Chapter 30
Emma’s breath caught in her chest as she passed through the second set of outer doors into an enormous reception hall. “Wow!” she exclaimed, her mind immediately consumed by images of ladies in ball gowns, disrobing from expensive stoles as their skirts swished across the oak floorboards. She glanced down at the brochure in her hand, flicking through the pages to find the floorplan. “This hall is over twelve metres long!” she hissed to Freda. “And it’s six metres wide. But this is only the entrance!”
“Yes, dear.” Freda’s head bobbed up and down and the fluffy woollen pom-pom on her hat wibbled and wobbled with the motion. She stared around happily, her blue eyes bright with happiness. “Oh look, there it is!” She glided across to the far wall and peered at a line of exquisite oak panelling. Emma followed her and focussed on an ugly chip in the wood near the bottom.
“What is it?” she asked, following the line of Freda’s outstretched finger.
Freda stood up and hugged herself, her eyes sparkling with memories. “I came with Mother to get the laundry and wandered off, pretending to follow my spinning top.” She squeezed her eyes tight shut. “I was a very wilful child and didn’t like that Mother was expecting yet another red haired baby to my stepfather. I knew the Lord’s family were all in London and I wanted to find my father’s room. I’d heard the whispering and rumours. But more than that; I thought if I could stand in his room amongst his things, I might just know. You understand? It’s terrible for a child not to know who their father is.”
Emma gulped and bit her lip. Oblivious, Freda continued. “It was just before my eighth birthday and I was already working, helping Mother with laundry. I ran off on the pretence of chasing my spinning top and found myself here. Just for a moment, I picked up my skirts and danced, pretending I was a fine lady invited to the house for dinner.” Freda seized her corduroy skirt and lifted it high, revealing a pair of wrinkled pop socks and very bare, white knees. She twirled unsteadily on her feet and the little knot of bargain hunters stopped to watch her from a gallery overhead. “I whirled and waltzed...and then I bumped right into my father.”
Emma gasped and stared at the little old lady, desperate to hear more of her story. Freda kept her eyes firmly closed as she processed her memory. “Of course I knew who he was. It’s so curious how blood calls to blood.” She giggled and placed arthritic fingers over her pink lips. “Oh, he was so handsome; dressed in his fine shirt and an expensive suit. He hadn’t gone to London at all. He picked me up and swung me around like the most dashing of princes. I laughed and giggled and my spinning top went shooting off towards the wall and took out that chip of oak. I thought he might tell me off, but he didn’t. He set me down on the ground and kissed the top of my head. Father never married and I believe he truly loved my mother. I saw him a few more times through the years but then he went off to war and never came back. Like so many others...”
Freda sighed and Emma bit back the choking feeling in her throat at the thought of Rohan, who so very nearly didn’t come home either. Tears of sadness welled up in her eyes at the unfairness of life and the premature death of her own dad; two women deprived of fathers through no fault of their own.
Nicky’s beaming face chastised Emma with her secrecy. He never asked about his father, yet his attachment to Rohan demonstrated how badly he needed one. She gulped and gave a little hiccough and Freda opened her eyes and reached out to touch Emma’s elbow. “Oh, don’t be sad for me, dear. I’m ninety and I’ve had a good life. I’m satisfied with my lot.” She smiled at Emma with a wealth of supernatural perception. “Some wrongs can’t be righted.”
Emma stood transfixed with the words resounding in her brain. She looked stunned and Freda’s brow knitted in concern. The elderly woman’s light touch on her arm forced Emma to collect herself and they proceeded to the end of the reception hall and into another enormous room to the right. The brochure announced it as the ballroom and Freda wandered around, examining the threadbare curtains which hung from ceiling to floor and shaking her head sadly. “It used to be so beautiful,” she sighed. Resting a gnarled hand on the back of an old chaise lounge which had once been chintz but now resembled something faded and past its day, she stroked the fragile fabric and screwed up her face. “I can see why they’re getting rid of it all. It’s ruined.”
