I don't want-'

'Yes you do. You just said you did. Drink your tea, you look like a ......"

'Don't hit me,' Mummy was whining until Julian's voice rose, deceptively calm, with a hint of weariness.

'Don't be so silly. No-one's going to hit you, never have, never will. Why did you let her wear that dress, Jo?'

Oh, here we go again. Let her! Have you ever tried stopping her? She does what she wants.

How do you suppose I stop her? I've got enough to do-'

'Sitting on your bottom all day? Playing house? Leaving dirt everywhere and the garden a mess?

Pretending to cook? I don't know where you get the energy.'

Sarah remembered the elaborate meal of the night before, the polish on the furniture, the semi-tidiness, her own clean sheets, and reflected that Julian was being less than fair. Joanna's voice now had a hint of tears.

Oh what's the point? I do nothing while you play G.o.d with the sick. Bet they're all queuing up now, praying for the chance to see another doctor. You look like those dead cod off one of the boats.'

At least I work. One of us has to.' His voice was dangerous. There was a pause, a clatter of cutlery, then a crash.

Oh, what a pity!' Mother's voice rose to a giggle. 'No champagne for Mrs Tysall!' Julian ignored the interruption.

I'd have more to offer the sick if I wasn't surrounded by idiots at home. A brother who can't work and can't get a job unless I get it for him, a sister who thinks she deserves to be kept.'

OK,' she howled, 'give us some money and we'll go. Isn't this what the lawyer's for?'

'Mrs Tysall, please,' Mother chanted.

'Money?' Julian taunted. 'Other people start their lives without.'

I'll go,' Joanna shouted, 'and you can keep Mother. But you wouldn't, would you? Would you?'

Her fist was pounding the table, her voice rising in hysteria, then sinking. Mouse began humming tunelessly; there was the sound of a chair sc.r.a.ping back on a stone floor. Julian's voice again, dismissive and distant.

'Tell Miss Fortune, when she deigns to appear, that I'll be in the surgery at twelve, and do remember what else I told you. Don't forget to give her directions. Don't offer to feed her either, not tonight, not any night. She supports herself as long as she's here and I don't think it will be long.'

Sarah waited. There was the remote sound of a door banging somewhere inside the house, silence but movement inside the kitchen, a sensation of relief Sarah knocked on the open door and stepped inside.

Joanna leapt to her feet and turned back to look busy at the vast Rayburn with its large simmering kettle, rubbing her eyes with a tea towel, while Mrs Pardoe's mouth formed into a startled OOOh of something like pleasure. She looked as welcoming as a placid baby with exactly the same span of concentration. There was a stale-looking edifice of chocolate cake in the centre of the table.

'Good morning, Mrs Pardoe,' said Sarah. 'It's a lovely day.' The sleeveless gold lame dress was only as shocking as the enormous ear-rings which hung down to bare shoulders, tinkling as Mrs Pardoe finished chewing her toast and dabbed at her mouth with the corner of the tablecloth, leaving small traces of marmalade.

'Good morning to you, Mrs Tysall. How nice to see you.'

Sarah felt cold as Joanna, flushed and uncertain, came back to the table with a pot of coffee.

I do so hope you enjoy your stay, I made you a cake. I'm always making cakes and things, but no-one eats them.' Mother was continuing in the same, fluting tone of a hotel receptionist fresh from a training course.

Oh Mother,' said Joanna uneasily, embarra.s.sed, but all fight gone.

And I do wish,' said Mother, rising from the table and affording Sarah a glimpse of her pink trainers, 'that you young things would wear frocks. Trousers, my dear, are made for men.' With this she swept from the room in a cloud of perfume, a bright smile and fluttering of fingers to indicate her blessing. Joanna looked at Sarah across the table and tried to smile. Tears still lurked, not as well controlled after a quick appraisal of Sarah's appearance in the light of Mother's remarks. Joanna did not notice the dirt on the jeans, only their immaculate fit and the vibrant silk shirt ending across slim hips, and the fact that Miss Fortune's appearance in trousers bore no resemblance to her own.

'Did you hear us having a row?' she asked abruptly. 'Think I caught the tail-end. Sorry.'

'That's all right then. You must have missed the worst bit, when Edward was in on it too. He stormed out a while ago. A morning ritual. I should stay in the cottage if I were you, until after eight-thirty on weekdays. After that, it's only me and Mother. Have some coffee? Toast?'

