by Issy Brooke
It looked very odd. She patted Kali absently and walked back to the kitchen. She set the timer for the cake, and then stood by the window as she opened the curious envelope.
There was one sheet of A4 paper inside, folded four times. She flattened it out and her stomach felt cold.
The message was written in thick black marker pen, in the same shaky capitals as the address.
It was a stark, blunt warning.
GET OUT
Penny’s hands shook. It was irrational, but she folded it up and then unfolded it again, as if it would become a different message. But it was no magic trick.
It was a threat.
Mary’s letters had told her to go away, too. Now it was imperative that Penny spoke with Mary again. She had to compare the letters to determine if they came from the same source. That would rule out David as the sender of them – unless there was something supernatural going on, which she highly doubted.
But then, this was Lincolnshire, after all.
* * * *
It was difficult to wait for the cake to cook. Finally she pulled it out of the oven and left it to cool. While it rested on the wire rack, she decided to go out and visit Drew in his forge. She needed to be active and doing something to distract herself from the letter.
She had to let Cath and the police know. She was sure of that. But she was also determined to find out a little more and see if it was linked to Mary’s letters. She wasn’t sure if she was going to tell Drew or not, but she wanted to.
But he had told her he didn’t want to be any part of it. He knew she was going to talk to Eleanor and he had disagreed and walked away.
Penny walked more and more slowly as she neared the industrial area. There was an agricultural vehicle showroom, with glossy, shiny tractors in a row outside. There was some kind of small-scale catering operation, and two white-coated workers leaned out of a fire exit to smoke some cigarettes, their blue hairnets pushed back on their heads.
And there was the forge. She stopped in the shared car parking area and looked across the tarmac to the open doors. So, he was in there. She could hear the repetitive tap-tap-bang, tap-tap-bang as something magical happened to metal as it became a useful or ornamental item.
He’d walked away from her.
He’d shown her kindness. She owed him for the head-collar and the support he had shown.
She was torn.
Men made things complicated, she thought, somewhat crossly. No wonder I avoided any of my relationships becoming serious. Although in truth, I was always too busy to notice if they were getting serious or not, and eventually the men gave up and wandered off, calling me “commitment shy” as they left.
The tapping had stopped. A figure crossed the open space of the doors, pausing halfway.
Her stomach lurched and she turned abruptly, and walked quickly away from the scene. Men were too complicated, she told herself again.
Finally she decided to call Francine back, and she fished her mobile phone from her bag as she went briskly along the High Street and back to her cottage.
* * * *
The conversation with Francine was short as she was about to go into a meeting.
“You have already forgotten what it’s like to work for a living,” Francine said with a laugh. “It’s Tuesday. Normal people are working.”
“Oh my goodness. Yes, I did forget.”
“Quick, tell me about the craft group.”
Penny slowed her pace. “I haven’t spoken to you since that? Oh no. There was Mary and then Ginni but she was angry and then Eleanor and Thomas but I don’t have an ASBO but someone has sent me a threat, so…”
“What are the police doing about it?”
“I haven’t told them,” Penny confessed.
Penny didn’t need the miracle of telephone technology to hear Francine’s shriek. “Go to the police right now!” There was a muffled conversation then, as Francine told someone she was on her way, hold on, wait. “Sorry. Just asking them to hang on with the meeting. I really have to go. But Penny, please, go to the police. I’ll call you as soon as I can. How exciting!”
And that was that.
How exciting?
Penny shook her head at Francine’s exuberance. Everything had changed now. It wasn’t an exciting bit of fun. Someone had threatened her – her, Penny – and she felt sick, vulnerable. And alone.
She let herself into her cottage, and buried her face in Kali’s fur for a moment, sunk to her knees in the hallway. “Hey, there, girl. We’ll be all right.”
Kali’s tail thumped the floor. Penny had to take that as a yes. The smell of baking was filling her nostrils, and it was time to attend to the cake.
She threw herself into the mechanics of cooking and decorating. She whipped up some buttercream filling and sandwiched the Victoria sponge cake together, adding a layer of jam as well. She dusted some icing sugar over the top, and sat down to admire it. Kali came and pressed against her leg, hopeful that some of the lovely-smelling cake would somehow just mysteriously fall to the floor for her to helpfully eat.
The letter was sitting on the table, its message stark and unequivocal. GET OUT.
She felt a heavy, dragging unwillingness to go and see Mary. Her imagination was now working overtime. Was it a bluff by Mary to garner sympathy? Was it someone dangerous? Was it the murderer?
What would happen if she did not GET OUT?
There was no threat spelled out. Was that going to come in the next letter?
She laid her head on her arms briefly and closed her eyes. Maybe Drew was right and she should never have meddled.
* * * *
When she awoke, her mouth was dry and her head was fuzzy. Her shoulders ached and popped as she straightened up. What a stupid position to fall asleep in, she thought.
The cake.
The cake was gone.
Her first thought linked it to the threatening letter, until she saw the sheepish look on Kali’s face – not to mention the icing sugar around her muzzle. Half of it was in pieces on the floor. Penny leaped to her feet with a cry and Kali dashed away looking guilty.
