The Couple at No. 9(30)

He starts off typing in ‘Saffron Cutler’. A few articles pop up about the bodies found in her garden, but nothing that wasn’t in the cutting on his dad’s desk. He continues scrolling. Lots of news stories from someone called Euan Cutler, who writes for one of the red tops. Rose Grey is also a dead end – he has no clue which of the many Rose Greys could be the one referred to in the article he found.

Then he types in his father’s name.

A number of entries pop up. His dad is a very eminent man. It takes Theo a while to sift through it all, and he almost gives up. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting to find. There’s a page detailing his long and successful medical career and then he notices another article about a private practice set up in 1974. It’s accompanied by a grainy black-and-white photo of his much younger father standing with another man at some black-tie do. He peers more closely at the screen. There is a caption underneath: Practice partner Larry Knight. That’s strange, thinks Theo. As far as he’s aware his dad never had a partner at the small private clinic he used to run, and which he sold when he retired six years ago.

He types his dad’s name and ‘Dr Larry Knight’ into Google. A few articles from a range of medical journals pop up. It sounds like they parted ways about four years after setting up the clinic. Theo wonders why. His dad has always been an enigma to him – there is so much about his past he doesn’t know. Maybe Larry Knight might give him some answers. He realizes he’s grasping at straws. There’s nothing here to link his dad to the bodies in Wiltshire. But maybe Larry Knight might give him some insight into what his dad’s life was like before he met Theo’s mum; he might even know Rose Grey.

He rubs his eyes. He’s exhausted yet wired at the same time. He can’t tear his eyes away from the screen even though there is no new information there.

He blinks away his tiredness but his dad’s name swims in front of him.

Dr Victor Carmichael.





16


Rose



January 1980


Daphne moved in with us on New Year’s Day. She turned up on the doorstep just after lunch, her blonde hair in a French-style plait, shivering in her thin coat, armed with just a rucksack and the clothes on her back.

I often wondered, in the days and weeks that followed, why a woman who, I assumed, was in her mid to late thirties had no other worldly possessions. It seemed to me she had left her last location in a hurry.

Was it rash of me to invite a stranger into our home? I didn’t think so. Not then, anyway. Then she was nothing more to me than a lodger, someone to pay rent so that I had another source of income rather than squandering the last of my parents’ inheritance. From her demeanour on Christmas Eve, I sensed she was as desperate as I was to hide away. And I was willing to bet my life on it that it was for similar reasons: running from a man.

That first evening was a little awkward. I showed her around the cottage and to her room so she could dump her stuff. I saw the cottage through her eyes: the unvarnished floorboards that I still hadn’t got around to carpeting, except in your bedroom (pink, like you wanted); the tatty kitchen with the brown tiles; the fireplaces instead of radiators; the old Rayburn range that was always on, and where I boiled water in a cast-iron kettle.

‘What do you use this for?’ asked Daphne, pointing to the door on the left as we descended the stairs.

‘Nothing at the moment,’ I said, leading her into the empty room, with the brown and yellow patterned wallpaper left from the last owner. ‘It’s not a very big room. I think it was probably a front parlour or something.’

She frowned. ‘I suppose you could use it as a dining room.’

‘True, but we have the table in the kitchen.’

‘Or a playroom for Lolly?’

‘She usually plays by me in the front room. Or up in her bedroom. But …’ I hesitated, glancing at her ‘… you’re welcome to use it. For whatever you want.’

Her face brightened and she turned to me, her eyes widening. ‘Really? That would be great. Although,’ her face fell, ‘I don’t have my sewing-machine any more.’

‘You sew?’

‘I made my own clothes before …’ She blushed. ‘Anyway, I’ll save up and buy another.’

I wondered if she’d made the patched green coat she was wearing. It certainly had a home-made look about it.

‘You might be able to get one second hand. I can ask around.’

‘Thank you.’ She lifted her eyes to mine and held my gaze longer than was comfortable. Her lashes were tinted with blue mascara, a fleck of which had landed on her pale cheekbone. She had a very small black dot on her iris that looked like a beauty spot.

I lowered my gaze first. ‘Right. Well, I’d better see to Lolly,’ I said, turning around and going back upstairs.

Later, after I’d tucked you up in your little iron-framed bed, Daphne and I sat side by side on the brown corduroy sofa, like a nervous couple on a first date. She was still wearing her coat and a pair of navy platform boots that looked like the toes had been coloured with pen under her flared jeans. I’d poured us both a glass of Babycham that Joel, the landlord of the Stag and Pheasant, had given me for Christmas, and we sat and watched the flames and logs spit and crackle in the open fire. The smell of smouldering wood and firelighter fuel was heavy and intoxicating. The radio was on and Blondie’s ‘Heart Of Glass’ was playing in the background.