I Remember You
Harriet Evans
A Richard Curtis film in book form – the perfect book to curl up with on a long winter’s evening.Tess Tennant is moving away from London to the sleepy picture-perfect town where she grew up, to teach at the illustrious Langford College. She finds a cottage to share with a burnt-out city lawyer called Francesca. Around the corner is her childhood best friend Adam, who she's always loved like a brother …Rural life isn't quite how Tess remembers it. Bored, she returns to London for a big night out with Adam but it all ends in tears. Heartbroken and heartsick,Tess has to take her class on a trip to Rome to visit the classical monuments, and she's in the mood to be reckless.Rome in May is beautiful, filled with the scent of jasmine and warm sunshine, and soon Tess is being swept off her feet by a charming stranger who takes her round the city for a magical week and she soon forgets the complicated problems waiting for her at home.But when she does return to Langford,Tess finds a note from Adam saying he's leaving for a while. What happened between them when they were young? And what is the secret of his mysterious past?I Remember You is about the secrets of a town past and present, about a girl who likes to daydream and whether your first love is your true love.
I Remember You
Harriet Evans
HarperCollinsPublishers
I remember you
Heartbroken Tess Tennant is leaving London and moving back to her picture-perfect home town to take up a teaching job. It’s time for a fresh start, one with warm stone cottages, friendly locals in oak-beamed pubs and of course Adam, her childhood best friend, who never left Langford.
But something isn’t right in the town: Adam is preoccupied with a new girlfriend and the past—which Tess thought she’d put behind her—is looming large again.
So by the time she has to take her class on a trip to Rome, Tess is feeling reckless. She is swept off her feet by a mysterious stranger, and falls in love. But her magical Roman Holiday is about to turn into a nightmare…
Back in Langford, as autumn creeps towards Christmas, Adam is gone and everything has changed. Tess has to decide, once and for all, where she belongs and who she belongs with.
Rich, witty and moving, I Remember You is for anyone who likes to dream about a new life—and for anyone who still remembers their first love.
Harriet Evans is the author of three previous novels, Going Home, A Hopeless Romantic and The Love of Her Life, all of which were bestsellers. She lives in London and now writes full time, having given up her job this year to do so.
She would love to hear from you: please contact her at www.harriet-evans.com
For the Don, my wonderful dad Phil, with all my love
When my life is through, And the angels ask me to recall
The thrill of it all, Then I will tell them I remember you.
‘I Remember You’, lyrics by Johnny Mercer
Table of Contents
Cover (#uc527347d-1927-5757-a2b9-d5bf03f0af71)
Title Page (#u57925c1c-f798-58cc-a9de-3b4e3b78518d)
Extracts (#u40d9a754-beb3-594e-8000-3646f4f4b7f4)
Dedication (#uf2e94b85-5b4d-5db3-b020-f1ee688d97f3)
Epigraph (#u5cccb23c-5e36-5f0c-bbed-e188d7f0fc38)
Prologue (#uab71968a-c5b8-57a0-a97b-72a73ca9869c)
Part One (#u78bf6424-a054-5510-bcd1-5be2b762d679)
Chapter One (#u9af6f5c8-712c-5a2f-8db2-2538fd32c1a2)
Chapter Two (#u10a3fc44-4105-5cf1-9e1a-28f12e827779)
Chapter Three (#ua0607efc-d497-59fc-b5c5-3e16bde84041)
Chapter Four (#u7388b7bd-0106-50b1-8ae8-4f4571e2cb14)
Chapter Five (#u20128158-fe06-5351-bc94-5f535f0ee9d3)
Chapter Six (#uaf9acf6c-8b2f-5f75-8b16-ca310aeadcb5)
Chapter Seven (#u58ec5ea3-eeab-5c5e-9ceb-b3e40ab73f06)
Chapter Eight (#u0e35036c-17b8-52ff-86f0-138c086b378d)
Chapter Nine (#u310a888b-2d12-548d-87e6-0d4c5997155c)
Chapter Ten (#uca3dd79c-e227-5ec3-b61a-18f635382f6a)
Chapter Eleven (#ua88043c7-0778-58ad-a2e1-7ed0576f1b76)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Others Book By (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_e2a356ec-11ac-555d-a304-c245fb614f84)
Spring had arrived in Langford early that year. A sprinkling of bluebells carpeted the lanes, and daffodils nodded proudly in the breeze which rolled in from the hills behind the small town. As Tess Tennant raced up the hill from the bus stop, she caught sight of her mother and her mother’s friend Philippa, outside the Tennants’ house. They were laughing in the bright sunshine.
‘Hello, Tess darling!’ Emily Tennant called out to her daughter, who ground to a halt, panting. ‘I was just telling Philippa your news.’
‘You haven’t told Adam yet, have you?’ Tess said, between breaths. She unhooked herself from her school bag, trying to look nonchalant and grown-up; she was almost eighteen now, after all. By the time Cleopatra was eighteen, she was ruling Egypt with her brother. By the time she was twenty-two, she’d got rid of her brother, seduced Caesar and had his baby. Of course, she was dead at thirty-nine, and had wrecked Egypt with civil war, so perhaps she wasn’t someone one should slavishly emulate—but she’d been to Rome, got to shag Mark Antony in the process and wear some awesome gold jewellery as well as being super-empowered and all that, so it wasn’t all bad.
‘No, of course not,’ said Philippa, brushing her wild dark hair away from her face as she smiled at Tess. ‘But well done, sweetheart. That’s wonderful. He’s going to be so pleased for you.’
‘He’s got a scholarship to Cambridge,’ Tess said, brushing her hands through her hair. ‘He won’t remember who we are in a few months’ time, he’ll be too important. He’ll be going to posh college dinners with E.V. Rieu and Oliver Taplin, people like that.’
‘E.V. Rieu died in 1972,’ said a voice behind her. ‘I’d be extremely surprised if he rocked up to dinner.’ Tess turned around to see Adam, her best and oldest friend, standing in front of her with an expectant look on his face.
‘I got in,’ she said, beaming. ‘I’m going. I’m going to UCL. If I get three Bs.’
‘Oh, my God,’ Adam said, a wide grin breaking out over his face. He threw his arms round her. ‘That’s completely, completely brilliant. You are totally bloody brilliant.’
‘Come in and have some tea,’ Tess’s mother called out to them, as Philippa smiled at them, hugging each other tightly.
‘No, thanks, maybe later though,’ said Tess. Adam released her, draping his arm round her shoulder and squeezing her tight. ‘Hurrah,’ she whispered happily. ‘The meadows?’
‘Yep,’ he said, nodding.
‘Oh,’ said Philippa, pleased. ‘Bye, you two! Have a nice time! Get me some garlic on the way back, Adam. Have a—oh, yes. Bye!’
As they walked down the lane together, Adam rolled his eyes at Tess. They both knew their mothers were watching them.
‘For someone who despises the conventions of marriage, your mum is surprisingly bourgeois,’ Tess said (she was doing Politics A level).
‘It’s weird, isn’t it,’ said Adam, chewing on a piece of grass. ‘So mysterious and bohemian, and yet she wants her teenage son to go off with the girl next door.’
No one knew where Philippa Smith had come from. She had arrived in town nineteen years ago like Mary Poppins, on a wild, windy day in early spring. She was moving into the cottage opposite the Tennants: Frank was a GP and he and Emily had one child, Stephanie, who was nearly two. Philippa was nearly eight months’ pregnant, Emily barely showing.
She had been teaching in Dublin, she told them, and the father of the baby was Irish, a fellow lecturer at the college where she worked. She spoke of him without rancour, but she wasn’t going to see him again. Beyond that, Philippa said nothing more about herself. She had no apparent family or friends; she barely scraped a living marking A—and O-level exams and writing textbooks on early English history. Parts of Langford were scandalized; but Emily, who had a young child and had moved with Frank from London to live in this small, strange town, adored her immediately. Philippa accepted her neighbours’ friendship—their invitations to join them for pot luck, their casual enquiries checking that she was all right—up to a point, and then she would retreat back to her draughty cottage and her books. For someone with virtually nothing—no family, no other friends, no back-story—she was strangely imperious.
Philippa had her baby son, Adam, six weeks after she moved to Langford; Tessa (to use her full name) was born a couple of months after that, and it was always accepted that the two babies would grow up in each other’s pockets. The sight, however, of the blond, tall Adam, and his determined blue-eyed sidekick with black hair that bobbed round her head like a halo, trotting hand in hand towards the shop around the corner, was irresistible. It was impossible not to smile, put one’s head on one side, and say, ‘Aah…aren’t they adorable?’ And when they were thirteen, and Adam was still tall and a darker blond, now a weekly boarder at a good school thanks to a combination of scholarship and sponsorship, and Tess was still small and stocky and determined, but both of them were shyer, it was rather affecting to see them putting their childhood closeness behind them, behaving slightly awkwardly around each other. People had stopped wondering where Philippa came from, and instead smiled fondly when her sweet-natured, shy son appeared anywhere with Frank and Emily’s daughter.
‘I think someone’s got a little crush on someone…’ a well-meaning person would hiss, delightedly, as Tess ambled casually over to Adam, shyly, at a drinks party to say hi.
