Kissed a sad goodbye - Deborah Crombie [151]
“No, it wasn’t like that,” Lewis said tiredly, and Gordon saw lines in his father’s face he hadn’t noticed before. “I never meant to hurt you—I never meant to hurt Annabelle—”
“Then why did you plan to cheat her?”
“How did you know about that?” Lewis said quietly.
“You’re a fucking hypocrite, Lewis Finch. After you spent years drumming the importance of integrity into me, it turns out you’re no better than all the rest. Annabelle told me that night what you’d done—”
“You wouldn’t understand. It wasn’t about Annabelle. It wasn’t even about the business, except as a means to an end.”
“And what end was that?”
“I wanted to take something from him, something he loved as much as I loved Irene, and Edwina, and he always cared more for the business and his bloody family name than he did people. But it’s nothing to do with you—”
“Do you mean William Hammond? Did you kill Annabelle to get back at William Hammond?” Gordon was shouting, past caring if anyone heard.
“What?” Lewis sounded utterly baffled. “What are you talking about?”
“When she came to see you, she told you the deal was off, didn’t she? And she told you she loved me—she said she meant to prove she loved me—and you killed her!”
“You think I killed Annabelle?” Lewis spoke slowly, as if trying to get it clear in his own head, and for the first time Gordon felt doubt. “But I thought you … When she left that night I thought it was you she was going to see.… I was afraid …”
Gordon stared at his father. “Are you saying that all this time you thought it was me?” His throat tightened with a wave of relief he wasn’t sure he could allow himself to feel. “And I thought … they said it was someone who loved her, someone who laid her body out so carefully, and I couldn’t believe that you’d killed her and just left her.…”
“Laid her body out?”
“They said she looked serene.…” Gordon saw that his father was no longer listening.
“I should have seen it from the beginning,” Lewis said softly, his gaze still far away. A gust swirled dust and rubbish round their ankles, and in the west lightning arced from cloud to cloud.
“Seen what?”
Lewis yanked open the door of the Mercedes. “This time I’m not going to let him get away with it.”
“What are you talking about? Let who get away with it?” As Gordon reached for his father, the slamming car door brushed the tips of his fingers. “Dad!”
But Lewis was already reversing out of the parking space, and the spinning tires threw grit into Gordon’s eyes as the car accelerated away.
CHAPTER 15
Trade-union and community campaigns to prevent this decline were transmuted in the 1980s into campaigns to redevelop the area in the best interests of local people, to encourage investment which would bring more jobs, to improve transport, schooling and health care. Alongside these concerns was a concern that the community should not lose touch with its roots.
Eve Hostettler, from Memories of
Childhood on the Isle of Dogs, 1870–1970
“We could use a bit of rain, old girl,” said George Brent. He was on his knees in the vegetable patch in his back garden, with Sheba sitting beside him, watching him as if he might turn up something tasty. “Marrows are getting to be as scrawny as I am, in this blasted heat.”
Sheba lifted her sleek black muzzle, sniffing the air, and George straightened his back a bit as he sniffed, too. His nose wasn’t what it used to be, but he could smell rain, and the sky to the west looked thunderous. “Rheumatism’s playing up—that’s a good sign,” he added as he stood and worked the stiffness from his joints. “Maybe we’d best pick them ripe tomatoes, just in case.” He was proud of his tomatoes—he started them early in the spring, on the kitchen windowsill, and bragged on them to the neighbors whenever the opportunity arose. Reaching for the basket he’d left on the grass, he bent to the task and had it half filled when he heard a whistle and a shout from the house.
“Dad. What are you doing out here in the garden with a storm coming on, you stubborn old goat?”
“Eh, lad, come and give me a hand,” called