Shadow Over Edmund Street by Suzanne Frankham (read a book .TXT) 📕

white Land Rover in the narrow driveway. Rose, who had learnt how much the houses cost, couldn’t believe a couple so young could own a house as expensive. But maybe it owned them. Forever demanding money for the mortgage, for mending the roof, painting the weatherboards, taming the garden. For Rose, the prices weren’t so bad. She’d transferred her British pounds back to New Zealand dollars at a time when the pound had some worth, before it fell to an embarrassing fraction of its former glory.

They’d driven back along the main road and Sam had said, ‘Turn the other way, Mum, down to the water.’ She had always lived on the poor side of the main road, in a house that hadn’t been particularly loved. Down towards the water was a different country. The streets wider, the old kauri villas proud and substantial, the weatherboards well maintained, gardens brimming with flowers, lawns manicured.

Katie had spotted it. Shrieked, ‘Stop Mum!’ A cottage near the end of a short steep road that ran down towards the harbour, had a ‘For Sale’ sign on the fence. ‘Let’s check it out.’

They’d walked up and down the road, poked their noses in as much as they could and Sam had thrown his arm around Rose’s shoulder, his voice alive with enthusiasm. ‘Can we afford it, Mum? What do you think? Let’s ring the agent. The number’s there on the board. Should we try to buy it?’

It was such a joy to see the kids excited that she’d gone along with them and bought the house. They loved it. The cat loved it, and apart from the days when the wind blew in hard from the southwest and rattled its old bones, she loved it too.

Thinking about the house reminded Rose how Edwina had trembled when she found out the cottage at number eleven was for sale.

‘I want the house, Rose. I really want it. I know the house you see,’ she had added. ‘When we were kids my best friend lived there, but she died young.’

Rose had been nonplussed, but it didn’t matter. Edwina hadn’t noticed her discomfort, kept on talking.

‘There’s something I need to do, should have done a long time ago. Now things have changed. It’s now or never. It’s time.’

Rose remembered how reluctant she’d been to ask the obvious questions—what, who and why? Couldn’t face the thought of a convoluted explanation about people she’d never known. She’d tried not to encourage Edwina’s conversations with their endless, bewildering twists and turns, but thinking about it now, it was not like Edwina to be enigmatic.

‘There’s something I need to do, should have done a long time ago. It’s time.’ That’s what Edwina had said. She’d shown a dogged determination where the cottage was concerned. A determination strong enough to push her into selling a house that had been in her family for three generations. It hadn’t been the desire for a newly renovated home or even the need for cash.

Rose sat up in bed, felt the hairs on her arm prickle. Remembered the detective talking about changes in Edwina’s behaviour. What had he wanted to know? Anything odd Edwina had done recently. A key, that’s what they were trying to find, something unusual. He was thinking about new people who might have influenced Edwina, but with sudden absolute conviction Rose knew the key was the house. The other things had been a natural progression from winning the raffle—trying to improve herself. Something else had driven Edwina to buy the cottage. Rose stared into space, oblivious to the cat sneaking onto the bed and curling up into a tight ball. She was seeing Edwina’s face when she talked about buying number eleven. Not pleasure, something different. Something mysterious tinged with fear.

Ignoring the cold she leapt out of bed, searching for the detective’s card. Detective Alex Cameron, with the long legs and dark hair which flopped over his dark eyes. It had been three months since Edwina died and she’d thought of phoning him from time to time. How was the investigation going? Any excuse. But that was a different Rose. The one who was stirring after years of mourning. Not that she ever would. The intricacies of conducting an affair with two teenage children at home had stopped her in her tracks, especially two children whose beloved father had been killed in an accident.

She found Alex’s card in her wallet, picked up the phone, put it down. What could she say to him? The house is the key. There’s a body in the yard? No. Nevertheless, she was sure there was something about the house. She tucked the card, his mobile number scrawled on the back, into her wallet. She had nothing to tell him. Nothing at all.

* Rose spent the rest of the day in turmoil. Katie and Sam wandered in and out, ate dinner, went to a party. She smiled, talked, cooked, had conversations, all on automatic pilot. After the children left, she opened a bottle of sauvignon blanc and proceeded to work her way through the bottle. She wandered around the house with the glass in her hand, spent minutes at a time staring out the window at the endless darkness of the sea. All the time trying to decide what to do. Edwina buying the house might be the key but there had to be a person involved. A story associated with the house. Problem was, she had no idea how to find out.

It came to Rose in the middle of the night when she woke with a dry mouth and a thumping head. Mrs O’Brien would know. But as quickly as she thought of her, she dismissed the idea. Her one meeting with Mrs O’Brien at the funeral hadn’t gone well. Mrs O’Brien had made her displeasure known.

Rose swallowed a glass of water and two painkillers. She was falling off to sleep again when she remembered the other friend Edwina had talked about, the one from the vegetable