Stephen reminded me of a Labrador as he looked at me with big brown eyes and waited hopefully for me to make a positive decision. Though your average Labrador doesn’t wear designer horn-rim specs. Country estate agency must be a profitable business. I’m a sucker for Labradors, and I could no more have turned Stephen down brutally than I can refuse my father’s Harris a quick titbit when he asks for one (possibly why he resembles an ambulant coffee table). Besides, Stephen was obviously a really nice bloke, if a bit do-lally on the organisation front, so I started to let him down gently, saying it sounded fascinating, but…
Too gently, because with a skill that made me wonder why he hadn’t gone into politics, he demolished each of my objections, one by one. I’d have a real job to put on my CV, I could give it a trial for just six months to see how I liked it, Rose and Jeremy lived a few miles away so I’d have a ready-made circle of friends, he even knew of a cottage I could have until Christmas at a peppercorn rent in return for caretaking. He didn’t mention my overdraft - the result of still living like a City exec on a barmaid’s pay, but I’m sure he wouldn’t have had any scruples about quoting the figures if he had known about them. Somehow he seemed to have sensed my restlessness, because every second point was about it being an adventure and how a change would do me good. The guy’s fervour made the average Jehovah’s Witness look positively restrained. I was wavering, I particularly liked the sound of the peppercorn rent, especially as Stephen talked the cottage up to sound as if it belonged on the front of a heavily tinted postcard, when he inadvertently played his trump card. I was playing for time, afraid that I, who in my opinion am not particularly impulsive, was about to do something very impulsive indeed, so I asked him exactly where Frampton was.
‘It’s about ten miles from Wickham…’ I didn’t hear any more. ‘Wickham’ blazed into my brain in ten-foot-high letters, winking in neon pinks and oranges with spinning Catherine-wheels and the odd rocket or two flashing all around it. You might say it caught my attention. Surely Wickham was where Luke Dillon had said he had a house? Not that I was intending to go and chase him or anything. What was the point? Even if someone as beautiful as that hadn’t already got a stunning supermodel type girlfriend, he’d probably have been irrevocably put off me by the Bo Peep outfit. He might even have thought I’d chosen it.
I presumed Rose didn’t realise he was living so close to her new home; even she wouldn’t think her chances of a happily married life were improved by having an object of desire a mere hand-delivered billet-doux away. But given what I strongly suspected she felt about him, surely in a way it was my duty, as her best friend, to make sure she didn’t do anything she might regret later. Which required my presence in the vicinity so I could act as policewoman and general guardian of virtue. And if I were forced to imperil my own virtue in the interests of protecting hers, it would be in a good cause, wouldn’t it?
‘When do you want me to start?’ I asked, so abruptly that Stephen carried on with his persuasive spiel for a few seconds, then stopped, his eyes blinking in surprise behind the trendy lenses.
‘Monday?’ he said at last.
It was my turn to blink. It seemed that despite his vague appearance Stephen was a man who knew what he wanted, and wanted it soon. I made a few token protests about having to give notice at both job and flat and pack up, but I was no proof against his brand of deadly persistence, and I found myself meekly agreeing to present myself for work on Monday morning. I wasn’t even allowed to have any doubts about the accommodation; if the fairytale cottage fell through I could always go and stay with his sister, who was a bit of a dragon but very good-hearted, while Stephen found me somewhere else, which he assured me he would. ‘You want to watch her gin and tonics though,’ he advised me seriously. ‘They smoke.’
For a startled moment I thought of overflowing flasks in chemistry experiments and wondered if Stephen’s sister was quite sane, until he added, ‘They’re all gin and no tonic.’ He folded up the piece of paper on which he’d jotted my phone number, put it in his wallet, and pushed his chair back. ‘I’d better get going,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a couple of other appointments. I’ll ring you later in the week to confirm the arrangements about Number Three, Green Cottages.’
With that he departed, leaving me to wonder if he was going to despatch the business of his other meetings in the same vague, but ultimately ruthlessly efficient manner as he’d dealt with me.
