Palmer-Jones 01 - A Bird in the Hand by Ann Cleeves

retreated to his side of the door. She tried to keep them quiet for the rest of the period but the peace in his classroom would not return. It had been disturbed by long pink toenails, thighs in tight jeans and a low-necked black shirt. His concentration wavered and his head ached.
    At lunchtime he had to queue in the supermarket for the items on the list he had made that morning before leaving home. His mother was seventy now, and although she managed to get out to the shop in the village she could not carry anything heavy. In the afternoon he had a free period, but another teacher had been timetabled to use his room. He hated using the staff room. He sat in a corner, rigid with unfriendliness, terrified that someone would approach him to make conversation. Later he would say angrily to his mother: “I sat there all afternoon and no one spoke a word to me.”
    He left before four o’clock, hoping to avoid a meeting with the mass of joking teachers, who often met in the staff room for coffee before they went home. They chattered like children and he despised them. Today, more especially, he hoped to avoid Mrs. Phillips and her student teacher. But in the corridor he almost tripped over the headmaster, and had to walk along with him, listening to the praise of the young man who had recently been promoted as head of Cranshaw’s department. Carrying the plastic bag of groceries, he felt foolish. At last he reached his car and then he had to prepare himself emotionally for his meeting with his mother.
    They lived together in a small, ugly house in a street behind the Blue Anchor. They rented it and Bernard Cranshaw resented paying for major repairs, so in comparison to the rest of the street it looked shabby. He was one of a large family, but his father had died, his brothers and sisters had married and he was left at home to look after his mother. Throughout his youth he had been dependent on his mother; she had protected him from the violence—and more importantly from the sarcasm—of his father, and now she was dependent on him.
    In contrast to his room at school the house was untidy, piled with papers, slides and photographs. It irritated him, but he was helpless before it. His mother left the housework to him now and once in the house he had no energy. She sucked all the energy from him, with her intense need for his attention and sympathy. Some days he tried to talk to her, to tell her about his day at school, as he would have done when he was younger, but she did not want to listen, only to be listened to.
    She started to talk when he entered the house, followed him to the kitchen, touching, almost stroking his arm to ensure that she retained his attention as he cooked their meal. Usually she talked of his father. Her bitterness towards him had not ended with his death. She was a slight woman, still vain, still attempting to make herself attractive. Every month a girl came from the village to set and dye her hair. Whenever she went out and before Bernard arrived home from work she would apply make-up to her face. Despite her thinness she ate heartily and there was some relief as they took their meal in the dingy kitchen, but even as she ate she continued to talk. Real freedom came later. But tonight he would have to postpone it.
    “Mother.”
    She seemed surprised that he had spoken, and stared at him, her pink, glossy lips a little apart.
    “Mother, I had a letter today from Kenneth Wallis. Do you remember? He used to teach with me.”
    “I didn’t see a letter.” She was insulted that she had not shared in this detail of his private life.
    “He wrote to me at school. If you remember, he was Scots. He’s teaching now in the Highlands and he’s invited me to stay with him to see some of the breeding birds there.”
    It was out now. He should have broached the subject more carefully, more tactfully. But then she would not have understood him.
    “That was kind of him,” she said sweetly,