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happen if he was stupid enough to accept
it. He’d get accused of taking advantage of Flor when she was soft in the head, or of cheating the son and daughter out of their inheritance, most likely both.
    Money was all right while you didn’t have to think about it, while you had no choice but to grub around for every shilling like the rest of the common herd. The trouble came with easy
money. Easy money got you thinking. Already he was wondering how much was sitting behind the wardrobe, whether it was enough to buy a suit, a car, the deposit on a garage premises . . . Easy money
caused ructions with your mates. In Germany Ernie had found some jewellery in the basement of a ruined house. The rule was finders keepers, and trust no one but your mates. But someone must have
talked, because during a three-day halt the booty vanished from Ernie’s kit. Easy money created suspicion, and suspicion was the last thing he needed just at the moment.
    In his bedroom he opened the shoebox and went through the contents with an eye to their resale value. It didn’t look good. The green brooch that had sparkled so brilliantly in his memories
of his mother was dull and chipped, no more than cheap glass, while the fancy watch she’d kept for best had a tarnished metal strap and water marks on the face. There were two gold rings,
though, and a small oval photo frame that had every appearance of silver. He packed the valuables in his knapsack and left the tat in the shoebox along with the bundles of photographs and
souvenirs. He glanced briefly at the photograph he’d removed from the oval frame: a portrait of his mother, who’d died when he was nine. The picture wasn’t as flattering as he
remembered; in fact it made her look rather plain and severe. And that was before she’d married his father, when she took to glaring at any camera that dared to point her way.
    Now that his business was done he ran downstairs with a sense of relief, even of generosity. He might find time to split some logs and sort out the woodshed before getting away on the afternoon
train.
    Striding into the kitchen, he came to an abrupt halt at the sight of the woman standing by the table. The light from the window had the effect of bleaching the colour from her face and for an
instant it seemed to Billy that she was both flesh and illusion. She was motionless and her skin was smooth as stone. Only her eyes were indisputably alive, and they stared at him unwaveringly.
    ‘I heard you were back,’ Annie Drinkwater said.
    Billy forced his expression into something approaching impassivity. ‘Not for long,’ he said.
    ‘I heard that too.’
    Billy felt an unnerving sense of dislocation. She seemed just the same yet quite different, her features unchanged yet drawn with an almost photographic intensity, like a film star’s in a
poster, all eyes and lips and hair, splashed dramatically across the landscape of white skin.
    Aware that he was staring openly, he put on a long lazy grin, only to find that she had turned away to unload a basket of vegetables.
    ‘I was wondering how they managed for veg,’ he said, looking past the leeks and cabbages to her ring finger and seeing the gold band there.
    ‘Oh, people have plenty to spare. You know how it is.’
    ‘And you fetch it down for them?’
    ‘It’s not far.’ She shot him a quick smile that managed to be friendly and impersonal at the same time, and again he was struck by the clarity of her features. She was wearing
lipstick which accentuated the pallor of her skin and the darkness of her hair, and her eyebrows were fine-drawn and arched. The overall effect was one of sophistication; though perhaps it was just
the fashion; perhaps he was just out of touch.
    ‘Good of you to do it, though.’
    Shrugging this off lightly, she picked up a bundle of leeks and took them to the sink.
    ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t be Mrs Bentham, by any chance?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘I’d no idea it