Miles could no longer see her expression with the door open.
‘You don’t think anyone’s got anything on you, do you?’ she asked.
‘No — but I’m a lawyer, aren’t I? There might be people with a grudge. I don’t think this kind of anonymous stuff… I mean, so far it’s all about the other side, but there could be reprisals… I don’t like the way this thing’s going.’
‘Well, that’s politics, Miles,’ said Samantha, openly amused. ‘Dirty business.’
Miles stalked out of the room, but she did not care; her thoughts had already returned to chiselled cheekbones, winged eyebrows and taut, tight abdominal muscles. She could sing along with most of the songs now. She would buy a band T-shirt to wear — and one for Libby too. Jake would be undulating mere yards away from her. It would be more fun than she had had in years.
Howard, meanwhile, was pacing up and down the closed delicatessen with his mobile phone clamped to his ear. The blinds were down, the lights were on, and through the archway in the wall Shirley and Maureen were busy in the soon-to-be-opened café, unpacking china and glasses, talking in excited undertones and half listening to Howard’s almost monosyllabic contributions to his conversation.
‘Yes… mm, hmm… yes…’
‘Screaming at me,’ said Shirley. ‘Screaming and swearing. “Take it bloody down,” she said. I said, “I’m taking it down, Dr Jawanda, and I’ll thank you not to swear at me.”’
‘I’d’ve left it up there for another couple of hours if she’d sworn at me,’ said Maureen.
Shirley smiled. As it happened, she had chosen to go and make herself a cup of tea, leaving the anonymous post about Parminder up on the site for an extra forty-five minutes before removing it. She and Maureen had already picked over the topic of the post until it was ragged and bare; there was plenty of scope for further dissection, but the immediate urge was sated. Instead, Shirley looked ahead, greedily, to Parminder’s reaction to having her secret spilt in public.
‘It can’t have been her who did that post about Simon Price, after all,’ said Maureen.
‘No, obviously not,’ said Shirley, as she wiped over the pretty blue and white china that she had chosen, overruling Maureen’s preference for pink. Sometimes, though not directly involved in the business, Shirley liked to remind Maureen that she still had huge influence, as Howard’s wife.
‘Yes,’ said Howard, on the telephone. ‘But wouldn’t it be better to…? Mm, hmm…’
‘So who do you think it is?’ asked Maureen.
‘I really don’t know,’ said Shirley, in a genteel voice, as though such knowledge or suspicions were beneath her.
‘Someone who knows the Prices and the Jawandas,’ said Maureen.
‘Obviously,’ said Shirley again.
Howard hung up at last.
‘Aubrey agrees,’ he told the two women, waddling through into the café. He was clutching today’s edition of the Yarvil and District Gazette. ‘Very weak piece. Very weak indeed.’
It took the two women several seconds to recollect that they were supposed to be interested in the posthumous article by Barry Fairbrother in the local newspaper. His ghost was so much more interesting.
‘Oh, yes; well, I thought it was very poor when I read it,’ said Shirley, hurriedly catching up.
‘The interview with Krystal Weedon was funny,’ guffawed Maureen. ‘Making out she enjoyed art. I suppose that’s what she calls graffiti-ing the desks.’
Howard laughed. As an excuse to turn her back, Shirley picked up Andrew Price’s spare EpiPen from the counter, which Ruth had dropped into the delicatessen that morning. Shirley had looked up EpiPens on her favourite medical website, and felt fully competent to explain how adrenalin worked. Nobody asked, though, so she put the small white tube away in the cupboard and closed the door as noisily as she could to try and disrupt Maureen’s further witticisms.
The phone in Howard’s huge hand rang.
‘Yes, hello? Oh, Miles, yes… yes, we know all about it… Mum saw it this morning…’ He laughed. ‘Yes, she’s taken it down… I don’t know… I think it was posted yesterday… Oh, I wouldn’t say that… we’ve all known about Bends-Your-Ear for years…’
But Howard’s jocularity faded as Miles talked. After a while he said, ‘Ah… yes, I see. Yes. No, I hadn’t considered it from… perhaps we should get someone to have a look at security…’
The sound of a car in the darkening square outside went virtually unremarked by the three in the delicatessen, but its driver noticed the enormous shadow of Howard Mollison moving behind the cream blinds. Gavin put his foot down, eager to get to