Death at Rainbow Cottage, Jo Allen [top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT] 📗

‘I wondered. She called me, too. I didn’t ignore it, but I told her I had no comment. Except for my standard response about trying to improve the tolerance of our force for those of different ethnicity, gender and sexuality both within the force and in the wider community, etcetera, etcetera.’ For a moment, Faye exhibited a trace of humour.

‘It’s so hard,’ Ashleigh burst out, impulsively. ‘Don’t think I don’t understand. When everything goes pear-shaped in your life you do stupid things. And when it comes down to it, it was the same for both of us, wasn’t it? We were both lonely and we both needed help. It’s not weakness to admit it.’

‘I’m trying to make a new start.’ Just like Ashleigh herself had done. ‘The last thing I need, at this stage in my life, is a newspaper coming in and looking for something sensational.’

‘But it’s only a local paper.’

‘It’s a local force and we work in the local community. So yes, local matters.’ Faye reproved her.

‘What they printed was nothing. Even if she does come back with more it’ll be a flash in the pan and the next week people will be talking about the plans for the roundabout or whether they should allow any more houses to be built, or anything. They might even be talking about Claud’s Rainbow Festival and how wonderful it is. And at the end of it, people will respect you for the job you do.’ Faye’s defences were up. It was obvious. There was no point in wasting any more time.

Pointedly, Faye looked towards the door. ‘I hear what you say, Ashleigh. thank you.’

Ashleigh got up. Faye was trying to shame her into apologising, but she wouldn’t. Honesty was the only thing if they were to work together, and she wasn’t going to be the one to give up and move on if it all went wrong. If Faye was going to make life difficult for one of them, it would be for herself. ‘Goodbye, then.’

‘Thank you for calling round.’ It was enough of a concession. ‘I’ll see you in the office.’ Faye got to her feet and shepherded her to the door, as if she couldn't be trusted to pick a safe route through the teetering piles of boxes and bags still unpacked.

‘Ah, damn. I’m sorry.’ As she reached for the door, Ashleigh’s bag caught on the small side table in the hall, sideswiping the contents to the floor. She swooped to pick up what she’d knocked over. A picture in a clip frame, a younger Faye with two small children clinging at her knees and a bespectacled, slightly older man staring down at the three of them in adoration. She handed it back.

‘Get out,’ Faye said, and slammed the door behind her.

*

The door to Faye Scanlon’s house opened and closed, and Ashleigh O’Halloran, in a scarlet shirt and blue trousers and with her blonde hair loose and blowing in the wind, stepped down the path and onto the pavement. Turning sharp left, she headed away from the house and up the hill.

Faye Scanlon and her bloody workshops. If her enthusiasm for equality hadn’t been so strong, the equal to Claud’s, he might have spent less time enthusing about this woman’s capabilities and behaved differently towards the wife who only wanted him to love her. Shivering, Natalie reached out her hand for the knife, slid it out from under the passenger seat and put onto the seat.

She didn't enjoy killing, but there was no other way to purge her life of the poison that had taken Claud from her but to rid the world of all the others Claud might have grown to love.

Time was her only ally now she’d given herself away to Jude Satterthwaite. She drew her finger along the edge of the blade, the knife that Claud had used to cut the meat the night before. Her blood mingled with his and dripped down onto the seat of the car.

She got out, concealing the blade inside her coat, and paused for a moment in the empty square. The wind whipped against her face and a bad-tempered cloud passed overhead, spitting rain upon her. She turned her face up to the sky, and a rainbow slipped down from the sky and hovered over the house that Ashleigh had just left.

As if she’d needed a sign.

*

Before she was at the top of the hill, Ashleigh knew she’d given up too easily. She’d been humiliated and there had been tears pricking at the back of her eyes as she left, but in reality Faye’s mistakes weren’t all that different to her own. It was the picture that had given her away. Chris had said something about Faye’s husband having thrown her out in the aftermath of the affair and that was what Ashleigh herself had done to Scott, still regretting the bitter necessity of it. A mistake like theirs, a joint lunge into misery and self-pity, could cost you the earth but you healed it only by confronting it.

I never took it out on Scott, she reminded herself. I ended it cleanly.

It was the injustice that got to her. Jude would counsel caution, with any action going via the proper channels if Faye’s behaviour in the workplace verged on intimidation, but that wasn’t enough. Faye still loved her husband, perhaps, just as Ashleigh loved Scott, but you moved on.

For a moment she’d thought she’d got through, and there was still something that nagged at her in Faye’s face, as if the woman had been desperate to be persuaded to do the right thing and Ashleigh had failed to give her the nudge in the right direction. Faye had children. Did that make a difference? She turned and headed back down again, in time to see Natalie Blackwell get out of her car and stand