LITMIR.BIZ

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      As these two worries jostled for prominence, a third, which had been lurking in Carole’s unconscious, rose to join them – the prospect of meeting Gaby’s parents. Carole had the social skills of any middle-aged woman who’d been brought up in the right middle-class way, so she was not going to disgrace herself, but the mere thought of the encounter disturbed her. It was fear of the unknown. These two people were about to become inextricably involved with her, and that knowledge brought to Carole Seddon the familiar terror of losing control of her carefully circumscribed existence. In her Fethering retirement she had simplified everything – she had her comfortable Home Office pension, High Tor all paid for, her Labrador Gulliver to prevent her from looking like a lonely single woman. She resented anything that threatened to recomplicate her life.

      As if reading her thoughts, Gaby said, And we really must fix a date for you to meet up with my mum and dad.’

      ‘Yes,’ Carole agreed, envying the ease of that ‘mum’. Without total honesty, she went on, ‘I’m really looking forward to that.’

      ‘I’ll ring them this evening and try to sort something out. Are weekends best for you, or would a weekday be as good?’

      ‘It doesn’t make a lot of difference,’ replied Carole, suddenly overwhelmed by the bleakness of her social calendar.

      ‘I’ll get back to you when I’ve talked to them.’

      ‘Fine.’ Everything seemed to be ‘fine’ that lunch-time, Carole thought wryly. At least, everyone kept saying everything was fine.

      ‘We’re going to have to move soon,’ Stephen announced, looking at his watch. ‘Want to look at some churches.’

      ‘I thought you’d decided that you were going to get married in Fethering.’

      ‘Near Fethering. If there’s a prettier church in one of the other local villages, then we’ll go for that. Since Gaby isn’t a resident . . .’

      ‘And since neither of us has a shred of religion,’ his fiancée contributed, anticipating his thought.

      ‘. . . we may as well make our choice on purely aesthetic grounds.’

      Gaby’s face took on an expression of mock-guilt. ‘And the only person who’ll be offended by that will be my grandmother. Still carrying a very large candle for the Catholic Church, I’m afraid, Grand’mère. Still, she lives in France, and I think she’ll be too frail to make it to the wedding – so, as Steve says, we’ll just go for the prettiest church we can find.’

      ‘Yes, well, fine.’ Though Carole had no more religious feeling than they did, she had found her son’s words a little offensive. Without buying into the belief side of the church, she felt there were still certain social niceties that should be respected.

      She reached for her handbag. ‘I’ll settle up.’

      ‘I’ll get it, Mother.’

      ‘No, my treat. My patch. My idea to meet here.’

      ‘I won’t hear of it.’

      And he wouldn’t. Before Carole had time for further remonstration, Stephen was up at the bar, wallet at the ready.

      Gaby eased her body against the hard back of the settle in their alcove, wincing as she did so.

      ‘You all right?’

      ‘Getting a bit of pain from my back.’

      ‘Have you had it looked at?’

      ‘No, I’m sure it’ll sort itself out. Just tension.’

      ‘Worried about the huge step you’re taking in getting married?’

      It was an atypically direct question for Carole, but Gaby just laughed it off. ‘No, a client at work’s giving us a hard time. Actor who’s just hit the big time – or may have hit the big time. He keeps talking about moving on to another agency, and my boss is on my case all the time, trying to make sure I don’t allow that to happen.’ She grinned weakly. ‘Usual stuff.’

      Carole wasn’t entirely convinced by the answer. She thought her own diagnosis might be nearer the truth. Suddenly she noticed how pale and stressed Gaby looked, how different from the vivacious young woman she had first met only a few months previously at the Hopwicke Country House Hotel. Though her body retained its plumpness, Gaby’s face seemed to have thinned. There were deep hollows under her eyes and the tight blonde curls had lost their lustre.

      ‘How long has the back been bad?’

      Gaby shrugged, a movement which again caused her to wince. ‘Few weeks.’

      ‘Doesn’t Stephen think you should see someone?’

      ‘I haven’t told him it’s hurting. I have to be strong for him.’

      Carole hardly had time to register the strangeness of this remark before Gaby, almost childlike in her pleading dependency, asked, ‘Why? You don’t know a good back person, do you? Because we are going to be down here for a few days.’

      ‘Well . . .’ Carole Seddon couldn’t quite keep the scepticism out of her tone as she replied, ‘I know someone who does some healing.’

Chapter Two

      ‘No, she hasn’t called me,’ said Jude.

      ‘Oh, well, probably the back got better of its own accord. As backs do.’

      Jude instantly picked up the implication of the last words – that all back pain was psychosomatic, and didn’t affect people who had a proper control over their emotions. As Carole had. She smiled. ‘A pain may have its origin in the head, but that doesn’t mean the bit where it manifests itself hurts any the less.’

      There was a predictable, ‘Huh.’

      ‘Don’t worry, Carole. I’m not about to go into a riff on holistic medicine. I’m just saying that the physical and the mental are deeply interconnected.’

      Jude’s neighbour sniffed. It still sounded like mumbo-jumbo to her, and she devoutly hoped she would always continue to think of it as mumbo-jumbo. Carole Seddon had been brought up to consider the physical and the mental as totally separate, and the idea of breaking down the barrier between them she found positively frightening. Unwelcome thoughts and emotions were hard enough to control as it was, without suddenly changing the traditional rules that kept them in their proper place.

      They were sitting in the front room of Jude’s house, Woodside Cottage. The space was cluttered with ‘things’ which their owner had accumulated over many years. Very few of them had any practical use. There were ornaments, shells, bottles, drapes, chains, bangles, faded photographs in frames. Each ‘thing’ represented a memory for Jude, of a time of her life, of a friend or a lover. She could have told visitors the history of each, but that was not why she had them on display. They were private aides-memoires, and in fact she was rarely asked about them. People who came to Woodside Cottage seemed to accept the clutter, as just another manifestation of its owner’s personality. And they were always more interested in telling Jude about their lives than in asking about hers.

      Even Carole had got used to the clutter, and Carole was distrustful of ‘things’ – particularly ‘things’ that brought memories with them. She tried to exclude such ‘things’ completely from High Tor, hoping to keep the lid tightly closed on most of her past life.

      The windows of Woodside Cottage were open that morning, and the warm June air presaged another hot summer. An ‘unnaturally’ hot summer, the Fethering locals would say darkly, before moving on to lugubrious talk of ‘climate change’ and its inevitable corollary of a man-created Armageddon. But that day there was still sufficient movement in the air to set the bamboo wind chimes tinkling. Not for the first time, Carole wondered why, though she’d have despised the sound

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