Uphill All The Way

by Sue Moorcroft

  He sat himself down, and said nothing as he drank his tea at a temperature that would've scalded most people, his eyebrows twitching like corpulent caterpillars above his eyes.

  'Never had a chance.'

  Judith put down her own tea, untouched. 'I'm afraid not,' she said, quietly. 'It's difficult to understand.'

  'Only a babby.'

  'I know.'

  Tom's face worked, his complexion deepening to the brick red it seemed to be so much of the time. 'When Kieran was a babby I used to watch him in his cot. Make sure his little chest was moving. And Pam. She'd get up in the middle of the night sometimes, just to check.'

  Molly stirred. 'I used to, too, with Edward. I think all parents do it.'

  Tom let out a huge, wavering sigh. 'I've been thinking a lot, lately. How different things would have been if Pam hadn't died.'

  Judith's thoughts whipped immediately to Giorgio. 'I know what you mean. But you still have Kieran.'

  Tom stared into his empty cup. 'Do you think so?'

  An hour later, she was back at Lavender Row, having been firm with a protesting Molly that she would be perfectly OK alone. It had all been over so quickly, she scarcely felt as if there had been a funeral at all.

  But there she was on the sofa, a hot drink in her cold hands and her shoes kicked off. Recently, she'd painted the sitting room walls a dignified pigeon grey. She'd been going for understated but ended up with disappointed. It was such a dull result. Until Adam, who, like many photographers, had an arts background, took a pale dawn pink and a deep cream to the ornate white plaster ceiling roses and patterned coving. Just the lightest touch, the smallest highlights to a flower here, a teardrop there, and the whole room took on life. Stylish. Unusual.

  The fire was roaring as it fed on the wind in the chimney, when Adam rang the doorbell. 'I was passing, and saw your car.'

  She let him in, and prepared to set the kettle boiling again. He wore a midnight shirt that accentuated his spare frame, and gave a whistle as he followed her up the passage. 'Jude, you have legs! I suppose it's not funeral etiquette to tell you that they're nice?'

  'Probably not.' But it was quite nice.

  Over the second mug of tea, she dug the letter from Alexia Zammit from her bag, and showed it to him.

  His eyebrows shot up into his hair as he read it. 'This is extraordinary.' His eyes moved over and over the page. 'What do you intend to do?'

  She leant closer to reread the letter herself. 'It makes me feel like a thief.'

  'It's meant to, obviously. But you were given the crucifix, you didn't steal it, or even ask for it! Even if you suppose, just for a minute, that you're not entitled to it - how can you be sure that Alexia is? It could've been left to anybody: Giorgio's sister, or his parents. Or the local cat's home. No one's offered you sight of the Will.'

  Letting the page flutter from her fingers, she shrugged. 'So what do I do? Just grimly cling on to it and see what happens?'

  'Get a solicitor.' He hesitated, looking faintly embarrassed. 'If the fees are a problem, I think there's assistance available. Or I could... you know. If you were stuck.'

  She retrieved the letter, folding it neatly between her fingers, troubled and uncertain. 'Thanks, but it's not the money. I just hate the thought of setting a solicitor on Giorgio's family.'

  'And being proved to be in the wrong isn't your strong suit.'

  She acknowledged his grin. 'True. I probably am the one in the wrong, because I doubt that I'm in any Will that exists. The executors would've written.'

  'They might not have this address.'

  'So where did Alexia get it?'

  The diagonal frown lines appeared on Adam's forehead as he thought. 'The aunt? The only explanation for the whole thing is that she admitted she'd given you the crucifix, and coughed up your English address.'

  She shoved her now empty mug onto the table. 'But then she would've rung to warn me that trouble was on the way.'

  He yawned, and stretched. 'Your faith's refreshing.'

  She stared. 'Cass wouldn't drop me in it!'

  Briefly he took her hand. His unharmed hand, of course, the fingers strong and healthy as they curled around hers. 'Think about her husband being furious, and probably all the rest of the family, too. It would've been difficult for her to resist the pressure.'

  She sighed and let her eyes close. 'So I presume too much upon Cass's loyalty?'

  His voice came very close for a moment, his breath brushing against her cheek. 'I think, realistically, she might've had to choose - loyalty to you, or loyalty to her husband.'

