Death on the Lake by Jo Allen (early reader books TXT) 📗

the day had turned rapidly from dark to light. Family entitlement was something you earned, in his book. That was why Sharon’s boy, Ryan, had put his back up so much, swanning up and expecting to be taken into the bosom of the family without making any effort to learn about them or listen to how they did things. And as for that idea of moving in…he’d read about that sort of thing in the paper. Drug dealers moving in with vulnerable people and using their homes to push their wares. Cuckooing, they called it. But if that was what Ryan had been trying to do, he’d been thwarted. I’m many things, George chastised himself, but I’m not vulnerable.

A sound startled him from upstairs. Upstairs? No-one went upstairs in his cottage. The dust would be as thick as March snow up there, and after he’d gone whoever came to clean up would be able to roll it up like a mat and throw it away.

At ninety-five he should expect his hearing to play tricks on him. He shuffled his way into the kitchen to fetch his pipe and have a cup of tea. It was nearly ten and Becca, he knew, had every second Saturday off. When that happened, she’d call in and see him in the morning and spend a bit longer with him. He always looked forward to that.

The noise came again. He shook his head, irritably. It might be a bird, but if it was it must be a hell of a big one. A pigeon, maybe. More likely something had gone wrong with the roof. When he’d moved in all those years before repairs hadn’t seemed too important because he’d expected to be carried out in a box long before he had to deal with that problem. But that was how it went. Life played silly buggers with the smartest plans, and if he’d spent all that money and gone through all the hassle he probably wouldn’t have lived long enough to be grateful there were no raindrops falling on his head; but if the roof had gone he had a problem. The previous night’s downpour would have done a wild winter storm proud, and the rain had hammered so hard on the cottage it had sounded like someone was in the room above his head. The accompanying wind could easily have lifted a tile or two. When it rained again, as it would before another day had passed, he’d have problems. If there was a serious leak, Becca and her mum wouldn’t let him stay there, and if there was one thing he was set on, it was spending his last days in the dale where he was born and the house he’d been born in.

It would save on the funeral costs, he thought to himself, if they only had to carry the coffin the short distance down the lane to the church.

Putting the pipe down, he shuffled towards the stairs.

The last hurrah of the overnight gale was whipping white horses to life on Ullswater as Becca came around the south side of Hallin Fell and down into Martindale. She frowned as she got out of the Fiat, because she’d been right and the car that had been following her for the last mile or so was Jude’s Mercedes, and the woman in there with him was Ashleigh O’Halloran. Her heart flickered in a moment of anxiety, as if she expected him to bring bad luck. Surely there couldn’t have been another mysterious death?

He stopped his car in the same lay-by. That meant she’d have to talk to him and she wasn’t in the mood — not when she’d failed to find the courage to have that crucial conversation with Adam the night before and so, in consequence, found herself ever more deeply embedded in the wrong relationship. She hated to hurt people’s feelings, and if she’d known how difficult it would be to terminate her relationship with Jude she probably wouldn’t have tried. And it would all have gone toxic. The right thing to do was almost always not the easy one.

This complicated train of thought, backwards and forwards, didn’t help her out of her present predicament. She was still going out with Adam Fleetwood and, in the immediate future, she would still have to be polite to Jude Satterthwaite.

‘Morning.’ She stayed by her car as he and Ashleigh got out of the Mercedes. They were dressed for walking. At least that meant there was no trouble to be had. ‘Off for a walk?’

‘Yep.’ Jude opened the boot of the Mercedes and lifted out a small backpack, which he swung over his shoulder, and a pair of walking poles which he handed to Ashleigh. The two of them looked as if they trusted the weather. She was wearing walking trousers and a thin tee-shirt that showed the dark shape of a bra that might have been red, and he’d opted for shorts and a tee shirt. ‘I’ve never taken Ashleigh up onto Beda Fell and Pikeawassa, and as we’ve both managed to get the weekend off together, I thought I’d show her the view.’

Ashleigh O’Halloran didn’t have the legs of a hillwalker, thought Becca spitefully, though Jude undoubtedly did. ‘It’s going to be a lovely day now all that rain has cleared. It looks as if you might need your sunscreen.’

‘Yes, nurse.’ Ashleigh felt sufficiently familiar to risk the joke, and she and Jude exchanged glances and smiles over it. Becca smiled back. She was grown-up enough to understand there was no way back from the way that she’d treated Jude and generous enough to hope he found some kind of happiness with someone else. It was just that she was surprised by the woman he’d chosen.

‘Enjoy your walk,’ she said, nodding at them.

‘Say hello to George for me,’ Jude said. He divided the people around him but George, who prided himself on his cussedness, liked him, probably because so many other