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

Wendy flipped open the shorthand notepad she was carrying and thumbed through a couple of pages. ‘No, sorry, Disberry. Unusual name.’

‘That’s what I was thinking. We might be able to find her, if she still lives around here. She was nine in 1943, so she’d only be forty-six now.’

‘She’s probably got married. Her name will be different.’

‘Even so, we might be able to track her down with an unusual name like that. Of course, you’re quite right, some children are terrible fibbers.’

It was only after she had dropped Joan off that Wendy remembered the photograph Peter had discovered in the cellar. She’d intended to mention it on both occasions she had seen Joan following her initial visit. Not that she could remember much about it, or even whether the young man in it could be said to resemble any of the family members in Joan’s album. It was just that she thought Joan might have had some suggestion as to what it had been doing, hidden under the attic floorboards – perhaps it was connected with some sort of game the children had all played together? The trouble was that she and Joan always got talking and the mystery photo slipped her mind.

Wendy was eager to share her discoveries over dinner, but the rest of the family were no more than politely interested. Katie wanted to talk about her forthcoming school play, in which she had been cast as a fox. It wasn’t a speaking part, which was fortunate as she would need to wear a mask. Tara was in a hurry to get away from the table and phone a friend – allegedly about a shared college project. Bruce merely said, ‘It was very clever of you to find out so much. It’s great that you’ve satisfied your curiosity, because now you’ll be able to get the whole thing out of your system.’

Wendy had stuck to the information regarding the Coates family, deciding that it was better not to mention anything about Dora (since this was a chapter of the house’s history that Bruce considered an inappropriate topic for the ears of the younger children). She said nothing at all about the fact that she and Joan had spent part of the journey home speculating about the possibility of tracking down Peggy Disberry.

I find it better not to dwell on anniversaries. Christmases and birthdays, special occasions which some people will never again be able to share with the lost ones. But there are some anniversaries that you aren’t allowed to forget. The blood, the dirt, the digging – the desperate, desperate digging.

NINE

December 1980–January 1981

The drink driving case came before the magistrates a couple of weeks before Christmas. The bench was unmoved by Wendy’s explanation of a single mistake in an otherwise unblemished decade of driving, or the notion that the loss of her licence would cause difficulties for her during the occasional periods when her husband’s work took him away from home. Having listened, stern-faced, they handed down a ban of twelve months, while Wendy stood in the dock, trying not to cry. She supposed that she ought to be cross with Joan – as Bruce was – for unthinkingly encouraging her to drink and drive, but it wasn’t as if Joan had done it on purpose. I have to take responsibility, Wendy thought. It was my own stupid mistake.

It was a nuisance, no doubt about it. Bruce had to take her supermarket shopping now, and missed his Saturday afternoon football match to accompany her on a foray into Middlesbrough for Christmas presents. He didn’t openly complain, but she knew what he was thinking.

The Christmas shopping went much more smoothly than Wendy had anticipated and by eleven thirty they were laden with bags and had already ticked off most of the items on her list.

‘Let’s go and have a coffee,’ she suggested. ‘I know a nice little place just round the corner, well away from the plastic cup and hamburger fraternity.’

‘Good idea.’

They were passing a shop which advertised ‘picture framing, quality paintings and personal service’ when Wendy stopped abruptly. With bags in both hands, she was unable to point. ‘Look,’ she said, nodding towards a painting propped on the easel which formed the centrepiece of the window display.

The picture was of a young woman in a full-length dress, who was smiling down at her sleeping child. The woman’s face had a wistful quality to it, Wendy thought. And the child looked utterly peaceful, cocooned from the world by the transparent draperies of its crib.

‘Oh Bruce! Isn’t it lovely?’

He nodded. ‘Very pretty.’

‘I wonder if it’s an original. I’d love to know who painted it.’

‘I should think it’s a print. I can’t see a price on it.’

‘It’s quite big. And it’s a posh shop, so it’s sure to be expensive.’

‘I’ll go and ask.’

To her surprise he dumped his bags on the pavement and entered the shop, disappearing immediately among the various items on display inside. He returned two or three minutes later.

‘Is it very expensive?’

Bruce laughed. ‘Horribly. But at least I’ve found out what you wanted to know. It’s a print of a painting done by a French woman. Morisot, the chap said her name was, from a French school apparently.’

‘A woman,’ Wendy said thoughtfully, taking a last long look at the picture, as Bruce adjusted the shopping he was carrying before they set off again in search of caffeine.

Though Bruce was forever watching the pennies, the balance of Wendy’s legacy and the equity from the house in Jasmine Close meant that they were comfortable enough for regular treats, and it crossed Wendy’s mind that he might have arranged to buy the painting as a Christmas present for her, but there was no tell-tale flat, rectangular present under the tree on Christmas morning and instead she simulated appropriate excitement over her favourite perfume from Bruce and thanked his parents profusely for their misguided gift of a sandwich toaster (of rather more benefit to the children than to herself, Wendy could