Disordered Minds by Minette Walters

Author:Minette Walters [Walters, Minette]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: UK
Published: 2003-04-30T14:00:00+00:00

She drove to the Smugglers Inn at Osmington Mill, to the east of Dorchester, which had been built in the thirteenth century, beside a stream, in a cleft between two swooping downlands that rose to meet the spectacular Jurassic cliffs of the Dorset coast. The car park overlooked the sea—a turbulent grey that April lunchtime, whipped by an easterly wind—with the thatched inn accessible via a steep ramp and a flight of steps. “My treat,” said George firmly, leading the way. “I had a paycheck this morning so I’m feeling flush.”

Jonathan made a halfhearted protest. “Why don’t we go Dutch?”

“Because you’re broke and I’m old enough to be your mother,” said George, pushing open the door. “Also I’m starving, and I refuse to feel embarrassed about eating three courses while you pick away at some miserable little starter because it’s all you can afford. Reason enough?”

He followed her inside. “I suppose Andrew’s been dishing the dirt on me again?”

“It depends how you define dirt. Most of what he said was highly laudatory.” She turned to look at him. “What do you think?”

“That you’re feeling sorry for me.”

“The pub, Jonathan. What do you think of the pub?”

“It’ll do,” he said, taking in the impressive oak beams that crisscrossed the low ceiling, the open fireplaces with glowing embers and blackboards advertising local lobster and a healthy wine list. “At least it’s an improvement on the Crown and Feathers.”

“You’re very difficult to please,” she said with a sigh. “Anything’s better than the Crown and Feathers. I hoped you’d appreciate some atmosphere.”

He laughed and steered her toward the bar. “I was teasing, George. If you want to pass yourself off as my mother, you’ll have to learn to take it.”

This sharing of a meal was so different from the first that Jonathan wondered whether George’s remark about a bad beginning making a bad ending was true. If so, he blamed Roy Trent for it. However ill Jonathan had been feeling that day, it was the other man’s use of “black” and “wog” that had really raised his hackles. “Tell me something,” he invited when a natural lull came in the conversation. “Did you phone Roy to tell him you were going to be late for the lunch in February?”

George paused with her fork, laden with steak-and-kidney pudding, halfway to her mouth. “Of course I did. I said I’d be lucky to be there before twelve-forty-five and asked him to take you up to the room. Why do you ask?”

“Just interested in why he was so aggressive. He left me standing at the bar for a good ten minutes before he put in an appearance, then the first thing he did was call me a wog, but he must have had some suspicion of who I was. The only other people there were a middle-aged couple and Jim Longhurst, so it’s not as though there were droves of potential Jonathan Hugheses to choose from.”

George looked appalled. “Did he really call you a wog?”

Jonathan nodded. “Wog…black…darkie—the only thing he didn’t call me was a nigger.

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