CHAPTER 10
Pat was sitting on the early-morning train to London, replaying the events of the evening before at book club.
Dorna Braddon, in full campaign mode, had clearly thought she could butter up the village with lamb shank stew, a bucket of dry couscous, a wheel of Brie, a slab of Cheddar and a platter of Ferrero Rocher.
Pat was incensed. Did Dorna really believe that people’s loyalties, their attachment to the land, their sense of place could be softened with sparkling wine and impressive interior design?
It felt calculated. Patronising, even. The psychology of it grated on her: the attempt to bypass thought with comfort, to grease resistance with indulgence.
Flattery disguised as hospitality. What unsettled her most was how easily it seemed to work.
And what had she done with her dog? There wasn’t a trace of Trigger all evening.
Dorna had also admitted to wanting to murder all of the Save the Seashore group.
There was a wide gap between wanting to murder someone and actually committing the crime, Pat was aware of that.
But had Dorna slipped up? Had she blurted out something she really didn’t want to; had she felt under pressure, under the influence of alcohol and the gaze of the assembled group, who were all hanging on her every word?
Somehow Save the Seashore had something to do with this, thought Pat as she rested her temple against the train window.
She’d always found the movement of a train relaxing, the gentle sideways rocking motion, the rattle over the tracks; it was a place where she did her best thinking.
Save the Seashore had not filed their objections to the plan at the town hall.
Why was that? Dorna had clearly forced the bats to vacate the luxury barn residence that had been their home for decades.
Pat had gone there with Prichard one sunny evening when she first arrived down in Westlinke.
He’d insisted on showing her the bats, if she remembered correctly.
Bat-watching was a hobby of his. It was a decrepit, tumbledown building with a red tin roof that also had a resident owl.
The place was full of straw and the remains of dead mice.
It hadn’t smelt enticing. But they’d spent almost an hour watching the bats and the owl.
And now apparently they were gone. She and Prichard should definitely check to see if that were really the case.
Her telephone rang in her large handbag at her feet. She scrabbled blindly around in the capacious void, feeling old pens and pencils, crumpled receipts, tissues, hair ties, loose change, ChapSticks and keys, until she finally found it.
‘Prichard Knowles!’ declared the voice at the other end.
Announcing himself on the telephone was another of Prichard’s more eccentric habits.
Pat suspected it was left over from the days when he was the Eddie Stobart of the south, and every time he rang his own company it ensured that the receptionist sat up and paid attention.
‘Prichard! How are you?’ she began.
‘What a night!’ he exhaled with excitement before cutting straight to the chase.
‘So, do you think she murdered Henry? She admitted as much just before we left. Oh, and by the way, I forgot my coat, so I went back into the house and I could hear her complaining to Fi about your dislike of the Boho Golf plans. She said, and I quote, “She likes her view from the moral high ground, that’s for sure!” To which Fiona replied, “Why do you think I planted all that leylandii!” Can you believe it?
The two of them having a good old-fashioned bitch.
But anyway, what do you think? I’ve been dying to ask.
I’ve hardly slept. I had dreams about bats and spas and golf clubs. It was actually a nightmare!’
‘Well, I think it’s interesting that she said what she did.’
‘Admitted to murder?’
‘To wanting to murder, that’s different.’
‘Is it, though?’
The phone went dead as the train entered a tunnel.
The window became a dark mirror, and Pat stared at her own reflection, the outside world lost to shadow.
She straightened her glasses and smoothed down her hair with her fingers.
She was in good nick for sixty-two, she thought.
She could still touch her toes. Climb a cliff, swim well; she could probably still do a cartwheel given enough wine and a sunny day if her bloody hip wasn’t irritating her.
She smiled at her reflection and looked herself in the eye.
Come on, Pat, she nodded, it can’t be that hard.
What did happen to Henry Clayton? No one puts on a glamorous suit to jump off a cliff.
A burst of light. The end of the tunnel. Her phone sprang to life and she called Prichard back immediately.