‘You can tell he’s awfully fond of her,’ someone else would say. ‘Look at them!’
Tess and Adam had long accepted there was nothing they could do about it. It wasn’t their parents. It was the whole bloody town: Mrs Sayers the primary school secretary, Mrs Tey the solicitor’s wife, the lady at the newsagent’s—even Mick, who ran Langford’s best pub, the Feathers, had been heard to say, ‘They make a sweet little pair, don’t they?’
It was one of the reasons Tess was desperate to get out.
The water meadows were flooded in winter, but as spring arrived and the water receded they began to dry out so that, even in the full heat of summer, the grass was always lush and green, the butterflies colourful and plentiful, the honey bees always busy. On this sunny April day they could sit on the tree by the river, swinging their legs over the bubbling water, drink the beer Adam kept in the knothole and smoke illicit cigarettes, the butts of which they were always careful to collect and remove when they left. Not just to save their own hides, but because they were country children and, along with other things like never leaving a gate open, they would sooner eat a cigarette butt than leave it lying in a field. Especially the water meadows. They’d been used in a Merchant Ivory film and the Prince of Wales had visited them last year. Everyone in Langford was proud of them.
Adam took a drag of his cigarette. ‘So, you’re really moving to London, then,’ he said.
‘Yep,’ Tess said, swinging her legs happily. ‘Can’t believe it. You’ll have to come and visit me.’
‘I’ll visit you, but I’m not so crazy on London,’ he said.
She nudged him. ‘Don’t be silly. You don’t even know it!’
‘I know it well enough to know I don’t like it.’
Tess stared at him, trying not to look impatient. Adam was not especially open to new things, and it annoyed her, though she hoped university would change that. She wanted to take on the world, to run full tilt at life. He was content to sit and watch the world go by outside his window while he worked.
‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘Cambridge I can cope with—although it’s pretty flat, at least there’s countryside nearby. London—’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Too noisy. Too crazy. Too many people! No green spaces, nothing. I think you’ll miss it.’
Tess turned and stared at him. ‘Have you lost your freaking mind?’ she said, half-seriously. ‘I’m eighteen, bruv! So are you! Just because we’re studying Latin and Greek doesn’t mean we have to turn into old men with bushy moustaches and elbow patches who talk about the good old days.’
‘Well, you especially,’ said Adam. ‘I’d love to see you with a big bushy moustache, T.’ He nudged her, but she glowered at him and he relented. ‘OK, I’ll come and visit you.’
‘You’d better,’ she said firmly. ‘We are going to parrrrtay. When Cleopatra first met Caesar, she said—’
‘Oh, shut up about Cleopatra,’ said Adam, who was highly bored of Tess’s Cleopatra obsession. ‘Her parents were brother and sister, no wonder she was crazy.’
‘Adam!’ Tess said, in outrage.
Adam rolled his eyes. ‘OK, OK.’ He patted her on the back. ‘You really can’t wait to get out of here, can you?’
She looked at him, and shuffled along the wide branch, suddenly a little uncomfortable. ‘It’s not that. I just want to do something different, get away, you know? I feel like all these things are just round the corner waiting for me, and I’m sick of the same old faces, same stupid tourists gawping over the same boring things.’
‘Yeah,’ Adam said slowly. ‘I know. Still…I’m going to miss it.’ He looked around, at the meadows that stretched before them, the shocking green of the trees in bud, the blue sky, the fields folding out away to the horizon. ‘It’s a nice life here, that’s all.’
‘Of course it’s a nice life for you,’ Tess told him. ‘You’re Adam Smith. The richest woman in town paid for your education. You’re tall. You’re super-intelligent. You’ve got a cool bike. And all the girls at my school have a massive thing for you and you could basically snog anyone you wanted. You’re a superstar.’
‘Tess!’ Adam laughed, embarrassment written over his face. He blushed. ‘That’s rubbish.’
‘It’s not,’ she said. ‘Why would you want to leave? You’ve got the perfect life.’ She stood up; a piece of bark was digging into her. ‘Me, I want to leave. I want to live in London. I don’t want to turn into an old lady before my time.’
‘You’ll come back, though,’ Adam said, still sitting on the branch. ‘Won’t you?’
Tess felt sad suddenly, and she didn’t know why. She turned to face him, and stood between his legs. She pinched his cheek lightly. ‘Don’t bet on it. I can’t see myself living here.’
‘I know what you mean, but omnia mutantur. All things change,’ said Adam.
‘Yeah, they do,’ said Tess. ‘But we change with them, that’s the rest of the quote.’ They were silent for a moment; both of them took another swig of beer. ‘Still,’ she said. ‘We’ve got ages till we have to go. We’ve got the whole of the summer. And then—’ She lifted her beer and clinked it against his. ‘The rest of our lives.’
They were right, of course. Things do change, but neither of them could have foreseen in what way. Because already, part of Tess and Adam’s future had been written, set in stone long before they were born.
PART ONE (#ulink_bc114665-ed68-5dd6-b083-adf247ba5253)
I’ll tell you of a tiny Republic that makes a show well worth your admiration—Great-hearted leaders, a whole nation whose work is planned, Their morals, groups, defences—I’ll tell you in due order. Virgil, Georgics, Book IV (trans C. Day Lewis)
Langford College
Classical Civilization Tutor Required For A levels, Term-long courses and Seminars Immediate start preferred
Langford College is one of the most important and well-regarded adult educational facilities in the country. This private training college for further education is set in a Grade I listed Victorian manor, former seat of the Mortmain family, in twenty acres of beautiful grounds near to the historic market town of Langford.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, the position of Tutor in Classical Civilization now becomes vacant. We are urgently seeking a replacement, to arrive in February to prepare for the Summer term. The applicant must be educated to MA level or beyond in Latin and Greek. Three years’ teaching or lecturing experience essential. The applicant must be prepared to guide his or her students on a field trip, one per annum.
Applications are now invited by post, including CVs with two references, to Miss Andrea Marsh, c/o Langford College, Lang-ford,—shire. No email queries, please.
‘Per Artem Lumen’
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_8a558e20-e3b7-551d-a664-6b62c43fe1fd)
The old woman sat at her window, her usual position, and watched, waiting. It was noon in Langford, and if there was to be any activity on the high street (described as ‘one of the most beautiful streets in England’ by DK Eyewitness, ‘picturepostcard perfect’ in the Rough Guide, and ‘chintzy’ in the Lonely Planet), it would be at this time.
There might be a couple of ladies walking to lunch at the tea shop. Or some weekenders emerging from Knick-Knacks, one of the many gift shops that sold Medici Society notelets, Cath Kidston cushions and ‘vintage’ mirrors. Or perhaps a group of American tourists, rarer at this time of year, distressingly loud, having visited the house where Jane Austen spent several months staying with an old friend. (The house, formerly known as 12 St Catherine’s Street, was now the Jane Austen Centre, a museum which contained a glove of the great author’s, a letter from her describing Langford as ‘neither incommodious nor invidious, yet I cannot like it‘, and a first edition of Emma, inscribed, ‘To Lord Mortmain, in respect of his great knowledge, this little offering.’ But since the author was anonymous until she died, it was generally agreed it wasn’t her, anyway.)
Perhaps she might spot a bus trip taking people to Langford Regis, the famous Roman villa nearby (home to some of the best mosaics of Roman Britain, and a new heritage trail promising a fun day out for all the family.) Perhaps even a film crew—they were increasingly common in Langford these days. But whatever it was, Leonora Mortmain would have seen it before, in some form or another. For, as she was fond of telling her housekeeper Jean, she had seen most things in the town. And nothing surprised her any more.
She watched them walk past with a weary disdain; the tourists, lured from London or Bath for the day, even on this cold January morning, clutching their guide books, reading aloud to each other. And there was her old adversary, Mick Hopkins, the publican at the Feathers. He was putting a sign out on the road—what did it say? Leonora couldn’t make out the bright chalk lettering, and her glasses were on the other side of the room, in the bureau. Something annoying, no doubt; some quiz night that would mean everyone became disgracefully inebriated and staggered out onto the street, calling names and making noise, waking her all too easily from a restless sleep. Leonora Mortmain sighed, and her long fingers briefly clutched her skirt. Sometimes she wondered, quite literally, what the world was coming to. The town she had known all her life was changing. And she didn’t like it.
There was a picture in the town hall (renamed the Civic Centre in the eighties, now mercifully re-renamed). Leonora had a copy, too. It showed the Langford Parish Council on Easter Day 1904, outside St Mary’s Church, behind the high street. Men in morning suits, top hats and gloves, walking sticks, their sepia faces serious and respectable, their wives demurely on their arms, expressionless and slim in pintucked, ruffled Edwardian dresses. Everything correct, respectful. The church noticeboard in the background was freshly painted. Even the urchin playing in the street in the foreground, unseen by the subjects of the photograph—even he was clean and presentable! The previous day, Leonora had watched in amazement and horror as a mother—she presumed she was the mother—pushed her child along the high street in a buggy with one hand. The woman was fat, red-faced and sweating, holding a cigarette with the hand that steered the buggy and eating a pasty of some description in the other. She was dressed in pink jogging bottoms; the child was filthy. And she was shouting at it as she went. ‘Shut the **** up, Tiffany!’ she’d screamed as the child screamed back. And then later that same day, as evening came, a troupe of girls, no more than teenagers, walking along towards the bus stop, wearing jeans and trainers, and tops that displayed more than enough of their cleavages, smoking and drinking out of cans. One of them—no more than fourteen, Leonora estimated—stopped and kissed, in a most unseemly way, a youth of the same age, whose hands had roved over her body like—like oil in a pan. And under her clothes! Leonora had watched it all from the window.
