Read Online Last Post by Robert Barnard - Free Book Online

of her brain, Eve thought: that’s one horribly mixed-up young man. With her brain’s emotional part, Eve remembered how nearly they had come to embracing, and a wave of tenderness for him swept through her. No doubt they both were in danger of becoming involved on the rebound, each wanting to fill a void in their lives with something that had been lacking: he was perhaps attracted to her by her maturity, her experience, her lack of silliness and shallowness; she was attracted to him by his youth, his energy, his confidence in everything except his emotional life. Nothing may come of it, she said to herself. But she was quite sure she wanted to know him much better.
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    Next morning very early Eve drove into Crossley and told her mother’s newsagent to continue sending the Guardian for the moment, as she was unsure how long she needed to stay in Crossley to put her mother’s affairs in order. In among the shop’s detritus from the end of the tourist and walking seasons she found a street guide toHuddersfield and bought it. Then she set off in quest of Heckford and Portland Gardens.
    All trace of the gardens that presumably were once there had long gone, except for little square patches in front of the Victorian and Edwardian houses. These were superseded halfway along the road by postwar semis and a few very new jerry-built detached houses with garages, some of them with conservatories glued on recently. It was nearly eleven o’clock. Eve parked her car near, but not too near, number 23, and waited. She very much wanted to talk to Jean Mannering, and had the letter from her in her handbag, but she was not sure she was ready to do it yet. She had picked up a couple of sandwich packs and a carton of milk on the way there, and she ate half of the chicken and bacon, drank some milk, and had one of her occasional cigarettes. She thought about what she was doing and why, about her mother and their relationship: had they really been close, or was there just the friendly familiarity of mother and daughter, without real warmth? But if that was all there was, why was she caring so much about what she had read in the letter? Most of all she thought about Rani.
    After more than an hour she was rewarded. The heavy door of number 23 was opened and a woman with gray hair, wearing a coat against the early autumn chill, came down the stone steps, opened the gate and walked away from Eve’s car and toward the little row of shops that she had noticed five minutes away. Her walk was straight backed, and she had passed into the street like someone making an entrance. An actress, surely. Eve was out of hercar in a trice and across the road, staying a suitable distance behind her quarry. As she passed number 23, she noted that there were three doorbells in a downward line beside the front door: two flats and a bedsit in the roof, she thought. The woman was walking briskly—no sign of arthritis or a failing hip. She popped a letter into the post box as she passed, then took out her purse and went into the tiny newsagent’s and general store. She emerged with the Radio Times and the Independent . She kept on toward the shops, several of which had become takeaways of various national persuasions. But there was still a butcher clinging on till retirement age, and the woman went in and bought lamb chops (Eve could see the butcher taking them from the window). Then she went farther, to what called itself a minimarket on the far end of the row of shops. Eve dallied on the other side of the road, and at one point she thought she had been noticed: at the cash desk the woman suddenly turned around and looked through the window. But then she walked over and fetched something on special offer, and went back to the cashier. When the woman came out, her transparent plastic bag seemed to contain potatoes, some other vegetable in a plastic pack, the special offer dishwasher powder and some kind of