Read Online Asking For Trouble by Ann Granger - Free Book Online

uneasy. Living with others had already shown itself too likely to attract attention. We went to Jubilee Street in another attempt to collect our belongings. Either the council or the police had boarded up the house and we had to break in at the back. We put everything portable into black plastic rubbish sacks and took them over to the shop so that Ganesh could ferry them in the van to my new abode. He wasn’t able to do it straight away, so while we waited for him to be free, Squib and Nev went to the pub and I went for a last walk round the neighbourhood I’d got to know so well, or what the developers had left of it. Not that I was going far, but even a block or two is moving away.
    I was walking through the graveyard when Edna jumped out from behind a headstone, doing her Magwitch impersonation.
    ‘Where are you going in such a hurry, dear?’ she asked.
    ‘Nowhere,’ I told her. ‘I’m not in a hurry.’ Even the thought of not being waylaid by Mad Edna any more made me feel sad. I sat on a tomb. She sat down beside me and began rummaging in her grubby coat. She had an excited air about her, like a child who has learned a new trick and is going to try it out.
    Eventually she produced a gold-coloured Benson and Hedges cigarette packet, very clean and not crushed. She held it tenderly in her mittened hands and touched it with a yellowed nail sticking through the chopped-off ends of the glove-fingers. She stroked it reverently a few times, then opened it with infinite care and very hospitably offered me a cigarette.
    I declined but she continued to push the gold box at me, peering up into my face to make sure I’d noticed how beautiful it was, if only card. If it had been real gold, she wouldn’t have been happier and she wanted me to share her pleasure in it.
    I said, ‘It’s nice, Edna!’ but still refused a cigarette.
    She looked disappointed but took one herself.
    She’d got matches, too. One of those little booklets you get for free in bars and restaurants. Watching her struggle to light it, I offered help, struck the paper match for her and lit her smoke.
    Before handing the booklet back, I read the name on it. It came courtesy of a wine bar in Winchester. She didn’t like me studying it, or even holding it, and snatched it away, tucking it and the precious gold-coloured packet away in some best-not-to-think-about place. The mittens didn’t hide how rheumatism had swollen her knuckle joints. She oughtn’t to have been living rough in a graveyard. But I knew anyone’d have a dreadful job moving her out. She liked it there. She smelled a bit high, though, and I moved along the tomb as far as I could.
    Two of the feral cats lounged nearby in the long grass watching us through half-closed eyes. Another was curled up asleep on a grave. Wherever Edna sat, a cat or two was generally nearby. She was part of their extended tribe.
    As she was puffing happily on her cigarette, I told her I was being moved into a temporary flat.
    ‘Why don’t you get yourself a little place in Chelsea?’ she asked. ‘Chelsea is interesting. Wonderful parties. Although some people think living there rather fast.’ She gave a rasping cough. She wasn’t used to this amount of fresh tobacco.
    Mentally she was back in her débutante days again, whenever they’d been. I had no idea how old she was. She always appeared incredibly ancient.
    I told her I depended on the council and had to stay in the borough. She mumbled at that and began ferreting among several plastic carrier bags she always had with her. Smoke curled up into her eye and made her squint. Knowing that Edna normally collected her smokes from bins and gutters, I wondered about the gold packet and asked, ‘Splashing out, Edna? Buying the ciggies in a proper packet now?’
    ‘He dropped it,’ she muttered. ‘He didn’t see. I saw, though. He didn’t see me. He walked through here.’ She waved the cigarette at the path through the long grass and tipsy