by Fiona Walker
‘Technically, yes, although we really didn’t want to and it was all over a silly misunderstanding.’
‘Because of his lady friend.’
‘Who said that?’ The eyes bulged in the stiff face. ‘Your mother, I’ll bet!’
He shook his head. ‘I remember hearing Dad saying it.’
‘Grown-ups get very angry about things like that, even in a long marriage.’
‘He said it was the last in a long line.’
‘Gunnpa made lots of friends. He was a very sociable man.’
‘Like Dad.’
She stared at him, eyes alert in the still face. Then, clearing her throat carefully, she asked: ‘Is Daddy being... friendly, do you think?’
‘I think Dad’s being very friendly, Gunny.’ Relief at sharing the fear washed over him.
‘In London during the week, you mean?’ Her voice stayed sing-song bright.
‘Yes. And sometimes away. He was quite friendly in Switzerland a few months ago when he flew out for a case.’
‘Come here.’
Fitz was pressed to a lavender-scented bosom. ‘What do I do, Gunny?’
‘Leave it with me.’
Part 2
HARVEST, HOLIDAYS AND HOMECOMINGS
12
Pip had been up all night baking and googling, perfect insomnia pastimes as she’d long ago discovered, although she regretted the many spoonfuls of raw cake mix and four Red Bulls she’d consumed, especially as she hadn’t yet unearthed the detective trail she was looking for. She would have carried on searching for clues, were it not for the many early client calls for which she’d baked extra supplies.
Captain Jocelyn Percy’s funeral was taking place at midday. Every time she thought about it, Pip felt a little shiver of excitement.
Her kitchen surfaces were rockeries of Tupperware containers filled with all the Captain’s favourites: flapjacks, brownies, Bakewell slices and refrigerator cake, all cut into fittingly funereal coffin shapes. And her head was revolving with names, dates and clues that didn’t yet match up.
Nobody googled as obsessively in search of answers as Pip Edwards. She was the black widow of the world wide web, as merciless in pursuit of the perfect sponge recipe as a married neighbour’s profile on discreet dating sites. Unafraid of its darkest underbelly, Pip could look up a hired hitman in less time than it took most surfers to check the news headlines. She often fantasised about setting up her own detective-agency-cum-bakery called Proof.
It was when she’d given up her job to look after her elderly parents that Pip had truly embraced the internet. In much the same way that Alan and Jean Edwards had once marked up the Radio Times on a Friday to plan their viewing week ahead, she now had a fixed routine. She had multiple social-media profiles and feeds, and was a long-standing member of manifold chat rooms. She occasionally trolled, but more often flirted, reviewed and advised; she watched lots of YouTube funnies as well as tasteful Tumblr porn GIFs, masturbating with quiet, secret pleasure. She had several dating profiles, none with her own name and a recent photograph attached. Her confidence online was in direct contrast to her diffidence off it.
She now liked to think of herself as the village’s Wizard of Oz. By day, she might occupy an antiquated world of servants’ bells, game soup and afternoon tea in houses with no computers; by night she was on the superhighway in her high-tech bungalow hub, where she led a vicariously modern life through her alter-egos, like Epiphany_1983 on Mumsnet, who had imaginary DDs, DSs and a loving DH, or Piping_Hot_Babe on PistonHeads, who had a penchant for off-roading. She kept a laptop in every room, plus several tablets and two smartphones always at hand. Someone on one of her favourite online forums had eight mobiles, using them to juggle his many love affairs, which she thought a bit excessive. Pip’s second phone was what she thought of as her Dark Phone, a pay-as-you-go: she changed its SIM once a month, paying cash to top up at garages so the account couldn’t be traced. She didn’t understand why everyone didn’t have one. It was like owning an alter-ego, a telecommunications sports-car that came out on only hot, naughty, top-down days. Not that she ever had those, but she liked to think she was ready.
Feeling unprepared made Pip extremely anxious, which was why she’d just spent a sleepless night digging around in everything from Blair’s company records to historic Dutch warmblood pedigrees in search of a clearer picture of Ronnie. The clues still didn’t add up, and she felt wholly unrehearsed, the intelligence she had acquired no match to the wit of the Compton Bolter, whose most devilish dog days – and Pip was sure there were many – had left not one tiny bite-mark of data. She still hadn’t been able to piece together anything about Ronnie’s life during the fifteen years between deserting her marriage and dealing horses in Germany, or much about her life since returning, and how Blair’s mysterious older wife Verity fitted in. It was the first case that hadn’t taken her less than a week to crack.
