Stalker

Chapter 1

Am I the only one here who believes that Mary Last is innocent?

Sally looked round the oval oak table that all but filled the room. She tried to sound assertive as she posed the question, in an attempt to hide from her fellow jurors the sense of isolation and defeat that she was feeling. Across the table, Jill looked at her with a silent, exasperated nod. Sally knew that the younger woman, who was a mother of three and the only other woman on the jury, simply wanted the trial to be over and to be back with her family. Jill had been making that perfectly clear in asides and glances at her watch during the last hour.

But Sally was not going to let the silence signal the end of the matter. She tried once more, her voice clear and low.

It is entirely possible that there was someone else in that car.

She looked straight at Bill, the jury foreman, silently defying him to contradict her. A white haired, bespectacled man in his sixties, whom in other circumstances Sally would have considered avuncular, he came back with a deeply patronising tone to his voice.

My dear Sally, we have been over that possibility half a dozen times in the last few hours. It might well be possible, but there is no evidence. And just because she says that someone else was there, does not mean that we have to take her word for it. In fact, you now appear to be the only person here who gives Mary Last’s story any credence whatsoever.

Quite right, Bill, an angry Toby, red-faced and thirty-something in jeans and open necked shirt, came in. Toby was a fisherman, and Sally had the distinct feeling that he disliked her for her education and cultured accent.

The good lady here must be away with the fairies if she wants us to believe this rubbish.

Seething at the mockery in the man’s tone, Sally chose to ignore the taunts and to hold on to her reasoned approach. She wanted to give the argument one last airing. But she was tired of holding the line and her patience was running out. She looked across the table, directly at him.

To my mind, Mary Last made a compelling witness on the stand. The woman insists that she was a passenger on the night of the crash and she admits that she was there. But she swore on oath that she was sitting in the passenger seat of the 4 x 4. She also admits that she was the sole insured driver.

And she let this so-called Jean-Lois drive her brand new Jeep? Hardly. Another man, Gavin, this time a businessman for whom material goods were clearly the important things in life, interjected.

Ignoring this polite derision, Sally ploughed on, feeling all the while that this was now a lost cause. Usually a persuasive negotiator, Sally was making heavy weather of being on this jury. The opinion leaders had swung the doubters to their way of thinking, despite Sally’s best efforts. She tried again. As she did so, she ran her left hand through her short hair, a sure sign to anyone who knew Sally well that she was concealing inward exasperation.

She allowed her friend, Jean-Lois, to drive because she had one glass of wine too many. He promised her that they would be covered, third party, by his insurance. That is perfectly reasonable and plausible, surely? She looked around her at the eleven others in the room. Some were doodling. Others were looking out of the window. No one seemed to be paying more than token attention.

Her story just could be true. How many other couples go through exactly the kind of row that she says they had? On the drive back to the city from the country pub that they visited, they were in the middle of a row over when she would see him again. These things happen every night of the week, surely? Jean-Lois becomes angry. The phone rings, and he answers it. He ignores Mary’s plea to pull in. He starts an animated, friendly conversation with someone on the other end of the line – someone that Mary thinks might be a woman. Jean-Lois is now driving on full beam headlights and too fast – probably at between sixty-five and seventy miles an hour. She stretches over and shouts at him to slow down.

And she tries to persuade us in the witness box that this phantom man, Jean-Lois, cut the corner on a bend? I don’t think so. A man is dead because of that woman. His wife now has to bring three kids up on her own. And Sally here expects us to believe this cock and bull story. This was Toby again.

The fisherman threw his pencil down on his pad in a contained show of temper. Sally ignored the body language and his interruption and picked up again on the facts that Mary Last had asserted in evidence to a hushed courtroom.

It is possible. That’s all I’m asking you to accept. The small car coming towards them stood no chance. She remembers the 4 by 4 veering off the left hand kerbside. The last thing that she says she remembers was jarring through her body as her vehicle hit the ground.