“I’m sure the right buyer can take it all and restore it back to beauty,” Emma said, offering hollow reassurance. The furniture would need more than a face lift from an expert. She read the auctioneer’s brochure, ticking off the items in the room and shaking her head at the exorbitant cost of it all. Just the Queen Anne chair in the corner of the room would feed Emma and Nicky for a month or two. Emma heaved out a breath and followed Freda to the end of the room and into the one behind, listed as the morning room. The grey light filtered in on dusty furniture which looked scratched and dented. The once polished surfaces would have been slick with wax and the loving touch of a butler’s gloved hand as he refreshed the filthy drinks cabinet. It was heart breaking and the atmosphere was oppressive and dark.
Two men whispered in the corner of the room, eyeing a sideboard with covetous eyes. “I can French polish this out,” one of them said under his breath. “See how high the bidding starts and then try and get it.”
“There’s not much here, dear,” Freda remarked as they wandered into the drawing room, which matched the size of the reception hall on the other side of it. “I wonder where the rest is.”
“The rest?” Emma glanced down at the brochure again. “Yes, I suppose it does look quite empty. Maybe someone else stripped it first.”
“Well,” Freda began confidentially, “I know when the last Ayers was declared bankrupt four years ago, furnishings were all included. My dear friend wrote to tell me. What a shame. All the best pieces are missing.”
Emma walked along, clutching Freda’s arm and no longer interested. The woman’s words felt like an omen, hanging over her like a cleaver. Some wrongs just can’t be righted. Emma felt destined never to be happy. They progressed through an unfurnished dining room, a library in which none of the books were for sale and stood in the industrial kitchen while Freda poked around in the old wooden cupboards. “The cook when Mother worked here was Mrs Daventry. She was a slave driver. I had my bottom slapped once by her for stealing cherry tomatoes from the top of a pie.” Freda snorted and clapped her hand over her mouth, letting out a squeak of mirth. “Gosh I was a naughty girl!”
The rooms were beautiful but Emma’s heart felt too laden to enjoy them. Freda needed help up the back stairs to the rooms on the first floor, taking each step carefully on fragile bones and gnarled, arthritic feet. “I used to run up these!” she exclaimed once, puffing on the middle step and causing a bottle neck behind. “Damn these old bones!”
“Hey!” Emma snapped at a man in a suit who attempted to push past the old lady. “Have some bloody respect!” Her eyes flashed like black coals and he took a step backwards, standing on the toes of the woman who followed in his rude wake. “Serves you right!” Emma told her and the face of disgust was quickly made blank and expressionless. Emma felt like a harpy, taking her anger and disappointment out on everyone around her. Some wrongs just can’t be righted. Freda’s words tortured her, causing a diaphanous void in her gut.
Most of the crowd behind disappeared, using one of the other two staircases up to the first and second floors above. Freda made it to the landing of the first floor, cheering and waving her tiny fists as though she scaled Everest in a tweed jacket and corduroy skirt, one pop sock wrapped round her ankle like a skin coloured, gossamer scarf. Emma hauled it up for her, restoring her dignity just as one of the suited men from the auction company jogged up the steps behind them. “Er, madam,” he said to Emma. “The auctioneer would like to see you, please.”
Emma looked at him in horror and Freda giggled inappropriately. “Me?” Emma panicked, her eyes wide with fear as she pointed at her own chest like a schoolgirl. The man nodde
d and indicated the stairs behind him.
“Yes, madam. Now.”
Emma’s knees began to shake. She shouldn’t be here and now she was about to be unceremoniously expelled. She shot a look of desperation at Freda, who came admirably to meet the challenge. The elderly lady drew herself up to her full shrunken height and fixed an authoritative blue eye on the young man below on the stairs. “My dear,” she began. “I’m the bastard daughter of Geoffrey Ayers and I intend to look around his home before it gets chopped up for apartments. My friend and I have just hauled my sorry ass up these stairs at great cost to our sanity. I shall not be going down again in a hurry!” With that, she scuttled off left towards the laundry, giving a squeal of delight from inside. “Oooh! It’s still the same! I do believe I was conceived on this very floor. Mother did ramble so as she got older...” Her voice tailed off as she went further into the cavernous room.
