Free Without the Moon by Cathi Unsworth Page B

he added, “run.”
    â€“ . –
    Daphne had almost come to the end of her tale. Swaffer had learned how it was membership of the CP that had brought the two women together – shared nights of intellectual discourse, rallying and sweating over pamphlets in the top room of a pub in Burton-on-Trent, owned by a sympathetic former miner. Of how Evelyn had shed her shyness amid their endeavours, while Daphne had found the purpose in life she had been seeking, the pair of them becoming so inseparable at one point that Daphne had even brought Evelyn back to London with her when she was given leave. And then, as summer had shaded into autumn, how the bloom had started to come off the red rose of their friendship.
    â€œIt was when I started to get friendly with some of the others in the group that it all started to change,” Daphne recalled. “It was fine when I was the new girl and she was showing me off to everyone. But when others started taking an interest in me, well …” She rubbed her arms as if she was out in the cold, not standing in front of the fire.
    â€œIt started with a few snide comments here and there. I tried to ignore them, pass them off as my being too sensitive, mishearing what Evelyn had really said. But then, when she was driving me back to the farm one night, it turned into a full-scale row. She virtually accused me of being a prostitute because I had spent too long talking to this one other person. Then I realised what it was. She didn’t want me to talk to anyone else, have anyone else but her. I had thought it was she who was the shy one, when I met her that first time in The Black Horse, but in fact it was my own awkwardness she picked up on. And I think she read it as something else …”
    She looked back at Swaffer, searching for the right words.
    â€œShe was in love with you,” he said.
    Daphne nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I think she was. But she was so intense about it, so suffocating, it was frightening and I knew I couldn’t go on seeing her. I’m not very good at that sort of conflict, I’m afraid, Mr Swaffer. So I rang Balcome Place and asked to be relieved of my duties. As you know, we’re volunteers in the WLA, there’s nothing to make us stay where we’ve been posted. I didn’t tell Evelyn, I just went. And I never heard from her again until the night—” her eyes dropped back down to the fire in the grate, “she was murdered.”
    â€œWhat happened that night, Miss Maitland?” Swaffer asked.
    Daphne lit another cigarette.
    â€œShe called me,” she said, blowing smoke across the room, her eyes following the trail of it, into the distance. “At about half-past six in the evening. I don’t remember having given her my number, but as I told you, she did stay here with me once and I suppose she was just cunning enough to have taken it down and stored it away. She said it was her birthday and that she was coming up to see me. Just as if we had never said a bad word to each other, just as if she was an old friend I would have been delighted to receive at such short notice. Well, I couldn’t believe my ears. And I’m afraid I told her what I thought of her. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say, there was this long silence and then she hung up the telephone. But that wasn’t the end of it. I had a horrible feeling it wouldn’t be.
    â€œI told my housekeeper that if anyone should come calling later that evening she must tell them I was not in London and send them away. Sure enough, four hours later, there was Evelyn, standing on the doorstep.”
    Daphne’s hand shook as she put the cigarette out, reached for her glass of brandy. “But, Mr Swaffer, if I had only known what was out there waiting for her, I would never have turned her away. I was so scared of her, but what was she, really? A lonely, frustrated woman, that’s all. She