Tigerlily's Orchids by Ruth Rendell

stuff. There was a woman in there buying something for cleaning drains.’
    Olwen put on her old black coat, tied a scarf round her head and searched for an umbrella. She wasn’t sure why she failed to find one – because there wasn’t an umbrella in the flat or because she was trembling and shaking too much to look properly. No one was in the lobby and this pleased her because she knew none of them would do her essential shopping for her. She had asked them all and all had refused. Not rudely or scathingly and the sharpest response she had had was from Michael Constantine who told her that now was her chance to give up drinking.
    The front path to the gate and the street was encrusted with old snow and grey ice in which footprints had made deep craters. The rain falling on it seemed not to have washedany of this away, though it was possible now to see dark paving stones in the hollows. Wally Scurlock should have swept this earlier in the week, not left it till today. He would never do it now but rely on the rain doing it for him. Olwen set off, pressing her boots into the declivities, surprised to find how slippery the uneven surface still was. There was nothing to hold on to except the box hedge and that was no more than eighteen inches high. She was not only unsteady on her feet but weak from lack of food.
    She could see ahead of her that the pavement in Kenilworth Avenue wasn’t much better than the path in here, worse perhaps where the children had hardened the surface by tobogganing on it. She had almost reached the gate when she fell, sliding over backwards and hitting her head on the brick border of the path. It was Rose who found her no more than two minutes later. She had come out with McPhee because dogs need to be exercised whatever the weather. Rose called an ambulance before she even touched Olwen. Then, covering her with her own warm winter coat, she sat down on the low wall, shivering and hugging herself, waiting for the paramedics to come. MacPhee, less conscientious, ran around her in circles, tangling his lead between her legs and yapping, for a walk deferred makes a dog’s heart sick.
    Michael came out on his way to the post office and pronounced Olwen probably concussed. He noticed what Rose hadn’t, that she had a cut on the back of her head which was bleeding into the snow.
    â€˜Shall I give her some Rescue Remedy?’ Rose asked him. ‘Or would my own herbal elixir be better?’
    â€˜Have either of them got any booze in them? Because if not I reckon she’ll spit them out.’
    Rose thought that a dreadful way for a doctor to talk. It just went to show how much better a practitioner of alternativemedicine would be in this situation. The ambulance came after ten minutes and two paramedics, a man and a woman, took Olwen away to hospital. Rose waved cheerily to her as they moved off and then she took McPhee round the block, eagerly anticipating as she picked her way through ice and dirty snow and puddles how, when she got back, she would tell Marius what Michael had said.
    A taxi took Stuart to the Tesco and brought him home with a back seat full of drink, crisps, nuts, cheese and biscuits. He had also bought two hundred cigarettes. It was expensive, adding greatly to the cost of this party which now he dreaded, though he had no intention of offering cigarettes to the guests. His little fridge was too small to take more than two bottles of champagne and two of white wine at a time. He could put some of it out in the snow if any snow was still there by Saturday. His mother, who phoned five minutes after he got back, thought it would be.
    â€˜I’m sorry, darling, but there’s no way Daddy and I can come all the way to where you live in this weather.’ Annabel Font always said ‘where you live’ to avoid naming Stuart’s suburb. ‘We’ve had such an enormous lot of snow out here. Of course you do in the country.’
    Loughton