This Much is True

by Jane Sanderson

Genres: General Fiction; Women's Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

The one thing keeping her family together is the lie that could tear them apart...

Perfect for fans of Kathryn Hughes' The Letter and Amanda Prowse's My Husband's Wife - a twisty, gripping novel about the shocking secret at the centre of a family, and a mother desperate to keep it hidden.

After decades in a deeply unhappy marriage, Annie Doyle can barely bring herself to care that her husband Vince is finally about to die.

But as the family gathers to see out his final days, Vince utters a single word that will change everyone's lives forever:

'Martha.'

Who is Martha? And why is Annie so quick to dismiss the mention of her name?

As Annie's long-held secrets start to emerge, the lives of everyone she holds dear will be changed forever...

Read by Patricia Gallimore

Release date: April 20, 2017

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 400

Sample

1

Every Wednesday morning, Annie Doyle walked her dog, Finn. She’d done this now for the best part of two months, since the day Josie and Sandra – well, just Josie really – asked her to join them. They were at the reservoir car park and they all happened to be loading their dogs into the cars at the same time, and although Annie had kept her eyes down, Josie had said a bright hello and made an almighty fuss of Finn, a certain route to Annie’s heart. Even so, she’d been taken aback by the offer of joining them the next week, because really, she hardly ever came here and the last thing she was looking for was friendship. But Josie had been so chatty, so sunny, that although Annie was about to shake her head no, she found herself nodding yes instead.

So it began, and now, on Sunday nights when she considered the week ahead, she felt immediately brighter about all her dull and dutiful chores: visits to Vince, appointments with his doctor, errands for Michael – nothing, in truth, that she actually chose to do, only things that had to be done. No, her Wednesday walks meant the world. Michael mocked her for it, but she didn’t care. She and Finn had a new shape to their week and the dog loved it as much as she did: more, probably.

Other days, Finn didn’t get much of a walk. Oh, she might put him in the car on her visits to Vince, because she drove past the reservoir then, and it was no trouble to stand a while and let him rootle through the undergrowth at the water’s edge. But usually she just took him five minutes down the street on his lead to the rec – or rather he took her, dragging her along while he lunged ahead – to sniff the air and do his business and lope around, getting in the way of joggers and boys on BMX bikes. On Wednesdays, though, Finn woke up knowing in his bones that today was the day, and from moment to moment as Annie pottered on, he kept her in his sights. That wasn’t difficult, mind, because by anyone’s standards the house was small – six good strides from the bottom of the stairs and you were already at the kitchen sink – so he made a nuisance of himself, trailing behind her from kettle to toaster to hob to washing machine to front porch and back again, as if he was certain that without his vigilance she’d just nip off out without him.

Today, as always, Annie was trying her level best to leave as silently as possible. Michael was still upstairs, and he hated to be disturbed. All his life he’d been a light and fractious sleeper: even as a baby he could never surrender completely to a good night’s rest. So Annie crept cautiously round the kitchen in her socks, ran the tap as softly as she could, rinsed her cereal bowl as if it were Lalique, because the ordinary sounds of domestic plumbing had the power to ruin his day.

At the sink she stared through the kitchen window and saw the sky was a solid gunmetal grey. It might be an idea, she thought, to warm up the Nissan, so she knotted the belt on her cardie and made for the front door. Finn plodded along too.

‘I’m only going to warm the car up,’ she whispered, but he fixed a determined, purposeful gaze on the front garden through the double-glazed porch glass and his tail thudded rhythmically against the telephone table, making it wobble on its four thin legs.

‘Shush,’ Annie said, and she slipped out, then shut the door on him and scooted down the garden path in her rubber-soled slippers, clutching the car keys. Mournfully the dog watched her go.

She climbed stiffly into the car and put the key into the ignition. Her face wore a small frown of anxious concentration, as if the task in hand – inserting the key, turning it – was a delicate, uncertain operation. Somehow she always expected the battery to be flat, but the engine coughed obediently into life so she pushed the heater switch to high and the fan to full before easing herself out of the car again. Then she left the little Nissan rumbling in a cloud of fumes, and darted back to the house. When she opened the door again, Finn took a few clumsy steps backwards then rushed at her with reckless joy, as if she’d been away for a month. He was a big, heavy-set golden retriever and she was only five foot three so they were mismatched, though they couldn’t have loved each other more. She clucked at him and scrubbed at his ears and he closed his eyes and smiled. Before Finn, she hadn’t known a dog could smile, but he did, and often: the soft black edges of his mouth curving up at the corners when he looked at her, or when she petted him, or when his biscuits rattled into his bowl.

