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Back Jumping the Queue
Chapters (34)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Author
  3. Also by Mary Wesley
  4. Jumping the Queue
  5. 1
  6. 2
  7. 3
  8. 4
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  10. 6
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  31. 27
  32. Also available from Vintage
  33. Also available from Vintage
  34. Also available from Vintage

He let himself out by the kitchen door, closing it gently. If he walked fast he could catch the 11.30 to London. Then who knows, he thought. Who knows where my dollars, deutschmarks and francs will take me. From London I can take the tube to Heathrow, into the world, back to life. Walking fast across country, Hugh thought bitterly of his mother and of Matilda. She always hoped I’d find a woman I could love. Now, he thought, pausing by a gate, leaning his head in his arms, thinking of Matilda, now I can’t have her. They shan’t find me, not now, not ever, for her sake they must not. He hurried on, across the main road, down a side road to the town, to the station. He was engrossed by Matilda, her body and his joined, smelling her, hearing her, feeling her. He did not hear the squeak of brakes or the yelp as a car driving fast clipped Folly on the head and killed her, tossing her body to the curb. He was so absorbed by Matilda that it had not occurred to him that Folly would leap out of the kitchen window and follow.

I will write from wherever I may be, he thought, thinking aloud as people do under stress. I will tell her everything and she will laugh. It will be good for her to remember me with laughter. She needs laughter.

At the station he bought a ticket to Paddington and fell asleep as the train drew out of the station.

Folly’s body was hit by two more cars before she was found by the police, squashed flat. ‘Poor Mrs Pollyput,’ said the constable. ‘First that gander, now this. She isn’t in luck exactly.’

26

WAKING, HEARING THE birds, Matilda stretched, then curled up again. She wanted to prolong her sense of ease. She felt as though each bit of her body was free from the tension which had been there so long. She felt the bed beside her. Hugh had gone. It didn’t matter. A wren sang loudly in the garden. He would come back. There would be more. She tried to remember whether it had ever been like that with Tom. It hadn’t. Good but not perfect. Hugh was so much younger than she, it couldn’t last. He would go away, indeed he must go away otherwise sooner rather than later he would be in prison. She slept a little then woke, thinking of Gus.