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

rack, examined it and, deciding it was still edible, reached for some butter.

‘I don’t think there’s much chance of that.’ Bruce laughed. ‘Your mother would need to live to be over a hundred.’

‘Oh, I don’t know … if you’re counting continuous occupation by one family and we left the house to Jamie, he could easily live to be in his eighties,’ Wendy said, cheerful and unthinking.

‘Thorntons living here eighty years from now.’ There was an odd inflection in Tara’s voice as she laid the emphasis on Thornton. On Wendy’s remarriage, Tara’s surname had never been changed to match.

‘He’ll need to have a jolly good job then,’ said Bruce. ‘Have you any idea how much the electricity bill is?’ He tossed the offending item (which he had just opened) across the table. It slid to a halt against a used knife, acquiring a smear of marmalade at one corner.

‘I’ll have to ring Joan and tell her about this,’ Wendy said.

‘What on earth has it got to do with her?’ asked Bruce.

‘She said she’d be interested. I promised to let her know whatever information we got back from the bank.’

‘She’s probably not interested at all. Just wanted to come gozzing around to see what we’ve done to the place.’

When she telephoned Joan later that morning, however, Wendy took a small, private degree of satisfaction from the fact that Bruce was completely wrong. Joan’s response was highly enthusiastic and she reissued her invitation for Wendy to visit her for the purpose of viewing some old family photographs.

Wendy chose lunchtime to announce that Joan had invited her over. ‘I’m going a week on Tuesday evening. You won’t need the car, will you?’

‘What?’ Bruce’s attention was divided between his sandwich and the weekend paper, which he had folded to a suitable size so that it fitted between the edge of the table and his plate. ‘The car? No, I don’t need it on Tuesdays. Though goodness knows what you want to be going off to see that woman for.’

‘You know I said I was going to make the invitations for my eighteenth?’ Tara said. ‘Well, I’m starting to think we’ll need to buy them after all.’

‘I knew you’d never get round to doing them,’ Wendy said. ‘You’ll have to go into town and choose something.’

‘That means they’ll be really ordinary. Couldn’t we get something printed up specially?’

‘You should have done them in the holidays,’ Katie said. ‘I told you I would help you with the colouring in.’

Tara pulled a face at her sister before saying, ‘Please, Mam, I bet we could get something much nicer if we had them made up specially.’

‘I daresay we could … at a price. But when we costed everything out at the start, you said you were going to make them yourself. We haven’t budgeted for a lot of bespoke invitations. What do you think, Bruce?’

‘It’s nothing to do with me. I see the paper’s full of this Lady Diana Spencer again.’

Wendy turned back to Tara. ‘I suggest you have a look at what’s available, while you’re in town this afternoon. You might see something really nice.’

Bruce had finished with one section of paper and was making heavy weather of refolding it in readiness to read something else. He was about to flatten the pages into their next configuration on the table when he made a wordless exclamation.

‘What’s the matter, Daddy?’ asked Katie.

‘It’s nothing,’ Bruce said. He folded the paper in half, enclosing whatever it was he had just seen, put it down beside him and leaned his elbow on it, which prevented anyone else from picking it up to investigate. ‘So, what’s everyone planning for this afternoon? I don’t suppose anyone wants to come with me to watch Billingham Synthonia in the cup?’

‘Yawnfest,’ said Tara. ‘Anyway, I’m going into town.’

‘I’m going to stick my stamps in,’ said Katie.

‘Have you tidied all that other stuff off your bedroom floor, like I asked you to? You’ve to do that before you go getting anything else out,’ Wendy cautioned.

‘I’d like to come,’ Jamie assured his father solemnly. ‘But I have to ride my bike.’

Seeing that Wendy had finished her lunch, Bruce caught her eye and left the kitchen, the newspaper stuffed artlessly under his arm. She followed him to the sitting room, where he closed the door behind them and thrust the paper at her, opening it out as he did, so that she could read what he had seen.

‘Peter Grayling,’ he hissed. ‘Isn’t that the big bloke who worked for Broughton?’

Wendy was reading as she spoke. ‘Goodness,’ she said. ‘Peter’s been arrested. Mrs Parsons was right after all.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When they were doing the house up, Mrs Parsons – she lives on the opposite side of Green Lane – told me that the police had questioned him about this Leanne Finnegan’s disappearance when it first happened. She’s sure that he killed her.’

Bruce was incredulous. ‘And you didn’t see fit to mention this?’

‘It was just gossip.’

‘Pretty accurate gossip, by the sound of it. You mean to tell me that you knew this man was a suspected murderer and you never so much as breathed a word? You just let Tara and Katie wander freely around here? You didn’t even have much to say when Tara started going out with one of these men. I mean, what is wrong with you?’

Tara chose that moment to bob her head around the door. ‘Having a not-in-front-of-the-children moment, are we? What’s the big news? I saw you being all secretive with the paper.’ Though she and Bruce had never officially made up their spat, their relationship had to all intents and purposes slipped back into its former groove.

Bruce took the paper from Wendy and thrust it at Tara. ‘It’s that bit, there. See the headline? Man held in connection with Hartlepool murder. You see what type of person Mr Broughton employs?’

‘That’s very unfair.’ Tara was obviously shocked by the news, but Bruce’s words brought colour to her cheeks. ‘It’s not fair to judge other people