The Skeleton Room by Kate Ellis Read Free Book Online Page A

gently when the woman’s dead face was revealed.
     The staff at the mortuary had done their best to make Sally presentable, but it was still a distressing experience for a man
     who had courted her, lived with her and, presumably, loved her.
    Trevor hadn’t spoken. He had just given an assenting nod as the crisp white sheet was pulled back. He had stayed silent as
     they had driven him home and had nodded meekly when Rachel had explained that the post-mortem would be carried out in the
     morning. His sister had been contacted and she had agreed to come over so that he wouldn’t be alone.
    When Wesley arrived home he saw a space where Pam’s car should have been. He felt a pang of anxiety. Even after meetings and
     lesson preparations, she was usually back from school by half five or six and now it was half past seven. What if she’d had
     an accident? What if she’d been rushed to hospital – a miscarriage, or something wrong with their son, Michael?
    As he put his key in the front-door lock all sorts of terrible scenarios began to unfold in his imagination. He called Pam’s
     name but there was no answer.
    He walked through to the living room and called again, but the only sound was the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.
     The emptiness of the house came as a shock when he had expected the usual domestic chaos. The silence disturbed him.
    The place was as untidy as he had left it that morning. But one thing had changed: a large sheet of paper lay on the coffee
     table, a message scrawled across it. Wesley picked it up.
    ‘Della rushed to hospital. Michael next door. Be back soon.’
    Wesley sighed. Gerry Heffernan had a huge repertoire of mother-in-law jokes but none of them seemed appropriate for Pam’s
     mother, Della, a woman who could best bedescribed as ‘giddy’, in stark contrast to Wesley’s own mother, who was a sensible family doctor with strict views on child
     rearing.
    He wondered what Della’s emergency could have been. Somehow he had never associated the ebullient Della with illness, but
     then she was in her fifties and she did drink rather more than the government’s recommended guidelines. Wesley had always
     considered her to be a silly woman who made Pam, her only daughter, seem staid in comparison. But then he had a sneaking fondness
     for his mother-in-law, irritating though she could be, and he would never wish illness or disaster upon her.
    Hunger gnawed at his stomach, but he was resigned to the fact that he would have to feed himself. And there was Michael: he
     would have to relieve the neighbours of the alarming responsibility of a lively toddler who had more energy than sense before
     they were reduced to quivering wrecks.
    When he heard the sound of a car door slamming outside, he rushed to the front door. Pam was on the drive locking the door
     of her VW Golf. She turned round and gave him a weak smile. She looked tired.
    ‘Have you got Michael yet?’ were her first words. ‘I was about to.
    I’ve only just got in myself. How’s Della? What happened?’
    Pam didn’t answer for a few moments. She was intent on taking the paraphernalia of her work from the boot: files, boxes of
     books, a bulging briefcase; the working day wasn’t over yet. Wesley took a box from her: her pregnancy wasn’t showing much
     yet but it was a fact etched on his mind.
    ‘So how’s Della?’ he repeated, anxious to know how serious things were.
    ‘Fine. Will you fetch Michael from next door?’
    ‘What happened?’
    She turned to him. There were dark rings beneath her eyes and her face was ashen. She looked ill. ‘My bloodymother fell down a step outside a pub and broke her ankle. She’d been celebrating the end of term with some of her students
     and she was somewhat the worse for wear, as far as I can make out.’
    Wesley tried hard not to smile. Della lectured in sociology at a further education college and, ever since the restraining
     influence of her late husband had been removed