Part 3 (1/2)

'Rufus was talking to one of the firemen. They were still here this morning.'

'What about Maddie?'

'Oh, she died.' Wigwam's face crumpled. 'She was downstairs when it happened '

Sarah hugged her friend. She felt weepy herself now, having latched on to an image: a fair child, a pair of yellow jellies; the kind of tear-trigger newspapers relied on, but genuine enough for that. 'Come on. Let's go.' They were surplus to requirements, rubberneckers at a tragedy, and it wasn't a role she enjoyed seeing herself in. But looking for somebody specific to share the blame, she saw that the man on the waterfront had gone, and a couple of policemen now stood in his place. This was not necessarily a significant development. But Sarah could not shake the man's picture from her head, and it stayed with her as she and Wigwam walked into town.

That morning she had cleared the dinner party debris, vacuumed the sitting room, changed the bed linen and polished the wooden handrail that ran alongside the stairs; she had cleaned the mirrors in the bathroom, swept the front path and had a long internal dialogue as to whether to defrost the fridge or wait until the weekend. She had eaten two bowls of muesli, five digestive biscuits and all four mints left over from last night. She had opened the Guardian jobs section, closed it, and turned to the TV listings instead; had watched the last half of a pro-gramme that taught her how to find the railway station in Italian, and the first half of one about early colonial administration in Australia. She had been seriously thinking about the remaining digestive biscuits, trading the calories against agreeing to defrost the fridge that afternoon, when common sense had prompted her to leave the house instead.

Now she was eating a slice of strawberry cheesecake while Wigwam explained the Singleton family: 'Her husband was killed a few years ago.'

She'd never realized South Oxford had such a high body count. 'Killed how?'

'He was a soldier.' Wigwam made the statement a flat inevitability, as if being in the military were itself a terminal condition. 'He fought in the Gulf War, can you imagine that?'

Sarah could. It wasn't as outrageous as Wigwam seemed to think: somebody had to have fought there, else it would have been over too fast. 'And that's where he was killed?'

'No, of course not. Dinah's only four. Four and a bit. No, he was in some kind of accident in a helicopter or something. I think in Cyprus.'

'You only think so, Wigwam? You're slipping.'

She stuck her tongue out. Then said, 'It was four years ago. There was a few of them killed. Him and some other soldiers. Dinah wasn't even born.'

'Did you know him?'

'Course not. This was before they moved here, silly.'

Talking to Wigwam was a window to another world. If CNN ever started a rolling gossip channel, they had their anchorwoman right here. On the other hand, she did expect you to keep up. Sarah should have known when Maddie Singleton moved into the area: more than a duty, this was her holy obligation. What happened where you lived was of paramount concern. A war might rumble into life thousands of miles away, but who the neighbours were having round next Friday, that was news.

'Exploding, though,' Wigwam said, and shook her head. 'If you were a soldier you'd expect it, wouldn't you? Sort of. But not a soldier's wife.'

Sarah avoided confronting whether soldiers expected to be blown up by taking a bite of cheesecake. 'I don't suppose she knew much about it.'

'That's the best way to go,' Wigwam said with an authority that sounded born of experience, though presumably wasn't. She nibbled at her apple pie. 'But so young,' she added, m.u.f.fled. 'You wouldn't wish it on anybody.'

'I don't know. How about Gerard?'

Wigwam winced, to indicate that there were some things you couldn't joke about, but also gave a quick smile to show that Sarah was forgiven. 'Is he very important? Gerard Inchon?'

'He thinks so.'

'I didn't like him very much.'

Sarah laughed. 'Neither did I, Wigwam. Neither did I.'

'Why are rich people horrid?'

'Maybe you have to be horrid to get rich, I don't know.' She looked at the cake on her fork. 'You know what I found myself thinking, though? That he was also horrid because he was fat.' She shuddered. 'This is me speaking. A couple more mornings like today, I'll be the same size as a helicopter.'

'You're not fat.'

'I eat. It's all I do these days. I do housework and I eat. I also watch telly, but I eat while I'm doing that too. Sometimes I have the telly on while I'm doing the housework, come to think of it. If I did that and ate all at once, think how much time I'd save.'

'You're just depressed. Have you been looking for another job?'

'Barely. The first month I applied for everything, and got exactly no interviews. You lose heart.'

'You should take up something.'

Sarah groaned. 'I don't want a hobby, Wigwam. I want a life.'

'Jobs aren't everything.'

Wigwam would know. She had about seven, luckily all part-time. Sarah felt a pang of guilt: doing housework kept Wigwam's kids fed. Other people's housework. It was probably easier not to obsess on it when it wasn't your own, but even so it didn't make for a career.

'Why did he say it was a bomb, though?' Wigwam asked suddenly.

'Who?'

'That Gerard. Rufus says it was probably a gas main. That's what it was, wasn't it? When houses blow up, it's usually the gas. Or else they've been keeping something inflammable in the cellar.'

There were times when Sarah wondered what it was like inside Wigwam's brain. She was either gifted with unusual insights, or had been stranded on this planet as a small child.

'But Gerard said straight off it was a bomb. Why did he say that?'

'I don't know.'

'It was an awful thing to say.' Wigwam's eyes filled with tears again. 'Who would want to blow up Maddie Singleton?'

'Or whoever was with her.'

'What?'

'Maybe it was the man with her they were trying to blow up.' A thought occurred to her. 'It was a man, wasn't it?'

'I expect so. She was Catholic.'

There was a certain tortured logic to this, so Sarah let it pa.s.s. Besides, she'd had another thought. 'If she was seeing somebody on the quiet . . .'

'Maddie?'

'Yes. Somebody might be missing a man.'

Wigwam let this sink in. Then her eyes grew round in horror, tinged ever so slightly with delight. 'Oh no!'

'h.e.l.l of a piece of news to wake up to.'

'That's terrible. To find your partner was unfaithful and it got him killed!'

'I'm not sure. If I found out Mark was having an affair, I'd be quite pleased to learn in the next breath he'd been blown to kingdom come.'