‘Now then,’ she said, batting him away.

He gazed at her with mute devotion and followed her once again to the small kitchen, where she washed her hands and dried them on an old tea towel, which showed a faded parade of beach huts and a recipe for Cornish pasties. Andrew had given it to her years ago and it’d been so long among her kitchen possessions that she didn’t always even think of him when she used it. This morning, though, she had a sudden, sharp image of him solemnly handing it over, still in its candy-striped paper bag, at the end of a wet few days in Padstow. He was such a generous boy, she thought now; so steadfast in his love for her. From the youngest age he would save up his pennies to buy presents for Annie at Christmas and on birthdays, and they were always his own ideas. And always, too, there would be that moment of awkwardness when Andrew proffered his little gift and Michael’s face took on a closed and sullen look; the look that he sometimes still had, even though he was a grown man of fifty. Annie knew she hadn’t always thanked Andrew as fulsomely as she should have done, trying to appease Michael, trying to keep the peace. She sighed, feeling sad all over again at these long-ago events, then she tutted at her own foolishness, snapped out the tea towel and draped it over the chrome rail of the oven door to dry.

Annie left the kitchen still followed by the dog. There was an old-fashioned five-prong coat-stand in the hall: two for her, three for Michael. He had a grey wool coat, a lightweight green anorak and a Day-Glo orange cycling jacket and she knew whether or not he was in by whether one of these garments was missing from the stand. He never left without a coat, and then, on his return, he never left a coat anywhere other than its correct place. Now, as always in the mornings, all the coats were here because the other thing Michael never did was spend the night elsewhere, being the sort of man who valued home comforts above the unpredictability of the outside world. He was a little like Annie in this respect, although even she sometimes wondered why a man his age had nowhere more interesting to be than his own single bed. Still though, she appreciated his presence in the house overnight, because it was just the two of them. Three, if you counted Finn, which she did.

She unhooked her navy fleece from the coat-stand and put it on, then patted the pocket to be sure the whistle was there. Behind her the dog made guttural noises of glee and bounced his big yellow front paws on the hall floor so that his claws rattled on the tiles. Michael said Finn was too large for a house this size and Annie supposed he was right; it was true that when she got him she hadn’t known how big that sweet golden puppy would grow. Mind you, she sometimes thought – and she thought it again now – that she’d sooner get shut of Michael than Finn. She smiled and reached for the broad flat plane of the dog’s forehead, enjoying for a moment the firm, silken warmth. Then she turned back to the coat-stand for his lead, and found it gone.

‘Where’s your lead?’ she asked the dog. Finn trotted jauntily to the door, ready to leave.

It was always on the coat-stand, always: only, this morning it wasn’t. Annie stood for a moment, looking at the space where the lead should have been. Finn had his nose in the crack of the door, ready for off.

‘We’re going nowhere till we find it,’ Annie said.

She made for the kitchen again and after a second’s hesitation the dog galumphed after her, barging ahead, so that a hot wave of annoyance washed over her, though it was prompted as much by the missing lead as by Finn’s bad manners. Upstairs she could hear Michael walking into the bathroom, and this annoyed her too, because she’d meant to be on her way by the time he appeared. She stared crossly at the worktops. Tea caddy. Kettle. Toaster. Michael’s fruit bowl and, next to it, Michael’s banana stand, which she noted was empty. There was no sign of the lead and in fact she would have been amazed to find it here, where it didn’t belong.

Back they went to the coat-stand, and down came Michael, descending the stairs straight-backed as if he had an invisible tray of china teacups on his head. His black hair was wavy and a little too long, just as it had been since he was sixteen. Here and there it was greying. He had grown it long when he decided to apply to music college and ever since then it’d been in his eyes. It was thinning now and looked to Annie as though it could do with a brush, or a wash, or a short back and sides. She smiled.

‘Hello, Mother,’ he said, in the way he had of sounding disappointed to see her. ‘Dog Day again? How it does come around.’

‘Hello, love, have you seen Finn’s lead?’

He stopped on the bottom step and looked at her with his head cocked. ‘Why? Did you hang it in the bathroom?’ he asked, facetiously. Annie and Finn, side by side, were both looking at him but Michael looked only at his mother. He never included Finn in a conversation, although for his part Finn maintained a generous interest in Michael, as if at the smallest signal he would be happy to love him, in spite of past slights.

