather remembered Edward’s slithery, liver-spotted hand on her wrist and his wetly whispered comment at the time: ‘Not in white then?’ – as if his brother Harold had bequeathed him the role of leery old goat in his will. It was far more likely that Edward wouldn’t recognize her. That morning she’d stared carefully into the mirror and wondered how much of the schoolgirl-Heather was left that Iain, if they should chance to run into each other in the village, would remember. She’d been happy to decide that there was very little: her hair, which had been as long and golden as Kate’s, was now fringed, bobbed and streaked with the kind of metallic highlights that were a hairdresser’s tactful preparation for a client’s seamless transition to grey. She was still slim, but on the larger, more comfortable scale that was to be expected in her forties. She wondered briefly if Twiggy, with whose ironing-board flatness of front it had been bliss to be compared before the days when anorexia was to be feared, had also filled out a bit. She reckoned she could, with luck and some careful avoidance, get away quite safely with living unidentified a few yards away from her ex-husband. But there was the dangerous presence of her over-inquisitive mother to consider. Keeping Delia ignorant and uninterfering was going to be tremendously difficult.
    Heather, whose knowledge of hospitals was gained from only a couple of visits to casualty with Suzy’s broken collar bone and Kate’s febrile convulsions, had expected the nursing home to smell of cabbage and urine. She sniffed cautiously at the air as she, Kate and Delia went in. She could smell polish and air freshener but neither lunch nor pee. ‘Smells OK,’ she commented, surprised, looking round at the reception area that wouldn’t have been out of place in a good country house hotel. The peachy striped wallpaper was fresh and clean, no torn edges or discoloured patches. The caramel-coloured carpet had no mysterious stains to challenge a squeamish imagination.
    â€˜So it should at these prices!’ Delia retorted, clutching both hands around her bag as if expecting Uncle Edward’s fees to be snatched from her the moment she crossed the threshold. ‘Do you know,’ she went on, ‘Edward’s had medical insurance since way before it was the thing to do. He must have been one of