The Ice House

"I'm not hungry. Molly left a casserole in the Aga if you are."

"Mm, she told me before she left. I'm not hungry either."

They lapsed into silence.

"It's a bloody mess, isn't it?" said Phoebe after a while.

"I'm afraid so." Diana pushed her sandals off her feet and let them drop to the floor. "The Inspector's no fool." She kept her voice deliberately light.

Phoebe spoke harshly. "I hate him. How old would you say he is?"

"Late fifties."

"He hasn't aged much. He looked like a genial professor ten years ago." She considered for a moment. "But that's not his character. He's anything but genial. He's dangerous, Di. For God's sake don't forget it."

The other woman nodded. "And his incubus, Jock-the-Ripper? What did you make of him?"

Phoebe looked surprised as if the other woman had mentioned an irrelevance. "The Sergeant? He didn't say much. Why do you ask?"

With rhythmical movements, as if she were stroking a cat, Diana smoothed the woollen pile on the front of her jacket. "A

"Have they spoken to her yet?"

"No, they've told her they'll talk to her tomorrow. They seem very relaxed about it all. We have their official permission to go to bed."

Phoebe closed her eyes and pressed long fingers against her temples. "What did they ask you?"

Diana twisted in her chair to look at her friend. "From what they implied, exactly what they asked you."

"Except that I walked out and refused to answer their questions." She opened her eyes and looked ruefully at the other woman. "I know," she said. "It was very silly of me but they made me so angry. Strange, isn't it? I stood up to hours of interrogation when David went. This time, I lasted five minutes. I found myself hating that man so much, I wanted to claw his eyes out. I could have done it, too."

Diana reached out again and briefly touched her arm. "I don't think it's strange-any psychiatrist would tell you that anger is a normal reaction to stress-but it's probably unwise." She pulled a face. "A

"They want to question the children."

"I know and I don't think we can prevent it."

"I could ask Jane's psychiatrist to write a report advising against it. Would that stop them?"

"For a day or two perhaps before they secured an order for a second opinion. That would declare her competent to answer questions. You know yourself, her own psychiatrist pronounced her fit eighteen months ago."

"Not for this." Phoebe massaged her temples vigorously. "I'm frightened, Di. I really think she's managed to blot it all out. If they make her remember now, God knows what will happen."

"Talk to A

"Meaning that I am less able to be objective?"

Go easy, Diana told herself. "Meaning that she will have inherited the rigid Gallagher backbone, you oaf."

"You're forgetting her father. However much I might like to pretend otherwise, there is some of David in each of them."

"He wasn't all bad, Pheeb."

Tears welled uncontrollably in Phoebe's eyes. She blinked them away angrily. "But he was, and you know it as well as I do. You told the Inspector so this afternoon and you were right. He was rotten to the core. In time, if we hadn't got shot of him, he'd have turned me and the children rotten too. He had a damn good try in all conscience." She was silent for a moment. "It's the only thing I hold against my parents. If they hadn't been so conventional I need never have married him. I could have had Joh

"It was difficult for them." But I agree with her, thought Diana. There was no excuse for what her parents did, so why am I defending them? "They did what they thought was right."

"I was seventeen, for Christ's sake-" Phoebe's nails bit deep into her palms-"younger than Jane is now. I allowed myself to be married off to a bastard twice my age simply because he'd seduced me, and then I just stood by and watched him rewarded for it. Christ," she spat, "it makes me sick to think of the money he bled from my father."

Then don't think about it, Diana wanted to say. You've tried to forget them, but there were good times, times at the begi