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

a window booth by someone who was much too young to be Jack. Someone with short spiky hair and too many rings in his ears to count. Rose tapped her foot, fiddled with her wedding ring. Juliana arrived ten minutes late. The relief must have shown on her face.

‘What?’ Juliana asked, ‘did you think I wouldn’t come? I said I would.’ She had dressed for the occasion, and Rose was aware more than one person had swivelled around to watch Juliana make her way to the table. She was wearing colours. Lots of them. Different shades of red, blue and purple. A long red skirt and top covering her generous frame, a pair of red patent stilettos and a scarf with swirls of purple and aqua thrown across one shoulder. Combined with her shining black hair, red lips and blue hooded eyes, the result was startling. Rose loved it. A peacock in a cage of drab blackbirds.

A man had followed her to the table. He leant down and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘Juliana,’ he purred, ‘it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you so radiant.’

‘Thank you, dear Jack. Meet my friend, Rose.’

Jack, dressed head to foot in black—shirt, tie, trousers and jacket—leant forward to shake her hand. Ice-blue eyes, thinning dyed black hair slicked back off his face, a crescent tattoo on one of his knuckles. The hairs on Rose’s arm began to prickle. If she hadn’t been with Juliana, she would have excused herself, gone somewhere else. She did her best to appear calm, smile, say hello.

‘Jack, why don’t you order for us? You know my favourites. Rose and I have serious business to discuss tonight.’

He raised one long, elegant eyebrow. Rose watched transfixed.

‘Tonight we solve the murder of Edwina!’

‘Was it sensible to let Jack know?’ asked Rose after he had left. ‘About trying to solve Edwina’s murder?’

‘Jack? Oh, yes. He knows lots of things. He was in the same class as us. At primary school. St Joey’s. At secondary we went our separate ways, but we were all together as young children. Besides, he was one of the boys who made my life hell at school. I’ve been making him pay for it in countless little ways ever since.’

‘Good on you. There’s something about him … menacing. What did he do? Was it bad? The bullying, I mean. The things coming out now … did it really happen?’

‘Oh my God, of course! All part of the story I have to tell you.’ She lowered her voice, leant across the table closer to Rose. ‘His name’s not Jack, you know, it’s Johann. Born here, but the family’s Austrian, or so he says, but I bet his father was German. Maybe it was just in my family, but the war threw a huge shadow over us when I was a kid. My grandfather lived with us you see, and most nights at the dinner table he talked about it. Endless stories. The old country and the war. My poor father was born at the start of the war. In Italy. Imagine. Such deprivation. For years after, too. Scarred he is, to this day. Impossible to recover.’

She plucked at her scarf. Gave a short laugh. ‘Doesn’t pay to dwell, dear. Jack figured it out soon enough, ditched his family history as fast as he could, became one of the tormentors. I was an easy target, so Italian. Gave us wogs hell. Names mostly, nothing much physical. These days I’m one of the few who knows all about him. He has to keep me on his good side.’

Rose shuddered. Thought back to his ice-blue eyes and slicked back hair. Started to ask more about his past when the food arrived.

Juliana’s eyes sparkled. ‘Let’s eat first, I’m starving. Then we’ll talk. It’s tapas. Italian, Spanish, French. You name it, Jack does it. Good too,’ she added.

Rose surveyed the spread of dishes in front of her. Prawns, croquettes, calamari, tortilla, chorizo, mussels and other dishes she didn’t recognise. Thought it was just as well she hadn’t eaten much these last couple of days. Smiled her thanks at Juliana and started on the prawns.

‘Here,’ Juliana said, wiping her fingers on a serviette after the food had been eaten and the plates removed, ‘have a look at this picture. I spent hours searching for it. Quite a trip down memory lane you’ve started. One I didn’t want to take, believe me.’

Rose took the photo, black and white fading to sepia. Three girls sat on the pavement with their feet on the road, smiling. All of them wore white dresses, ankle socks and Mary-Jane shoes. On one side a young girl, thin as a rake, her dark hair pulled back in pigtails. On the other side, a girl with short brown hair and glasses. In the middle, an angelic-looking child with long wavy blond hair and a shy smile, radiating an ethereal quality.

Rose placed the photo on the table. ‘Who’s who?’

‘I’m on the left, the skinny one with pigtails. You wouldn’t believe I could have been so skinny, would you? Ah, well,’ she sighed. ‘That was then and this is now. Edwina’s on the other side, with the glasses. Her mother used to cut her hair. All our mothers used to cut our hair, you know, but Edwina’s mother was brutal with the scissors. In the middle’s Trudi. She was so beautiful, Trudi. Edwina and I, we loved her hair. We used to brush it and play with it. Treat her as if she was a doll.’ Juliana shook her head.

Rose studied the photo. This was more than three little girls sitting on the pavement. ‘Tell me about it. What was going on?’

‘Want a limoncello?’ Juliana waved her empty glass in the air.

Rose nodded. What the hell, why not?

‘Good. Always helps to oil the brain when talking about this stuff.’ She signalled to Jack who by some mysterious process knew what was required.

‘The photo,’ Juliana said, after she’d taken a sip, ‘was taken before the