Extraordinary! Incredible! That the town had come to this, and Leonora increasingly had no remedy for it. O tempora, o mores, her father had been wont to say (although he disapproved of Cicero in many ways). Well, what Sir Charles Mortmain would have made of his beloved town now, she shuddered to think. She simply could not imagine. Leonora Mortmain shifted uneasily in her seat, and her hand restlessly stroked the bell that lay near her at all times.
Her father was a man who cast a long shadow: a passionate classicist, author of Roman Society (Heinemann, 1933) which expounded the virtues of Imperial Rome—its organization, its rules, its ruthlessness—omitting many of its more interesting vices—vomitoriums, poisonings, slave boys. Young Leonora (many doubted such a beast had ever existed but it had) had lived in fear of him, desperate for his approval. He had died in 1952. She wondered, often, what he would have made of things now.
The fact that his own daughter had been forced, because of death duties, to sell Langford Hall, the Victorian Gothic manor house at the edge of the town, was something that still, nearly forty years on, gave her pause. Langford Hall was now Langford College, a private institution that at least taught respectable things, like History of Art, French classes, the Classics, of course, and so on. But no matter how respectable it was, she knew Father wouldn’t have liked it.
Leonora Mortmain took a deep breath. Thinking about her father brought back painful memories. She had been feeling older lately, and these days she kept thinking about the past. More and more. She had a final plan underfoot—one that she knew was right, but which sometimes made even her quail at the thought of what she was doing…
Something caught her eye, and Leonora sat back in her chair. A tall, darkish blond boy—well, she supposed he was a man now. He appeared outside the pub and started chatting to Mick Hopkins. He clapped the older man on the back as they laughed about something, his wide, easy smile infectious.
Leonora knew them both. Mick Hopkins had been at the Feathers for more than thirty years now. They said he was a good landlord—Leonora had never been inside the pub, though she had lived opposite it for forty years. She supposed he was an inoffensive man in his way, compared to some of the people she was forced to watch on a regular basis, but she didn’t care for him. He was responsible for so much of the bad behaviour she saw outside her window, and whenever she complained he brushed her aside, politely, but she could tell he was laughing at her…She hated that, hated it.
Her eyes fell, almost greedily, on the man he was with. It was Adam Smith, Philippa Smith’s son. Leonora watched him carefully, knowing she was spying, but just for once letting her curiosity get the better of her.
When he was eleven, Adam had won the top prize at Langford Primary, for outstanding achievement. Leonora had offered to pay his school fees. It was the right thing to do. He was an extremely intelligent boy, he had been offered a part scholarship, as a weekly boarder, to—School, and his mother couldn’t afford for him to take it up. Leonora had stepped in, enjoying the slightly surprised murmurs of approval that greeted the announcement that she was paying for his education. She would do it every year, she said, fund the brightest pupil from the school through to their graduation, as a memorial to her father.
But to Leonora’s immense displeasure, Adam had gone to the bad. His mother had died, suddenly, when he was almost eighteen, dropped dead in the street of a brain aneurysm. A terrible thing and a shock to everyone, but Adam had gone to pieces. He had failed, soon after his mother’s death, to get the results he needed for Cambridge, and he had gone on failing ever since. He didn’t seem to care about that fine mind of his after that; he would rather loll about on the street chatting and laughing like a common idiot, not like the gentleman he should be. She had had such high hopes for him, had seen it as her chance to create something out of nothing, and it had failed…Leonora Mortmain blinked, realizing she was staring rather too intently out of the window at the young man.
She rang the bell with fury, shaking her head querulously. Too tiresome to think about all that now.
‘Mrs Mortmain?’ Jean Forbes bustled into the room. ‘Are you all right, Mrs Mortmain?’ The ‘Mrs’ was a courtesy—no one quite knew why or where it had started, but no one dared call her ‘Miss’ now. Much less ‘Ms’, though some would have loved to have tried.
‘I am well,’ said Leonora, collecting herself once more. She looked out of the window, searching for composure. Her eye fell upon a girl in jeans and a light blue top, ambling slowly along the street towards where Adam Smith stood with Mick from the Feathers. ‘Tell me, who is that?’
The inhabitants of Langford believed Jean Forbes put up with a great deal. Leonora Mortmain didn’t pay well, and she was an extremely difficult woman, who almost went out of her way to be unpleasant. Poor Jean, people said. That awful, dried-up old crone—imagine having to live with her! Did you hear, she tripped Ron Thaxton up with her walking stick, because he was in her way? She told Jan Allingham that she believed charity should be in the home and nowhere else, when she came round collecting for Cancer Research. The list went on and on.
For her part, Jean knew they said it—on certain days, she couldn’t blame them for saying it. But luckily for Leonora, Jean’s nature was good and kind and, most importantly, patient. ‘You rang very loudly. I thought you were—’ she began.
‘What?’ snapped Leonora. ‘I asked you who that—’ She jabbed the window with a long finger, painted magenta and crowned with a thick gold and garnet ring. ‘—was.’
Jean looked now as if she were about to say something, but she thought better of it, and leaned out of the window. The girl and Adam had recognized each other, and were embracing, laughing heartily as they did so. He patted her on the back, lifting her up so her feet were off the ground as Mick went inside, leaving them chattering happily together. Jean screwed up her eyes.
‘Oh, my goodness,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Isn’t that Frank and Emily’s daughter?’
‘And whom might they be?’ asked Leonora Mortmain.
‘Tess,’ Jean said. ‘I’m sure that’s Tess Tennant. Ah! Bless her! Sweet girl. The doctor’s daughter. Dr Tennant? He came when you had that problem with your foot. You used to like her, remember, she went off to become a Classics teacher. She and Adam were such friends. Looks like she hasn’t seen him for a while.’ She clapped her hands together. ‘Of course! Didn’t Carolyn Tey tell me that she’s joining Langford College in a couple of weeks? She’s the new Classical Civilization tutor there.’
‘Is this true?’
Jean blinked. ‘Well, yes, of course it’s true. Do you remember, Derek what’s-his-name had to leave before Christmas, he got shingles? They’ve been desperate for someone ever since.’ She looked at her employer, realizing she was gabbling, and sighed. ‘Carolyn’s signed up for a course, Mrs Mortmain! They’re going on a trip to Rome in May!’ Jean sighed. ‘Ooh. I’d love to go to Rome.’
Rome. Rome, in May. In the plans that Leonora had had when she was young, Rome had figured large. And it would mean she could go back to the house, legitimately go back once more, as a student, not as a young girl living there. Just once more, before she died. Leonora pretended to ignore Jean, leaning back towards the window, watching Tess who was explaining something to Adam. He stood listening intently to her, hugging himself, his hands tucked under his armpits. Tess ran her hands through her black hair, and it stuck up a little at the back. Rome. Rome.
‘Hm,’ said Leonora. ‘Well, I don’t remember her.’ She wrinkled her brow, as if searching for a memory.
‘You do remember, Mrs Mortmain,’ Jean said. ‘She used to play with Adam—Adam Smith all the time. Best of friends when they was little. It’s nice to see her again,’ she said ruminatively. ‘Nice to have a young face move back to the town, isn’t it?’
‘Ye-es,’ said Leonora slowly, not really listening. Her gaze had slid from the girl to the poster she was now reading, stuck crudely onto the old blackened wood of the archway. ‘Jean—ah, what does that poster say?’ she asked.
‘“Stop the Out-of-Town Superstores,”’ Jean read slowly. ‘“Shame on the Mortmains! Save Langford!” Oh,’ she said, realizing what she’d just said. ‘Oh, Mrs Mortmain, I’m sure it doesn’t mean…’
Leonora stood up; leaning heavily on the windowsill as she did so. She was shaking. She peered forward, the better to see the poster:
STOP THE OUT-OF-TOWN SUPERSTORES
SHAME ON THE MORTMAINS!
SAVE LANGFORD!
SAVE THE WATER MEADOWS!!!!
If YOU want to stop Leonora Mortmain from ruining OUR town with these plans for 2 megamarkets, a homeware store and 4 other retail outlets, to be built on the historic Langford water meadows, which will make HER RICH and KILL THE TOWN AND OUR BEAUTIFUL WATER MEADOWS, come to the Feathers, March 15th, for a town meeting. Call Andrea Marsh, Ronald Thaxton or Jon Suggs for more information! Get involved!
‘Oh, dear,’ said Jean, as her employer sank back into the silk chair, breathing fast. ‘I didn’t want you to see it—’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Leonora snapped. Her mind was racing, almost as fast as her heart. ‘It was bound to happen, sooner or later. And the sooner they realize it’s our land, to do with it what we wish, the better. The plans are already approved in principle.’ She looked around her lovely sitting room, and then out onto the street again, at the poster, as Tess and Adam walked away, still talking. Adam looked across, towards the house. Leonora shrank against the curtains. She did not want him to see her.
