Starburst by Robin Pilcher Page B

made, and about the walks along the banks of the river Seine and the visits to museums and art galleries she had made with Albert Dessuin. In turn, Madame Lafitte would read these aloud to Angélique’s mother, whom she knew had never received such a letter. Happiness seemed to radiate from these dispatches, so much so that it never occurred to Madame Lafitte that, not once, had Angélique mentioned her home life with Albert Dessuin and his mother. If she had but known about the tirades, the selfish hypochondria and the cold unfriendliness of the dreadful woman, the heavy clinking of bottle against glass that sounded from Dessuin’s bedroom as Angélique passed by late at night to go to the bathroom, then Madame Lafitte would have taken the first train to Paris to make other arrangements. But Angélique never included a word of this in any of her letters, frightened that such a disclosure might end her time at the Conservatoire.
    It was two days before her eighty-eighth birthday that Madame Lafitte received the news from Angélique that she had won the Prix du Concours Long-Tibaud. In another letter from Albert Dessuin, which arrived on the same day, he announced to Angélique’s guardian that he had decided to give up his position at the Conservatoire and continue to teach Angélique and manage her affairs, as already she was being inundated with requests from concert halls around Europe to hear her play, and Dessuin felt that there was no way she could cope alone with such a pressure.
    Madame Lafitte did not open, nor did she read, either of the letters herself. That was left to a young male nurse who sat on a chair close to the stroke victim’s bedside in hospital. When he had finished, he looked closely at her face and nodded. Good news, he thought to himself, for both her and for the doctors. The smile was the first sign of understanding she had given since being brought there.

SIX
     
    T he battered Transit van with the blown exhaust drove slowly through the confusion of streets, every one of them lined with identical stark-fronted, drab-harled houses, before coming to a halt at the entrance to a wide cul-de-sac. Terry Crosland rolled down the window and studied the street sign, just being able to make out the letters of Bolingbroke Close beneath a swirl of black graffiti. He swung the nose of the van around and reversed down the street to a point where he wouldn’t interrupt the game of three-aside football that was in progress. As he opened the door, a deafening bang resounded around the tinny confines of the van and he saw the football dribble past him on the pavement. Thumping the door closed, he went over to the ball, pulled it towards him with his foot and deftly flicked it up into his hands.
    A young boy came running down the street towards him. “Sorry ’bout that, mister.”
    “No ’arm done, lad.” Terry smiled at the boy and lobbed him the ball. “Any idea which is the Brownlows’ ’ouse?”
    “Number seventeen, over there,” the boy replied, pointing to a house that seemed to have aged worse than others in the ten or so years of its life. “That’s Robbie Brownlow playing in goal for the opposition.”
    Terry cast an eye towards the small figure that stood in front of the goal-chalked wall at the far end of the cul-de-sac. He was gazing up into the sky, seemingly more interested in the vapour trail of a plane flying overhead than he was in getting on with the game of football.
    “Good, is he?” Terry asked.
    “Nah,” the boy replied disparagingly. “That’s why we put ’im against the wall. We’d keep losing the ball if ’e was at this end.”
    Terry watched the boy kick the ball back into play, and then walked across the road and entered the Brownlow property through a wrought-iron gate that a spare five minutes and a lick of black paint would have improved considerably. The pathway to the front door was blocked by a pile of large stones with weeds growing amongst them, a planned