The Mill on the Shore by Ann Cleeves

area that it had been sold for development, and we’d been concerned that there would be a horrible holiday camp or hotel. Then Meg phoned up, full of her plans, expecting us to be excited too. Phil was relieved but I would have preferred a night club and a row of concrete chalets. I was starting to be happy again, Phil was training me to be a ringer, I was making new friends. It wasn’t the exciting roller-coaster of a life I’d had with Jimmy but it suited me.’ She paused, determined to make George understand. ‘I knew that if they came here to take over the Mill everything would be different. It wasn’t only that I was still bitter about Hannah. It was more trivial than that. I thought, I suppose, that they’d take Phil away from me too. That he’d change. He’d already been taken in by the myth of the glamorous Jimmy Morrissey. And then Meg is such a dominating character that I thought our relationships with friends here would be thrown out of balance. I was afraid I’d be reduced to competing with her in some way. I didn’t want them here. I even hoped that they’d be refused planning permission.’ She smiled. ‘If I’d known how to go about it I’d have bribed the council.’
    ‘But the plans went ahead without any problems?’
    She nodded. ‘I suppose they were relieved at last to find someone who was willing to take the place on. The fact that Jimmy had a good green image was an added bonus.’
    ‘What did Phil think about your opposition to their moving here?’
    She gave a little laugh. ‘He had some strange notion that I was still in love with Jimmy. “ I can handle that,” he said. “ You mustn’t think I’d be jealous. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t all get on together.”’
    ‘And there wasn’t any truth in that idea?’
    ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘ If anyone was in love it was Phil. He was in love with the idea of being part of the Morrissey clan. He was like a star-struck teenager. There was no way I could make him see sense.’
    She hesitated, came to a decision to speak:
    ‘I went to see Jimmy,’ she said, ‘ just before they signed the contract on the place. I never told Phil He thought I was going to London to meet some old friends. But I arranged to see Jimmy on his own and I tried to persuade him to change his mind …’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘He agreed to meet me and that was surprising enough. The old Jimmy would have been too busy. I should have known then that he had changed. We went for a walk in Battersea Park, along the river. It was probably the longest conversation we ever had without interruption but I could see straight away that it would do no good.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Not because he’d made up his mind to take on the Mill and was determined nothing would make him change it. I’d expected that. But because he refused to take any responsibility for the decision. He left all that sort of thing to Meg, he said. It didn’t matter to him one way or the other but Meg had made up her mind so he supposed that they’d go. I couldn’t pin him down to anything, couldn’t even provoke an argument. All my anger just washed over him. Meg would do what was best, he said, and that was that. I was astonished. I knew she wanted him to spend more time with the family but I never thought he’d give up Green Scenes , all the telly appearances, without a fight.’
    ‘Don’t you think it was the accident which changed him?’ George asked.
    ‘Partly,’ she said. ‘But there was more to it than that. Remorse was never his thing and whatever else you might think of Jimmy he could always put up with physical pain.’
    ‘But the depression?’ George said. ‘That must have been real. He was treated for it.’
    ‘I think the depression was the result of the move, not the cause of it.’
    There was a silence.
    ‘Did you ever approach Meg to try to persuade her not to move?’ George asked at last.
    ‘No,’ Cathy said. ‘I knew it would be no