‘So,’ she said. ‘It’s started, then.’ She paused. ‘Well, everyone needs to understand. It’s for the best.’
Jean Forbes said nothing as Leonora Mortmain turned to the window again, and continued to stare out onto the street.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_2abe54f9-e032-5acb-b81f-e71fbc730d55)
‘So when did the train get in?’
‘An hour or so ago. I dumped my stuff at the pub and you’re the first person I saw.’
‘You’re staying there?’
Tess said grimly, ‘I need to find somewhere to rent, fast. It’s expensive, the Feathers—what’s happened?’
‘I can’t believe you’re back,’ Adam said, smiling at his oldest friend as they walked down the High Street. He made to put his arm round her.
‘Ow!’
‘Oh sorry,’ he said, rubbing her shoulder where he had jabbed it.
‘It’s fine.’ Tess picked up her speed; she was small and he was tall and she remembered, then, that they didn’t walk well together: always out of step. There was an awkward pause.
‘It’s really you! Man.’ Adam shook his head, looking at her. ‘It’s been a long time, Tess. I can’t think of the last time I saw you.’
She looked up at him. ‘I know.’ Her eyes searched his face. ‘Your hair got darker,’ she said, eventually.
He tugged at it. ‘Oh. Probably not.’
‘You used to be so blond,’ she said. ‘Especially in summer.’
‘Not for years,’ he said. ‘That was when I was a boy.’
‘Remember your mum used to call you the Milky Bar Kid, and you’d get so cross?’ She smiled, but a look of pain shot across Adam’s face at the mention of Philippa’s name, and she regretted it. Was he still not able, after all this time, to talk about his mother?
‘I’d forgotten,’ he said, though she knew he was lying, he remembered everything. ‘You just haven’t seen me for a while, that’s all. You are a heartless girl.’
Tess shook her head firmly, glad to move the conversation on. ‘You never come to London, that’s the problem.’
‘Hey.’ He grimaced. ‘You never came home, that’s the problem.’
‘Rubbish,’ Tess said. She avoided looking at him, trying not to sound defensive, keeping her voice light. ‘Anyway, Mum and Dad don’t live here any more, so why should I?’
‘Typical,’ said Adam. ‘A brother. I’ve been like a brother to you all these years, and you just don’t care.’
‘A brother?’ Tess laughed, rolling her eyes, she couldn’t help it. ‘Right.’
Adam seemed not to hear her. He looked at his watch. ‘So—how’s Stephanie?’
‘She’s great. She and Mike just moved to Cheltenham—but you knew that.’
‘Sure,’ said Adam, stopping to let a tiny old lady clutching a green string bag pass on the crowded street. ‘She sent me a Christmas card. Morning, Miss Store! How are you?’
‘Good morning, Adam dear,’ came a bright voice back. ‘I’m very well, thank you. I have some lovely rhubarb, if you’d like some. Didn’t you say you were coming round later?’
‘Yes, please, that would be great.’ Adam smiled, and they walked on. Tess chuckled.
‘What’s so funny?’ Adam said. ‘She’s a very nice lady.’
‘OK, OK!’ Tess said. ‘Where are we going later?’
‘I’ll explain in a bit,’ Adam said. ‘I hope you’re pleased.’
Tess pulled her ponytail out and rubbed her scalp, letting her hair fall about her shoulders. She looked around her again, frowning. ‘Well, I’m back.’
She had to remind herself how, back in Balham before Christmas, dumped, unemployed and miserable, the job at Langford College had seemed, quite literally, like a miracle. Not only was it a job, which in these times was a rarity itself, especially since she was a Classics teacher and not someone providing a necessarily indispensable teaching service, but it was also a way out, a new start, a way to leave behind the misery she’d felt and start over again. But now she was here…It was eighteen months since she’d been back; even longer, she realized now, since she’d really taken stock of Langford, of what were to be her new surroundings. Like someone walking through their new house and wondering if they’ve made a terrible mistake, she now saw the town again, as if through fresh—and rather dismayed—eyes.
Take, for example, the high street. It was like walking through Toy Town. The shops looked smaller; the church of St Mary’s at the end was tiny. Even the side gate, the entrance to one of the medieval lanes that skirted around the edge of town, seemed minute to her, as if a child could climb over it. Compared to London, to her old street in Balham, which was three times as long as the high street, it was hilarious. She’d forgotten, when she first went to London, how huge everything seemed, even though she knew it already. How it took her a term of wandering around Bloomsbury to get used to it, the size of the squares, the vast classical columns of the university buildings, the height of the houses, even the size of the theatres. She was taken to the ballet by a boyfriend from university, and Covent Garden seemed as huge a football pitch.
And the shops! Everything here was either an antique shop or a gift shop or a tea shop, or else a crappy homestores place that only seemed to sell frozen Findus pancakes and ready-made Yorkshire puddings. She peered into the window of a shop called Jen’s Deli, noting with some relief that there was at least one shop that sold parmesan and prosciutto. She may have lived in Balham, but even Balham had a shop that sold Poilane bread.
‘Penny for them,’ said Adam’s voice, behind her.
‘What?’ said Tess, momentarily disconcerted. She glanced up, and saw his reflection in the window, watching her. She brushed her hair out of her face. I was just thinking how glad I am that at least there’s a half-decent shop here that sells fresh parmesan. She was ghastly. ‘Oh, well. Nothing!’ she said brightly. ‘So—tell me. How’s it going? How is—everything?’
For a while now, Tess hadn’t known the best way to ask what Adam was up to, but she knew it drove him mad, the pussyfooting. After Philippa died, people pussyfooted all the time, half-asking him what he’d do. ‘You’re—not going to Cambridge? Ah! What will you do here instead? A job at the pub? Sounds like a good one, Adam, keep you behind the bar instead of in front of it, eh! Ha! Ha!’
‘Ah, so you’re working in the museum now too? Well, no one better than Jane Austen! If that’s what you’re going to…So, how long do you think you’ll be—oh, you don’t know, well, of course, that’s absolutely right, isn’t it! Quite right.’
To Tess’s father Frank, who had asked Adam straight out a couple of months after his mother died, why he wasn’t going to Cambridge, why he wasn’t even going to defer for a year and then go, Adam simply replied, ‘Things have changed, I’m afraid. I’m not going.’
‘I think Philippa would have wanted you to go,’ Tess’s father had said. Tess had watched, terrified, her fingers in her mouth.
Adam had said, evenly, ‘I know she’d have understood why I’m not going. There are reasons why. She would understand, trust me. Thanks, though.’
‘What for?’ Dr Tennant had said, bewildered.
‘For asking directly in the first place,’ and Adam had said it so politely that Tess had looked at him, almost in despair, and then at her mother whose hand flew to her chest, as if clutching her heart in some sort of pain. He was heart-breaking, this young man, completely alone in the world, prepared to throw away his best chance at life. But what could they do? They couldn’t bind him and bundle him in the back of a van, then drive east and dump him outside the gates of his college. And there was no one else they could talk to, either. All Adam—or Frank or Emily—knew about Adam’s father, the Irish professor, was that he’d moved to America many years ago, and there were no details for him; Adam wasn’t even sure of his surname.
He was only just eighteen, and he was alone in the world. There wasn’t really anything the Tennants could do now, except watch out for him, help him as much as they could. Watch, as everyone’s favourite boy passed his twenties living in the small cottage where he had grown up with Philippa, never clearing out her possessions, and alternating jobs between the bar of the Feathers and the Jane Austen Centre, where he worked behind the front desk two and a half days a week. He never talked about his mother, or what might have been. Never.
Looking at Adam now, Tess knew she wasn’t going to get an answer out of him.
He said, ‘Things are the same as they’ve always been.’
‘Still working at the Feathers? I didn’t know the barman when I went in to drop my stuff.’
‘Yep,’ said Adam. ‘Suggs is doing a couple of nights a week there, actually.’
Suggs was Adam’s best friend and his housemate in the cottage.
‘How’s the Jane Austen Centre?’
‘Oh, you know,’ Adam said. ‘Pretty full-on. Tiring.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, you know. We’ll have to rearrange Her Glove soon, and some people are talking about moving the furniture in the Writing Room. Phew.’ He saw her expression. ‘I’m joking, you idiot.’ He pushed her gently. ‘It’s dead, deader than a dodo. Especially this time of year. We get tourists, but it’s ten a day at best. Even I can cope with tearing off ten ticket stubs.’
Tess was embarrassed, and tried to cover her embarrassment. ‘Right. I see. Well, it sounds like you’re keeping yourself busy!’ He gave her a strange look. ‘Er, let’s take a look in here, shall we?’ she said, almost wildly, and pushed the door of the deli open before Adam could stop her.
‘No—er—Tess—’ he called after her as she went inside, but she ignored him.
‘Hi,’ said a friendly-looking person behind the counter, wiping her hands on a tea towel. ‘Can I get you anything?’
She was beaming in a welcoming way which made Tess, less than two hours off the train from London, instantly suspicious of her. ‘Just looking, thanks,’ Tess replied repressively and turned to the shelves.
