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Sad!
    You have my deepest sympathy. I calculate May must have been about sixty-seven. These days that is a very early age to go. I hope time is beginning its healing work.
    Yours sincerely,
    Jean Mannering
    Eve got up, snatched a short coat from the hall and set off for Huddersfield.

CHAPTER 6
Actress

    This morning there was no need for waiting and spying. The house was known, the object was known, the approach was decided on. Eve got out of her car, walked purposefully across the road and pushed open the iron gate. The three names on the doorbell at number 23 Portland Gardens were Naylor, Dougall and Mannering. No indication whether they were single women, single men, or couples—probably for security reasons. Eve, oddly, felt quite daring as she pressed the Mannering button. There was a silence, then the clattering of slippers on the stairs.
    â€œHello. I’m not interested in buying—”
    The woman was smiling, but impersonally. Eve didn’t much like being taken for a cold caller.
    â€œMrs. Mannering? My name is Eve McNabb.”
    â€œIt’s Miss Mannering, and . . .” She blinked, and then the smile widened. “Eve McNabb. But I’ve just written to you.”
    â€œYes, I got the letter this morning,” said Eve. “Thank you. It was very kind.”
    Jean Mannering shook her head.
    â€œIt was a formal letter of condolence, and I did regret as I wrote it that it couldn’t be anything more. It is so very long since there’s been any contact. But do come in. Pardon me if I’m a bit nonplussed. I don’t really know what to call someone I last saw in a pram. Eve? Ms. McNabb? This way—I’m first floor. Come in and have some coffee. Be careful on the stairs. They’re rather steep.”
    They got to the first-floor flat and Eve blinked at the lightness of it: airy, sunny, with blinds instead of curtains and a general feeling of space and clean lines. Jean Mannering was well fleshed but also sensibly dressed—cashmere jumper, smart, olive green skirt—to make the best of her mature figure. Her face was round, cheerful and had probably been, when she was a young woman, decidedly attractive. Eve felt she was someone she could be comfortable with. She could smell the coffee, and it soon arrived with a plate of biscuits. So far so normal.
    â€œYou must be so busy,” said Jean, sitting down and gesturing toward the other armchair. “I remember from my own mother’s death—just the cleaning out and sorting was horrendous. And it was down south, so I was in foreign territory.”
    â€œAnd there are all the letters. I don’t like replying with a form letter, but I may have to.”
    â€œWell, don’t even bother with that for me. You will have got a lot because your mother was a public figure—and a very popular one. Your visit is the best possible reply I could have.”
    Eve took a biscuit and began to relax.
    â€œIt’s very nice to talk to one of my mother’s friends from long ago. I’ve found since arriving back in Crossley that there’s an awful lot that happened that I know nothing about.”
    â€œOf course there is! When do we start having memories, after all? When we’re about five, I suppose. And then the memories as like as not are of trivial things, trivial events, rather than important ones. My grandparents died in a car crash when I was seven, and I have no memory of that at all. But I have a sharp picture in my mind of a skirt I was bought at Marks and Spencer’s when I was six.”
    â€œLuckily there are lots of people in Crossley who can fill me in about my mother,” Eve went on, “especially on school matters. And there are neighbors, long-standing ones, who know things I don’t. You never taught at Blackfield Road, did you?”
    â€œMe?” said Jean, with an expression of horror. “I never taught anywhere. I just grew up in Crossley