Lamb to the Slaughter (3 page)

But Ellie Burnett had appeared. Romy waved, gesturing to her to come forward, but Ellie didn’t seem to notice, making for a seat in the middle of the hall as she greeted acquaintances with her sweet, vague smile.

As the mother of a teenage son, she had to be well on in her thirties, but she looked ten years younger than that, wearing a long flowered skirt with a ruffled white cotton shirt, her fair hair all pre-Raphaelite waves and tiny ringlets round that Madonna face. She was very pale, though, and there were blue marks like bruises showing through the delicate skin under her eyes, an indication of the stress she was under. She was looking utterly exhausted too.

They were all under stress, especially since that disgusting business with the dead sheep earlier this week – intimidation from ALCO or their chums, no doubt. It was just that in some people stress didn’t make you look so rose-petal fragile that men fell over themselves to pat your hand and ask tenderly how you were, like they were doing to Ellie now. But then, men always made fools of themselves over Ellie. When she did one of her folk-song nights in the Cutty Sark pub, they sat about drooling in a way that put you off your beer.

Romy’s tensions showed in the deepening lines between her dark eyes and around her wide mouth; she’d accumulated a crop of angry spots on her chin, too – not a pretty sight. Unconsciously she touched them with her short, square fingers, scarred with calluses and burns from years of working with silver.

And here, at last, was Pete, chatting his way down between the chairs, scattering his famous smile like largesse to the punters as he passed. Seeing her, he waved and came to sit down, breathing beer and charming apologies at her.

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry, babe,’ he murmured. ‘I had an idea about that project I needed to discuss with Dan and then I was late leaving him.’

‘So you didn’t have time for more than a couple of pints on the way home.’ Romy’s voice was tart.

Pete grinned, unabashed. ‘You know me too well. Forgive me?’

He took her rough hand in his, stroking the back of it with his thumb, and as always at his touch, a thrill ran down her spine.

‘One day I won’t,’ she warned.

Pete didn’t even acknowledge the empty threat. ‘Barney didn’t want to come?’

‘No, I suggested he might, considering what’s at stake, but—’ She shook her head.

Barney had looked at her as if she were mad. ‘How can I? I’m going out on the bike with Dylan,’ he said with the ­elaborate patience of one explaining to a small child with learning difficulties.

‘You wouldn’t have the bike if it wasn’t for the business,’ she’d pointed out, knowing she was wasting her breath. She hadn’t wanted him to get it anyway, given the shocking death toll for young riders, but it was never easy to make ‘no’ stick where Barney was concerned. He didn’t scruple to play the resentment card because she’d walked out on his father to take up with Pete, and once Dylan Burnett persuaded Ellie to get him a bike, Romy knew Barney wouldn’t give up. It was smarter to stick it on the credit card at the start and save weeks of aggro.

Dylan was a bad influence – there was no doubt about that. Well, what could you expect? His father was a showman in a funfair; Ellie had stuck with the travelling lifestyle for a couple of years but once their informal partnership broke up, such contact as Dylan had with his father had been casual at best. It was tough, being a single mother, and her worst enemy couldn’t call Ellie forceful. She doted on Dylan so that he was thoroughly spoiled, so no wonder he ran wild.

Romy had been strict enough with Barney as a child, but she was worried about him now. He spent holidays with his father, and the occasional weekend, but that didn’t give him the paternal discipline that a young man needed. Pete certainly wasn’t about to take on the role. His attitude to Barney was detached, to say the least. Sometimes Romy suspected there was actual dislike there, though it was hard to tell with Pete.

Still, she had other, more pressing problems at the moment. She turned again to scan the hall. There were probably seventy people here now, but there was still no sign of Andrew and she felt a little lurch of disquiet. Surely he couldn’t have forgotten?

Alanna Paterson appeared, panting, at her side and collapsed into a chair. She’d shut up her potter’s workshop at the Craft Centre just before Romy left, but she didn’t seem to have found time to change. She was still wearing clay-smeared jeans and a grubby-looking top and her grey hair was wild.