‘They’ve got some good stuff in here,’ Adam said, in a low voice. He swivelled round, so they were both facing the shelves. ‘Nice pasta, and the vegetables are fresh. They get them from George Farm, it’s a good arrangement.’
‘I love cooking,’ Tess said. She sighed with pleasure.
‘How long are you staying at the pub for?’ Adam asked her.
‘Till I find somewhere,’ Tess said.
‘You should have stayed with me,’ Adam said. ‘It’s ridiculous, you paying to stay there.’
‘I didn’t—’ Tess began, then she stopped. ‘That’s so sweet of you.’ She patted his arm, touched and grateful for the presence of him, and shook her head.
‘That’s OK,’ Adam said, still in a low voice.
‘Why are you speaking so softly?’ Tess said. She turned back to the counter. ‘Perhaps I should get some—’
‘Adam?’ said the friendly girl eagerly, her pale face lighting up. ‘I thought it was you. Hi—hi there!’
‘Hi, Liz,’ said Adam neutrally. ‘How’ve you been.’
He said this not as a question, more from a need to say something. Tess watched this exchange with dawning understanding.
Liz wiped her hands on her tea towel again, beaming with pleasure. ‘It’s good to see you! I wondered where you’d been.’
‘Ah—ah.’ Adam took a step back, and Tess smiled wryly, looking at her feet. Just like the old days; nothing had changed. She knew what was going to happen next.
And it did. ‘This is Tess,’ Adam said, putting his arm around Tess and squeezing her shoulders. He kissed the top of her head. ‘Tess, this is Liz. She’s from London too.’
‘Actually, I’m from Nantwich,’ Liz said. ‘But I live here now. Moved down here last year.’ She held out her hand bravely, smiling a little too enthusiastically. ‘It’s great to meet you, Tess!’
‘Yes,’ said Tess, shaking her hand. ‘You too.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I’ve just moved back and it is great to catch up with people like Adam,’ she said woodenly. ‘Because he is my oldest friend. And is like a brother to me.’
‘Right! Right!’ Liz tried and failed to hide her pleasure at this news, and stared at Tess with something like adoration. Adam, meanwhile, glared at his oldest friend with something like loathing.
‘So—’ Tess went on, evilly, getting into her stride. ‘It’s great to meet you. Are you two—’
‘That wasn’t fair,’ Adam said a couple of minutes later, as he bundled Tess out of the shop, having guilt-bought far too many overpriced deli items and leaving Liz smiling pleasantly behind them.
‘It wasn’t fair of you to do that to me, the old routine again,’ Tess said firmly. ‘Or to that nice girl. I remember you and your ways, Adam. But poor Liz doesn’t know about you.’
‘What about me?’ Adam said tetchily.
‘That the main reason you work at the Feathers is to pick up women,’ Tess told him. ‘And that you should be in the tourist guide as a well-known landmark.’
‘I only slept with her a couple of times,’ Adam said, ignoring this.
Tess hit him on the arm. ‘“I only slept with her a couple of times,”’ she mimicked, crossly. ‘God, men. You think that means it doesn’t mean anything! Oh, you are so useless. She’s mad about you! She’s been waiting for you to call her!’
‘Well…’ Adam said. ‘I bet that’s not true. I mean, I like her, but—’
‘Oh, I know, you can’t be bothered to actually talk to her, after you’ve shagged her,’ said Tess, and it came out sounding angrier than she meant.
‘Don’t split your infinitives,’ Adam said, brightly. ‘Call yourself a Classicist?’
‘It’s not funny,’ Tess said. They walked down the road towards the pub and after a pause she burst out, ‘God, sometimes I really hate men.’
Adam glanced at her swiftly, and was silent for a moment, then said, ‘So, er—have you heard from Will?’ He patted her arm. ‘Don’t hit me again. I’m serious. I’m sorry about you two, I thought it was all going well.’
‘I thought so too,’ said Tess. ‘I was wrong, obviously.’
‘Do you know why…’ Adam began, and trailed off.
‘Yeah. He’s seeing someone else.’ Tess said. Adam nodded. ‘Someone called Ticky.’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
Tess gazed up at the thick white January sky. ‘No, I don’t either. Except I hate her.’
‘You see, just like a girl,’ Adam said. ‘You should hate him, he’s the one who did you wrong.’
‘You sound like Mae West,’ Tess said, trying not to sound miserable.
‘I mean it. I never thought he was…’ he trailed off again. Tess nodded, and shoved her hand through the air in a ‘I know, I know’ gesture. Adam had met Will a couple of times and she had come to accept—so she told herself—that there were some people with whom Will was not destined to get on. Adam was one of them. He was too ready to laugh, too ready to take the piss out of Tess; they knew each other too well, perhaps, for Will ever to be the third side of the triangle.
Will had not been a laugh-a-minute. Indeed, that was one of the things that Tess had originally liked about him. Here she was, this poverty-stricken teacher, frittering her twenties away in South London pubs, wearing too-short skirts and drinking Pernod and Black, her only claim to cultural superiority being that she taught Classics (though bribing bored fourteen-year-olds with a bloodthirsty description of the Emperor Nero’s brutal murder of his mother Agrippina as a back route to telling them about the fall of the Roman Empire did not necessarily indicate the highest levels of academic achievement, she knew). Their friend Henry, whom Tess knew from university and Will from school, had introduced them at a birthday party. It was a hot summer’s day and Tess was wearing a shirt dress which emphasized her curvy form; her eyes were sparkling, her thick dark hair shining, and she had a tan, having just returned from two weeks in Greece with Fiona, another friend from university.
Will had been impressed with this clever, pretty girl and—height being a sensitive issue with him, since he stood less than five foot six inches high in his shoes—what he particularly loved was the way her tanned face looked up to his, her blue-grey eyes smiling at him, as she described her holiday. He had barely listened as she talked, and so he never heard that they were staying in an all-inclusive resort, and to his question, ‘Did you go to Mycenae?’ never heard the answer, ‘Well, we went to a karaoke bar called Mycenae Mike.’ He merely smiled as she chattered, wondering how easy the promising shirt dress which revealed just enough of her breasts would be to remove.
Three dates did it; by then Tess, who had been rather unsure about him at the beginning, since he was so unlike her in so many ways, had fallen for his adept flattery, and by Christmas she was head over heels in love with him. For the first year all was wonderful; Will liked the fact that she was a little different from his usual (tall, thin, blonde, posh) girlfriends, and Tess for her part liked the fact that he was a little different from her usual (young, puppy-dog-eager) boyfriends. Their differences were a badge of honour in her eyes: they weren’t each other’s usual type, she told herself, and anyone who’d care to listen, including Adam. That’s what made it work so well—to start with.
‘I’ve asked myself if I knew when it went wrong,’ Tess said. They were walking towards the edge of town, down to the ancient walls. It was mid-afternoon but the sky was getting darker, almost as if night-time was approaching.
‘And what conclusions have you reached?’ said Adam.
She looked sideways up at him, pushing her hair out of her face, as they walked along the windy street. Here, at the edge of town, the breeze was often strongest, whistling through the lanes like a dervish. Tess wished she could tell him the truth. But he, of all people, was not someone she wanted to talk to about it. She gave a little wince, as if she were speaking an unfamiliar language, trying to frame the words correctly.
‘He—’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘He just went off me, I think. I wasn’t right for him.’
‘Well, it’s also that he wasn’t right for you,’ said Adam, but Tess wasn’t really ready to hear that, she still remembered the Will who stood up when she came back into the room, who was always on time, who sent her flowers to work on a regular basis, who bossed her around, in an amused, rather despairing way, which made her feel like a naughty schoolgirl, instead of the matronly teacher she feared becoming.
‘He wasn’t,’ she said, slowly. ‘But…I thought he was.’
‘Did you have the Dealbreaker, though?’ Adam said.
‘The what?’
‘Come on!’ Adam smiled at her. ‘You remember the Deal-breaker.’
‘My God, do you still use that?’
The Dealbreaker was Adam’s cut-off point, the moment when you knew, he said, by some tiny action, that this woman was never going to be for you—though he insisted Tess apply it to men, too. It was his excuse to be picky, she always thought. It had seen off Cathy (gobbled her food), Laura (pigeon-toed), Alison (never heard of Pol Pot) and Belinda (allegedly, hairy chest). Tess shook her head, wondering at him. Twelve years since she left for university, nine years since she moved permanently to London, and Adam was still working in the same place using the same terminology, pulling with the same frequency. But who was she to judge any more? She’d moved back here, after all, and she no longer had any idea who she was. He at least seemed to know.
‘Sure I do,’ he said. ‘It’s good, I’m telling you. There’s always a Dealbreaker. The fatal flaw. In any relationship, until they’re the One.’
‘There’s always a fatal flaw if you always look for one, Ad,’ Tess said pointedly. ‘So, what was the dealbreaker with Liz?’
‘I’m not telling you,’ said Adam. ‘Though it’s pretty bad.’
She stared at him, curiously. ‘Oh, go on.’
‘No,’ said Adam, and she knew he meant it. ‘What was the Dealbreaker with Will? Come on, there must have been one.’
‘There wasn’t…’ She shook her head.
‘Bollocks, Tess,’ Adam said. ‘Are you seriously telling me there wasn’t? I know there was.’