I spent the next few days in a frantic whirl that only left me time to wonder if I’d gone stark raving bonkers about a hundred times a day. Some of the tummy-wrenching pangs of fear about uprooting myself to a place I’d never even been before, to take up a job for which I hadn’t even seen a description and my only contract was a handshake, and with only the vaguest idea of whether I was going to be force-fed neat gin for the next few weeks were at least partially assuaged by the really genuine pleasure of my bank manager. He came from Rutland and knew of the agency. ‘Very good reputation, Miss Gardener, very good indeed.’ In fact he was so delighted I was moving near the county of his birth he only mentioned my overdraft to say that I probably needed a few new clothes for my new job and with the excellent salary I was going to be earning he had no hesitation in increasing the overdraft by another two hundred and fifty pounds. I wondered if Mr Brown, who had just moved straight to the top of my list of favourite people, had been taking happy pills. It didn’t stop me accepting with alacrity. Or going shopping.
My flatmates were unnervingly cheerful about my leaving them in the lurch. I was going to pay rent until they found a replacement so they didn’t have any money worries, but even so, the four of us had come down from university together and had shared for several years in an atmosphere of remarkable peace and tranquillity considering none of us could exactly be called retiring or unopinionated. The alacrity with which they all said they wouldn’t give up the chance to live in a cottage made me wonder if they hadn’t been suffering from living with somebody who had Unpleasant Personal Habits. For a couple of days I took to surreptitiously sniffing at my armpits and in the region of my shoes, but the only odours I could detect were Rightguard and Kiwi shoe cream. Finally, I twigged they (and a large part of the rest of my acquaintance) had seized on the many advantages of a country cottage lived in by an old and, they hoped, hospitable friend, which were going to amply compensate for the nuisance of finding a congenial flatmate. They were looking forward to long sunny weekends spent in a deckchair on the lawn, sipping Pimms, occasionally getting up to wander along to the cricket field to watch the muscular arms of the local lothario as he bowled to save the match. I’d already taken a booking for August. I wondered if my last night at the pub would be crowned by the landlord saying, ‘You’ve got a spare room, haven’t you, Susie . . .’
Stephen had rung to say the owner of 3, Green Cottages was delighted to have the place lived in for about six months, the rent really was bank- balance boostingly minuscule and he was arranging to have it aired and cleaned. He warned me that it was absolutely tiny, so among all the other things on my list to do I had to fit in a couple of fast trips to my parents’ to dump several boxes of the staggering amount of possessions I’d managed to accumulate over four years of living in the same place.
I was fumbling for my door key after the second exercise in breaking the speed limits to Sussex and back when I heard the telephone ringing. Cursing my flatmates for being inconsiderate enough to work during the daytime and not be there to answer it, I opened the door, made a heroic leap and caught the receiver as the phone rang for what must have been the twentieth time. I stood there catching my breath and rasping heavily in a way that must have surprised the caller very much, ‘Ullo, who is that?’ demanded a familiar marked French accent.
I took a deep breath, ‘Arnaud,’ I exclaimed in pleasure. ‘How lovely to hear from you. Where are you?’
‘Susie, you sound strange. Are you ill?’
‘No, I just had to run for the phone.’
‘
That is all right then.’ Arnaud takes great care of his health. For reasons that escape me he believes that he suffers from a particular susceptibility to infection. ‘I am in London. We have lunch? Today? My appointment has been cancelled.’
‘Now?’ I asked blankly, leaning back against the wall. I usually got a little more warning of Arnaud’s flying visits to London, enough to wash my hair at least. I investigated my roots gingerly. I supposed they felt clean enough, if not absolutely straight-out-of-the-salon shiny and bright.
‘My boss, he rings me at six o’clock this morning to tell me he has la grippe and I have to go in his place, then zut, when I am here the meeting is cancelled. And then I think, what luck, I can have lunch with Susie.’
I was about to ask if he was in his normal hotel and jump in a taxi when I remembered the terrifyingly huge amount of packing up I still had to do, and also that I’d sworn faithfully I’d have tea with my elderly godmother.