Preparing for the sombre day in store, Pip felt highly agitated, her heart artificially palpitated by energy drinks and blue light. Bending down to shave her legs, blood rushing to her head, she nicked her ankles and the shower basin turned red.
With Google on her side, she’d kept track of all the Captain’s closest connections like dots on a radar. They were all now converging. It was going to be a very big day. Only one remained under the radar.
Pip had a soap-addict’s affection for funerals, especially those seething with high tension and family ill-will. Her parents’ ceremonies had been lonely affairs, limp with misery and dulled by poor attendance, but Captain Jocelyn Percy’s promised to be a green-and-pleasant-landing spot for the great, the good and the grudge-holders, an old-school roof-raiser. Nobody had told Pip what would happen after today. Lester remained tight-lipped as ever, and she suspected he knew even less than her. Forced to play midnight detective to piece things together, all she’d found were fragments.
Rubbing anti-dandruff shampoo into her scalp, she hardened her resolve to remain the stud’s secret weapon. This week, with Alice texting about funeral arrangements, and Pax calling to check she was okay, Pip still felt part of the family firm, and that gave her consequence. Without the stud, she had very little tangible in her life. Internet chat rooms didn’t resound with shouts, barks and racing commentaries or smells of wet dog and open fires. LOL, WTF and emoticons with colons and bracket mouths hardly compared to the triumph of real laughter, the unity of shared rage, or deep tribute of humble gratitude, like the day not long after starting work there when she’d taken Ann Percy her midday sherry and distinctly heard her say: ‘What would life be like without you, eh? You are the most devoted and sweet of creatures.’
‘Thank you!’ she’d whispered joyfully, backing out, her constancy guaranteed.
Some time afterwards, it occurred to Pip that Ann Percy might have been talking to the Labrador at her side, but by then she was all-in for keeps. Right up until their last breath, she’d protected both Percys with fierce loyalty, welcoming allies and seeing off foes, helping Lester on the yard, even cooking Christmas lunch and Easter roast for the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, finding herself, to her delight, at the centre of a big, glamorous soap-opera family for the first time in her life. As soon as its new matriarch was sworn in, she was ready to renew her oath of allegiance. If only Ronnie wasn’t so inscrutable, her loyal friends too discreet to speak out of school...
Lathering herself in Dove, jittery with caffeine overload, the answer finally came to her. Friendships tessellated. The friends would be friends of friends. There would be a repeating pattern. She stepped out of the shower and hurried to the nearest computer, dripping water and blood everywhere, already seeing the key puzzle pieces. The secret was to find a link between them other than the obvious one.
Pip’s Facebook profile was a source of particular joy. Over the course of eighteen months, she’d targeted indiscriminate equestrian stars, media-friendly toffs and local celebrities with requests and now boasted three hundred influent
ial Bardswolds-set friends, only a handful of whom she’d ever met. Getting more big-hitting village friends was her new goal. Some, like novelist Petra Gunn, were tough nuts to crack, with private personal profiles, the open pages produced by a publicist.
At least she had a profile, which was more than most of the Percys. Only Pax was on there, and she had just thirty-one friends with nothing posted on her wall for almost a year. There was no page promoting the stud. Pip, who now counted Olympic dressage medallists, Gold Cup winners and Horse & Hound columnists among her friends, was far better connected. They needed her.
Now, fingers flicking this way and that on the track-pad, she called up Blair Robertson’s groom, whose Facebook posts regularly appeared on her feed along with a lot of inspirational quotes. She glanced at her photos – nothing new there – then scrolled slowly through her friends.
Verney. The family name! A son from Verity’s first marriage by the look of it, all checked shirt, big smile and dark glasses. His profile was private, but he had friends in common with Pip. She’d click on to find another corner of the jigsaw.
