Jude knew how tough and impregnable that shell could be. She herself had been away and busy and hadn’t had time to concentrate on fence-mending with her neighbour. But now she was back, determined that a rapprochement should be effected. And she had a feeling that the news of the torso in Fedborough might, perversely, be just the thing to restore the health of their relationship.
Carole closed the door behind them. ‘Would you like coffee?’ She was aware of how boorish she was being, and that knowledge compounded the darkness of her mood.
‘Listen,’ said Jude. ‘Forget coffee. Let’s get things sorted. I know exactly why you’re behaving like this with me, and I promise you – you don’t have to.’
‘Would you like to sit down?’ asked Carole with icy politeness, gesturing towards the sitting room.
‘No, I bloody wouldn’t like to sit down! I’d like to take hold of you, shake all this nonsense out of you, then give you a big hug.’
‘Oh.’ Carole almost visibly shuddered. Every disciplined middle-class fibre of her being recoiled at the concept of big hugs.
They stood facing each other, Jude poised for a hug, Carole prepared to repel any such approach.
‘You’re just making things worse by cutting yourself off.’
‘I would have thought that was my business,’ came the tart reply.
‘Oh, come on . . .’ Jude took her neighbour’s hand. Carole, on hug alert, was unprepared for this, and did not immediately snatch the hand away. ‘Let’s go into your kitchen, make some coffee, and get this sorted.’
Carole felt another twinge of middle-class resistance. She was the hostess. She should serve coffee in her sitting room. Women huddling cosily in the kitchen had overtones of northern soap operas. Which reminded her, she never had found out where her neighbour came from. In fact, given how close at times they had been, she knew remarkably little about Jude’s past.
Carole switched on an electric kettle. She had decided it was now warm enough to turn the Aga off for the summer. It wasn’t, quite, and the kitchen felt chill, a deserved reflection of Carole’s mood. Gulliver, her Labrador, rose from his stupor in front of the regrettably cold stove to greet their guest with bleary delight. Whatever may have happened to the mistress, the dog hadn’t lost his social graces.
Gulliver had a bandage round the thick end of his tail, but Jude knew this wasn’t the moment to enquire what had happened to him. There was another, more demanding, priority.
‘I know it’s because of Ted,’ she announced. ‘That didn’t work out, and you feel really low as a result. We’ve all been there.’
‘I haven’t been there as many times maybe as you have.’
It was a sharp line, which might have offended someone less easy-going. But Jude just gave a warm chuckle. ‘Fair criticism. Carole, I know you think everyone in Fethering’s laughing behind their hands at you, but they’re not. Only about half a dozen people knew there was anything between you and Ted, and none of the ones who did are the sort to gloat over someone else’s misfortune.’
‘I just feel I’ve made a fool of myself,’ said Carole, and turned pointedly away to make the coffee.
But Jude recognized it as a start, the first hint of thaw in the frost.
‘I know you don’t commit yourself easily, and I know how much your husband walking out hit your confidence.’
‘You don’t know that. We hadn’t even met at the time it happened. Anyway, so far as I’m concerned, I’m well shot of him.’
‘I don’t doubt that’s true, but I’m sure his leaving you made you withdrawn, unwilling to engage with other human beings.’
‘David said I had always been like that. He said it was one of the reasons why he did leave me.’
Slowly, the thaw was continuing. Very slowly, but then a quick thaw was not in Carole’s nature. With an easy laugh, Jude took her coffee cup and sat down at the kitchen table. Gulliver, besotted, nuzzled into the back of her knee.
For a moment Carole was tempted to insist they take their coffee through to the sitting room, but instead she sat edgily on a chair opposite Jude.
‘Ted just wasn’t the right person for you, Carole. God, people spend their whole lives searching for the right person, it’s no surprise the process can take a long time.’
‘It’s a process I’ve never completed. David turned out to be a complete disaster. Then Ted . . .’ The pale blue eyes focused on Jude’s brown ones. ‘Has it ever happened to you?’
‘Hm?’
‘Have you ever found the right person?’
‘I’ve thought I have a few times . . .’ Carole wanted more detail, but before she had a chance to put a supplementary question, Jude went on, ‘Ted’s a nice guy. Not an evil bone in his body.’
‘I know that, but . . .’
‘But?’
‘He’s terribly . . . scruffy. He really doesn’t care what he looks like . . . or what kind of conditions he lives in. He doesn’t have any standards. He actually doesn’t seem to notice things like that.’
‘Ah.’ Jude pictured Ted Crisp, landlord of Fethering’s only pub, the Crown and Anchor. He was a large man with straggling hair and beard, whose idea of a fashion statement was a clean sweatshirt. Though his pub was not dirty, it did express a raffish untidiness which Jude found rather comforting, but Carole apparently didn’t.
Jude looked round the antiseptically gleaming surfaces of the kitchen, and could not even imagine Ted Crisp in such an environment.
The relationship had always been an unlikely one, a surprise to both participants when it started, and for the two months of its duration. What effect the affair’s ending had had on Ted was hard to estimate. Never one to wear his heart on his sleeve, he remained the same bear-like presence behind the bar of the Crown and Anchor, ready with an endless supply of jokes remembered from his days working the stand-up circuit. Whether he was putting on the brave face of the suffering clown, who could tell?
The effect on Carole was much more overt, at least to the eyes of her neighbour. It was entirely in character for Carole Seddon, as a civil servant retired from the Home Office, to withdraw into what she thought of as anonymity; though, perversely, such behaviour had the effect of drawing attention to what she was doing. Carole had taken to shopping at times when she was unlikely to meet anyone she knew, even avoiding Fethering’s Allinstore and driving in her trim Renault to distant supermarkets. With the light mornings, Gulliver’s compulsory walks on the beach had been getting earlier and earlier.
At that moment Jude resolved to get Carole functioning properly again. Though the two women were polar opposites, there was potentially a strong affection between them. Jude even made a resolution to get Carole back into the Crown and Anchor.
But any realization of her ambitions would be a long way ahead. With Carole, she knew, she’d have to proceed with caution and circumspection.
‘But
