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‘I know that Sabrina took your purse.’
Marielle’s face dropped. She looked mortified. ‘I see. And now you’re going to tell me I’m the biggest fool to walk god’s earth, aren’t you?’
‘I am so not. You have the biggest heart of anyone I know and you did more than your duty for her, but it’s up to her now to sort herself out.’
Sylvie waved over the waitress for the bill and as Sylvie was getting out her bank card, Marielle’s brain started to spin.
‘Hang on, how did you know?’ she asked her friend.
‘I bumped into Flick in the post office yesterday. She was very upset. She told me and I’m afraid that I couldn’t sit back and do nothing. I—’
This was getting weirder.
‘How did Flick know?’
‘Cilla told her. They had lunch together on Sunday and apparently it came out in a bit of a row.’
Marielle’s features squeezed further into an expression of utter confusion.
‘What came out?’
‘About your purse going missing. Cilla made her swear not to say anything though and I had to convince Flick that she wouldn’t go to hell for telling me and breaking an oath—’
‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ Marielle pressed her fingertips into her temples, thinking hard, back-tracking, putting events in order. ‘No, no, that’s not right. That can’t be.’
‘What’s the matter?’ Sylvie asked her.
‘Sylvie, I didn’t tell anyone about the purse when I couldn’t find it. No one. If I was going to tell anyone it would have been you, and I certainly wouldn’t have said anything to Cilla about it. I’ve only spoken to her the once recently anyway, when she came up to the house to tell me off the day we went to see Psychic Pat, so this doesn’t make any sense because I didn’t even know it was missing until long after she’d left…’
Her voice trailed off as she replayed the scene of Cilla’s visit in her head. Cilla barking at her, Marielle wanting to make peace with some tea. She’d filled up the kettle and put it on. Then she’d opened up the cupboard hunting around for the best mugs and the matching plate for some biscuits. She would have had her back to Cilla throughout. She’d only discovered her purse wasn’t in her bag five minutes before she and Sabrina were going out of the door that evening.
‘Sylvie, there is only one way Cilla could have known about my purse.’
‘Oh god, Marielle,’ said Sylvie. It was her turn now to look mortified.
Chapter 38
It was a foul day, which was good because nobody in their right mind was on the beach apart from a couple of hardened dog-owners, but even they’d make it quick. Through a practised process of elimination, Orrible had worked out the optimum size of rock he’d need to have any chance of hitting that handbag, which was still hanging tantalisingly. He’d come pretty close to it recently but today was the day; he was not going home until it was his. He arrived at the site with a bag for life full of rocks and bricks that he’d collected and began chucking them until his arm gave up and he had to stop and roll his shoulder. It was still aching from being twisted the last time he’d been the recipient of one of Square’s armbars. He was meant to have it, he knew. It was fate that the owner of the handbag had lost her memory and hadn’t gone into Slattercove police station and told them that the bloke who had nicked her car looked like someone who should have been dancing up the yellow brick road with Judy Garland. She’d only have had to mention ‘floppy hat’ and the rozzers would have been round at his house faster than you could say ‘brain’.
The rain was getting stupid now; he picked up one of the rocks that had come tumbling back to him down the cliff face like a homing stone, and pitched it, roaring as he did so as if that would help take it higher up, but it didn’t work, landing well south of its target. It had become a battle of wills for him: man versus handbag. It was the last thing he thought of at night and the first thing he thought of when he woke up. It was a compulsion stronger even than keeping on the right side of Billy.
He was just straightening up from retrieving the rock at his feet when a seagull mistook his hat for something edible and swooped, screeching at him.
‘Oy, you bloody thing,’ Orrible said as it soared upwards, the hat in its beak. He lobbed the rock in his hand which, by some miracle, hit the seagull full on in the wing and drove it smack into the cliff wall but, luckily for the gull, the impact was softened by the bag. And luckily for Orrible, the collision caused the branch it was caught on to snap clean off. Orrible watched in joyful amazement as his hat, the seagull and the bag fell down to the beach in a holy trinity. The seagull gave its head a shake, righted itself and flew off none the worse for its ordeal. Had it died, Orrible thought he just might have given it a state funeral.
He lumbered up to the prom to catch the bus home, though he could have floated there without the need of a vehicle, so euphoric he was about winning this long-drawn-out campaign. He fully intended to save the whole surprise of what the bag contained until he was sitting at the kitchen table with a celebratory can of cold lager but he’d had a quick dabble inside and there was a fabulously fat purse and a passport. He recognised the woman’s photo in it. So, she was called Polly Potter then. He thought she looked nicerwithout all that make-up that she’d been wearing up on the cliff top. He clutched the bag to him for the prize it was and quickened his pace as the bus he wanted was just about to pull in and save him from the rain. Could this day get any better?
The doorsshhh-ed open and he stood back while the woman alighted. She was carrying a black bin liner and when she raised her head and her eyes locked onto his, he knew her straight away because he’d just been looking at her photograph in her passport.What were the blimming chances?
Sabrina registered the scrawny, scruffy man with the string for a belt and the floppy hat, holding a woman’s large handbag. She’d seen him before. In a field where her uncle’s car had crashed many years before, the black eyes that took in everything, the insects scratching inside him.Her Uncle Ed, her Auntie Rina. Would you like to come and live with us? Seagulls and the seaside, the old cat next door, the crash, Benidorm. It’s for the best.Thoughts and feelings and sounds and words burst a dam wall inside her, totally drowning her brain. She couldn’t breathe.
She put one foot on the ground and her legs crumpled beneath her.
‘Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph, not again,’ said Orrible.
Chapter 39
Teddy couldn’t understand why Sabrina hadn’t come in to work. He’d been thinking about her all night and after their chat, he couldn’t wait to see her, be in her orbit, know she was close by. It was enough for now. He rang his mum to ask if she knew where she was, but he couldn’t get hold of her either. He was debating whether to take a quick drive up to Big Moon when he saw Marielle walking towards the restaurant and he went to unlock the door for her.
