A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [123]
She couldn’t continue talking to Frank, her legs felt as if they were about to give way. ‘I’m really tired. I must go on up and see to the tea,’ she said.
‘You all right, love?’ Frank asked, taking a step closer. ‘You’re as white as a sheet.’
‘I just need to sit down and put my feet up,’ she said, trying to smile.
‘You make Dan go and get you fish and chips tonight,’ he said, patting her paternally on the shoulder. ‘And tuck yerself up in bed nice and early.’
Fifi felt even sicker then. Obviously Frank didn’t realize Dan had gone. She certainly couldn’t bring herself to tell him, not now when she felt so wobbly and tearful.
While Fifi was talking to Frank, Nora Diamond was in the bathroom rinsing out her stockings and she heard what was said. She quickly went into her living room and shut the door before Fifi came up the stairs because she couldn’t face her.
She hung her stockings over the back of a chair to dry, then poured herself a large gin and tonic. She had already taken off her office suit and her girdle, and put on her housecoat, just as she did every evening when she got home from work. Normally she only had a small gin and sat down to watch the news before making her dinner, but tonight she needed a large one to steady her nerves.
Nora had heard the argument between Dan and Fifi on Saturday. She had been cleaning her living room with the door open. When Dan went rushing down the stairs she looked out of the window and saw him hurrying up the street with a bag over his shoulder.
Nora heard Fifi crying several times over the weekend. Her heart kept telling her to go up there and offer some comfort, but her head told her it was none of her business and that if Fifi needed help or someone to talk to, she’d call on her.
This morning Nora had watched Fifi from the window as she went off to work. She had looked elegant in a checked blue jacket, tight skirt and high-heeled shoes, her shiny blonde hair bouncing on her shoulders. The sight brought back memories of when her own heart was broken, yet she’d still done her face and hair and marched out to meet the world head on.
Nora liked both Dan and Fifi, so she didn’t want to apportion blame to either of them. Whatever the causes of the breakup, it was a terrible shame. They’d been so good together.
But it wasn’t Fifi and Dan’s problems that bothered her tonight. It was John Bolton’s death.
Mrs Witherspoon was better than the BBC at broadcasting trouble and disaster. Nora had only gone into the shop for a quarter of tea on her way home, and was immediately regaled with the news.
She was deeply shocked and horrified, but she had to control her emotions and react in the way Mrs Witherspoon expected of snooty Miss Diamond, a woman who was as unyielding and cold as her namesake.
In twelve years of living in Dale Street, Nora had learned that when her neighbours were puzzled by someone new, in the absence of fact, they invented something which suited them. Yvette was rumoured to have been a member of the French Resistance, Stan was sometimes a Polish war hero, but more often an illegal immigrant. When Fifi first appeared it was said she was a model, though this rumour soon died as Fifi candidly told the truth about herself.
Nora had been amused when she discovered that she was supposed to be a doctor who had been struck off. She could only imagine this was because in her first week here she’d given first aid to a man who had been knocked down by a car. In fact her limited medical knowledge had been gained during the war, when she was a volunteer nurse’s aide in a hospital in Dorset.
She had chosen not to dispel this myth, however, because it proved to be a good smokescreen.
John Bolton was the only person who knew the truth about her. He had helped her when she had absolutely no one else to turn to, but by mutual agreement they had never revealed their connections with one another. Even Vera, his wife, knew nothing of it.
Nora sat back in her chair and closed