“Will there be anything else, Miss?” the waitress asked, clearing away the empty plate.
“What? Oh, yes. Yes. Another cup of tea, please.” Katie Greenock had to pull herself back from a very long way. It would be her third cup, but why not? Let it simply be another part of her little rebellion.
She sat at a table with a red-checked cloth—very clean, she noticed—by the window of the Golden Grill in Eastvale. The narrow street outside was busy with pedestrians, even in the thin drizzle, and almost directly opposite her was the whitewashed building with the black beams and the incongruous white-on-blue sign over the entrance: POLICE.
It was early Monday afternoon, and she didn’t know what she was doing in Eastvale. Already she was beginning to feel guilty. It was simply a minor gesture, she tried to convince herself, but her conscience invested it with the magnitude of Satan’s revolt.
That morning, at about eleven o’clock, she had felt so claustrophobic cleaning the rooms that she just had to get out—not only out of the house, but out of Swainshead itself for a while. Walking aimlessly down the street, she had met Beryl Vickers, a neighbour she occasionally talked gardening with, and accepted her offer of a ride into Eastvale for a morning’s shopping. Beryl was visiting her sister there, so Katie was left free to wander by herself for a few hours. After buying some lamb chops and broccoli at the indoor market for that evening’s dinner, she had found the Golden Grill and decided to rest her feet.
She had only been sitting there for fifteen minutes when she saw three men come out of the pub next door and hurry through the rain back into the police station. Two of them she recognized—the lean, dark inspector and his fair, heavy sergeant—but the young athletic-looking one with the droopy moustache and the curious loping walk was new to her. For a moment, she thought they were sure to glance over their shoulders and see her through the window, so she covered the side of her face with her hand. They didn’t even look.
As soon as she saw the inspector, she felt again the bruises that Sam had inflicted on her the previous afternoon. She knew it wasn’t the policeman’s fault—in fact, he seemed like a kind man—but she couldn’t help the association any more than she could help feeling one between room five and what she had let Bernie do to her.
“What’s wrong with you?” Sam had asked when he came home.
Katie had tried to hide her red-rimmed eyes from him, but he grasped her chin between his thumb and forefinger and asked her again. That was when she told him the police had been back and the inspector had interrogated her so hard she couldn’t hide it from him any more.
Sam had hit the roof.
“But it’s not that important,” Katie protested. “It can’t be!”
“That’s not for you to say,” Sam argued. He threw up his hands. “You stupid bloody bitch, have you any idea what trouble you might have caused?”
Though she was scared, Katie still felt defiant. “What do you mean, trouble?” she asked, her lower lip trembling. “Trouble for who?”
“For everyone, that’s for who.”
“For your precious Colliers, I’ll bet.” As she said it, her image was of Nicholas, not Stephen.
And that was when Sam hit her the first time, a short sharp blow to the stomach. She doubled up in pain, and when she was able to stand again he thumped her left breast. That hurt even more. She collapsed on the sofa and Sam stood over her. His face was red and he was breathing funny, in short gasps that seemed to catch in his throat. “If we make something of ourselves in this place,” he said, “it won’t be any thanks to you.”
He didn’t hit her any more. He knew when enough was enough. But later that night, in bed, the same cruel hands grasped the same wounded breast. He pulled her roughly to him, and there was nothing she could do about it. Katie shuddered, trying to shake off the memory.
“Will that be all?” the waitress asked, standing over her again.
“Oh, yes. Yes, thank you,” Katie said, paying the bill. Awkwardly, aware of the ache in her breast and the Black Forest gâteau sitting uneasily in her sore stomach, she made her way out into the street. She had one more hour of freedom to wander in the rain before meeting Beryl near the bus station at two-thirty. Then she would have to go home and face the music.