‘I thought I was going to be late! I had a couple of phone calls.’

‘Better late than never. Andrew hasn’t arrived yet. I can’t think what’s happened.’ Romy was starting to get nervous.

Alanna seemed surprisingly unmoved. ‘Oh, I expect he’ll turn up. What about Ossian – did he say if he was coming?’

‘He’ll probably only come if he can sit staring at Ellie. He’s hardly going to be worried about losing the studio. Mummy and Daddy will write the cheque for another one,’ Romy said acidly. She didn’t have much time for Ossian Forbes-Graham; the oils he produced from his Craft Centre studio were beginning to be taken seriously by the art establishment in Edinburgh and even London, but it was all about image, in her opinion. He’d seen
La Bohème
once too often, probably, from the way he behaved, and he seemed to her weird and getting weirder.

‘Oh well,’ Alanna said, a little uncomfortably, ‘everyone’s got their own take on this.’

Romy gave her a sharp look. Was it possible that Alanna, too, had been got at by the enemy? And perhaps even Ellie had been made an offer she couldn’t refuse? You could produce crochet work anywhere and there she was now, her head bent over some coloured wool and her fingers flashing. But Romy had so much to lose – the perfect workshop, the expensive equipment – and when Gloag had phoned to try to talk her round, she’d told him in no uncertain terms that she wouldn’t drop her opposition to the project.

But Andrew – surely not Andrew too, Andrew who had been her saviour and whom she trusted as she didn’t trust herself? With his background of soldier ancestors, it was hard to imagine that Andrew could do a dishonourable thing.

Yet there was Norman Gloag now, beaming as he ushered in the too smart young man from ALCO, ready with his file of rebuttals and the promises which would fool the gullible into believing that a superstore wouldn’t leach the lifeblood out of the place.

And Andrew hadn’t come. Romy’s lips took on a curl of bitterness. There was no such thing, after all, as a man who didn’t deal in lies. She despised herself for ever believing there might be.

The young man from ALCO spoke well, Ellie Burnett had to acknowledge that. He was very personable, with a soothing manner and a light touch as he talked about all the benefits a superstore would bring to Kirkluce: low prices, extended choice, employment prospects. He laid particular emphasis on the scope for part-time jobs, ideal for mums wanting to be able to pick the kiddies up from school, and for the older kids after school, ‘saving for further education – or just saving Dad from having to fork out for all those cool items “everyone else” has!’. That got a responsive laugh. He was working well, and you could feel the mood of the meeting shifting in his favour.

She could see why people would like the idea of jobs for their kids. If Dylan had been doing even a few hours a week, the money would have helped, though she couldn’t imagine him paying off the loan she’d taken out for his bike and she’d be too frightened of losing him even to suggest it. But at least it might have kept him busy, instead of spending all his time hanging round with Barney Kyle, who always led him into trouble.

It had got worse since he had the bike – but how could she have said no and risked alienating him? Even as it was, her heart was in her mouth every time the funfair was in the area and Dylan went off to see his dad – not that she had anything against Jason. It was only after she left him that her life had fallen apart for those dark, dark years. He was a kind man, but she had found caravan life in a small, intimate community quite simply unbearable. Now it was her constant fear that their son might choose the travelling life and never come back to her.

It was thanks to Andrew that she’d been able to indulge Dylan. ‘One of your lovely, delicate flower paintings on my birthday,’ he’d asked as a rent for the studio. Then, a couple of years later, he’d quietly handed her the keys to the two-bedroom flat above it, saying he couldn’t let it and he’d be grateful to have someone to keep it aired: it had belonged to his father’s chauffeur and it wouldn’t be economic to do it up. He’d had central heating and a new bathroom and kitchen equipment put in, though, and saving the rent for ‘social housing’, as they called it nowadays, had made all the difference to her.

She’d been keeping her hands busy with the mechanical creation of a little bunch of blue and green crochet flowers to put on a hat, in an effort to keep her mind off other things, but now they faltered and she laid the work down in her lap.