'Please. Coffee.'

'By the way, you've to meet Julian at his surgery, about twelve, he said. I'll take you, but I'm under strict orders not to discuss business beforehand, not that I know much, not about the estate, whatever you call it, and all that.' The words were rushing out in a fit of apology.

'That's fine. I wouldn't expect you to disobey orders.' They smiled at each other conspiratorially, two women mourning the dominion of men. 'But can you answer me two things? First, why does this family need a lawyer to sort out who should inherit what? Why can't you do it for yourselves?'

Joanna waved vaguely round the mess of the kitchen, the tea spilt on the wooden table, rubbish stacked at one end, two fishing rods next to the Rayburn, the smashed gla.s.s on the floor. 'You can see why, can't you? We're not exactly good at the art of communication. b.l.o.o.d.y Julian gives the orders and b.u.g.g.e.rs up our lives, Ed looks after me. He and Julian never speak, that sort of thing. What was the other question?'

'Why on earth,' Sarah asked casually, 'does your mother call me Mrs Tysall?'

'Search me . . . Oh, I remember, Edward said something about it when she started this morning.

There was a couple called Tysall had a holiday cottage down here, a few years ago, he said. Mrs Tysall had red hair, like yours, she sometimes came here by herself Then she had some kind of accident and drowned. Ma used to talk to her in the hairdresser's. Well, everyone talked about her, I gather. It was a bit of a scandal at the time, because the body got stuck somewhere, wasn't found for a year, after a high tide. Must have been horrible. Lots of red hair.'

'What about her husband?'

Joanna thought hard. 'I dunno the details. More scandal, but you'd have to ask Julian about that.

He dealt with the bodies: it suits him, he's better off with dead people.' She laughed at her own wit. 'Oh, yes, once this Charles was told where his wife was found, he thought she'd run away, or something, you see, he must have walked out to see and got caught by the tide. He got washed up in Holkham the next day. Must have been love. Romantic, isn't it?'

Joanna was pouring more coffee, enjoying herself with ghoulish tales which did not touch her own life and mattered less than her eighteen-year-old concerns with love and spots. Or so Sarah guessed. The pa.s.sions of the over thirties were obscene mysteries to teenagers.

'Charles Tysall was a client of ours,' she volunteered without quite the right kind of indifference.

'I knew him.'

'Did you? I never did,' said Joanna, wondering how a person managed to acquire a figure like Sarah's and the jeans to fit it. It must be a combination of smoking instead of eating breakfast, and living in the sinful paradise of London which she did not crave.

'Well, knew him slightly.' She sipped her coffee, black. 'What an action-packed place this is,'

Sarah added lightly. 'Family fights, suicides, sirens, death and all other adventures. Even a ghost, you were saying last night. Everything happens here.'

Joanna shot her a pitying glance of incredulous impatience.

'What on earth are you talking about?' she wailed. 'We own most of the village,' she added mournfully, 'and absolutely nothing happens here. Nothing at all.'

CHAPTER FOUR.

The medical centre could have been anywhere. There was nothing rural about it and the clean, hygienic smell, still reminiscent of sickness, made it somehow a fitting place to discuss a will.

. . the residue of my estate, whatsoever and wheresoever, to my wife Jennifer absolutely. For her to dispose of between my children entirely in such shares as she sees fit.'

'Look,' Julian was saying from the opposite side of a depressing metal desk, oblivious to her curiosity, cutting short niceties and looking at any point in the bare room which did not include Sarah's presence, 'I can't pretend I like this because I don't. I don't like any of this business and I regret the necessity for your presence here. Ernest Matthewson was my father's lawyer for half a lifetime, but I don't always see the sense in his ideas.'

I thought it was your idea,' she interrupted. Julian looked blank. A brief, forced smile touched his features like a magic wand, to reveal a glimpse of humanity on a face carved from stone, distressed by chronic pain which may or may not have been his own.

'My idea? Ernest simply told me you were coming. Never mind. You ARE here, for better or worse. You've looked at the will, but not the list of a.s.sets which form my mother's property as it is now.'

She waited for signs of smugness, saw none as he handed her three typed pages, headed with the name of a local estate agent. A glance at the list showed a longish list of houses, business premises and shops. Sarah wondered fleetingly if there was anything freehold left in the village belonging to anyone else.

