Page 30 of The Impossible Fortune (Thursday Murder Club Mysteries #5)
Joyce
Tomorrow we’re off to Manchester. I have never been.
I’ve seen it on television, of course, but you never get the full picture, do you?
I also once had a colleague from Manchester, and she won the Pools and marched into an operating theatre and told a particularly unpleasant surgeon to go and eff himself, and then invited us all to join her in the pub after work.
Again, it might not be the full picture, but it left an impression.
Elizabeth has told Jill Usher that we are genealogical researchers with exciting news about her family. She has asked me to invent something because she says I’m the one ‘with the imagination’.
What a week it has been. Alan is shattered, and I don’t blame him.
Who killed Holly? And have they killed Nick too? I do hope not, that’s no start to married life for Paul, is it? It must count as bad luck, surely?
I do fear the worst though. Ibrahim has made us all printouts of the texts that ‘Nick’ sent to Paul. The more you look at them, the more obvious it becomes they are not from him. Which leads to an unfortunate conclusion.
Joanna and Paul have headed back to London.
Paul is going to be in touch if they hear from Nick again.
He hadn’t been as distraught as I imagined he might be over Holly’s death.
Perhaps they weren’t as close as I’d thought.
She didn’t come to the wedding, so I suppose that tells a story.
You can tell he’s concerned about Nick though.
He’s desperate for us to find him. Holly was too, wasn’t she?
When it came time for them to leave, I walked them back to Joanna’s car, but by that time there was nobody around, so I didn’t have the chance to introduce Paul to anyone as ‘my son-in-law, Paul, the professor’, so that will have to wait.
Joanna gave me a kiss goodbye and told me that she loves me, and in my head I thought I should say it back, but then I thought, it’s so obvious that I love you, and so I just heard myself say, ‘Well, of course.’
Joanna made Paul shine his torch under the car to look for bombs, which I thought was a bit much.
He did it very gladly, I have to say. Let’s see if he’s still happy to check the car for bombs in seven or eight years’ time.
For example, I like grass to be neat, so Gerry would go out and cut the lawn every Sunday with a big smile on his face.
Then, after about five years or so of the smiles, he said, ‘Do you mind if I skip a week?’ He later said, ‘I’ve always hated it,’ and I thought, do you know what, that’s fair enough.
Well, actually what I did was to go out and cut it myself that first Sunday to prove a point, but discovered he was quite right: it is miserable work.
So then he only cut it every three weeks, and I learned to love longer grass.
Anyway, there was no bomb, and they got home safely about half an hour ago.
We’re off on the early train to see Jill Usher tomorrow, and Ron is heading down to find Bill Benson.
He asked Ibrahim to go with him, but Ibrahim said he has someone else to meet.
Jason is coming to pick up Kendrick tomorrow morning, so we all said our goodbyes at the door.
Poor Alan will be heartbroken when he realizes he’s gone.
When Joanna’s friends used to come for tea, the first thing Joanna would do was to rush upstairs with them to show them her toys, and that’s how Alan is with Kendrick, rushing in and out of the room, dropping toys at his feet.
I’m still not entirely sure why Kendrick has been here, and not at home. Perhaps I should ask if everything is okay? Or is that not my business?
In the end Elizabeth rather enjoyed packing away all the cats, I could tell.
We helped with some other clutter too and left all the boxes in Jasper’s garage.
The two of them told war stories as we packed.
The day Jasper blew up a bridge, that was one.
I drank my tea from the Southern Electricity mug.
He didn’t have any milk, but one thing at a time, I think.
On the train home Elizabeth fell asleep, which is very unlike her. In the end she had her head on my shoulder, so I couldn’t move. But I didn’t want to either. My God, the older we all get, the more like children we are.