‘Prichard Knowles! As I was saying,’ he continued, ‘I think we need to put Dorna’s name more firmly in the frame, and also Save the Seashore. So Derek, Dorna, the Seashore tribe and the Fin du Monde.’ He was listing them off.
‘I shall do it,’ agreed Pat, ‘as soon as I get home tomorrow morning.’
‘Roger that. Meanwhile I’ll keep digging for proof of the missing bats.’
‘Good idea. Also, there was another shock last night.’
‘Really, what did I miss?’
‘I have to say, Prichard, you surprised me with your take on Sally Rooney’s book. I was amazed by what I was hearing. You seemed very enamoured by the whole thing.’
‘Well, I didn’t actually read a word of it, hahaha!’ He laughed loudly.
‘What?’ Pat pulled the phone away from her ear. ‘But you …’
‘ reviews,’ he replied. ‘That and the back of the book.’
‘You dark horse, Prichard Knowles.’
‘Aren’t we all, Pat? Aren’t we all! Buenos noches!’
Pat checked her watch. It was 9.16 in the morning.
She was on her way up to London for an evening with Sue.
She looked forward to these trips into town.
Not that she was ever bored with living in Westlinke.
She loved the place and the beauty and freedom it gave her, but occasionally what she really wanted was the thrill of familiar streets, the bustle of the city, the greater variety of people to watch, or failing that, a brilliant piece of theatre and a late-night walk back to Islington.
But mostly it was her friend she missed.
Sue was intelligent, she was funny, witty and super smart, and Pat just loved how she felt when she was with her.
Sue made her laugh and think, which was a rare and beguiling combination.
Beguiling enough to give her another reason to leave her husband.
Pat did not want to be married to a man any more.
She could have settled for it, but just to settle when you only got one life didn’t seem right to her.
She wanted fresh air, literally and metaphorically.
After she and Martin divorced amicably, she moved in with Sue.
It worked for a while. But after a year, she realised that as much as she loved Sue, what she wanted more than anything was to live on her own in the countryside, near the sea.
She enjoyed London from time to time, but it was the quiet of the country she longed for.
It had been the same years previously when she had been unhappy practising law and felt the pull to study psychology.
She sat with that feeling for a while. Unpleasant sensations like restlessness, boredom, unhappiness were inconvenient, but people needed to listen to them because they showed what they might need to change about their lives.
She did her courses at evenings and weekends while still working full-time as a solicitor: a counselling diploma, a master’s degree in psychotherapy, then a doctorate in clinical psychology.
Her daughter, Sofia, probably missed out on consistent time with her mother.
Pat knew she hadn’t made a mistake when she married Martin.
He was a gentle soul who was still apparently loving his life in Chiswick without her, playing cricket, going to the pub with his many friends.
He was also a regular for Sunday lunch at Sofia’s house in Battersea.
She and her husband, Adam, did a very good roast chicken, apparently.
Not that Pat had been there for a while.
Last time, she’d criticised Sofia’s frilly pinny, worn while making the gravy, calling it a bit too ‘trad wife’ and derivative for her liking.
The comment sparked an almighty row about feminism, autonomy and Nietzsche’s idea of individuation in marriage.
Sofia leant towards the romantic vision: two people becoming one, a shared identity forged in domestic harmony.
Pat, by contrast, saw that as a slow erasure; she believed in a union of distinct selves, two individuals walking side by side, not merged.
The fight ended with Sofia shouting, ‘I don’t want to end up divorced like you!
’ It was the kind of argument that stayed lodged between them, revisited silently in the early hours when neither could sleep.
Pat was looking forward to seeing Sue. Their affair had begun with heat, snatched kisses, breathless nights, a glorious, grown-up kind of passion, before settling into something gentler: a deep friendship with a side order of ‘lesbian bed death’, where laughter and loyalty gradually edged out lust. Whenever Pat came to town to see her psychotherapy supervisor, she stayed with Sue, and they even shared a bed, but the only joint activity that occurred there these days was grappling with the crossword.