Sally stopped and then could not help saying, That must have been horrific. She quickly covered her own identification with the defendant. Her account was very real. It’s hardly the kind of thing that you could just make up. Not the way that she described it so vividly. Can no one else appreciate that? She looked down the table, her tone slightly irritated.

So when she came round there were paramedics by her side, talking to her beside the open door. But they were at her right hand side? She was behind the steering The woman’s legs were broken, for God’s sake wheel? Oh come on, for God’s sake, Gavin almost shouted in his exasperation. You can’t expect us to believe that anyone, let alone that this so-called Frenchman, left a dead man in another car and moved the injured Mary Last to the driving seat of the 4 by 4. The woman’s legs were broken, for God’s sake.

The businessman looked at the foreman, inviting him to draw this rerun of the evidence to a close. The foreman sat forward in his chair. He was going to take control. Sally did not hold out much hope that he would want to swing opinion in her favour. She was right.

That was certainly Mary Last’s evidence. I have to give it to Morrison and Co. Her defence solicitors did as best they could. He paused in his reference to the case for the Defence and, for a second, Sally thought that he was opening up the debate. But she was disappointed.

But let’s look at the facts here. The Prosecution have had a field day with Mary under cross-examination. Not only did the alleged driver, Jean-Lois, disappear into the night, no one at the busy pub that they visited remembers them. Miss Last does not know the man’s address and the company that he was supposed to work for, the Prosecution have established, simply does not exist. And furthermore, if he was French, as he said he was, Customs can find no trace of such a person. It’s all a fabric of her imagination - let’s face it - just a fanciful, devious attempt to pervert the course of justice He paused and looked down the table before leaning back in his chair. I don’t think I need to ask what everyone thinks here. We have a responsibility as jury members. My view is that we must surely realize that this prosecution can only lead to a rightful finding of guilt. We have a duty to Christine Sharpe - that poor woman out there who now has no husband to support her.

Jill came in and Sally realized that the younger woman was speaking in a conciliatory tone because she saw that they were now on the homeward run. Sally listened in silent resignation.

We are sympathetic towards Mary Last, Sally, but only to a point. It’s a heavy responsibility to decide on someone’s fate, after all. And none of us liked seeing Mary in that dreadful state after she gave her evidence.

They seemed to all nod now in some sort of collective guilt. Mary Last had collapsed under the pressure of cross-examination and had had to be escorted out in her wheelchair. The court proceedings were adjourned until she was composed once again. It was the collapse of someone who had seen for herself how flimsy her evidence was; how incredible it sounded under the scrutiny and penetrating questions of the Prosecution. The discomfort amongst the jurors for the defendant at that moment was almost palpable. But it was not enough to sway their judgement or to overlook the bereaved woman who sat with such composure watching the defendant in the dock.

Sally knew that it was too late. One by one, as the hours of their deliberations went by, the members had gone over to the side of the majority view – the view of logic and of indignation that anyone should try to pull the wool over their eyes. They were not about to shift from that position at this late hour. Justice for a woman whose husband had died on impact as he drove home to his family – that was the jury’s imperative.

They trooped back to the courtroom. Cynthia, the woman who was Mary Last’s mother, was already in her seat, scrutinising the faces of the jury members as if to read the verdict in their faces. As far from her as she could seat herself, Christine Sharpe, the young bereaved woman sat, her hands set in her lap, her eyes on the jury foreman. But the anger, animation and frustration of the jurors in the jury room were now gone. In their place, there were twelve blank and inscrutable expressions. Sally could not hold eye contact with either of the women, bereaved wife or defendant’s mother, and looked to the door where Mary Last would almost immediately be wheeled in to hear her fate.

A few minutes later, Mary Last was found guilty, by majority, of causing death by dangerous driving whilst she was under the influence of alcohol. She was also convicted for the offence of seeking to pervert the course of justice.

