The Girl Next Door by Ruth Rendell

house was even more unexpected. The drawing-room, as her husband Martin had called it, was all his own work, everything in it chosen by him with care and taste.
    “It reminds me of my aunt Zoe’s house.” He found himself talking about Zoe, how good she had been to him and now she was so old, ninety-six, he dreaded her dying.
    “Not many people dread the death of someone so old.”
    “I don’t want to talk about how awful my parents were, though they were. My father was worse than my mother; at least she wasn’t violent. Zoe was loving and kind from the moment I went to live with her. D’you know, I couldn’t believe at first she wasn’t joking or playing some sort of game.”
    “Do you often see her?”
    “She still lives in Lewes. In a cottage but rather a big one. I go down about once a month and it’s not a chore, I think we both enjoy it.”
    “I’ll fetch us a drink,” said Daphne. “Sauvignon all right?”
    When she came back, he was standing by one of the bookcases, reading all the titles. She thought how thin and bony he looked. Frail was the word, but not ill , his face creased with wrinkles but his hands long and shapely. He took the wine and tasted it with evident pleasure. “May I tell you something?”
    “Of course. Whatever it is, are you sure? Don’t tell me anything you may regret when you think about it in the long watches of the night.”
    “I won’t regret it.”
    He told her about keeping Vivien’s room the way it was when she died. “I go and sit there sometimes and I talk to her. This room reminds me of it because it’s beautiful in the same sort of way. Do you think it wrong of me—self-indulgent, sentimental even?”
    “Not if it comforts you.”
    “I don’t know if it does. I don’t know if anything would. But I have a sort of feeling that I’d feel terrible if I got rid of it—I mean, turned it into a spare room or something. I’d feel bereft. If one of my children came to stay. I’ve got two other spare rooms but would I have to offer that room to them?”
    “Do they ever come?”
    “No. Well, they do. They come for flying visits from abroad—flying in two senses—but they never stay. I feel I ought to mind but I don’t really, not while I know they’re happy.”
    “I never wanted children. People say you regret it if you don’t have them but I can’t say I do. Shall we go and eat?”
    She had cooked black-olive pasta with a salad of avocado and artichokes, followed by crème caramel. The cheese was Shropshire Blue, which she said she was hooked on, so she hoped he liked it. He did and took red wine with it. The dining-room had orange walls and black furniture. He wondered if she lived alone or sometimes alone or had someone that a few years ago people would have called a “significant other” but no longer did. She played some Mozart that he had heard before but not for years. That kind of music brought tears to the eyes, and although he loved it, he was glad it didn’t last long. He left just after nine, saying he went to bed early and would catch the bus round the corner in Abbey Road.
    “I write poetry about buses,” he said. “Well, doggerel really. ‘A wonderful bus is the one-eight-nine, A special favourite of mine, It goes straight down from my abode, To lovely leafy Abbey Road.’ There’s more but I won’t inflict it on you.”
    She laughed, kissed him lightly on the cheek, and watched him go until he turned the corner. It was twenty past nine. She was putting the plates and cutlery in the dishwasher when the phone rang. It was one of those calls when you know who it is. She knew. Of course she couldn’t have done so, it wasn’t the kind of phone that tells you a name, but she knew, though not quite so well as to dare say, “Hallo, Alan.”
    He didn’t introduce himself, he didn’t need to. “I’m on the kind of phone that you can carry about but it’s not a mobile, so you couldn’t know who it was.”
    “But I could. I