The Perfect Daughter by Gillian Linscott Read Free Book Online Page B

crowd, trapped inside the cart, I saw the scared faces of the old woman and the dark-haired man. He was trying to reason with them, getting nowhere.
    â€˜Nell, wait! Leave it to the police.’
    But Bill didn’t take his own advice. We both ran over. The air round the crowd was heavy with beer fumes. They were mostly young men and a few girls, having some holiday fun as they saw it, but once they’d started it was taking them over, growing vicious. As they chanted and pushed against the cart it rocked almost off its wheels. Another few heaves and it would be over with the the two people and a cauldron of boiling water inside. I shouted to the crowd to stop it but it did no good. Bill grabbed a couple of men by the collar and dragged them aside, so of course they turned on him. For once in my life I was glad to hear a police whistle shrilling and see navy-blue uniforms. Bill’s attackers melted away. He took my arm and dragged me to one side.
    â€˜Just let them get on with it.’
    The police didn’t even need to use their truncheons and nobody hung around to be arrested. In a few minutes all that was left to show there’d been trouble was an area of scuffed grass with burst sausages trampled into it. The Blacks were still inside the cart, the woman sobbing and trembling, the man apparently arguing with the police who didn’t seem sympathetic. We watched as a policeman escorted the man to fetch his donkey from where it was tethered under a tree and stood over him while he harnessed it to the cart. The woman emptied the cauldron on to the grass, stowed away the mustard jar and they rolled off towards the road. Some of the drunks cheered from a distance as they went.
    Bill and I followed the cart out to the road and watched it going slowly down the hill. We’d both had enough of the Heath and the holiday, although it was still only midday.
    I said, ‘I suppose I could go to the student house this afternoon, get it over with.’
    *   *   *
    I hadn’t intended Bill to come with me, but he seemed to take it for granted that he would and I was feeling too down to argue. We decided to take the underground into the centre of town. While we waited on the platform Bill asked: ‘You’re hoping her friends might give you some idea why she killed herself?’
    A train was coming, which saved me from having to answer. Bill had been through enough already today. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him something that had been growing in my mind since I found her. Supposing the question wasn’t ‘why’ but ‘if’?

Chapter Five
    T HE STUDENT HOUSE WHERE I’D LAST SEEN VERONA alive was in one of the small streets behind Cheyne Walk in the stretch between Battersea Bridge and Albert Bridge, close enough to the river to hear seagulls and smell the mud when the tide was out. It was mid afternoon when we got there after a walk along Chelsea Embankment, not saying much. I wished, to be honest, that Bill weren’t there but after what he’d done for us, I could hardly tell him to go away. I hadn’t paid much attention to the outside of the house on my other visits, beyond noting that it looked run-down, so before we went in I stood with Bill on the pavement opposite and had a good look at it. The general impression was of a house that hadn’t woken up yet, even on a holiday afternoon. There were curtains drawn over the downstairs windows, yellowed linings turned to the street. The sash windows of the two upstairs storeys were closed, one of them pinning down a thin blue towel hung out to dry, flapping languidly in the breeze coming from the river. The sill next to it, with cream paint flaking off the stonework, supported a milk bottle and a dead geranium in a pot that looked as if it would slide down into the street at any moment.
    â€˜Probably all out,’ Bill said, sounding unconcerned.
    We crossed the street. The front door,