‘Me? Mum, you don’t think I’d do that. I didn’t—not me—it wasn’t me. It must have been Flora who spilt the milk, tore the comic, broke the cup, ate the chocolate...’ Or any of the hundred tiny crimes committed in this house every day while Sancha was cast in the role of detective, judge and jury all in one, trying hopelessly to pin the blame on one of her children while suspecting all of them. The boys always tried to accuse Flora, but if she was asleep in her cot and couldn’t be proved guilty they turned on each other, both equally full of righteous indignation and wide-eyed innocence.
But they were children. Mark was a grown man. He needn’t think he was getting away with anything. She would talk to him tomorrow morning, before the children woke up.
She set her alarm for half an hour before she needed to get up, but when she went along to wake Mark the spare room was empty. He must already be up. Sancha ran downstairs, but he wasn’t there, either. He had left the house while she was asleep.
There was a note on the kitchen table. She snatched it up and read it hurriedly. ‘Had to get to work early. Mark.’
She screwed the paper up and threw it across the room, sobbing with pain and anger.
He was lying; she knew it. He had left to avoid facing her. He had sensed she was going to ask awkward questions and didn’t want to answer them.
But he was going to. Sooner or later he was going to have to talk to her.
Later in the morning she and Flora set off to the small neighbourhood shopping centre and were heavily laden by the time they ran into Martha Adams, the only neighbour who was really friendly with Sancha.
She stared, grinned. ‘You’ve had your hair done! Marvellous! You look years younger—suits you shorter.’
‘Thanks. I feel lighter, too.’
Martha contemplated Sancha’s three shopping bags. ‘Been on a buying spree?’
‘It’s just food,’ Sancha groaned. ‘The boys eat an incredible amount every day. Between them and Flora we went through half a box of cornflakes this morning alone. I can only just keep up with them.’
‘Come and have a coffee,’ invited Martha, and they walked across the street to the Victorian Coffee House, which had been built a year earlier to look around a hundred years old.
The waitresses were all young and pretty, and wore Victorian black and red print dresses with starched caps and aprons. The menu was couched in Victorian language, too. Sancha and Martha didn’t need to read it; they had been there before and knew the menu by heart.
Martha ordered what they always had. ‘Two coffees, two hot buttered muffins and hot chocolate with a marshmallow on top for the little girl.’
‘You got it,’ said the waitress, and vanished with a swish of long skirts.
Flora had spotted the Victorian rocking-horse which was one of the major attractions of the place for her. For once there was no other child riding it.
‘Want a ride, want a ride,’ she began to chant, trying to climb down out of the highchair Sancha had popped her into.
Martha lifted her out and carried her over to the rocking-horse. Flora at once began to gallop, crowing with delight.
Sancha watched her with fierce love; Flora was demanding, exhausting, but above all adorable, and Sancha would die to protect her. Yet by one of fate’s strange ironies it had been Flora’s birth that had driven Sancha and Mark apart.
It wasn’t that Mark didn’t love the child or hadn’t wanted her—more that by needing her mother’s full-time attention Flora had driven a wedge between her parents, had soaked up so much of Sancha’s time and care that there had been nothing left for Mark.
While Sancha watched her child Martha had been watching Sancha, her forehead creased.
‘Is something wrong?’
The question made Sancha start. Only then did she realise she was on the point of tears again. It kept happening since she’d got the anonymous letter. Turning her head away, she brushed a hand across her eyes.
‘No, of course not,’ she lied, forcing a smile as she turned back to face Martha’s intent gaze.
Just five feet tall, and built on a diminutive scale to match, with a slender body and short legs, Martha had a mobile, heart-shaped face and bobbed black hair without a trace of grey yet—although she was forty years old. She lived alone in the house across the street from Mark and Sancha and her home was a magnet for all Sancha’s children because Martha kept a cat and two dogs—sleek red setters, with gleaming manes and liquid dark eyes.
Her eyes shrewd, she refused to accept Sancha’s lie. ‘Come on, you know you can talk to me. I won’t repeat anything you tell me,’ she murmured, with one eye on Flora. ‘Having problems? Not Flora?’
Sancha laughed. ‘Flora’s always a problem!’
‘That’s true,’ Martha said, smiling. ‘But there is something wrong, isn’t there? Is it the boys? Or Mark?’
Her quick ears caught Sancha’s faint, quickly suppressed sigh.
‘It’s Mark?’ Martha deduced immediately. ‘He isn’t ill? Or is it his job? Is he having trouble at work?’
Sancha gave her a wry look. ‘What a little Sherlock Holmes you are! It’s nothing. Forget it.’
Martha studied her face. ‘You look terrible—did you know that? As if you haven’t slept a wink all night. You seemed fine last time I saw you—when was that? Couple of days ago? Nothing was wrong then. So what’s happened since?’
Sancha glanced at Flora’s small, wildly rocking body. Flora was oblivious of everything going on around her, could not hear their lowered voices, anyway.
It was tempting to talk to Martha, who had been the first neighbour to visit them when they had moved into the newly built house across the street from her, bringing a plate of home-baked biscuits and a bunch of roses from her beautiful garden. She had been a rock during the years since—had done the shopping for Sancha whenever she couldn’t get out, babysat, been ready to listen to Sancha’s problems with the children and given advice and practical help whenever she could.
Sancha had always felt very lucky to have such a good neighbour, and she, in her turn, had tried to be very supportive to Martha during her own time of trouble, when Martha’s schoolteacher husband, Jimmy, had run off with an eighteen-year-old he had been teaching at the nearby college. Their elopement had caused a scandal and the local newspapers had been full of the story; reporters had badgered Martha, waited outside her house for her to emerge, called questions through the letterbox, and photographers had rushed to get snatched photos of her if she came out.
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