Pete returned half an hour later, smelling of mastic and sawdust, looking tired. His expression didn’t betray anything, but Meredith could tell from the slight droop of his lips that he wasn’t best pleased to have to deal with a grief-stricken Paula on his barge – although of course he was far too kind to let her see that.
He joined them on the roof, glancing at the empty wine bottle and their flushed cheeks.
‘Nice day for it,’ he commented after he’d said hello, giving Paula a warm hug then sitting down and tipping his face to the sun. Meredith noticed he hadn’t offered Paula any verbal condolences, but she knew him well enough to understand that the awkwardness of it all would probably have brought him out in hives. And it would only have set Paula off again, so on balance it was just as well.
‘Yeah. Did you get your cabinet finished?’
He nodded. ‘Yup. Just got to let the glue dry and then varnish it tomorrow. Deliver on Monday. I’m knackered. It’s looking good, though. Check it out.’ He took his phone from his back pocket and brought up a photo, turning the screen so they could see it. It was an intricate mahogany Chinoise-influenced cupboard with inlaid mother-of-pearl cranes and flowers.
‘Wow, Pete, that’s amazing. Really beautiful,’ said Meredith. ‘Isn’t it, Paula?’
Paula didn’t say anything. She was just twirling the stem of her empty wineglass round and round, perhaps as a hint that she wanted yet another drink.
Meredith didn’t want her to carry on drinking. It would only make her more maudlin.
‘Do you fancy a walk down the towpath, Paula? I could do with stretching my legs and clearing my head. I’m not used to drinking in the daytime.’
Liar! she shouted at herself. It was at almost the same time of day that she’d been knocking back Jack Daniels with Paula’s dead husband during the last couple of hours of his life.
‘Not really,’ Paula said in a small voice.
Meredith shot Pete a glance. She could tell that he was reluctantly wondering if he had to invite her to stay for dinner. She felt guiltily relieved that she was at Pete’s rather than in her own cottage, because if she’d been home there’d have been no excuse not to extend the offer.
‘What time did you say Jackson’s coming back?’ she asked, as gently as she could.
Paula shrugged. ‘He’s going to cook dinner. Not that I could eat anything.’
‘Oh that’s so nice, he’s cooking!’ exclaimed the twins in tandem, and Meredith hoped Paula didn’t pick up that their enthusiasm was as much for their own sakes as hers.
Grief did strange things to people. Which of them knew how they’d react in that situation; become maudlin and morose, quiet and withdrawn, inconsolably tearful – or all of the above? When their dad died, Mum had been like Paula was being right now – tetchy and unbearable, and Meredith remembered it felt to Pete and her as seventeen-year-olds that their mother just wanted to make everyone else suffer the way she was.
That was partly what had driven Meredith away. That, and Samantha of course. The fact that Pete had forgiven her for abandoning him to deal with Mum was yet another testament to his kind heart. Even if it had taken him a few years…
Would Paula ever forgive her, though, for what she’d done to her? Of course she wouldn’t, if she ever found out, and who could blame her?
Meredith looked over at Paula. She’d put the wineglass down on the roof and was biting her nails, working at them with her teeth, trying to pull off bits of cuticle, a vacant expression in her bloodshot eyes.
‘What time are you having dinner?’ Meredith asked, tentatively.
‘Are you trying to get rid of me?’ Paula bit back.
‘No! Of course not, Paul. Honestly, you can stay as long as you want. Can’t she, Pete?’
Pete nodded, looking faintly terrified.
Then Paula burst into tears again. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she sobbed. ‘I just … I can’t … it’s all … have you got any more wine?’
‘There’s some red,’ said Pete, bolting down into the barge and disappearing for a disproportionately long time, although Meredith had been about to try suggesting a cup of tea again. She felt personally responsible for the loss of the woman Paula had been – the brilliant, creative, scatty, well-groomed person who couldn’t be further from this broken human slumped in the picnic chair in front of her, whose life had been blown apart forever.
Meredith had to keep remembering that it wasn’t her fault. Ralph’s death wasn’t her fault.
Pete’s tousled head reappeared, bent to avoid bumping it on the low barge doorway as he came back up the steps holding a half-full bottle of red.
‘I’ll buy you some more to replace what we’ve drunk,’ Meredith said, noticing he hadn’t brought out a glass for himself.
‘Too right you will,’ he said, with a faint smile.
‘Not joining us?’
He shook his head. ‘Too much invoicing to do,’ he said. ‘If I start drinking now that’ll be the rest of the day blown out.’ He topped up their glasses and retreated.
‘He should’ve brought us clean ones,’ Meredith grumbled mildly, although she was feeling more annoyed about having to drink more wine to keep Paula company. White wine and sunshine always gave her a headache, and she could feel one burgeoning behind her ears and across her temples. Adding Merlot to the mix was guaranteed to make it set in for the day. Still, she thought, it was the least she could do.
On the quayside, Pete’s neighbour Trevor was splitting logs to replenish the communal woodpile, and Meredith idly watched his biceps flex as he swung the axe. Trevor was a nice man. In a civil partnership with Johnny, both of them were from Zimbabwe originally; a lovely couple. Sometimes Meredith envied Pete and Andrea. All the residents of the river boats had formed themselves into a proper, tight little community. They were always having impromptu get-togethers and leaving each other little gifts on deck – homemade lemon curd, bottles of fizz, pot plants. She herself had no neighbours and rarely received any visitors, unless someone she knew decided to have a day out at Minstead House and popped into the shop to say hello.
