16 #2
‘Oh, I see all right,’ Jennifer shouted at her mother.
‘You never loved him, did you? It would suit you down to the ground if some book came out that belittled him, wouldn’t it?
As if he didn’t have to put up with that sort of thing all his life, and it’s still happening now that he’s dead and gone and can’t defend himself! Well, I’ll do it, even if you won’t.’
‘Jen!’ Monica said, but already her daughter was slamming her way out of the door.
Monica sank back against the sofa and poured herself another drink. But she was already beginning to weep – weary, helpless tears that trickled down her face and tickled as they dripped off the end of her chin.
‘They can’t see us until half past four,’ Caroline said as she slipped her telephone back on to the coffee table, next to her steaming mug of coffee.
She had been talking to her solicitors in town, who were fully booked up with appointments until then.
‘But they say we can have a quiet room to ourselves, and someone will bring the cardboard boxes up out of storage for us. Hope that will suit you?’
‘Oh sure, I don’t mind waiting,’ Lyssa assured her.
‘Splendid. You can join me for lunch in the restaurant here while we pass the time. You can be my guest – and they do quite an extensive menu, really, considering practically none of their clientele have all their own teeth any more. It’s not all pureed mush!’
Lyssa nearly choked on her coffee. It was always a bonus when the person you were interviewing had a wicked sense of humour.
‘I’m sure it’ll be delicious. And if you wanted to do any shopping in town before the appointment, we can do that – my car’s quite comfortable and easy to get into and out of? ’
‘Sounds perfect,’ Caroline said.
Neville had learned patience a long time ago and, after parking in a shady spot, he was reading the news on his tablet.
Occasionally he would do a crossword puzzle or a sudoku to mix things up a bit, but he was relieved nevertheless when, two hours later, he saw Lyssa’s car emerge from the entrance to the private retirement village across the road.
He noted that she had a passenger and wondered who she was talking to now about Amelia Montrose. At least her white-haired companion didn’t look likely to cause him much trouble, unlike some he could think of.
He followed behind her as she toured around to find a parking space and was lucky enough to find one for himself, not too far from her own.
He made sure to stick to the deeper shadows as he trailed along behind the pair on the pavement, sometimes turning into a shop doorway if it looked as if he might be spotted.
But mostly they wandered obliviously into and out of some antiques shops, a few charity shops and lastly a café, where they had tea and cakes.
They were clearly killing time and when, at last, they entered a discreet building tucked away up a small alley, he sensed that the real reason for their getting together was about to be revealed.
Casually he strolled past the entrance, where a shiny brass plaque told him that a firm of solicitors resided within. He nodded.
Interesting.
Inside, Caroline was greeted with genuine warmth and respect by a man who didn’t look that much younger than herself, and they were shown into a clearly little-used back room, that held a rather large table and several mismatched chairs.
Waiting on it were three large cardboard boxes. The man, who Caroline addressed as ‘Bertie, sweetie’, asked if they wanted tea or coffee, which they both declined, then with a gentle smile left them alone.
Caroline watched him leave with a sigh. ‘Bertie’s been my solicitor for years. Always had a soft spot for me, bless him.’ Then she shrugged and turned to the boxes. ‘Right, then,’ she said firmly. ‘Let’s have a rootle.’
Lyssa, who was itching to get her hands on the boxes’ contents, didn’t demur.
It didn’t take her long to find the letters that Caroline had referred to, which did indeed provide proof that Monty wrote the songs – including a letter from Glen himself to the manager, saying how pleased he was with ‘Monty’s new verse for “Lying Lips”’.
She also found some photographs of Luke Raines and the Lucky Cuckoos that had never been published before, which were a decided bonus.
Fresh material was a biographer’s dream!
Caroline agreed to let her use the photographs, and ‘Bertie, sweetie’ was even obliging enough to allow Lyssa to use their photocopier for the letters. Not surprisingly, Caroline didn’t want to let the originals leave the building.
