Kitabı oku: «One Summer at Deer’s Leap», sayfa 4

Chapter Four

The post office at Acton Carey was well stocked and I bought two phone cards, postcards of local views, stamps, a bag of toffees and a bottle of sherry. I shoved it all in the boot, then rang Mum from the phone box. Almost the first thing she asked was if anyone had called – as in visited.

‘Jeannie arrived last night. I left her still sleeping. She plans to come next Friday too.’

I could almost hear Mum’s sigh of relief.

‘Has Piers phoned, Cassie? He rang here to see if you’d got off all right. He said you’d forgotten to give him your phone number, so I let him have it.’

‘I’ll ring him tomorrow maybe. How’s Dad?’

‘Same as always. He says that if we come up to see you it’ll probably be midweek. The traffic, you see …’

‘Fine by me.’ Dad has a thing about weekend drivers. ‘Just as long as you come. I’d love you to see the place. Tell Dad the natives are friendly!’

We chatted comfortably on about things in general and nothing in particular – you know the way it is when you phone your mum – until the card began to run out. I said I’d ring in the week and sent my love to Dad. She told me to look after myself and be sure to check the doors at night.

I called, ‘Bye, Mum. Love you!’ just as the line went dead.

Then I looked up at the church clock and realized I had half an hour to kill. If I left at about ten forty-five, I’d figured, I should be at The Place a little before eleven. I decided to walk the length of the village and back, gawping at the pub and the village green as if I were a tourist.

The pub was called the Red Rose, which figured. It looked old and, from the outside, friendly. The village green was ordinary, but the grass was cut short and the flowerbeds either side of an oak seat were well kept. There wasn’t a scrap of litter about.

I sat down to waste a few minutes, looking about me, liking what I saw. Sheets blew on a line, very white against a very blue sky; a lady in a pinafore came out to wash her front windows. The Post Office van was making the morning delivery. I supposed that Deer’s Leap would be its next stop and wondered if there would be any letters in the lidded box at the crossroads end of the dirt road when I returned. There would certainly be milk and a brown loaf, because I’d left a note there this morning.

There was nothing else to think about now except being at The Place at about four minutes to eleven, even though the airman wouldn’t be there; how could he be, just because I wanted it? On the other hand, I had thought about him so much that surely some of my vibes had reached him.

Jack Hunter. A young man with old eyes, piloting a bomb-loaded Lancaster. Young men of my own generation were still kids at his age, fussing over their first car, pulling girls. Once, the Red Rose would have been filled with men from the airfield nearby; women too, because they had had to go to war. I wondered how people could have been so obedient, doing as they were ordered in the name of patriotism. I supposed they’d had little choice.

Would Piers have flown bombers or fighters? Somehow, with his dark, brooding looks, I think he would have been more likely to have been a paratrooper; a swash-buckling type with a gun at the ready.

I pushed him from my mind. There was no place for him in my life for the next four weeks. Correction. There was no place for him, if I faced facts, in my life at all! Piers had served his purpose, satisfied my curiosity. He was nice enough to have around, but in small doses.

I wondered what it would be like to be in love – desperately in love – with a man who might any night be killed. I jumped to my feet as I remembered the war memorial, realizing I hadn’t seen it yet.

I found it on a triangle of grass outside the church gates. It was in simple stone and on the front were the names of men who had died in the First World War. I counted them, horrified that from so small a village, twelve young men had been killed.

Underneath it, three more names were chiselled; dead from a later war. It made me feel grateful those men had given their lives and then I knew I’d got it wrong. They hadn’t given anything! Their young lives had been taken, stolen, squandered!

I looked to the side to see the names of seven airmen in alphabetical order and the simple inscription, In Grateful Memory. 8.6.1944.

I saw the name J. J. Hunter and reached to touch it with my fingertips.

‘Please be there,’ I whispered.

The tingling began at the clump of oaks. Until I reached them I had managed to keep my feelings in check. But beyond those trees anything could happen and I was hoping desperately that it would.

Strangely, I was more excited than afraid, because deep down I was telling myself he wouldn’t be there. In fact, if Beth and Danny hadn’t told me to leave it, if Beth hadn’t half-heartedly admitted she might have seen the airman and told me the people in the village didn’t want the press all over the place, I might have convinced myself he was all in my mind. But Jack Hunter was as real as you or me.

I wound down my window. Then I stopped to lean over and slip the nearside door catch.

