appearances twice more on my doorstep, but been removed much faster than the first time.
I had been buying head-sized melons.
Skint Old Gardening Tips, No. 1
Always keep margarine tubs of compost on your windowsills, and whenever you eat fruit, push the pips or stones in. Water daily, and eventually something will come up. The novelty of this method is that you won’t have the faintest idea what it is.
Even in my numb state – which by then seemed part of me, like permafrost – I found the inquest appalling, although but for Miss Grinch it might have been a murder trial, which would have been very much worse.
The kindly coroner treated me like a frail little flower, and Miss Grinch with respect, but was firm about having Angie removed from the room when she became hysterical and demanded the death penalty.
She was still screaming, ‘Murderess! Murderess!’ as she was escorted out.
I knew in my heart of hearts she was right, even though the coroner assured me it wasn’t my fault at all, and urged me to put it behind me. The verdict was brought in as accidental death.
The coroner added a little speech to the effect that people who succumbed to the current craze for heavy cast-iron pans would do better not to hang them from the ceiling, and I’d have to second that one.
By the time I got out of the hearing the reporters from the local paper were encouraging Angie to stage the scene of her life.
She spotted me. ‘Murderess!’ she screamed with a certain monotony, tossing her black veil over her shoulders and then lunging at me with blood-red talons like a deranged harpy. ‘Murdering harlot!’
Well, that was different – but why harlot? Surely it was because I’d resisted her leching husband that he was dead? And she knew what he was like.
Fortunately, one or two people were holding her back, since I was transfixed by all the avid stares.
‘I’ll never let this rest until my poor Greg has justice!’ Angie howled. ‘Wherever you go I’ll find you, and make sure people know the sort of woman you are!’
I wished I knew what sort of woman I was.
‘You’ll never be able to forget it.’
Well, that was certainly true.
‘Wherever you go, I’ll follow you,’ she added, sounding suddenly exhausted, and dangling limply from the hands that a moment before had been restraining her. ‘You’ll never escape.’
Nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide …
‘Why, Angie?’ I asked. ‘You must realise by now I didn’t mean to kill him. Don’t you think I feel badly enough about it already?’
‘No, but I’ll make sure you know what it’s like to suffer – to be friendless and alone … like me.’ She drew a dramatic hand across her eyes and gave a broken sob.
‘But, Angie, Greg walked into my house uninvited and indecently assaulted me! And you must have known he was serially unfaithful?’
‘Yes, but none of them ever killed him!’
Well, there was that. And the more I protested, the guiltier I felt. Could I really not have diverted that fatal downward swing?
‘Besides, whatever his faults, he loved me,’ declaimed Angie, looking tragic.
‘Maybe he did, but he slept with anyone he could get,’ I pointed out.
‘They weren’t important.’
The voices of the listeners now rose in a babble of questions, but Miss Grinch popped up suddenly at my side, seized her chance, and hurried me through a gap to the waiting taxi.
‘How tall was Greg?’ I whispered as we climbed in. ‘Did you find out?’
‘Five feet, ten inches exactly, dear,’ she replied.
Looking back, I could see Angie still holding forth on the steps like Lady Macbeth.
‘I wish I was dead,’ I said dully. ‘There doesn’t seem any point to living any more.’
‘Clearly God still has a use for you,’ Miss Grinch said placidly.
‘Compost?’ I suggested.
‘We are all God’s compost, if you like,’ she said. ‘Interesting – I’ve never thought of it like that before. However, I am sure he has something in mind for you before that. He moves in mysterious ways.’
‘Like the frying pan,’ I agreed, and we were silent until we reached the house.
Miss Grinch bought the local papers, and thankfully I hadn’t merited the front page. Even with Angie’s theatrics I suppose they can only get so much story from a domestic accident without insinuating something libellous.
I was described throughout as Mrs Charlotte Fry (although I’ve always called myself by my maiden name), and there were several photographs of me looking very small and weird, like a glaze-eyed rabbit cowering under the menacing overhang of Angie’s bust.
My hair was now a clear white for about an inch at the roots.
‘I always wondered about that very dense blue-black shade,’ Miss Grinch said, scrutinising a particularly hideous photo.
‘It was my natural colour.’
‘Believe me, it is a mistake, once a woman reaches forty, to dye her hair a dark colour. Your skin has lost the fresh bloom of youth and the contrast is too severe.’
‘I know, but Matt wanted me to keep it black. He liked this sort of Goth look with the long hair and the dark eye make-up, because he thought it made me look young. He was so much older, so I was a sort of a Trophy Wife, you know?’
‘Yes, but you can do what you like now, dear.’
‘I don’t think I care.’
‘I’ll have my hairdresser come round and do something with it – have it made as God intended.’
‘God intended my hair to turn silver at thirty, like my mother’s, but my eyebrows and eyelashes to stay dark.’
Mother is Lally Tooke and when I see her on the jacket of one of her radical feminist books, or on TV, she looks a bit like she’s wearing a powdered wig, but she also looks good. We have the same big dark eyes, the purplish colour of black grapes.
Matt was always impressed by Father’s fame (or notoriety), dragging his name into conversations like a dog with some malodorous and grisly find. ‘My father-in-law, Ranulf Rhymer …’
He never felt the same way about my far-flying mother, but then, neither do I: that hand did not so much rock the cradle as break off shards and wage a bloody battle with them before leaving the field for ever.
‘You could