The young man gulped, his red curls moving on his head with the motion. He fiddled with the black buttons on an immaculate waistcoat and agonised internally. Then he nodded. “Ok, madam. I’ll tell the auctioneer you’ll be down in a minute.” Reluctantly he left, treading quickly down the stairs but glancing up at Emma twice more. As soon as his feet hit the oak boards of the reception hall, Emma took off after Freda, clattering into the laundry to find the old woman peering into the glass door of a modern washing machine.
“We need to get out of here!” Emma panicked. “We aren’t meant to be here and I think we’re about to be thrown out.”
“I want to see my father’s room.” Freda’s wizened face crumpled like a naughty child. “I want to see Geoffrey’s room.”
Emma ran her hand through her hair in fear, snagging her index finger on an unruly curl. “Fine!” she said decisively. “But do you know a back way out of this place when we’re done?”
Freda’s face curved into a beautiful smile and Emma glimpsed the wayward child who spun her top just to dance in the reception hall. She tapped her nose with a crabbed finger and grinned. Freda held Emma’s hand and scurried to a room at the south end of the building, next to the huge master suite, dressing room and ensuite, which she would have loved to see. The dilapidated state continued with peeling flock wallpaper hanging in swathes above their heads and a dusting of plaster in patches along the way. “In here, dear. Father slept in here.” Freda’s steps were urgent rapping against the oak floors like a much younger woman.
The room opened up before them, renovated to perfection. A beautiful four poster bed graced the centre of the room and the walls were decorated in a subtle powder blue. The furniture was all of a French style, chic and white with distressed edges and a golden sheen to the corners. The ensuite was fitted with a modern shower and fitments, a white claw footed bath sat diagonally across one corner. Freda disliked it but confusion showed on Emma’s face as she stroked the top of a tallboy leaned against one wall. Something about the decor resonated with her and she shook her head to clear the image. “This isn’t right! Father wouldn’t like this,” Freda commented in disappointment, wrinkling her nose. She sounded upset. “Where’s Father’s things?”
Emma gulped and took the old lady’s arm. Something about the style of the decor pulled at her memory, familiar and unnerving. It irked and jarred in its simplistic beauty and Emma’s brow knitted in confusion. Freda began to pull drawers open and then Emma noticed the sign on the bedroom door which the old lady had flung open. No entry.
“Where’s his things?” Freda asked again, as a pair of boxer shorts tumbled from a bedside drawer, pulling Emma back to reality. Nearly seventy years had passed since the end of the Second World War and Geoffrey Ayer’s personal effects would be long gone. She didn’t have the heart to crush Freda’s dreams further and cuddled her close. “I’m sure they’re somewhere here,” she soothed. “But I need you to get us out of here now, like you promised.” Emma kept the urgency out of her voice and Freda swiped at her eye with an inaccurate hand and reluctantly nodded.
Down the back stairs they went, at a faster pace than the upward journey. They trotted through the kitchen and storerooms beyond, turning left and skirting underneath a rope barrier which declared the area out of bounds. Freda picked up speed, admirable for a lady in her nineties, forcing Emma to jog to keep up. “This is the old coach house, dear,” she called over her shoulder. “We’ll go out this way, then they won’t see us from the main house.”
Fortunately the Yale lock on the front door allowed them to click it locked behind them and the two unlikely companions hot footed it down the long driveway. Freda was puffing by the time they reached the ornate gates. Emma began to giggle, suppressing the urge to laugh until she cried. Something about the house and the blue room made her sad.
