CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

Sh.e.l.ley answered a knock at the door to find Maisie waiting on the front steps of Ingledene.

'I was thinking', the older woman said without any preamble, 'that perhaps we ought to do something in the way of flowers now that the dates for the funerals have been set.'

'Yes,' said Sh.e.l.ley. 'Yes, of course. Come in while I get my purse ... although on second thoughts, I think it will have to be a cheque will that be all right?'

Maisie acquiesced to the cheque, while following Sh.e.l.ley into the hall and wondering how on earth anyone could live amid such confusion. All those piles of books and papers on the stairs, for example. Hardly enough room to walk up and down.

'We hadn't really got to know Gilda,' Maisie said. 'She was here less than a year, poor thing, but as I said to Fred, I don't feel that you can do something for one and not the other and naturally we should make some sort of gesture for Marcus's sake. Poor man, it must have been a terrible shock for him.'

'From what little I've seen of him, Marcus seems to be coping remarkably well,' Sh.e.l.ley said. 'Of course, having Melissa has been a great support.'

'And an awful thing for young Sean, too,' Maisie went on, either failing to catch Sh.e.l.ley's meaning, or choosing not to pursue it. 'An accident out of the blue like that. I understand he's going back south to live with his mother.'

'So I've heard. Do you know what's going to happen to Gilda's daughter?' (If anyone knew, Sh.e.l.ley thought, it would be Maisie.) 'She's going to live with a cousin of Gilda's. I met her, in fact the cousin, I mean. She seems a very nice woman. I happened to be pa.s.sing the house when she came to collect some of Rebecca's things.' Sh.e.l.ley had to turn away so that Maisie did not catch the expression on her face. 'Rebecca calls her Aunty, apparently, and it seems they've always been close, so hopefully it will all work out. Such a terrible shock for everyone,' she repeated. 'And as Fred keeps saying, it was an avoidable tragedy. So silly to risk a shortcut like that, with the roads so bad.'

'Marcus said he couldn't understand what they were doing together in the car at all. They weren't exactly good friends, and he's never known the two of them to go anywhere before. In fact, Marcus told me that Jo must have gone out in a hurry, because she hadn't taken her purse or her credit cards or even locked the front door, although she was very scatty about things like that.'

'Perhaps Jo had hurt herself, or been taken poorly, and Gilda offered to run her to a doctor,' Maisie suggested. 'There would have been no way of knowing, afterwards, because I heard the bodies were almost unrecognizable.'

'It was probably something quite mundane,' mused Sh.e.l.ley. 'But I suppose none of us will ever know now.'

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.

I would like to record my thanks to all those who have helped and encouraged me as I wrote this book, in particular Erica Woolley, Emma d.i.c.kens, Jane Conway-Gordon, Krystyna Green and all at Constable & Robinson. Last but not least I want to thank my husband Bill for his unfailing love and support ... and the real Timmy for keeping my feet firmly on the ground.

Also by Diane Janes.

The Pull of the Moon.