Free This Way Out by Sheila Radley Page B

.’ His veneer of patience had cracked. If he hissed his exasperation, rather than shouting it, it was only because he was ashamed to be rowing with Christine and didn’t want her mother to hear. ‘Can’t you understand? All right, it’s not you I’m thinking of, it’s me. I resent the fact that our lives are no longer our own, and I want to get rid of your mother because I’m sick of having her in the house. So now you know.’
    His wife looked up from the curtain. Her eyes were troubled but her chin was firm.
    â€˜I’m sorry you feel like that. You’ve always been so nice to her that I hadn’t realized … But it doesn’t change my mind. I’ll tell Mum to keep well out of your way in future, but I’m not going to ask her to leave the house. And it is, after all,’ she reminded him, standing up, ‘as much mine as it’s yours.’
    They stared at each other, breathing anger. ‘If that woman stays,’ Derek threatened, ‘I won’t be responsible for the consequences.’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜What I said. I won’t be responsible for – for whatever might happen.’
    Christine’s look of anger changed to something verging on contempt. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, turning away to fold the finished curtain.
    â€˜I mean it.’
    He longed to be able to unburden himself to her: to tell her what a mess he’d got into with Packer, to ask for her help in extricating himself from the man’s influence. But that would be to admit a weakness, and what would Christine think of him if he revealed that to her? Besides, he could hardly expect her to go on loving him if she knew that he had even trifled with the idea of killing her mother.
    No, confession was out. It would ruin his relationship with Christine. And their happy marriage – what few years, or months, of it might remain – was after all the most important thing in his life.
    The only way he could save himself from Packer was by removing Enid from the house. It was such a simple solution to the whole problem that it ought to be easy enough to accomplish. But Christine had a mind and a will of her own. He knew that confrontation was useless.
    â€˜Please,’ he coaxed, trying the alternative tactic. ‘I want to live with you , not with your mother. Is that so strange? Isn’t it what you want too? She can always come and visit us – but please, Chrissie, make her go back and live in her own home.’
    His wife refused.
    Derek slammed out of the house and took long savage strides down the back lawn and through the picket gate in the hedge. Then he paused for a moment, screwing his eyes against the concentrated final rays of the sun. The grazing field that sloped away in front of him to the Wash brook was brilliantly green under a rain-dark evening sky. An earlier shower had brought out the smells of pushing vegetation, and of the mud that oozed from the beaten earth of the field path he was standing on.
    He was, he realized, still wearing his grey flannel suit and black shoes. After the row with Christine he hadn’t thought of stopping to change, and he certainly wasn’t going to go back to do so now. He reached behind him to slam the garden gate shut, felt an obstruction, and heard an anguished howl.
    â€˜Oh, Sam , you stupid old mutt. All right, I didn’t mean to squash you. Come on then, if you must.’
    Better to take the dog anyway. That was what he had planned, on the drive home, so as to have a credible reason for covering the ground where Packer had been that morning.
    He turned to the right, with Sam lolloping ahead of him, tongue out, stern happily high. Derek hadn’t been along the field path for some considerable time. The beagle had been Laurie’s pet – hence its tartan collar, unsuitable for a hound, but her own choice – and walking it had never been his