by Agatha Frost
Open about what, Julia didn’t ask. Of all the things Ruth, leaning woozily against the counter at the manor, had said, the comment about James’s internet history had lingered the longest. Ruth had looked so pleased with herself, and Julia hadn’t liked it. That comment hadn’t related to what she’d done; she’d said it purely to spite – or embarrass – him in a room full of people.
“You two seem to be on the right track.”
“Yeah.” Richie nodded, inhaling. “I think we might be. Finally.” He glanced in the direction his father had gone and shook his head slightly. “Although, he has been planning behind my back again. Thankfully, this time, he seems to be considering what I want.”
“Oh?”
“That closed coffee shop in the village?”
“Happy Bean?”
“Dad thinks it’ll make a decent sized bar, if I want it.” Richie shrugged, though Julia could see him resisting giving in to the smile pricking those upturned lips. “It’s a good location.”
“Good light, too.” She couldn’t resist. “Does that mean you’re to make Peridale your home?”
Richie thought about his response, but he ultimately shrugged again. She could hardly blame him for not knowing what he wanted to do, especially when faced with options; twenty was so young. He looked up at Julia and then past her, and the smile he didn’t bother hiding prompted her to turn.
Mark, Evelyn’s grandson, was waiting on the other side of the window, half hidden by the ‘SAVE YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY’ posters they could finally take down. He typed something on his phone, and Richie’s pocket vibrated.
“Maybe I will,” he said, freeing his smile completely as he rose to his feet. “Could . . . could you ask your husband to sign this? Never got a chance the last time I was here with it, what with my dad turning up when he did.”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Did you enjoy it?”
“Never read it.” He pushed the chair back under the table. “It’s my dad’s copy. He’s been wanting to ask Barker to sign it for months, but he was too nervous.”
“A few weeks ago, I might not have thought him capable of nerves.”
Julia looked over at James, making himself a coffee very incorrectly with his phone crammed between his shoulder and ear. She made a mental note to draw up an instruction card for Neil to put on the wall.
“I don’t think he ever tries to be the bad guy,” said Richie, leaning against the chair. “The things he seems to want in life put him there often enough, though. It’s his birthday on Saturday. I was going to get this signed for him because what do you get the man who has it all?” He glanced at the window again. “Can I leave it with you? I kinda need to go.”
“Consider it done,” she said, putting it in her handbag. “Have a fun afternoon.”
“I think I will.”
Though Richie and Mark greeted each other with a timid hug, they were already deep in conversation by the time they left the view of the windows. She hadn’t asked about Ed, but Evelyn had said that he’d checked out separately the night of Ruth’s arrest. Whatever Richie and Ed had shared, it hadn’t been built on the best foundation. And even if it had started strong, she couldn’t imagine many relationships surviving the knowledge that one had been blackmailing the other’s mother.
Like Ruth, Ed had been just another opportunist. Innocent of most of the things Julia, at times, had wanted to believe he’d done, but not innocent. Dot had dubbed him ‘the walking red flag,’ and Julia was inclined to agree.
“There’s Mummy.” Barker grinned as he pushed the pram into the library. “Can you say Ma-Ma, Olivia? Ma-Ma? Da-Da. Go on . . . go on . . .” He greeted Julia with a kiss. “I swear she almost said something earlier, but maybe she was just enjoying her yoghurt.”
Julia scooped Olivia out of the pram and held on tight. She’d always known the importance of family, but the Jacobsons had reminded her that not all were made equal. She’d thought James had it all.
Designer suits.
Flashy cars.
Properties galore.
More money than sense.
A lot, but not everything.
“All sorted?”
Julia looked in the direction of Barker’s nod. At the table filled with abandoned champagne glasses, Neil and James were two seats apart. They each had a book and a cup of coffee in front of them, but they were chatting, not reading. She wondered if James was revealing his idea of appointing a committee to help oversee the running of the library, or if they were just talking about the weather. That they were talking at all was all the proof Julia needed of their victory.
“All sorted,” she replied, ripping down one of the posters on her way out. “Let’s get this one to the park. We still have a few hours until the party.”
18
The hours after leaving the library were some of the most exciting of Katie’s life. They returned to the cottage to six bailiffs whose attitudes changed dramatically as they paid off each in full. By the time they’d all been sorted, two had taken off their jackets and were quite jovial – and much less scary.
As Brian had pointed out many times, it was just a job.
Like Ruth, they only handled the big money.
Thanks to Ruth, their debt had only increased due to the ever-climbing interest. On phone call after phone call, operators read out stomach-churning figures, and one by one, they paid each in full, passing the debit card between them as they burned through their pile of red-stamped letters.
They saved a six-figure income tax bill that had built up over nearly a decade for last, and then collapsed onto the sofa in an exhausted heap.
Years of Wellington debt erased in an afternoon.
And it felt so good.
“We did it,” Katie said, leaning into Brian’s side. “What now?”
