Death of a Perfect Mother by Robert Barnard Page B

Once that was over, the day opened up with manifold possibilities for Lill. Now she could dispose of her hours as she would, captain of her fate, mistress of her soul; meaning, in fact, that she could plan any manner of mischief she set her heart on.
    Lill wondered whether Guy Fawcett would be home next door during the day.
    The thought stayed with her as she performed in her slapdash way her various early morning chores. The cat—black with white paws and whiskers, and knowingeyes that saw through Lill all right—demanded breakfast, and Lill reached down a tin. As she opened it she noticed a By Appointment sign on the label, and said to herself: Blimey, you’d have thought she could afford something better than this! She washed up the breakfast things, and slapped a greasy cloth over the kitchen table. Then she put some coke on the kitchen stove and emptied the ashes from underneath. Throughout she kept half an eye on the kitchen window and the gardens outside.
    At nine-fifteen Guy Fawcett appeared beyond the next-door fence, large and visible, and carrying a spade which he showed no inclination to use.
    Didn’t do to seem too eager. Lill knew the moves in the game as well as anyone alive. She went upstairs to make the beds, opened the bedroom windows wide, and carrolled in her crow-scaring singing voice the first two lines or so of ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Morning’, over and over. She knew the ropes. It gave him an opening. ‘You sound happy today,’ he could say when she finally emerged into the back garden. As she made Brian and Gordon’s beds her eyes strayed to the figure of Guy Fawcett, wandering around his back lawn in the pallid April sunshine. His heart doesn’t seem to be in it, she thought. Better give him something to keep his pecker up. So when she went downstairs, she took out the sink-tidy, with the rubbish from breakfast, and slapped the contents into the dustbin, humming cheerily the while a healthy Cliff Richard number.
    â€˜You sound happy this fine morning,’ said Guy Fawcett from over the garden fence. ‘Come into a fortune?’
    â€˜That’s right,’ said Lill, not pausing in her trot back to the kitchen. ‘I come into the pools. Just like that woman said, it’s going to be “Spend, Spend, Spend” with me.’
    â€˜It would be too with you, Lill,’ said Fawcett, his bass baritone throbbing with admiration. Lill laughed all the way down the scale, threw him a sideways look that couldmean whatever he chose it to, and charged through the back door. The first move had been made. The gunfighters were circling warily round the dusty town square, waiting for the moment when they would come out into the open, all cylinders blazing.
    Lill hurried through the rest of her chores. After all, though it doesn’t do to seem too anxious, still—Fred and Gordon would be back at five past one. Another little bout of teasing would be strictly within the rules of the game, but it would take time. She finished her scanty Hoovering, decided not to dust the bits of brass, china dogs, cheap African pots and other ornaments dotted around her mantelpiece and window ledges, then fetched her handbag and put on a bit of make-up lovingly in front of the mirror: not too much—didn’t want to make it too obvious; not too little—have to give him an excuse for mentioning it. She smirked at herself when she had finished: she could still show the young ’uns a thing or two! This done, she armed herself with a fearsome pair of secateurs from Fred’s gardening drawer, and sallied out into the fresh air.
    The garden was Fred’s responsibility. When not tending the parish parks he came back to dig his own potato patch, and it would never have occurred to him to complain at this. Now and then Lill acted in a supervisory capacity, told him what she wanted, where, and so on; but basically she took no interest in it. Flowers, like