About two thirds of it,' Julian said, guessing her thoughts. 'Took him twenty years. My father,'

he continued, 'believed, pa.s.sionately in bricks and mortar, exchanged the proceeds of his manufacturing concerns for nothing else. Hence it was apposite for him to be on a roof when having a heart attack, because, at the age of seventy, he chose to clean leaves from the gulley. He always was an over achiever and a lousy delegator. Since his death, my mother has been as you see her; it appears to be a permanent malady. She can no longer read or cook, has no sense of property or propriety, no sense of time, no sense of fear, absolutely no insight into her own condition and no perception of ours.

She's difficult, irritating, demanding, vulnerable and quite incapable of dealing with her own affairs since she doesn't even know what she owns. Neither do I, entirely. I believe Edward does.

He works at the estate agent's who manage things.'

He sighed as if bored by the whole subject. 'Father was copping out, you see.' Julian went on with the same suppressed irritation. 'For such an astute and materialistic man, he was very indecisive. He left it all to Mother to sort it for him. Amazing. I thought he loved and trusted me.

Obviously not.' Sarah watched him flinch.

'For the last couple of years, he and Mother seemed to rediscover each other. They behaved like lovers, told each other jokes instead of him simply issuing orders. Father even gave up social climbing, she hated it anyway. He perfected his skill at fishing. Talked about raising rare breeds of sheep. There's one left, in the garden.'

Sarah wanted everything. She wanted to know where Mrs Pardoe had worn her gold dress for the first time and what Mr Pardoe had been like. She wanted family portraits, anecdotes, signs of grief, instead of this unnerving formality. All she could see from here was that husband and wife between them had created a good-looking tribe, disparate in appearance, Edward, dark and slight, Joanna fair and rounded, and the eldest, sitting opposite, stocky and attractive with a jutting chin, red-gold curls, the blazing eyes of a fever and no inclination to wander from the point. Sarah supposed she had better act as she had always done with clients and pretend that she had more to offer than educated common sense. The pretence often became real.

'Look,' she began, 'it's a perfectly valid will.'

'Yes, I know that,' he said rudely. And it leaves me, as the eldest, to administer an estate over which I have no power. Mother can't make a power of attorney in my favour, because she'd have to understand what it was. I've tried and failed. I manage to collect rents, pay cheques and run things only because the bank manager's a patient, but I've got responsibility without authority. I also know, before you deign to tell me, that if she dies, Edward, Joanna and I would inherit in equal shares. Meantime, we're all stuck.

We've got a.s.sets without a huge income. Enough, but not generous. Mother could last for thirty years.' He made the last statement fondly, a glimmer of admiration in his voice. Sarah caught him smiling, smiled back and watched his face harden, a man coa.r.s.ened by bitterness and a loneliness beyond his own curing. Sarah was watching the fleeting betrayals of a condition which was second nature to herself saw a man who had pa.s.sed harsh judgements on himself 'So,' she said briskly, 'this is what we do. Itemize the estate, then value it. Decide on how it should be managed, whether in or outside the family. Then go to the Court of Protection with our plans. They can write a will for your mother.'

'Simple,' said Julian ironically, the smile coming back.

'No. Not simple, but possible. It'll cost you the price of a house on a Monopoly board, but I don't suppose that matters, you seem to have plenty of houses. The object of this planning is to make sure your mother is safe, happy and well provided for. That's the primary aim. Then, to free up enough capital for you, Edward and Jo to spread your wings and fulfil your dreams sooner rather than later.'

Julian laughed, surprising himself There was irony in the laugh, but at least it was laughter.

'What dreams? What dreams could a simple country doctor have?'

Everyone has dreams,' Sarah protested. 'Your father must have had dreams to acquire as he did.

Jo tells me that Edward has dreams of being an artist. She may dream of being a cook. Money's for refurbishing dreams. Why else work for it?'

'Some of us don't.'

Surely she could not believe Edward had honest dreams. So much for her wisdom. Edward dreaming of being an artist only meant the same Edward who blamed all his failures on being bored, growing from spiteful boy into lazy man, drifting through one job after another until his father had got him a sinecure in the local estate agent's office. His ability to concentrate was pathetic,' his lack of convention a sham. Julian looked at Sarah and decided her neutral expression was a clever sham too. She might repeat what she was told, but only believe what she chose.

He sat back. This time the smile did not retreat into the gauntness of his face.

