with less than eighteen months to live - ‘could hear themselves think!’
‘I doubt much thinking goes on there. Shouldn’t you be more concerned about thieves tampering with vehicles under your very nose?’
‘Oh, I very much doubt there was ever any thief !’
Water off a duck’s back. ‘Oh, so we live in a yob-free oasis, do we? See that midget thug over by the clinic? How do you know it wasn’t him? You’ll excuse me. I’m in rather a hurry.’
Thankfully, my Saab started first time.
I reversed out of the tight spot.
I found myself heading not homewards, but on the road to Black Swan Green. I very nearly turned around: Daddy and Marion weren’t expecting me until Sunday. But the universe had told me to cherish my loved ones, so onwards I journeyed, onwards, until the steeple of Saint Gabriel’s and its two giant redwoods sailed closer, closer, over the orchards. Philip and I would explore that graveyard, while our parents chatted after church. How long ago? When Mummy could still go outside, so the late 1970s. Philip found a crack at the base of the steeple. A crack of black. A door to the land of the dead, Philip told me. Left ajar. Philip heard voices, he swore, crying lonely, lonely, lonely.
And it occurred to me that Olly wasn’t the only victim of that hit-and-run murderer, because the Mrs Judith Dunbar-Castle whom I would have become had also been slain.
No, ‘Dunbar-Castle’ sounds like a National Trust property.
Judith Castle-Dunbar was a woman in her fifties, though she could pass for her forties. She was content, and contentment is the best beautician, as Maeve, the owner of an organic shop who pulled the wool over everybody’s eyes, not just mine, used to say. Olly and I would have pooled our funds and bought a spacious house near Charmouth. The Dunbar family would have embraced me. Unlike that gold-digging Patricia creature, who bled him white. Leo would have been Olly’s best man, and Camilla my bridesmaid. Olly’s grown-up son would have wept for joy into his champagne. I don’t think of you as a stepmother - you’re the big sister I never had. A chamber orchestra would have performed Jesus Christ Superstar for us as, one by one, Olly’s friends would have let slip that my husband was on the ropes before he met little old moi.
Magpies loitered with intent on Saint Gabriel’s lychgate.
Once, I was taller than the beech hedge around Daddy’s house. Now it’s as high as the car port. When one returns to childhood haunts, one is supposed to find how much smaller everything has become. But in Black Swan Green, I always feel that I’m the shrinking one.
‘Daddy! So here’s where you’re hiding!’
‘Why would I “hide” in my own greenhouse?’ Daddy was bent over a cactus, stroking it with a special brush. He switched off the radio cricket. ‘You aren’t due until Sunday.’
‘I was just passing. Don’t switch the radio off on my account.’
‘I switched it off because the agony’s too much. We’re 139 for 8 against Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka.’
‘That’s a gorgeous bloom, Daddy.’
‘This, you mean? Mexicans call it the Phoenix Tree. The Yanks call it the Blue Moon. I call it a waste of bloody time. Six years of fussing and fretting, all you get is this mouldy mauve flower and the aroma of cat litter.’
‘Oh, Daddy!’
‘You can cut me eighteen inches of that twine.’
‘Sure. Is Marion not around, Daddy?’
‘She’s at her book group. You’re too old to say “sure”.’
‘Her book group? Jilly Cooper’s got a new one out?’
‘They’re reading an Icelander. Halldor Laxless, I believe.’
‘ “Halldor Laxless”. My.’
‘The only writer I can stomach is Wilbur Smith. All the rest are bloody Nancy boys. Eighteen inches, I said. That’s more like two feet.’
‘I put a punnet of strawberries on the kitchen sill.’
‘They bring me out in a rash. You’re staying for lunch, I suppose.’
Mummy used to complain that Daddy loved his greenhouse more than his real house. Neighbours’ children’s frisbees and shuttlecocks would get confiscated for landing too near it, never mind that they ganged up on me to vent their displeasure. And no silky mistress was ever cared for as much as the green velvet lawn upon which Daddy lavished vitamins and weedkiller. I remember the day Philip was shown how to mow it. It’s a man’s job, Judith. Women are congenitally incapable of straight lines. End of story. A lesser woman would still be bitter.
‘Did Philip’s birthday card ever arrive, Daddy?’
‘Philip has to lick the Adelaide