The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [136]
“He’s been cock-a-hoop since you phoned him in hospital,” she said accusingly. “What did you say to him?”
The demons are dead and buried… “Nothing much. Just that we’d all survived and MacKenzie had run away with his tail between his legs.”
Mum was peeling some potatoes at the sink. “Why should that please him? He wanted the beastly man dead or behind bars, not free to do the same thing to someone else. I can’t understand why you’re all so unconcerned about him getting away. Aren’t you worried that he’ll murder some other poor woman?”
I watched her busy hands and debated the merit of truth over lies. “Not really,” I said honestly. “It’s the age of the global village. The story’s gone round the world with his photograph, so he’ll be found very quickly if he’s alive. There are too many people looking for him.”
She turned to look at me. “If?”
“Wishful thinking,” I said.
“Mmm.” A pause. “Perhaps that explains your father. He’s behaving like a schoolboy at the moment.”
“Being on a farm reminds him of home.”
“Except the last time he operated a tractor was twenty years ago,” she said. “We employed a workforce for ploughing…Dad was the boss man who drove a four-by-four and checked the furrows were straight.” She held my gaze for a moment before returning to the potatoes. “But I’m sure you’re right. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”
ONE AFTERNOON, Jess said she was going to visit Lily and asked if I’d like to go, too. I knew Jess went to the nursing home regularly, even though Lily had no idea who she was, but this was the first time she’d invited me to accompany her. I went out of curiosity—a desire to put a face to the personality I’d come to know—and I’m glad I did. Even though the fires that had driven her were now absent, Lily’s beauty was so much sweeter than her daughter’s. It proved nothing—for I firmly believe that looks are skin deep—but I did understand when she smiled why Jess was so fond of her. I’m sure the same bemused affection had been in Frank Derbyshire’s smile when his daughter had quietly taken his hand in hers, and stroked it without saying a word…
IF I LIVE to be a hundred I’ll never understand my mother’s gift for socializing. When she and my father first arrived in London, they were on the Zimbabwean exiles’ dinner party list within hours of the plane landing. My father complained about it—“I hate being trapped at tables with people I’m never going to meet again”—but underneath he was secretly pleased. He had more in common with ex-pat farmers who had experienced Mugabe’s ethnic cleansing at first hand than he did with the London chattering classes who could only talk about their second homes in France.
Suddenly, visitors started appearing at Barton House. I knew a few of them through Peter, but most I’d never seen before, and I certainly wasn’t on dropping-in terms with any of them. The first time anyone appeared—a jolly couple in their sixties from Peter’s end of the village—Jess was in the kitchen and, despite her best efforts to melt into the background, my mother drew her back out again. I warned her she’d scare Jess away if she wasn’t careful, but it didn’t happen. Jess turned up each evening with Dad, and seemed content to be quietly included in whatever was happening, albeit on the fringes.
On a few occasions Julie, Paula and their children came too. Even old Harry Sotherton put in an appearance, and had to be driven home by my father after consuming more ale than he was used to. It reminded me so much of life in Zimbabwe where meals were regularly stretched to accommodate anyone who was passing. Jess was never going to be the life and soul of a party, but to see her held in genuine affection by the people who knew her did her nothing but good.
Peter became the most regular visitor. I never did find out what my mother said to him, but she asked me to make the first move by inviting him over. I decided to go to his house and, if necessary, slap a MacKenzie embargo on him, but the subject