The Long Call (Two Rivers #1) - Ann Cleeves Page 0,31

though I was always glad when he wasn’t. I can be a bit of a potty mouth and I could sense disapproval oozing from every pore whenever I spoke. We’d rock back to number twenty after a couple of beers and the table would be laid and there’d be the most amazing food. It was what Simon was born for, cooking. Like painting is what I was born for.’

She stopped for a moment. The coffee must have been cold but she sipped it to provide a pause in the story, a beat. ‘That night it was paella. The most amazing seafood.We were drinking something light and white that slipped down like lemonade. Caz and Ed decamped to the sitting room. Usually Simon did all the clearing up himself, but I’d had enough of playing gooseberry and I stayed behind to help. We’d both had a lot to drink and we started to talk.’

She stopped again, but Matthew didn’t prompt her. He sensed this was worth waiting for.

‘He asked out of the blue if I wanted kids. I said I was too selfish. Nothing mattered more than my work. I made some crap joke, like That’s why I’m still single. He said he’d always wanted to be a dad, but that would never happen now. He didn’t deserve a happy family. He’d had a wife that he’d loved but he’d let her go. By that point we’d loaded the dishwasher and he was washing the pans that were too big to go in. He turned away from the sink with a scourer in his hand. Sometimes I think I’d be much better dead. I said something crap again. Something like But you can’t kill yourself. We’d miss the Friday night feasts. He said suicide wasn’t an option. Not yet. He still had work to do.’

‘What sort of work?’

‘I don’t know. I was pretty pissed by then, but he was seriously weirding me out. Like he had some kind of Messiah complex. Like there was something he was meant to achieve and nobody else could do it. I left him to the pans and went to bed. The living room door was open and I could tell Caz and Ed were having a deep and meaningful and I didn’t want to intrude.’ She set down her mug. ‘But I could almost believe it, you know. That he was special. He had a kind of charisma, a lack of bullshit and compromise. I could imagine him as one of those gurus that gullible people follow without question. I could really believe that he had a mission in life and he didn’t care what other people thought; nobody was going to get in the way.’

Matthew suddenly pictured Walden as a very different man from the helpless, hopeless rough sleeper described by Caroline Preece. He wondered which view was the more accurate. ‘I don’t suppose you saw Simon at all on your travels yesterday afternoon?’ His voice was light.

There was a brief hesitation, hardly noticeable. ‘Of course not. I think I might have mentioned it, don’t you, if I’d seen him just before he died?’ She’d turned away before speaking to look out of the long window, so he couldn’t see her face.

Chapter Ten

WHEN JEN LEFT HOPE STREET, she tried phoning Matthew but there was no reply. The sharp sunshine and the daffs blowing in the little garden next to the car park made her think of new beginnings. Spring. They also made her remember that time was passing and she wanted a man in her life before it was too late. Sometimes Ella brought a lad home and although the pair were well behaved when Jen was around, she sensed their adolescent lust. The touching and the easy intimacy provoked an envy that shocked her. She thought she could kill for that: a good man to hold her hand when they were out walking, to stroke her neck when she’d had a bad day, to lie next to her at night and screw her senseless as the dawn came. She knew she tried too hard with the men she met, was too desperate and she scared them off. And she still hadn’t met a good man, at least not one who was right for her, who could keep her interest after a couple of nights.

She sighed and phoned Ross. ‘I’ve just finished with Caroline Preece.’

‘Anything?’

‘Only that Walden liked yoga and meditation. He volunteered in the caff at the Woodyard. In Caroline’s eyes that made