LITMIR.BIZ

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staying?’ said Trudi. She hadn’t dared mention it earlier.

      ‘Just tonight, girl. After that, you’re on your own,’ said Janet severely.

      They dined that night on tinned ham and half a bottle of Riesling which Janet had brought with her. Afterwards, though it was still early, Trudi announced, ‘I’m going to bed.’

      As she started up the stairs the phone rang. She turned and looked at it. Janet came out of the lounge but halted when she saw Trudi was still there. The phone rang on.

      ‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’

      With a sigh, Trudi stepped back down and picked up the receiver. Her reflection looked back at her from the gilded pier glass. The peeling frame no longer seemed to fit so well. This was a stranger setting out on a long and difficult journey.

      ‘Hello?’ she said, and listened.

      After a few moments she put the phone down.

      ‘Well?’ said Janet.

      ‘Nothing. Must have been a wrong number.’

      Trudi walked past her friend with great control and began once more to climb the stairs.

      To show anything more, to show her inward agitation to Janet, was impossible. Her reaction, whether of doubt or belief, would certainly be that her friend was not fit to be left alone. Eventually her irritated anxiety might even make her insist that Trudi should extend her stay in Oldham.

      That was what was really impossible, the shame and embarrassment of being carried back like a sick child to spoil Frank’s sense of relief and release.

      Only time would show whether it was more impossible than remaining here where the phone could ring and out of a great hollow silence like the space behind the stars a voice, faint as a false dawn yet in accents as familiar as day, could breathe, ‘Trudi … I’m watching you …’

       2

      ‘What about personal property, Mrs Adamson?’ said Ashburton. ‘Apart from the usual things like watches, cuff links, I mean. Did your husband collect stamps, for instance? Rare coins? Old china?’

      ‘No way!’ said Janet confidently. ‘But I’ll be going through everything with Mrs Adamson before I go back this afternoon.’

      Janet had done most of the answering but Ashburton had courteously persisted in directing his questions at Trudi.

      She felt stupid to be letting her friend answer for her, but her thoughts kept on drifting elsewhere. The truth was that it was not till here and now, listening to the little solicitor drily outlining her puny resources as he saw them, that she had really begun to understand the truth of her position. She had never thought of Trent and herself as wealthy, but she realized now this was because she had never had to think about such things at all. Not once from the start of their marriage had he ever denied her anything she wanted on the grounds of expense. Not that she had been extravagant, but as even the gentlest of streams where it finds no resistance will over time carve itself out a wide and wider bed, so her expenditure over the years had spread and never found a limit.

      Now it sounded as if she was going to be penniless. This was a dawn knock she had never even imagined in her most fearful wakings. She felt panic fingering her throat and desperate to deny it she cut right across Mr Ashburton’s next sentence, saying, ‘He collected books.’

      ‘Books?’ echoed the solicitor.

      ‘Trent?’ exclaimed Janet.

      ‘Yes. Well, not books generally. George Orwell’s books.’

      ‘Orwell? What did Trent have to do with Orwell? I never saw him reading anything thicker than a newspaper, and then he was usually doing the crossword!’

      Her friend’s incredulity was easy to understand. Trent was not a bookish kind of man in any sense, but at some point during his RAF career when he had run out of crosswords to while away pre-sortie longueurs, he had picked up something of Orwell’s and been hooked.

      ‘I asked him once why he liked Orwell,’ said Trudi. ‘He said he was a man who understood the rottenness of things. I’m not sure what he meant.’

      Janet shook her head in disbelief, but Ashburton was not to be diverted from the point.

      ‘You say, collected? First editions, you mean?’

      ‘Yes. I don’t know. I expect so.’

      ‘They should be worth a little,’ said the solicitor, making a note. ‘Now, is there anything belonging to you still in Vienna?’

      ‘Only our furniture,’ said Trudi. ‘The move happened so quickly, we just put it in store.’

      ‘Aha. Valuable, would you say? Antique, perhaps?’

      ‘There are some nice pieces. I liked to buy nice things and Trent …’

      Her voice broke. Janet looked indignantly at Ashburton. He went smoothly on. ‘Then it seems that we must look to the courts for any substantial increment to your income. On the surface we have a good case. Stationary car, speeding truck, an independent witness. Unfortunately there has been a development. The witness, Mr Harold Brightshaw of Six Mile Farm near Grindleford, Derbyshire, has had a stroke. He is an old man, almost eighty, and it is possible he will not recover. He made a statement of course, but there is a vast difference between a statement in the hand and a witness in the box.’

      ‘What about the truck driver?’ demanded Janet.

      ‘Still in hospital. The police have not yet decided what to charge him with. In any case, he will certainly not be keen to give evidence against himself, and his firm can afford excellent legal advice.’

      ‘They can afford excellent damages too, then!’ exploded Janet.

      ‘No doubt. But litigation is costly, Mrs Adamson. As things stand, I would recommend looking for an out-of-court settlement.’

      ‘Would you?’ said Janet. ‘Mrs Adamson doesn’t actually need to instruct you in this matter, does she?’

      ‘No, of course not,’ said the solicitor, unoffended. ‘Mrs Adamson?’

      He regarded her with the alertness of a sparrow waiting for a crumb. He was in many ways a slightly ridiculous figure, but she sensed in him a sparrow’s strength and tenacity too.

      ‘How did you come to act for my husband?’ she asked.

      ‘I was recommended, I believe.’

      That decided Trudi. No one made recommendations lightly to Trent.

      On the way back, Janet said, ‘Are you sure about that little creep, girl? He looks as if a good belch would blow him away.’

      ‘I like him,’ said Trudi. She felt quite proud of her certitude, but her pretensions to self-reliance quickly evaporated as they started going through Trent’s things and she recognized there was no way she could have done this without Janet’s presence.

      Janet knew someone who ran a nearly new shop in Manchester and she offered to take Trent’s clothes and also a large proportion of Trudi’s which were untake-inable.

      ‘Pity he didn’t spend more on the life cover and less on the mohair,’ observed Janet as they sorted out the suits. ‘Hello, this is a bit out of character, though. Gardening clothes, is it?’

      She held up an anonymous brown Terylene suit which bore the label of a down-market chain store. She went through the pockets swiftly and efficiently.

      ‘Keys,’ she said, producing a ring. ‘Spares by the look of ’em. Bright and shiny. Small change. Two pounds sixty p. But hello! This is better.’

      ‘This’ was a wallet.

      ‘Fifty quid in notes. Handy.

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