The Chorister at the Abbey by Lis Howell Page A

staying out all night.’
    ‘So how did she get back home?’ he asked.
    ‘Well, that’s just it! I was nearly hysterical when I realized she wasn’t in bed, and I shouted for Neil and we tried the mobile but there was no answer. We were just wondering about ringing the Robinsons or even the police and then . . .’ Lynn paused, her eyes round and pink at the rims with her sleepless night. ‘. . . the phone went and Chloe called us! She said she was fine, but she’d been sick and that someone had rescued her. She said she’d be back at six o’clock in the morning. And rang off. We sat there for two hours, scared witless. Then, bang on the dot, we heard her key in the lock.’
    ‘You must have been relieved. But you know at that age a lot of them stay out all night.’
    ‘But transport is such a nightmare! The kids with cars drive like madmen on New Year’s Eve. We’d given her money for a cab and told her to be home by three.’
    ‘So how did she get back?’
    ‘She said she’d been very silly but that someone had looked after her, then given her a lift home!’
    ‘Who? One of her mates?’
    ‘No, Edwin, that’s what was odd. She wouldn’t say who it was.’
    ‘That’s strange. Were you annoyed?’
    Lynn looked shocked. ‘No! I hate even the thought of rowing with Chloe; you know that, Edwin . . .’
    Her eyeline drifted away as she remembered the early hours of the morning, sitting there in the kitchen waiting for dawn, with her daughter slumped in front of her, drinking hot chocolate.
    ‘I’ve been really stupid, Mum,’ Chloe had said. ‘And I’m sorry. If I hadn’t been rescued I don’t know what would have happened to me. I was really sick in the lane by Strumpets club.’
    But when Lynn had asked her who had taken care of her, she had shaken her head.
    ‘Just some bloke I know. He was really kind.’
    Then, suddenly, Chloe had begun to cry, huge gasping sobs of relief. And it had all come out. How uni was scary and lonely and how the only boy she had fancied there just ignored her, and how the other girls in her hall were all so much prettier, and how people who’d done gap years all seemed so much more sophisticated. Chloe had been wretched.
    So she’d come home, to find that her mum was absorbed in Christmas preparations or hot flushes – and her dad was always out. She’d been so homesick. But home had just gone on without her.
    ‘Edwin, she isn’t even doing very well with the academic work. She was always such a star at Norbridge High. Since she came home, she’s just been showing off – to pretend it was all fine at university.’ Lynn’s tired eyes filled with tears and self-reproach.
    Edwin looked past Lynn to the living room where Chloe was leaning forward, smiling with enormous concentration at her grandfather.
    ‘Well,’ he said softly, ‘whatever happened certainly seems to have had an effect. She’s behaving angelically now!’
    ‘I know! She’s been totally different this morning. Look how good she’s being with Dad.’
    Even so, the dinner had gone on to be the usual stressful affair, dominated by the old man making heavy-handed jokes about priests, rabbis and vicars with endings he couldn’t remember. Edwin almost longed for Chloe’s old-style comments like, ‘Oh, belt up, Gramps,’ or, ‘I wish I’d hidden your dentures.’
    When at last he shut the door behind them all, Edwin went up the stairs two at a time to the tiny spare room at the front of the cottage where he did his work. He’d had enough reality for one day. He was studying the Psalms. One of the local clergy in Victorian times, who rejoiced in the name of Cecil Quaile Woods, had reportedly written some interesting psalm settings, but most of them had been lost. While Edwin was not particularly interested in the man, he was fascinated by the idea of renewing the interest in psalmody – if only locally at first. It wasn’t a project which would get much support from his new boss. But on New