by Issy Brooke
It was exactly what she wanted. But not from this over-keen man who was looking at her with more than friendliness on his face. She said, “What a lovely offer. Thank you but–”
“Perhaps a meal?”
She tried not to groan. “Oh, no, I…”
“Lincoln is not far away. Have you been? Such an overlooked city. It has some wonderful places to eat. The Bailgate area is particularly sophisticated. I know a smashing pub. Tonight, perhaps? Yes! I am free from … well, I shall get Colin to cover for me, so anytime from eight …”
She shook her head decisively. How had “let me tell you about Glenfield” become “let’s go on a date in a nearby city”?
“Thank you, Warren, but no thank you. I must be going.” She strode past him. These situations needed to be clear and unequivocal. She’d learned that the hard way, some years ago. There had been a pleasant, if slightly drippy, sound electrician on her production team when they were in Cambodia and she had been too soft to give him the brush-off properly. This meant he had followed her around hopefully for four months once they returned to the UK and she had taken to hiding in cupboards just to avoid him. She’d been caught by a security guard who had days of footage of her shenanigans, and she had a lot of explaining to do.
It was far less cruel, in the long term, to simply say “no.”
But Warren was undeterred. She began to recognise him as one of those men who had been turned down so many times that he no longer really registered a proper, clear refusal. He followed her out of the shop and onto the pavement, saying, “It’s a simple neighbourly offer, that’s all. I’ll show you the sights, tell you who is who and what is what…”
“No, but thank you.”
He was quite ugly when he was annoyed. “You needn’t act like I’ve just propositioned you. I’m making a friendly gesture.”
“And I appreciate it,” she said tightly.
“You don’t seem to.”
She backed away, wishing for the first time that she had her dog with her. Kali could at least look menacing. “I am settling in very well, and I like living here, and I appreciate your offer but now I need to go. Good day.” She added “leave me alone” in her head, and hoped he could read that through the narrowing of her eyes.
“You women are all so …”
She turned and walked briskly away, not needing to hang around to hear what he thought of all women. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way, my friend, she thought. You come on too strong and we run away and then you get angry and try even harder the next time … it’s never going to work.
It was a shame.
And she had the prickling feeling along her spine that he was staring at her as she went, and she wondered how much of an enemy she had made.
Enemies were easy enough to handle in London. She’d made a few, after all. But here in Glenfield, she was going to find it difficult if people started to take against her before she really got established.
Warren would probably turn out to be a local mover-and-shaker with influence in every corner of the town. She shuddered and headed for home.
Chapter Three
But her cottage on River Street didn’t feel like home quite yet. She’d lived in a small apartment in London, so she had been able to bring most of her belongings with her, but even with her familiar items around, it was an unfamiliar sort of place.
Kali was lying in the hallway, doing a fine impression of a large black rug, but she kept her eyes on Penny in case she suddenly decided to shower food everywhere. Dogs were ever-hopeful.
Penny prowled from room to room. It didn’t take long. The cottage’s front door opened into a tiny porch where she kept boots and coats and hats, and then that opened into the long, narrow hallway. To the right was the main living room at the front of the house, and further down the hall was the square kitchen. Bizarrely, the stairs to the two bedrooms and tiny bathroom led up from a corner of the kitchen.
“I am going to put some pictures up,” she told the dog, who cocked her head. “Don’t freak out when I start bashing into the walls with a hammer, okay?”
Kali didn’t. She followed Penny into the living room and watched as she began to put some nails into the walls. How could the dog go crazy when it caught a glimpse of another dog half a mile away, and ignore this racket? She was learning more about dogs. Ever-hopeful … and they made no sense.
Penny pushed it from her mind. She was hanging a picture from many years ago. She’d painted it herself, in watercolours. It showed a mountain ridge with a cloudy sunset behind it, and it was one of the first paintings that she’d been so pleased with that she had had it professionally framed.