‘No,’ Annie said. ‘I just thought—’

Michael continued on his way, stepping onto the hall floor and rounding the newel post in a tight, fluid movement.

‘Well you thought wrong,’ he said. ‘Damned dog’s nothing but trouble.’

Oh, thought Annie, that isn’t nice. But she let it pass.



The lead wasn’t in the car either so as Annie pulled away from the kerb she was discombobulated: too preoccupied by its loss to notice the white van directly behind her that had to slam to a halt to avoid a collision. Only at the T-junction, when she looked left and right and then glanced in the rear-view mirror, did she see the angry driver behind her, his face contorted with contempt, his right hand making a gesture Annie had never fully understood but which she knew to be obscene. She looked away at once and made a careful right turn into Park Road and then again into the main road, keeping her eyes fixed ahead and praying that the white van would turn left towards Sheffield, not right towards Barnsley. She drove steadily, perfectly, regally, but her hands, clamped on the steering wheel, were white at the knuckles. She wasn’t prone to road rage herself. If anything, the mistakes of other drivers only served to make her feel kinder towards them, so to have her actions provoke this sort of instant apoplectic loathing made her feel truly wronged. She would have thought the benign presence of Finn in the boot and her own curly white hair, which puffed up above the top of the seat like a meringue, would be enough to grant her a little kindness, not to mention respect. She didn’t even know what she’d done wrong.

At the crossroads she was aware at the periphery of her vision that the van had slid alongside her. Good, she thought; he’s turning off left. But he’d opened his window and she heard furious, shocking expletives raining down on her like shrapnel. She kept her eyes rigidly on the road ahead, and when the lights turned to green she managed to pull away with a smooth, textbook action as if to demonstrate once and for all what a fine driver she was, and how harshly she was being judged.

‘Has he gone?’ she asked Finn. The dog was silent in the boot, although he sat up at her voice. Annie risked a swift glance up and across and saw in the mirror the bonnet of the white van still just a hair’s breadth away from the Nissan’s rear bumper. Her heart hammered in her chest and in a panic she braked when she’d intended to accelerate. Behind her the van driver slammed a hand on the horn and held it there. Annie wailed. She wished Finn was in the passenger seat and not in the boot, but then thought it was a comfort to have his bulk placed between her and the furious man, whom she now assumed had had no intention of turning left and had only wanted to shout at her. She felt bewilderment as well as fear. His anger was inexplicable to her; was he actually chasing her? It seemed unlikely that his destination was the very same as her own.

There were no more shops now between here and the reservoir where she was meeting the others: nowhere safe for her to run inside and seek sanctuary. She considered the primary school, but there were secure keypads on the doors these days, to keep out paedophiles and gunmen. She pictured herself arriving at the reservoir – first, as always – and having to face her tormentor alone. She felt an urgent need for the lavatory and underneath her fleece her blouse was damp with perspiration. Then she thought of Sandra, whose cottage she’d seen but never visited, and which lay – with a small detour – between Annie and the car park, so she made a snap decision to turn right, up Wheatcommon Lane. She did this without indicating, spinning the steering wheel like a getaway driver, and the van turned too, so she pressed on up the lane the few hundred yards to Sandra’s house, and tilted the rear-view mirror off at an angle so there was no danger of inadvertently seeing the whites of the angry man’s eyes.



When Annie’s little hatchback hurtled up the driveway, Sandra Moloney’s first impulse was to laugh, but this was immediately quelled by the sight of a dirty Ford transit in dogged pursuit. Sandra, dishevelled and not yet quite dressed, was at the kitchen window, leaning against the sink, chewing a cold crust from a piece of toast. Ordinarily Sandra didn’t dash anywhere for anyone, but this morning she made an exception; Annie’s precipitous arrival was unprecedented and a short, beefy man in baggy jeans and a Motörhead T-shirt was unloading himself from the van in a menacing fashion. Without shoes or socks, the crust dangling from her mouth like a damp cigarette, Sandra bolted for the door and rounded the corner onto the drive, where she arrived at Annie’s car only shortly after the bullet-headed brute. His hands were splayed on his knees as he bent close enough to Annie’s window to steam up the glass. Annie, round-eyed, had locked herself in and now threw Sandra a look of fathomless despair.

The man hadn’t seen Sandra; his focus was only on Annie. ‘Stupid bitch,’ he shouted through the glass, loudly enough that mild-mannered Finn gave a sharp bark of retaliation.

