A Fatal Attachment by Robert Barnard Page A

you’re a natural vegetarian,” said Ted, “I mean, if you’d like to be a vegetarian, and think that killing animals for food is pretty nasty when you come to think about it, only you can’t be one because most vegetables are so yucky, then you wouldn’t want to eat your meat red, would you? I mean, you cut into it and it sits there saying: ‘Flesh’.”
    â€œShut up, you nerd,” said Colin, brandishing his knife. “You’re putting me off.”
    â€œWell, I hope you’ll put off being a vegetarian until your mother is better,” said Lydia. “I really wouldn’t know what to cook for you. I’m an unrepentant meat-eater myself, and I have a fur coat—call me a wicked woman if you will.”
    After dinner Ted rang the hospital to say they wouldn’t be going in that evening.
    â€œDid you say you would?” asked Lydia.
    â€œWell, we did, but the swimming really tired us out. I’ve said we’ll be in tomorrow, definitely.”
    â€œShe barely recognises us, you know,” said Colin.
    â€œOr we hardly know her,” said Ted, clearly very troubled.
    â€œIt’s like talking to someone who is almost someone you know.”
    â€œEerie,” said Colin.
    Then they played Monopoly, which was Colin’s favourite game. Lydia had given her set away when the Hoddle boys grew up, but the Bellinghams had brought theirs up two nights before, and had left it with her. They’re settling in, Lydia had thought.
    Lydia played well, and played to win. She had no patience with people who pandered to children and let them win. The boys were more haywire in their approach, but Colin had a run of luck and finally drove Lydia to the wall.
    â€œPerhaps I’ll become a great capitalist,” he said.
    It was twilight, and time for them to leave.
    â€œThanks for a super meal,” said Ted.
    â€œMy pleasure. Will your father be in?”
    â€œOh yes. He’s got a lot of paperwork to go over for the firm. He was going to have bacon and eggs and get stuck into it.”
    â€œI think I’ll walk down the hill and say hello to him. It’s such a lovely evening, and we really ought at least to recognise each other if we pass in the street.”
    So the boys collected up their things, including a little pile of homework they had managed to forget about, and all three left the cottage, Lydia locking up behind her. It was indeed a lovely evening, with birds singing in the gathering darkness, and the air still warm. The boys collected their bicycles from beside the gate and wheeled them down the hill, the three of them talking animatedly. When they got to the bottom and the little collection of houses, shops and pub that constituted Bly, they turned right.
    â€œI’ll find out which your house is too,” said Lydia. “I think I know which it is, but now I’ll be sure.”
    They went past Andy and Thea’s house, that regrettable mixture of stone on the ground floor and half-hearted timbering on the first. There was a dusty Volvo parked outside.
    â€œI think that must be Maurice’s,” said Lydia, peering at it in the gloom. “I thought he said he’d be gone by now.”
    â€œIt’s a Midlands number plate,” said Ted.
    â€œSomething must have kept him,” said Lydia, speeding up a little. “Andy and Thea will be pleased.”
    â€œAndy Hoddle,” said Colin. “Isn’t it an awful name?”
    â€œIt doesn’t have any ring to it,” agreed Lydia.
    â€œHe’s a good teacher, though,” said Ted.
    â€œI’m glad to hear it. Though I never could take science seriously somehow.”
    The house Nick Bellingham had bought when the family moved North was even more regrettable than the Hoddles’. It was a mean, four-square brick construction, with a skimpy apron of garden in the front, and a larger stretch of wilderness at the back. Lydia, in