Free Ring of Guilt by Judith Cutler

about poor Dilly troubled me in a way I couldn’t understand. I could understand anyone wanting to talk to Griff – the most approachable, kindest soul in the world – but why should she change her mind?
    Griff and I had joked about Titus knowing everything. Maybe I should phone him. This wasn’t just the ordinary, everyday thing you’d think. Titus objected to being phoned from landlines, for a start, though I’d tried to point out that mobile phone records were just as accessible to people who might want to sniff round. Actually he objected to being phoned at all. It was his pre . . . prerequ . . . pre-something or other, anyway, to contact other people. Prerogative? Is that it?
    The other problem was that Griff didn’t like Titus, and really didn’t like the weird relationship Titus and I didn’t so much enjoy as endure. So I said something about needing a breath of fresh air and headed off towards the station, where there was the best mobile coverage.
    â€˜Quick question, Titus,’ I said, because he didn’t do flowery greetings and enquiries about health either. ‘Dilly Pargetter.’
    â€˜Got beat up by her old man. Husband. Partner. Whatever. Does it sometimes. Bastard.’
    And that was the end of the call.
    Shoving the mobile and my hands in my pocket, I carried on walking. Griff said it stimulated the phagocytes, whatever those might be; I just found it helped me to think. Nothing doing between my ears this time, though.
    Perhaps it was because I had this thing about domestic violence. One of my carefully vetted foster mothers was regularly beaten black and blue by her equally carefully vetted husband Peter, a nice, well-spoken solicitor. And a bastard. Actually I did my first ever bit of whistle-blowing, even though I didn’t know I was at the time. I drew pictures for my social worker of where my foster mother had the bruises – well out of sight, of course. Talk about volcanic activity! What happened eventually I’ve no idea – people say most women just put up with it, don’t they? – because I was whisked off somewhere else. I can’t even remember where, now, I was consigned to so many places.
    I thought back to the triggers that had set Peter off. They ranged from nothing at all to overcooked pasta. So what might have provoked this attack on Dilly?
Does it sometimes
didn’t give me a lot to go on, of course. The only clue might be that she was looking for me – and the only connection I had with her was the ring currently in the custody of Will Kinnersley.
    It ought to be back in mine, now, surely, along with the one I’d accidentally bought at the auction I’d been to. I could always call Will. Except I wasn’t sure I’d be phoning about the rings.
    Of course I was. I didn’t do policemen, remember. Which brought me, in a very roundabout way, to my body. What had happened to it? I’d found it in Kent, so presumably Will would have access to any database it found its way on to. Why not?
    Because I wanted to talk to someone about it first? Someone had once remarked that I needed friends my own age to hang out with, and gossip with. Well, much as I’d have liked that, I’d not found any yet. The antiques world, at least my corner of it, seemed to be populated almost entirely by old people. Of course there were some younger ones, but the women I’d met had said
yah
a lot, and tended to talk about their parents’ place in France. As for the blokes, the less said about them the better.
    Which left Griff, of course. Trouble was, once I started confiding in him I might just tell him all about my last trip to Bossingham Hall and all the confusion that had caused me. And that would upset him. He didn’t like my father, any more than my father liked him – and would hate any legacy from him coming my way. Especially something as precious as my own grandmother’s ring. He’d