‘Hop in,’ I’d say. ‘It’s open …’

Almost eleven. I started the car and crawled past the spot I’d first met him, trying to look both sides and straight ahead at the same time. I looked in the rear-view mirror, but he wasn’t behind me, either.

‘Aren’t you coming, Jack Hunter?’

My voice sounded strange, then I let go a snort of annoyance because talking to a ghost that wasn’t there was worse than talking to myself!

‘That’s yer lot!’ This was a load of nonsense and he’d had his last chance! If he wasn’t interested, then neither was I! He could find his own damn way to Deer’s Leap! I’d come here to look after a house and two cats and a dog; to write in peace and quiet and when Jeannie went back on Monday, that was what I would do!

‘Men are a flaming nuisance,’ I said out loud, and that included ghosts!

I began to laugh. A very real Hector would come bouncing up, followed by a loudly purring cat, when I got out of the car. All very neat and normal. Only Cassie Johns was out of step!

I realized I had slowed, because I was looking for a flock of sheep, wondering if I’d imagined them too. The crossroads was ahead, and the signpost. I turned right, then slowed so I could take the pot-holed dirt road easily.

I could see the roof of the house above the trees. Jeannie was up, because the white gate ahead was open, and I’d left it closed. In front, to my left, was the kissing gate and, oh, my God! He was there! Walking through it! I saw him clearly, and the gas mask slung on his left shoulder.

I slammed on the brake, the engine coughed and stalled. I yelled, ‘Jack Hunter!’ then flung open the door as he pulled the gate shut behind him. When I got there, he had gone. The path, which led to the farm buildings, was empty. I ran down it as far as the conservatory, but there was no sign he had ever been there.

Then I turned, and stood stock-still, gawping in disbelief at the iron gate. Now it was black again with shiny paint, yet when I’d opened it I’d swear it had been rusty! And what was more I had heard its grinding squeak as he closed it behind him! I walked up to it, touching it with my finger, and it swung smoothly and silently on well-oiled pivots.

Yet he’d been there. He had! He was still around. It was just that this morning we’d missed each other by seconds – and fifty-odd years!

Jeannie and I ate a lunch of soup and sandwiches, then lazed on the terrace, gazing for miles, soaking up the August sun, breathing deeply on the air.

‘Y’know, this shouldn’t be allowed. It’s positively antisocial to have a view like this all to yourself. I wonder what they’ll ask for this place, once it goes on the market?’

‘Haven’t a clue. I’m used to London prices,’ Jeannie shrugged. ‘But I suppose that even though it mightn’t be everybody’s cup of tea, it won’t go cheap. Like you say, the view is really something and position counts for a lot.’

‘If you like out-of-the-way places,’ I said.

‘The old ones knew where to build, didn’t they?’

‘Before planning permission came in, you mean, when they could choose their plot and just start building?’

‘Sort of, but they’d have to do their homework first. The most important thing when Deer’s Leap was built would be the availability of water, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Danny said there was once a stream, just beyond the paddock wall.’

‘Well, that would’ve been all right for livestock and clothes washing, but they’d have needed drinking water too. Mind, that ornamental well at the back near the conservatory was once the real thing. I believe they only got mains water here after the war. And they still don’t have sewers. That’s why we shouldn’t use too many disinfectants and upset the natural workings of the septic tank.’

‘They were very self-sufficient, though.’ My mind jumped the centuries to the man and woman who built this house. Their initials were above the front door: W. D. & M. D. 1592. ‘Do you realize Elizabeth Tudor was still alive when W. D. brought his bride here? Wonder what they were called – and how many children they had.’

‘William and Mary Doe,’ Jeannie said, off the top of her head, ‘and they probably had ten children and would count themselves lucky to rear half of them!’

‘A bit nearer home,’ I said cautiously, ‘I wonder who lived here in the war, and how they managed. Petrol was rationed, I believe. How did they get about?’

‘On bikes, most likely. Or maybe they’d go shopping once a week on the farm tractor. Who knows? And anyway, who’s interested?’

‘Me, for one.’ I looked straight ahead, pretending it didn’t really matter. ‘Well – I’m an author. I can’t help being curious and it would all be grist to the mill – if we found out, that is …’

‘If it’s so important, why don’t we go down to the Rose, tonight? They don’t get a lot in there, especially since drink-drive came in. I could introduce you to Bill Jarvis, if he’s in. Bill knows most people’s business around here, past and present. Maybe he could tell you.’

‘It isn’t that important,’ I hedged. ‘It’s just that I keep wondering what it was like here when it was a working farm and before somebody tarted up the buildings at the back, and when there were animals around the place, and manure heaps.’

