The Brimstone Wedding

by Barbara Vine

  Not tell Richard, not tell Marianne. God forbid. Not give them to Richard.

  They were left to me with a purpose. Or at least for a reason. Because it was my father who made it happen, wasn't it? The man who said to them, ‘Just the two of you, was it?' was my dad. It was my dad who advised them, put the idea into their heads, put them off telling the police, showed them a picture of his children, of his daughter with the unusual name. And if he made things happen to them, so they made things happen to him. It was reciprocal fate (I haven't pored over my Chambers Dictionary for nothing). If he hadn't come along just then things would have been quite different. He'd have got home early as he'd promised and Mum wouldn't have chucked him out and he'd never have married Kath but have stayed with us and I'd have been with him when he died. Maybe. And maybe not.

  For I don't believe in fate. I don't believe in destiny or patterns in life but in chance and that what happens is what you do yourself. I shall pull out the tapes, unravel them and burn them. Somehow it seems my right.

  This evening I was going to give Richard the clothes Stella left in this house, but I've changed my mind. He won't want them and I do. It's spitting with rain and when we go out I'm going to wear Stella's silvery coat. It's very pretty, it's come back into fashion.

  The clothes of the dead wear as well as any others. Why didn't I see that long ago?