‘The anger in that man,’ the woman said. As it shot forward, the car broke a flowerpot, clipped by the back wheel. ‘Your boss, yes? I was in the hall. I just think the old lady translated you badly, that was all.’
He tilted his head quizzically. The woman’s voice was posh but with a trace of Midlands, maybe somewhere near Birmingham.
She went on: ‘I heard it all because I was at the front. You said, “In the radio station’s vault there is no money” – and somehow she made that into, “It’s the radio station’s fault there is no money.” When you said, “We have tomorrow,” it came out as, “We have to borrow.”’
‘Sweet Jesus.’
‘You did say you’d pay them back.’
‘I did not.’ It was dawning on him, what had happened. He pushed his voice. The explanation was important. ‘I just said, “We’ll have your back.” That’s all I said. Not—’
It was too much. He looked at the woman. She had her hand over her mouth, in polite surprise or to suppress a giggle. She seemed unusually young to have emerged from the Harpford Village Hall audience. She was in her forties, like him, with a close auburn bob and a rayon jumper cinched at the waist. The outline suggested sport or healthy eating or both. Her skin was clear, her forehead free of lines. The tightness across her cheekbones gave her eyes the compact, radial intensity of a bird’s. He had the instantaneous thought that the woman had had cosmetic work done. Botox, in Devon! Holding her spine unnaturally straight, on six-inch heels, she looked tall, even compared to him. When she smiled, he saw tiny bumps on her teeth that were applied to keep a dental mould in place, although the plastic liner was not there at the moment (vanity, because she was at a social event?). She wore classy earrings, small gold seashells. The warmth in her voice suggested great kindness, as though she was the sort who would stop to help a person who fell over in the street.
Yet she was also a little too perfect to be truly beautiful. Devon was a county of farms and coastal paths, the land of people who worked outdoors, the only place in the UK outsidethe Scottish Highlands where there was a degree-level course in dry stone walling. A person got used to seeing muddy boots and weathered skin, and, frankly, to hearing people break wind in supermarkets. This woman looked as if she had spent her life in a spa. She was the bone-china cup you were scared of holding in case it broke.
But what struck Edward most forcefully was an uncertainty about her demeanour, as if she was a supremely confident person who was suddenly having to deal with uncertainty. She dipped her head slightly as she spoke, like a bird at water.
‘Were you part of – part of the …’ He tailed off, choosing his words carefully. ‘Were you part of The Case?’
‘I know nothing about any case,’ she replied. ‘I’ve only just moved down here.’ She looked embarrassed. ‘I had to leave North Devon. It was a source of great sadness to me.’
At that moment, there was a round of applause and a cheer from inside the hall.
Had to leave North Devon.The phrase pinballed around Edward’s head. ‘Why?’ he croaked.
‘I was married to a wonderful man; we lived in North Devon for many years and we were so happy there. And then he died suddenly and I had to leave.’ She fidgeted in her purse. The sun was high in the sky, and Edward wanted to move into shade. ‘I’ll be honest with you, it broke my heart. I loved where we lived, the sense of community we had there. I had so many friends …’ She tailed off, looking down. Edward followed her gaze: her fingers were white where they pinched the edge of her purse. ‘So I moved, and my neighbour, who doesn’t know who I am, thank God – she suggested coming here today as a little outing. She says if I’m to live down here in Sidmouth, I should listen to your show. And then she said you were known for your investigating.’
He looked at her, stopped by the sentence.
‘Investigating?’
‘Like – you’re a kind of secret sleuth. It’s just … it seems to be something people know about you. That’s what she said.’ Her voice dropped. ‘I hadn’t wanted to offend you.’
‘You haven’t.’
‘You see,’ she said, ‘people who loved me, or at least truly liked me, the people who ran the local charity, the people at church who went to see the old ones in the area and who I willingly volunteered with, the people at the whist club, at the school …’
She tailed off. All he had heard was ‘people’, as if everyone had banded together against her. ‘No one will look at me. Not even the places I volunteered for. I have lost my position.’
Position.That, thought Edward, was such an interesting word. A century ago, it would have meant an actual job. She was using it differently, for something less tangible, but it carried the same load. Her status in North Devon had been as real as a payslip or an office chair. She had been sacked from the life she had had. The sacking – by all those ‘people’, that crowd of silent faces gelled into a giant moon – had exiled her.
‘So,’ she said, ‘I wanted you to investigate something for me.’
Edward tried to laugh but his voice seemed to have gone completely now, his throat strained.A sleuth?If he had known the woman better, he might have leant towards her to speak into her ear to make himself heard, but instead he circled his index finger in the area of his Adam’s apple and shook his head.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Not the time. But let me give you my card. You might know the name.’
He looked. The card said WENDY WRIGLEY. In the lower corner was a Gmail address and a mobile number. Not knowing the name was a little embarrassing for Edward. He prided himself on being aware of local authors, local singers, especially folk artists who played at the Sidmouth Folk Festival. Was she a celebrity of some sort?
Edward turned the card over and pulled a pen from his jacket.
Cupping the card in the palm of his hand he wrote:
What do u want me to investigate?
When he showed the card to Wendy Wrigley, she chuckled as if at a private joke.
And then she replied softly, as if passing on a secret. ‘Oh, that’s easy Edward. I want you to investigate me.’
