The Devil`s Feather by Minette Walters Page A

them. I suppose I should have announced myself but it was a situation that was doomed to embarrassment whatever I did. Half of me hoped they’d up stumps and leave if I delayed long enough; the other half recognized that the longer the delay the more difficult the explanations. What was I going to say, anyway? That I was leaving? That I wasn’t leaving? And what name was I going to use in front of the doctor? If he applied for Marianne Curran’s medical records, they would show me as sixty-three.
    I think it was standing in Lily’s hall during that long hiatus that persuaded me to stay. It was impossible to ignore the tattiness—in one place three feet of wallpaper near the ceiling had come away from the Blu-Tack blobs that had been holding it in place—but in an odd sort of way it appealed to me. Apart from my stint in Iraq I’d spent the last two years in a minimalist flat in a high-rise block in Singapore, where space was limited, cream was the predominant colour and none of the furniture reached above my knees. It was hideously impractical—red wine was a nightmare—and hideously uncomfortable—I couldn’t move without barking my shins—but everyone who saw it had commented on the designer’s flair.
    This was the opposite. Spacious, lofty and red-wine-friendly. The faded wallpaper in blues and greens, of Japanese pagodas, feathery willow fronds and exotic pheasant-style birds, was a good fifty years old, while the furniture, big and lumbering, was utilitarian Victorian. There was a battered chest of drawers under one branch of the stairs, a leather grandfather chair, sprouting horsehair from its seat, under the other, and an ugly oak table in the middle carrying a plastic pot plant. Perhaps the threadbare Axminster rug underneath it added a sense of recognition, because it reminded me of the one we’d had in Zimbabwe. My grandfather had imported it with great ceremony and then refused to allow anyone to walk on it.
    The doctor’s voice broke the silence. “Does it never occur to you that you might be wrong?”
    “About what?”
    “At the moment, that woman out there. You’re assuming she can pull herself together enough to come inside…but supposing she can’t?” He paused to let her answer, but went on when she didn’t. “Perhaps her fears are real, perhaps she’s frightened of something tangible? How much do you know about her?”
    “Nothing, except that she talks with a South African accent and knows the paper bag trick.”
    “Ah!”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “It explains why you think she’s going to come in. Paper bags are to you what leeches were to sixteenth-century quacks…the cure to everything.”
    “They’re a damn sight less harmful than Valium.”
    Peter gave a snort of derision. “It wasn’t paper bags that cured you, Jess, it was getting to grips with running the farm. You conquered a steep learning curve through sheer bloody guts and an above-average intelligence. Show me the paper bag that taught you how to shove your hand up a cow’s backside to help deliver a calf.” He paused.
    “What would you know about it?” I heard a door crash open angrily. “I’m going out to see if she’s still in her car.”
    “Good idea.” There was another long silence.
    I looked towards the front door, expecting Jess to come in that way, but I heard her voice in the kitchen again. “She’s not there. She must be in the house.”
    “So what happens now?”
    For the first time she sounded unsure of herself. “Perhaps we should make a noise so she knows where we are. If we go to meet her she might take fright.”
    “All right,” he teased. “What do you want me to do? Sing? Tap dance? Bang some saucepans together?”
    “Don’t be an idiot.”
    His tone softened as if he was smiling at her. “If she’s made it to the front door, I think you can safely welcome her in. I’ll put the kettle on while you’re doing it. Let’s pray she’s brought some tea bags