Quiet Neighbors by Catriona McPherson

shirt in a knot just under her bosom and turn up the hems of her khaki trousers to show off her slim, brown ankles.
    Not what most people looked like as they hauled themselves away from the brink of near disaster and stood reeling, catching their breath. Not what Jude looked like as she tackled the bookshop, one room at a time, with rubber gloves and buttoned cuffs, her hair in a scarf and a paper mask on her face.
    By the fifth day, though, the shadows were gone from under her eyes and those odd yellow streaks that might be what people meant when they said “pinched” were gone from the sides of her nose too.
    â€œHo!” said Mrs. Hewston, standing in the kitchen doorway. “You’re looking well on it.”
    â€œGuilty,” said Jude. “It’s the sea air.”
    Mrs. Hewston said nothing but smirked and bridled so much that Jude took her upstairs to show her the little bedsit to prove she was sleeping alone.
    â€œOf course, I haven’t been here much since the doctor died,” said Mrs. Hewston, looking round the bedroom landing with the quick, angled glances of a blackbird, although the doors were closed. “He was one of the last true gentlemen. Always treated me quite like one of the family. Chocolates on my birthday, brandy at Christmas, always lifted his hat when he drove past.”
    Jude couldn’t think of anything less like family membership than lifted hats and neutral gifts on expected days, but she said nothing. She didn’t even realise she had missed the cue until Mrs. Hewston offered it up again in a different form while they were climbing the second set of stairs.
    â€œYes,” she said with a sigh, “you don’t come across his like much anymore. And it was a mutual regard. He called me the salt of the earth. ‘You’re the salt of the earth, Nurse Hewston,’ he’d say.”
    What with her age and all the talking, she was labouring before they reached the attics, and she sank into one of the kitchen chairs in the yellow room as soon as Jude opened the door.
    â€œIt was the great sadness of his life that this one didn’t follow him into medicine,” she added, taking three breaths to get through it.
    â€œLowell?” said Jude, confused enough to look around for who else she might mean. The Scots with their thises and thats caught her out ten times a day.
    â€œIt’s Lowland ,” said Mrs. Hewston. “He was named for his mother’s family. They were gentleman farmers down Whithorn way. A great big spread. They looked down on the doctor when he went courting Miss Lowland. Can you believe it? But there, the family died out and the farm’s away. Sold on to a bunch of bankers and they’re living off cheques from Brussels, like all farmers these days.”
    Jude nodded, barely listening. The fields around the edges of the town were dotted with sheep and cattle, she thought, and the shops were full of lamb and beef; it didn’t seem like much of a con to her. But then, Mrs. Hewston would look at a babe in arms and see a grifter. She was still sneering at man of sixty because he didn’t want to take up medicine when he was a boy.
    The woman had seen Jude’s attention wandering and changed the subject. “And so what’s brought you here?” she began.
    â€œLike Lowell said,” Jude replied evenly, “I’m helping out with a project in the bookshop.”
    â€œAll the way to London for consultants!” Mrs. Hewston said. “That’s the mother’s side. A fortune they let slip through their fingers. And all that land. The doctor built up his practice from nothing and retired very comfortably. It was London, wasn’t it?” she added. Jude nodded. London was a big place. “And you jumped at the chance, did you? Ah, well. I’ve seen it too many times not to know it again. Galloway is just that kind of place for some reason.”
    â€œWhat kind of