Beside her, Mickey sighed. Mandy looked at him, concerned, and he smiled ruefully.
‘Have you ever made a resolution, Mandy?’
‘I make them all the time. To drink eight glasses of water a day. And to take all my make-up off before I go to bed, that sort of thing. But I always break them.’ She frowned. ‘Is something the matter?’
‘Nothing that a couple of hundred grand wouldn’t sort out. Don’t suppose you could lend it to me?’
‘Sorry.’
They laughed together. Mandy was curious. What Mickey was hinting at tied in with what she had witnessed the day before, and she wanted to know more.
‘Are you in big trouble, then?’
Mickey cursed his indiscretion. He must still be pissed.
‘No – not really. It’s just cash flow. Boring, boring. Come on, I’ll race you to the end of this track. You can have a head start.’
Rising to the challenge, Mandy wheeled Monkey round and dug her heels into his side, giving the little horse his head. Mickey gave her fifty yards and followed at a steady pace, allowing her to win by half a length. She was flushed with triumph and exhilaration, and he hoped all traces of their conversation had gone out of her head. After all, cash flow was hardly of interest to an eighteen-year-old, was it?
Then he wondered why he was worrying. Everyone was going to find out soon enough, once the word got out. For he’d made a decision, and it wasn’t a happy one.
As soon as he got off the plane at Birmingham airport, Keith became a driven man. He located his Landcruiser where he’d left it in the long-term car park, then called his secretary at home on his mobile. She was paid generously, so he didn’t feel guilty about disturbing her on a Sunday. First, he cancelled all appointments for the next three days. Irene was respectfully and silently shocked. He hadn’t cancelled so much as a meeting since he’d had shingles four years ago, but she didn’t demur. Instead, she filled him in on Mandy’s whereabouts. Apparently she was staying with the Liddiards of Honeycote House, somewhere in the Cotswolds. Irene had checked them out with Miss Cowper at Redfields, who’d assured her they were a very nice family – they ran a brewery, apparently. Keith was very fond of the Cotswolds. He’d taken American clients there in the past, and it inevitably took their breath away and persuaded them to order container-loads of traditional roll-top baths and toilets with overhanging cisterns so they could recreate a little bit of England for their impressionable customers back home.
It was still only eight o’clock, but Keith decided that instead of going home to his mockingly empty mock mansion, he’d take a drive down to Honeycote and collect Mandy. It would be nice to take the four-wheel drive somewhere it might actually get dirty – he wasn’t sure he’d ever even put it into four-wheel drive – and he’d take the Liddiards out to lunch to say thank you for having her.
Little more than half an hour later he was bowling merrily along the picturesque ‘B’ road that his AA map reliably informed him would lead to Honeycote. He felt a silent wonder as he passed through storybook villages, sleepily complacent in their charm, perfect plumes of smoke curling from their chimneys. Their perfection lay in their irregularity: zigzagged rooflines encrusted with silver-green lichen, mullioned windows with leaded panes that never saw a drop of Windowlene, assorted chimney pots, grand next to humble, all hewn out of buttery stone and laid out along little lanes that twisted and curved and rose and dipped so that you turned a corner and were suddenly surprised by a steep grassy bank, the welcoming frontage of a pub or the strangely restful prospect of a churchyard, gravestones leaning at all angles. Keith marvelled that real people lived in these fairytale settings, then supposed that in fact it was not all roses. The downside would be the coachloads of tourists that inevitably trawled through their midst each summer, the lack of anywhere to park, the pubs filled with screaming day trippers – and an economy dependent on these locusts.
Nevertheless, Keith could feel himself relaxing in these surroundings. He slid Mozart into the CD player and hummed happily to himself as he negotiated the rest of the journey. He pondered on how he had once or twice suggested to Sandra that they move out of stifling, suburban Solihull to somewhere more tranquil and restful, but she had been mystified by the idea and refused to give it even a second’s consideration. What about their Social Life and the Golf Club? And (the reason that had convinced Keith that of course he was being whimsical) Mandy’s Education. Keith realized now that Sandra hadn’t given a fig about Mandy’s education, or indeed Mandy at all, but had been afraid of being forgotten in the countryside and losing her place on the rung of the social ladder. And presumably the attentions of her lover, though whether this was the first or the fortieth, Keith had no idea.