The tiny shop in the Craft Centre where Ellie sold paintings, knick-knacks, crochet and colourful wall-hangings wasn’t just her workplace. It wasn’t too much to say that it had saved her life: it was her refuge, the personal space she needed if she were not to feel – well, bruised, was the only way she could think of it, by the harsh world outside. It barely washed its face: even living rent-free with such state benefits as she could claim, it was harder and harder to keep her head above water financially as Dylan got older and more expensive.

She was having to accept more singing engagements. She was very popular in the local pubs, and she liked to sing – perhaps even needed to sing, sharing the beautiful instrument God had given her for the delight of others – but it was so often an ordeal. Men looked at her as if they fantasised about possession. They always had. If she needed a reminder, Ossian was looking at her adoringly from across the hall, with his strange eyes, almost aquamarine in colour, fixed on her face.

He had come in late, and she had seen him trying to find a seat as near her as possible. He was only a boy, not a great deal older than Dylan, and he was romantic and over-sensitive, but she found it difficult to handle his fixation with her, ­especially when his studio was only twenty steps away from her little shop.

She’d read, in her Catholic girlhood, of some saint or other – Agnes, was it? – who had mutilated herself as a deterrent to the lusts of men. Perhaps she should have done that ... But she daren’t go there. If she wasn’t careful, she’d reach the point where she yielded to the deadly longing which was still at the back of her mind: to escape, to blot out all the problems in the old way...

The applause startled her. She hadn’t even heard what else the ALCO man had said and now he was handing over to Councillor Norman Gloag.

What was it about Gloag that so repelled her? He was ugly, of course, with a bulbous nose and flabby pouches round a fleshy mouth, but it wasn’t simply that. Perhaps it was his air of invincible self-satisfaction, suggesting that whatever he wanted would happen, regardless of the wishes or needs of anyone else.

He was wearing a blue suit, expensive no doubt, but ­fractionally too small for his bulky frame, and the sort of club tie that was like a Freemason’s handshake. It didn’t mean anything to you unless you were the right sort of person.

He’d been a surveyor for years, but more recently an estate agent, when, despite properties having been bought and sold without their help for centuries, the Scots were foolish enough to be persuaded that they were necessary. Gloag had done well for himself; he knew all the Kirkluce solicitors and had what was almost a monopoly in the area. One of Ellie’s friends had told her, when she sold her house, that she was sure a deal had been done behind her back. She’d got a disappointing price for it from a friend of Gloag’s, but of course nothing could be proved.

Gloag was talking now. As local councillor, he should be putting the hard question which the ALCO man had so efficiently ducked: the effect of a superstore on a market town with thriving individual shops. But it was clear his only interest was to support a future planning application and discourage objections. A farmer who demanded to know what price he’d get for his milk once the superstore had strangled the local dairy was slapped down so unceremoniously that the emollient young man had to intervene, softening the rebuff with an assurance that his company used local products at a fair price ‘wherever possible’. Meaningless words, of course, but there were nods of approval from the audience, apart from the farmer who walked out, turning at the door to yell, ‘Bloodsuckers, that’s what you are – bloodsuckers!’

There was fierce applause from one small sector of the hall, where older people were sitting together, but the hostile looks directed at them from all round told their story.

Now Romy was on her feet, with bright colour burning in her cheeks, haranguing Gloag and ALCO and – unwisely – people who were stupid enough not to see how bad this would be for the town, how the atmosphere would change, how the holiday visitors who had brought trade to Kirkluce because of its good local shops would go to Castle Douglas instead, how shops would close and how, once the superstore had no rivals, the prices would rise.

Ellie winced. Romy had never been sensitive, and despite the rebellious mutters behind her seemed oblivious to the damage she was doing. Her cause was losing support with every word she uttered.

Now Romy was using the big gun. ‘Anyway, Gloag, however you threaten and bully, you and your oily little sidekick there can’t do a damn’ thing about it. If Andrew Carmichael refuses to sell the Craft Centre, the deal collapses. And he will.’