The judge referred to the psychiatric report. Despite the lack of evidence and the insistence of the defendant that she was not the driver, the psychiatrist had found no evidence of any delusional mental state. Her injuries would heal. She would have proper physical attention in prison. He had no hesitation therefore in giving a custodial sentence. She was sentenced to four years.

A wheelchair-bound young woman, barely thirty, Mary sat, stunned and looking at the jury members in incomprehension. Sally’s heart went out in that instant to the young female graduate who in other circumstances would recently have embarked on a career in management here in the city. Now, instead, she had a jail sentence ahead of her. Cynthia Last started to cry quietly and just said No, in the softest of whispers. The wife of the dead man slumped forward as if in relief.

Sally - Sally Benjamin, Head of the School of Business Studies at City Foundation University - looked at the shattered person of Mary Last and felt profound guilt in those moments when the wheelchair-bound woman simply sat speechless. Then the convicted woman was wheeled away to start her sentence, her eyes now on her mother in a silent, tearless farewell – a farewell with some unspoken communication. The prison officer closed the door between the courtroom and the route to the convicted woman’s prison cell.

Sally’s tough headedness served her well now as she shut out the quiet, angry sobs of Cynthia Last, a woman of fifty or so, well dressed and elegant, but shrivelled now in defeat, in the seat that she had occupied just behind her daughter for the duration of the trial. The force of Mrs Last’s almost aggressive support of her daughter over the last days was dissipated.

This was more than Sally could take. She looked at Gavin, the businessman on the jury. He was looking away, maybe in embarrassment. The fisherman was silently jeering at Sally. As far as he was concerned, he had right on his side. Jill was looking at her watch and reaching for her phone. Bill, the foreman, gave her a word of comfort – she had argued her case but the logic of the defence was against her. He touched Sally briefly on the shoulder as a mark of comfort and respect. But it was cold comfort.

The jury was discharged and with that, Sally’s connection with these eleven other people ended. And if she was honest with herself, she could not blame one of them for their finding. There simply was no evidence to the contrary – just a statement on oath. Sally knew that that was just not enough to sway twelve people. They had reason and logic on their side.

With only a glance of farewell at her fellow jury members, the people whom she still felt had so badly failed to entertain the element of doubt in their deliberations and in their judgement, Sally headed out from the fast emptying courtroom into the late spring and early evening sunshine. Journalists surrounded Christine Sharpe. Sally overheard her say that justice had been done, but that would not bring back her husband.

Sally let the fresh air fill her lungs. Rationalisation set in almost immediately. After all, the convicted woman still had the chance to appeal. This conviction did not sit singly on Sally’s shoulders. She had done the best that she could. She knew of old that things like this have to be done. They also need to be left behind. She had her own life and work to get on with. The trial was over. Tomorrow would be another day. It was the easiest way to deal with the pain of what she had just experienced.

Chapter 2

Could we meet right away?

The phone call, Sally knew, was more instruction than question. When the Principal of the University called one of his colleagues, the assumption – no, the unwritten rule – was that the person concerned would drop everything and attend. The only exception to the rule was the sacrosanct lecture, and Sally’s morning was only scheduled for administration.

A mixture of irritation and curiosity was her predominant reaction as she made her way to the Principal’s suite of offices. Three days of jury service represented seriously lost time in her world - a lot would have happened.

Mark Turner’s secretary was waiting for her. Mrs Close, an attractive middle-aged woman, smiled in polite recognition, said, ‘Good morning, Professor Benjamin,’ and announced Sally’s arrival by intercom. Sally was in the Principal’s office within four minutes of his call.

In the world of equal opportunities and its contingent lack of courtesies, Mark was something of an exception. He stood up as she entered the white oak panelled room and welcomed her back to the team as if she had been absent for a month. His courteous good manners and the sincerity of his greeting to Sally - whom he had personally headhunted – had the effect of making her momentarily ashamed of her passing irritation over the interruption to her planned work schedule. If she could not find time to hear what Mark wanted to see her about, she had her priorities wrong.

