Faith - Lesley Pearse [172]
‘I take it Peggie was your reason for not going to the police too?’ Stuart said with a touch of sarcasm.
Ted blushed. ‘Yes, she was,’ he said, hanging his head. ‘But not the way you are thinking. Let me explain how it was at the time.’
12 May was a beautiful day. Ted had been working out in the garden all afternoon. Peggie was indoors sitting by the patio doors doing a jigsaw on a large tray across her wheelchair.
Around five it became chilly, and he went in to prepare the evening meal. He put his head round the sitting-room door to ask Peggie if she’d like a cup of tea, and how she was getting on with the jigsaw. She ignored both questions so he went back into the kitchen.
Once the meal was ready and the table laid in the dining part of the kitchen, he turned on the television there, and went back into the sitting room to get Peggie.
‘Turn the sound up,’ she snapped at him as he wheeled her up to the table.
It was one of those moments that he had had so often in the last few years, when he fervently wished the riding accident had killed her. She hadn’t been the easiest of women to live with even before that. She was domineering, insensitive and self-centred and if she didn’t get her way she sulked for days on end. But she had been an asset to him in his business, the perfect hostess, a great cook, and it was she who was responsible for bringing so many clients to his firm of surveyors. She’d been a good mother too; both Robert and Joan had done very well at school and gone on to university. It was only when they left home for good, moving down to London to better-paid work than they could get in Scotland, that Ted realized he and Peggie had nothing left in common. She lived for riding, while he liked reading, painting and gardening.
The accident changed everything. Peggie had always cared about her appearance; she was an attractive, slender woman with long brown hair, and she wore her clothes with style. But once she knew she would never walk again she lost all interest in the way she looked. She resented that Ted had sold their beautiful old house in South Street, right in the centre of St Andrews, even though it was obvious she could never live there, and she said she hated the bungalow.
Robert and Joan had nothing but praise for it. They remarked on how the sun came in all day and they thought the view of the golf course beyond the garden was wonderful, for the old house had only had a small garden and no view at all.
But all Peggie did was complain. Ted understood her frustration at not being able to walk, but she didn’t even try to do things for herself. There was a constant whinge of ‘That must be done’, or ‘How many more times must I point out you haven’t done so and so yet?’ When he had to go out to do a survey, she was on to him the moment he got back. If he went into his study to write a report, she interrupted him. There was no reason why she couldn’t make a cup of tea herself, iron a few clothes sitting down, or even cook simple meals, for everything in the kitchen had been designed for a person in a wheelchair, but she refused point-blank, as if she were totally incapacitated.
Her weight had ballooned up to fourteen stone since returning home from hospital, and most days she didn’t even bother to brush her hair. She would stay in her nightdress if Ted didn’t insist he helped her dress. None of the carers he took on to help lasted long, for she was as nasty to them as she was to him. Even Robert’s and Joan’s visits home were getting less frequent. Peggie did always improve when they were there, but she morally blackmailed them, making them feel guilty they lived and worked so far away.
Ted turned up the sound on the television just as the local news began.
‘A woman was found dead this afternoon in a house near Crail in Fife,’ the pretty blonde newscaster said, and even before a shot