The Killings at Badger's Drift by Caroline Graham Page B

Everything was on a low table in front of the sofa. But she wouldn’t trust her shaking hands.
    ‘You’re white as the proverbial sheet under all that plaster of Paris.’ Judy stared at the older woman. ‘You’re not pregnant are you?’
    ‘Of course not.’
    ‘Of course not,’ echoed Judy. ‘You’re well past it, aren’t you?’
    ‘Have you got a cigarette, Trevor?’
    Her husband, not looking up from his paper, replied, ‘There’s some in a box on my writing desk.’
    Barbara took one, tapping it so furiously on the lid it almost snapped. She lit it with a silver football and stood smoking at the window, her back to them. The silence, packed with unspoken animosities, lengthened.
    Judy Lessiter directed her burning gaze at her father’s paper shield. She would have liked to burn straight through it like a magnified ray from the sun. To see it brown and blacken and flake away, leaving a hole for his stupid astonished face to peer through.
    It was now five years since that shattering day when they had both turned up on the doorstep with matching gold bands. He had been away from home the night before, telling her he was at the bedside of a dying patient. She had been unable to forgive him for this lie which she felt was utterly despicable. She wasn’t even sure if she still loved him. Certainly her pleasure in observing his day-to-day discomfiture augured strongly against it.
    From the very first she had resisted strongly Barbara’s rather half-hearted suggestions about clothes and makeup and alterations to her room. She liked her room the way it had always been - old toys, patchwork quilt, school books and all - and found Barbara’s suggestions on how to make it more feminine (ruffled curtains, soppy Pierrot wallpaper and oyster shag-pile carpet) quite nauseating. She was also, she told herself, far too intelligent to be taken in by the stupid magazines Barbara spent half her life reading. As if a new you could be found by starving the old you half to death then tearing the eyebrows out of what was left. But the motherly advice hadn’t lasted long and Barbara had soon slipped into the daily routine that had continued ever since. Giving orders to the daily help, visiting her hairdresser, health club and dress shops and lying about the house studying what Judy called ‘ Harpies Bizarre and other gorgoneia’.
    Judy was not happy. She had not been happy since the day her mother died. Not, that is, in the fearless uncomplicated way an only child of two loving parents is happy. But the unhappiness of the other two gave her a curious sort of comfort. And then there was Michael Lacey. Or rather there wasn’t. And would never be. That was something she would have to keep repeating every time the little worm of hope wriggled in her heart. Not only because of his looks (even after the accident he still had the most wonderful face) but because of his work. A painter must be free. Only last week he told her he was going to travel; to study in Venice, Florence and Spain. Full of anguish she had cried, ‘When, when!’ but he had simply shrugged, saying, ‘One day . . . soon.’ Since her engagement his sister Katherine was hardly ever at home and Judy walked over to the cottage sometimes, cleaned up a bit, made some coffee. Not too often. She tried to space her visits widely with the secret hope that he might start to miss her.
    Two weeks ago he had taken her arm and led her over to a window. He had held her chin and studied her face, then said, ‘I’d like to paint you. You have amazing eyes.’ He had spoken almost clinically, as if he were a sculptor and she a promising lump of stone, but Judy’s heart had melted in her breast (A New You!) and her dreams, refurbished, gained in strength. He hadn’t mentioned it again. She had walked over a few evenings ago, seen through the window that he was working and, lacking the courage to disturb him, crept quietly away. She had not returned, afraid that an unwanted