‘Stupid old bag, you’re a fuckin’ liability.’

He banged on the window with his fist one, two, three times and Annie started to cry, her face in her hands. Sandra, temporarily ossified by shock, sprang into sudden life. She hurled herself at him, thudding into his stocky frame and shoving him backwards and sideways, away from the car. She was taller than he was, and just as solidly built, and he staggered with the force of her attack, then lurched back towards her with a roar, a bovine bellow. Sandra planted herself between him and the car, as fixed and sturdy as an oak tree. Behind the glass Annie watched in mortal fear and Finn, fired up by the turn of events, barked and bounced so that the Nissan rocked from side to side.

This was the scene that greeted Josie Jones when she arrived at the end of Sandra’s driveway, holding Betty on her plaited leather lead. Betty, a serene and graceful collie, stepped a little backwards and a little left, so that she stood behind her owner, in a position from which nothing could be asked of her.

‘Sandra!’ Josie shouted. ‘What are you doing?’

Sandra shot her a savage look. She had one hand on the car and another on the man’s chest, clutching a twist of T-shirt and somehow keeping him at arm’s length from his quarry. He was a short, fat, beast of a man, whose irrational anger threatened to consume him. His face was dark damson purple and the veins in his neck stood out like electric cables. At his left temple, another smaller vein pulsed visibly with hot blood. He flailed at Sandra, who in this moment was magnificently invincible.

‘Fuckin’ lunatic!’ he shouted.

‘Sandra!’

This was Josie again, marching towards danger, dragging a recalcitrant Betty on four unyielding legs. The little dog left channels in the gravel where she passed. Then the passenger door of the car flew open and Annie clambered out, ungainly in her haste, shaking with shock, her ashen face the very image of despair; Josie and Betty stared and inside the car Finn agitated noisily for release, his gentle brow puckered with bewilderment.

Annie, who now had the car and Sandra between herself and danger, mustered a deep, shuddering breath and shouted, ‘Please stop!’ Miraculously this did the trick. The man stopped his flailing and Sandra dropped her arms by her sides and stood panting, keeping her unblinking gaze on his face. The fire was leaving him; he glanced left and right, as if uncertain where he was, or why. His T-shirt had ridden up to expose a swathe of white belly.

‘What’s going on?’ Josie asked, looking from Annie to Sandra and back again.

‘He followed me,’ Annie said, in a sort of injured wail. ‘All the way from Beech Street.’

‘You cut me up,’ the man said. ‘You never even bloody looked.’

Sandra said, ‘Oh just eff off, you big buggering bully.’

Josie laughed, she couldn’t help herself, and Annie, desperate now to broker peace, said, ‘Whatever it was I did, I apologise.’

‘No you don’t,’ Sandra said. ‘If anyone should be sorry it’s him.’

‘You’re all fuckin’ mental,’ said the man. He rubbed his ear then moved his head left then right and the bones in his neck clicked. ‘You,’ he said, pointing at Sandra, ‘should be fuckin’ locked up and you’ – pointing now at Annie – ‘shouldn’t be fuckin’ drivin’.’

‘And you,’ said Josie, narrowing her striking green eyes, ‘should be ashamed of yourself, terrorising this lady.’ She pulled Betty along behind her and walked right up to him, staring into his face as if committing every detail to memory. ‘I don’t like the look of you,’ she said, ‘and I never forget a face.’ For a moment the man looked likely to resume hostilities, opening his mouth and drawing a single long breath as if there were more insults to hurl. But then he closed it again and, like a wounded grizzly bear, lumbered unsteadily to his van where the driver’s side door still hung open. He hoisted himself up, shut himself in, started the engine and reversed away down the drive, scattering stones and dust and flicking one last rigid middle finger at them as he went. Sandra whooped and shouted, ‘Girl power!’ and Josie grinned, folding her arms and watching the van’s retreat. Annie, frail with utter relief, only closed her eyes and tried to calm her breathing.













2



They sat in Sandra’s kitchen, the women and their dogs. Finn was possessed by post-incident excitement and he skittered and spiralled idiotically across the floor with his tail in his mouth. He looked like a mutant crab. Betty sat primly looking the other way and Sandra’s elderly Alsatian paid nobody any mind. He lay on his big stained cushion in an alcove that had long been his alone, and snored. Now and then he emitted a silent gust of foul wind that even Sandra noticed.

‘Jesus, Fritz,’ she said, and wafted a hand ineffectually. Annie sat mute and pale and Josie only smiled.