Then she reminded herself that solitude and isolation had been her own choice. It would drive her crazy having people just dropping by at all hours.
‘Post-mortem was yesterday,’ Paula said tersely, and Meredith felt a tiny jolt of fearful adrenaline, even though she already knew this.
She forced her thoughts to the possible results, praying that it wouldn’t show that Ralph had recently had sexual intercourse … Surely it wouldn’t, she thought. Not if he’d been in the water for days. ‘Yeah, I heard, but they haven’t had the report in yet.’
Paula fixed her gaze on her and for a moment Meredith thought, She knows. But then she just said, ‘Maybe it’ll show that he had some sort of terminal illness, and drowned himself rather than facing it.’
‘Maybe. Although,’ Meredith added with reluctance, ‘he seemed fine that day. He was on great form.’
‘I’ll find out on Monday, I suppose,’ Paula said thickly, looking at her phone. ‘Fun, fun, fun. Not. Oh. I’ve had a text from Jackson, checking where I am. I’d better go.’
‘I’ll walk you home.’ Meredith got to her feet.
‘No need, it’s only through the village.’ Paula stood up too, swaying slightly, knocking over her empty wine glass. Meredith managed to catch it before it rolled off the boat into the water.
‘No, really. I need some fresh air.’
Pete was sitting at his galley table with reading glasses on the end of his nose and a sheaf of paperwork in front of him. He looked up as they climbed unsteadily down off the roof. Meredith stuck her head through the doorway to tell him where they were going.
‘Staying here tonight?’
‘Do you mind?’
‘Of course not.’
‘As long as I won’t be putting the kibosh on any potential action you might have been contemplating.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘As if. Although I thought I’d invite Andrea over to supper.’
‘Well in that case I’d better—’
‘No. I want you there,’ he said firmly. ‘Please. I don’t want her to think I’m going to try it on with her.’
Meredith sighed. ‘Pete. Dude. What’s the matter with you? She’s lovely, and you fancy each other.’
‘She’s my neighbour, Mez, and she’s pregnant. It’s far too complicated, and I wouldn’t want to lead her on by letting anything happen.’
It was Meredith’s turn to roll her eyes, although she did understand. It would be terrible if they slept together and then Pete got cold feet – as he was prone to. Andrea was far too vulnerable to be messed around.
‘Well, maybe the time isn’t right now,’ she conceded dully. ‘Right. See you in a bit. Text me if you want me to pick anything up in the shop on the way back.’
‘More wine!’ he called after them.
Paula trudged through the village next to Meredith, several people stopping to hug her, tears in their eyes as they gushed condolences, which Paula accepted as gracefully as she could manage. Meredith could tell that she wanted to tell them all to sod off.
Paula and Ralph had been a popular couple in the village, and Ralph’s death had been broadcast on the local news the previous night: ‘Death at Minstead,’ the newsreader had intoned, over a backdrop of Minstead House looking particularly glorious. At least they hadn’t shown the actual pond.
‘Now it’s really like sodding Midsomer Murders here,’ Paula said savagely after she’d been accosted for the third time. They had often laughed about how Midsomer-ish the village was, with its chocolate-box cottages and petty, complicated village politics. Now they even had a mysterious death to boot.
Meredith couldn’t muster a smile.
They reached Paula’s house, a stocky-looking whitewashed 1920s villa on the far edge of the village, wisteria climbing around a front door that was usually flanked by two big stone lions, which Ralph had loved and Paula hated. But as soon as the door came into view, they knew something was wrong.
Meredith did a double take. The right-hand lion was still there, standing proud, but the left-hand one had been smashed; its head was severed from its body and was lying next to it, staring up at the sky.
She put her hand on Paula’s arm. ‘Paul … look at that.’
She waited for Paula to confess that she herself had done it in a fit of grief – although how she’d have had the strength to, without pushing the whole statue over, Meredith couldn’t imagine. But as she watched Paula’s eyes widen with shock and incomprehension, she knew that this was the first Paula had seen of it too.
‘It was probably Jackson,’ Paula said uncertainly. ‘He’s been so upset. He never liked those lions either.’
Meredith wasn’t so sure. She had a very bad feeling in the pit of her belly, and, as Paula opened the front door and dumped her bag in the hallway, she realised she was holding her breath, waiting for Jackson to appear and confirm or deny it.
‘Jack?’ called Paula. ‘I’m home. What’s happened to the lion?’
Jackson appeared at the top of the stairs – a gangly tousled youth, eyes pink-rimmed. He was usually handsome, in an unformed sort of way, but today he looked like a pale facsimile of himself.
He shrugged. ‘It was like that when I got home. I thought you’d done it. I know you hated them…’
‘It wasn’t me,’ Paula said, kicking off her shoes and sitting down wearily on the bottom stair, leaning her head again the wall with an expression of utter defeat.
Meredith’s heart sank. ‘I don’t want to worry you,’ she said, ‘but I think you need to let the police know.’