The Company of Fellows Read Online Free PDF Page A

that was holding the corn. “We’re just making
dinner”.
    Perhaps she
knows it’s something bad and her head has shut down in denial,
Emily thought. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the reaction she normally
got from teenagers. Most teenagers who weren’t shouting the odds
about their rights or telling her to “fuck off outa my face” forgot
the bravado and went back to being obedient little kids when they
saw the badge. Then again most of the teenagers she spoke to
weren’t chopping stir fry with their mothers.
    The cottage
was laid out very traditionally, at odds with the crisp, modern
décor. The kitchen was down a corridor, behind the reception room.
Emily followed Becky, shoes clanking on the blonde wood; as she
looked at Becky’s rolled-down socks she tried not to think what
kind of mess her heels were making of the floor. On the inside it
was the kind of place that makes you nervous, the kind of house
where everything was both expensive and fragile, and where any mark
would stick out like a boil. The pale spearmint walls were
decorated with occasional pieces of Chinese calligraphy framed in
black. By the door was a round maroon lacquer table with a display
of honesty and bamboo in an asymmetrically curved white
vase.
    Dr Haydn Shaw
was in the kitchen. She still hadn’t looked up when Emily first saw
her. She was working away at something in a giant stone pestle and
mortar. Emily waited for a moment, wondering if she should allow a
few more seconds of normality before she delivered the blow that
would scar their lives; wondering when they would next have any
normal time. Then again, the Martha Stewart perfection of it all
was making her nervous. Or maybe there was just a part of her that
couldn’t handle normal. The part that had been attracted by Tommy,
she thought, surprising herself that his name came up so
easily.
    “ Dr Shaw?”
said Rosie. Emily snapped back to alertness.
    “ Hello.” Haydn
put the pestle and mortar down and rinsed off her hands under a
giant swan-necked tap. If she was apprehensive then Emily couldn’t
sense it.
    “ It’s the
police, mum,” said Becky, before they could introduce themselves.
“Detective Chief Inspector Harris and Detective Sergeant
Lu.”
    “ Death or
handcuffs?” Haydn said completely evenly. So evenly that Emily
wondered if she was on lithium. Whether they both were, come to
that.
    “ Is there
somewhere we can sit down, Dr Shaw?” said Rosie.
    “ It must be
death then,” Haydn concluded. “Who is it? Let me guess. It’s
Charles.”
    “ Dr Shaw.”
Emily reached out a hand and turned her shoulder to try and get
Haydn to the sitting room. Or somewhere she could sit down. If the
nonchalance is because she’s in shock, she thought, then she’ll
faint and smash her head on one of those thick, expensive granite
worktops any moment.
    “ It is
Charles.” Haydn sat down on a barstool. “What happened? Did the
goose liver and truffles finally set up an impassable picket line
in his aorta?”
    It began to
dawn on Emily that perhaps this wasn’t shock or denial but absolute
blind indifference. “We think Professor Shaw was
poisoned.”
    “ Someone’s
killed Dad?” said Becky.
    “ I’m sorry,
Miss Shaw, we think your father killed himself.”
    “ Mum?” Becky
looked at her mother. As though she wants to ask permission to be
sorry, thought Emily.
    “ It’s OK,”
said Haydn, holding out her hand to her daughter. “It’s OK.” Becky
stood behind her mother, one hand on her shoulder, the other in her
hand. Emily watched her shuffle closer as though for warmth, and
close her eyes as she felt her mother’s clothing against her own.
She wondered when the last time was that the Shaws had had any
contact. She felt irritation building again and had to swallow it
down.
    “ What makes
you think he killed himself?” Haydn asked.
    “ We found a
note,” said Rosie. “It wasn’t signed, but it seems to be his
writing.”
    “ I’m afraid
I’m going to