Breakfast detritus was all across the table, including a bottle of milk and an open plastic tub of butter, its surface soft and littered with toast crumbs. A late wasp, survivor of the recent Indian summer, performed listless sorties through the clutter. Sandra didn’t apologise for the mess because she didn’t see it. Josie saw it but didn’t mind it. Only Annie, whose own domestic life was rigorously ordered, noted the squalor and felt uncomfortable. Her tea was untouched because there were traces of an earlier brew on the rim of the mug; dried droplets of someone else’s brown drink. And although Josie and Sandra were talking nineteen to the dozen about the drama, Annie only sat, consciously quiet, wondering if they’d noticed she wasn’t joining in; wondering when they could leave. Then Josie said, ‘So Annie, he followed you all the way?’

Annie looked up and nodded.

‘And what do you think got his goat?’

‘You see, I couldn’t find Finn’s lead.’

This was no answer at all.

‘Nutters like that don’t need much of a reason to blow their tops,’ Sandra said.

Josie nodded. ‘It’s true,’ she said. She rubbed Annie’s back and Annie managed a watery smile.

Sandra gave a sudden spurt of laughter. ‘Your face,’ she said to Josie. ‘You thought I’d gone mad.’

‘I couldn’t believe my eyes,’ Josie said. ‘And you, a librarian.’

Sandra smiled grimly. ‘What a brute though! He called Annie a bitch.’

Annie winced.

‘He thumped her window as if he wanted to smash it.’

‘What if he’d hit you?’ Josie said. ‘What if he’d had a knife?’

Sandra shrugged.

‘He could’ve hurt you.’

‘Well what was I supposed to do?’ Sandra was starting to feel nettled now, and she looked at Annie, expecting some form of support, if not actual acclaim, but Annie was hunched in her chair feeling sorry for herself and even when Finn crashed into the dresser and rattled the plates on his mad progress round the kitchen she just sat on, silent and suffering.

‘Annie,’ Sandra said.

Annie looked up again, slowly, as if it required an effort. Her pale blue eyes were rimmed with red.

‘You okay? You’re not saying much.’

Annie stared at Sandra.

‘You haven’t even said thank you,’ Sandra said.

‘Oh, but didn’t I?’ said Annie, startled into finding her voice.

‘Nope.’

‘I’m sure I did.’

‘Well then,’ said Sandra. ‘As long as you’re sure you did, I suppose that’s the main thing.’

She stood up and stomped to the sink, where she jettisoned her tea and dumped the mug among the dirty breakfast pots.

‘Well anyway, thank you, Sandra,’ Annie said, anxious now, and Sandra said, ‘Sure, whatever.’

There was a silence, and it might have turned prickly except for a terrific clattering on the stairs and the crash of a door hurled open. A teenage boy plunged into the room then drew back in some confusion when he found the kitchen full of women and dogs. His face coloured instantly.

‘You’re late,’ Sandra said, without turning round. ‘The bus comes by in three minutes.’

His blushing face now took on an injured look. ‘You didn’t wake me,’ he said.

‘I did, but you went back to sleep.’

‘Well, you didn’t wake me again.’

‘Correct. I said I wouldn’t, so I didn’t.’ She was pulling on some old woollen socks now, which she seemed to have found in the folds of Fritz’s bed.

‘Hi, Billy,’ Josie said. He turned to her and smiled, and Annie could see now what a handsome boy he was, dark haired and brown eyed with a lovely smile that she gathered was reserved at this moment for people other than his mother.

‘Hey, Josie,’ he said.

‘This is Annie,’ Josie said. ‘And that’s Finn,’ she added, pointing. The boy nodded pleasantly at Annie, and she nodded back. She could see nothing of Sandra in him, except perhaps his unkempt appearance, and that surely was nurture not nature.

Sandra said, ‘Seriously, Billy, you’ll miss the bus, and I’m not driving you to school.’

‘I’ll walk if I miss it.’

‘Right, good luck with that.’

Josie laughed and said, ‘Billy, just leave, that’s your best bet, sweetheart.’

He grinned at her. ‘Yeah, right, I’m outta here.’ As he passed Sandra he punched her softly on the shoulder and said, ‘Bye, Ma,’ and Sandra said, ‘Bye, hon, see you later,’ in a voice that no longer had any harshness in it, only love. Annie, watching and listening, thought about Michael, who even now could sulk for days at the least provocation, and herself, who could never ignore him, only fuss and worry and make him worse.