Passing the open gates, Emma stopped and looked at the ruined sign. “What does it say?” she asked Freda. “What’s the name of the house?”
“It’s Wingate Hall, dear,” Freda said proudly. “Owned by the Ayers family for generations, since before the Norman invasion. They were King’s men during the civil war and it’s rumoured Henry VIII stayed at the house once on a visit from London to the parishes, during the Reformation.” She tapped her nose again and peered up and down the long country road.
“How did you get here?” Emma asked, looking at the smattering of vehicles remaining. Most of them looked like transit vans belonging to bespoke furniture companies and antique dealers. It seemed everyone else had been turned away from their rubbernecking adventure. Emma thought of Jade’s posh indignation and smirked.
“I came on the bus,” Freda announced, looking back up the driveway. “I say, is that young man waving at you?”
Emma glanced back towards the house, seeing the red haired young man running down the driveway with his arm raised above his head. “Oh no! He probably wants to cite us for trespassing!” Emma panicked. “Quick!” she squeaked, running towards Rohan’s smart car, parked haphazardly on the grass verge. “Get in!”
Freda shuffled towards the car and struggled with the heavy passenger door. As she lurched into the seat and slapped her handbag onto her knee, Emma put her foot down and screeched off the verge, taking a large slice of juicy turf with her. The auctioneer’s assistant reached the end of the driveway and lowered his hand in disappointment as the car sped off towards Northampton and Emma heaved a sigh of relief. “So long, sucker!” Freda called behind her and Emma gaped in horror.
Emma drove towards Northampton and then doubled back to avoid driving past the manor house, in case the young man waited on the road. Freda managed to click her seat belt eventually and halted the dull bell which tolled on the dashboard in warning. Then she sighed and grinned. “That was very enjoyable. I haven’t been back to the house since 1946.”
Emma gaped. “I though you hadn’t been back since you were a girl, that would be what? 1930s?”
Freda wiggled her shoulders and eyed Emma sideways. “Oh, I never actually said that, dear. I came back here in 1946 on the day I eloped with my sweetheart.”
Emma swerved as she looked too long at the smug old lady in the passenger seat. “You what?”
Freda huddled herself more snugly into the seat and beamed out the front windscreen. “I eloped with my sweetheart when I was twenty one years old.”
Emma felt a shiver down her spine at the sudden similarity with her own life story. “I eloped,” she whispered to the gentle woman next to her. “But I was only just sixteen.”
“It’s exciting, isn’t it?” Freda giggled. She turned her beautiful blue eyes on Emma. “Why did you elope, dear? Didn’t your parents approve either?”
“He was my stepbrother.” Emma’s cheeks flushed with an old embarrassment. “We aren’t blood, but Rohan’s mother called me disgusting. She warned me off when I was fourteen and someone told her they saw me holding her son’s hand. She said I’d go to hell.” Emma shuddered and concentrated on the country lane zooming past underneath them.
“Ooh, let’s go for morning tea!” Freda clapped
her hands together in her mittens and Emma laughed.
“Ok, then. There’s some cash in the ashtray. But tell me your story. Why didn’t your parents approve?” Emma pressed the indicator and turned onto a signposted road which claimed it would take them back towards Market Harborough.
Freda flashed a beatific smile filled with mischief. “My poor mother was horrified and my stepfather went purple with anger, which was an interesting contrast with his red hair.” She chuckled to herself and immersed them both in the world of her memories. “I worked down at the market after the war but it was a sorry place then, run mainly by the women of the town. Our men trickled home, injured, broken; not the strong chaps we remembered. My stepfather had a dreadful limp from a lump of shrapnel and he drank for the rest of his days. The sunny red haired man was left in a prisoner of war camp in a foreign land and a tortured monster returned. There were no more babies for my mother, but she wasn’t sorry.” Freda sighed. “I was working on the vegetable stall in the summer of 1946 and he walked right up to me. I’ve never forgotten the look on his face when he saw me. ‘My goodness,’ he said. ‘If it’s not little Freda Porter, all grown up and pretty as a daisy.’ The other girls stared at me, talking so easily to a gentleman but you see, the world was changing.”
