Cold Shoulder by Lynda La Plante

weeping, or if she was stumbling around the kitchen trying to get supper ready.
    That night Kit hadn’t come home for supper, and her father got the phone call, just as she was about to serve him steak. She could smell it, all these years later, the steak, the mashed potatoes, and the mint peas. She knew it was something terrible because of her father’s expression and the way he let the phone slip from his hand as he pressed his face into the old flowered wallpaper. Then he punched the wall twice before he walked back and collected his jacket.
    ‘There’s been an accident. It’s Kit.’
    Lorraine was left alone with a father who never came to terms with his grief. He hadn’t been affectionate before the accident, but afterwards he showed her no warmth whatsoever. If he felt any pride in her being accepted into the police academy, he kept it to himself, and he was dead three weeks before she graduated.
    Lorraine sold the house and prepared to move into an apartment. It had been while sorting through his belongings that she had found pictures of her mother. She had once been so beautiful, with a fragility that took Lorraine’s breath away, but the sweet smile, even in her youth, was a little frightened. She also found albums of photographs of her brother, every achievement recorded for posterity. But there were few pictures of herself, and those she did find had been left in an envelope.
    Lorraine burned most of the memorabilia, and sold all the furniture along with the house. She kept a photograph of her brother and one of her parents on their wedding day. She would have liked one of them all together, as a family, but there hadn’t been one — there hadn’t really been a family. Now she had nothing — not even a photograph of Mike or the girls. She pictured them in her mind, little Julia and sweet-faced Sally… and Mike. The feeling of loss swamped her. She forced their faces from her mind and found solace in counting the specks of dirt on the wallpaper — anything rather than think of the past.
    She woke up as Rosie thumped into the kitchen. She felt stiff from the cramped position in which she’d finally fallen asleep.
    ‘I’m going to be late,’ Rosie muttered, in her usual bad — tempered early-morning mood. She stood to shovel in her cereal, milk trickling down her chin. Lorraine stretched.
    ‘Will you feed the cat?’ Rosie barked.
    Lorraine joined her in the kitchen. ‘Do you think alcoholism is hereditary?’
    Rosie rammed her cereal bowl into the sink. ‘If you came to a few more meetings you’d know, wouldn’t you? But they say it is. Why don’t you read the leaflets I gave you?’ She continued spouting as she returned to the bedroom, and Lorraine uttered a silent prayer that she had not gone out for that beer. Another day over, sober.
     
     
    Rosie plodded down the road and turned the corner, just as the squad car drew up. Two officers checked the address and glanced up the rickety wooden stairs. The cab driver had not been sure of the number he had driven the woman to, but he had known the street and the date his fare had flagged him down. His description of her matched that of the other two witnesses, and he had picked up the fare a short distance from the shopping mall car park. He was able to add one more detail: the woman had a front tooth missing.
     
     
    Lorraine examined herself: the suit jacket was a fraction too large, the skirt band a couple of inches too wide, but she bloused up the jacket, a safari-style fawn cotton, and with the cream silk shirt beneath, it looked good. She borrowed a pair of pearl stud earrings from Rosie’s jewel box, and used her mascara, a little rouge and powder and, as the lipsticks were all a violent orange, rubbed on lip balm instead. When she heard a rap on the door she hesitated: maybe she should have asked Rosie about the earrings. If she was back, she might get into one of her moods. She heard a second rap; knew it couldn’t be Rosie, who would