Pembridge

This was how Joel thought afterwards of what happened to him on the corner of Pembridge Crescent and Chepstow Road.

Portobello Ruth Rendell 2010

He hung on to the top of the wall on the Pembridge Villas side, watching them through the leaves, and he nearly laughed out loud when he saw them glance at the locked French windows, their glass intact, mutter something to each other, turn, and go back the way they had come.

Portobello Ruth Rendell 2010

He stopped thinking about it when he found a cash dispenser in a bank wall at the bottom of Pembridge Road.

Portobello Ruth Rendell 2010

The moment you turn out of Pembridge Road or Westbourne Grove or Chepstow Villas and set foot in the market, you feel a touch of excitement, an indrawing of breath, a pinch in the heart.

Portobello Ruth Rendell 2010

The street is long, like a centipede snaking up from Pembridge Road in the south to Kensal Town in the north, its legs splaying out all the way and almost reaching the Great Western main line and the Grand Union Canal.

Portobello Ruth Rendell 2010

With a Chocorange in his mouth, its flavour not at all diminished by the scene just past in the drawing room, he put up his umbrella and began to walk along Chepstow Villas towards the Pembridge Villas turnoff.

Portobello Ruth Rendell 2010

Found, Lance read, found in Pembridge Crescent, a sum of money between 80 and 160 pounds.

Portobello Ruth Rendell 2010

He envisaged a time when he was over this, when it was all behind him and he could, with ritualistic pleasure, take that bagful and drop it in the waste bin on the corner of Pembridge Road.

Portobello Ruth Rendell 2010

LEW CROWN WOULD be back from his holidays by now, as the old woman in Pembridge Villas must also be.

Portobello Ruth Rendell 2010

She had gone to Pembridge Crescent to see where his heart attack had happened, notably to find the bell in the gatepost her son had fallen against.

Portobello Ruth Rendell 2010