CHAPTER 16
“Michael.”
I swung around when I heard the voice. It was coming from an older-looking lady. She stood next to us, clutching a shopping bag.
“Mrs. Devereux,” Mike said sweetly, and then looked over at me in panic. “This is my primary-school teacher, Mrs. Devereux,” he said, very pointedly. It took a few moments for my brain to click. Excuse me for being somewhat slow, but my brain had been very much occupied with something else entirely.
“Oh! Oh!” I said. “Nice to meet you.”
“I was also his grandmother’s best friend,” she added. “I used to change his diapers when he was a baby, if you can believe it.”
I looked at Mike as his face went slightly red, and I tried to bite back a smile. “You don’t say.”
“And who might you be, dear?” she asked me.
“Sorry, this is Becca,” he jumped in quickly.
“Becca.” She extended her hand for me to shake. “So nice to see Michael with a lady friend. It’s been ages since he’s been seen with a female companion. Well, not since April, anyway.”
“Uh . . . Well, it’s only just May, so that’s not very long ago,” I said.
She burst out laughing. “Oh, you are a funny one. I meant April the girl, not the month.”
“Mrs. Devereux, please, I’m sure Becca doesn’t want to hear about that now,” he said, shaking his head a little.
“Took him by complete surprise, that did. Took us all by surprise. I mean, half the town was sure they would get married, but, as it turned out, she fancied someone else altogether. If you ask me, she was always a little cold. But her father was Swiss, you know.” She whispered that last part, as if it had some great significance. And then she leaned in and lowered her voice even more. “Very strict people, the Swiss, what with their watches!”
“Aaaah,” I said, trying to figure out whether I agreed with this sweeping assessment of an entire nation. I looked over at Mike and he rolled his eyes.
“There are no secrets in this place,” he said, half under his breath.
She looked at me and smiled. “He’s been quite the most eligible bachelor in town since she broke his heart, all those years ago.”
“He is, is he?” I tried to stop my smile again.
“No.” Mike shook his head at me again. “Not true.”
Mrs. Devereux nodded. “Turned into such a good man, despite the fact he was a terror as a child.”
“Really?” I asked.
She nodded. “So misbehaved in class. And, when he was a teenager, he had the whole town talking when he and his friends drew some rather obscene graffiti . . .” She leaned in and whispered to me. “It was a big, purple phallus. Right on Anthony Hopewell’s front wall. He nearly had an angina, the poor soul. He’d only just had his other hip done, you know.” She shook her head and then tutted loudly. “Mind you, maybe he deserved to have it. You know, he left his poor wife Violet for his physiotherapist . . .” She leaned in even closer to me now and looked around, as if making sure no one was listening. “She was from the Channel Islands. The mistress.”
I looked at her and she eyeballed me as if I was meant to know what that meant. As if I was meant to understand what being from the Channel Islands had to do with any of this. I had no idea, but I started nodding, anyway. “Well, you know what they say about people from the Channel Islands,” I offered up, lamely.
And then she winked at me. “Oh, I do know, dear,” she said.
“You do?” I asked.Whatdothey say about people from the Channel Islands?
And then she put her finger over her lips and made a shushing sound. “We’ll keep that to ourselves, though, won’t we, dear?”
I nodded again. “We sure will.” I quickly made a mental note to google people from the Channel Islands.
“Yes,” she said, looking back at Mike, “he was quite the naughty one, growing up, but look at him now.”
I gazed at Mike. He was hanging his head now, looking embarrassed.
“Sounds like he was quite the rebel!” I said.
