Shadow Over Edmund Street by Suzanne Frankham (best e reader for android .txt) 📗

a dark corner of the churchyard. His back was wedged against the uneven bricks of the hall, his desires red hot and Bridget’s body entangled with his.

After they’d finally collapsed onto the floor, he’d been shocked to feel the hard wooden boards of his apartment, when he’d been expecting the soft damp earth of St Barnaby’s. When his breathing was back under control he’d said something like, ‘this isn’t right Bridget. This isn’t right.’ And she’d replied, ‘I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore, I only know what I want. What I need.’ It had seemed such a logical answer. For five long years he’d been blinded by the need to hold onto love, even if it was paltry scraps, until one day he’d seen a face reflected in a shop window—his—a haggard man tied to someone who was sapping the life out of him, destroying his future.

He was free now, but the price had been high, a constant ache of loss and loneliness. He’d never imagined there’d ever be another chance for him.

And then along came Rose.

* Rose was cleaning up after the lab. Phylum Mollusca, class Gastropoda, to be precise, the most successful class of molluscs. She’d spent most of Sunday immersed in her work, putting together displays to show the diversity of the class: the marine gastropods, the freshwater gastropods, and those species that had managed to conquer land by eliminating gills and adapting the mantle cavity to act as a lung. She’d rigged up a digital camera to a microscope, and the students had taken some magical art-science photographs. The sinistral and dextral whorls of the gastropod shells as sophisticated and stunning as any man-made sculpture. Anything to take her mind off Edwina.

On Monday afternoon, after she hung up her lab coat, turned off the lights and locked the door, she could no longer hold her brain in check. Especially the wild thoughts that swirled about her dinner with Alex Cameron.

She had arranged the telephone call with Katie beforehand, her safety valve, so she didn’t have to say goodnight to him. Like a real human being. Rose had no idea how real human beings said goodnight after a ‘date’ these days. Not that it was a date, but to her it had felt like one. Did they shake hands, did they kiss, or were they expected to jump into bed together?

It was all too hard.

She hadn’t wanted to leave. Knew she wouldn’t. There was something about the man. The eyes, the way he spoke, the way he listened. The way he cooked. There was a lot to like.

The idea of the beautiful Jessica Chan with a face that adorned buses, billboards and magazine covers, living in the same building, was unsettling. A sign she had indeed returned to the land of the living. But what disturbed her the most was his throw-away line, just before she left.

‘Did you say the brother was a judge?’ That was what he had asked. It might have been merely his surprise that someone who started life in a small shabby weatherboard in Edmund Street, with a family torn apart by tragedy, could end up a judge, but she had gone over and over it and she was sure it was something else. Something had clicked in his mind, but she had no idea what.

As she hurried through the university on her way home, cutting across the park to the bus stop, she knew there was a clue, but for the life of her she couldn’t see it. However, her new best friend Juliana might.

* ‘Hello there, Rose my love. How are you today?’ Juliana was dressed in a royal blue trouser suit with a scarf in shades of red and pink. Her lips were vermillion and her eye shadow royal blue to match her suit. The shop was quiet, a few people dropping in on their way home from work.

‘You look magnificent,’ said Rose. ‘Bright and perky.’

‘Really? Trying to disguise the exhaustion more like. On the practical side, since Edwina’s passing, we’ve rearranged the morning schedules and I landed the five am shift on Mondays.’

‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. Can’t you hire someone else?’

‘Who, my dear? These days, who would drag themselves out of bed so early in the morning for the kind of measly money we pay? Edwina was old school, worked hard for her money.’

Rose tried to imagine her son taking a job three mornings a week, getting up before five. ‘I see your point. So sorry.’

‘Life,’ Juliana smiled. ‘Anyway. Need something for dinner?’

‘No. Not food. Information.’

‘Intriguing. Do go on.’

‘What was the surname of the family? Trudi’s family?’

‘Now, there’s a one,’ said Juliana, gazing at the ceiling. ‘I’m sure I knew it at one stage, but no can do at the moment. Mrs O’Brien would be the one to ask.’

Rose grimaced. ‘She doesn’t think much of me. Do you think you could find out?’

‘You were an evil influence. Leading poor Edwina astray. Sure. I’ll go visit the old dear tomorrow. She needs cheering up anyway now she’s lost Edwina. Must be hell for her.’

‘Oh, thank you.’

‘But why? What’s on your mind?’

‘I don’t know. When I told Detective Cameron about Trudi and her family, he latched on to the fact the brother was a judge. Any ideas?’

‘My dear, if I was you and talking to the divine Detective Cameron, I wouldn’t be talking about Edwina. Edwina is long gone. You ought to be thinking about the future.’

Rose blushed.

‘Aha. I see I’ve hit the mark.’ She smiled. ‘Good. I’ll find out the name of the family. Now you’ve put the thought in my head, I’m rather keen to know what happened to the dishy brother myself.’

* ‘Alex, are you sure? Everyone?’ asked Marion. ‘The whole team?’ It was first thing on Monday morning and she had just walked in. She was hanging up her raincoat, shaking droplets of water out of her hair.

‘Yes. The uniforms too.’

‘What? All right, but it might take a while. They’ll be