Dead on Cue

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Nay, lass, we’re all entitled to make up our own dreams,’ Woodend admitted. ‘But if you’re goin’ to study to be a nurse, does it have to be in London? Or could it be in Lancaster or Manchester, where me an’ your mam get a chance to see you now an’ again?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind studying in Manchester.’

  ‘An’ would you mind comin’ home – I mean, back to Whitebridge – while we make the arrangements?’

  Annie smiled. ‘No, I wouldn’t mind that, either.’

  She stood up, and Woodend put his arm round her shoulder. Together, father and daughter began to walk down the hill.

  ‘I told you not to come, and you came anyway,’ Annie said, ‘but if you were going to do that, why didn’t you do it sooner?’

  ‘I . . . er . . .’ Woodend said uncomfortably.

  ‘You were up to your neck in a case?’ Annie suggested.

  ‘It wasn’t easy to get away right then,’ Woodend said in his own defence. ‘Reputations were at stake. Perhaps lives as well.’

  ‘I’ve never known you be on a case it was easy to get away from,’ his daughter told him.

  Woodend came to a halt and looked his daughter in the eyes. ‘I’d die for you, Annie,’ he said. ‘I’d give up my life for you without a second’s thought.’

  Annie met his gaze with her own. ‘I know you would, Dad,’ she said, perhaps a little sadly. ‘But give up on a murder investigation right in the middle of it? Well, that’s quite a different matter altogether.’