disappeared behind The Times.
Idly she picked up the Melsham Gazette. The headline on the front page almost jumped out at her. ‘Mayor denies financial involvement in Melsham Construction.’ She skimmed through it with a sinking feeling in her stomach. It was happening, the avalanche she had been expecting. Now it would rush on and on until all their lives lay in ruins. For herself she hardly cared, but it would affect so many people: the family first and foremost, the Youngers, Donald, George’s employees, the credibility of local government, because she was sure there had been coercion, bribes, favours done and received. Maggie Doughty wouldn’t rest until every bit of dirt had been dug out and splashed all over the front page, and then there’d be an outcry and the council would be forced to hold an enquiry. And supposing she was questioned? Could she lie? Did she want to lie?
‘George, have you seen this?’
He put down his paper and glanced across at her. She was holding the folded Gazette out to him, tapping it with her other hand. He grabbed it and scanned it quickly. ‘The bitch. God knows why, but she’s got it in for me. How did she manage to persuade Toby Greenbank to publish it? He told me the story wasn’t worth risking his advertising revenue. The hardware shop alone spends thousands, taking whole pages at a time.’
‘Is it true? Did you award Zita Younger the prize for the fountain to silence Colin?’
‘Of course not. The idea is ridiculous. It was a committee decision. Oh, she’s clever saying I’m denying a rumour, a rumour she started, I shouldn’t wonder. God in heaven, what are they trying to prove?’
‘That you’re dishonest, perhaps?’ she asked sweetly.
Rita picked her way over the debris to the door of her mother’s poky little hovel in Farrier’s Court. The workmen had already begun to demolish the old premises ready for the new shopping mall, though as yet Dora’s house remained untouched. The ground about it was littered with broken bricks, lumps of plaster, strange pieces of iron, broken chairs, even an anvil. The constant coming and going had churned it up into rutted mud, but Mum would be enjoying it all, laughing and joking with the workmen, making them cups of tea and showing more of her ample bosom than was decent for a woman nearing sixty. She didn’t act like sixty, in spite of her rheumatism. ‘Comes with taking me knickers off in draughty places,’ she’d said once and laughed coarsely. She loved shocking people. ‘Give a dog a bad name and he’ll live up to it,’ was another of her sayings.
The council, having purchased the land, had promised Dora, the only occupier left in Farrier’s Court, that she would be rehoused, though it would inevitably mean a higher rent. Dora, who had a philosophical attitude to almost everything, was unconcerned. ‘They can’t get blood from a stone,’ she had told Rita.
When Rita let herself in, Dora was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup in front of her and a bottle of gin at her elbow, a cigarette dangling from her lips and the Gazette in her hand. A pair of wire-framed spectacles were perched on the end of her nose. She looked up as Rita came in, dumping a bag of groceries on the table. ‘So, it’s you.’
Rita laughed. ‘Who d’you think it was, Rudolph Valentino?’ She went to see her mother every week, just to make sure she was all right. She did a bit of cleaning and washing and fetched in the groceries and then they would sit over a cup of tea or a glass of gin, sometimes both, and exchange whatever gossip was going.
‘Who’s this Maggie Doughty?’ Dora asked. ‘She’s certainly stirring it up for George Kennett. This is the second article I’ve seen lately. What’s she got ag’in him?’
‘Dunno, but Colin always swore to get even with Mr Kennett, so he might just have cooked up something, but dragging Zita’s name into it i’n’t right. She won that competition fair and square.’
‘But there’s no smoke without fire.’ Dora reached out for a bottle of gin and poured them each a glass. ‘You’ve got to find out what’s goin’ on. Nip it in the bud…’
‘Ma, Zita’s twenty-one, she isn’t going to take any notice of me. And Colin certainly won’t listen.’
‘They’ve got to be made to…’ There was a long pause before she spoke again and then it was accompanied by a deep sigh.