Sally, tall at five foot ten inches, slim and elegant as always in her quiet city suit, liked the man who was her boss. In his mid forties and greying slightly at the temples, he would be five or so years older than she was and he was suave, well mannered and quietly spoken. Had he not been her boss and a married man with two children, she would have allowed her quiet attraction to him to show. As it was, she now, as always, presented her smiling-eyed and warm persona – the same that she would show as equally to any student or to the catering staff in the dining hall. The only distinction now was an unspoken hint of respect for her senior colleague that set the correct tone for their relationship.

It’s good news, Sally, he said as he sat down, watching her as he smiled at her. We’ve won the tender, all thanks to you.

She was alert and sitting forward in her chair, displaying quiet delight.

An emphatic yes was all that she said. She refrained from punching the air. As she spoke, she swept one hand through her short dark brown hair and smiled the smile of someone who has just heard the best of news.

On behalf of the University, you have just secured one of the biggest contracts for training ever put out to tender in this country. And you have won it here in Greater Glenburgh.

Greater Glenburgh was a boom city these days, with a vibrant economy and virtually no unemployment. In just ten years the city had built an international sports, exhibition and conference centre, doubled its visiting tourist rate and become a financial and technical centre equal to any in the country. With this economic growth, had come increasing housing demand, affluence and prosperity.

From the University’s perspective, we have already done well out of the local boom in the economy, Mark went on, as if to emphasise just how big an onward leap for the University Sally had just secured. We already offer a plethora of new opportunity for education related to industry. And we will grow again now, thanks to you.

And the team, Sally smiled, recognising the work of her absent colleagues. I couldn’t have swung the Forum without them.

The Forum to which Sally was referring was a consortium of the public services and the local business world. Together they put together a tender that Sally had bid for and had just been instrumental in securing. The tender was a proposal to develop the leaders of the city from all spheres of its activity. These leaders were the managers and bosses who were charged with taking the city even further forward in the world of the globalised economy. The umbrella organisation formed as the consortium – which became the Greater Glenburgh Forum - decided that the task was to bring together the bosses of the public sector, the local politicians, and technology and business into a programme of training in advanced management techniques. The way forward was this jointly funded project. And its supporters heralded it in the press - as the most ambitious project anywhere of its kind. Doubting Thomas journalists called it unrealistic in its aims.

And you, Sally -, and yes, your team - he continued, Have competed with six other submissions from across the country to mount this programme of change management through consultancy sessions and training programmes. And you have pulled it off between you all.

Sally sat back in her chair with a wide grin of satisfaction, one that she knew she could safely display in front of Mark. He was nodding, enjoying the prospect every bit as much as Sally.

He looked at her earnestly. Then he picked up a paper knife and looked at it, a sign of his slight discomfort at what would come next.

There’s one condition attached to the offer of the contract. And I think that we should accept it.

And that is? Somewhere inside her, a small alarm bell was ringing.

That the University should sub-contract one aspect of the Programme to a small team of management consultants – Radical Change. Douglas Becker is its chief executive.

Sally had heard of Radical Change and of Becker. The consultancy firm was one of the six other competitors for the contract. And they had a high reputation throughout the country, created in very recent years by Becker who now regularly featured in British and American monthly management magazines. The partial award to Radical Change would mean having to share the work and the kudos, not to mention the financial settlement that would go with the contract.

Is there no way out of this? she almost groaned.

Mark shook his head.

I don’t think so. At the end of the day, we have to keep the Forum happy. And, let’s be honest, Radical Change are very small beer by comparison with the University. Apart from the logistics of working with them, and apart from the loss of perhaps ten percent of the whole contract to them, there should be no problem and perhaps some advantages. He leant forward in his chair. Can you work with them?

Sally knew that the meaning behind the words of Mark’s question was actually I want you to work with them. She respected her boss and his judgement and pulled into line right away.

