Page 35 of A Curious Ending

Sarah looked at Lara significantly. ‘That’s why I asked Kate along. I think she needs to talk to you,’ Sarah said softly.

‘Ah, you know yourself, Sarah, she was a good woman, the best. But the truth is I just don’t know… look I know the doc said an overdose, but was it? I keep thinking, and I can’t sleep… and… well… do you think it was because of me?’ Kate’s stream of agitated speech stopped for a moment, but she kept rocking.

Lara was completely lost. Where had this come from? She glanced over her shoulder to where Abby was sitting at a table behind her. For once Abby was looking equally blank.

Kate was off again, this time looking at Lara, ‘Do you think the family knew? That poor sweet woman, she was one of kind.’

Eventually Lara spoke, ‘Kate I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

Kate just looked at her and shook her head.

It was left to Sarah to explain. ‘Kate used to go there to do Lady Porter’s hair and so was often in the house. Well, Lady Porter told her that the family kept trying to stop her drinking, and made a big fuss about doing her shopping, saying they were helping her out, but they stopped buying the stuff she really liked, and that included what she liked to drink. So Kate used to sneak a bottle of her favourite gin in with her sometimes. She always drank Hendrick’s.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Lara nodded. ‘She always used that when she was mixing us a Pink Gin.’

Sarah gave Lara an appraising look. ‘So you were quite friendly then?’

Lara nodded again, but did not want to go into details. She was much more interested in getting to the bottom of what Kate was talking about. Kate had by now drunk most of her wine and was looking appealingly at the two other women. ‘Do you think it’s the drink that killed her? Do you think it was because of me?’ she said again.

Sarah turned once more to Lara. ‘Kate’s got it into her head that it was the medication mixed with the drink she’d brought that killed her, and maybe that was why the family didn’t want her drinking. I mean, she obviously was on some sort of medication.’

Lara thought about the sleeping pills that Lady Porter did not apparently have a prescription for, and of the bottle of pills they had found in Penny Porter’s bathroom. But she could hardly tell Sarah and Kate about these.

Sarah now turned to Kate. ‘Look, all you did was bring her a gift occasionally. Of course you didn’t poison her. She was an adult, why shouldn’t she have a drink in the evening if she wanted to? She was perfectly capable of working out whether she could mix it with her medication.’

But would she have been able to, Lara wondered, if she had had a few too many?

‘I just thought they didn’t do right by her,’ Kate had now stopped rocking but was still very distressed. ‘Lady P said Richard and Penny kept going on about her wasting money. She was fiercely upset about it. They treated her like a child. I just thought if I got to my seventies and I had a family like that I would want a drink.’ Tears were now welling up in Kate’s eyes. ‘And I know when Penny did her shopping, Lady P always said there were things on the receipt that she never gave her and the stuff Penny did bring her was always the cheap stuff. She said the gin she brought was disgusting and tasted like loo cleaner.’

Lara suddenly recalled the few times Lady Porter complained of feeling ill, she had said it was because she was drinking the wrong gin. Lara had thought she was joking.

Kate said defiantly, ‘But she wasn’t a drinker. I don’t care what her family said. She never had more than one drink while I did her hair.’

Lara had now got the gist of what Kate was saying, and she joined Sarah in reassuring her that she had not killed her friend by bringing her the odd bottle of gin. By the end of ten minutes Kate was calmer and they even managed to make her smile. Eventually, she headed off to the cloakroom to get some tissues and to tidy up the mascara tracks smearing her face.

Lara looked at Sarah. ‘Wow,’ she said.

‘I know,’ Sarah replied. ‘Kate is fantastic, but she does worry a lot. I knew this had been eating away at her.’

Lara thought of the woman who she had sometimes seen around the town and who had occasionally bought flowers from her. Kate had always seemed so confident and popular. She seemed to know everyone in the town. But as Dr Patil had said, how well did you ever know what was going on in someone’s mind? There was one thing Lara was sure of and she voiced it now.

‘She really loved Lady Porter, didn’t she?’

‘We all did,’ Sarah replied. And Lara felt something easing within her and the expression, ‘You are among friends’ came into her mind.

‘The thing is,’ Sarah continued, glancing quickly at the door to the customers’ bathroom, ‘Kate won’t hear a single bad word about her. I’m sure Lady Porter did drink. She was in here a couple of times when she’d had a few. I just don’t tell Kate that.’

Lara nodded, thinking it was not something she would want to tell Kate either.

Sarah glanced in the direction of the customers’ bathroom and leant forward, her voice urgent. ‘Look, Lara, there’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you. That time at the fete. I’m so sorry I said that about your stall. It really was beautiful and afterwards I thought what a bitchy thing it was to say.’

‘But true,’ Lara said ruefully.

‘Oh, we all make mistakes. My God, if someone picked me up on everything I did wrong in the early days I would never have got out of bed. I’m really sorry. It was just—’

At that point Kate reappeared in the shop and Lara was left wondering what Sarah had been going to say. Something about Julian? She looked towards Kate who was unpacking a bottle of wine that she had brought with her, giving it to Sarah to open. She remembered Kate’s scoffing laughter and wondered if she could ever ask her about that. In the end she said, apologetically to Sarah, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t bring any wine with me.’

‘You can walk around with some flowers tomorrow,’ Abby suggested.