She stepped back and considered it. Yes, she still liked it. It was calm but the mountain had an air of potential menace; in the winter it would be deadly.
She remembered the art student she had been. She’d been lively and yet relaxed, curious and confident, eager to grab life and run with it. Of course, younger folk never really thought they’d ever get old and that time would run out. She’d fallen into the television production world through the design side of things, proved herself a good and capable organiser, and somehow … somehow her career had taken over, and she had pursued it, thinking that’s what she had wanted all along.
But when she’d achieved everything, the status and the money and the swanky flat in central London and the car – and the overpriced parking space to go with it – she felt oddly bereft. Now what?
She was startled from her reverie by the ringing of her phone and she darted through to the kitchen to fumble around in her bag. She retrieved it while it was still ringing but shoved it to her ear before she really registered who was calling.
“Hey, Penelope. How’s country life?”
Francine? What was Francine Black doing, calling her? Penny had hoped she’d been left behind in London. Francine was the one of the few people Penny hadn’t given her phone number to. The ditzy woman meant well, but goodness, she seemed to see the world as a place of brightly coloured flowers and fluffy kittens. Penny couldn’t help but say, quite bluntly, “Oh. What do you want, Francine?”
“I couldn’t wait to hear from you! How are you doing? Oh my gosh, it’s all so exciting! Leaving the rat race, wow. I’m so pleased for you. What is your cottage like?”
Penny rolled her eyes at Francine’s stream of childlike enthusiasm. She had been a rival television producer and they had sometimes worked together and sometimes in opposition. While Penny had embraced corporate life and culture with studied seriousness, Francine had blithely drifted through her career, giggling and bouncing and being everyone’s friend. And somehow, it hadn’t done her any harm. She was the least professional person Penny knew.
Maybe, Penny acknowledged, she resented Francine’s natural exuberance.
But good heavens, the woman was like an over-excited teenage girl with a new set of sparkly shoes. Pink ones, obviously.
Penny leaned on the small kitchen table and gazed out of the window, the phone clamped to her ear. “My cottage is small and sweet and quiet. Er, so how did you get my number?”
Francine tutted and laughed with delight. “Bob Channings who was dating that ferocious Liza woman, no, wait, Lisa, Liselle, I can’t remember. The one with the ears.”
“Everyone has ears.”
“No. The ears. Different sizes. Once you saw it, you couldn’t unsee it.”
“Lisbeth,” Penny said with a sigh. Oh yes. Those ears.
“Yes, Lisbeth! She had your number. I knew you’d moved. Leicestershire, is it? Nice cheese. Have you had the cheese?”
“Lincolnshire. They have bread with plums in, and some strange ham with bits in called haslet, and sausages … also with bits in. Basically, Lincolnshire food is normal food but with extra bits in it.”
“It sounds yummy!” said Francine. In a more serious voice, she said, “But who on earth moves to Lincolnshire? It’s the sort of place you come from, not go to.”
“That’s
exactly why I’m here. So people don’t bother me,” Penny added pointedly.
“What are you doing with your time? Have you joined masses of clubs? Are you bored? Have you learned to knit?”
Penny thought if she rolled her eyes much more, they’d roll right out. “No, I am not bored. I have a dog and a cottage and I’m getting involved with local activities…”
“Such as? Women’s Institute, that sort of thing? You, making jam, how wonderful. I’d love to make jam. I tried once but it stayed runny.”
“There are shops here. There’s no need to make jam. And there’s lots to do. Yesterday I found a dead body.”
That stopped the conversation in its tracks. Penny smiled to herself. You weren’t expecting that, were you?
Francine cleared her throat and said, “Are you joking? It’s a sick kind of joke.”
Penny felt guilty. Poor bubbly Francine. Why did happy people bring out the worst in Penny’s nature? “I’m sorry. No, I’m not joking. I found a dead man out in the fields. I called the police and everything.” She was about to ramble on, but she stopped herself. Suddenly, Penny was struck by the lack of people she could talk to. She wanted to spill the details she’d heard about the poor man, and his brother, and how he hadn’t been to darts and that must mean something… but she couldn’t say all that, not to Francine. Francine was so keen and eager to be her friend and somehow, it just put Penny off.
