Free Ripples on a Pond by Joy Dettman Page B

free, Amber’s tapping feet given focus, she slid between the shrubbery and took her benefactor’s arm, her mind fashioning an excuse for her abrupt disappearance. No excuse necessary. Lorna’s expression suggested she was not pleased by the delay.
    â€˜Obnoxious female,’ she muttered. ‘Always was.’
    She offered her keys. Amber unlocked the driver’s side door, placed the keys into the ignition, then slid across to the passenger seat.
    Thirty years ago, Lorna had not tolerated fools gladly. Age had done nothing to mellow her attitude. The motor roaring her annoyance, she rammed the gearstick into reverse.
    â€˜A car is backing out behind you,’ Amber warned, but quietly. Experience had taught her to keep her tone level and low at all times.
    The cars within a hair’s-breadth of colliding, Lorna’s size eleven mashed the brake. Collision avoided. The second car moved back into its space, giving Lorna right of way. Most who drove to church gave her right of way in the car park – and she took it as her due.
    They gained the road, and, gearbox crunching, they went on their way, slowly.
    â€˜The world is full of fools,’ Lorna commented. ‘That female in puce was at one time engaged to my fool of a brother.’
    Amber nodded and watched the road ahead. She well recalled Sissy’s lost wedding to Vern Hooper’s gangling yard of pump-water son; recalled Monk’s mansion, which Vern had renovated for Sissy; recalled, too, her own dream of living in that mansion with her girl. The gawky swine had broken off the engagement, not only ruining Sissy’s life but killing Amber’s final hope of escape from Norman’s snores.
    â€˜Her sister was the town trollop,’ Lorna added. ‘She had an illegitimate brat to my brother. A son.’
    â€˜Goodness me,’ little Miss Duckworth tut-tutted, remembering the birth of the stray’s illegitimate son, and Amber’s consequent loss of Sissy to the Duckworth clan.
    She knew Jim Hooper had married the stray. The Salvation Army captain, having failed with Sissy, had contacted Maisy Macdonald, Amber’s lifelong friend.
    Dear Amb,
    It would do you no good at all to come back up here. As you know, memories are long in Woody Creek . . .
    . . . Jim Hooper and Jenny finally got married. They’re back here, living in Vern Hooper’s house . . .
    â€˜Two boys on bicycles,’ Amber warned. ‘Our turn is just ahead of them.’
    Lorna blasted her horn. The bike riders wobbled, then cleared the road. The turn negotiated, the abused gears having found a nominal peace, Amber asked if Lorna’s brother had children.
    â€˜A daughter. My father claimed their bastard. You’ve met him.’ Lorna’s false teeth clacked. ‘That drunken lout you allowed in the door at midnight.’
    â€˜Had I not opened the door, he would have had it off, Miss Hooper,’ Amber defended.
    She’d been unaware that the young male who had pushed by her in the dead of night had been the stray’s illegitimate get. She’d believed him to be Margaret’s son. But no time now to ponder relationships: Lorna was swinging the car at her padlocked gates. Missed them. Relieved, Amber alighted to take the keys and unlock the gates.
    The car driven through, Lorna continued towards the garage, while Amber reversed the process of the gates – the closing, the chaining, the fixing-on of a heavy padlock – her mind free to travel back to the night she’d met Lorna’s nephew.
    He would have had that door down. He’d almost knocked her down as she’d opened it. He’d known Lorna’s house, had gone directly to her closed bedroom door, flung it wide and hauled the nightgown-clad Lorna from her bed.
    Amber, who feared men in uniform, had been so afraid she’d picked up the phone to call the police. He’d ripped the cord from its wall socket