She said, slowly, ‘God, there really was.’
‘So?’
Tess laughed up at him, her eyes sparkling. ‘Not telling you either.’ He smiled. ‘Not because you won’t, honest. Just ‘cause—it’s—’ She shook her head again. ‘Too embarrassing. Get me drunk and I’ll tell you.’
‘That’s a promise,’ Adam said. ‘So,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘What do you need to do first?’
‘Find a place to live,’ Tess said. ‘No idea where to begin. I’ll probably have to get a flatmate, too.’
‘When do you start?’
‘Four weeks’ time. But my lease came to an end, and I just wanted to leave London,’ Tess said, walking fast to keep up with him. ‘Beside, they wanted me here early to prepare for the summer term.’
‘When did the job end?’
‘Last week,’ said Tess. ‘They’re folding my classes into Mr Collins’s—he’s the head of Classics.’
‘Two people teaching Latin and Ancient Greek at a secondary school in South London, eh,’ said Adam. ‘Wow.’
‘Wow exactly, and that’s why I’m the one who got made redundant,’ Tess said, in a small voice.
‘Sorry,’ Adam said, putting his arm round her again. ‘You’re back now. You’ve got loads of time to settle in, too.’
‘Exactly. I thought I’d use my redundancy to come down early and scout the place out for a bit, before I start at the college.’ She shook her head. ‘Funny, isn’t it. So posh. Going from Fair View comp to this.’
They had reached the end of town; they were standing in the last lane that overlooked the medieval city walls. It was still strangely dark for the middle of the afternoon. Tess peered over, down to the valley, the hills opposite, the gathering clouds above them. ‘Hey,’ she said quietly. ‘The water meadows.’
‘Yeah,’ said Adam. ‘Did you know, they’re—’ he started, but then stopped abruptly and held out his hand. ‘It’s raining.’
‘What were you going to say?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ He patted her arm. ‘T—it’s great to have you home again.’
‘I need somewhere to live,’ she said, uneasily. ‘Then I’ll start to feel like I’m home.’
‘Fine,’ said Adam, clapping his hands. ‘Let’s go and see Miss Store.’
‘Who? Oh, the old lady with the bag—why are we going to see her?’
‘Because,’ said Adam, looking pleased with himself, ‘Miss Store’s neighbour has just moved out, and there is a cottage for rent by the church, which I am pretty sure you will love.’
She stared at him. ‘Adam, that’s—wow!’
‘I told you,’ he said. ‘I know everything in this stupid small town. I’m like a fixer.’ She laughed. ‘And I want my oldest friend to be happy now she’s back. Shall we go?’
‘Is it called something like Ye Olde Cottage?’
‘It’s called Easter Cottage,’ Adam said, smiling. ‘And it’s on Lord’s Lane.’
‘Of course it is,’ said Tess. ‘You are wonderful.’
‘Let’s go,’ he said, and they turned away from the water meadows.
‘Aw,’ Tess said. She stopped and hugged him, her voice muffled against his jacket. ‘Oh, Ad. I missed you, man. I’m sorry. I’m sorry it’s been so long.’
‘S’OK,’ he said, squeezing her tight. ‘I missed you too, T. But you’re back now. Back where you belong. And it’s brilliant.’
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_4c6dc6f3-9bd8-5616-9729-56e37e037149)
Several weeks later, Tess sat on the sofa in the sitting room of Easter Cottage kicking her shoes against the worn flowered silk of the sofa. Her feet beat a steady, echoing rhythm against the fabric in the silence of the room as she gazed out of the window, lost in thought. It was late afternoon. From the direction of the high street, sounds of small-town life drifted up to her—each one, it seemed, redolent of the world she was now in, each one serving to emphasize once again the world she had left behind. The sound of friends meeting in the lane. The ring of the shop bell in the Langford gift shop. A dog barking. Evening was fast approaching, another evening alone in this still-strange new cottage. She was living in a cottage, for God’s sake. She shivered. Tess was uneasy. Unhappy, even.
She remembered, as she had done several times, the conversation she’d had with her mother the night before she’d moved back to Langford.
‘I’m sure you’ll enjoy being back there,’ Emily Tennant had told her daughter. ‘Just mind you don’t turn into an old lady.’
‘An old lady?’ Tess had said, amused. Three years ago, the week after Stephanie’s wedding, her father Frank had sold his GP practice and her parents had retired to the coast. Tess had thought they were mad, moving away from home. Still did, especially now she was on the eve of going back there. ‘I still don’t understand why you moved. I mean, the new house is great, but—Langford’s Langford! It’s beautiful.’
‘Of course it is,’ her mother said soothingly. ‘But we wanted a bungalow. Somewhere easy to manage. We wanted to have some fresh air, be by the sea. Take the dogs for walks in peace, and put in double glazing and a satellite dish if we want it.’ She sighed. ‘I was just sick of feeling like a tourist in my own home. Langford’s full of second-home owners and day trippers and tea shops. Sit at the table where Jane Austen sat, and all of that. Trust me, I know,’ she had added, mysteriously. ‘It’s wonderful, Tess dear, but—don’t get sucked into all that heritagey stuff. You’re still young.’
‘Oh, Mum, calm down!’ Tess had told her, slightly indignant. Was it not she who had danced on a bar in Vauxhall the previous week, and done three tequila shots in a row before snogging the barman? ‘I’m thirty. I’m in the prime of my life. I’m not an old lady.’
That afternoon, in the sweet little shop next to the Tourist Centre at the far end of the high street, Tess had bought a tea towel with a map of Langford on it. It was really nice, and she needed some more tea towels; Easter Cottage was lovely but it had virtually nothing in it. But it had cost her six pounds, and she was starting to see her mother’s point. She was pretty broke, and she was lucky to have got this job.
Summer term at the College would be beginning soon; Easter was early that year. It seemed impossible that three months ago she’d been living with Meena in Balham, in the depths of despair, dumped by Will and sacked by work (well, rather smoothly told her job was being ‘folded into’ her boss’s). Added to which, the week before Christmas, a boy who looked about ten had mugged her and taken her purse, just outside Stockwell tube. That had been the final straw.
Well over a month had passed now since she’d found Easter Cottage and she was still without a flatmate. Tess was starting to realize how foolhardy she’d been. People didn’t turn up somewhere like Langford looking for a place to rent. They were either retired, or young married couples, or weekend-home owners. Not like Tess, that’s for sure.
There was Adam. But Adam still lived in the cottage he’d grown up in. He couldn’t afford to rent somewhere else. There was Suggs, Adam’s best mate, but Suggs smelt of stew, and only had one pair of socks, and besides, he lived with Adam. She didn’t really know anyone else. Perhaps she would, soon. Apart from anything else, it was such a lovely cottage. She could be so happy here, she knew it.
Tess sighed, and looked around the sitting room and the tiny galley kitchen. She had tried to make it a cheering sight. Her mugs, gaily hanging on their little white hooks; the old fireplace, which she’d filled with a jug of daffodils; and the framed poster of the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome hung above the sofa, which was festooned with bright, pretty cushions. It was a cold spring, and she was enjoying the cool nights, enjoying nesting in her small, sweet new home. Usually, she liked it when night came and she could draw the curtains and settle down on the sofa.
But tonight, the fog of gloom that she’d been trying to shake off all day seemed to settle firmly over her head. Tess shook herself. It was the countdown to starting her new job; she just had to tell herself that after Fair View Community College it’d be a walk in the park, teaching middle-aged people about Augustus and gladiators and the Senate. So why was she so nervous? There was an alarm bell sounding somewhere, a note of disquiet, and so she did what she always did in these situations, which was to enumerate her worries out loud to something, an inanimate object. In her flat in Balham, this had been the photo of Kanye West on the kitchen wall (Meena was obsessed with him and knew all the words to ‘Gold Digger’).
Now she looked around for something similar. But Mrs Dawlish, Miss Store’s old friend from whom Tess had rented Easter Cottage, was clearly not a fan of Late Registration. Marcus Aurelius was not suitable—the horse would get in the way. There was an old map of—shire on the wall, printed on oldeworlde textured parchment-style paper, and next to it a print of Jane Austen, the well-known watercolour by her sister Cassandra. It was a pretty shocking print, JA’s colouring resembling that of someone afflicted by a rough bout of seasickness and jaundice combined, but it was considerably better than nothing. Tess nodded.
‘Right,’ she said aloud. ‘Let’s go through it, one by one. OK?’
There was a silence. She felt stupid, her voice echoing loudly in the small room. ‘OK,’ she made Jane Austen say, though she didn’t really think it was the kind of thing Jane Austen would actually say, and she made a mental note to look up the word ‘OK’ to see whether there was any record of its usage in early nineteenth-century Hampshire.
‘I’m worried about my new job,’ she said in a small voice, crossing her legs underneath her on the sofa. When she said it out loud, it sounded—what? Silly? Or even more terrifying than she’d thought?
‘And why is that?’ she heard Jane Austen say.
‘Erm…’ Tess screwed up her eyes and stared at the picture, to try and see that small, pursed mouth moving. ‘Well…I’m worried that, even though it’s supposed to be less of a challenge than my old job, the people are going to be more difficult.’
‘What do you mean?’ Jane Austen asked, sounding a bit like Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins, Tess realized.
