Read Online The Son-In-Law by Charity Norman - Free Book Online Page B

wretchedly.
    ‘What the hell did you do that for?’
    It had looked so like Zoe, silhouetted against the Minster’s windows; as though he’d met a wraith in the icy dusk. After her death, his shock and grief were bound up with arrest and interview and criminal charges. He’d been forbidden to contact his children or anyone connected to the family—that was a condition of his bail. Turning up at Zoe’s funeral had been impossible, though he later discovered that she’d been cremated and her ashes scattered into Lake Windermere, a place she’d always loved. He had pleaded guilty to killing her, but a part of him didn’t believe that she was dead at all.
    Even as he spoke her name, he’d realised his mistake. Scarlet was off, fast as a fox, darting down the alleyways of the old city with her violin case swinging. He was left sitting stunned on the bench.
    Idiot, he had told himself furiously. You’ve blown it.
    All he’d wanted was to see his girl. Well, now he had seen her and terrified the poor child into the bargain.
    Akash was still ranting as they pulled in behind an elderly blue Fiesta. The pregnant-with-twins sister came to the door of her flat and handed over a set of keys. After a lot of fumbling with a rusty catch, Joseph lifted the car’s bonnet.
    His friend watched proceedings with a sardonic smile. ‘You don’t know one end from the other, do you Scott?’
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘Stand aside,’ Akash ordered, pulling a small torch from his pocket. Joseph watched as his former cellmate revved the engine and fiddled with spark plugs, finally slamming the bonnet shut. ‘We can take it out for a spin, if you like. But it’s exactly what it looks like—bloody old and battle-scarred, like you. But honest, like me.’
    Joseph had already been to the bank. Within ten minutes he was the owner of a battle-scarred, but honest, blue Fiesta.
    ‘So what next?’ Akash asked later, as they celebrated in the Prince Albert.
    ‘You mean assuming they don’t send me back inside for breaching my licence?’
    ‘Yeah. Assuming that.’
    Joseph downed half his pint. ‘I appreciate your sofa, I really do, but it’s time I got on my own two feet. I’ll be off first thing tomorrow.’
    ‘Oh yeah?’ Akash looked doubtful. ‘Off where? To see your fairy godmother?’
    ‘You could say that.’
    •
    To a man who’d spent three years locked in a small cell, the North Yorkshire Moors felt surreally limitless. They stretched into hazy oblivion; bleak undulations, brooding in crystalline winter light. There were no walls here on the tops; no fences, no boundaries at all except the thin ribbon of the road. Sheep grazed freely, and once, Joseph was forced to stop and wait for an ambling pair to cross. On the seat behind him lay a kitbag with enough clothes to see him through the winter.
    Several miles north of Helmsley a turn-off led into a steep valley, whose shadowed verges glittered under a layer of frost. The road twisted, slick with mud, and narrowed until it seemed no more than a farm track. Eventually it forded a beck before turning uphill again. Joseph negotiated a flock of hens as he turned through an open gate and into a farmyard. A sign hung lopsidedly from the bare branches of a tree: Brandsmoor Camping and Caravans.
    As he climbed out, a collie arrived growling by his knee. She had opaque eyes, and walked with the stiff care of the arthritic. Joseph reached to let her sniff his hand. ‘Jess, Jessy,’ he said quietly, and her tail waved its white-flag tip.
    The house had stood for two hundred years, weathered and stoic, mellow sandstone worn smooth at the corners. The roof was in trouble, the ridgepole hunchbacked and missing several slates. An iron boot scraper cluttered the front doorstep alongside a pair of tartan slippers, and herbs slept through the winter in pots and watering-cans. Joseph was caressing the collie’s ears when the door opened, and someone spoke.
    ‘Who is it, Jess?’
    She was old;