Numb on the bus rumbling home, Anna allowed herself to see the funny side. She’d had a wasted evening and her hope of finding her parcel-sender had suffered a setback. But that was all it was. In the grand scheme of things, it was less of a blow than it might have been. Narinder was an opportunist, but harmless otherwise. At least he’d admitted that he lied. As the lights of the city moved slowly along the misted bus windows, Anna realised the courier’s deception had inadvertently given her a new gift: a greater determination to unravel the mystery of her parcels. Before this evening, the question had intrigued her; now she knew she needed to seek out the truth.
And she was no longer afraid of what she might find . . .
Twenty-Two
For Mrs Isadora Smedley, Sunday afternoons were made for high tea and scandal. A widow for more years now than she had been a wife, these days she lived for moments when tantalising mouthfuls of food were accompanied by delicious morsels of gossip. For many years her closest friend, Sheila, had provided both delicacies, always the first to know the inside track on their friends and acquaintances. But last year a sudden stroke had taken her first to hospital and then to a hospice in Bracknell, leaving Isadora alone for the first time in her eighty-four years.
Crushed by this but determined to carry on, Isadora had made a valiant effort to keep all of the dates the two friends had established: Monday afternoons playing bridge at the local Age UK day-centre, Tuesdays and Wednesdays walking to the park and having tea at the small café by the duck-pond, Thursdays collecting their pensions at the post office and doing their shopping, Fridays catching up on the papers and sharing their findings over a phone call, Saturdays for resting and Sunday afternoons meeting for high tea at the Pleasance Hotel, just around the corner from the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Until a hidden threat appeared, which changed it all . . .
Walking home from the supermarket one Thursday afternoon in November, as the weak daylight began to fade and street lights fizzed into life, Isadora had become aware of someone walking quickly behind her. When she slowed to check her handbag for her front-door key, the footsteps slowed, too. She had glanced over one shoulder and caught a glimpse of a hooded figure moving towards her. It was enough to make her hurry towards the lobby light of Walton Tower’s entrance, spilling out across the darkened pavement just ahead. It was close, but still too far away – and as she ran, her aged knees smarting in protest, all she could think of was the horror of being caught, of the unknown shadow reaching out and grabbing her shoulder . . .
The fright had changed her overnight from a woman who had feared nothing to a virtual recluse. She had retreated to the small confines of her apartment, refusing to leave and ordering food by telephone to be delivered to her door. Gone was her prized routine, replaced by a frightened loneliness that clung to her skin and dragged at her heart.
Until she met Miss Anna Browne from 16B.
The delightful young woman’s kindness and help had transformed Isadora’s life. Now, more than twelve months since her neighbour had conspired to gain entrance to her home and win her trust, Isadora was enjoying what she often referred to as ‘my second youth’. Visits to the theatre, galleries, cafés and exhibitions and strolls in the park on pleasant days – all accompanied by her new friends: Anna, Seamus the caretaker, Jonah the rather handsome Northern chap from 16D and Tish, the amusing American lady from the floor below. Isadora’s social calendar now sparkled, as it hadn’t done in over thirty-five years. Darling Anna had arranged it all and, even more surprisingly, appeared to enjoy Isadora’s company.
In return, Isadora did what she did best: Sunday high tea with lavish helpings of gossip in her home, for Anna and any of her friends who were free. But the times she liked best were when she and Anna were alone. She had never been granted children or grandchildren of her own, but the lovely girl fitted the bill perfectly. Sweet and attentive, she possessed a quick wit well concealed from the outside world. And recently Isadora had seen Anna begin to bloom, like the blousy pink ‘Albertine’ roses Mrs Smedley remembered growing in the garden of her childhood home. The girl had splendid potential. With the right encouragement – in ways both open and covert – she could make a better purveyor of gossip than Sheila herself, given time . . .
The day after her date with Narinder, Anna enjoyed high tea with her elderly neighbour, Mrs Smedley. Jonah joined them midway through the elegant feast Isadora had spread out for them on her best tablecloth and soon the topic of conversation moved to Anna’s parcels.
