The Skeleton Tree by Diane Janes (reading women TXT) 📕

‘Oh …’ Wendy could see that her soon-to-be-neighbour was expecting a reaction, but she had no idea what to say. At least half-a-dozen possibilities ran through her mind all at once. ‘But … people can’t be sure,’ she said, hesitantly. ‘I mean, if it was certain … if there was actual evidence, the police would have charged him, wouldn’t they?’

Mrs Parsons pursed her lips and shook her head. It was almost, Wendy thought, as if the woman considered that she herself was complicit in some felony for allowing Peter to work on the house and therefore facilitating access to the neighbourhood for this dangerous individual.

‘Well, I just thought I ought to warn you. You’ve a teenage girl yourself.’

‘Thank you,’ Wendy said. ‘That’s … very thoughtful of you.’

There was a pause, which became increasingly awkward with every passing second.

‘Well, I expect we’ll be bumping into each other again,’ Wendy said. ‘Seeing as we’re going to be near neighbours.’

‘Aye. Maybe.’ Mrs Parsons turned away, heading down the road, presumably towards her home.

Wendy thought about the encounter all the way home. What had Mrs Parsons meant, saying ‘maybe’ in that way? That she would not be going out of her way to mix with someone who had clearly not been willing to immediately act on her warning? Or that she doubted it because Wendy might end up disappearing as comprehensively as the girl from Hartlepool? She didn’t keep things from Bruce as a general rule, but he had been inclined to worry over the new house since the very beginning, and the idea that someone working there had been suspected of abducting and doing away with a young woman wasn’t exactly going to reassure a man with a wife and two daughters. Surely there was no need to give him anything additional to worry about – another reason to question the purchase of The Ashes in the first place? After all – and she had intimated as much to Mrs Parsons – the police (and ‘everybody’) couldn’t really know that Peter was the guilty party. If there had been any evidence against him worth talking about, he wouldn’t still be at liberty to replace her rotten floorboards while singing his Jimmie Rodgers songs and spending his Saturday afternoons at the Victoria Ground?

She considered speaking to Mr Broughton about it, perhaps even asking him to move Peter to another job, but that seemed very unfair. Suppose there wasn’t another job? It must be bad enough having the finger of suspicion pointed at you by everyone, without losing your job on top of everything else. Well … no, not pointed at you by everyone. She herself had not associated him with the disappearance of Leanne Finnegan. Nor, obviously, had Bruce, who would surely have said something about it if he had.

She only vaguely remembered the case. The disappearance had been all over the local papers, and at one stage a man had been detained to help police with their enquiries, but now she came to think about it, the girl had never been found and the man had not been named. There had been a brief flurry in the local media and then a couple of days later came the news that he had been released without charge. There would always be a grapevine, though. Neighbours, work colleagues, friends of friends who could put a name to the man involved. Word would spread along that spiderweb of contacts, a whisper in the pub, a nod in the supermarket. Mrs Parsons had evidently heard the story and knew what Peter Grayling looked like well enough to recognize him as he arrived to work at The Ashes, though she clearly wasn’t a friend.

It came to Wendy, as she turned into Jasmine Close, that if you wanted to settle an old score against someone who was not a friend, suggesting something that might result in his immediate loss of employment was a nifty way to go about it. After all, she had no way of confirming whether or not what Mrs Parsons had told her about Peter had so much as a grain of truth in it. That decided her. It was far better not to bother Bruce with the story at all, particularly when everything was coming on so well, what with Mr Broughton saying they were still on budget and all the major works on target to be finished in little more than two or three weeks. After that they would need time to allow for things to dry out before they could paper and paint. No point rushing to move in until everything was perfect.

They would be in by summer. At Christmas she would be snipping holly from their own bush and putting up their tree in The Ashes. A proper evergreen from now on, not that artificial one they had in the loft. She visualized the tree’s arrival, Bruce unloading it from the roof rack, being helped (or hindered) in the process by overexcited children. Fairy lights reflecting in the front downstairs window. Maybe they could rig up some lights in the garden too. It was a bit posh, having lights strung in your front garden, but the kids would love it. Bruce would know how to do it safely (and tastefully).

When she reached home, she changed out of her gardening clothes, taking a moment to consider the state of her hands and nails. Gardening was hard on the hands, in spite of wearing gloves, but the results were rewarding. Spring had crept through the garden as she worked. She had cleared a good deal of it herself, working relentlessly day after day until the area at the front of the house was transformed: rediscovered flowerbeds formed three sides of a square around the stone sundial, each of them newly planted with rose bushes where nettles had previously held sway. The last of a succession of skips had gone from the drive,