“We set up savings accounts, ISAs, a trust fund for Vinnie, and we book a well-earned holiday.” Brian stood, holding his hand out for Katie to join him. “Anything you want, my love.”
“How about a cat?”
“I was thinking more a new handbag?”
Katie considered it. There was a new Gucci bag she’d seen that morning on her phone. In a former life, it would have already been a stamp on her bank statement.
“Let’s get a cat.”
“Then your wish is my command.” He kissed her hand and twirled her. “But first, my love, we have a very important appointment to attend.”
Later that night, Katie hit her fork gently against her champagne glass. She looked around her sitting room at all the same faces she’d seen at the garden party. In the small cottage, they were crammed in like sardines.
“I wanted to thank you all for coming tonight,” she said, her lack of nerves a surprise to herself. “I never got to give my speech at the last party. I worked really hard on one all about the manor and its history, but I won’t bore you to sleep with that today.”
Katie paused to take a sip, and to her astonishment, some people chuckled. She hadn’t meant to be funny, but she’d take it.
“A lot of you know me as Katie Wellington,” she continued. “The daughter of Vincent Wellington. Or maybe even the former glamour model from the magazine days.”
A few men coughed, and one woman clutched her cardigan close.
“I’m all of those things,” she said. “Like a lot of you, I’ve lived in this village my whole life, but I only started feeling a part of it when I began working at the café.”
She’d seen most of the faces staring at her now waltz through those doors at least once.
“Still, I’d like to take this opportunity to reintroduce myself.” She raised her glass, and everyone did the same. “I am all of the things I said before. But I’m also a mother, a wife, a friend, a nail technician – and a good one, I might add.” She paused to laugh, and more people joined in; a nice chunk were her clients, too. “I’m Katie. Just Katie. Whatever you used to think about me was probably accurate at the time. My father used to joke that the peroxid
e fumes were rotting my brain. Or maybe he wasn’t joking. We’ll never know now. I know you all came to see the latest instalment of our breakdown, and I don’t blame you. I’d come too. But I’m afraid that today, I have only good news.”
Sipping her champagne, Katie looked across the room to where her family were. Only Brian knew what she was about to tell everyone. She wanted to watch for their reactions.
“As of this morning,” she said, lifting her glass higher, “you’re looking at the new owner of Trotter’s Books on Mulberry Lane, soon to be Katie’s Nail Salon.”
Katie had gone over her little speech in the shower. And in the car. And then in the supermarket. Each time, she’d imagined a different reaction. When she’d announced the spa, she’d expected applause and been met with puzzlement. When she’d started her fake tan business, she’d thought people would be proud of her and they’d laughed. She’d tried not to let it bother her.
Their loss, she’d always thought.
She had good ideas.
Today, everyone else seemed to agree. They clapped and raised their glasses. And her family looked so proud. She couldn’t tell for sure, but Dot and Julia looked like they were crying. Even Neil was raising his glass to her.
Warmth wrapped around her as she truly felt embraced by the community she’d always watched from the outside in. She understood why they all tried so hard to keep everything as it should be.
Through their faults, she liked them too.
“Fantastic speech,” Julia said later, after the party had died off and they were alone in the apple orchard after sunset. “There’s something truly endearing about you, Katie. I’m glad everyone else got to see it tonight.”
She wasn’t quite sure what ‘endearing’ meant, but she’d look it up later. In any case, she was pretty sure it was a compliment.
“Don’t worry about me doing a runner from the café,” she said. “I video-called Alfie and walked him through the shop this morning, and he gave me a rundown of how much he thinks it’ll cost and how long it’ll take.”
“What happened to the boutique?”
“Someone else got there first.” Inhaling, she looked out to the starry night sky. “It’s okay, though. I prefer where I’ve ended up.”
She hadn’t in the moment.
They’d turned up on Mulberry Lane to view the boutique one last time, only to find it had been sold the day before to a woman from Riverswick wanting to expand her clothing business. Of course the former boutique made sense for her next location. When the estate agent had suggested the burnt-out shell of Trotter’s Books across the street, a Wellington tantrum had prickled up from her toes.
Though the walls were charred and the ceiling beams exposed, the estate agent assured them the building had been made structurally sound. As Brian had explained, it was a blank canvas on which she could do exactly what she wanted. It needed a cosmetic upgrade – and Katie knew she was good at that. She’d only needed to spend a minute in the blackened shop with its boarded-up windows to see her vision come straight back to life.
She’d already found the first piece.
A clear acrylic reception desk filled with pink neon tubes.
Not very Peridale.
But very Katie.
People would talk regardless of what she did, so she planned to show them who she was so they could gossip about her more factually. Then again, if their imaginations ran away from them, that was alright too.
Sometimes, the rumours were more entertaining than the truth.
“So, I’m already thinking about opening dates,” Katie said, breaking the silence; Julia also looked deep in thought, but when wasn’t she? “Are you still planning to come back to the café full-time in December?”
“Busiest month of the year.”
