Free The Sting of Death by Rebecca Tope Page A

She’ll be wondering what you thought of the cottage.’
    ‘Tomorrow. I’ll do that tomorrow. Sorry I was too late to help with putting the kids to bed.’
    ‘I kept them up a bit late, hoping you’d come in time. Timmy had a long sleep this afternoon in the garden.’
    Karen’s garden was increasingly prodigious as the summer wore on. She’d encroached on the burial field at one end, cutting down a straggly hedge and planting a row of fast-growing willows a generous fifteen yards further back, gaining herself a space for beans, brussels sprouts, cabbages, sweetcorn and potatoes. Drew had been happy to let her. He had ten acres to play with, enough to bury thousands of people, enough to last a lifetime, even if business became seriously good. And since their income was significantly below the official poverty line, the food she produced was more than welcome. ‘I’ll soon have enough surplus to make regular sales,’ she said proudly. ‘I can do veggie boxes.’
    Drew had his doubts about that, but said nothing. Veggie boxes involved efficient paperwork, a lot of driving to deliver the boxes, and a lot of complaints and demands from bothersome customers.
    ‘Did you ever meet Justine?’ he asked suddenly. ‘As a child, I mean?’
    Karen’s gaze lost focus as she examined memories from early childhood. ‘We had a party,I remember. It must have been my mother’s birthday – thirty, possibly. Uncle Sebastian came with Auntie Helen, Penn’s mother. And they had another little girl with them, a bit younger than Penn. I remember I was fascinated by her; she had very black hair and a narrow little face. She looked like a picture of Mary Lennox in a book I had. You know – the girl in The Secret Garden . She seemed thin and sad like Mary. She was probably only two or three. I have a feeling somebody said her mother was away, so Auntie Helen was looking after her for a while. It seems like a million years ago. I wasn’t a great deal older than Steph is now.’
    ‘Your family!’ Drew exclaimed. ‘It’s like one of those ten-volume sagas. I thought, you being an only child, there’d be nothing much to it. How come it’s taken me so long to realise?’
    ‘There is nothing much to it. It’s a perfectly ordinary group of people.’
    ‘Maggs said she must have long black hair,’ he remembered. ‘And she’s small, to judge by her clothes and shoes. Seems to fit your memory of her.’
    ‘Her father was Spanish, isn’t that what Penn said? That would explain the hair colour. She sounds very bohemian.’
    ‘Lonely,’ Drew pronounced. ‘At least, solitary. There was something sad about the place where she lives.’
    ‘I wonder where she is,’ Karen said with feeling. ‘It’s good of you to get involved, Drew. Especially as it might get you into trouble with Roma. You realise that, don’t you?’
    He frowned. ‘I hadn’t seen it like that,’ he admitted. ‘You mean because she hasn’t been speaking to Justine?’
    ‘She might feel rather iffy about you interfering, if the whole subject of Justine is taboo. You ought to go and talk to her about it, if you don’t want to lose her friendship.’
    ‘She’s not that special to me, you know.’
    ‘Oh, I think she is,’ Karen twinkled. ‘But that’s okay. I know what you’re like by now. It doesn’t worry me.’
    ‘No reason why it should,’ he said uncomfortably. There were still grey areas in his dealings with other women that had never been properly thrashed out between them.
    The phone interrupted. ‘Hospice here,’ said a brisk female voice. ‘I understand you’re dealing with Mr Graham French? Well, he died at six o’clock this evening. We’ll keep him overnight, but perhaps you could come for him tomorrow? The family will be in touch in the morning.’
    ‘Thanks.’ He sighed as he replaced the phone. He’d really liked Mr French.
    * * *
    Roma Millan’s sister Helen had mixed feelings of her own about the virtues of family life.