Page 33 of Worse Than Murder
She goes over to the window and pulls back the curtains. Trees are down in the middle of the road; rain is pouring down in sheets. Debris litters the ground, and a fence panel has smashed through the windscreen of Kitty Routledge’s Volvo across the road.
Lynne’s scared. She hates bad weather, storms in particular, for obvious reasons. She hates the fact she’s alone. She hates that Iain is out in this and she’s powerless to help. She hasn’t heard from Alison since lunchtime. Where is she right now?
She grabs her phone from the coffee table and rings her daughter. It rings out until the voicemail kicks in. She wasn’t planning on leaving a message but suddenly thinks that, if Alison sees a missed call from her mother, she’ll likely panic and think something’s happened.
‘Alison, it’s me,’ Lynne begins. She’s trying, but failing, to sound calm. ‘I just want to make sure you’re all right. I’m guessing you’re very busy right now, but give me a call when you can. It’ll be?—’
Lynne screams and drops her phone as a tree comes crashing through her living room window.
* * *
Sally and Philip have taken Carl and the two dogs into Carl’s bedroom at the rear of the building. It’s sheltered by the woods and hopefully muffles the sound and danger of the storm. I remain in the living room, transfixed by the raging tempest. It’s difficult to imagine that less than a day ago I was running in the midst of a heatwave beneath the brilliant blue sky. Now, that sky is angry and is unleashing hell upon the earth. The destructiveness inside of me is on the side of Mother Nature. Tear this planet apart. We’re destroying it anyway, as well as each other.
Another tree falls and crashes onto the concrete car park. Fortunately, it’s free of vehicles. The lights go out, plunging the room into darkness. I pick up a storm lamp from the windowsill and turn it on. I see myself reflected in the black mirror of the window. A flash of lightning lights up the scene. It hits a tree beside the lake which falls against another with such force they are both uprooted and fall into the water.
I’ve seen storms before, but nothing of this magnitude. It’s electrifying and, after all these years of wondering why gawkers stand on the outskirts of a crime scene, I now know how they feel. Witnessing something dark and destructive is additive. Around me is total chaos, but I’ve never felt more alive as I watch the dance of a broken power cable spitting out blue sparks. I leave the living room and go out into the hallway. Everything in my head is screaming at me to remain indoors, but I defy all logic. I can hear my heart pounding in my ears. I throw open the front door and step out into the wildness of nature.
Lynne Pemberton is shattered. She hasn’t been to sleep yet, and it’s now getting light.
The storm raged until the early hours of the morning before it eventually began to die down. However, the damage had been done, not only to Lynne’s house, but to the village as a whole. Lynne hasn’t been out yet as she’s still battling to save her own home.
After the tree had crashed through her living room window, and the initial panic and horror subsided, she set about covering all the furniture with any old duvet covers and blankets that she could find to protect them from the rain that was lashing into the room. She immediately called Alison, leaving a panicking voicemail, and Iain, where she screamed at him to return home.
There was nothing any of them could do until the tree, a mighty oak more than a hundred years old, was removed. Iain called Frank who has the next farm up and asked if he could come straight over. He’d been in the process of chopping the felled tree outside the school into manageable moveable pieces, but he came as soon as he could. By three o’clock, Iain was hammering up sheet board with Lynne, Alison and Claire holding it in place. The only thing they could do then was wait until daylight and the electricity coming back on before a full survey of the damage could be done.
‘I loved this carpet,’ Lynne says as she squelches through the living room into the kitchen. ‘I’m guessing it can’t be saved.’
‘We need to get it taken up and see if the floorboards beneath are damaged or soaked. They’ll need to dry out before we can lay a new one.’
‘What about my sofa?’ she asks, looking longingly at it.
‘We might be able to clean it. You did the right thing in pushing it out of the way and covering it,’ he says, putting his arm around her shoulders.
‘I know they’re only things,’ she says, emotions rising in her throat. ‘They can easily be replaced, but… they’reourthings.’
‘It could have been much worse. You could have been standing at the window when it crashed through. I could have lost you.’
‘Don’t say that,’ she shudders.
‘It’s true.’ Iain’s phone vibrates in his back pocket. He pulls it out and looks at the text message. ‘It’s from Frank. He says the people from the electric board are here to try and restore power. Are you still planning on going over to see that detective?’
‘What? Oh, yes. I’ll go later. There’s no rush. I’m guessing Alison will have too much to keep her busy over the next few days to worry about the past.’
She slumps into a wooden chair brought in from the kitchen.
‘Are you all right?’ Iain asks when he notices the angst on his wife’s face.
‘The last time there was a major storm here we were plunged into a nightmare. Now, it’s happening all over again.’
Iain squats down to her level and wraps his arm around her, pulling her tightly into a hug. He rests her head against his chest and brushes her hair.
Neither of them says anything. They don’t need to. They are both thinking the same thing. Their thirty-year secret is about to be blown wide open by an interfering DCI from Sheffield, and there is nothing they can do about it except wait for the fallout.
* * *
It’s a much colder morning. A stiff breeze is blowing. The heatwave is over, and Philip, Sally and me are surveying the restaurant from the far side of the car park. There are a few missing roof tiles. A couple of trees have fallen which need to be removed before the restaurant can open later, but Nature’s Diner seems to have been in favour this time around.
‘Close call,’ Philip says.