Emma nodded in sad agreement. Her degree study took her through the post-war miseries of many European countries, a world with very few young men left in it. She understood.
“His eyes were blue, like mine and we played together as children. He cut a handsome figure at the debutante balls of his youth but as we grew, it was forbidden for us to speak. I knew his scent from the shirts I handled as Mother washed them and it felt as though I had loved him forever. There he was, standing in front of me fresh from the war, one of the few young men to return to our town in those early months after the ceasefire.” Freda sighed again and as Emma glanced at her, she saw a flush creep up the old lady’s neck and into her cheeks like a caress. “I felt dumbstruck. I was just shy of my twenty first birthday, a year younger than him and we hadn’t spoken for more than ten years. I gaped like a fish and felt a complete fool.” Her fingers fluttered to her mouth and Emma felt alarmed to see a tear drip down onto Freda’s skirt.
Emma reached out and gripped the gnarled fingers in hers, squeezing them in an attempt to infuse love. Freda sandwiched Emma’s cold hand between hers and lifted it to her lips, placing a gentle kiss on her knuckles. “Bless you, dear,” she whispered.
Freda was quiet for the remainder of the journey. Emma found the Common’s car park in the west of the town and parked the Mercedes, abandoning it with a shrug of embarrassment at the wonky parking. “I’m so rubbish at driving this car,” she muttered as she helped Freda out of the passenger side, frustrated at her complete absence of skill and squeezing between a trolley bay and the side of the car.
They got seated in the busy Baptist Church coffee shop which heaved with mothers and small toddlers. Freda dabbed at her eyes with a spotted handkerchief and watched a little redheaded girl around three years old. Emma smiled at the concentration on the child’s face as she poured tea into a china mug from a metal tea pot, pretending to be a big girl in the special moment with her mother. Freda hiccoughed. “She reminds me of one of my sisters. Little Sophia.” She smoothed the white tablecloth with a shaking hand and then tapped it smartly. “Memories, memories.” With a huge effort, she turned to Emma with a smile plastered on her pink lips.
“Hello, Freda!” A lady in her sixties approached the table, pulling a notepad and pencil from the front pocket of her frilly apron. “Nice to see you out and about.” The waitress bent and kissed Freda’s sallow cheek and then greeted Emma with a smile and a nod. “What can I get you both?”
Emma’s face dropped, remembering her offer and rising from her seat. “I just need to nip back to the car...” she began, mentally adding up the value of Rohan’s loose change in the ashtray.
“No, no, dear.” Freda placed her fingers over Emma’s. “My treat. You did the driving and after all,” she wrinkled her nose, “we had immense fun up at the big house.”
“Ooh, the big house!” The waitress became animated. “Did you go to the auction?”
“No, just for a nosey. We came away before the auction started. I didn’t think I could bear seeing all the Ayers furniture being sold for next to nothing.”
“No, you wouldn’t, dear, would you?” the waitress sympathised. She took their order, scrawling slowly onto the pad in a neat script reminiscent of the 1950’s school taught hand. Emma waited until she was out of earshot before leaning in towards Freda.
“Thank you so much for morning tea,” she said, putting her hand over Freda’s. “But why is it so cheap? How can a pot of tea and scones for two come to under five pounds? Did she make a mistake?”
“No, dear. It’s staffed by volunteers from the church. I did a couple of hours until recently. The doctor wouldn’t renew my driving licence so I’m waiting for my mobility scooter to arrive. Then I might come back and do a few hours. It’s a great privilege to work here and it makes a cup of tea accessible to some of the families of our town. My husband would have approved.” Her eyes misted over again and Emma grew silent. Freda collected herself after a few moments and smiled beneficently at Emma. “I was telling you about him, wasn’t I?”
