Some Old Lover's Ghost Read Online Free PDF

up well, and went for a long walk in the countryside. There were aconites like yellow stars in the hedgerows, and puddles for Jack and Lawrie to splash in. Walking, Jane told me about the tedium of jumble sales and the exhaustion of interrupted nights, and I told her about Tilda. Go and see her again, talk to her a bit more, she said, very sensibly. You’ve nothing to lose.
    So on Monday morning I telephoned Tilda, and on Tuesday I drove again to The Red House. We sat in the upstairs drawing room, by the fire. The room had originally been a solar: a large, semicircular window looked out over the front garden and caught what sun there was. Heat gathered in the room; surreptitiously Islipped off my waistcoat and rolled up my sleeves. The old always feel the cold.
    But Tilda’s mood had altered since the previous week. She was fractious and difficult, evading my questions or giving incomplete answers. She had become suddenly more frail, so that her skin had the absolute pallor of old age. Outside the wind flung fragments of branch and leaf, remnants of a storm. The howl of the wind, the snap of twig against window pane, seemed to increase her nervousness. I mentioned Jossy’s name, and Sarah Greenlees’s, but she was monosyllabic, unforthcoming. Tilda’s lack of response would, in a person who lacked her uprightness and grace, have been positively rude. I was aware of both anger and frustration. The biography had been her idea, after all, and not mine.
    In an attempt to save a wasted day, I persuaded Tilda to let me see the photograph album again. I turned the pages for her and she glanced at them disinterestedly. One photograph in particular caught my eye – a man and a child, both strikingly good-looking. I was about to ask Tilda their names when she started and said, ‘Isn’t that someone coming up the path? Will you tell me who it is, my dear?’
    I rose and looked out of the window, down to where the path was squeezed by the towering box topiaries. ‘A man … fair hair – tallish. Young.’
    I heard Tilda whisper, ‘Patrick,’ and for the first time that day, she smiled. I remembered that on my previous visit she had mentioned a grandson called Patrick.
    ‘Patrick,’ said Tilda, when her visitor opened the door of the solar, ‘why didn’t you tell me you were coming? You could have had lunch.’
    He hugged her. ‘It was a spur of the moment thing. I’d a client to see in Oxford.’
    Tilda turned to me. ‘Let me introduce you to Miss Bennett. Rebecca, this is my grandson, Patrick Franklin.’
    We shook hands. ‘I had a postcard from Dad this morning,’ said Patrick to Tilda. ‘From Ulan Bator.’
    Tilda sniffed. ‘Joshua courts unnecessary danger. He always has.’
    ‘It runs in the family.’ Patrick Franklin was wearing a leather jacket and jeans. Not client-visiting clothes, I thought.
    ‘Ask Joan if she will make us tea, won’t you, Patrick? Or have you not eaten? I’m sure that Joan would make you an omelette.’
    I said quickly, ‘I could have a word with your housekeeper on my way out, Tilda.’
    She turned to me. ‘But you mustn’t go yet, Rebecca. We’ve hardly started.’
    I had to stifle my impatience. ‘You and Patrick will want to talk—’
    ‘Patrick and I have plenty of time to talk. It would be quite ridiculous for you to rush back to London already. Such a waste of a journey.’
    But after tea, Tilda fell asleep, her mouth neatly closed, her eyes flickering behind her lids as she dreamed. Patrick Franklin tucked a rug over her, and turned to me.
    ‘She’ll snooze for ten minutes or so. It’s so damned hot in here, I really must escape for a while. Has my grandmother shown you the garden yet, Rebecca?’
    The garden of The Red House, which I had glimpsed through the conservatory windows on my previous visit, had been an enticing tangle of paths and overgrown trees. I followed Patrick outside. It had stopped raining, but there was a dampness in the air, and the tug of the