Sounds OK. I don’t know Becker personally, but by all accounts, he is going places. I take it that their submission was better in that area than ours – change management, I mean?

In part only, I believe, but enough for the Forum to want their contribution. But overall, Sally, this is big and the congratulations go to you. Well done.

That was it. She would have to look at Radical Change’s submission and see what she had missed in her own proposal such that she had lost a significant part of the work to another interest. But it was not worth spoiling the moment and the overall significance of what she had just achieved. A ninety percent achievement in such high stakes was no mean feat. Right now, Mark could just as easily be criticising her in some quiet way for not landing the whole tender, but he was not doing that. He was treating this as outright success, which was obviously how he had handled things in her absence this week. He could have argued the toss with the Forum and demanded the whole contract, threatening that, otherwise, the University would withdraw. He had used his renowned elder statesman approach in his judgement and nine tenths of the contract was now theirs. So be it.

There will be a press announcement later on today by the Greater Glenburgh Forum. So you will most likely be asked for an interview and should be on the regional TV at six. OK?

No problem, she indicated as she stood to leave. And neither was it. Sally was well used to giving interviews at this stage of her career. This was big, though, and Mark was allowing her to front the publicity. She appreciated it.

Mark offered one more piece of information.

Oh, and by the way, I took the liberty of inviting Radical Change to lunch on Monday first. Douglas Becker has accepted. Provided that we all agree, we then accept the contract.

Fine, Mark. There was no point in discussing these arrangements. Mark had used his judgement in her absence on jury duty. That had to be respected.

As she was heading to the door, Mark changed the subject.

It’s a sad business about that drink driving case, by the way. It was in the paper this morning.

Mark waved his hand towards the broadsheet on his coffee table. She had not noticed it till now. She was in management, I gather?"

A picture of Mary Last was on the front page and the strap line, Sally could see, was ‘Jail for Woman Road Killer’.

Must have been pretty gruelling for you. I’m surprised that you did not know the woman, he went on.

No, I didn’t know her. She was new to the city. She said nothing about the view she had formed that the woman just might be innocent.

Pity. You might have been spared jury service if you had already met her professionally. You rather missed the action here this week.

He seemed genuine. Mark was a very honourable man; one who would truly wish that Sally, the one who had done all the preparation for this moment, had been here in the thick of the action during this week of successful outcomes. How different he was from so many bosses she had seen - those who leave their junior colleagues to do all the work and then cream off the goodies at just the right moment.

She smiled at him in silent acknowledgment. He really was a pleasure to work with.

As she walked back to her office, her day’s work ahead of her now with a very different, more pressing feel to it. But Mark’s words about the jury being gruelling stayed with her. He was right. That was just what they had been. Even so, she could not feel regretful. Gruelling and trapping as the three days were, the experience of jury duty stayed with her. But as she distanced herself from the experience, she wondered why she had had such a strong feeling about Mary Last. After all, there had been no evidence at all. Did that Frenchman really exist, or was he some sort of surreal whitewash of a defence put up by a troubled woman and her gullible lawyer, each prepared to argue a case that had no evidence and that the police had failed to properly investigate?

But, as she entered her department, she was greeted by a small barrage of waiting journalists and cameramen, all being marshalled to a sitting area by a protective Helen. The trial was soon out of her head.

Chapter 3

She almost raged inside in a silent exasperation born of sharing her partner with his ex-wife. Alan was doing it again. He was allowing Judy to pull his unseen strings. And there was nothing that Sally could do about it.

His explanations were always so reasonable. Sally could see, even if Alan could not, that Judy had him caught in a form of moral blackmail over the children.

Harry is my son, Sally. I told you last week that he was due to swim in the all-school championships. Every child wants his parents there. Harry wants me there. That’s reasonable, surely?

