A Bitter Feast(74)

She had no idea how much time had passed since she’d walked so unsuspectingly to the front door. Petals from the St. Swithun’s roses on either side of the porch fluttered past her, shaken loose by the breeze, and the sun danced in the treetops of the Woodland.

After a bit, she realized she could hear the sound of voices coming faintly from the dining room. Lunch. Her mother. What was she going to tell her mother? And then she thought of Doug, and that was enough to get her to her feet.

She was going to kill him.

Stepping quietly into the hall, she stood in the pocket of shadow just outside the kitchen, where she could see into the room without being noticed. Her mum was loading plates into the kitchen dishwasher. Toby was bouncing a dog ball into the scullery for Polly. Mac was stretched out on his side, taking up as much of the kitchen floor as possible. Ivan still sat at the table, Charlotte leaning against his knee. He was telling Charlotte the Three Little Pigs in broad Geordie, just the way he used to tell it to her, and every time he said, “And then he blew the house doon,” Charlotte shrieked with laughter and told him to do it again.

Then, her mother seemed to sense her presence, and turned. “Melody?” When she didn’t move, her mother wiped her hands on a tea towel and came to her. “Melody, what are you doing out here, darling? Where’s your friend? Is he not staying for lunch?”

“No,” Melody managed to croak. “No, he’s not. He had to go.”

“Oh, what a shame,” said Addie, but it was obvious from her keen look that she knew something was wrong.

“Where’s Doug?” Melody managed to ask before Addie could say anything else. “I need a word with him.”

“In the sitting room, I think. He said he had some email to answer.”

“Thanks.” Melody turned away, her fists already clenched, but she could feel her mother’s eyes on her back as she walked out of the room.

When she reached the sitting room, Doug’s laptop was open on the table, but he was scrolling through something on his mobile. He started when he heard her and closed the phone screen. Looking up, he said, too casually, “Oh, it’s you. Um, where’s Andy?”

“You mean he hasn’t told you already?”

“What? Why would he—”

She cut him off. “You bastard, Doug. You absolute bastard.” Fury coursed through her. “How could you bring him here when I hadn’t—I didn’t—” She gulped back a sob.

“I was only trying to help—”

“You had no right. No right!” Melody realized she was shaking. “You are an interfering shit. Now he knows about Mum and Dad—”

Doug stood up so that they were face-to-face, separated only by the coffee table. “Melody, for God’s sake, be sensible. How could you not tell him? He was bound to find out, and better sooner than later—”

“That wasn’t for you to decide. It was none of your—”

“Melody, calm down.” Doug looked, she noted with some small, cold compartment of her mind, frightened. But he said, “What did you think would happen if you kept that from him? I’m your friend, for heaven’s sake,” he added, in a voice so reasonable that it made her want to strike him. “I only wanted—”

“Were. Were my friend. Did you know Andy broke up with me? Did you? This is your doing, Doug Cullen. This is all your fault.”

She expected him to argue, but he just looked at her. After a long moment, he shook his head and said, so softly that she could barely hear him, “No. No, really, Melody, it’s not.”



Somehow Kincaid ended up with the dog.

He’d walked out of the pub car park and crossed the road, standing for a while on the bridge over the Eye, waiting for his breathing to return to normal. He couldn’t stop thinking about Nell. What if Gemma was right about what had happened? And why hadn’t he worked it out himself? He could see it all too clearly, now, Nell stopping to help, getting O’Reilly into the car but not managing to fasten his seat belt, talking to him, perhaps, as she drove, trying to figure out what exactly was wrong so that she could phone ahead to the hospital. Realizing her passenger wasn’t responding, looking over just as she was coming up to the T-junction and finding him slumped in his seat . . .

Kincaid had driven that road with Ivan, had seen how little warning there was of the upcoming intersection. And in the dark, in a panic . . . His head swam and he held on to the wooden bridge railing. What was wrong with him?

Was it the accident that was making him feel so strange? When he closed his eyes, he had moments of frightening disorientation in which he replayed over and over how he’d felt when he’d come to, upside down in the car.

He had to pull himself together.

The sound of a car coming from the direction of the mill had made him look up and move off the bridge. It was a local taxi. Glancing at the car’s back window as it passed, he could have sworn he recognized the passenger’s profile. He’d watched the taxi turn right at the roundabout and vanish from sight beyond the manor. Could that really have been Andy Monahan? Here? Melody hadn’t said anything about Andy coming this weekend. Shaking his head, he decided he must have been mistaken.

As he’d turned to walk back to the pub, the churchyard caught his eye and his thoughts had gone back to Nell. Would she be buried? And, if so, here? Who was looking after her arrangements? Perhaps Mark Cain would know something.