Several gregarious event riders were very lax in their privacy settings. As Pip scrolled fore and aft through friends’ lists, more Verneys appeared. Blair had stolen the queen of a big dynasty, it seemed. Cousins in Kent and Scotland, an uncle in Kenya. One fierce-looking niece – Roo – was particularly high profile, with an army of friends and followers, many of them family. Here was another Verney. Was this one Verity’s daughter? The dates added up. Like Pax, the avatar was a white silhouette with no recent activity and only a handful of friends, all laid bare by an amateur’s mishandling of Facebook.
Of those friends, one stood out, her thumbnail a photograph of the most beautiful horse Pip had ever seen.
Verity Robertson.
13
Hoof beats rang out on tarmac as the Saddle Bags trotted past Compton Magna’s small church in the low morning sunlight. Most village alarm clocks had yet to go off, but the air was already heavy with steamed-off dew and warm pollen. The heatwave was now in its third week. High in the VIP zone of the graveyard, matting had been laid out around a deep, open rectangle, an artificially green carpet compared to the drought-bleached grass.
None of the women needed to ask who was being buried. The Captain’s funeral was a Bardswolds headline event. Rumours had been flying all week that royalty would be there.
‘Anybody else going to the actual service?’ Gill asked sombrely, fanning out her polo-shirt collar. ‘Do you think we should wear hats? I know half the village will be there, and one doesn’t want to look too much like a principal mourner, but I do have a rather splendid black fascinator that’s only seen one wedding, and missed Ladies’ Day this year due to high wind. What do you think?’
There was a sticky silence, the other Bags uncertain how to react to an NFI to a funeral.
‘It’s good to get some wear out of these things, isn’t it?’ Petra said kindly.
‘Absolutely,’ Gill agreed. ‘Paul’s black suit’s been let in and out more than the cat over the years. I do think a hat is a mark of respect.’
‘From the sound of it, a crash helmet might be best.’ Petra longed to be a fly on the wall for research purposes.
‘And riot shields,’ huffed Mo, hurt that her elderly parents had also been left off the guest list, despite farming and hunting alongside the Captain for a lifetime.
Bridge just smelt the free booze. ‘Worth it if the Life Hackers are there to get the after-party going. I’m going to disguise myself as a pallbearer.’
‘You’ve always said you can’t bear Paul,’ muttered Petra, winking.
‘Genius!’ Gill’s funny bone was tickled enough to abandon the pious face. ‘Paul’s driving me mad. He’s so excited about rubbing shoulders with the Windsors, I almost convinced him to shave off the Schnauzer’ – it was her nickname for her husband’s much-loathed beard – ‘but all he’s done is trim it with my ruddy nail scissors. He says it’s Shakespearian, but he just looks like Noel Edmonds.’
‘Ew.’ Bridge gave her a pitying look. ‘Is that why your scarecrow was a seventies throwback?’
‘The checked flares were proper George and Mildred vintage,’ chuckled Mo.
‘Mum got decades of dog-walking out of those golf trews,’ Gill insisted. ‘Never throw out anything with wear in it, and certainly not to village jumble. You never know where you’ll see it next.’ She gave Petra a told-you-so look. ‘What was it your mother-in-law said in her blog?’
‘A murder of crows could not have been louder than the patterns on show in “Open Wardrobe Week” as it was known in the Gunn household,’ Petra recited, her unwanted impulse buys having found their way from the summer fête’s nearly-new stall onto half a dozen exhibits in the village’s hotly contested scarecrow parade.
‘Brilliantly evil.’
Gunny had been as remorseless as anticipated (‘I’m so lucky not to need to add saccharine and dumb down everything for my readers as you do, Petra’), her most recent blog a predictable metaphor for her disappointment in her son’s marriage, much of it devoted to veiled suggestions that her daughter-in-law should make more effort physically.
Petra gave a gallant smile. ‘My favourite was: When a woman calls the weeds in her flower-bed “organic”, you can guarantee she’s not a regular at the waxing salon.’
The Bags lined up in front of the winning Open Garden Week display, still on show at Wishing Well Cottage, crafted by enthusiastic weekenders who owned the thatch beside the Green. It featured the entire royal family, including George, Charlotte and three dorgis, all in flat caps or knotted headscarves.
‘If an HRH really is coming to the village today, d’you think they’re quite the thing?’ Mo fretted.
Gill looked aghast. ‘They should jolly well get rid of them.’
‘The Webbs are in Corsica for the rest of the summer,’ said Petra, who knew the family.
