The Chorister at the Abbey by Lis Howell Page B

Year’s Day, now his family had all gone, he would give himself a treat and settle down to some work.
    He needed to find out where the Quaile Woods psalter editions might be. It was the sort of totally absorbing activity which would keep Edwin busy for hours. And then there would be no time to think about Marilyn Frost.
    Or Morris Little.
    Alex Gibson had succumbed to her sister’s invitation to go for dinner on New Year’s Day, although the cold she had incubated since before Christmas was threatening to explode into her head, and she felt dazed and fuzzy. During the day she had managed to stick to just half a bottle of wine, but it had made her feel unusually dizzy. Her brother-in-law had offered to pick her up.
    Reg held her arm as she walked to the car. ‘There’s no need for that, Reg; I can manage.’ But she felt even more breathless than usual, getting her scarf tangled around her knees, and stumbling.
    ‘All right, all right, I was only trying to help.’ He sighed with great patience. ‘You know David and Pat Johnstone from Uplands Golf Club, don’t you?’
    Reg cheerily signalled a couple in the back of the car. Alex twisted round to say ‘Hi’, but suddenly thought that her breath might smell of alcohol so instead she just grimaced at them. The man was in his sixties, with thick grey hair and a smooth, padded look. His wife was stringy and tired-looking, with thin crispy curls. She gave a sort of cackling laugh.
    Yet another black mark, Alex thought. Well, if I’m being flaunted as the dysfunctional female of the family, I might as well enjoy it.
    Reg said, ‘David is the very successful estate agent. You’ll have seen his boards: “Johnstone – sign of success”.’
    ‘Not just real estate, Reg,’ Johnstone boomed. ‘I’ve got thumbs in lots of pies!’
    Reg laughed uncomfortably. ‘But you’ll have seen David’s posters, Alex.’
    ‘Oh, yes . . .’ The Johnstone logo, in orange and fuchsia, littered local villages. But in Fellside, the signs were up for so long they faded to the same brownish-grey colour as everything else in the village.
    ‘I might be able to help you with the bungalow . . .’ David Johnstone leant forward; Alex could smell the toothpaste on his breath.
    ‘Oh?’ she snapped. ‘Good at hoovering, are you?’
    Reg squirmed, and Alex turned to stare angrily out of the window. Reg and Christine frequently made remarks about ‘capitalizing’ on the bungalow, which she resented. She didn’t like the house and had no intention of staying in Fellside, but this was all too soon.
    The wrinkly Pat Johnstone, who looked older than her well-upholstered husband, laughed in her irritating, cackling way. ‘Dave means he could help you sell it.’
    ‘She knows what I mean, thank you very much,’ David Johnstone snapped at his wife. Alex felt guilty for giving him the opportunity.
    ‘Oh, don’t mind me!’ Pat Johnstone laughed her coarse laugh. Then she started to sneeze. ‘It’s your scarf,’ she said wheezily to Alex. ‘I’ve got an allergy to cheap man-made fibres.’
    ‘I’ll take it off.’ Alex stuffed it in her bag, but when she leant forward to do it she felt suddenly nauseous. I’m really not very well, she thought.
    The rest of the journey passed in silence.
    Reg and Christine Prout lived in a smart detached house on the main road between Fellside and Uplands. Reginald Prout was in his early fifties and worked for the council, counting the days until retirement and endless afternoons on the golf course. He had been handsome as a young man, but he had gone bald in middle age; his face, without his dated chestnut bob, was pale and weak. He had a nervous habit of stroking his head as if hoping to find more hair to cover his pate. Alex’s sister Christine was plump and motherly, missing her two daughters, who had both left home for London. Her house was too neat and tidy without them.
    There was no chat until they were all installed in Reg and Chris’s front