heard a female voice calling out to Harry to let her in. Jan frowned, puzzled. Who was this woman who was familiar enough to be calling him by his Christian name and expecting to be let into the house? Had he recovered from the ending of their marriage so quickly that he had already replaced her with someone else? Then Jan heard the voice again, calling out, ‘Are you all right, Harry? I know you’re in, I can smell cooking. Are you feeling down because of what happened with your wife? Do you want me to fetch the Reverend to come and talk to you?’
Jan bristled then. So this was a member of the congregation, wasting no time in ingratiating herself with Harry. Saw herself as the next Mrs Clayton, did she? Well, Jan was going to put a spanner in the works!
She unlocked the door, opened it and addressed the woman with a brusque, ‘What can I do for you?’
The visitor was roughly in her late-fifties. Hanging down below her coat Jan could see the bottom of a wrap-around apron. Her greying hair was scraped under a scarf tied turban-style. She eyed Jan in amazement and demanded, ‘Who are you?’
Jan stiffened and responded indignantly, ‘It’s you who should be telling me who you are, being’s it’s my door you’re calling at.’
The woman looked shocked. ‘Your door! Oh . . . so you’re Mr Clayton’s wife. But what are you doing here?’ She sneered at Jan in disgust. ‘I understood he had turned you out because he caught you fornicating with another man in his bed.’
Jan was very conscious that she was still wearing the clothes she’d been in the last few days and hoped the other woman wasn’t standing close enough to notice. She appraised her visitor, looking her up and down. ‘You don’t look like a woman who believes everything she hears. It was all a misunderstanding that has now been resolved.’
The other woman exclaimed, ‘Oh, I see.’ She looked most put out. ‘But Harry didn’t mention he wouldn’t be needing our help any more last night at the Church Council meeting.’
She should have known that the do-gooding widows or spinsters among the congregation would have been fussing and faffing over Harry as soon as they caught wind of his misfortune, thought Jan. She planted a smile on her face. ‘Well, you have my deepest thanks for looking after him so well while I’ve been away.’
‘And seeing to any washing he needed doing, and cooking his evening meal ready for him to warm up when he came in from work,’ the other woman told her.
Jan thought that the vicar was as cunning as a fox. Why would Harry need to take his heathen wife back when all his housekeeping was being taken care of so conveniently? No fear then of him disentangling himself from the church, and the vicar losing one of his valued followers. ‘Well, thank you for that too,’ Jan said stiffly. ‘You will excuse me, won’t you? I was just making my breakfast and I risk burning it.’
‘Oh, yes, of course. I’ll be seeing you again tonight then, Mrs Clayton, when I attend the Bible class here with the others.’
I shouldn’t count on it, thought Jan as she shut the door and locked it again afterwards.
She turned to make her way over to the stove, hoping the contents hadn’t spoiled during the time she had been distracted. She meant to knock on the bathroom door and tell Glen to hurry up when out of the corner of her eye she spotted a movement and spun her head to see a strange man standing outside the bathroom door. He looked jumpy and extremely worried. It took her several moments to realise the stranger could only be Glen. What she saw was a hollow-cheeked, pale-skinned man in his early-fifties, though he could be younger given the harshness of the life he had been leading for the last few years. But then, a few home-cooked dinners would soon put some meat on his bones and fill out his cheeks. To her surprise, Jan thought him even now to be quite a handsome man. Out of his ragged dirty clothes and dressed in clean ones, and once she had tidied his shorn-off hair, she wouldn’t be at all embarrassed to be seen out in public with him.
‘My God,’ she exclaimed, ‘what a transformation! If I didn’t know it was you, I would never think for a minute you were