  She sighed. And she'd choose loyalty to Saviour and the rest of the Zammits, obviously. Covering her eyes with her arm, she groaned. 'I bet the damned thing's valuable.'

  Adam confirmed the arrangements for the next photo shoot, and left the fireside reluctantly.

  'Friday, 8am,' Judith noted. 'And, of course, for Matthias and Davina's wedding on Saturday!'

  Adam stuffed his phone in his trouser pocket. 'I wish they hadn't asked me to do it. I'm no bloody wedding photographer.' He frowned.

  She threw him his jacket. 'A photographer's a photographer to them, I expect. Would you enjoy the wedding more if you were simply a guest?'

  He pulled a face. 'Probably not. You are staying for the reception, aren't you? Shelley's going to be there with her new bloke, I don't want to be all on my own, ain't-it-obvious-Adam-has-no-date.'

  She laughed. 'Get a date, then!'

  'You forget how long I was married. I've forgotten how.'

  She gave a disbelieving sniff. 'I bet your mates' wives are always inviting you to dinner parties! I bet they line up divorcées and you could get eight dates, if you wanted.'

  He lifted his eyebrow. 'I do get invited to dinner parties, do you think that's why? Shelley was always dragging me out to sit at someone's ugly dining suite and talk to people I didn't know, and I took it as a perk of the separation that I could give those nightmare evenings a miss. Anyway, a date would expect phone calls, after.'

  'Dire,' she agreed gravely, watching him push his feet into shiny black shoes. The laces were elasticised, and didn't need tying. 'How do you know that I won't?'

  His eyes gleamed with laughter as he straightened. 'But that's what I like about you, Jude, you never expect me to phone unless I've got something to say. Neither do you dredge things up from a week last Thursday and leave me to guess what's wrong. You don't create tenuous cases to make things my fault, you don't tell me what to wear, you don't put on stupid heels and then bitch because your feet hurt, or scream over a broken fingernail or sulk because your hair's only 99% perfect.' He grinned. 'In fact, you're not like a woman at all!'

  It took her several moments to find her voice. 'Is that meant to be a compliment?'

  His grin faded. 'Um... it was meant to suggest that you're pleasant, easy company. But it came out a bit...'

  'As if I'm some ancient bloke in drag?'

  This time his smile blazed right from his eyes. 'Never a bloke. My compliments might be skewed, but my sight is excellent.' He smoothed his shirt collar neatly beneath his jacket, thoughtfully. 'I've annoyed you, haven't I?'

  Then he swung back, an expression of alarm flashing across his face. 'Just don't say you won't come to the wedding!'

  As Judith showered, she reminded herself that frowns and pouts would only add unwelcome lines to those she owned already, but, nevertheless, kept finding she was frowning and pouting, Adam's words circling annoyingly in her mind.

  Dressed in new black trousers and a cream jumper, she awarded herself a soothing read to take her mind off things before picking Molly up.

  It was the thump of her book sliding off the sofa forty minutes later that woke her, crick-necked and left foot burning with pins-and-needles. Easing her head upright and the foot painfully into motion, she glared at the baroque silver clock on the mantelpiece, a rare extravagance from a jeweller in Valletta. 'Blast!'

  She definitely hadn't intended to sleep. Naps se
emed so middle-aged. Pins-and-needles so unwomanly.

  Maybe because she wasn't a woman at all...

  Oh, for goodness' sake! Madness to take any notice of Adam's teasing. Didn't she know how he loved to wind her up?

  What was more important was that she and Molly had arranged to take their mother out. Wilma thought the sky would fall in if she weren't home by nine o'clock, and would therefore be in a stew if they hadn't collected her from The Cottage by seven.

  Damn.

  Because Judith hadn't yet made the phone call.

  But she should be leaving now.

  Double damn.

  Decisively, she reached for the phone. The call would only take two minutes and she wanted it over. She dialled.

  Click. Click. Silence. Then the single ringing tone, sounding far away. But the voice that answered unnerved her with its clarity. 'Hallo?'

  She caught her breath at the sudden realisation that she was breaching the citadel of Giorgio's till-now-unseen family, and had to concentrate to make her voice work. 'May I speak to Alexia?'

