The Ambleside Alibi: 2 Read Online Free

doesn’t go down well in these parts to get all snotty. Keep on the right side of people, is my advice. You never know when you’ll need them.’
    That was probably true, thought Simmy disconsolately. When the winter weather descended and the fells were deep in snow, it would be a big reassurance to know that everyone was prepared to help you out. The road down from Troutbeck that she had to traverse every day would be lethal if it iced over. The network of gossip would surely turn into something more benign and constructive when people had to huddle together in a blizzard. Simmy’s mother only laughed when she voiced these concerns. ‘It’s never as bad as you’re imagining,’ she said. ‘It’s not Iceland, you know. Here on the west coast we can sometimes get through a whole winter with no snow at all.’ But she’d been forced to admit that the past five or six winters had in fact seen weeks of disruption thanks to the weather.
    ‘Sorry,’ she said. Then a new customer came to the rescue and Mrs Weaver went off to investigate the death of an old lady in Ambleside.

    The remaining hour or so of Wednesday afternoon drifted past without further event. Simmy sold three bowls of hyacinths, a week away from flowering; two Christmas wreaths that she had made herself; and a single, long-stemmed lily to a small boy who wanted something for his teacher. There were also two new Interflora orders on the computer, for the coming week.
    Outside, the final flourish of December sunshine before twilight took over had long passed. It was almost dark by half past three. The shortest day was a little over a week away. There were no tourists in Windermere or Bowness this weekend, and would be very few for the next three months. Simmy’s shop felt like a fragrant little cave where she could pass the short days in peace, assessing the year gone by and making resolutions for the one to come. Her divorce from Tony was at last absolute, after a lengthy hiatus in which he had made a succession of tedious objections, or simply failed to sign the paperwork. Tony had become an unpredictable stranger whose motives and values suddenly made no sense to her. The final months of their marriage still carried a haze of bewilderment with them, a host of unanswered questions as to exactly what had been going on. Nothing so banal as adultery, nor so stark as domestic violence – although he had once hit her when she’d badgered him to justify himself. The easy explanation, given to friends and family, was that they had failed to coordinate their grief over their lost baby, and somehow that failure had eaten away at the seams of their couplehood, so they simply came apart. It had felt as if they were floating in space, the connecting umbilicus accidentally severed so they could no longer communicate.Tony had blamed her for little Edith’s death, wordlessly, almost secretly, but nonetheless implacably. He had wanted the baby so fiercely that the disappointment had changed him into a man Simmy no longer recognised. His eyes had filmed over with accusation and a terrifying rage. He tried passing the blame onto the hospital staff, in the traditional manner, but logic was against him. Edith had died before labour even started, the placenta failing to sustain her, for no good reason. All the tests had shown normality, until that thirty-ninth week when it suddenly went wrong. ‘It just happens sometimes,’ said the doctor helplessly. ‘There were no indications that it was going to.’ When Tony tried to insist that the small size of the baby should have warned them, he was shown charts to prove that Edith had been well within the parameters of normality.
    Simmy did at first understand the male frustration of having to entrust the safety of the child to a capricious female body. But it was a core fact of nature, and to kick against it was foolish. She herself, holding the little blue body, seeing her own father’s features on the inert clay-like face,