The Diary Of Pamela D.

Chief Inspector Robert Matthews, who had become something of a fixture in recent weeks, sat at one end of the table opposite Mrs. Dewhurst. Across from Pamela sat Fred Pascoe to her left, Jennie in a highchair and Anne. Jennie stole the show, of course, and would eventually have succeeded in breaking the ice were they trapped in the high Arctic in mid-winter. The Inspector was a calm, sociable man, and entertained them with stories of life at CID. His stories were rivetting, having an almost philosophical aspect that was at once humane, understanding and humorous in a unique, quirky sort of way.

'Robert, why don't you write some of your stories down, just as you tell them, in your own voice,' Mrs. Dewhurst said amidst a chorus of assent. Her familiar usage of his first name didn't go unnoticed, either.

He gave a self-deprecating shrug. 'You'd think that's all there was to it, wouldn't you. But it doesn't seem to work that way. The moment I make a conscious effort to capture something on paper it just seems to melt away, right through my fingers. Unless,' he added with a menacing leer, 'the paperwork involves trying to nick someone. Then it's a different sort of story altogether.' This, of course, got the intended laugh.

But at these words Pamela felt suddenly separate, apart, as though she were turned into something almost supernatural, watching the room they were sitting in and the house from the outside, as though oak beams and stone walls were as insubstantial as vapour. Albert Askrigg, she had come to believe, was not a man at all, but was rather a force of nature- evil, dark and dangerous. You couldn't capture or subdue a force of nature. One never truly overcame nature's fury- one merely lived through it any way one could. She spent the rest of the meal wrestling with the intangibles she would need to overcome if she wished to survive.

The final wall, as Pamela soon discovered, that lay between herself and Theo seemed to remain standing, as solid and unbreachable as ever. No sooner was supper over than he turned back into his old unreachable self. Miffed, she was all the more glad for Tessa's presence. When they were ostensibly alone together, sitting in the back garden where Fred Pascoe and his wife and child also were, she confided, 'Why does he always do that? For a moment there I thought everything was going to be just fine . . . then, he just shut it off again: it's like he's able to simply flick a switch, and poof! no more Theo. At least, not the Theo I want in my life.'