‘Second-homers on third holidays, lucky things,’ Bridge grumbled. ‘I get a week’s camping in Wales with Poland’s most argumentative tent constructor.’
‘More than I get,’ sniffed Mo. ‘If I take more than a day off, Barry hands me a dust sheet and a pot of paint. Gill’s going on a cruise.’
‘It’s a narrowboat on the Norfolk Broads, and it’s hardly luxurious. Not like Petra’s fortnight in a Tuscan villa.’
The other three Bags levelled accusing looks at her.
‘With four children and no WiFi,’ she reminded them, receiving a round of unsympathetic hums. ‘And Charlie.’ The hums softened in commiseration.
The riders indulged in a favourite guess-who’s-going-where game.
‘New Forest guesthouse called Dundoggin,’ Mo suggested, in a knowing undertone, as they passed the dormer bungalow shrouded by weeping willows occupied by two squabbling vintage-car enthusiasts, then turned the corner past the first of a pair of tall-fronted cottages.
‘Paxos yoga retreat,’ said Petra, whose occasional dog-walking friend lived in the first, a divorced political-speech writer for whom it was a weekend bolthole in which to whip up rhetoric and boil jam.
‘Barcelona.’ Bridge nodded at the other cottage in which her two gay IT mates, live-streaming endlessly on Facebook, hogged the entire village’s bandwidth.
Passing the Old Almshouses, with its wide, pretty face and tall barley-sugar twist chimneys, they all looked out eagerly for signs of life. Kit Donne’s was among the prettiest façades in the village.
‘He’s taking his play to New York soon,’ Gill said. ‘We saw it on National Theatre Live at the cinema. Very way out and political.’
Petra suspected Gill found most comedies not set in the Home Counties and starring Celia Imrie way out and political. ‘Didn’t Billington once call Kit Donne the Cumbrian Mark Rylance?’
‘We had a lovely holiday near Beatrix Potter’s house in the Lake District once,’ Mo remembered. ‘So pretty. I wonder if he goes back.’
‘Probably holidays so
mewhere funky like Lake Khövsgöl,’ said Bridge. ‘Sleeping in a yurt, milking horses and hunting fox or rabbit with golden eagles.’
‘Is that anywhere near Esthwaite Water?’ asked Mo.
‘Mongolia. Stripped-back nomading’s big among London luvvies. My friend went on a trek with Moroccan shepherds and said half the cast of The Crown was there.’
Petra had read Kit Donne described in a recent Sunday supplement as a workaholic still grieving for his wife; his handsome face was drawn and shadowed in the photograph. She sensed the village’s elusive theatre director didn’t take holidays.
‘That garden is distinctly stripped back.’ Gill tutted at the withered brown grass and weeds surrounding the house. ‘It was so pretty when Hermia was alive. Hollyhocks as tall as Maasai.’
‘Let’s please not try to lead this whore to culture again.’ Bridge groaned. ‘I don’t do flowerbeds, just flowers then bed, preferably with a romantic movie and a three-course meal in between.’
Gill laughed. ‘Hermia would have approved of that. Before the accident she was the bubbly, hospitable one. Their old house – now yours, Petra – was always awash with visitors. She loved her parties and plays. Terrible waste of a life.’
‘Were her injuries very bad?’ Petra asked, as they rode on. She knew very little about the woman whose death had coincided with the Gunns’ arrival in the village, except that she’d been invalided in a traffic accident while riding several years earlier. She never thought twice about hacking on the roads herself, but when her girls were on their ponies, lorries driving too fast plagued her subconscious.
‘That’s the awful thing about head injuries.’ Gill’s usually stern face twisted with rare compassion as she glanced over her shoulder at the Old Almshouses. ‘Her body was still capable of everything it had done before the accident. It was her brain function that was impaired. She had to learn to walk and talk all over again. She had a bucket list that the Austens were always banging on about – I think they came up with it, actually – run a mothers’ race at school, perform a Shakespeare speech on stage and ride a horse again or something like that. It should have been heroic, but she didn’t manage any of it. Some people who’ve had very big brain traumas like hers can change personality completely. It’s like a having a stranger in your midst, not like an amnesiac who simply can’t remember, but somebody who sees things totally differently. Old friends found it very hard being around her. She became a complete recluse eventually.’