But it was nice to talk to someone from her past. She had to acknowledge that.
“Are you all right?” Francine asked with genuine concern at the news and the sudden silence.
“Yes, yes, of course I am.” Penny was surprised and slightly embarrassed to hear a catch in her voice. She cleared her throat and repeated it. “I am fine. I coped.”
“You always cope with everything!” Francine said in admiration. “I wish I was like you. I don’t cope. I have a big blow-up with stress, and then carry on.”
Maybe that was the way, Penny thought. She was about to answer when she heard Kali erupting into barks from the other side of the house. She could hear Francine asking about the noise, and she made her hasty excuses to finish the phone call.
“Thank you for calling … I really have to go … the dog, you know…”
I should have asked her about her life, her job, her mood, Penny thought as she went to find out why Kali was so upset. It turned out to be a moth battering itself against the window. Penny rescued it carefully and let it fly free in the back garden. Then she stood at the back door, leaning against the frame, looking at the rapidly growing grass. Kali came out to sniff the bare flower borders.
Now she’d shaken Francine off, she illogically wanted to talk to her again.
I must be going daft, she thought. I never wanted to talk to her in London. She was too loud and silly and flippant.
Too much like the person I once was … that I want to recapture.
I’m jealous.
* * * *
The call from Francine would have upset her equilibrium except Penny had to acknowledge that she had precious little equilibrium to start with. When it got to five o’clock she decided to take the dog out for a walk again. She had soon learned, moving out of the city, that in this rural area, the evening meal was eaten earlier than London, and it wasn’t called dinner. No, five o’clock was teatime. Sometimes it was six, depending on where family members worked. But things certainly seemed quieter on the pavements, even if the roads were busy, and she wanted to see if it would be a better time to walk Kali.
She snapped on the lead and gave the dog a pep talk in the hallway before leaving. She knelt down and stroked Kali’s shoulders. “You must behave,” she told her. Kali hung her head. “You need lots of exercise. How can I give that to you, if you lunge after every dog, barking like a monster? It’s no good. I don’t want to look like a terrible dog owner. So are you going to behave?”
Kali licked her lips and turned her head away. Penny narrowed her eyes. Dogs couldn’t feel guilty, so what was she trying to tell her?
I need to find a library and learn some dog body language, she decided. She stood up and peered out of the front door. It was cloudy and overcast. It was daft, but she welcomed bad weather. It made it far less likely that she would encounter other dogs and their owners.
“We had better get this sorted by the summer,” she said to Kali as they left the cottage and walked briskly along River Street. She turned right, heading south again. She felt restricted in where she could go, but it was too risky to turn left and go through town to find the footpaths on that side of the settlement. It would take too long, exposing her to too many potentially unexpected dogs. So, south it was.
They went past the Spinney and continued to follow the road. On her left were the farmlands that she had trespassed on, where she had found the dead farmer. She couldn’t help wonder how he had died. It was a funny place to commit suicide, and how had he done it? There had been no gun near him.
Kali was keen to be out and she felt a pang of guilt that she wasn’t letting her run off-lead. But she hadn’t had her long enough to have built a proper bond, and she had no idea if Kali would come back if she called her. And though she regretted taking the dog on, she didn’t really want her running off and never coming back.
They walked on, until she came to a path that left the road and wandered along a field margin. It was marked with a green sign, so she followed it, and slackened the lead so that Kali could ferret about in the hedge to her heart’s content.
The path was well-trodden and she began to feel nervous as it disappeared around a stand of trees up ahead. Her palms were clammy and her head began to feel like it was in a tight vice as she imagined thirty-two dogs appearing and charging at them, and Kali ripping them all to bits, and Penny ending up in jail for lack of control, and dying alone in a cell.