‘Well, I’ve got more to lose,’ Tess admitted. ‘I grew up here.’
‘True,’ Jane Austen said, ‘but I’d have thought teaching Classical Civilization in a failing comprehensive in South London and getting some teenagers who don’t care about anything to even remotely be interested in the Roman Empire is worth much more than impressing Mrs Flibberty-Jibbit of Langford, wouldn’t you?’
Tess paused. Then she said, ‘Good point, there, Jane. Do you mind me calling you Jane?’
‘I do, rather. I prefer Miss Austen. Next?’
‘Well, I’m worried about money.’
‘Aren’t we all, dearie,’ said Jane Austen. Tess realized she was now making her sound like someone from a Carry On film. ‘Proceed, my dear Tess,’ she amended.
‘I need a flatmate, otherwise I’m screwed,’ she said. ‘I’m really stupid.’
‘Yes, that is rather naive of you, committing to this house without a companion to share the rent,’ said Jane Austen. ‘Did you place an advertisement outside the inn?’
‘Yes,’ said Tess.
‘Well, why don’t you go down the pub tonight and ask Mick if anyone’s interested?’ That wasn’t quite right. ‘Mayhap you should repair to the inn and enquire as to the results of yon advertisement placement.’
‘I was in there yesterday…and the day before,’ Tess said sadly. ‘He’s going to think I’m stalking him.’
‘Ask Adam to meet you there, then,’ said Jane Austen, rather impatiently.
Tess sighed. ‘I texted him. He said he’s busy tonight.’ She cupped her chin in her hands and said gloomily, ‘He wouldn’t tell me what he was doing, either. I think he’s bored of me. Already. He’s my only blimming friend here and he’s trying to ditch me.’
She breathed out heavily, making a sound like a car engine winding down.
‘Well,’ said Jane Austen reasonably, ‘it sounds to me as if you are in need of some new acquaintance. After all, you left London for a fresh start. Think of what Will would think if he saw you, sitting all miserably by yourself here, moping around?’
That was it.
‘You’re bloody right,’ Tess said aloud, as she stood up. ‘Honestly, Tessa Tennant. What’s wrong with you? Get a grip! You’re out of London, you’re back here in this lovely town. No more tube strikes, no more congestion charge.’ She took a deep breath. ‘No more waiting ten sodding minutes to be served at the pub, no more strange men staring at you on horrible bendy buses, no more skinny teenagers staring at you in TopShop, and definitely no more horrible boyfriends going off with girls with stupid names!’ She thumped her fist on the wall; it echoed, disconcertingly. ‘You’re back! It’s good! You’ve got a bloody good job and you’re lucky!’
Somewhere in the eaves of the old building, a bird trilled, an early evening call. ‘There you go,’ Tess told herself firmly. She stared at the picture again, and it stared impassively back. ‘Now, go to the pub, get a drink, and cheer up.’ She shut the window and dumped her now-cold cup of tea on the kitchen draining board.
‘Thanks, Jane!’ she yelled, as she headed towards the door. ‘I’m off to the pub! See you later!’
She collected herself. ‘I’m going mad,’ she said softly, shaking her head at the print, which hung by the front door. ‘Sorry.’
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_1d22a03d-1e16-53ed-9888-eb81e4cf6ded)
The Feathers had been in Langford for four hundred years. In its day, it had been one of the great coaching inns, the resting place for the beau monde on their way down towards the great estates of the South-West. Charles I had hidden in a cellar there for a couple of weeks, and Beau Brummell had stayed the night before visiting the Roman Villa and signed the visitors’ book. ‘Passing comfortable,’ he had written. ‘A charming little town, Langford. I pay you my compliments. Brummell.’ Langford, which had always thought of itself as a deeply correct place, and regarded with suspicion the new claims of towns like Bath (vulgar nouveau Regency), Stratford-upon-Avon (American tourists everywhere) and Rye (smugglers’ money!) had col lectively swooned at this, back in the day. In fact, nearly two hundred years later, it still continued to swoon; the visitors’ book was in the great hallway that led through to the dining room; in a glass case, open at the page on which Mr Brummell had flirted with the town. The Feathers was, geographically and symbolically, at Langford’s very heart for this reason.
The dining room had huge wooden settles, carving it up into different sections, so that coachman and nobleman could eat in the same room, but not be troubled by the other. A huge, leaded oriel window, giving out onto the high street, let in the light, and at the back there was another window, with a perfect view of the countryside as the town sloped down the hill, stopping before the valley, with the Vale of Langford opening up before them.
Tess, coming into the dining room on that March evening, armed only with a copy of Persepolis, which she was re-reading, and the paper, was struck once again with the sensation that hit her: the clear, seductive light, the musty, clean smell, the quiet reassuring sounds of a working pub on a slow Wednesday spring night. The bar, a long L-shaped affair, was low and welcoming. Tess pulled up a stool, waiting for Mick to appear, her eyes scanning the blackboard for the day’s specials: she was suddenly very hungry.
And then, from the corner of the bar behind her, someone spoke.
‘Scuse me,’ said a husky, female voice. ‘Can I take this stool?’
Wheeling round, Tess looked up suspiciously to find a girl about her own age looking at her. Of course. It was That Girl. That Girl, as she had wittily christened her in her own mind, was staying at the Feathers, and was the sort of person, based solely on outward appearances, that Tess had always secretly yearned to be. Sophisticated, mysterious, effortlessly glamorous; Tess had seen a Mulberry handbag swinging from her arm as they’d passed in the street a couple of days ago. Tess had been pinning up her advert, wrestling with a rusty pin and a hard wooden board; That Girl had sashayed past, smiling pleasantly at her. That Girl’s long, glossy hair was—well, toffee-coloured, that was the only word for it. Her clothes just sort of hung off her, like they were meant to. She definitely wasn’t a local, That Girl.
‘Er,’ said Tess, pushing the stool next to her away from her, swiftly, feeling like a spotty teenage boy. ‘Here, of course…Yes.’
That Girl pushed her hair away from her eyes, behind her shoulders. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m Francesca.’ She smiled, briefly, and held out her hand. ‘I saw you yesterday, didn’t I? Are you staying here as well?’
‘Um, no,’ said Tess, sitting upright. She wasn’t dwarfishly short, but she was self-conscious about her height, and girls like Francesca made her feel peasant-like, a pear-shaped lard-arse. She smiled and tried to flick her hair out behind her back too, but her thick dark locks were too short and unwieldy. They swung back in her face like bouncing wire wool, so instead Tess shook her head, nonchalantly, trying to pass this off as a normal cool hair-move, and said, ‘I live here, actually. Just moved back from London.’ She felt this was necessary, she didn’t know why. ‘How about you? Are you on holiday?’
Francesca stroked a corner of the small blackboard with her long creamy fingers; the chalk smeared into swirls. ‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘I’m just staying here for a while. I’m from London too.’ She looked down, and was silent.
‘Oh,’ said Tess, not sure what to say next. ‘Well.’ She cast a glance around the almost empty pub. ‘It’s a great town, anyway.’
‘Yes,’ said Francesca, more eagerly. ‘I love it here. Everyone seems really nice. So you—you’re from here, then?’
‘Sort of,’ Tess told her. ‘I grew up here. But I’ve been in London for the last ten years. I’ve just moved back to Langford. I got a new job.’
The words on her lips still sounded so strange, foreign. She would have to get used to them. She didn’t know what else to add to this but her companion said,
‘Wow. So you’ve been back a few weeks, right?’ Tess nodded. ‘That must be great.’ Tess nodded again, slowly. Francesca pushed the blackboard away, and cupped her chin in her hands. ‘But it must be weird too, I bet. Coming back here—are you on your own?’
She said it in a friendly tone, in the spirit of polite enquiry; at least, Tess chose to take it that way.
‘I’m not on my own—I mean, er, I am on my own, yep,’ Tess said nonchalantly. She pushed the ball of her palm firmly over her forehead. ‘I had a bit of a crap time, last few months.’ She hesistated, debating as to how much detail was necessary. ‘And I was unemployed, too. So—I saw this job advertised and I applied and I got it—that’s how I decided to move back. Plus, you know, it was time to leave London,’ she said, getting into her stride. ‘I wanted to live in a proper community again. Escape from the town, shop in local shops, walk everywhere…just be with people who I—you know.’
Francesca was nodding politely. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘That’s so cool of you. Let’s hope they don’t build that out-of-town shopping centre, then!’
‘Oh. Well, exactly,’ said Tess. ‘I know. So—why are you here?’ she blurted, curiously.
‘Oh, I’m just meeting someone for a drink,’ Francesca said. ‘Just someone I met.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry, you didn’t mean that, did you.’
Tess smiled. ‘I don’t want to be nosy.’
‘God, no,’ said Francesca. ‘The weird thing is, it’s the same reasons as you.’ She gave a little smile. ‘I’m here to escape from London too. Except I was never here in my life before, and I have no idea why I’m here.’ Her eyes met Tess’s; Tess saw something in them, something vulnerable, and she suddenly liked her, this stranger. ‘I’m a lawyer. Well, I trained as a lawyer, but most recently I’m a banker.’ She made a slicing motion across her throat. ‘An unemployed banker. Doesn’t get much more tragic than that.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I was heading for a burnout anyway,’ said Francesca. ‘Seriously, if I hadn’t been given the heave-ho I’d have done something stupid. It’s the best thing to happen to me in years. That’s the weird bit.’
