False Report by Veronica Heley

Author:Veronica Heley [Heley, Veronica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House Publishers Ltd
Published: 2011-10-10T13:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Bea was taken aback. ‘Me? Find out who killed Josie? Oh, but I—’

‘I know you’ll do your best. Josie brought a lot of happiness into my life. I know she was on the make, but not all the time. She had a great gift – she really listened to what people said. Most people don’t really listen, you know. You can see that while someone else is talking they’re thinking about what they’re going to say next. But Josie really listened. I used to play her some of the music that was running around my head, and she encouraged me to write it down, which I hadn’t been doing. She made me talk to people about it, and no one was more thrilled than she was when I began to get commissions. She made me realize I wasn’t totally past it.’

Bea blinked. Did he mean that Eunice and Clarissa thought of him as ‘past it’?

He shook his head at himself. ‘I let things slide, didn’t I? I knew things weren’t right at home. I knew Eunice was bored with me, and I sort of knew, without admitting it to myself, that she was seeing someone else. I knew Clarissa thought she’d outgrown me, although I could have told her she needed to work hard to improve her technique on . . . But she’d stopped listening to me, about music. About anything.

‘Neither of them listened when I tried to tell them about the commissions I was getting, but to be honest, I’m not sure that I listened properly when Eunice told me about her work. In a way, it was understandable, for we were in such different fields. It was like talking another language. You could say that Eunice ought to have made more of an effort to understand what was going on in my life, but I don’t think I was any better at listening to her.

‘It was such a wonderful release for me, to be able to write music which people actually wanted to hear. For so many years I’d sat on my talent, thinking it wasn’t good enough, thinking I had to earn my living as a teacher, thinking that one day perhaps I’d have the time to write my melodies down and see if anyone might be interested. Then it happened, almost overnight. It was glorious and frightening and I suppose it took over my life.

‘I realize now that I ought to have made them stop and listen, made them understand what was happening to me, but I didn’t. It’s no good saying Eunice was responsible for the breakdown of our marriage, because I was just as blind and deaf to her as she was to me. The only surprise, looking back, is that it took so long for the penny to drop. I just didn’t see it coming, did I? It was a bad shock. Knocked me right out for a while.’

Bea wondered if the shock were more to do with Josie’s betrayal, than his wife turning him out of the house.

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