  The voice became guarded. 'I am Alexia.'

  'This is Judith McAllister.'

  A pause. 'Yes?'

  'I'd like to speak to you about your father's crucifix.'

  Alexia's calm English was excellent, no doubt she practised it every day in her job in the pharmacy. 'You have it,' she said, with calm satisfaction. 'Please send it to me. My address is on my letter.' And the line went dead.

  Swearing, Judith redialled, speaking the instant Alexia answered. 'I don't know whether I can do that. I need information.'

  The voice that came across the miles was controlled and dispassionate. 'Please send back my father's cross. Thank you.'

  Gritting her teeth and thinking of Giorgio, Judith dialled a third time. She made her tone gentle and reasonable. 'It was given to me by a member of the family, I accepted it in good faith. I - '

  For the third time, the dialling tone cut her off disdainfully.

  'Bugger you,' she snapped, then fetched her cocoon of a coat - this English winter was killing her - and slammed out to the car.

  Molly always expected to be picked up, she complained to herself, shoving the grape-coloured car into first gear, checking over her shoulder for traffic and peeling out. Molly was such a girl.

  She never drove if she could get someone else to, never attempted to move furniture or take something apart to see if she could mend it. Molly cooked casseroles. She'd made all the floral curtains for her new Frankie-less house, a modern, detached property that had been squeezed into a plot of four houses a few streets from Lavender Row. The plot was off Fairbank Street and named Fairbank Close. Bloody close, Judith thought as she whipped into Molly's meagre, shared drive.

  Sliding into the car, Molly looked pointedly at her watch.

  Equally pointedly, Judith made no apology for tardiness.

  In five minutes they were at The Cottage, a glaringly inappropriate name for a three-storey stone town house of some magnitude, obviously once a terribly well-to-do establishment. Smaller properties behind had been demolished to make way for a large, single-storey extension where many of the residents were domiciled, and the car park where Judith zipped into a space and yanked on the handbrake.

  Wilma was waiting on one of the rose pink vinyl chairs beside the counter and pigeonholes covered in chipped, off-white Formica that was the nurses' station. 'You're late,' she observed politely, accepting simultaneous kisses, left cheek Molly, right Judith, and moving a boiled sweet around her mouth.

  'Nothing to speak of,' breezed Judith. 'I'll get your chair.'

  Wilma pulled her hairy maroon coat more tightly around her. 'So we're still going?'

  'It's only seven minutes past, Mum, we can easily get you back for nine.'

  Wilma pulled herself up onto her walking frame with a little grunt at the effort. 'I don't want to be any trouble.'

  'You won't be. We're going to drive you to a new café by the embankment where you can see the river.' Judith hooked the wheelchair with one hand and with the other made an entry in the appropriate book to allow for the taking out of a resident, signing it, J McAwigglewiggle. She didn't feel like waiting for Molly to sign it clearly M R O'Malley, with the capitals, the apostrophe, a loop on the Y, a curly flourish below, and a careful full stop at the end.

  Once she'd gained her balance, Wilma hotched her way down the hall that was carpeted in a funny shade of honey, pushing the walking frame out in front of her and shuffling to catch up to it, her handbag swinging from a hook at the front. 'Isn't it too dark to see the river?'

  'They have lights shining on it. It's pretty.'

  Wilma chuckled creakily and rattled her sweet against her dentures. 'Pretty wet! Is it raining?'

  'No, not at the moment.' Molly's voice was made for reassurance. She took up station beside Wilma, ready to catch her arm if she wobbled. This was the way they usually divided the responsibilities: driving and wheelchair, Judith, giving an arm and being soothing, Molly.

  'Is it going to?' Wilma persisted.

  Judith wheeled the folded chair. 'Perhaps later.'

  Her mother halted, and Judith almost ran her over. Wilma sucked vigorously. 'Do we want to go, if it's raining?'

  'The car's right outside, I'll put your chair in the boot while you hang on here with Molly, then I'll open the car door. You won't feel more than two drops, even if it pours.'

  Wilma didn't budge. 'Only I've just had my hair set. It was a new girl came round, and she's done it lovely, hasn't she?'