“Oh no. What am I going to take to Mary now?” It felt like the last straw. Penny hadn’t realised how much it was all getting to her until this moment. On her knees, scraping up the destroyed cake, with a scary letter on the table; she wanted to curl up and cry.
Like in London, when she had begun to realise that stress was making her ill.
No. She sat back on her heels and took a deep breath. She was in control, she told herself. Kali peeped around the door and Penny remembered what she had read about the guilty look in dogs; it was really fear, not guilt. She called Kali over and rubbed her head. Kali rolled onto her back, which unfortunately smeared the jam a little more over the kitchen floor. The dog was going to need a bath.
“Oh, you.” Penny started to giggle, and then to laugh. She had to see the funny side. “Get up, daft dog.”
Kali sprang to her feet and looked at her feet in confusion. Penny cleared up and wiped the floor. She grabbed some antibacterial wipes designed for pets and made a valiant attempt to clean the remnants of the cake out of Kali’s fur, much to the dog’s disgust. “I’m sorry. Were you saving that for later? Look after the house, and try not to be sick,” she told the dog. “I have a mission.” She picked up the letter and went to see Mary.
* * * *
Penny expected Mary’s house to be in some sort of hippy-clutter-disarray with dream catchers and multi-coloured wall hangings and the lingering scent of patchouli.
She was very wrong.
Mary opened the front door of her terraced cottage cautiously, peering through a four-inch gap until she recognised Penny, and then she flung the door open with a cry of greeting. “Now then! Penny, my duck!”
“Hello, Mary. How are you?”
“Fair to middling. Not so dusty. Come in, come in.”
Penny stepped into a pristine living room, the front door opening directly from the
street. It was a large, low-ceilinged, square room, with plain magnolia-yellow walls and a beige three-piece suite with dark red cushions. There were no bookshelves, a fact which always made Penny shudder in other people’s houses.
“Would you like a drink?” Mary asked. She looked like she was standing in the wrong house, dressed in her layers of velvet with her jangling bangles and fringed shawl.
“No, thank you. I’m afraid I’m here with some difficult questions. Um.” Penny fiddled with her bag and pulled out the envelope. She decided it was in no one’s interest to mess around. “I received this letter this morning and I wondered if it was similar to the ones you had got.”
Mary’s face tensed and she took half a step backwards, her hands raised in front of her, and her fingers flexing at nothing. She stared at the letter in Penny’s hand. “Can I see?” she whispered.
Penny unfolded it and began to pass it over, but Mary could see the words printed there and she waved it away. “Oh, oh,” she said. “Yes. Wait. I’ll get mine.”
Penny would have found Mary’s reaction comical if she hadn’t, herself, received a letter. When it actually happened to you, she reflected, it was a whole new thing, and quite sickening.
Mary went through the door at the far end of the room, and returned a moment later with two sheets of paper. “These are the last few I got,” she said, and thrust them at Penny with a trembling hand.
LEAVE TOWN NOW said one, and GET OUT OR ELSE said the other, with an added unpleasant profane insult scrawled at the bottom of the sheet. It was the same handwriting, the same paper, and the same style of envelope.
“Was yours addressed to you?” Mary asked.
“Yes. To Miss Penny May. I am actually a Ms.,” she added. “And yours?”
“Miss Mary Radcliffe. I am a Miss.”
“We need to tell the police,” Penny said.
“No, no, no,” Mary moaned. “I can’t. I’m sorry, Penny, I just can’t, duck. I’ve never spoken to them. Never.”
“The police are there to help us,” Penny said, as if lecturing a small child.
Mary began to pace around her room, crossing to the mantelpiece over the gas fire and moving one of the delicate china ornaments a micro-millimetre to the left, and then back to the right. “No, no. They will ask questions and I’ll get flustered and it’s all my own fault. It’s all my fault. Me, you see. Just a silly old woman who can’t keep her mouth shut. But I’m learning, see, my duck, I’m learning.” She turned and faced Penny with a set, hard face. “So I shan’t talk to the police.”
Silence fell between them. Penny didn’t feel right in trying to put pressure on an already fragile woman.
There was nothing for Penny to do but to leave, and return home, thoughtful.
Mary had said it was all her fault: what else had she to be sorry for?
Chapter Eighteen
Penny found herself moping around for two days. Francine did call back, and Penny filled her in, but made light of it all, and Francine’s reaction was one of shared excitement. Penny realised that to Francine, she was simply watching a thrilling film, divorced from the reality that Penny was actually living through.
In truth, the letter had deeply unsettled her but she decided not to tell anyone in Upper Glenfield about it. Instead, she waited to see if she would receive another, but the post on Wednesday and Thursday brought her nothing but junk mail and a bank statement.
The bank statement wasn’t sobering, exactly, but it reminded her that she had to think more about her future here in Upper Glenfield. She could tighten her belt a little, and manage perfectly well, but life would be small and constrained. Penny had never wanted to live a small, constrained life. She had earned the right to splash out on nice food now and then, she thought. Her plans to go to craft fairs resurfaced.