“Then that lines up perfectly with how long Alfie thinks the work will take.” She bit her lip before sipping her chilled wine. “Just think, by Christmas, I’ll have my own shop, you’ll be back at the café, and Jessie will be home! It’s so exciting.”
“But before then, the summer continues.”
“Oh, and we have to do something for Halloween. Don’t have the manor anymore to throw our annual parties.”
“Who knows, maybe Richie will throw a party at the bar?”
“I still can’t believe we’re getting a bar.”
“And a nail salon,” Julia pointed out. “And apartments.”
“We’re so cosmopolitan.”
Talking about what they were going to dress up as at Halloween, they linked arms and went back into the house where only family lingered. They were all varying degrees of stuffed, exhausted, and tipsy, but all obviously content to be together; just how Katie liked it.
She’d always wondered if they knew how lucky they were to have each other.
19
Julia had a bounce in her new Oxfords as she made her way down the winding lane.
It didn’t really matter that it wasn’t all that sunny.
She had a lot to smile about.
She’d spent a few hours with her daughter, eaten breakfast with her husband, and finally received an official wedding invitation from Leah and Johnny – all before she was due at the café.
Turning the bend in the lane, she was surprised to see a sleek, black car parked outside what was left of the ruin of the cottage Barker used to own. A fallen tree had destroyed the original cottage, and what remained in its place was a half-finished structure of glass and metal.
The concept had always been too modern for Peridale, but now it was just an eyesore. Every day, she drove or walked past it, and every day, she paid it no attention.
But the car, so shiny it looked like it had been lifted fresh from the factory floor and placed in her path, was impossible to miss. When the window slid down, the possibility behind her wild thoughts became a little more real.
“I heard a rumour that you’re renting a house in Riverswick,” she said, ducking to peer inside. “New car?”
“Had it for a while,” said James, revving the engine. “Finally taking her out for a spin and checking out some of the local listings. You heard right, though. I’m afraid I had to pick Riverswick over Peridale, for now. Better rental properties. But this is a decent plot for something, don’t you think?”
“It’s about time someone did something with it,” she said without going into the history of how it had come to be abandoned. “You know that would make us neighbours.”
James craned his neck, though with the bushes in full bloom, her cottage was too far around the bend to see this time of year. She was almost glad. If James bought the plot, whatever he was to build would surely put hers and Leah’s cottages to shame.
“If I choose this place, at least I know I’ll have two friends up the road?”
Julia pretended not to hear the question mark.
“Sure,” she said. “Friends.”
“Then, friend to friend,” he said, hitting a button that made the passenger door slide up, “I could use your help with something. I promise it won’t take long.”
Julia loved being at Fern Moore on hot summer days like these. If she thought Peridale came alive, there was something altogether different in the air here. BBQs sizzled from balconies and all over the courtyard. A dozen different songs from every direction competed with the hyperactive children playing on the wooden playground in the courtyard.
“It’s changed more than I thought it would have,” said James as they observed life from the outskirts. “Feels the same, though. There used to be shops all along there.”
He motioned to the units, two of which now occupied by a supermarket and a recently opened café. The others had their graffiti covered shutters down.
“They sat completely empty for at least a decade,” she said. “It’s only just started to change. Looks like there’s some people looking out for the community here. They could always use more.” She nodded to the empty units. “What used to be there?”
“Clothes
shop and a record shop.”
“I don’t think there’s much use for a record shop these days, but everyone needs clothes.” She nudged his arm. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out, though. I’m right in guessing you wouldn’t even notice the money leaving your account?”
“Probably not.”
He dug into his jacket and pulled out a stack of glossy photographs and passed them to Julia. She flicked through, showing Fern Moore in the late 80s and 90s. It looked the same, and yet so different.
“A lot of young families moved in back then,” he explained, shielding his eyes as he looked up. “It always seemed so much bigger when I was a kid, but maybe that’s what living in London for so long does to you.”
“Some of these families have been here for generations.”
“I suppose they have.”
“Do you recognise anyone?”
James looked around, but he shook his head.
“They might recognise you,” she suggested.
“Flip back two pictures.”
Julia landed on a little boy sat on the swings of the metal playpark that used to be in the centre of the courtyard. Back then, it was still shiny and new. The boy’s clothes were too tight, but he was a bit of a dumpling. Behind him, a woman, skinny as a rake and wearing a long leather jacket, pushed the swing, a cigarette hanging from her lip.
“I looked a bit different,” he said. “That’s my real mum. Sinead. Smoked like a chimney and was dead at forty-two. Never really knew what to do with me. My therapist once said it sounded like I was raised by someone lacking a maternal instinct. Ruth gave me just enough of what I’d always missed. I latched on hard.”
“She exploited you.”
“I think we exploited each other.” He looked up, pointing to the middle row. “There was one nice old couple up there. They’d always take me in when my mum locked me out. They baked all the time. I’m not sure they were all that good at it, but sugar and butter still have the same effect. Didn’t start losing weight until I left. Couldn’t really afford to eat when I first got off the train in London. Didn’t seem like a priority. I was in such a rush to make my fortune.”