Read Online Worst Fears by Fay Weldon - Free Book Online

she’d stopped running round and screaming, I had to drive her back. She wouldn’t have been fit to drive anyway. She clung to the doorhandle; she kept saying it was her house by rights, I had to drag her away. She complained no one was being nice to her. I said you were on your way, in all decency she had to stay away, and I offered her £200 to make sure she did. I thought that was about the right sum. Not too little, not too much. A tip.”
    “You what?”
    “Money’s nothing,” said Vilna. “I felt for you. Women like Jenny Linden can be dangerous. At home where people are sensible they are found dead in a ditch; knifed. Here you do not use knives, you use money. My mother and I follow the customs of the country. It is advisable. Do you want to see my new crown?” she asked. She opened her mouth and Alexandra looked inside.
    “Very nice,” she said, and went to visit Jenny Linden.

7
    J ENNY LINDEN’S HOUSE WAS in the old part of town: a row of cottages facing a wide but secluded street, on the other side of it being the high brick wall of Eddon Gurney prison, built 1718, and now Grade One Listed as a building of prime architectural and heritage interest. The prison had been recently taken out of service: the level of absenteeism and suicide amongst its staff had finally impinged upon the authorities: no amount of re-organisation or counselling, it seemed, could ameliorate the terror and fear that oozed out of the old stone walls. But the city council had begun the work of converting the building into a Penitentiary Theme Park, the first of its kind in the land.
    No. 42 sat snugly amongst its similar neighbours: two-storey cottages with thick walls, built to house the prison warders. A plaster front, a porched front door, a large square window to the right, a kitchen out the back, two bedrooms, and a bathroom extension above the kitchen. Out the back door was a little square garden. Once such a dwelling would have housed a man, a wife, an aunt or so and some children. Now it served very well as a love nest for one. Cosy.
    There was a parking space outside, but Alexandra left her car a little way down the road. She looked through Jenny Linden’s window but saw no one inside. A rather handsome orange cat sat on the inside sill, next to a well-cared-for pot plant, and stared bleakly at her. Alexandra could see beyond cat and plant into a room which was vaguely arty: orange throws over ethnic wicker chairs, a large table on which were the bits and pieces of work in progress—bits of card, pieces of fabric—an easel; a rug on a polished floor; theatre posters on the walls; photographs everywhere. She could not make out the detail. A zodiac lamp; a deep sofa on which a couple could copulate, just about.
    Alexandra rang the front door bell. No one came. She looked up and down the road. No one. Children were at school, adults at work. These were aspiring little houses; not for those on welfare. Alexandra slipped a credit card between lock and hasp and pushed. It was how she opened the door of her London flat, after the show, after the late-night supper, if she had forgotten her key. Jenny Linden’s door opened. Such a method of entry would never have worked at Vilna’s house. Alexandra went inside. The house smelt of lavender toilet water and scented soap, of paint and glue. There was a sense of desperation in the air, of serenity suddenly shattered: a coat which should have been on a peg fallen on the floor and not picked up; in the small kitchen a bag of shopping left on the floor and still unpacked. Frozen food losing its hardness, going soggy: the opposite of a dead body, which started soggy and went hard. The silence felt temporary, as if recently rent by tears and wails which would at any moment start again.
    Alexandra went to the front window, pulled the curtains; switched on the lamp. On the table, open, was a diary. There were few entries: crosses here and there, and question marks. Today’s entry.