‘Then we’ll go to the village, like I said. The beer is good there. The further north you get from London, people say, the better the ale. I fancy a couple of pints!’

‘So who’s going to drive?’

‘You, Cassie. It’s your car.’

‘And drink Coke and orange juice all night?’

‘OK! There are loads of bikes in the stable. What say we pick out a couple, put some air in the tyres, and go supping in style?’

‘Can you get done for being drunk in charge of a bike?’ I giggled.

‘I don’t know. It depends how well you can ride one, I suppose.’

We decided to have an early tea. Fresh brown eggs, boiled, and crusty bread, then a huge dollop of the home-baked parkin Mum had slipped into the boot just as I was leaving. After which, Jeannie said she’d better have a dummy run, just to make sure she hadn’t forgotten how to ride.

It was all so lovely and free and easy. We were like a couple of kids let early out of school, and in a way I was a bit sad about it because next August, when I was writing book three and on the way to becoming a real, time-served novelist, I would look back to how it had been that summer at Deer’s Leap, and wonder who had bought the house and if they loved it as much as I did. And I knew they wouldn’t, couldn’t.

We wore leggings, the better to ride in, and shirts. Then we stuffed cardies in the saddlebags in case it was cold riding home. We pushed the bikes along the dirt road, neither of us being confident enough to brave the potholes.

When we got to the crossroads I said, ‘If we meet anything on the road, I’ll ride ahead, OK?’

‘If we meet anything on this narrow lane, I shall get off and stand on the verge! But there’s hardly any traffic hereabouts. What are you expecting – a furniture van?’

I almost said, ‘No – a flock of sheep,’ but I didn’t and we managed, after a couple of false starts and a few wobbles, to get going.

‘Don’t look down at your front wheel, Jeannie! Look at the road ahead. Y’know, I could get to like this. They say you never forget how to ride a bike.’

Jeannie soon got the hang of it and went ahead just at the spot I’d first seen the airman. I slowed and had a good look around, then told myself not to be greedy; that one sighting a day was all I could hope for.

‘Hey! Wait for me, show-off!’ I called, then pedalled like mad to catch her up.

The Red Rose wasn’t too crowded and we got a table beside an open window. Jeannie said she would get the first round and asked me what I was drinking.

‘Bitter, please. A half.’

She returned with two pint glasses, then asked me how I liked the Rose.

‘It’s ages old, isn’t it?’ The ceiling was very low, and beamed; the lounge end of the one long room had better seats in it than the other end, where there was a dartboard but not a slot machine in sight.

‘I could get to like this place,’ I said, lifting my glass. ‘Cheers!’

‘We’re in luck.’ Jeannie took a long drink from her glass. ‘Bill Jarvis is in the far corner. Would you like to meet him?’

‘You know I would! Are you going to ask him to join us?’

‘I’ll take him a pint and tell him it’s from a young lady who would like to talk to him.

‘He’s scoring for the darts, but he’ll be over in about five minutes,’ she said when she came back alone. ‘He said thanks for the beer, by the way.’

‘This is a lovely old pub. I’m glad they haven’t modernized it – made it into a gin palace.’

‘There’s no fear of that happening.’ She raised her eyes to the ceiling, which was pale khaki. ‘The last time it got a lick of paint was for the Coronation. When it was first built, in the early fourteen hundreds, it was the churchwarden’s house, and I don’t think it’s changed a lot since – apart from flush toilets outside.’

‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘that at the time of the Wars of the Roses, a churchwarden was quite an important man, in the village.’

‘Mm. He held one of the three keys to the parish chest – y’know, social security, medieval style. The other two keyholders would be the priest and the local squire. The parish chest is still in the church, but there’s nothing in it. You must go and see it before you go back.’

She was already halfway down her glass. My dad, I thought, would approve of Jeannie McFadden.

‘There’s a lot of things I must see and do,’ I said obliquely, ‘before I go back. But I think your friend is coming over …’

An elderly man made his way to our table, puffing out clouds of tobacco smoke that made me glad of the open window.

‘Now then, lass,’ he said to Jeannie, ignoring me completely, ‘what was it you wanted to know?’

‘It’s my friend, actually, Bill. She’s taken a liking to Deer’s Leap and wants to know all about it. She’s a writer,’ she added.

‘Then I’m saying nowt, or it’ll all be in a book!’

