A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [134]
Dan nodded miserably. ‘I walked out on Saturday,’ he admitted. ‘I was so mad with her it seemed the only thing to do. I got a letter from her this morning at the site though, saying she wanted to make it up. But then I expect you know all this?’
Frank was deeply shocked. ‘No, I didn’t know. Fifi hasn’t said a word to me,’ he said. ‘But it explains why everything was so quiet over the weekend. Now, don’t worry about her not being here, she probably didn’t expect you to come round immediately. She likely went off for a coffee and a chat after work with one of the office girls. Women do that when they’re upset.’
‘But she might have known I’d come straight here after I got the letter,’ Dan said, his voice cracking as if struggling with his emotions.
Frank sensed Dan was close to breaking down. He looked as if he hadn’t eaten or slept in days, so he told him to sit down and poured him a brandy.
‘I’m going to make you something to eat,’ he said firmly. ‘You look all in, so you’d best have a bath and get into bed. She’ll be home soon, and as I remember with June, the best way to make up is with a cuddle.’
An hour later, Frank was back in his chair watching television. He’d made Dan a quick meal of tinned stewed steak, peas and boiled potatoes, then packed him off for a bath. But it was after nine now, and Fifi still wasn’t home. He couldn’t help but be a bit worried himself as Fifi had often said she didn’t like going out after dark without Dan. It also seemed unlikely that a coffee or cup of tea after work with someone from the office would turn into a night out.
Dan had told him what the row had been about, and said he had really thought Fifi would have a better life without him.
Frank had always been of the opinion that Fifi was like a fish out of water around here. Losing her baby, and then the trauma of Angela’s death, was enough to shake the most solid of marriages. But whatever Fifi’s parents thought of Dan, he was a decent, hardworking lad, and just to be with them both was to see how much they loved each other. So he gave Dan a little pep talk about all marriages having their sticky patches, and told him that he and June had blazing rows in the first couple of years they were married. ‘But it’s a mistake to walk out,’ he informed Dan. ‘You see, that leaves it all up in the air, even when you do come back and apologize. So the next time you have words, you drag all the old stuff out too. What you’ve got to do is talk it through properly. Fifi’s been through a lot lately, you have to make allowances for that.’
They moved on to talk about other things after that and Frank told Dan about John Bolton.
‘Jesus!’ Dan exclaimed, his face blanching. ‘That will have sent her right round the twist. No wonder she’s not in, she probably thinks they’ll be coming for her next.’
Frank had thought that was a daft remark at the time, but now he was sitting here on his own, his ears cocked for the sound of Fifi’s key in the door, it didn’t seem quite so ridiculous. People were saying that John had been killed because he knew too much about what went on at number 11. Fifi could have been spooked by that – after all, she was to be a key witness at Alfie’s trial. He wondered if he ought to go upstairs and suggest Dan ring her parents in Bristol to see if she’d gone there.
‘No, that’ll just alarm him,’ he murmured to himself. ‘And Fifi wouldn’t want her parents to know she and Dan were having problems.’
The darkness seemed to press in on Fifi as she lay huddled up under the blanket. She’d been doing all right until it got dark; after a spell of crying and feeling panicky and sorry for herself, she’d forced herself to climb the bars of the cage for some exercise. She felt quite proud of herself for having managed to swing hand over hand right along the top of the cage like a monkey, and she even did handstands to pass the time.
The exercise had made her more focused about all this too. She’d lain on the mattress, staring up at the rain on the barn window high above her, and carefully analysed everything she knew.
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