Maintaining his business meant he’d lost touch. He didn’t know his wife, or his daughter, but had found himself on the treadmill of making money to keep them happy and had forgotten the magical, free ingredient: attention.
And, he realized further, he’d forgotten himself. Sure, he had his little luxuries and indulgences, but coming out here had made him aware that he had long stifled a more sensitive side of himself. Although he was a peddler of monstrous bathroom fittings, he had a surprising sense of the aesthetic that had been somewhat suppressed in recent years.
Keith found himself reversing up the road and tucking his Landcruiser into a makeshift lay-by that had emerged out of necessity in order to let oncoming vehicles through. He felt that as an outsider it was his duty to reverse: living here one must get sick of giving way day after day. Moreover, as he delved deeper into the countryside he found his usual aggressive and thrusting nature evaporating. As he entered the little town of Eldenbury he glanced at his watch and, seeing that it was only just ten o’clock and far too early to bowl up to someone’s house unannounced on a Sunday, he decided to get out, stretch his legs and absorb his surroundings.
He walked down the little high street, wishing he felt less of an outsider in his suit and tie, with the mobile phone which he habitually carried. He felt as if he had ‘townie’ tattooed across his forehead. Eventually he came across a small shop that proclaimed it sold ‘Country Clothing for the Discerning Gentleman’. He patted his inside pocket to make sure of his wallet and went in. Time for a transformation.
He selected a tattersall check shirt, a cravat, a pair of moleskin trousers and a greeny-blue chunky wool sweater. Five minutes later, he emerged from the changing room – really the cupboard under the stairs hung across with a gingham curtain – fully dressed in his new guise, and asked the surprised assistant to fold up his suit and put it into a carrier bag. He then perused the shop for accessories: a tweed cap, a fine pair of brogues and a waxed jacket. Soon he had run up a bill that amounted to more than the shop usually sold in a week.
As he went to pay, handing over his credit card to the delighted assistant, he realized with a pang of self-loathing that this was the way he and Sandra had always done everything. When they’d taken up golf, they’d gone and bought all the clothes, all the equipment, all the accessories, before even setting foot on the green. It had been the same with tennis. And skiing. Keith thought now what prats they had probably looked on the beginners’ slopes at Val d’Isère, standing out like beacons in their gleaming outfits and falling over instantly.
Now here he was, doing it again. Trying to buy his way in. Trying to tog himself up like a country gent when to really belong here, he knew, it needed to be second nature, uncontrived. But even the oldest, most distressed waxed jacket had started off as new once, he reasoned. Short of pinching someone else’s, he had to wear it in.
It wasn’t a day to feel defeated, decided Keith. In fact, it was probably something of a new beginning. From now on, he could be anyone he liked. He didn’t have to take his wife into consideration, worry about what she thought or wanted. He remembered all the ambitions he’d suppressed over the years, places he’d toyed with visiting that Sandra had turned her nose up at.
So, even if he was behavin
g like Mr Toad with a new passion, he’d waited long enough to be allowed to indulge himself. Reassured, Keith happily chose a Swiss Army knife from the display cabinet. It boasted nearly fifty cunning attachments, and Keith felt sure it was going to come in very useful.
He sauntered out on to the street and immediately felt at home, part of the scenery. Up ahead, he saw a pub, the Horse and Groom. A sandwich-board boasted that it was open all day for tea, coffee and good food. Keith thought a cup of coffee was just what he needed before he phoned the Liddiards to announce his arrival.
The creature behind the bar was like no one Keith had ever seen. Long, thick, back-combed black hair, eyes barely visible beneath layers of kohl, combat trousers and a T-shirt that proclaimed FANTASTIC CLEAVAGE UNDER KIT, she wasn’t quite what he expected behind the bar of a Cotswold coaching inn. Her accent made her sound as if she should be out in the fields picking peas, a country burr that seemed both naive and knowing.
