Close to Death

May remembered she was still holding it and thrust it into her hands. ‘You can have it, my dear,’ she said. ‘Just let me know if you enjoy it.’

Phyllis had been standing in the kitchen area of the shop all this time and watched, discomfited, as the three customers trailed out into the street. May went over and locked the door. Hawthorne and Dudley sat down at the table. ‘Would you like some tea?’ Phyllis asked.

‘You’d better come and join us, Phyllis,’ May instructed her friend. ‘They don’t need tea.’

Phyllis did as she was told.

‘We’ve just seen Felicity Browne,’ Hawthorne began.

‘Oh. How is she?’

‘You mean, apart from the incurable disease and the suicide of her husband?’ Dudley chipped in. ‘She’s not doing too badly.’

May flushed. ‘What do you want, Mr Hawthorne?’

‘We were just on our way back to Riverview Close and we were passing the shop, so we thought we might have a word, if that’s all right.’

‘And it would be nice if – this time – you told us the truth,’ Dudley added.

‘I think you’re a very rude young man.’

‘I’m not that young.’

‘We know your real names,’ Hawthorne said.

Phyllis looked shocked. May tried not to show any emotion.

Hawthorne continued. ‘Two old ladies move into a house in Richmond. They’ve come from nowhere. Nobody knows anything about them. Nobody visits them. They don’t get any letters or parcels. I try to find out more about them, but nothing turns up and I ask myself if they’re even using their own names. Or maybe they’ve changed them.

‘It’s quite easy to do it without anyone noticing. If your name is More, for example, spelled like Sir Thomas, you just add a second o. Or you can go back to your maiden name. May Winslow, for example, instead of May Brenner. In this country it’s also dead easy to use the deed poll system. Criminals do it all the time. And if you’re not applying for a passport or a driving licence, who’s even going to notice?’

May had gone white. She was breathing heavily, little gasps that made her shoulders rise and fall.

‘You gave yourselves away a few times, love,’ Hawthorne went on. ‘You want to know how?’

May nodded.

‘Well, to start with, you said you were at the convent for almost thirty years, but your friend Phyllis here seems to think that the last service before bed is vespers, when she really ought to have worked out that it’s compline or night prayer, which is followed by the great silence, when nobody is meant to talk. Also, she said that you and she were “cellies” and you were quick to explain this meant you shared a room, but quite apart from the fact that I’m not sure nuns ever have to share, it’s prisoners who call themselves cellies, women prisoners in particular.

‘Let’s work this out. St Clare was supposedly in Osmondthorpe, near Leeds. By an amazing coincidence, that’s just half an hour away from HMP New Hall in Wakefield, which is where Sarah Baines did her time, and you recommended Sarah for a job here. “You have to give young people a chance”. That’s what you said. It’s a lovely thought and I suppose it’s doubly true if she’s threatening to expose who you really are. It’s also why you couldn’t fire her, even though she’s a useless gardener and she may have killed your dog. She had you by the short and curlies.’

‘Do nuns have short and curlies?’ Dudley asked.

May glared at Phyllis. ‘I was always warning you,’ she said. ‘But you never could keep your mouth shut.’

‘I didn’t mean to . . .’ Phyllis began miserably.

May looked across the table at Hawthorne, the half-eaten cake and the cold tea between them. ‘I’ve done my time,’ she said. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong. All I wanted was to get on with the rest of my life in peace. Sarah knew that. And you’re right, the little cow blackmailed us. She knew who we were and she was going to tell everyone.’

‘What was she going to say?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘That we’d been in prison.’

‘Rather more than that, I think.’

‘You murdered your husband,’ Dudley said. ‘His name was David Brenner.’

‘He deserved it.’

‘Well, you certainly made your point. You hit him thirty times with a meat cleaver. There was so much blood in the house that even the police dogs threw up. You piled up the pieces in the bath and put his head in a dustbin for the Thursday-morning collection.’

‘I told you the truth about him. David was a monster. I was seventeen when I met him. I didn’t know anything about the world. I was just a child. And once I was in his hands . . . you have no idea. The things he did to me! He beat me and he brutalised me and he destroyed any confidence I had in myself until the day I finally snapped.’ She paused. ‘I’ll have one of your snouts, Phyllis, if you don’t mind.’

‘Snouts,’ Dudley muttered. ‘More prison slang.’