The Darkness and the Deep Read Online Free Page B

teeth of opposition from the harpy who had somehow managed to snare him. Oh, he didn’t say much – Lewis had always been one to keep his own counsel – but his mother could guess what That Woman would have put him through. He was too good, that was the problem, allowing her to walk all over him with her constant demands. Oh, she heard all about the way she behaved in the surgery from Muriel Henderson – and how she behaved outside it too, by all accounts.
    Did he know what they were all saying, know how she was making a fool of him? And of her mother-in-law too; no one would say anything to Lewis directly, but there were people bold enough to make broad hints, veiled in mock-sympathy (‘It can’t be easy for poor Dr Lewis, his wife being so taken up with her lifeboat friends’), which had necessitated some cold and steely snubbing.
    She hadn’t dared tell him herself. She and Lewis were close, but she had never been invited to discuss his marriage. Though she could see sometimes that things were difficult, he kept his problems to himself, just as he always had even as a little boy, and she had spent years concealing her opinion of Ashley so that the woman could have no excuse for creating a breach. If she’d got it wrong, if Lewis blamed the messenger for the message, it would have undone the careful work of years without any certainty of success in ending this disastrous marriage which was obviously never going to provide Lewis with the son he deserved, the grandchild she so hungered for. Ashley, as she had laughingly told Dorothy, wasn’t the maternal type.
    ‘It was your day off today, wasn’t it? Did they have to call you in to cover for Ashley?’ Muriel had told her how often that happened.
    He shook his head. ‘She did warn me to expect a phone call, but it would have been a bit tricky if they had wanted me. I’d been walking from St Ninian’s Cave over to the Isle of Whithorn – looking down towards Burrow Head it was quite spectacular to watch the landscape disappearing as the fog started rolling in – but by the time I got back from there surgery would probably have been over.’
    ‘What time will the poor girl get home tonight?’ Dorothy spoke with determined brightness. ‘It’s such a demanding hobby, isn’t it?’
    Lewis sighed. ‘I don’t think she sees it quite in those terms. A hobby’s something you can give up if it stops being amusing. She describes it as being almost a vocation – the call of the sea, that sort of thing.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘Frankly, from the symptoms it looks to me more like an addiction.’
    ‘I suppose it must be like belonging to a very special club, isn’t it? Now, that is very addictive – do you remember how when you were little it was always terribly important to belong to whichever secret club was the thing of the moment, with all the passwords and secret rituals?’
    ‘Good gracious, Mother, how long ago was that? But yes, I do remember – what fun it was!’ He smiled reminiscently.
    She cut a piece off her own steak with apparent concentration, saying casually, ‘And, of course, you do form very close friendships when you’re involved in something like that, don’t you? I’m sure, with that atmosphere of excitement and tension, dealing with life-and-death situations, it creates special bonds with the people you’re working with, very intimate relationships—’
    She had gone too far. Lewis looked up sharply, his blue eyes cold. ‘Oh, I think Ashley’s pretty savvy about handling that sort of thing.
    ‘That was a very good steak, Mother. Was it from the butcher’s in Shore Street? Ashley and I always use lack of time as an excuse for buying ready-meals but actually steak’s the ultimate convenience food.’
    ‘And it tastes so much nicer, doesn’t it?’ Dorothy rose to collect the plates. ‘And it’s my own apple pie to follow. With proper custard, of course.’
    So he had heard something. If there were . . . developments,