‘I write fiction, Mr Jarvis,’ I said, holding out my hand. ‘What I’m interested in is the history of the house. I’m not prying. I’m Cassie, by the way. What are you drinking?’

‘Nowt at the moment, though I wouldn’t say no to a pint of bitter.’ Reluctantly he shook my hand.

‘I want to know,’ I said, when he was settled at the table, ‘who lived at Deer’s Leap in the war. Jeannie said the Air Force just turfed them out without a by-your-leave. I’d have hated that if it had been my house.’

‘Ar, but my generation had to put up with that war and we hated it, an’ all. Didn’t stop the high-ups from London taking whatever they wanted, for all that. Smiths had no choice but to sell up and get out.’

‘And where did they go?’

‘Can’t rightly say, lass. Got my calling-up papers, so what became of ’em, I never knew.’

‘Did they have a family, Mr Jarvis?’

‘Not as you’d call a family – nobbut one bairn, three or four years younger than me. Susan, if I remember rightly.’

Susan Smith, I brooded, then all at once I remembered the initials S. S. and a tiny heart on the strap of the airman’s gas mask. The initials stood for Susan Smith. She, likely, had put them there!

‘How old was Susan when she had to leave Deer’s Leap?’ I managed to ask, a kind of triumph singing inside me.

‘Now then – I’d just been called up, as I remember. Was twenty-two. Usually they took you afore that, but they’d let a young man finish his training, sort of. I was ’prenticed to a cabinet-maker, so as soon as I’d done my time they called me into the Engineers and taught me about electrics! Any road, that would make the Smith lass about eighteen or nineteen. I’m seventy-six, so she would be seventy-two or -three now – if her’s still alive. Fair, she was, and bonny, but quiet, as I remember.’

‘It was rotten about their land – especially as the government expected farmers to work all hours to produce food,’ Jeannie prompted.

‘Ar, but t’farm were no use to Smiths any more. Them fellers from the Air Ministry took all their fields in the end. Nobbut the paddock left them. Then they said they wanted the farmhouse, an’ all.’

‘That was a bit vindictive,’ I said hotly.

‘No. Stood to sense, really. The Air Force wanted to extend the runway at the aerodrome, and they took Deer’s Leap to billet airmen in. ’em could do what they wanted in those days. Would have the shirt off your back if they thought it would help the war effort! They couldn’t get away with it now. Folk wouldn’t stand for it!

‘Mind, once they’d no more use for bombers, they soon upped and went! I suppose Smiths could have got their house back and their fields, an’ all, but they never tried. That farmhouse stood empty for years. It’d have fallen down if it hadn’t been solid-built and a good, tight roof on it. A man who’d won money on the football pools bought it eventually and fancied it up. He couldn’t stand the quiet, though, so it’s been rented out ever since.’

‘I think it’s a beautiful house,’ I said softly as Jeannie took Bill’s empty glass to the bar for a refill. ‘I wish it belonged to me.’

‘You’d never stand the quiet, lass.’

‘I would. I’m there for a month and I wish it was for ever.’

‘Ah, well, there’s folk in it now, so you can stop your fretting for it. Reckon they’m well satisfied with the place.’

‘Yes. They love it.’ I didn’t mention they’d be leaving it, come New Year. ‘I think the view from the front is unbelievable. There’s such peace there.’

‘Weren’t a lot of peace for folk around here in the war. ’Em had an aerodrome, don’t forget, on their doorsteps, and bombers overhead day and night. Bits of kids flying them. It’s a miracle there weren’t more crashes.’

Jeannie returned with a tin tray with three pint glasses on it. Bill Jarvis smiled, and took one of them.

‘Crashes?’ I probed.

‘Oh my word, yes!’ He pushed his empty pipe into his top pocket and took a long drink from his glass. ‘Mind, those bombers were great big things and needed a lot of room for takeoff, but folk around here could never see the sense in the Air Force wanting more land for longer runways. ’Em thought it was going to be something to do with the invasion; that we had a secret weapon that was going to take off from Acton Carey. But it was the Americans came in the end. Mind, I can’t help you a lot there. I was in Italy at the time, on the invasion.’

‘I wonder why the Smiths didn’t come back. I’d have wanted to,’ I said.

‘Ar, but talk had it that he was given some fancy job with the Ag and Fish; didn’t have to work so hard for his money.’

‘Ag and Fish?’ Jeannie frowned.

‘The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. For once, they took on a man as knew a bit about farming! I never found out what happened to him after that. Was none of my business. Now, I mind when I was in Italy …’ His eyes took on a remembering look, and I knew there would be no more Deer’s Leap talk. But I had made contact, and before we left I had arranged to meet the old man again at the Rose on Wednesday night.

