Stone Cold Red Hot - страница 51

“I’ll do the front now, Marjorie,” Mr Shuttle announced. “Will you plug me in.” He came up with the cable, smiled expectantly at me.

“Hello,” I said brightly.

“Do come in,” Marjorie blurted out, taking the cable from him, “this is Mrs Kenny, from Italian night class.”

“Ah, buongiorno,” he enunciated.

I nodded, grinning inanely and escaped into the house.

Marjorie Shuttle’s efforts to hide who I was and what I was doing from her husband spoke volumes about her connection to the Pickerings. Whatever it was it was still secret. I waited until she’d plugged in the lead and called out to her husband and then went with her into their living room, at the back of the house. I sat down without being asked. Sod the niceties. I wasn’t going to try and eke out dribs and drabs of information from Mrs Shuttle with carefully worded questions. She had something to hide and I was going to make her tell me about it. I’d start by making her think I already knew most of it.

“The business with the Pickerings. I’d like to hear your side of it.” As if I’d heard the other.

There was a fractional pause, she licked her lips. The drone of the vac reached us but was muffled by the distance. I looked towards the door, cocked my ear focusing on the sound then looked back to her, raised my eyebrows. Not very subtle, a nudge really, tell me or I ask him. She let out a long breath and stared at the carpet.

“I don’t see what this has to do with anything,” she prevaricated. “We haven’t seen the Pickerings for over twenty years.”

“Mrs Shuttle, I’ve come a long way today, I’m tired. I realise this may not be easy for you but just tell me about it in your own words. Save us both some time.”

“This won’t go any further?”

“Of course not.”

“If Gordon ever found out…”

“I’m not about to tell him but the longer I’m here the more risk there is that he’ll suspect something – or interrupt us and I’d have to see you again then.”

She gave a big sigh and shifted her position, looked down at the rug and spoke. “We were having an affair, Frank and I.”

Bloody ‘ell!

I nodded, go on.

“He’d been very kind, very thoughtful. Helping in the garden and…well, Gordon, my husband, was away a lot, he was a rep, covered the whole of the North, right up to Scotland. I was lonely, I was very young,” she raised her eyes to me. “But I hadn’t thought of him in that way. Then one day, he found me crying, you see,” she studied the floor again, “I was so unhappy and he comforted me. One thing led to another. It got out of control. I don’t know how. It was very physical, very powerful. It was an awful shock for both of us. We promised it would never happen again, we tried to stop.”

She smiled grimly. “It didn’t make either of us happy, just the opposite, really. It was awful. We both knew it was wrong, that we might hurt other people. And Frank being so respected in the church and all that. But there was this attraction, a sexual thing. Like a compulsion, an addiction. We needed each other. We’d stop and try and get on with our lives but all I could think about was Frank. I never sought him out, though,” she added hastily. “Days would go by, weeks sometimes and then he’d come back. Desperate. I couldn’t refuse him, I wanted him. No-one had ever made me feel that way – physically, I mean. He said the same. I don’t think he and Barbara had much of a marriage by then. Even when my mind was telling me it was wrong, my body was obsessed with him. And it would start all over again. The sex, then the guilt and the promises.”

“How long did this go on?”

“About a year. Then Jennifer found out, I don’t know how,” she pre-empted me. “Frank came round, he said Barbara knew, that Jennifer had found out.”

“And after that?”

“They cut me dead. I couldn’t blame them. But it was terrible. I was so lonely and I couldn’t talk to Gordon about any of it.”

“Who cut you dead?”

“Frank and Barbara.”

“And Jennifer?”

“She’d gone to university I got very depressed, more depressed. I told Gordon we had to move, that I didn’t like the house. It didn’t matter to him, we could move further north, better for his job. We put it on the market, it took forever to find the right buyers,” she shuddered. She sat before me ashen-faced, hunched over, still plagued by the wretched emotions dredged up recalling that miserable affair. The whine outside stopped and suddenly the room was full of silence.