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Vera's tears
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2024-10-29 19:42:56‘Why I left with tears in my eyes? I don’t think I was crying,’ she lied. She paused to consider, then said, 'Your dad can guess. Ask him.'
'I have, and he said, ‘another time.’'
'Another time it is then. Next question.'
I looked intently down the newly raked sand path, between the roses, toward a beautifully overgrown wall at the perimeter of the rose garden. Should I argue? No point. If she and my dad don’t want to talk about it now, then I should leave it. Next question it is.
'You didn’t ride out on Friday with the hunt, presumably because you had sold your field hunter. Why would you do that?'
'It was a very valuable horse - I needed to raise some quick capital and I knew the company bank wouldn’t help.'
'Come on, Vera. That’s only confounded the riddle. The most that nag could have fetched is a couple of grand and you have that as pin money.'
She peered at me over her reading glasses, which she always wore when eating. I
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'So, no one else cottoned on?' 'People may have thought us totally bereft of any common sense, but once the gossip mill was grinding, they lost all sense of reality. Perhaps they liked the idea that her ladyship had a couple of bastards by another man and gave them to a childless farmer in Scotland with a big financial reward. I think every other interpretation of my disappearance was too bizarre to be believed.' I pondered her tale. Once it had sunk in, I was aghast. 'So, let me get this straight, Vera. Not only did you have the trauma of miscarrying twins, you had to live a lie, deny any local support systems for a grieving mother and go live on your own in some Scottish castle. And you had a husband, who would rather be married to an adulteress than a faithful wife who had the misfortune to miscarry. When was your breakdown? 'Very perceptive. It hasn’t happened yet, although for a while I fought with it every day. 'Past tense?' 'Yes
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'A lot has happened since then. I expected more recent thoughts.''It all has to start at that point. If we extrapolate back from all points around today’s Lower Butts, we end up at that fateful morning. That’s where big bang happened. Let’s start at that moment. We can consider distance travelled since then.''That’s fine by me,' she affirmed.'I’m going to assume that you knew Sid had lesbian leanings. I wasn’t sure. You were!'I waited for confirmation. She remained quiet so I took that as a ‘yes,’ and proceeded.'You wanted her and you wanted the children she looked after, so you hired me so that you could have contact without your scheme becoming obvious to the outside world.'Vera stiffened, sitting upright like a governess wanting to make a good impression. She still said nothing.'Then you moved the Walker children into the stable apartments - with good reason I hasten to add. Ch
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Her message sounded very matter of fact. She was hard to understand, due to background noise and that confused me. It was five thirty in the morning on a lonely country lane in Suffolk. Where did the noise come from? My finger hovered over the delete button, but providentially Sonya came through the office door.'What’s it like to kiss a boy, Millie?'I was incandescent and finished her off as only siblings can.'Jesus Christ, Sonya. Right now, must it be?'Yes - this lad last term - before the holidays. He wanted to kiss me and now he’s going to ask...'I freaked. I shrieked.'Just go and kiss the stupid prat and find out for yourself, and shut the effing door after you!''Sorry,' she flounced, 'I was only asking.'She spun on her heel and headed back out the door.'Well it’s not exactly rhubarb-patch stuff, is it?' I shouted after her.She shut the door with a very loud and ostentatious bang th
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