“Let’s go to the Castle in Brinkbonnie,” she said. “You can pick me up at the flat, then I can get drunk.”

So he gave her a lift to Brinkbonnie. The sun was shining and there was a mild westerly wind. In the street where she lived the blossoms dropped from the trees like snow. In Brinkbonnie everything seemed much the same. As they drove down the Otterbridge Road he looked into the Greys’ farmyard, but there was no blue Rover in view. Perhaps it was discreetly parked in the tractor shed. The post office was still shut for lunch and the same cars were for sale outside Kerr’s garage. They stopped, for a moment, outside the field where the houses were planned, but there were no bulldozers. The council had decided to appeal against the inspector’s decision to the high court, so building was delayed.

In the Castle they sat on the stage in the lounge bar and ordered steak. She drank beer and most of a bottle of overpriced red wine. She wore wide red dungarees and enormous earrings shaped like frogs.

Halfway through the meal when she was already loud and flushed she put down her knife and fork.

“Did you know that Max and Judy are moving into the Tower?” she asked. And he realised that he was only there because there was no-one else she could talk to about her secret lover.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

“He resigned from the Health Centre after the business with Stella and the prescription,” she said. “ They’re planning to open the Tower to the public, run courses in local crafts, folk music. You know the sort of thing.”

He nodded.

“Have you seen Max?” he asked gently.

“No,” she said. “I thought he might have been in touch, but it’s probably just as well this way.”

“Yes,” he said. He could think of nothing more to say.

“I’m moving to Newcastle at the weekend,” she said. “I’m not really a small-town girl.”

He would have liked to ask her what had happened to Stella and the little girl, but decided in the end that he preferred not to know.

When he dropped her outside her flat, he thought she might ask him to come in for a drink, but she only waved like a child and beamed when he wished her good luck. He went home to the cottage in Heppleburn. In the woods in the dene there were bluebells and wood anemones and the trees were green with new leaves. He made a pot of coffee, so the smell of it filled the house, sat on the windowsill, and thought that he should appreciate the view while it was still there. Then the telephone rang and Hunter, at the other end, told him he was needed at work.

Copyright

First published in 1991 by Century