in the brain, like being frightened by a dog. Something can trigger it years later.'
'He's a psychiatrist as well as a heart surgeon now, is he?'
'Was there something?'
'Ross, please. We've talked about this before. I've been through a tough time and now I'm getting better.' She forced a smile.
'Mum, you've started not looking at people when you're talking to them. Your hands shake. You don't get better by taking more pills. Someone's got to be honest enough to tell you that.'
Neither of them spoke as she drove him home. It was meant to have been a relaxing evening but instead it had ended with Jenny feeling betrayed. David had primed Ross to confront her and suggested the bistro as the place most likely to take the sting out of her own son telling her she was a basket case. She pulled up on the road outside her sterile former home, fighting a losing battle against anger she could no longer contain.
'How dare your father do this to me?'
Ross sat silently in the passenger seat.
'You know what his problem is? He feels guilty. He wants me off his conscience so he can pretend everything's wonderful in his bourgeois bloody life. Well, it isn't. He's making a fool of himself with that girl. She's young enough to be his daughter, for Christ's sake.'
'Mum, that's not fair.'
'I know. I should be a bloody saint who never gets angry, never criticizes anyone, never shows any emotion.'
'There's no danger of that.'
Ross slammed out of the car and ran towards the house. Jenny wound down the window and called after him, but her apology came too late. He was already through the door. Lost to her.
She shed angry tears as she gunned home along empty roads, throwing the Golf around the steep corners on the valley road, grinding through the gears and stamping on the brakes. Her anger with David spilled over into fury at the world at large. Everyone wanted something from her, she was surrounded by people passing judgement. It was as if, resenting her authority, they had to do all in their power to diminish her. Even her father had managed to lash out from his senility to land a sickening blow.
No more. She was Jenny Cooper, Severn Vale District Coroner, a woman who had every right to demand respect.
She pulled onto the old cart track at the side of the house as the last of the late evening light bled away. She couldn't care less if her insecure ex-husband disapproved of the way she lived or had convinced himself she was a breakdown waiting to happen. That was his problem. When Debbie was cooing over a baby he'd be desperate for an intelligent woman to talk to. There'd be no more dirty weekends for a long time, just a lot of dirty nappies. There was some justice in the world.
The creak of the gate's rusty hinge echoed off the front of the cottage. The air was dead still and humid, not a hint of breeze to stir the leaves. She stopped halfway up the path and groped in her handbag for her keys. Where the hell were they? She delved beneath the jumble of make-up, pills, purses and assorted hair brushes. She checked the zip compartments. Nothing. She shook the bag to hear the rattle that would tell her they were in there, but somehow she lost her grip and dropped it, scattering the contents over the ground.
Damn! Damn! Stooping down to snatch them up something caught her eye: flashes of colour on the flagstones. In the dim light she made out a pattern of pink and yellow chalk lines: hopscotch squares and numbers drawn in a childish hand.
Her head spun and her heart exploded. She grabbed her car keys and ran.
Chapter 8
Jenny sped along the three miles of winding lanes, careered down the narrow dirt track through the woods and juddered to a halt in Steve's yard. The stone farmhouse, still rented out to the weekenders from London, stood in darkness. Steve's ancient Land Rover was parked outside the barn in which he'd improvised a flat in the upper storey, but there was no light at the window. She groped for the torch she kept in the glove box. It glowed dully for a second, then died. Jenny flung it over her shoulder. Too frightened to leave the safety of her car to stumble across the yard and pick her way through the blackness of the barn, she leaned on the