He sounded distinctly put out I was turning him down, his tone getting even frostier when I explained I was moving. I couldn’t quite work out whether he disapproved of my taking a non-executive job, of moving to the country - being a true Parisian, Arnaud believes the country is best visited only infrequently, when your liver is in need of a rest, or of my not consulting him, though he did mellow about my godmother. He has an entirely practical, very French attitude to elderly relatives - they deserve respect because they’re old and also because they might leave you something.
I suggested we meet up later that evening; it was my last shift at the Bull and Bush and after we’d thrown the last of the punters out there’d be a goodbye knees-up with the rest of the staff. I could almost feel his shudder of distaste come down the telephone lines. How could I even think of him coming to a place that served English beer and European wine-lake vin de table? Anyway, he was going to Marlow for the night, where he was entertaining the director of a bank, and he hadn’t asked me to come because he’d known I’d be working. I wasn’t entirely sure whether I believed this excuse. I thought it more probable Arnaud didn’t want the director of a major-league merchant bank to know his girlfriend was a barmaid, but frankly I was so knackered by all my tearing about I could barely summon up the energy to feel more than a pang of regret I wasn’t going to see him this time. Especially as he demands full participation and doesn’t appreciate his partner lying back thinking of La Belle France while he gets on with it. Still, he did say the deal he was working on meant he’d have to come over again soon and next time he’d try and arrange to arrive on a Friday so he could spend the weekend with me in my petite maison. I was truly moved by this noble gesture of magnanimity, since tiny cottages are only slightly more Arnaud’s style than pubs, and put down the phone thinking in a sentimental fashion that even if it had been about time I’d got myself a new job and a new home, the old boyfriend was absolutely fine, thank you very much.
CHAPTER 4
Stephen had given me a truly lyrical description of 3, Green Cottages, Little Dearsley and I’d taken his sales spiel with a mega pinch of salt. He was an estate agent after all, even if they are subject to stringent rules in the trades descriptions area these days. ‘Picture postcard’ can mean anything, there’s one of our local sewage works, and I was quite prepared to find that ‘near the pub’ meant it overlooked the car park and ‘unspoilt’ meant no interior plumbing. So you could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather when I discovered that, if anything, Stephen had been sparing with the superlatives; it also made me wonder how many houses he managed to sell, and if indeed he was an estate agent at all and not masquerading as one to cover something infinitely more sinister.
Number 3 was one of a row of four venerable workmen’s cottages, each with a small pointed porch over a flat, painted front-door with one or two climbing plants to each side. The plants spread and entwined with each other across the width of the terrace, so that in summer the grey stone underneath would be nearly concealed in a mass of honeysuckle, roses, jasmine and, reaching from around the corner of the house on the end, pale-pink cyclamen (according to Stephen, who must know a lot more about horticulture than I do, since they just looked like plants to me). The narrow strips of garden in front of the cottages were bright with patches of daffodils and crocuses and led directly off a genuine, if small, village green; all it needed was a duckpond and it could have been accused of being too perfect. So it was lucky in a way that the middle of the green was occupied by an ugly Victorian monument to a Sir Thomas Eyre, who had graciously donated sixteen pounds annually for the succour of poor, but respectable, maidens of the parish who had fallen on hard times.
Even the pub was a decent two hundred yards away from the front gate; the Dearsley Arms might look staid from the outside, but I’m not so naive as to believe that seemingly tranquil little places like this aren’t as much a seething mass of iniquity as your average inner-London suburb. Chucking-out time after a hotly disputed quiz night could become vicious and they probably had karaoke nights too. The only disadvantage to the cottage as far as I could see was it had been built in the days when your transport, if you were lucky enough to have it, was a horse who could walk over the grass, and its modern-day equivalent had to be parked on the road and all my suitcases lugged one by one across fifty yards of green. A dark-haired man was leaning against one of the gates, reading a folded-over paperback. It must be Stephen, who’d said he would wait for me with the keys and show me where the important things like the stopcock were. I appreciated the thought, even if it wasn’t going to leave me much wiser. I wouldn’t know what to do with a stopcock if it leapt up and bit me.