They were sitting over dinner in Sally’s apartment, the wine of their Friday evening meal slightly befuddling Sally’s reasoning. She knew it and she was doing the best she could to keep cool and to argue her case without losing her temper. It was an argument that had been going on now for the last hour since Alan came in the door. In the way that partners do, they started to exchange news of the day, but Alan’s announcement about the plans he had for the following morning put paid to any opportunity she might have to tell him her news about the contract.

Another goal for Judy. Nil score to Sally. Her words were sardonic and she knew it. But the wine was having its effect and she simply did not care.

She is right, you know. It will look so much better to Harry and Joyce, if Judy and I go together to the championships and present a united front. Alan’s voice was more troubled than angry.

A calm, thoughtful man, he was used to the tension that existed between them over his erstwhile marriage and the children. It brought rows into the relationship. Tonight, once again, neither of them was prepared - or perhaps able - to move beyond the impasse that would be the inevitable outcome of this row, just as it was of every other one. Alan hated it and would have been living with Sally by now if he had had his way. He said often enough that all he wanted was to spend his time with her. The children were important but not as important as Sally. But living together was not for Sally. She justified her decision by blaming the ambivalence that Alan still carried about his ex wife and the kids.

He sat looking into his wine glass, miserable that he was being torn between his duties to his two children and Sally’s expectations of how they should spend their weekends. Sally could see how troubled he was but a part of her emotions had closed down as soon as the subject of Alan’s family came up and she could not unfreeze. Alan tried to reason with her.

Children just can’t be turned on and off, Monday to Friday, so that you and I can have our weekends. They have events at the weekend like the rest of us, you know. He continued before Sally could respond, It’s not a question of Judy winning and you losing. I really do try to look after you and us.

It was feeble as far as Sally was concerned. Alan sighed as if he knew that the row would go nowhere; have no resolution. He got up from the table and started to clear dishes into the dishwasher, seeking some way out of the impasse.

Sally brooded at the table. It was not that she resented the children that much. She knew what they meant to Alan and she had long since chosen to respect that, even if she had no strong feelings for them herself. To the children, she was and probably always would be the other woman, the instrument of their parents’ failed marriage, no matter how untrue that was. No, it was simply that she sensed that Judy still had a powerful effect on Alan. His ex-wife seemed sometimes like a sort of pivotal point around which he was circling, sometimes on a long radius, sometimes a short one. This evening, it was short.

There was no point in changing the subject. The damage to the evening was done. But she tried anyway.

I swung that contract for the University. The one for the City.

Yes. I know. I saw it on TV. You looked good.

Is that all you can say? I looked good? For God’s sake, Alan, I’m bursting a gut at work and I pull off a coup and all you can say is that I looked good?

In fact it had been a good interview, broadcast by the regional TV boys to the nation on the evening news. She was elated at the way she fielded the questions and she delayed leaving the office till she saw the item on air.

She looked in disbelief at Alan as he stood there, dishcloth in hand. Then they both saw the humour of the moment at the same time. Alan, the house-proud architect was the least ambitious man she knew. He never had been and probably never would be on TV. She was the most ambitious woman that he knew. They both admitted the truth of this to the other often enough. Somewhere in their sexual lives, it brought some sort of frisson to the way they enjoyed sexual power in bed. Now there was a way out of the impasse.

All you can say is that I looked good? I’ll teach you to think only about how I look. Come here. She stood and moved towards him, laughing seductively now, her eyes inviting him to yield.

And I’ll show you what I appreciate about you most – mind or body.

Now, sitting up in bed, the passion and pleasure of their hours of the evening spent, the distance between Sally and her partner was once again palpable. It was early morning and the day loomed. The issue of Harry’s swimming championship had not gone away. She was electing silence. In an hour he would be up, dressed and away and what was to have been a good Saturday together, prowling the antique shops for ivory handled knives, had turned into an empty span of time alone.

She was angry with him to the point of rejecting him. One word and she could despatch him now, putting an end to two years of highs and lows that sometimes reached the point of being intolerable. Sally was tempted. Would he never see the subtle, devious manipulation of that woman? She was tempted, but then she always felt this way when they rowed. She tried to keep her cool.

