Читать книгу A Fatal Obsession - Faith Martin - Страница 11

The next morning, Mavis McGillicuddy dunked a soldier into her boiled egg and glanced at the kitchen clock. She had an hour yet before she had to get her granddaughter up for school, which was just as well, since, at ten years old, Marie was fast getting to the stage where her endearingly childish eagerness to please was beginning to transform into something more mutinous.

Not that Mavis minded all the ups and downs that came with child rearing, even at her age. Most women in their early sixties might have thought all that was behind them now, but Mavis was very much aware that without her son and his daughter living with her, she’d be just one more lonely widow.

And she’d much rather be rushed off her feet or dealing with a childish tantrum than sitting twiddling her thumbs.

On the wireless the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, was saying something dreary, as he always seemed to be doing, and she was half-tempted to get up and fiddle with the dial to see if she could find something more cheerful to listen to. But nowadays the radio stations seemed to play nothing but all this modern music the youngsters were going for. It was all Be-bop-a-lula this, or Poison Ivy that. And it was getting harder and harder for her to find the music she liked – recordings of the Glenn Miller Band, say, or a nice bit of Vera Lynn.

She looked up as the kitchen door opened and her only child swept in. ‘Morning, Mum. Seen my boots anywhere – the ones with the toe-caps? I’m uprooting some old apple trees today, and I don’t want… oh, I see them.’

The sight of her son, Jonathan, always brought a smile to Mavis’s face. At just turned thirty, he was still a handsome lad and looked far younger than his years. He’d inherited his thick, wavy blond hair from her and striking hazel-green eyes from his father. At nearly six feet tall, his work as a landscape gardener kept him fit and lean.

As she fondly watched him pulling on his work boots, she sipped her tea in contentment. Although life had been hard for Mavis in her early years (and during the war, naturally), she had to admit she’d had some luck in her life, and never ceased to be thankful for it. Outside the window of their modest, tiny, terraced house, the suburb of Cowley was going about its busy business, with the majority of the men in the neighbourhood flocking into the car works. But, thanks to help from Jonathan’s father, Mavis actually owned the little house they lived in, and was the only one in their street not to be renting. She had been able to afford to send Jonathan to the local grammar school, which in turn had led to his being able to do a bit better for himself than his peers, first becoming apprentice to the head gardener at St Edmund Hall, before striking out on his own and setting up his own little business.

Yes, in many ways, Mavis knew, she had been lucky.

‘Marie still in bed?’ her son asked now, pouring out a mug of tea for himself and peering through the window. The last few days had been wet and relatively mild – perfect for grubbing up stubborn tree roots.

‘Yes. She’s not happy to be going back to school after the Christmas holidays, though,’ Mavis said with a smile. ‘So I suspect I’ll have a bit of a job getting her up in time. But don’t you worry about it, son – I’ll not be having any of her tantrums. She’ll soon settle down again.’

Absently, Jonathan walked behind her chair and kissed the top of her head. ‘Thanks for looking after her, Mum. Don’t know what we’d have done without you.’

Jonathan said this often, more out of habit than anything, although he was vaguely aware that what he said was perfectly true.

He’d had to marry young, at just twenty, when the girl he’d been going steady with had fallen pregnant, and in truth, he’d never felt really happy about it – something that had always made him feel guilty. But there was no point in denying he’d felt trapped and a little resentful, and when his daughter had been born seven months later, he’d felt vaguely cheated. He’d expected – and wanted – a boy. Which had only increased his sense of guilt further.

But then, just three years after Marie was born, Jenny had been killed in a train crash, along with four others. She’d been on her way to Banbury to see about a part-time job, in the hopes they’d be able to afford to move out of his mother’s house and find a place of their own.

Obviously, that had never happened. So, at the age of just twenty-four, Jonathan McGillicuddy had become a very eligible young widower with a little girl to look after, and had quickly found that his unexpected freedom wasn’t as wonderful as he might have imagined. He’d missed Jenny terribly. And far from being an unwanted child, his daughter had come to mean the world to him. Luckily, his mum, long since widowed herself, had been more than happy to step into the breach.

Now Marie called her ‘mum’ and seemed to have no memories of Jenny at all.

His mother set about buttering some toast for him and then made sandwiches for his packed lunch. Slightly plump, she still bustled about with energy, but she must, Jonathan mused, be beginning to feel her age a little bit. And once more, he felt a vague sense of guilt wash over him. Was it fair to keep on expecting her to look after his daughter and effectively ‘keep house’ for him? Perhaps it was time he thought about marrying again? But even as he thought it, he shied violently away from the idea.

He’d only had two serious relationships with women in his life, and both had ended in utter disaster. First Jenny and then… But no, he wouldn’t think of her. He couldn’t. It had taken years for the nightmares to stop, and sometimes they plagued him still, wrenching him out of sleep, sweating and shaking, with his heart pounding.

Sometimes, he wondered if he was actually cursed.

His own ‘natural’ father had died before he’d even got the chance to know him. Everyone, it seemed, left him. And what if something happened to his mum? Or to Marie?

He shuddered and, telling himself not to be so maudlin – or stupid – quickly ate his toast and threw on his mackintosh. Everything would be fine. It had been for some time now. He mustn’t think about that other time in his life, when it had seemed he must be going crazy. When the danger had been so sharp and acrid he could almost taste it. No, that part of his life was over, and it was never coming back. It couldn’t. It was all dead and done and finished with.

Once again he absently kissed his mother on top of her head as she sat sipping her tea. ‘Bye, Mum. See you about four,’ he added cheerfully. ‘It’s no use trying to work in a garden after dark.’ That was one of the few advantages of winter for a gardener – a shorter working day.

He was whistling slightly as he stepped out onto the wet path and closed the door behind him. And as he walked to the end of the street and the group of lock-up garages where he kept his old van, full of his gardening tools, he didn’t notice the silent, watchful figure making careful note of his movements.

And it probably wouldn’t have made much difference if he had.