Free Deadly Business by Quintin Jardine Page B

Mrs Culshaw, you tell your precious husband to bear this in mind. The version of me that he invented in his pathetic pseudo-novel might be a hell of a lot closer to the mark than he realises.’
    ‘What the fu … does that mean?’
    ‘It means,’ I told her, ‘that he has no idea who he’s taking on, or what could happen to him if he threatens my boy and me. Now, I’ve had enough of this shit. Call me tomorrow, Susie, when your headache subsides and you can think like the intelligent, rational woman that I know you are underneath all this nonsense. And please, for your children’s sake if nobody else’s, do not drink any more.’
    Just as I ended the call, I heard her say, ‘Fuck off!’
    Janet and Tom were waiting for me at the foot of the slope at the start of the boardwalk that runs behind the beach. Ben and Tunè were in the distance, heading for the music with another couple. ‘Who was that?’ my son asked.
    I was still blazing mad, but sensible enough to realise that ‘Nobody’ would not cut it as an answer, so I told him the truth. ‘We were just having some girl talk,’ I added.
    ‘Did you ask where she is?’ Janet enquired. She hadn’t forgotten our earlier discussion.
    Maybe my state of mind influenced me, but I’d like to think that I simply decided it would be plain wrong to deceive her further. ‘She’s in America,’ I told her. ‘Something came up and she had to go there.’
    ‘When she went away last winter and before that in the autumn, was she in America then too?’
    There was something in her question, in its intonation, that told me she wasn’t buying any cover stories, not any more.
    ‘Yes, she was,’ I admitted, then went further. I owed Susie nothing and I wasn’t going to jeopardise my relationship with Tom’s highly intelligent half-sister, or him for that matter, by insulting them with any more attempted wool-pulling. ‘Your mother’s had a health problem,’ I told her. ‘She’s being looked after by a consultant in Monaco and he’s referred her to a clinic in America for treatment.’
    She stood tall and looked me in the eye, directly, giving me no wiggle room. ‘She’s not going to die, like Dad, is she?’
    ‘Your father died from a heart condition that wasn’t detected until it was too late. Your mother’s illness has been diagnosed, and it’s being treated appropriately. Her doctors are very happy with her.’
    I was dreading the next question:
is it cancer?
Thankfully, Janet seemed to decide that she had enough information and didn’t ask it. Instead she digested the news for a few seconds. ‘I won’t say anything to Jonathan,’ she said. ‘He worries about too many things as it is.’ Good kid; perceptive kid; caring kid.
    I nodded. ‘He doesn’t need to know.’
    ‘No. Thanks for telling me, Auntie Primavera. Mum’ll tell me too, eventually. When she does, I won’t let on that I knew already.’
    ‘I don’t mind if you do. My roof, my rules, like we say. If it was me, I’d have told Tom, but we all have to make our own judgements on the big issues in life. So don’t go blaming her, will you?’
    She frowned. ‘I don’t know. That’s two secrets in one day.’ She looked at her semi-sibling. ‘Did you know that our dad had been married before he married either of our mums?’
    He nodded. ‘Yes, Mum told me, after he died and we came to live here. Grandpa Mac talks about her too. Hasn’t he ever mentioned her to you?’
    ‘I haven’t seen Grandpa Mac since I was seven,’ Janet murmured, ‘the summer we came here and he was here too. I’d like to go and see him in Scotland, but Mum won’t take me.’
    That didn’t surprise me. While I get on with the entire Blackstone clan, I know that they don’t have a lot of time for Susie. I got over, more or less, the way she and Oz got together, but they never did, Ellie especially. I wouldn’t want to be in the same room as the two of them.
    ‘In that case,’ I promised, ‘next time