She Shoots to Conquer by Dorothy Cannell Page A

been lucky, I thought gratefully.
    “But lately it had begun to seem as though there’d always be a reason why Harold didn’t think it was the right time for us to get married. All very sensible, but I was forty-one on my last birthday and the other women at the bank where I’m a teller have stopped asking me when we’re going to set a date.” The blue eyes searched mine in appeal. “At the beginning—for the first seven years or so—I was in agreement that we shouldn’t rush into things. It wasn’t as though children would be an option. Harold had made it clear he wouldn’t agree to them. A needless expense is how he put it.”
    “Really!”
    “He feels the same way about pets. And I have always wanted a cat. But Mummy was allergic to them.”
    “Oh dear!”
    “But I don’t want to give you the wrong idea about Harold. He’s practical, which is a good thing, and I suppose I’m a dreamer.”
    “Nothing wrong with that,” I said, to which the dog responded with a look of rapt approval.
    Livonia Mayberry stared wistfully into space. “Mrs. Knox says that in this day and age I should be glad of a steady man. And I did truly appreciate Harold accepting that with my being an only child I had a responsibility to stay at home and take care of my parents. But they’ve both been gone for over five years.” Her voice cracked. “And after Mummy passed away, Daddy insisted on going into a residential facility. He said it was never his idea to keep me corraled—that was his word—with a couple of fogies, but he’d never been able to go against Mummy.”
    “Oh!”
    “I didn’t press him on that; but he couldn’t have meant he wasafraid of her. She was so sweet. Everyone, including Mrs. Knox next door, thought her absolutely wonderful.”
    Don’t we all look better from a distance?
    “It was just that she wasn’t strong, and if either Daddy or I were ever a little thoughtless with her she would get terribly worked up and talk about being a nuisance and how it would be better for everyone if she ended it all.”
    “How awful!”
    “Nothing I said could dissuade Daddy from going into Shady Oaks.”
    “And that was where you first met the woman you met again outside Selfridges, who told you about Here Comes the Bride ?”
    Livonia Mayberry stopped twisting her hands and sat motionless, her expression blank, her lips moving stiffly. “Yes. She said she had heard about it from a friend of hers who had come across it. She said the friend was a lot more adventurous than she was, but she was lonely after the breakup of a long relationship and sufficiently intrigued that she looked up the site on her computer and decided there was nothing to lose. It was a surprise, she said, to be notified that she had been accepted.”
    “What made you decide to give Here Comes the Bride a try?”
    “Harold and I had an upset that evening. I was late with his dinner due to missing the train I’d hoped to catch coming back from London. He’s in the habit of coming to my house for his evening meals three times a week as well as Sunday lunch. And really—I know this sounds boastful—I’m quite a good cook and always try to provide something tasty and nutritious with plenty of roughage. Harold is adamant about roughage.”
    He would be! I mentally conveyed this snide thought to the dog.
    “But that evening he complained that the runner beans were undercooked—I’d had to hurry them because he gets upset if we don’t eat promptly at six thirty, especially if he has to go back to the office afterwards. Which has happened more frequently over the years as he’s gone up in his job.”
    A high-rise window cleaner or a crane operator? I’d concedetheir claim to the dizzy heights, but somehow I didn’t picture Harold as the fearless outdoor type.
    Livonia Mayberry returned my look of inquiry. “He works as an accounts supervisor for a firm that manufactures hardware for doors. Sometimes he accuses me of not understanding