So she spent some long hours curled on her sofa with her sketchbook, and even more hours out with Kali and her cheap digital camera, snapping reference shots to play about with on the computer later on. She was not getting used to the lack of internet and she dreaded to imagine how many emails she’d find when the engineer finally came out to put the necessary boxes in place for a phone line.
Through all her wandering and moping and sketching, she didn’t pursue the murder case any longer in her thoughts, in spite of Francine’s urging. She was fed up of it. The letter bothered her but she was afraid to think it might be linked – though it had to be. She had annoyed Eleanor and Thomas; she could quite imagine that the letter came from them. Why would one of them have sent threats to Mary, though? Mary was still hiding something, and she was still a suspect, in Penny’s mind.
But it was not her case, Penny told herself sternly. Restrain yourself, woman. Know your place and all that. Listen to Drew, not Francine.
She started to avoid phone calls from Francine again.
* * * *
It was mid-afternoon on Thursday when it all changed. Penny was sitting at her kitchen table with her sketchbook, armed with some glue and a pair of scissors, feeling like she was back at art school again as she chopped and rearranged some drawings of foliage that she had made. The shapes were suggesting some repeating pattern that would look good stencilled onto plain linen and perhaps turned into a simple tote bag.
Kali knew someone was at the door before the knock, as usual, but her bark was a happy, short one rather than the “get off my property you vile postman” tirade. Penny expected to see Cath, or even Mary, but she was surprised.
It was Drew, holding a small posy of flowers and looking very contrite.
“Hi, I’m an idiot,” he said, shuffling his feet.
“Hi, yes you are. Come on in.” Penny’s first feeling was one of pleasure and warmth, but tinged then with surprise and suspicion. If he was going to tell her what to do, he could leave right now. But she decided to hear what he had to say. It was always nice when people brought you flowers, after all.
He trailed after her to the kitchen and stopped when he saw her artistic efforts, the sheets of paper spread out on the table. “I like that,” he said, pointing to the uppermost sketch. “It’s goosegrass. I think it’s a very underrated plant.”
“Goosegrass?”
“This one,” he said, pointing at the sketch of the leggy, trailing weed with its sticky round balls. “You can eat it, but it’s not great raw.”
“I can’t imagine it’s a culinary delight even when it’s cooked. We called it cleavers as kids. Because it, er, cleaves, I suppose. We used to stick it to each other’s backs.”
“Well, there’s no cleavers or goosegrass in this,” he said, thrusting the posy forward. “It’s garden grown. I don’t go picking wild flowers.”
“I’m glad to hear it. How lovely! Thank you. I’ll get a jam jar. I didn’t bother bringing any vases when I moved.”
He looked awkward and out of place, standing in her kitchen. He was too big for houses – not physically, but just the way he seemed to want to leap out of doors and escape. She had a flash of inspiration. “Shall we go for a walk? I want to show you how good Kali’s being with the head-collar.”
“Yes. I’d like that.”
And so they found themselves rambling west out of town, along the river, under the bridge and out into the hillier land. The weather was warm but the sky was grey and overcast, with a muggy tint to the air. To Penny’s delight, Kali did, indeed, behave impeccably.
“It’s good the way she checks in with you as she walks,” Drew observed. “See how she is always looking back to see where you are. You should reward her with a treat now and then, for that. You’re bonding.”
Penny felt a warmth surge from her belly. A bond? After everything, and all her doubts especially in the first few days, it was lovely to think that she had done the right thing after all. “Thank you. That means a lot to me.” Of course that jinxed it. “Oh – Kali, no. No! The nettles! Leave it. Come here!” She enticed the dog out of the tempting patch of stinging weeds and they continued along the dry path.
“They are tasty in spring,” he said. “In the hungry gap, they’re really useful as a source of iron.”
“Ouch. Tingly, too! I think I’d rather have a go at eating cleavers.”
“They don’t sting when you eat them. They make a good soup.”
“So what’s the hungry gap?” she asked.
“We’re coming out of it now. At the end of winter, and into spring, the food stores are running low, traditionally. But new growth isn’t coming through much yet. So although the countryside gets all lush and verdant, actually, there’s a very real danger of starvation. Historically speaking.”
“Oh, right.”
He bent and grabbed a nettle by the root, making Penny wince as he squeezed tightly and wrenched it free from the soil. “And the fibres inside can be spun or made into ropes,” he continued. “You know that folk tale about the woman who had to spin fine shirts for the swans to turn them back into men again, but she had to use nettles? It’s possible.” He pulled a pocket knife out and split the long stem, revealing the white stringy mass within.
Penny was fascinated. “Wow. Real nettle shirts. Okay. So nettles might have a purpose.”
“They tell us about the landscape, too.” Drew was alight with enthusiasm now. “They need a lot of phosphate in the ground to grow and get all nice and deep green. That’s likely along the edges of fields that have had fertilisers added, but also wherever humans have lived in the past too. It’s a clue to the history of a place.”
“How do you know all this stuff?” Penny could see why he was running courses now.
He shrugged and cast the nettle stem back into the patch. “I’ve picked it up over the years. I talk to old folks, I like poking around in old bookshops, and I spend a lot of time out and about, observing stuff.”