He glanced up as I was parking the car, a Peugeot 205 convertible, bought when I was in the money and which I’d managed to hang on to, just, so I waved, hoping he might have enough of a sense of chivalry to come over and do a bit of suitcase-lugging. He did. At least, I presumed he wasn’t just coming over to watch me do all the work. A depressing number of men think that because I’m a good big girl I have the muscles to match. In fact, the only real advantage I have over your average female in the street is that I can lift things down from the top shelf in the supermarket. Stephen looked quite different dressed in jeans and a big green jumper. Not at all the establishment figure he’d seemed in his suit and I wouldn’t necessarily have recognised him. I eased a large box out of the boot and handed it straight into a pair of hands conveniently placed to catch it. They weren’t hairy. I’d got into the habit of checking hands. As hands go, they were rather nice. But they weren’t Stephen’s. They belonged to Hamish.
I gaped at him, taken aback in that way you are when you ask for tea and someone gives you coffee and you take your first sip without noticing. For a moment, your taste buds can’t adjust. Hamish didn’t seem particularly thrilled by my reaction. I can’t say that I blamed him. I’d be fairly teed off myself if I’d given up my Sunday evening to let somebody I didn’t even know well into their new house and was greeted for my pains with the sort of look normally reserved for the creature from the Black Lagoon. I’d have started apologising, but I know from experience that when I do I usually put my shapely, but large foot even further in the mire. ‘I was expecting Stephen,’ I said at last.
Hamish smiled faintly. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Susie.’
‘I’m not disappointed, not at all, in fact I’m thrilled to see you . . .’ I began, in what sounded even to me like manifestly false gush, and my voice trailed off as his eyebrows rose in a distinctly sarcastic manner. Metaphorical footprints were making splat sounds from all around me. I took a deep breath and started again. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been rushing around so much my brain doesn’t cope well with unexpected changes, but it is kind of you to meet me.’
Ah, that was better. His brown eyes lost their deep-freeze look, and he smiled, properly this time, which made him look a lot more approachable. ‘It wasn’t by my choice.’ It was my turn to look surprised. He laughed, but quite nicely. ‘Stephen had a family lunch miles away which he
’d forgotten about, so he asked me to come and let you in.’
‘He seems to be quite good at getting people to do what he wants,’ I said. ‘I hope it hasn’t put you out too much.’ To my annoyance, Hamish didn’t make an immediate denial and protest that it had been his pleasure. ‘I hope that you didn’t have to come too far.’
‘Not really.’
‘I didn’t know that you lived around here,’ I went on chattily.
He shrugged. ‘I only moved recently. I had the choice of a job in Bradford or Leicester. Leicester’s marginally warmer.’ His eyes drifted pointedly to the boot of the car. I gave up being chatty, it would have been obvious even to someone with a lot less sensitivity than me that Hamish reckoned he had better things to do than hang around talking. I was working up a fine head of offence when he cut it off at the ankles, saying, ‘But Bradford must be positively tropical compared to here. It’s perishing.’ He hoiked the box under one arm and picked up a suitcase with his other hand. ‘Come on, let’s get inside and I’ll show you round.’ He strode off across the road without waiting to see if I was following.
I trotted after him, as usual having overloaded myself thoroughly so that I was wheezing and gasping like a sixty a-dayer when I reached the gate. Hamish gave me a slightly odd look. Perhaps because my face must have gone red with effort, which always makes a fetching contrast to my hair, though of course he could have been worried I was about to expire in a dramatic fashion at his feet. The porch had been glassed in to make a tiny vestibule, which was just about big enough for the two of us - providing I held my stomach in or it might have become embarrassingly intimate. Hamish gestured with his head in a somewhat perfunctory manner at the coat hooks and with his hip pushed open a door to the main room, realising a fraction too late he needed to duck under the low lintel. There was a brief outburst of swearing; I hung tactfully back until he finished, reckoning bandages and stitches probably wouldn’t be needed. Anyone who could make that amount of noise wasn’t badly hurt.
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