‘What can I get you, sir?’
‘Just a coffee, please.’
He looked along the bar, then noticed the pumps bore the logo of Honeycote Ales. He remembered his conversation with Irene.
‘Is this a Honeycote pub? Owned by the Liddiards?’
‘At the moment it is, yes, sir.’
‘At the moment?’
The girl leaned forward confidentially. Keith could see that her T-shirt told the truth.
‘Word is they’re going to the wall. Everyone reckons they’ll go bust any minute. Or be bought out.’
‘Really?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Just curious. My daughter’s staying with them at the moment.’
The girl put a hand to her mouth, as if alarmed she’d been indiscreet, but her eyes were laughing. Her bitten nails were painted a deep blood red.
‘Oh dear. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘It won’t go any further.’
‘If you see him, tell the young master Mayday sends her love.’ She flashed a set of Hollywood white teeth at him. Keith promised he would and walked away to drink his coffee, feeling rather as if he’d walked into a film. And he had to admit he was eager to cut to the chase – what she’d told him had aroused his interest. He couldn’t wait to meet the Liddiards of Honeycote and find out more about their business.
Two miles away, in a poky little bedroom over the lounge bar at the Honeycote Arms, Kelly had hardly slept all night. At nine, she’d begun the repairs to her party-ravaged face by applying a fifteen-minute clay mask. That would draw out all the toxins. She’d drunk far too much wine, even though it was dry and she didn’t like dry, but Patrick had refused to buy her a bottle of her favourite German wine all to herself. That had been the first sign: normally he was all too happy to ply her with alcohol so her could get into her knickers. Not that she needed to be drunk to get them off for Patrick. Oh no. Contrary to what her appearance might suggest, Kelly hadn’t had many lovers, but of those only Patrick had ever made her feel like that.
Off with the mask and on with the revitalizing moisturizer. Let it soak in for five minutes. Patrick had been horrible last night, and Kelly couldn’t understand why. He’d hardly spoken to her and when he had he’d snapped. And then he’d disappeared.
Under-eye concealer – got to get rid of those black rings. Eyeliner. Lipliner. Eyebrow pencil. It had been a pretty strange evening altogether. She’d spent most of it talking to Lawrence Oakley. He’d been very interested in her beauty therapy. Even hinted that he might set her up in her own salon when she’d passed her exams. Mascara. Lipstick. Done.
Satisfied that she now looked presentable to the outside world, Kelly decided she would slip downstairs and share a pot of tea with her mum. Eileen would be dying to hear about the dance the night before – what everyone was wearing, who was drunk, who disgraced themselves – and Kelly loved nothing better than a good gossip to an appreciative audience. She slipped her feet into a pair of fluffy bunny rabbits masquerading as slippers and made her way down the back stairs that led from their private accommodation to the heart of the pub. She was puzzled to hear voices coming from the bar, as she was pretty certain they’d had no B&B guests the night before. She peeped through the glass porthole and frowned. Mickey Liddiard and her dad were sitting at a table, deep in conversation. She pushed the door open slightly and was surprised to hear her father’s tone. She was sure she’d never heard him talk to Mickey that way before. The two men got on well and often shared an amiable beer. But this conversation was far from amiable. Kelly strained her ears.
‘Eileen and I wouldn’t last two minutes at the Blue Boar. It’s not our cup of tea at all – you know that.’
‘The thing is, Ted, I’ve got no choice.’
Ted stared at Mickey long and hard. Mickey squirmed under the contemptuous gaze.
‘Eileen said you’d do this. I said you wouldn’t.’
‘This is the last thing I wanted to happen. You’re my two most loyal tenants – ’
‘Well, you’ve got a funny way of repaying our loyalty.’
‘If there’s anything else I can do – ’
‘Give us a decent reference. We’re going to need it.’
Ted walked stiffly from the table and Mickey dropped his head into his hands. Ted’s quiet, wounded dignity had been worse than a stand-up row. He went behind the bar and pumped three shots of Scotch into an empty glass.
