Walk a Narrow Mile by Faith Martin Read Free Book Online Page A

for Meg. She played fair. I met her when I was twenty-five, and I thought she was the most gorgeous thing on earth. I’d just got the business up and running, and she fancied me, and thought my prospects were good, as they say in the old- fashioned novels. So …’ He shrugged. ‘We got spliced.’
    ‘Sounds reasonable,’ Hillary said.
    ‘So it was. For a while. Quite a while, actually. It was good. Like I said, the company took off, we went on holiday twice a year, had a house on the outskirts of Banbury in the green belt, with a bit of a view. Two nice top-of-the-range cars.’
    ‘Again, it all sounds very reasonable.’
    ‘Right. Till it all went tits up and I lost the firm. Bloody bankers. ’Course, in a recession, the first things that are cut back are the non-essentials. People who’d been thinking of getting double-glazing, or adding value to their properties with conservatories and patios, suddenly realized that putting food on the table and petrol in the car are higher priorities. I lost two of my fitters, then one of the girls in the office. Started taking on more and more of the admin myself. Working crazy hours to try and keep it afloat. Meg started complaining how she never saw me, how the money wasn’t there anymore to do the Town and take in a show and have a meal, blah, blah blah. And as the money got tighter and tighter, so did the expression on my dear wife’s face.’
    Brian had wandered over the window and was staring outside. Now he turned back and gave them a savage grin. ‘And when the firm finally went, so did she.’
    ‘You lost the house?’ Hillary guessed.
    ‘Mortgage providers took it back, the bastards.’
    ‘The cars?’
    ‘Had to sell one of them. Hers, obviously, since I needed mine. And lo and behold, I come back one day from a particularly vicious interview with the bank manager, and no more wife. She moved out to live with a friend. Female, before you ask. I got a nice solicitor’s letter serving divorce papers about a week later, and that was it.’
    ‘You never tried to see her? Talk her into coming back? No sending her flowers, or letters begging her to return?’ Hillary asked casually. ‘Most men try to save their marriages, if possible.’
    Brian Vickary cast a bleary, attractive eye her way. ‘Are you kidding? Me, beg? No way. Besides, I considered myself well rid of her. If she couldn’t stick by me through the bad times, who’d want her?’
    He cast a look around at the ramshackle bungalow and gave a sudden burst of laughter. ‘You know, when I heard she’d gonemissing, I was seriously pissed off. I had this fantasy, I guess, about starting up a new business after coming up with the big new idea that was going to make me millions. Then I’d buy a top-of-the-range Porsche – her favourite car by the way – and I’d drive it by her house wearing a load of bling and with an even better-looking girl in the passenger seat.’
    Brian Vickary laughed again. ‘I’m going to get another beer. Sure you don’t want one?’
    Hillary shook her head. ‘Just a few more questions first, sir,’ she said firmly. She had a feeling Brian was working himself up to a binge, and she needed him sober for just a little while longer.
    ‘You weren’t at all worried, then, when you heard she’d disappeared. You didn’t think, perhaps, that she was a victim of foul play?’ she asked curiously.
    ‘Meg?’ Brian snorted incredulously. ‘Nah. She was nobody’s victim, Meg, believe me. She had a way of getting what she wanted. When I heard she was working in some posh office I knew damned well what her game was.’
    ‘You think?’ Hillary asked, deadpan.
    ‘Sure. Getting into the boss’s trousers. Mind you, I did bump into her once, just the once, in some trendy bar. About a year after the divorce it would be. It was a mate’s thirtieth, and he was buying. She just came swanning over, as if nothing had happened, and began chatting. Said she was working for a solicitor