One More for Christmas(116)

She held tightly to the skillet.

This might not be over.

Did he have an accomplice?

She held her breath, braced for someone else to come racing through the door to investigate the noise, but there was only silence.

Gingerly she stepped toward the door and poked her head into the hall. It was empty.

It seemed the man had been alone.

Finally she risked a look at him.

He was lying still at her feet, big, bulky and dressed all in black. The mud on the edges of his trousers suggested he’d come across the fields at the back of the house. She couldn’t make out his features because he’d landed face-first, but blood oozed from a wound on his head and stained her kitchen floor.

Feeling a little dizzy, Kathleen pressed her hand to her chest.

It was all rather alarming. What now? Was one supposed to administer first aid when one was the cause of the injury? Was that helpful or hypocritical? Or was he past first aid and every other type of aid?

She nudged his body with her bare foot, but there was no movement.

Had she killed him?

The enormity of it shook her.

If he was dead, then she was a murderer.

When Liza had expressed a desire to see her mother safely housed somewhere she could easily visit, presumably she hadn’t been thinking of prison.

Who was he? Did he have family? What had been his intention when he’d forcibly entered her home?

Kathleen put the skillet down and forced her shaky limbs to carry her to the living room. Something tickled her cheek. Blood. Hers.

She picked up the phone and for the first time in her life dialed the emergency services.

Underneath the panic and the shock there was something that felt a lot like pride. It was a relief to discover she wasn’t as weak and defenceless as everyone seemed to think.

When a woman answered, Kathleen spoke clearly and without hesitation.

“There’s a body in my kitchen,” she said. “I assume you’ll want to come and remove it.”



2


Liza

“I told you! Didn’t I tell you? I knew this was going to
happen.”

Liza slung her bag into the back of the car and slid into the driver’s seat. Her stomach churned. She’d missed lunch, too busy to eat. The school where she taught was approaching summer exam season and she’d been halfway through helping two students complete their art coursework when a nurse had called her from the hospital.

It had been the call she’d dreaded.

She’d found someone to cover the rest of her classes and driven the short distance home with a racing heart and clammy hands. Her mother had been attacked in the early hours of the morning, and she was only hearing about it now? She was part frantic, part furious.

Her mother had always been so cavalier. Had she even locked the French doors that led to the garden? She’d probably invited the man in and made him tea.

Knock me over the head, why don’t you?

Sean leaned in through the window. He’d come straight from a meeting and he was wearing a blue shirt the same color as his eyes. “I presume I don’t have time to change?”

“I packed a bag for you.”

“Thanks for that.” He undid another button. “Why don’t you let me drive?”

“No, I’ve got this.” Tension rose up inside her and mingled with the worry about her mother. “I’m anxious, that’s all. And frustrated. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve told her the house is too big, too isolated, that she should move into some sort of sheltered accommodation or residential care. But did she listen?”

Sean threw his jacket onto the back seat. “She’s independent. That’s a good thing, Liza.”

Was it? When did independence morph into irresponsibility?

“I should have tried harder to persuade her to move.”

She should have told her a few more tales about the rate of accidents in the home amongst the elderly. But the truth was, she hadn’t really wanted her mother to move. Oakwood Cottage had played a central part in her life. The house was gorgeous, surrounded by acres of fields and farmland that stretched down to the sea. In the spring you could hear the bleating of new lambs, and in the summer the air was filled with blossom, birdsong and the faint sounds of the sea.

It was hard to imagine her mother living anywhere else, even though the house was too large for one person and thoroughly impractical—particularly for someone who tended to believe that a leaking roof was a delightful feature of owning an older property and not something that needed fixing.

“You are not responsible for everything that happens to people, Liza.”

Sean settled himself in the passenger seat as if he had all the time in the world. Liza, who raced through life as if she was being chased by the police for a serious crime, found his relaxed demeanour and unshakeable calm occasionally maddening.

She thought about the magazine article folded into the bottom of her bag. Eight signs that your marriage might be in trouble.

She’d been flicking through the magazine in the dentist’s waiting room the week before and that feature had jumped out at her. She’d read it, searching for reassurance.

It wasn’t as if she and Sean argued, or anything. There was nothing specifically wrong. Just a vague discomfort inside her that reminded her constantly that the settled life she valued so much might not be so settled. That just as a million tiny things could pull a couple together, so a million tiny things could nudge them apart.