In the silence, Alan was stroking her thighs, trying to soothe her with actions when he knew that words would be futile. If he was miserable, there was nothing that she would do about it.

She moved her thighs. At least she could send him into the day with something to hold him to her; something that Judy could no longer offer. She held that power over Alan; she held it over Judy. Of that, she was certain. Well, of that she chose to be certain – any other thought would be unbearable.

She let him respond to her apparent and then real arousal and quickly – she felt that he must be clock-watching – they repeated their lovemaking of the night before. This time it was with unspoken urgency and underlying distress.

I’ve got to go, he said, fifteen minutes later. He left the bed and headed for the shower. Thirty minutes after that he kissed her. They were thirty minutes in which virtually nothing was said. He searched her dark brown eyes for access to her, saw that there was none and just said,

I’ll be back about five. He was still miserable and she was not going to say anything to alleviate that for him. He had chosen family over her. That was the bottom line.

Damn you, Alan, she muttered as the door closed. She did not know whether he heard it or not. She hoped he did.

This modern flat that normally captivated her and gave a feel-good factor of security was like a vacuum in the minutes after he left. She wandered from bedroom to bathroom, through the square hallway to the stainless steel designer kitchen and then back through the hall to the large square and minimalist lounge with its cream coloured leather furniture. The place was empty without the man whom she loved so much and who frustrated her so much. What was that quotation, she thought, about when one person is absent the whole world seems somehow depopulated?

This is living half a relationship, she thought, crystallising the notion into unspoken words for the first time.

She opened the patio doors and stepped out into the morning sun to look down onto the so-called Riviera of Greater Glenburgh – the seaboard coast town of the city where thousands of new apartments and dockland conversions were turning the area into a regenerated suburbia for the city’s affluent intelligentsia.

Until now, she had simply kept saying to herself that Alan would make his commitment to her, just as she was committed to him – unreservedly, and completely. Or was she? Could she really be with Alan full time? But the new thought was painful.

After all, two years is a long time to be blindly in love. We all have to move beyond that point, don’t we? she reasoned to herself, as she looked out beyond the sea promenade below to the haze that was both water and sky. She knew that she was in part lying, indulging even, in self-delusion. If she were committed she would be living with Alan by now. She would have dealt with the Judy issue that way. But she was not prepared to answer her question as to why she kept putting off moving in together. Not yet. If she answered that she might have to look at her failure to make any commitment to anyone, let alone Alan. Better to hang the issue on the ever present ex wife.

"Is half a loaf better than no bread at all? Is half a relationship better than no relationship at all? No, these aren’t the questions. The question is, is half a good relationship better than no relationship at all?" she thought, struggling to allow the painful question to solidify from the vapours of her preconscious.

She could not face answering that. That would be too painful. It could lead to a decision that she did not want to take, a decision to end this half relationship.

The ring of the phone interrupted her train of thought. She lifted it in the lounge and said hello, just as she always did.

I see you, Sally.

The voice was muffled and croaky and obviously disguised. It could be that of a man or a woman. Sally could not be sure which.

Who is this? She was alert at once, an unpleasant tingle of vague fear running through her. But the phone line went silent, the line still open. She said nothing. A few seconds later, the line went dead.

She put her momentary fear aside and dialled the recall number. The machine voice told her what she knew that it would – that she had been called at 10.42 and that the caller withheld their number.

Exasperated, she clicked on the answer phone and went to shower but, with a sudden thought, she checked first that the front door to the outer hallway was locked. It was. It was not that easy to dismiss the fear that she had just felt.

But she had put the call out of her mind by the time that she was out in the sun and walking the promenade to catch the bus to the city centre. She was not going to allow the call to frighten her, or preoccupy her. And she was damned if she was going to spend the day waiting for Alan to show up. Nor was she going to buy food and cook for him like a dutiful wife. Sod him. They would eat out later or get a takeaway delivered. If