Free Dying to Know (A Detective Inspector Berenice Killick Mystery) by Alison Joseph Page B

the police? And he just said what he’d said before, about being her priest… and so after that I got up and came in here, I told him I needed to tidy up before the week’s lessons. And then I sorted out some CDs and then I thought I should work through the Grade 8 barre music, and I put on the CD player.
    And for some reason the Board have chosen a long piece of Chopin for the Adage , the Lente con Gran Espressione , and it’s the music we had at that show, the first one where I ever had a real solo, Oh that crimson costume, and Xavier the director claimed to have fallen madly in love with Anton, even though it turned out he was living with someone else all along, that Welsh boy who worked in the zoo and knew all about lizards…
    Another life.
    Chad came to the first night. It was in those weeks before our wedding. I was so nervous, almost sick before I went on… And afterwards, he said, did it go OK? And I remember thinking, what an odd question, how could he not tell how well it had gone, how as soon as I took my first steps I had forgotten to be nervous, and the feeling in the music had led me…
    It had been jagged layers of dark red silk, the costume deliberately torn. It floated around me, as I did a turn, like that, a pirouette, arabesque…
    Chad had said, afterwards, I don’t know anything about it, you see. But –
    But what? I’d said.
    You were very beautiful, he’d said. ‘Graceful.’ And then he’d stood there, twisting his fingers together like he did when he was shy, still does sometimes, and talking about the word Grace, ‘like the word in the scriptures,’ he’d said, ‘a state of Grace, you see, a completeness with things, and that’s what it was like watching you dance…’
    She had looked up at him, at his awkwardness, his hesitancy. She had taken hold of his hands to still them, and her eyes had filled with tears.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ he’d asked her, concerned, and she hadn’t been able to reply, hadn’t found the words to say that it was the greatest praise she’d ever had. Instead, she’d smiled, and said, ‘I’m so glad I’m marrying you.’
    A jetee , pas de bouree . The feeling of the floating silk around her.
    And now, here I am. The same steps. The same tears in my eyes.
    She stopped, motionless in the sunlit studio.
    Chad’s gone out now. I don’t know where he’s gone.
    She switched off the music, opened the studio windows, huge sheets of glass with a view of the sea, she’d had them fitted specially. She pulled on her leggings, her pink leg-warmers, Anton always laughs at these, she thought, so very eighties… She pressed Play on the CD player, and resting one hand on the barre she began, and point and close and point and close and en seconde and close…
    We were full of hope, then, Chad and me. He seemed so strong, so capable. When my mother insisted, as she always did, that I visit without him, our first Christmas, ‘it’ll be back to normal, dear, just you and your sister,’ Chad had said, firmly, that they would have Christmas at home, in London, ‘we can invite your mother to visit us instead, the sights of Hackney will be a nice change from Wiltshire…’
    En cinquieme … and point and close, and point…
    When did that desert him, that strength? When did he cease to be dependable? When we lost the baby, what made him shrink and furl away, so that instead of being there with the right words, the right touch, a reassuring hug, he was absent, somehow, nowhere to be seen?
    Chad must have gone out early this morning, she thought. There was no sign of him at breakfast, although coffee had been made and there was a plate in the dishwasher…
    And demi - detourné , and point and close…
    A ring on the doorbell.
    Perhaps he went for a walk.
    Another ring.
    He must have keys.
    The bark of a dog.
    A dog?
    She went to the CD player, pressed STOP, hurried to the front door.
    A man was standing there. He had floppy blond hair, a well-cut beige raincoat.