They had never talked about it. After the inquest and the funeral were over, Godfrey had tried several times to discuss it with Oliver, but the the professor had retreated behind barriers so impenetrable that it would have taken a braver person than Godfrey to force through them.
The local newspaper had made the most of reporting the tragedy, of course, and some bright journalist had dug out an article about how two people had died at Twygrist several years earlier, and used words like deathtrap and eyesore. The paper had mounted a campaign, saying Twygrist should either be properly renovated or demolished, and people had sent in letters saying it was a disgrace to let such an historic place fall into decay and that somebody should do something about it. There had been talk of setting up a Save the Mill Society, but in the end people had been too engrossed in their own lives, and in any case, the various communities around Twygrist were too small and too widely spread. Godfrey was aware of the irony of it all, because once he and Oliver would have suggested the Quire Trust spearhead such a society. But in the end, the responsibility for Twygrist had again been shunted from local authority to county authority, and all the way back again, and in the end nothing had been done at all.
Godfrey and Oliver had continued to work amicably together–although Oliver had become more distant, and less patient when Godfrey got into a muddle, which he sometimes did. The workings of the Quire House Trust was one of the things that muddled Godfrey most of all, because balance sheets sent him into a panic, but he did know that after a couple of years the Trust started to show a small but acceptable profit.
And presently, little by little, it began to seem as if life was not quite so anguished.
But since Amy’s death, Oliver had never, so far as Godfrey knew, spent any time alone with a lady, or even met one for so much as a cup of coffee.
Until Antonia Weston came to Charity Cottage.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Antonia spent what was left of the afternoon piecing together the notes she had made on Latchkill. It was infuriating that there was no exact date on the notes about the woman who had shut her eyes against the world and crouched in a corner. Antonia would have liked to tie them into Daniel’s letters but it could not be done.
Eventually she set the notes aside, put some chicken in the oven to cook, and went upstairs to wash her hair. This last was nothing to do with Jonathan’s arrival tomorrow; it was simply that it was a long time since she had been taken out to dinner, and she might as well look halfway decent. She would wear the autumn-leaf outfit she had bought on that first day of freedom in London; the fabric was silky and expensive-looking, and it would look terrific.
Her hair was dry by this time and pleasantly scented with shampoo, and she sat down at the kitchen table to eat the chicken. She was still enjoying the novelty of being able to eat what she wanted when she wanted. It was raining quite heavily outside, but the cottage was warm and snug. Or–was it? What about that shadowy corner of the kitchen? It was still there, that patch of fear and despair, and it would not take very much for it to rear up into a solid wall of suffocating panic. Once upon a time, someone had crouched in that corner.
‘…pressing against the ground, and scrabbling at the floor…afraid of the light above the ground.’
Antonia frowned, and carried the dishes over to the sink. While she washed up, she half listened to the seven o’clock news headlines on the radio, and she was just drying her hands when she caught a sound from beyond the kitchen window. Probably it was only the rain splashing down the gutters or her own imagination.