Half an hour later, Lyssa, clutching the precious photocopies in a large A4 brown envelope protectively across her chest, escorted Caroline back to her car, and then dropped her off back at the retirement community.
The worst of the rush hour towards Oxford was probably over, but Lyssa knew that it would still be clogging the main roads for a while yet, so she indicated left, and turned off down a single-track country lane that she knew was a shortcut between the two main arterial roads leading back to the city.
Here, the hedges were high and bordered deep ditches on either side of the rather potholed tarmac, and in the fields either side summer wheat and barley showed green, with the occasional splash of scarlet, where the wild poppies had grown through.
She had the window down to let in the warm summer air, and she briefly heard the trilling notes of a skylark ascending as she passed by it.
Sensing movement in her rear-view mirror, she looked up and was surprised to see a large black 4x4 bearing down on her fast. Immediately, she felt a sense of panic.
Did they think that they could squeeze past her and overtake her on this single lane?
Or, more likely, someone was in a hurry to get home and was trying to chivvy her into going faster.
She hated it when people got right on her bumper like that.
She was just looking around for a flat spot on the grass verge wide enough for her to pull over to let the road hog pass when she felt the 4x4 hit her.
It nudged her back bumper hard, making her head whiplash forward and back.
She cried out in pain and surprise. Then it hit her again, and this time she let out an instinctive scream and hit the brakes, expecting the driver behind her to do the same.
She’d never had a prang before, but she knew the drill – you pulled over, exchanged mutual insurance information, and . . .
The 4x4 hit again, this time even harder. And then accelerated, shunting her forward. And suddenly Lyssa knew that this wasn’t a simple case of a run-in with a careless driver; this was someone deliberately trying to force her off the road.
She gave a muffled sob of fear, wishing Kyle was with her to tell her what to do. But he wasn’t, and she needed to do something.
Think! She had to think!
With deep ditches lining either side of the road, the last thing she wanted was to run into them and maybe overturn her car.
But she didn’t want to try and speed away either.
She knew she wasn’t any kind of a skilled driver, and knew that the more she increased her speed, the higher her chances were of sustaining a serious injury if she did indeed crash.
So she began to brake even more. It was counter-intuitive, for she wanted nothing to do with the maniac in the car behind her, but what else could she do?
With the sun in her eyes and shining off the windshield of the vehicle behind her, she couldn’t see who was behind the wheel, and had no idea how many people were in there.
What if it were two men, or three or four, all intent on robbing her and stealing her car?
Or worse? She wanted to rifle in her bag to get to her mobile and call the police, but didn’t dare take her hands off the wheel as once again she was rammed, making it almost impossible for her to keep on a straight course.
The next time she was hit, it was not square on as before, but on an angle to the left side of her bumper and, with a sickening sense of inevitability, Lyssa felt her car begin to slew sideways across the road.
So far, she hadn’t met any oncoming cars, but if any came now, she was right across the road, and they’d be bound to crunch into her, sideways on.
There was no way she could right her direction again, so instead she frantically kept turning the wheel in the direction of her spin, hoping that she might be able to get past the 4x4 and speed off back towards Woodstock before the driver chasing her could do their own turn and follow.
But even as she thought it, the 4x4 began to turn with her, and Lyssa knew that the driver meant to shunt her over into the ditch.
With a sense of despair, she braced herself for the impact, hoping and praying that her car wouldn’t overturn completely.
She didn’t think that there would be any water in the ditch, but the mere thought that there might be, and that she might end up upside down and trapped in a partly submerged car, had her once more sobbing with fear and shock.
And then suddenly there was a flash of blue and the blaring sound of an angry horn, and she could see another car coming towards her fast, flashing its lights.
It must have been following on behind the 4x4, but it wasn’t stopping, as she was expecting, but rather bearing right down on the vehicle that was attacking her.
And because the 4x4 had followed her manoeuvre, it was now partly sideways on across the road and couldn’t avoid a collision as the blue car hit it with an awful sound of crunching metal.