Disturbing Ground by Priscilla Masters Page B

while to unbolt the door.
    Eventually it was pulled open and her patient peered around it fearfully, her face brightening when she realised it was Megan. “Hello, doctor,” she said, grabbing her hand. “Hello. So you have come. Thanks. Thanks ever so much.” She was still wearing her purple “funeral” leggings but today they were teamed with a blue polyester blouse which billowed over her wide hips and some very old fashioned brown slippers which slapped against her heels as she led the way to the sitting room.
    The air inside was faintly musty; none of the windows were open and the curtains were still half closed allowing only the dingiest of lights to penetrate.
    “I’m on my own now,” Esther said trustingly, dropping down onto the sofa. “I can’t get used to it neither. She’s gone and she won’t be back now. They buried her yesterday.”
    “I know. I was there.”
    Esther looked, child-like, at Megan. “The council say they’ll move me to a flat. I don’t mind if they do.”
    And although Megan knew she shouldn’t do this she began, gently, to probe her patient. “When did you last see Bianca?”
    Pale blue eyes looked guilessly into hers. “One of the days,” she said with great, vacuous significance.
    “Which day was it? Saturday?”
    Esther nodded, smiling.
    “Morning or afternoon?”
    “I wouldn’t know the time.”
    Megan suspected Esther wouldn’t even know the day. “They told me they found her in the Slaggy Pool,” she continued calmly. “They said she’d drowned. They buried her, you know. Yesterday.”
    “I know. I was there.”
    “You were?”
    “We spoke.”
    “Oh.” It was news.
    “You told me something about Bianca?”
    “I did?”
    “That you thought …”
    “Oh - I don’t know what I thought. She used to say things, you know.”
    “What things? What did she say?”
    “About people. Bad things about people.”
    “What sort of bad things?”
    Esther merely flashed her a bland smile.
    Frustrated now Megan tried again. “Which people?”
    “It’s surprising really. You’d never guess it, who does what.”
    “Who does do what?” Megan asked. “What do you mean? What did she mean?”
    But Esther’s mind had tracked away. “I miss her, you know.”
    “I’m sure you do.”
    “She was my friend. My - one - true - friend.”
    “I know.”
    “My best friend. My very best friend. The council say they’ll rehouse me.” Esther smiled. “In a flat. I don’t mind if they do.”
    So Megan gave up, checked whether there was anything Esther needed and left.
    On the pavement she hesitated, tempted to knock on Doris Baker’s door. But the police had already taken a statement from her. She had last seen Bianca on Saturday morning to give her her tablets. She would have nothing more to add. Any questions she directed to Bianca’s neighbour would be classed as interference. She sat in hercar for a few minutes, half hoping Doris would appear. But there was no movement and after a while Megan started up the engine and drove off.
    It was time to stop peering into the murky waters beneath The Bridge of Sighs.

Chapter 8
    But events conspired against her. A couple of weeks later, on Friday morning, the sixth of September, a request was filed for her to visit Triagwn House, now a home for fifty elderly residents and the responsibility of herself, Andy and Phil. The Social Services had been the rambling house’s salvation. Unless a practical use had been found for the building it would have been pulled down years ago and the land used for a much needed housing estate. But in the early nineteen eighties, when the grand house had been falling into irreversible decay the council had anticipated a growing need for local nursing home care for the elderly. And so they had bought Triagwn House and adapted it.
     
    As Megan threaded down the valley away from Llancloudy, towards the bottom of the valley, she was conscious of an unaccustomed sense of relief. Since Bianca had