Desperate Measures - [3]

She watched him speak, that mock sincerity, slick tongue and clever words. And she hated him. For his arrogance and his lies. For what he had done. She hated him and she wished him dead.

‘You have to keep calm,’ Adele said to Howard in the taxi home.

He shot her a glance, his eyes still bright with anger. ‘I couldn’t believe it,’ he said, ‘it’s all a sham, a fucking sham.’

‘It’s all there is,’ she said.

‘People like us, the system is stacked against us.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ She was suddenly angry at him. ‘But there’s nothing else we can do.’

He looked away from her, out of the window at the rain. ‘He needs teaching a lesson.’

Adele just caught his words. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she said quietly, anxious that the taxi driver might overhear. ‘Don’t you start thinking like that. That’s no answer.’

He didn’t reply. They sat in silence. She listened to the beat of the windscreen wipers and the drone of the traffic and closed her eyes. Inside she was trembling, her stomach knotted, her chest aching. She had clung to the hope that today would bring some resolution. Instead they’d been kicked in the teeth.

Chapter 3

Peggy’s breathing was worse. Roy checked that the oxygen mask was in the right position and that the cylinder had plenty in reserve.

Peggy was asleep, she’d barely woken in the past few days. The medicine that helped with the pain also made her drowsy.

He wondered if he should send for the priest yet. She was dying. He knew that. Dr Halliwell had explained it clearly, talked to them about hospices, but Peggy wanted to be at home. And Roy wanted her there. Nevertheless calling the priest seemed so final, like throwing in the towel. But if he delayed and she died before having the last rites she’d never forgive him. No, that wasn’t true, he thought, Peggy had always been a forgiving sort, a peacemaker, a good Catholic. It was more that Roy would feel bad for letting her down if he misjudged the timing.

She was so young, only sixty, most people lived into their eighties or nineties now. But Peggy had never been strong health-wise: asthma all her life and then the emphysema and the heart trouble, problems to do with her weight, too. She tried to lose some, countless times, diets and Weight Watchers, eating Ryvita and cottage cheese after making hot pot or pie and chips for Roy. Roy had gained weight too, and more since he stopped work to look after Peggy. At the warehouse he probably used to walk a few miles a day, overseeing the packers, dealing with snarl-ups in the system when incoming stock didn’t match the dockets or the goods were faulty.

Now and then, as a young man, he used to go out hiking in the countryside, down to the peaks in Derbyshire. After he met Peggy, walks were gentler, on the level, along riversides or through country parks, the deer park at Dunham Massey, that sort of thing.

Peggy still had a pretty face, round cheeked, warm brown eyes, even though the grey had replaced her chestnut curls.

She stirred a little, made a croaking note as she inhaled, but her eyes didn’t open. It was two hours until her next dose was due, though if she woke sooner and asked for it she could have some of the Oramorph. He wouldn’t see her suffer. He was clear on that. And the doctor had said there’d be no need.

He’d have to see if she’d take some Movicol as well to help with the constipation. She’d not eaten today. He’d made her Weetabix and warm milk but she couldn’t have swallowed more than a teaspoonful.

He left the room quietly and went into the kitchen. The parish bulletin was pinned up on the notice board. Roy took it down and turned it over to read the phone number then keyed it in, ready to speak to Father McDovey.

Father McDovey put out his hands, took Roy’s between them and grasped tightly.

‘How are you bearing up?’

‘I’m OK,’ Roy said, ‘thank you, Father. Come through. Would you like a drink?’

‘No, thank you,’ the priest said, ‘I’ve been plied with tea and biscuits all morning.’ He smiled. ‘Now.’ He set his briefcase down on the kitchen table. ‘In here I have an order of service for you, so you can follow what I’m doing.’ He drew out a laminated card and passed it to Roy. ‘Is Peggy awake?’

‘She’s drifting in and out,’ Roy said, ‘but never awake very long now.’

‘So Communion?’ the priest asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ Roy said.

‘She can swallow?’

‘Yes, small amounts.’

‘Well, we’ll see how it goes. It’s a sad time but she has the love of God and his mercy.’

Roy nodded, a lump in his throat.

As the priest began his ministrations, touching Peggy’s eyes and nose and mouth with the oil and reciting the prayers for the ceremony, Roy held her hand. He had first met Peggy at church. Roy and Ann, his wife, had separated by then. Roy was still driving the wagon.

During his marriage he’d be away for days at a time, and it got so he dreaded coming home what with Ann complaining about everything, wanting him to be different, to be something he wasn’t. He never really understood what she wanted from him. She complained of his silence, his ignoring her, said she wanted holidays, so they went on holidays and then she complained that he was a miserable sod.