‘You’re a fast worker,’ Jeannie laughed as we cycled home. ‘What are you up to with Bill Jarvis?’

‘Nothing at all,’ I called back over my shoulder. ‘But like I said, it’s all grist to a writer’s mill. Life here must have been a bit tame all round once the war was over.’

‘Yes, and a whole lot safer!’

We closed the white gate behind us. It would have been dark by now, but for a half-moon. We hadn’t passed one street-lamp. It made me feel good, just to think of how remote we were. Tommy was waiting, purring, on the doorstep; Lotus was away on her nightly prowl. Hector barked loudly as Jeannie unlocked the back door, then hurtled past us to run round and round the stableyard like a mad thing. I switched on the kitchen light, then filled the kettle.

‘Want a sarnie?’ I asked. ‘There’s ham in the fridge.’

‘Please.’ Jeannie kicked off her pumps, then flopped into a chair. ‘No mustard.’

‘It’s been a lovely, lovely day,’ I sighed as I cut bread. ‘Bet our legs’ll be stiff in the morning, though. I haven’t ridden a bike in years.’

We sat at the kitchen table. It was too late now to sit on the terrace and watch distant lights. Even the birds were quiet.

‘I’m tired,’ Jeannie yawned not long afterwards. ‘All this country air …’

‘Me too.’ I said I would check the doors and windows. I considered it my responsibility since Beth had left me in loco parentis, so to speak. ‘Off you go. I’ll be right behind you.’

Tommy had settled himself on the bottom of my bed, but I didn’t shift him. I cleaned my teeth, washed my face, then lifted the quilt carefully so as not to waken him. Then I sighed and stared into the shifting darkness, glad that Jeannie hadn’t wanted to stay up late, talking, because I needed to think.

Up until tonight, things had been a muddle, yet now it was as if I was looking down on a table top with the pieces of a jigsaw piled on it in a heap. I had found the corner pieces of that puzzle and laid them out carefully in my mind.

One was a long-ago airfield – aerodrome, Bill called it – at Acton Carey. It had been the cause of the Smiths – piece number two – leaving Deer’s Leap, which was corner piece three. The fourth was Jack Hunter, I knew it without a doubt, and that he and Susan were connected – or why were her initials on his respirator?

I had made a start! Next I must complete the entire outline of the puzzle so I could begin to fill in the story, which was the middle bit. I could rely on Bill for some things because Jeannie had been right: his brain was still razor-sharp. For the rest of it, I needed to talk to a sergeant pilot. Only he could help me with the difficult bits.

Were we to meet face to face again, and talk, or was he to be a wraith, slipping in and out of shadows – and through gates – always just out of my reach?

Susan Smith, I brooded. Born 1924, or thereabouts. Fair and bonny and shy. Jack Hunter – tall and fair and straight, and old before his time. Died in 1944 and a name now on a stone memorial. The really sad thing, I sighed, as my eyes began to close, was that he didn’t know it.

What, or who, had he been searching for over the years? I hoped he would tell me …

There was a comfortable silence about the place when I got up early on Tuesday morning. After making Jeannie promise hand on heart to visit next weekend, I’d stood waving as her London-bound train snaked from the station the previous evening.

I coughed, and the sound echoed loudly around the kitchen. The quiet was bliss, the only sounds, Tommy’s rhythmic purring at my feet and a swell of birdsong outside. Hector lay on the back doorstep, on guard. There was just me and the animals and the view from the kitchen window that stretched into forever.

The phone on the dresser rang, intruding noisily into my world. Reluctantly I answered it.

‘Cassandra?’

‘Piers! Oh – hi!’

‘What have you been up to? I’ve been ringing all the time!’

‘You can’t have.’ I felt a bit guilty for hardly thinking about him all weekend.

‘I phoned on Saturday night. Twice. Where have you been until now?’

‘We biked down to the pub on Saturday night. Jeannie had someone to see.’

‘What about Sunday?’

‘If you rang, then we were probably in the garden, cutting the grass.’

‘And last night?’

‘Most likely I’d gone to Preston, seeing Jeannie on to the train. Listen, Piers, what the heck is this? Are you checking up on me?’

‘No, darling. Sorry if I came over a bit snotty. But what was I to think when you didn’t even give me your phone number in the first place?’

‘You got it off Mum, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. After I’d asked for it. Why didn’t you ring me, Cassandra?’ He still sounded peeved.