Her heart was thudding and she realised she had stopped walking. Kali was staring up at her in concern.
“On my gosh, I am so sorry,” she said in a rush to the dog. She shook her head and closed her eyes for a moment, repeating some calming mantras to herself. She’d been sent on a business-related “de-stress” event once, and now she was making use of the very things she’d once laughed at. “I am calm. I am an ocean of light and peace. Good energy in” –she breathed in deeply– “and bad energy out.”
And this worked well until a male voice startled her, making her shriek and choke. “Now then. Are you all right? Meditating or something?”
Her eyes flew open. She still wasn’t used to the way the local people used “now then” as a way of greeting, and she certainly wasn’t used to tall, sandy-haired strangers appearing on lonely footpaths while she was fighting off what felt like a panic attack.
“I! Oh! Yes!” she blurted like she had landed from an alien spacecraft. “No!”
“Good evening to yourself, too,” the man said. “What a lovely looking dog. Is she a Rottie?”
“Yes. The rescue centre had said crossbreed,” she added, giving Kali a hard stare, as if she had been in disguise. “I think they thought it would be harder to rehome her if they admitted she was actually a Rottweiler.”
“What a beauty. Can I say hi to her?” The strange man kept his distance while he spoke, letting his gnarled hands hang by his sides. She noticed that although he was complimenting her dog, he wasn’t looking at the dog directly, which she thought was strange. He was dressed in faded jeans and a fisherman’s jumper that was threadbare in places and hairy in others. It had seen better days. Possibly in the previous century.
“She seems to like people,” Penny said. “In that, she lunges towards them, wagging her tail.”
“Tail wags aren’t always a good thing,” the man said. He turned to one side and cocked her head, glancing at the dog and then looking away. He yawned. How rude, Penny thought.
Kali looked at him, then up at Penny. Penny’s stomach lurched. Was the dog asking for permission?
Or reassurance?
“Go on, then.” She nodded at the man. “Say hello.”
Kali walked forward and sniffed at his feet, and then his legs. After a few seconds, he patted the side of her neck very briefly, then stopped. Kali leaned against him for more, so he patted her again. “There’s a beautiful girl. What’s her name?”
“Kali. And I’m Penny. I’ve just moved into a cottage in the town.”
“Hi, Penny. I’ll not shake your hand – forgive me – I’m a bit grubby.” He showed her his dark-stained palms. His hands were wide and his knuckles very knobbly. “I’m a blacksmith, mostly, with other stuff, you know. Sorry, names, ahh. I’m Drew.”
She liked his broad grin, and said, brightly, “Hi, Drew. It’s lovely to meet you.” Lovely to meet someone who isn’t creepy or dead, in fact. “So, tell me, where does this path lead to?”
He turned and waved towards the trees. “Around there it splits into two, but you wouldn’t want to take the left hand path. It leads up to Farmer Hart’s land and he’s a … he was a stickler for the old ‘get orf my land’ stuff. He, ahh, sadly he’s just…”
“Yes, I know. I found the body, actually.” She heard a strange tone in her voice. Was that pride or something? How awful. She tried to compose her face into something serious and respectful.
“You did? It was you? I heard talk. So you’re that woman from London. Oh. That must have been traumatic.”
“It was strange. I think it would have been worse if I had known him, you know?” She had to add, after a moment’s pause, “And what do you mean, ‘that woman’? It sounds a little … ominous.”
Drew simply grinned more widely. “Welcome to a small town. We know everything about you already. You were taking a risk being on his land, you know. Well, obviously you didn’t know.”
“I might be a soft London type but I am pretty sure you can’t just randomly shoot people anymore.”
“No, but you can shoot dogs if they might worry the sheep. They don’t even have to be attacking. The dogs, I mean. Not the sheep. Not that many trained attack sheep around here. Anyway. David Hart got rid of his sheep a few years back and went over to arable. Still, he’s put up electric fences absolutely everywhere.”