Emma nodded and leaned forward, keen to hear Freda’s fascinating story. “Yes, he approached you at the market.”
Freda sighed. “Ah, but what I didn’t tell you was my John lost an arm in the war and part of his face. Despite all that, he was the handsomest soul I ever met. He approached me, because he knew I wouldn’t stare at him and I realised as I watched his beautiful lips move through words filled with bravado, it didn’t matter a bit. I loved him then as much as I did when I was ten and he kissed me behind the wall of the coach house during a game of hide and seek.”
The tea arrived with a plate of scones and Emma watched while Freda buttered her scone with shaking hands. “You pour please dear,” the old lady ordered and Emma obliged, gushing tea into the cups while she waited, desperate for the rest of the tale. She accidentally put in too much sugar in her eagerness, but Freda waited until she’d sampled her scone before resuming.
“John asked my father if he could court me and the bitter old man refused. He threatened to throw me out of the house if we persisted. War is a great leveller of society, Emma and it changed everything. But John was my cousin on Geoffrey Ayers side, the youngest son of Edgar Ayers. Being first cousins and with John a son of the big house, it made our love impossible to sustain.” Freda sighed and looked at Emma. “Tell me about your young man, dear.”
“No!” Emma’s face screwed up in horror. “Don’t do that. Don’t turn it back on me without telling me what happened!”
“I need you to talk for a while, so I can drink my tea,” Freda smiled, with a twinkle in her eye. She raised an eyebrow at Emma and brooked no complaint.
“Fine!” Emma huffed and sipped her tea. “My father married a Russian woman with two sons when I was six. I felt this incredible link to the eldest son, although back then I was too young to know it was attraction; but it never went away. He was three years older than me and he kinda kept his distance until I was older. I became very attached to Anton, his younger brother and we were inseparable. There was a two year gap between us, but it felt like nothing.” Emma smiled until she remembered Anton was gone, then her face clouded over with an all-encompassing darkness. Freda reached a hand across and gripped Emma’s fingers but didn’t interrupt. “When I was twelve, I got into a fight at school with a boy. He was bigger than me and I used dirty tactics to fend him off. A huge crowd gathered and I can’t even remember what it was over, but suddenly Rohan waded in and ended it really quickly. He was always tall and strong for his age, blonde and good looking. Something about his Russian accent sounded intimidating and other children didn’t mess with him. But the boy cut my lip and ripped my blouse and I knew Ro’s mother would go ma
d when she saw it. Ro said nothing all the way home and it was a pretty decent walk. He strode along next to me and I knew he was angry because he gives off this kind of...angry hum.” Emma saw Freda’s lips curl in a smile.
“We were almost home and I felt like a coiled spring. I knew I’d be punished for the rip and Ro was the last person I wanted disappointed in me and it all sort of bubbled over. I hurled my school bag on the pavement and threw an almighty tantrum.” Emma laughed and covered her mouth. “Anton loved drama class and he would have been impressed. It felt fantastic, just letting off steam.” Emma looked down at her uneaten scone. “Rohan just stood there and looked at me, throwing myself around like a maniac and then he laughed. He actually laughed at me. I felt stupid and this rage bubbled up inside. I tried to slap his face and he caught my wrist and...well, he kissed me.”
Freda’s eyes crinkled in pleasure and she patted Emma’s writhing fingers. “And you married when you were sixteen?”
Emma nodded. “Yes. Ro was nineteen and already in the army. We ran away to Gretna Green and married at the blacksmith shop. Ro did all the paperwork and Anton helped with a cover. My stepmother didn’t know Rohan was due home on leave. He was at Cottesmore and picked me up on the way through. Anton faked this whole big farce and conned his mother into thinking I went on a school trip. I don’t think she ever found out.” Emma smirked. “She has no idea we married, or still are.”
“What went wrong?” Freda urged, sipping her tea one handed and centring Emma with the other, offering a gentle, intermittent stroke of her fingers.