‘Because!’ I said flatly and finally. ‘I’m very well, since you ask, and yes, we had a lovely, lazy weekend. Where are you?’

‘At the flat. I’ve just got up.’

‘We-e-ll, don’t ring any more in the expensive time. Leave it for after six, why don’t you?’

I’d be better able to cope with his bossiness then. An upset this early in the day could put me off my stroke – especially when he was making a meal of it, like now. ‘You’ve got to understand this book is important, Piers,’ I rushed on. ‘I came here to write – what you call my scribbling – and I do wish you would take me seriously. Just sometimes,’ I finished breathlessly.

‘But, my love, I do take you seriously.’ His tone was changing from accusing to placating. ‘It’s just that you seem to be wrapped up in it to the exclusion of all else. You and me, especially …’

‘Piers! Please not now; not this early in the day! And of course I’m wrapped up in it. It’s my work, you must accept that. This novel has got to be good and then Harrier Books might begin to take me seriously.’

‘You’re set on it, aren’t you, Cassandra? You really believe you can make a living from it when most writers need a daytime job too. Don’t you think you’ve been living off your parents long enough? Isn’t it about time you took a serious look at the way your life is going?’

‘I see. I’d be better shacking up with you, providing all the home comforts, you mean?’

‘Now you’re getting angry, sweetheart.’

‘Don’t interrupt!’ I was angry! Piers would have to learn you can only push a redhead so far! ‘I have never lived off Mum and Dad. I pulled my weight at home and only wrote when I could find the time. And yes, I do hope to make a living from writing! Ice Maiden is doing well; they’re reprinting it, as a matter of fact! Oh, don’t worry! I won’t be going into tax exile just yet, but I’m holding my own! And even if I wasn’t, I shouldn’t have to justify myself to you!’

I took a deep breath. I expected an explosion or a slamming-down of the phone, but all I got was a silence. Piers is good at pregnant pauses; can stretch five seconds into five minutes.

‘Cassie love, don’t get upset. I was anxious, hadn’t heard from you. For all I knew you could be – well …’

‘Having a passionate affair with a local yokel? Well, I’m flaming not!’

‘You seem determined to have a row. What’s the matter then – stuck for words?’

‘No, I’m not. The words are coming well, but thanks a heap, Piers, for helping me to start the day with an upset! I’m not doing a prima donna, but you narking on the phone I can do without! Ring after six, will you?’

I had meant to end the conversation firmly and with dignity, but I slammed the phone down angrily and now he’d know he’d got me rattled! I could imagine his smirk. Drat the man!

For the next two days I allowed nothing and no one to come between me and my work. Luckily Piers didn’t phone again. I existed on sandwiches and coffee, rewarding myself for my labours with a large sherry after I had switched off.

On Wednesday, at six o’clock exactly, I had safely stored two chapters on a floppy disk. I felt drained, but triumphant. Deer’s Leap was good to me, wrapping me round to keep out all interruptions.

I rotated my head, hearing little crackling sounds as I did so, deciding I needed to loosen up. My heroine had got herself into a bit of a mess, but she could stew in it until morning, I thought, well satisfied with the cliffhanger at the end of chapter twelve.

I was wondering whether to eat at the Rose or whether to boil the last couple of eggs, when Mum phoned.

‘Hullo, there! You sound a long way away!’

‘I am, Mum! I’ve just finished work, actually. I’ve got two chapters done since I came here! I’m having a sherry, then I’ll make myself some supper. How’s everything?’

‘We’re fine, only I’m afraid we won’t be able to make it up there this week. I’d forgotten your dad is judging at two flower shows. We’ll probably make it the week following. Is that all right with you, love?’

‘Come whenever you want to. I’d really like you to see this place. When I win the Lottery, I shall buy it!’

‘Ha! More to the point, are you getting enough to eat?’

‘I am, though I work while the mood is on me, and eat when I’m hungry. Jeannie is coming up again on Friday.’

‘Have you spoken to Piers, yet? I don’t suppose he’ll be coming to see you?’

‘Not unless you give him my address, Mum! I’m here to work. I don’t want any interruptions – leastways, not from him.’

‘Aah,’ she sighed, and I knew I had said the right thing.

‘I’m going to Clitheroe tomorrow. There’s something I want to look up at the library.’

‘You’re sure you’re all right, Cassie?’

‘I’m fine. We’ve eaten all the parkin, by the way. Bring me another piece when you come up, there’s a love? Jeannie really liked it.’