Geoffrey Standing was nervous. Other than his family, he’d never entertained guests at Sheldon Oaks. He knew he could be,as his wife Connie had described it, “a bit much.” He knew without her by his side to rein him in and give him a nudge when he was getting out of hand that he could annoy people. Now that she’d been dead for five years, what was he to do? People don’t change, not seventy-five years in anyway. Geoffrey just had an instinct, one he could never budge, to show off when he knew something. “You want to educate everyone,” Connie would say. Geoffrey had never quite grasped why that was a bad thing, and even though he understood that it wound people up, he couldn’t stop. The neural pathways were set, and neural pathways were exactly the sort of subject he enjoyed telling people about.
“Now. Margaret. I’m very much a bag-in-first man. Is that all right with you? Everything I’ve read on the subject says it’s the right way to go.”
“Perfect. Thank you, Geoffrey.”
There was a knock at the door. Geoffrey peeped through the eyehole. “It’s Catherine,” he announced to Margaret, opening the door. “Hello, Catherine. Can I get you a drink? Margaret and I are having tea. I’ve already made two cups but I’ve deliberately boiled enough water for three.”
—
Margaret watched Geoffreyfloundering around, playing host, treating three cups of tea like a dinner party for twelve people. Didn’t men get silly as they got older? Especially the ones who’d been married for fifty years and suddenly found themselves alone. Sad, really, but this was a time of life where they all found themselves confronted by stark realities. Geoffrey had the face of a man who’d never knowingly been in contact withmoisturizer, his cheeks blotchy and red, though no more than most men of his age and skin-care regime. There were people who got thinner, smaller as they aged, and there were people who widened. Geoffrey was the latter. Big shoulders, forty-something inches of waist, and a white beard. He had all the right elements to make a Father Christmas but somehow didn’t look anything like him.
With Margaret, at first, you noticed her clothes: blazers with shoulder pads, chunky pearl necklaces, tartan skirts. She wore her hair in a dyed black bob. In recent years she’d developed a waddle, thanks to her hips. She’d caught a glimpse of her gait in the window of John Lewis once and was so disgusted that she now did everything she could not to see it. She’d spent a lifetime hiding her gummy smile, and now she had a waddle to worry about.
Margaret marveled at Catherine. Everything she did had elegance. Tall and slim, with a long neck and the upright posture of a dancer fifty years her junior. She couldn’t put a finger on why, but Margaret always thought there was something Scandinavian about the way Catherine carried herself. Had Margaret the confidence to do so, she’d ask Catherine where she bought her clothes. Smart but not too smart, bold colors, lovely cuts. Trousers, not skirts. Cashmere sweaters, button-down blouses. The outfit always topped off with the perfect brooch. Never formal but never anything less than impressive. Catherine was effortless. Margaret had felt the same way about a girl at school sixty-something years ago. She just wanted to know what it would feel like to be her for a day. Though now Margaret was old enough and wise enough to understand that everyone had their own problems.
Once they were all sitting down and enough niceties had beensaid by all, Margaret, never one to fail to get to the point, did just that.
“Geoffrey, why did you invite us over? I got the impression you had some news.”
“Well, well, well. Now.” Geoffrey cleared his throat and adopted the demeanor of a man chairing a board meeting. “Carol.”
“Carol, yes?” said Margaret.
For one awful moment, Margaret thought that Geoffrey was about to reveal that Carol and he were dating and that this was his way of letting them both down lightly on the news that they were out of the running to be his lover.
“Carol Quinn,” said Geoffrey. “That name mean anything to either of you?”
“I presume we’re talking about Carol from baking?” said Catherine.
“Yes. Carol from baking. Margaret?Quinn.Carol Quinn. You remember Carol Quinn?”
“No!” Margaret put down her cup of tea, afraid that she might be about to lose control of her body.
Geoffrey nodded solemnly. “I’ve been on the broadband internet on my desktop computer to refresh my memory. It’s her.”
“This can’t be true. I don’t understand how.” Margaret searched her cup for more tea, finding only the bag.
“Can somebody tell me what’s happening, please?” said Catherine.
“Geoffrey, were you on the force when…?” asked Margaret.
“Part of the team who caught her. And I’m presuming her case crossed your desk…” said Geoffrey.
“I was home secretary. Did everything I could to pressure thecourts into a life sentence. Thought I’d done as much. Remember giving a statement about how she wouldn’t be out for a very long time indeed. Not until the 2020s. And, well, I suppose…here we are. Dear God.”
Catherine raised her voice. “Please…what on earth are you both talking about?”
Margaret turned to Catherine. “Carol from baking is a convicted serial killer.”
Four
Carol had takento carrying around poison. Just a little packet of strychnine, a white powder that at a glance looked like any other white powder. She’d had it in her handbag for about a month now after doing a week as a temp receptionist in a laboratory. She’d flirtatiously extracted some information from a young scientist in the canteen one day, then stayed late and made herself a little sample. Just the one packet. Enough to do the job, apparently, though there was many a time when she wished she’d stocked up. Would have made things a lot easier.
This was a long time ago, at the end of the seventies. Documentaries would have you believe that Britain was wall-to-wall punks and industrial strife, but Carol didn’t remember it that way. If she tried to picture the late seventies now, the biggest cultural change came not from the Sex Pistols or the emergence of Margaret Thatcher but from the microwave and the SodaStream. People’s minds weren’t on economic decline and the end of an empire. They were on the wonder of homemade fizzy pop.
People, back then, had started to annoy Carol, men particularly. Loudmouths on trains, gropy bosses, taxi drivers who farted as if they weren’t sharing an enclosed space with another human being.
The poison was a comfort. Did she think she’d ever use it? Probably not. But the knowledge that she now had it within her power to take matters into her own hands added a thrill to the daily grind.
