The Chorister at the Abbey Read Online Free Page A

he? All geared up for the carol service? Or still depressed about his new boss?’
    ‘I think he’s getting used to her.’ Robert got up and followed her into the kitchen where he put his arms round Suzy and kissed her. Usually, these days, the old house was full of kids. But there was peace and quiet in the kitchen for once.
    ‘And how was the Chorus?’
    ‘Morris Little was his usual irritating self.’
    ‘Sounds like you could do with some wine,’ Suzy whispered. ‘I’m gagging for some.’
    She moved a pile of half-finished home-made Christmas cards from the table and picked up a bottle of wine from the wobbly new rack in the corner. When she had moved into Robert’s house, The Briars had been dusty but impeccably tidy. Robert, a childless widower whose wife Mary had been a supreme Good Housekeeper, had lived on ready meals, tinned soup, and egg and bacon sandwiches after she died. Now the residue of family life was spread across every surface.
    Robert opened the red wine. ‘Something funny happened this evening.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘When I was talking to Morris Little, I called Jake my stepson.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘Well, I’ve never thought of Jake in that way.’
    ‘I shouldn’t worry about it. Morris probably didn’t notice. Why were you talking about Jake?’
    ‘Oh, Morris was getting at poor Tom Firth for being interested in church music at his age. Tormenting as usual!’
    ‘I thought Morris got obsessed with things himself.’
    ‘Yes, but he’s an adult. He seems to think all kids are ignorant louts like the Frost brothers.’
    Suzy rolled her eyes. She had only met Morris Little once, at a drinks party after an Abbey Chorus concert. He had pinned her against the wall and lectured her on a derelict nineteenth-century convent in Fellside, which he wanted listed as a Norbridge monument. He had inundated her with information and been childishly crude about nuns. She remembered him jabbing her in the shoulder when her attention had wandered, before making snide remarks about career women being too tired to concentrate. Sexist bore!
    ‘Anyway, you’re right,’ Robert was saying. ‘Morris has been going on about the choir singing something by John Stainer. He keeps hinting mysteriously that he knows of some local connection. But I haven’t heard of one and neither has Edwin.’
    ‘Stainer the Victorian composer? Wrote The Crucifixion or something?’
    ‘How did you know?’
    ‘I don’t think classical music is Elton John, you know!’
    They moved back into the sitting room, where Robert stooped down to light the real log fire in the big, tiled fireplace. Suzy looked round the room and waited for the warm glow to bring it alive.
    She had come to love The Briars, though she had moved there as an emergency measure at first. She and Robert had met during a disturbing time in Tarnfield eighteen months earlier, when several people had died and Suzy, a townie, had found herself in the middle of a country life dream which had become a nightmare. She and her husband Nigel had already been splitting up and she had agreed to sell their modern family house on the edge of Tarnfield so Nigel could buy the smart flat he was renting in Newcastle. Suzy had considered moving back home to Manchester, or buying a smaller place in Norbridge. But she had just met Robert – and also landed a lucrative contract at Tynedale TV. So when Robert suggested that she decamp to The Briars, she did – with the kids, the cat, her battered furniture, and no intention of staying.
    But a year later they were all still there, including the cat.
    ‘Are you going over to the church tomorrow?’ Robert asked her over his shoulder as he messed about with the paper and kindling.
    ‘Yeah,’ Suzy nodded. ‘Can’t escape. It’s village life, as you always tell me!’
    Most people in Tarnfield had been corralled into helping at All Saints Church over Christmas. Suzy had always been a helper at the church, if rather a sceptical one. And