Read Online Till We Meet Again by Lesley Pearse - Free Book Online Page A

Parks’s remarks made her feel nauseated. Pam was one in a million,’ he gushed. ‘She helped everyone, cared about everyone. My life is over now she has been taken from me.’
    Beth wondered what prompted him to go public. It would be understandable if the killer hadn’t been apprehended – anyone harbouring the guilty person might turn them in after an emotional statement from the victim’s family. Maybe what he said was all true, but real grief was a solitary, dignified thing. She wouldn’t mind betting that the marriage wasn’t a particularly happy one at all. Perhaps Roland Parks was even covering up something?
    But at least Mrs Wetherall wasn’t making flowery statements, not yet anyway. Was that because she had recognized Susan’s name as one her husband had mentioned at home? Or was she just naturally dignified?
    Beth wished she could cancel all afternoon appointments so she could go down to the library and check in their archives for newspaper reports on Annabel’s death. A death from meningitis would be reported on and Susan might have aired her views then if she felt her doctor was at fault.
    But Beth had to remind herself that it wasn’t her job to be some kind of private eye. She only had to liaise with the accused, get as much information as she could from them, produce witnesses, and then pass it all on to the barrister who would put his defence together for the day of the trial. Until Susan agreed she needed help, and started talking, Beth couldn’t really do anything.
    Susan was still saying nothing at all, both before her brief court appearance and after she’d heard she was to be remanded in custody and would be taken to Eastwood Park Prison outside Bristol. Beth didn’t try to make her open up by telling her she knew about Annabel, she thought she would save that for their interview at the prison on Monday. But she got the idea it wouldn’t have made any difference if she had. Susan seemed to have shut her mind down and didn’t care what happened to her.
    The weekend seemed endless to Beth. It rained almost solidly and for the first time in months she felt desperately lonely. She had always hated this time of year. Damp, foggy days, the light gone by five o’clock, soggy leaves on the pavements, and the shops all trying to create a feeling of false optimism with their tacky Christmas present ideas. But this time her melancholy seemed worse than usual. She found herself dwelling on the past, unable to settle to anything which would take her mind off it.
    The previous Christmas was one such memory which kept coming back to her. Every Christmas was torture to her; long before it came she dreaded all those cheery questions from her colleagues about what she would be doing. She used to lie and say she was going home to her family. Let them think she got the kind of Christmas portrayed in glossy magazines. A holly wreath on the door of the family home, an eight-foot tree, dozens of tastefully wrapped presents beneath. Carols and log fires, small children in party clothes, eyes wide with wonder. The dining table laid with candelabras, silver and crystal.
    In the far-off days when Beth felt compelled to go home for her mother’s benefit, Christmas was something to be endured, not enjoyed. Her mother a nervous wreck, her father waiting for her to make one slip up so he could humiliate her. Her brother and sister strained because they knew their partners didn’t want to be there, and their children like little stuffed dummies, not daring to say a word because they were afraid of their grandfather.
    Even after her mother was dead and her father in a home, Christmas had remained something to be dreaded. Of course she could have gone and stayed with either Robert or Serena and their families, they always invited her, but by then a family Christmas was synonymous with bad times. Mostly Beth booked into a country hotel, politely, but without enthusiasm, joined in the organized festivities, and escaped