Death at Rainbow Cottage by Jo Allen (book club books txt) 📗

was playing out in a way she hadn’t envisaged. Claud was lying – he must be, because a man who loved his wife would have wanted to spend all his time with her instead of seeking the company of others when she needed him – but his shoulders were set. He’d never admit it. ‘All those other people.’

‘Natalie. Darling. This has all been a bit too much for you.’

Claud was a liar. He’d say whatever was expedient to keep her quiet. ‘I saw it on your laptop.’

He lifted his chin, not quite in defiance. Claud never usually felt the need to be defiant, too entrenched in his own position so he only ever needed to indulge in self-justification. That kind of moral superiority was what irritated other people about him, unjustly, because Claud was a very good man. ‘I knew someone had been looking at it. I didn’t think it was you.’

That must be why he’d disposed of it. She’d seen him, carrying it through the church close, shadowed him when he dropped it into the beck. A manic laugh curdled somewhere in her brain at the thought of what Jude Satterthwaite would say when he realised that Claud had faked the burglary. ‘You were hiding it from people. You’re a fraud.’

There was fury in his eyes, but he subdued it. Claud was good at that. He could control his feelings, hide them, but now she could see what he was really thinking. Her breath came, short and ragged, the precursor to a panic attack. ‘It isn’t the way it looks.’

‘You went on gay websites.’

‘But not to date people. Why the hell would I want to date anyone else when I have you?’

‘Why would you go on those websites? The clue’s in the name. Dating. Dating, Claud!’

‘Christ, Natalie. You don’t think I’d do that, would you? But I find people interesting. That’s all. And we have a cause. I thought you were on board. It’s really important. I just wanted to talk to people. Not just men, either.’

That made it worse. ‘Talking is how it starts. Isn’t it? And what about Gracie Pepper? What about that bloody bell ringer, picking you off the street and inviting you to his house to discuss the Rainbow Festival?’

He was bewildered. ‘But what’s wrong with that? He invited you, too.’

‘But I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want you to go. I wanted the two of us to be together, with no more of you spending all evening on secret sites and emailing God knows who, and always finding ways to see someone else. Anyone but me!’ She paused for a snatched breath. Her heart raced. There was no way through Claud’s self-righteousness.

‘Oh, Nat. Come on.’ His eyes flicked nervously from her to the secateurs, as though he thought she might pick them up and lunge at him.

He was hers and hers only. Sharing him with anyone meant less of him for herself. Eventually he would leave her and she would go under, drowning in the airless horror of her own inability to cope. ‘What about Faye Scanlon?’ she asked, breathlessly.

‘Faye Scanlon?’

‘Yes. And Inspector Dodd.’

 He kept his eyes on her face. She used to trust him but now she knew she couldn’t. ‘They’re colleagues. That’s all. Maybe I’ve spent a bit too much time working. I’ll take a few days off. Take a day or two and think it through. All the things we’ve been saying. All the things we’ve been teaching people. That matters. That’s why I’m talking to people. You have to network.’

‘They all think you’re a bit weird, you know that?’

‘Maybe they do. It doesn’t mean I’m wrong.’

‘That sergeant. Ashleigh O’Halloran. She thinks you’re very weird. I bet you think she’s attractive, too, but she doesn’t care about you. She’s just mad for her boss.’ And just as well for her. But if she said that Claud would look at her the way he had done before, measuring up in his mind how unhinged she might be and then saying whatever he thought necessary to deflect her.

‘Did you take your tablet this morning?’ He laid a hand on her arm.

She shook it free. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘Just that you don’t sound like your normal self. You don’t really think I’m having an affair.’

‘How dare you tell me what I think?’

‘I’m sorry, but every rational conversation I’ve ever had with you, you’ve understood. I’m sorry if I haven’t shown you how much I love you, but I have to see other people. It’s my job. It doesn’t mean anything. And I’m sorry about the laptop. I knew you’d been looking, and some of the content on those chats wasn’t really appropriate. That’s why I got rid of it, and I see now it was stupid, and not only because the police started looking at it. I was afraid you’d get the wrong idea. And you have.’

She took a moment to breathe, a moment to listen, knowing he was right. She was being irrational and when these moments came upon her, she struggled to keep control. But because she thought differently some times from the way she did at others, did that mean that what he called her irrational mind was wrong? ‘I’m not a good person.’

‘My gorgeous girl. Let’s go inside and talk about it, shall we?’

When they got inside he’d be checking to see she’d taken her drugs and probably putting in a sly call to a doctor to have the dose increased. Maybe he’d try to have her locked up. Yes, that was it. And then he could do whatever he wanted with whoever he chose and she’d lie alone in some narrow room in an institution, for the rest of her life. A thin tear overflowed her eye and trickled down her cheek, dropping onto the roses