‘I hope you’re going to pay for that.’
He whirled round to find Kelly staring at him accusingly, fully made-up and dressed in a pink towelling dressing gown and rabbit slippers. He fumbled in his pocket for change, but before he could proffer the few coins he had, she had spun on her heel and walked out.
Skipper fixed a malevolent eye on the mound of grated carrot that was rising tantalizingly in front of him, let out a squawk and viciously eviscerated a grape. He was keenly conscious that his keeper’s mind was elsewhere, and was frustrated that it was not in his interests to put up too vocal a protestation. He knew from experience that it would result in his swift removal to the back room for a diet of daytime television chained to his perch. He loved it in the kitchen, for there were rich pickings for a parrot, but in order to avoid detection by the Environmental Health the deal was he had to keep quiet.
The grape duly demolished, he cocked his head to one side and surveyed Eileen shrewdly. Although he had been a present from the regulars for Ted’s fiftieth birthday, it was Eileen who fed, watered and cleaned him, and he was fond of her. He could see this morning that she was distracted. Her hand flew up and down the sides of the grater with its usual satisfying rhythm, leaving mounds of yellow and orange that would soon be transformed into a vat of lunchtime coleslaw. Skipper hoped for a share of the raisins that Eileen always sprinkled in after the mayonnaise, but she seemed in a world of her own and to have forgotten he was there. He weighed up whether an affectionate nip on the ear would work in his favour, and decided not. There was a deep crease between Eileen’s brows that he had come to recognize as bad news.
Eileen was indeed intensely preoccupied and it was only when her knuckles scraped violently on the side of the grater, causing a few droplets of blood to fall on to the carrot, that she realized how deep her reverie was. For half an hour now she had played out a dozen different scenarios in her mind, and she hadn’t been enamoured with any of them. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t find any pleasing explanation for Mickey Liddiard’s arrival here at half past eight on a Sunday morning. He was a lazy bugger, in her opinion; not a natural for a breakfast meeting.
Her passive acceptance of her role as the landlord’s wife, rather than landlady, meant Eileen had not insisted on accompanying the men into the bar when Mickey had asked Ted for a word. Baps didn’t fill themselves, after all, and Eileen hadn’t run the kitchen at the Honeycote Arms for twenty years without knowing that a half-hour slip in the schedule would mean chaos later on. She stuck a blue catering plaster on to her grazed finger before sc
ooping up the mounds of carrot, cabbage and onion into a mixing bowl, then slopped in glistening spoonfuls of mayonnaise. As she stirred, she strained her ears to see if she could pick up the tone, if not the content, of the conversation that lay so tantalizingly close behind the swing door.
She knew this was the moment she had been dreading for the past three years. Ted had often scoffed at her, but Eileen was neither an optimist nor a sentimental fool. It was her sharp business sense, her eye for detail, her meticulous book-keeping that had kept the pub ticking over for the past few years. Not to mention the hours of drudgery and graft that she put in behind the scenes. And she had picked up enough snippets of information from her customers to know that a business needed to be streamlined these days to be successful, to run without an ounce of fat. And streamlined Honeycote Ales was not. Furthermore, she’d gleaned from knowing comments made the other side of the bar that the Honeycote Arms was a potential gold mine. It was large, yet not unmanageable, secluded but not isolated – in other words, ripe for development. Eileen knew in her water’s that they were living on borrowed time. When the swing door finally opened and Ted appeared, she felt a surge of pity for him. He always trusted people and thought she was a cynic. It must be awful to have to learn the hard way.
Ted put a hand on her shoulder that felt as heavy as her heart.
‘Sit down, love.’
‘I already know. He’s selling the pub over our heads, isn’t he?’
‘He’s given us first refusal.’
Eileen snorted.
’The building’s worth three hundred thousand. Before you even take the turnover into consideration.’
‘We could borrow. The interest rate’s low – ’
‘Ted. We’re both over fifty. I don’t want to go into that kind of debt at my time of life!’
‘Mickey reckons we could get an investor. A sleeping partner.’
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