Asking For Trouble by Ann Granger Read Free Book Online Page B

a place of worship had been the Church of the Beauteous Day.
    The Church of the Beauteous Day had been really something. When they turned up of a Sunday morning, whole families dressed in their best, it was like Mardi Gras. And they knew how to worship with songs and cymbals, all right. To say nothing of trombones, choirs and hand-clapping. When they weren’t making music they were listening to the preacher, the Reverend Eli, and shouting joyously ‘Hallelujah!’ and ‘Yes, Lord!’ For one day a week, they brought light and life and faith to our street. But the premises weren’t suitable for all their social events and they moved out, led away by the Reverend Eli, a tiny man with crinkled grey hair. Away he took all those smiling ladies in the floral hats, smart young men, little boys with bowties and little girls with snowy socks, like Moses leading the children of Abraham into the desert. I don’t know whither he led them. Some said to Hackney. I was sorry. I missed them, especially the Reverend Eli, who, when he saw me, would sing out, ‘You ready to repent, child?’ and beam a gold-toothed smile.
    Though the chapel was abandoned, the burial ground was still in use, by the living. A crazy old baglady named Mad Edna had her home there among the headstones with a tribe of feral cats for company. People taking a short cut through the graveyard were alarmed when Mad Edna sprang out from behind a tomb, like Magwitch the convict in Great Expectations , and began a conversation with them. She always treated them graciously, as if they’d come to call on her. She told me she’d been a débutante once, long ago, and I believed her. The council was having trouble over demolishing the chapel because of the graves alongside it, so Edna was safe for the time being.
    A load of fruit and veg had been delivered to the shop during the afternoon. It was stacked on the pavement and Ganesh was moving it, putting some on display outside the shop, and carrying the rest down the side alley to the yard at the back.
    He was wearing grubby jeans and an old Fair Isle sweater, because it was a mucky job, and his long black hair was tied back with a piece of ribbon. He ties his hair back when he’s working because it’s more convenient and because his father insists on it. If Mr Patel had his way, Ganesh would be working round the shop wearing a suit and with his hair trimmed short back and sides, or so Ganesh reckons.
    Parents have ambitions for their children, I suppose. My dad had ambitions for me. Sometimes I hope that I’ll still manage to fulfil some of them, someday, and he’ll know, in heaven. I’d like to please him, even at this late date. Make up for all the disappointment.
    Ganesh looked up as I came along the pavement. His expression had been worried but it cleared. ‘Fran! Thank God you’re all right! What’s going on? I’ve been worried sick about you! Someone said a person had died in your house!’
    ‘Someone did,’ I told him. ‘Terry.’
    We both looked down the street towards the house. Besides the police, quite a few sightseers had gathered. There was a van parked, just down from the police vehicles, which hadn’t been there earlier. My heart sank, if possible, further. If it had been any one of the other of us, there wouldn’t have been half the fuss. Nev, with his history of breakdown, would have been written off as suicide. Squib hanging from the light fitting would have been written off as one fewer problem for society. They might have said the same about me. But Terry – there was something about Terry. She was going to be trouble. The police sensed it, just as I’d always sensed it. They knew they were not going to be able to write her off, just like that. They were doing it all by the book to head off any criticism at a later date.
    Ganesh didn’t like the sight of all the activity down the street either. He dusted his hands and wiped them on his sweater, and by mutual accord, we set off down the