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

After they had washed, dressed and eaten breakfast, Wendy and the two younger children settled down in front of the television in the sitting room to watch events unfold. Katie seemed full of nervous excitement about the wedding itself, though Jamie was much more interested in the party to be held on the village green later in the day. Bruce was down in Ashby and Tara was in Portugal with her father and his family, but she had informed Wendy that they would be watching the wedding on a television specially set up by the pool. Wendy had considered ringing Bruce to wish him Happy Royal Wedding Day but decided against it. He probably had enough to contend with. His mother was an ardent royalist and had apparently been talking of little else for weeks.

She joined in as Katie oohed and ahhed over the various dresses of the female guests and the bridesmaids, but after all the anticipation, Lady Diana’s dress was rather a disappointment.

‘It looks all creased,’ Katie mourned.

‘You’re right, pet. It looks as if it could do with a good iron across it.’

Katie lived the ceremony, visibly wincing when the bride stumbled over her future husband’s names, but Jamie grew bored and eventually got up from the sofa and drifted across to the window.

‘Mam,’ he said, beckoning. ‘Come over here and listen.’

Wendy joined him, mystified. ‘I can’t hear anything,’ she said.

Jamie nodded. ‘The whole world must be watching the wedding,’ he said.

She realized then what he meant. Not a single car had travelled along Green Lane since proceedings in St Paul’s had begun. No voices, no vehicles, nothing but birdsong disturbed the stillness of the glorious summer day.

They ate cold chicken and salad for lunch, the children being allowed fizzy drinks while Wendy had a large glass of white wine. The whole world was celebrating, so why not? She noticed that Katie seemed even more het up than before. Jamie was excited too. They were both wound up about the party, she supposed.

After lunch she took the various plastic boxes from the fridge and packed them into her largest shopping bags. There were too many to fit into just two bags and she had to press the children into service as porters. It was times like this when you really missed having a car, she thought. And thank goodness the children hadn’t been dragooned into donning fancy dress, which would surely have created an added complication. They walked up Green Lane and along the High Street to the village green. The route had been festooned with flags and bunting, pretty much every shop and dwelling on the High Street joining in. Cardboard crowns covered in kitchen foil jostled with garish pictures of the newlyweds, some cut out of newspapers, some hand-drawn. There had been nothing like it since the Silver Jubilee in ’77. If anything, John Newbould and his team had exceeded their previous efforts, for on the village green they encountered displays from a ferocious-looking troop of Viking re-enactors, a bouncy castle, and a carousel whose inbuilt barrel organ competed loudly with the kazoos, drums and glockenspiels of the local junior jazz band as they marched about and twirled their batons in unison.

‘They must be hot in those uniforms.’ Andrew Webster’s mother had appeared alongside Wendy, holding a cloud of pink candy floss on a stick, which she used to gesture towards the youngsters in the jazz band, who were now effecting a complicated-looking manoeuvre which entailed two groups crossing one another on opposing diagonal routes.

‘It is hot,’ Wendy said. ‘I’m afraid I’m getting a headache, what with the noise and the heat.’ And possibly also the unaccustomed wine at lunchtime, she thought.

Mrs Webster turned to study her face. ‘You do look a bit flushed,’ she said, raising her free hand and placing it uninvited against Wendy’s forehead. ‘You’re not going to pass out on us, are you?’

‘Oh, no … I shouldn’t think so. The trouble is I don’t want to take the children home when they’re having such a good time.’

‘Oh, don’t you worry about that. I’ll look out for them. Me and our Barry will be here until the fireworks tonight. Why don’t you go home and put your feet up for a bit? You’ll probably feel better in a while.’

Wendy made no more than a token protest. Mrs Webster was right. Her head was getting worse and she felt the need to lie down. After swiftly explaining the arrangements to Katie and Jamie, she set off to walk back to The Ashes. Just the prospect of lying down in her cool bedroom made her feel a little better as she left the cacophony on the green behind her. Most people who were attending had long since made their way to the village green, but there was a middle-aged couple approaching along the deserted High Street, and when they got nearer, Wendy saw that it was Mrs Parsons, accompanied by a man who was probably Mr Parsons. Wendy had not seen the woman to speak to since the occasion, over a year before, when she had stopped her in the street to inform her that Peter Grayling was a suspect in the Leanne Finnegan case. Wendy would rather have avoided speaking with her now, but they were approaching each other on the same side of the road and it was impossible to cross over without being pointedly rude, so she smiled and would have passed by with a ‘hello’ had Mrs Parsons not stopped and effectively blocked the pavement.

‘I suppose you saw the news yesterday?’ the woman said.

Wendy admitted that she had not.

‘Well, they’ve found that girl’s body. Leanne Finnegan.’ There was an almost triumphant glint in Mrs Parsons’ eye. ‘Poor lass. The family have identified her by her jewellery. Of course, they can’t get him now, that Peter Grayling. You can’t try a person twice, seemingly.’

‘Double jeopardy,’ the man put in gravely.