Noting the careful way he had answered her, she said, ‘A bit of all three, I suppose.’
‘Do you want to turn back the clock?’
She smiled. ‘I asked first.’
‘The obvious answer would be to say I’d go back to when I was in Canada, and I’d make sure I booked my passage home on a different ship.’
‘And the less obvious answer?’
‘I wouldn’t turn back the clock and change what happened to me. Who knows what might have happened if I’d returned later, or sooner? I could have made it home safe and sound, then flown with the RAF and been shot down and killed on my first mission. I count myself as one of the lucky ones.’ He leaned forward and touched her hand. ‘I’ve been the luckiest of men, Evelyn. In so many ways.’
She raised his misshapen hand, the fingers of which had never straightened after being burned, and turning it over, she kissed his palm. ‘I’ve been lucky too.’
A moment passed while she gazed into the blueness of his eyes and she was suddenly taken back to the day, twenty years ago, when she had stood before him in church and uttered the words ‘I do.’
It had been a classic wartime wedding, hastily thrown together. She had worn a day dress bought with clothing coupons, some of which had been donated to her by Romily and Hope, and the service had been attended by just a few close friends and family. From the church they had walked the short distance to Island House where Mrs Partridge had served sandwiches and Kit’s favourite tomato soup in mugs. By pooling rations, enough ingredients had been collected in order for Mrs Partridge to make a small wedding cake complete with dried fruit.
When they cut the cake together, Kit had kissed Evelyn with such a look of adoration on his face, she had promised herself she would never do anything to hurt him.
ChapterTwenty-One
Quince Cottage, Melstead St Mary
October 1962
Florence
Florence was not the murdering kind. She really wasn’t. But when it came to hermother-in-law, she was prepared to make an exception.
Over the years she had thought of many ways to get rid of Ruby Minton, but being the sensible person she was, sneaking up on the old bat with a heavy saucepan, or adding arsenic to her tea, or placing a tripwire at the top of the stairs, was clearly out of the question. And anyway, no matter how vile Ruby was, the woman wasn’t worth going to prison for.
However, right now she would happily swing for the old witch.
‘I said you look like a cheap whore in that dress.’
‘I heard you the first time, Ruby,’ Florence said pleasantly, then muttering to herself, ‘I’m not the one who’s deaf, but who refuses to accept it.’
‘Speak up! How do you expect me to hear what you’re saying when you mutter like that? And where’s my tonic? You know I have to have it straight after I’ve eaten. Dr Flowerday was most insistent on that.’
‘I’m just getting it for you,’ said Florence. From the shelf in the kitchen where she kept the tea caddy and cannister of sugar, along with the tin in which she put the housekeeping money, she took down the glass tumbler which Ruby insisted nobody but she used. Into this Florence emptied a sachet of white granules which Dr Flowerday had prescribed Ruby for her dyspepsia, and then held the glass under the cold tap. Stirring vigorously, Florence imagined the granules were a fatal dose of strychnine, which would cure hermother-in-law of her flatulence once and for all.
Back in the front room where Ruby was sitting in the best armchair directly opposite the television set waiting forDixon of Dock Greento start, Florence handed her the glass. ‘Here you are,’ she said with a dutiful smile.
The effort was lost on Ruby. The woman scowled and all but snatched the glass from her. ‘Well, don’t just stand there, put the television on. Or are you deliberately trying to make me miss my favourite programme?’
‘Of course not.’
‘And make sure you have the volume turned up. I know you always turn it down to spoil my enjoyment. And when are you going to change out of that awful dress? It’s too tight and too short. Billy will be shamed to his boots to be seen with you looking like that.’
‘Billy helped me choose it,’ Florence said with some satisfaction. ‘He said the colour really suited me.’
‘I doubt that very much,’ Ruby scoffed. ‘Out of the way, then. How do you expect me to see the television with you standing in front of it?’
Perish the thought that the old witch would ever be grateful for anything Florence did for her.
Upstairs she heard George humming to himself in the bathroom and Rosie drying her hair in her old bedroom. She had left home six months ago to work as a receptionist at the Angel Hotel in Bury St Edmunds, and where shelived-in. It was good to have the children home, if only for the weekend.
Florence found Billy standing at thefull-length mirror in their bedroom, an exasperated expression on his face.