‘It’s all most exciting,’ Isadora beamed. ‘Beautiful gifts from a secret admirer – how wonderful!’
‘Are you going to find out who it is?’ Jonah asked, brushing petits-fours crumbs self-consciously from his T-shirt. ‘I mean, you do want to solve the mystery, right?’
‘I do. In fact I’ve already started to investigate.’ Amused now by her own situation, Anna confessed about her date with Narinder.
Jonah’s chin made a bid for Isadora’s prized parquet floor. ‘Blimey, Anna, I’d never have thought you willing to do that. Did he know anything?’
‘No. And I’m a bit thick for not realising what he was up to. I’m flattered in a way.’
‘And yet no further to unveiling the culprit,’ Isadora noted. ‘But what fun!’
At 7 p.m. Anna and Jonah waited in Isadora’s living room while she prepared for their night out together.
‘I can’t believe you two are dragging me to the theatre,’ Jonah groaned. ‘Again.’
Anna chuckled. ‘You liked the last play we went to see.’
‘Well, anything by Willy Russell is fine by me. But I’ve never heard of this one.’
‘Never heard of Hobson’s Choice? It’s the classic Northern comedy! Gosh, I thought I’d led a sheltered life in the Duchy. You’ll love it, I promise.’
Jonah muttered something unintelligible, his gruff expression brightening as Isadora returned. ‘So, Miss Smedley, ready for your theatre premiere?’
Isadora Smedley shook her head, her lilac-washed curls never moving as she did so. ‘Always the joker, Jonah. I am well aware it is a community-theatre production.’ She enunciated the words as if describing something pitiful. ‘In my youth, the premieres I attended were glittering in every sense. For my first theatre visit I wore my grandmama’s ermine and pearls.’
‘And I’ll bet you were the star attraction,’ Anna smiled, placing a discreet hand against the old lady’s back to steady her as she stepped into the hall.
‘You flatter me, darling,’ Isadora replied, her powdered cheeks blushing all the same. ‘But I dare say I was.’
Jonah offered his arm, which Isadora gracefully received, and together they made a stately progress towards the lift.
Taking Mrs Isadora Smedley out to various London events was something Anna – and Jonah, for all his comedy grumbling – had come to enjoy, brought about after a chance remark from Seamus, who said he hadn’t seen the fiercely independent pensioner for a few weeks and was beginning to worry for her well-being. Anna had mentioned this to Jonah, who left a parcel outside her door, knocked, and hurried back to his flat while Anna waited. When Isadora finally opened the door to collect the gift, Anna was able to catch her.
Even now, the memory of what Anna had seen in Isadora’s apartment when the old lady invited her in shocked her. Bags of discarded takeaway containers were strewn across the kitchen, the detritus of home deliveries, which didn’t require the old lady to leave her home.
The thought of the elegant old lady being too scared to set foot outside her home horrified Anna. She remembered her own much-loved, much-missed grandmother and thought how different it had been for her. While living in a tiny Cornish fishing community had its downsides – not least that everybody and their cat knew your business – at least the elderly residents were looked out for and called in on regularly. Here in London’s perennially busy sprawl it was too easy for souls to be forgotten. What had been an oasis of freedom for Anna had become
a prison of loneliness for Isadora. It broke Anna’s heart and she sprang into action, enlisting the help of Seamus, Jonah, Tish and anyone else in Walton Tower she could recruit to draw up a rota of volunteers to escort Isadora out into the city that she now feared to walk alone. Over a year later, the rota was still in place, firm friendships having been forged and much fun having been had.
And so it was that the small party of Walton Tower residents now took their seats in the compact studio theatre above a pub in the West End to watch a much pared-down performance of Harold Brighouse’s famous play. Anna giggled as she saw Jonah wincing at each wrongly pronounced Northern word, and pretended not to see Isadora raising a carefully ironed handkerchief to her eyes when Maggie led Willy Mossop to their wedding bed. At the end of the play they all rose to their feet to applaud the community-theatre cast and made their way downstairs to the packed bar. Tish secured a bench table and guarded it with typical New Yorker venom until Jonah returned with drinks.