Emma sighed. “We didn’t sleep together until we were married and I fell pregnant straight away. I didn’t have a mother to help me so I was naive. I threw up at school every morning for weeks on end and another girl told me what she thought it was. When my stomach started to swell, I knew. After we were married, Rohan was meant to apply for a married quarter on the army base to get me away from his mother, but in the interim, he was deployed to Afghanistan. The last time I saw him, I was meant to tell him about the baby, but all he could talk about was someone else’s war. I thought he came to get me, but he didn’t. He wanted me to wait for him and live with his mother. He told me to finish school. I was so angry, I walked out and when I cooled down enough to go home; he’d gone.”
Emma gave a shuddering breath. “His brother helped me leave Lincoln and took me to a family member in Wales. I had my son and didn’t see Rohan again until recently.”
“That’s so sad.” Freda’s brow knitted in concern. “Will you get back together?” she asked and Emma shrugged.
“I don’t know, Freda. Too much has happened and he has this girlfriend hanging around, so probably not, no.”
“We should see her off, for a start!” Freda waved the butter knife threateningly and Emma resisted the urge to laugh.
“Now you finish your story!” Emma insisted. “What happened with you and John?”
“We also ran away, dear, but not so far. We were both over the age of consent and whilst it would have been lovely to have our parents’ blessing, we didn’t actually need it. John made an honest woman of me and took me home to his parents. It’s no surprise we were thrown out, quite dramatically. The words incest and disgusting were bandied about as they would have been with you, I suppose. Even now, those two words make me cringe. The gates of Wingate Hall closed behind us and John never returned to see his family. We were dead to them, although in my ninetieth year, it all seems so foolish and trivial now. The world has changed such a great deal and illegitimate children and cousins marrying are the very least of society’s problems. My John was the love of my life until he died last year. Sixty eight years we were married and I wouldn’t change one of them for a different life. God didn’t bless us with children, but it was a small price to pay for marrying one’s sweetheart, wouldn’t you say?” She fixed perceptive eyes on Emma, who nodded in obedience.
“Did you stay in the town?” Emma asked and Freda shook her head.
“No, no, dear. We lived as missionaries in the Philippines and settled there when we retired. But I grew homesick after John’s death and wanted to be here to die. I returned a year ago and took an apartment in the flats off the Northampton Road. It’ll see me out.” She smiled philosophically and started on the uneaten half of Emma’s scone.
“What’s wrong, dear?” she asked, responding to the paleness of Emma’s face.
Emma leaned in close, so only she could hear. “Rohan’s mother lives in those apartments. She moved in there a few years ago.”
“Oh, I might know her,” Freda smiled, pushing her teacup towards Emma so she would pour the last drops into her cup.
“Maybe.” Emma became tight lipped and unresponsive, pouring the tea woodenly.
“What’s her name?” Freda pushed. “I won’t tell,” she whispered.
“It’s not that; she knows I’m here. We’ve already had an argument. Rohan banned her from coming round to the house, it’s just...” Emma faltered. “I can’t let her near my son. Through the kindness of my silly brother-in-law, she now thinks Nicky is his. She bailed me up in the park recently and demanded to see him. All these years, she thought I got knocked up by some spotty teenager in my class but obviously now, the issue of him being her grandson has made her more dogged. I can’t let her anywhere near Nicky. She tried to kill him before he was born and I know for a fact she can’t be trusted around children; well, around anyone really.”
“Oh, that’s so sad. We’ll just keep our little friendship a secret then, won’t we?” Freda beamed. “Who is this terrifying woman?”
“Alanya Harrington,” Emma whispered and Freda’s eyes bulged like blue marbles.
“The Black Widow!” she breathed. “She’s your mother-in-law?”
Emma’s jaw dropped. “What did you call her?”
Freda grasped both Emma’s hands and held them in a vice-like grip. “She befriends the elderly men, silly old fools! We think she kills them but we just haven’t worked out how yet.”