'Miss Fortune, I believe you may be a witch. I was waiting for you to accuse me of cupidity and you talk about dreams. I suppose you also exorcise demons?'

Sarah shook her head, smiling. 'I find it easier to pay them off. Gremlins, demons, goblins, regrets. They're the symptoms of life after thirty.'

Julian allowed himself another bark of laughter, which stopped abruptly to coincide with a knock on his door and the entry of a buxom nurse who bustled towards the pile of notes in a wire basket on the edge of the desk, smiling her professional smile. Then she stopped, face to face with Sarah, ceased smiling, grabbed the notes and scuttled away without apology. The door clicked shut angrily behind her. Sarah pretended to study the list of Pardoe a.s.sets Julian had given her.

'Amus.e.m.e.nt arcade, East Quay,' was a description which sprang from the page. The room was suddenly hot.

Is that enough to keep you going?' Julian asked, back into the persona of a doctor asking if the medication would last the week. She wanted to slap him, but rose gracefully, tucking the papers under her arm.

I wonder if your nurse thought I was a malingerer? Asking for a sick note to sit in the sun, or something of the kind? She seems . . . a little possessive.' She felt unreasonably angry, looked down at the pristine slacks which had replaced the dirtier jeans, too smart for a village surgery, noticed that Julian's skin resembled the colour of chalk.

I'm sorry. You must have given her a shock. Actually, you gave me a shock when I first saw you. You happen to be the graven image of a patient of ours, oh, two years ago, but she was . . .

well, difficult to forget.'

'Mrs Tysall,' said Sarah flatly. 'Your mother calls me Mrs Tysall. Someone in the hairdresser's said I was like an old client. It's extremely disconcerting, a person could get sick of comparisons, but I suppose you all mean Elisabeth Tysall who resides in the graveyard, without even a headstone on her grave. Wife of Charles.'

He had risen from his seat, still pale, twisting a pencil in his large hands.

'Your sister says you dealt with both bodies, Elisabeth and her husband,' Sarah went on artlessly, driven by the same flat anger. 'She was your patient, you say. I always wanted to meet someone who knew her. Was she very lovely?'

The pencil snapped.

'Get out of here. You're right. Comparisons are odious. You don't resemble Elisabeth at all. No-one does.'

Sarah stopped, watched his rage crumble into a thinly disguised distress, the veneer of control exerting itself slowly.

'Demons and gremlins,' she murmured. 'I didn't mean to touch a nerve. Was she a friend of yours? She certainly needed one.'

He shook his head, reverting abruptly to the original state of officious rudeness.

'Please go, Miss Fortune. I doubt if you're at all suitable to help us. Spend the weekend in the cottage, as our guest. Then we'll reconsider.'

As you please.'

Stonewall Jones ran from the amus.e.m.e.nt arcade, left down the quay, left again and then cut through a crooked alley leading to the main street. On the way, he could nod in several directions to houses where various relatives lived, first his mother, out at work at the moment, her carefully made sandwiches mashed in his pocket, his baby brothers three doors up with Aunty Mary, Uncle Jack round the corner in the police station. The place was a mine of people who were good for a fifty-pence touch, and those who would, in various scolding ways, let him in had he asked, but not one compared with Cousin Rick.

Rick had his drawbacks, but as a hero he was faultless, while as a spy, Stonewall was the soul of discretion, with the added talent of being able to lie convincingly, although truth was his natural inclination. He also had a memory as long as his fleeting stride and a fine eye for detail. Which was why he was now so excited. The redhead.

The memory was visual rather than verbal. Stonewall talked all the time to Rick, sometimes to his mates at school, while anyone else got short shrift. The redhead girl came back before his eyes from a time when he had been smaller, but not such a baby he'd fail to remember a woman with her face full of st.i.tches, coming out of the medical centre, crying. That was two years and a whole lifetime ago; but he never quite forgot because he had not had the chance. First he had found her credit cards and stuff with her photo on it hidden in the creeks. Then he and his stepdad found the body, exactly one year after.

Dad had been terribly sick, which Stonewall had not considered a good example. Tutored by illicit, adult videos, seen in the house of a mate, he wasn't that shocked himself. The redhead looked like a real dead dog, not a person, the impression accentuated by the long hair like red spaniel ears covered in muddy sand, floppy, silken, gritty and wet. She was a thing, not to be confused with anything live.