Isadora sipped her cream sherry like a duchess holding court. ‘What did you make of the production, Jonah?’
‘I doubt any of them have ever been north of Watford Gap, but they made a fair pass,’ he replied. ‘Although the actor playing Willy was about as Northern as Donald Trump.’
‘According to the programme, that young man hails from Connecticut,’ Isadora smiled, patting Tish’s arm. ‘So, your neck of the woods, dear. But God bless the Yanks. They try.’
Tish took the half-compliment with good humour. ‘Glad you appreciate my nation’s effort, ma’am.’
Anna smiled as her friends exchanged anecdotes about the play, and Isadora regaled them with stories of glamorous theatre visits of years gone by. While spending the evening with two friends and an elderly doyenne might not be everyone’s idea of a great night out – Anna could only imagine the look on Sheniece’s face at the prospect – she loved every minute of it. Taking Isadora out had long since stopped being a Good Samaritan task and was now something she looked forward to immensely.
She patted the smooth head of the owl brooch on her jacket lapel as she watched her friends laughing together and felt a strong sense of peace wash over her. Having friends who enjoyed her company, and someone out in the world who was thinking of her, made Anna feel very loved. Again, she caught herself wondering about the identity of the sender of her gifts. Was it someone close to her? Could they be here, tonight? She cast a glance around the busy pub interior. It could be anyone in the pub, she thought. Or anyone in London. Or maybe anyone in the country. It could even be Mrs Smedley, no stranger to the extraordinary in life, if her tales of her youth were anything to go by. Anna relaxed in the company of her friends and enjoyed the possibility of what she might find.
Twenty-Three
For the next four weeks, no new parcels arrived.
It led Sheniece to declare that Narinder from the courier company had obviously been the mystery sender and that, failing in his chance to come clean during his date with Anna, he was now in hiding. Ted attempted to console Anna by suggesting that her life would be ‘less sticky’ without the anonymous gifts, while Babs was characteristically blunt.
‘If he only sent you five things, he wasn’t worth having anyway. You deserve someone who’ll shower you with gifts, flower.’
Anna was disappointed that the parcels had ended. It had been a wonderful adventure and she’d started to rely on the deliveries to inject excitement into each week. But she wanted to know why they had been sent – and was even more determined to unravel the mystery.
I will find out who you are, she vowed, casting her eyes across the wide atrium floor of the Messenger building, as if hoping for a glimpse of them.
One new gift recently arrived in Anna’s life was making a difference, however. An opportunist courier from City-Serve didn’t deliver it; neither was it wrapped in perfectly folded brown paper. But it boosted Anna’s confidence more than any of her parcels had.
It began one Monday morning when Anna, having arrived in the city centre an hour early for work, decided to treat herself to breakfast at Freya & Georgie’s – a chic, independent coffee house recently opened just down the street from the Daily Messenger building. She had been a passive observer to the steady creation of the coffee shop during the last month, noting the changes in its interior as the weeks passed, and had decided to visit when it opened. Inside, the warm wood panelling and smooth, purple-grey slate floors offered a contrast to the monochrome concrete-and-steel buildings on the street. Large wing-backed armchairs snuggled next to low coffee tables and dusky-red fabric sofas, while tall, rustic stools stood, sentry-like, against a polished wooden bar in the window. Quotes from famous books hung around the walls in rococo-style frames of burnished gold and silver, and order numbers were given out painted silver on tiny black canvases attached to easels, like that which held Anna’s hope-heart painting at home. Service was efficient and inevitably brusque – perfect for the largely business clientele who prized speed over civility – but for a city-centre coffee shop the atmosphere was pleasantly relaxed.
As she waited to order, a sudden tap on her shoulder caused her to turn – bringing her face to face with Ben McAra.
‘Hi, Anna. I didn’t know you came here,’ he grinned.
‘I didn’t, before today.’
‘Are you taking out or staying in?’