‘Okey doke,’ Sandra said, standing up. ‘Let’s walk the dogs.’

Annie tapped the tub of butter. ‘Shall you put this away?’ she said.

‘I’ll clear up later,’ said Sandra. She gave Fritz a jiggle with her foot. ‘C’mon, Fritzy, stir yourself.’

‘But it’s melting,’ Annie said, because she couldn’t help herself.

‘It’ll be fine – the heating’s gone off now.’

She swung out of the room and Annie, easing herself up out of the chair, wondered how Sandra’s mind worked. When she’d first met her and Josie, she’d thought perhaps the regular company of younger women would be good for her, stop her turning into so much of a stick-in-the-mud. But if anything, Sandra made her cling harder to her own habits. Oh, it would be a snowy morning in hell when Annie Doyle left a pat of butter to melt half the day on the kitchen table.



Annie and Finn were ahead and Josie, whose car was with the mechanic again, put Betty in Sandra’s boot with Fritz. The old Alsatian couldn’t jump in these days; Sandra had to heave him up in her arms where he hung, heavy as a sack of wet sand, waiting to be shovelled into the car. Sandra had rescued Fritz when he was a youngster, a malnourished, dull-coated creature who’d been picked up on the hard shoulder of the M1 with bloodied paws and terrified eyes. He was about fourteen now – they could only ever guess at his age – but still he looked at her with fathomless gratitude, as if she could never be repaid. Nobody knew his story, and there were more attractive, less motley-looking specimens in the line-up of rejects at the dogs’ home. But Fritz had stepped forward in his cage and pushed his face side on against the bars so that Sandra could scratch the back of his ear. After that, she couldn’t leave him there to be spurned again and again by people seeking the more obvious charms of perky terriers and spaniels with liquid chocolate eyes.

Now, when she looked in her rear-view mirror, she could see the sharp white tips of Betty’s pointed ears but there was no sign of Fritz and she knew that he’d be lying like a huge draught excluder against the door of the boot.

‘She is a terrible driver,’ Josie said. She meant Annie, who was keeping them to a twenty-five-miles-an-hour creep along a wide, clear highway; she braked at the approach to corners, and she braked at the appearance of oncoming traffic. ‘I expect she wound that brute up, driving like she’s driving now.’

‘The boot of her car is all dog,’ Sandra said.

It was true. Annie kept her back seats down flat to make more room, but still Finn seemed to fill all the available space. When she braked, his bulk lurched a little forward before settling back again. He faced Sandra and Josie through the rear window and panted; it looked as though he was laughing at them. Now Annie slowed still further and her right indicator came on, although the turning to the reservoir was still some way off, and on the left.

‘I might overtake,’ Sandra said.

Josie shook her head. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘That’d be hostile.’ She yawned. ‘I ordered five hundred daffodil bulbs from Marshalls and they came this morning in four sacks.’

‘God. Five hundred?’

Josie nodded. ‘I know.’

‘Lovely though. Where you putting them?’

‘That bank at the side of the house.’

‘The grassy one?’

Josie nodded.

‘God,’ Sandra said again. ‘It’s not even soil then.’

Ahead, Annie turned left with infinite care onto the track that led to the reservoir car park. Sandra followed. Josie said, ‘I might get Mr Dinmoor to put them in.’

‘The old man?’

She said this in the way a person might say ‘the clown’, as if behind the words was a barely concealed snort of laughter.

‘He’s not old,’ Josie said. ‘I mean, he is, but that’s not all he is.’

‘If you say so.’

Josie opened her mouth to reply but Sandra had parked alongside Annie and was already getting out of the car.



The reservoir path was only two miles around and completely flat, but it was still a bit of a push for Fritz so their pace was slow, more a meander than a walk. They passed a row of anglers’ platforms, empty at this hour on a weekday morning, and a tatty yellow board erected years ago by the Samaritans, with a number to call before you took the final plunge. The further you walked from the car park the wilder the water’s edge, until at the far end the tangle of reeds, bull rushes and low-slung willows formed a mini-reserve for water birds, which nested in the shadowy interior. Now and again coots, moorhens or crested grebes exploded in a maelstrom of fuss and feathers. Often they’d be dodging Finn, who kept charging into the shallows then standing there as if he’d forgotten what it was he’d come for. He wasn’t supposed to disturb the birds but Annie didn’t like to restrain him on his walks, and besides, this morning she didn’t have a lead: a fact she was currently explaining to Sandra and Josie.

‘So anyway,’ she said at