  'Lovely.' Judith joined Molly in chorus, and successfully smothered a sigh. Making her mother happy was getting increasingly difficult. Wilma was losing her confidence about being taken out of The Cottage, but didn't always want to be left in it. She worried if her daughters phoned instead of visiting, but she admitted that their visits tired her.

  'Do they do scones, at this new place of yours?'

  'Yes!' Judith paused for effect. 'With oodles of jam.'

  'One oodle will be enough, dear.' Spurred on by the promise of jam, Wilma set off again. Then, hovering in the doorway with Molly, she observed Judith's struggles to fit the wheelchair in her boot. 'Pity you didn't bring Adam, he's good at lifting the chair.'

  And better at charming Wilma, Judith thought, exchanging a look with Molly. Molly, having long ago conquered any antipathy towards Adam, often teased him that Wilma had a crush on him. Wilma never seemed as tiring when Adam was there to make her laugh, and never checked her watch and wondered if she'd be back in time for cocoa.

  'There,' she said, when she was settled. 'Now, Judith, how's Kieran? He hasn't been to see me for weeks.'

  Molly rubbed her forehead as Judith pulled up outside the house at Fairbank Close. 'Gosh, Mum is exhausting these days! Not her fault, of course, bless her. Coming in for a cuppa?'

  Although she'd planned to go straight home for a couple of hours with the latest Harlan Coben thriller, Judith found herself accepting the invitation. Home meant not only the seat-edge thrills of Harlan Coben, but a lot of time to think. About Alexia, the crucifix, and who it actually belonged to. About today's bijou funeral for a bijou life. About Kieran, his face floating before her eyes, empty, shattered.

  She followed Molly into the dead neat, dead plain home decorated in beige and peach. She could certainly do with a cosy sisterly chat, she thought. If only she had a cosy sister rather than one who was convinced of her duty to deliver opinions on Judith whenever possible. They made for the kitchen – beige units, peach walls – Molly fussing over her long, wool coat as she slid it on a hanger and hung it in the cloaks cupboard.

  Judith tossed the emerald cocoon over the newel post. 'Do you think I'm blokish, Moll?'

  'Blokish?' Pausing in the act of washing her hands, Molly's eyes grew round. 'What, butch do you mean?'

  Judith considered as she hopped up onto a stool. 'Not butch, exactly. But... unfeminine?'

  Molly shrugged. 'Depends which definition of unfeminine.'r />
  Judith felt her eyebrows fly up in horror that Molly hadn't shrieked in protest at 'unfeminine' and 'Judith' arising in the same sentence. 'Using any definition!'

  Molly whipped a broderie anglaise apron around her waist and fastened it in a bow. 'You're very independent, of course, and you're often - almost always - natural.'

  Judith's voice sharpened. 'What do you mean, 'natural'?'

  'Without make-up or artifice. Also, perhaps because you're quite tall, you stride everywhere.'

  'I have a naturally long step.'

  'You hardly ever wear heels.'

  'They'd make me taller!'

  'You overtake a lot when you're driving.'

  'And overtaking makes me blokish?'

  Molly dropped two teabags into a pretty china teapot, white-and-peach. 'I never said blokish! But it is manly to overtake, isn't it? I always queue behind any traffic, but men rush by, even when they can't really see what's tearing up to meet them.'

  Judith sighed. If it was 'manly' to overtake, this conversation was never going to evolve as she'd like. 'I don't think I meant the way I drive or walk. Go back to independent.'

  'Overly independent,' said Molly, thoughtfully, as the kettle made its first grumbles and hisses. 'Fiercely independent. Non-clinging. Clear. Not requiring advice. Some people call it being bloody-minded.'

  'But it's good, isn't it, not to cling?' Judith ignored the bloody-minded bit.

  Her sister shrugged shoulders that had grown plumper since she'd left Frankie although Frankie, conversely, looked thinner every time Judith saw him in town, undoubtedly because he had no one to cook him dinners and puddings each evening.

  'Depends who you are and what you want. When I left Frankie there was no one I'd rather have had in my corner. You were encouraging and supportive, you have a built in scanner to detect lies and nonsense, and you're overawed by no one and nothing.' Molly used a small pair of scissors to slit open a packet of shortbread, the expensive, thick and delicious kind, and began to set it out on the plate like the hands of a clock.