‘Staying in.’
‘Mind if I join you?’
Since the weekend of the Charity Fair Ben had made no effort to speak to Anna again. According to Ted (a questionable source at the best of times, but all Anna had to go on), Ben was working on an exclusive story and had been holed up in an Edinburgh hotel while he put it together. Anna suspected her colleague of making this up, to make Ben’s absence easier for her to take, but she didn’t tell Ted.
Ben McAra was annoying and Anna wasn’t at all sure whether she could trust him, but facing him now, she realised she’d missed his smile. And that was as good a reason as any to offer him the spare chair at her table.
He asked what she’d been up to since the fair and, noticeably, didn’t mention the parcels. Anna, who had no intention of talking about them anyway, told him about the new furnishings from Tish’s beloved Marylebone boutique that she was planning to buy for her apartment, and the insider gossip she’d been given by Jonah about certain TV programmes.
‘I suppose cameramen see it all,’ Ben remarked. ‘Is he ever tempted to film the scandals behind the scenes, instead of the countryside? I’d watch that over Countryfile any day.’
He let Anna steer the conversation and she never once felt as if he was waiting for the parcels to be mentioned. In return, she asked him about his job and latest assignment.
‘Ted tells me you’ve been in Edinburgh?’
Ben laughed. ‘I might have known Bloodhound Blaskiewicz would be on my trail. I just got back, actually.’
‘How was it?’
‘Awful. Long and frustrating.’ Seeing Anna’s surprise, he continued. ‘I love Edinburgh – it’s just annoying to be bound by work and unable to explore the city. I spent most of the time holed up in a hotel room, trying to arrange interviews, with, it has to be said, little success.’ He stirred another lump of sugar into his black coffee. ‘I promised myself I’ll go back there for fun, maybe later in the year.’
Anna tried to imagine what it would be like to have a job that entailed travelling to other cities and working out of hotels. The notion was appealing, but she suspected the reality would be very different. Tom had once bemoaned his job’s requirement for him to work out of hotels in Rome, New York, Madrid and Berlin. ‘Once you’ve seen one hotel room, you’ve seen them all,’ he complained. ‘Mini-bars and expense accounts are all very well, but they’re nothing compared to a decent cup of tea and bath in your own home.’
And yet it transpired that Tom had found something about New York hotels to love: the last time Anna heard from him, he had been living in a hotel in TriBeCa for six months.
‘So, are you planning a holiday this year?’ Ben’s question brought Anna’s attention back to the cool comfort of the coffee house.
‘Maybe. I haven’t decided yet.’
‘You said you were from Cornwall? Must be great to go back there when you get the chance.’
Anna’s shoulders bristled. ‘I don’t – go back. Not often. Not for the last six years, anyway.’
‘Really? I’d be back like a shot. All those glorious beaches, Cornish cream teas and sea fishing; if I even slightly knew anyone who lived there, I’d be camped on their doorstep at every opportunity.’
‘It’s a beautiful place,’ she conceded, despite all the other baggage her home county carried with it for her. ‘Just not much of a holiday for me to go back there.’
‘I sense a story there . . .’
‘Occupational hazard for you, I suppose.’
The edge of steel in her reply made him sit back a little. Clearly rethinking his next comment, he lifted his head to scan the interior of Freya & Georgie’s. ‘I like it here. Know what I think?’
Relieved to be excused from discussing Cornwall any further, Anna smiled. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think we should do this regularly. Same time next week? What do you think?’
With that, the one gift Anna had least expected arrived: the opportunity to know Ben McAra better.
Twenty-Four
Megan Milliken never intended to be a barista. But, like much in her life, her optimistic childhood ambitions had been diverted by reality. She had come to the city seeking fame as an actress, attended nine months of auditions and then, with no work forthcoming and her landlord threatening strong-arm tactics, reluctantly accepted a waitress job in the café down the street from her cramped bedroom in a shared house. That was five years ago; and while her acting career had progressed no further, she had discovered a natural talent for making outstanding coffee.
A Parcel for Anna Browne Page 15