Cambridge Blue

CAMBRIDGE BLUE

Alison Bruce

Constable & Robinson Ltd
3 The Lanchesters
162 Fulham Palace Road
London W6 9ER
www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Constable,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2008

This paperback edition published by Robinson,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2010

First US edition published by SohoConstable,
an imprint of Soho Press Inc., 2009

This paperback edition published by SohoConstable,
an imprint of Soho Press Inc., 2010

Soho Press, Inc.
853 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
www.sohopress.com

Copyright © Alison Bruce, 2008, 2009

The right of Alison Bruce to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

UK ISBN: 978-1-84901-264-5

US ISBN: 978-1-56947-877-6
US Library of Congress number: 2008028447

Typeset by TW Typesetting, Plymouth, Devon
Printed and bound in the EU

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

CONTENTS

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Forty-Six

Forty-Seven

Forty-Eight

Forty-Nine

Fifty

Fifty-One

Fifty-Two

Fifty-Three

Fifty-Four

For Jacen, Mum,
Natalie, Lana and Dean

PROLOGUE

Jackie Moran opened her eyes and stared up at the underside of her duvet – pulling it over her head was the last thing she remembered doing the previous night. One of her pillows now lay cocooned alongside her; the only sign that she’d moved in her sleep.

Unless someone else had put it there.

The faint orange glow of her night light leached through the edges of the duvet. She guessed it was still some time before dawn.

Motionless, she watched the graduated shades of ochre and grey, trying to persuade herself that there was no movement on the other side of the covers, but she was scared to look out, sure that someone would be waiting for her if she did. She listened, but the more she strained to hear, the more she was convinced that someone was breathing quietly in time with her. She held her breath and listened. Nothing.

She waited until the sound of her heart palpitations filled her ears, then began to breathe again.

Jackie moved slowly, turning her wrist just enough to see the fluorescent glow of her watch face. The trick would be to do it without disturbing the bedding. 4 a.m.

It was no surprise; every night without sleeping pills went this way. The same fear and paranoia. The same cold sweat that drenched her neck and breasts. The same feeling that her world was flat and she was sliding ever closer to the edge.

She shut her eyes and willed herself to sleep, counting her heartbeats and trying to ignore the familiar uneasy feeling that hovered above her, realizing that, today, it had become far more intense.

She woke again at 6 a.m. with her hair tousled and tangled as though she’d tossed her head from side to side in her sleep. Her duvet lay on the floor. She couldn’t remember what she’d dreamt; she refused to dwell on her nocturnal self-torture.

By 6.30 a.m., Jackie Moran had been out of bed for a full half-hour. She still wore her nightshirt; grey and thigh-length with the words ‘Personal Trainer’ across the front in pink lettering. She had been amused by the thought that she could one day be fit enough to work in a gym.

Her cottage originally had two bedrooms, but she had decided to have the second refitted as a bathroom. She kept the first floor heated throughout the night – it was one of her luxuries in life, allowing her to pad around with bare legs and feet. Pulling on her jeans and thick socks was always the last thing she did before going down to the cold downstairs.

She made up the bed, drew open the curtains, then crossed the small landing between the bedroom and bathroom. She called downstairs to her Border collie, ‘Bridy, walk in five minutes.’ She turned a blind eye to her dog spending nights on the settee.

In the sitting room, Bridy uncurled herself and slid on to the stone floor. She dutifully took her place at the bottom of the stairs and waited for her mistress.

Jackie’s clean underwear was drying in an orderly left-to-right queue on top of the radiator. They had come from the same home-shopping catalogue as her nightshirt. It was only the second time she had worn them, and already she could see that the quality wasn’t great.

She ran the basin’s hot tap until the water steamed, then dropped the polished plug into place and left the basin to fill. She pulled off her nightshirt, folding it as she made her way, naked, back to the bedroom to leave it under her pillow. Jackie glanced at herself in the dressing-table mirror; she had no objections to her figure. She had long since accepted that it was her lot to be boy-like rather than womanly. Perhaps she would have paused longer if there had been anyone to see her naked. There wasn’t.

Dressed in her ski jacket and jeans, Jackie opened the cottage’s side door on to the Fen Ditton morning and checked the weather for the first time. Not that it mattered: barring a change of boots for floods or unexpected snowfall, there was no British weather that would prevent her from taking Bridy on her morning walk.

A damp chill hung in the air. She put Bridy on the lead, and the dog trailed at her heels, grey muzzle close to her left hand.

This was the village at its best; fresh with a new morning and blissfully few people. Not that she disliked people, but they were likely to be a distraction, and she needed space to think.

Bridy paused to snuffle in the verge. Jackie rattled the choke chain and made a clicking noise with her tongue against the roof of her mouth. ‘Not yet, Bridy.’

Bridy responded with a sneeze, then continued to trot alongside her.

Jackie cast a concerned eye over the war memorial. A delinquent had defaced the ‘Lest We Forget’ by changing the ‘L’ to a ‘B’. The press had inevitably jumped to the defence of the youth. The
Cambridge News
had done a survey of local schools and reported a ‘commendable knowledge of the two World Wars amongst local teenagers’.

Words are cheap.

Mr Mills at the post office had actually done something about it. He had campaigned for a custodial sentence, which had apparently scared the lad witless in the process.

She walked past the post office, its windows polished and paintwork immaculate; she had a great deal of respect for Mr Mills and his determination to care for the village. The idea of standing up in public like that was impossibly daunting and she’d been glad when the press’s brief interest had died.

She checked herself. Wasn’t she suddenly sounding middle-aged? The point of her whole routine had been to make her daily life more efficient, but she could now see it had merely caused her to become set in her ways. She was touring the village complaining about other people, when perhaps she should look at her own life with the same critical eye.

Jackie wasn’t about to dwell on all the things she’d once thought she would be able to accomplish by the age of thirty. She didn’t need to list them to know that she’d ticked none of the boxes, and with only one month to go they were most likely to remain unrealized. But was this it, then?

Damn, what if it was?

At the Plough public house, the road curved to the right with a tractor-width mud track diverging to the left. She let Bridy off the lead and followed this trail in the direction of the river path, walking between the tyre tracks on the raised strip of stones and divots.