‘Why? What happened?’ Tess said.
‘Can’t remember, really,’ Francesca said frankly. ‘Last few months are a bit of a blur. I was working twenty-hour days. For about two months. Then I went to a wedding, someone at work, and after a drink apparently told one of the partners to fuck themselves. Then I tried to kiss another one. Then…well, the first round of redundancies was before Christmas, and I knew I’d be the first to go, so they didn’t have to pay me a bonus.’ She said it as though reciting a lesson. ‘I got a few months’ redundancy pay. My flatmate’s just moved in with his girlfriend, so I rented out my flat and…I’m here.’
Tess could only gape as the barman appeared. ‘Hi, Mick!’ said Francesca. ‘Get me a gin and tonic, would you?’ She waggled a finger at Tess and looked at her watch. ‘My drink date isn’t here yet. What do you want?’ She stopped. ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t even know your name.’
‘It’s Tess,’ Tess said, and they shook hands again, smiling at the formality of it.
‘God,’ came a voice from the door behind them. ‘Francesca, can you ever—Oh. Tess?’ The deep voice stopped. ‘Is that you?’
Tess whirled round. ‘Adam? I thought you were—’
There, striding towards them, was her oldest friend, a look of bemusement across his face. His thick light brown hair was standing up in tufts, as it did when he was in a hurry, or confused, and his eyes were questioning. He smiled as he reached them, and she nodded, behind Francesca, smiling back at him. Of course…of course.
‘This is a nice surprise!’ he said, squeezing her arm, just a little too hard.
‘Yes, isn’t it,’ she answered, taking his hand in hers and scratching his palm with her middle fingernail. He jumped in surprise.
‘I thought I—’
‘You said you were busy tonight,’ Tess said, unnecessarily loudly. ‘How lovely to see you. I just came in to check up with Mick about my ad.’
‘Ah, of course,’ said Adam. ‘Well, lovely to see you, Tess.’ Francesca was looking at them, confusion spreading over her lovely face. ‘Yes, I am busy tonight, as you can see.’
‘Yes,’ said Tess, trying to think of some appropriate comeback, but she had missed her chance for Adam leaned forward, towards That Girl again.
‘I really am sorry for being late,’ he said, smiling at her. Francesca looked up at him, her cheeks flushed, hair falling in her face, her composure momentarily disturbed.
‘Oh, that’s fine,’ she said, shyly.
‘I had to lock up at the museum, and then I found a little chick barely alive in the lane…’
‘Country Boy,’ said Francesca. She turned to Tess. ‘I called him Country Boy the first day I was here. He’s so funny.’ Her eyes met his again.
‘I’m not,’ said Adam. He was smiling at her. ‘I’m a sophisticated international man of mystery, that’s me. Call me Adam Bond instead.’ Francesca gave a gurgle of laughter. ‘So you’ve met my oldest friend, then?’
‘Wow, really?’ said Francesca, turning to Tess with pleasure in her eyes. ‘Isn’t that weird!’
‘Hilariously weird,’ said Tess, ignoring Adam’s glares. ‘We grew up together. In fact—’
‘Let’s get a drink,’ Adam said hurriedly.
‘I’ve got one, but—great idea,’ Francesca said, turning to the bar. ‘Tess, what did you say you wanted?’
Tess felt as welcome as a red sock in a white wash, nor did she wish to stay and watch Adam perform his moves on yet another unsuspecting victim—although in this case she was fairly certain she wouldn’t be called upon to pretend to be Adam’s girlfriend, as with Liz from the deli.
She said, warily, ‘Oh, I really can’t—’
‘Yes,’ Adam said, too quickly. ‘It’s really sad, but unfortunately Tess can’t stay.’
Tess looked at him, and she thought of walking back down the lane to the cottage again, opening the door, seeing Jane Austen’s somewhat disapproving face on the wall. ‘Oh, go on then,’ she told Francesca. ‘Just one, then. I’ll have a gin and tonic too, that’d be lovely. Thanks.’
‘Brilliant!’ Francesca said happily, moving off towards the centre of the bar.
Tess narrowed her eyes and glowered at Adam. She said, under her breath, ‘I can’t believe you! I don’t want to be in this situation, you know!’
‘OK, OK. Don’t kill me.’ Adam put his arm around her. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just—this one’s a tricky one.’
‘I’m not staying for supper. Just one drink,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘I promise. I didn’t know—is it a date?’
‘Not sure,’ Adam said. He touched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘Wouldn’t mind your advice, later. I’m looking for a sign either way before I make a move.’
Francesca came back with the drinks. ‘I’ve just asked Mick if we can change the dinner reservation to three, Tess—why don’t you have some food with us? We’re eating. Go on, it’ll be fun!’
Tess looked from Adam to Francesca.
‘I think that’s a sign,’ she said.
‘What’s a sign?’ said Francesca. She handed her her drink.
‘Nothing,’ said Tess.
‘Go on!’ Francesca said, nudging Adam.
‘Yes, Tess,’ Adam said woodenly. ‘Go on. Please do join us.’
‘Oh, all right then,’ said Tess. She bit her lip, trying not to laugh. ‘Since you insist.’
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_ebc1cd62-9d16-5d35-9dfa-4d6467d0ac18)
Tess had been looking for some confirmation, a sign that, a month down the line, she had made the right decision moving back to Langford. She was due a good time, and that night was it. There was nothing her still-raw single state hated more than feeling like a gooseberry, but as they sat down she promised herself she’d leave early, citing preparation for the new job, leaving Adam to make his move. As darkness slid over the old building, and the lights behind the bar glowed at their backs, the welcome fire leaping in the grate, they sat down at a table and intently studied the menu.
‘Mm,’ said Adam, after that awkward pause that always joins the group of diners with menus who aren’t quite sure what to say to each other. ‘Looks great. I love the food here. It’s the best.’
‘Yep,’ said Tess. She glanced down.
‘You hungry?’ Adam asked Francesca.
‘Not sure,’ she replied, seriously. She looked at the menu again, a curtain of hair falling about her shoulders. ‘Deep fried local brie with cranberry sauce? Or chicken liver pwith onion marmalade? What is this?’ she said, laughing. ‘Caf?Rouge circa 1997?’
Adam looked astonished, and Tess stifled a laugh, not wanting to agree with her, but at the same time she felt a stab of loyalty. Almost as if, by dissing the Feathers, Francesca was dissing Langford, Adam and thus Tess’s decision to live here. She caught this train of thought and shook her head. ‘You can have a special,’ she said, pointing to the board where ‘Chicken Pie’ and ‘Lasagne’ were starkly scrawled. Francesca looked at them, sadly, as if she’d expected more. Adam gazed expectantly at her. He seemed worried she might be about to drop dead of starvation.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘We can—’
‘No, no,’ said Francesca, hurriedly. ‘It’s fine! So.’ She put down her menu and smacked the table. ‘You two have known each other for—what? How long?’
‘Thirty years,’ Tess said at the same time as Adam said, ‘No idea,’ and they broke off, laughing.
‘And you grew up here?’ Francesca said. ‘That’s so cool. I bet it must have been a lovely place to grow up.’
‘It was,’ said Tess. ‘Just—it’s a lovely town. Small, friendly. Very…’ she trailed off. ‘We could pretty much do what we wanted, couldn’t we?’
‘Were you near each other?’
‘Opposite houses,’ Adam said, rolling his eyes. ‘Tess and Steph used to throw mud at me over their garden fence. Lovely children. My mum…’ He paused. ‘Mum was always having to tell them to stop bullying me.’
‘What a load of rubbish,’ Tess said, feigning indignation to cover the pause that always happened whenever anyone mentioned Philippa.
‘Do they still live there?’ Francesca said.
Tess opened her mouth, but Adam said quickly, ‘No. Mine—don’t really know who my dad is, he was Irish and my mum met him at college in Dublin. My mum’s dead. And hers,’ he jerked a thumb in Tess’s direction, ‘moved to the seaside.’
Francesca laughed, awkwardly, at the contrast, and looked embarrassed. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to—’
‘S’fine,’ Adam said quickly. ‘I was being—yeah.’ He smiled at her. ‘Anyway,’ he said, turning to look at Tess. ‘Langford is a beautiful town. Bit quiet sometimes, but I like it that way.’
There was a silence. All three looked down at their menus again until Adam broke the slight tension, gently touching Francesca’s hand.
‘How about you, then?’ he said.
‘Well, I’ve come here for peace and quiet, so that suits me fine,’ said Francesca. ‘Just some time somewhere new, some fresh air, chilling out, getting some perspective, walking, reading, you know.’ She spoke slowly, and gazed into the fire.
‘Sounds like a great idea,’ said Tessa, sympathetically, whilst thinking at the same time, Chilling out and getting some perspective? Who are you, Deepak Chopra? ‘Just a week or so, then?’ she asked, smartly. ‘How long will you be here?’
‘Bit more than that.’ Francesca dropped her mellifluous voice. ‘I need to not be me for a while.’
‘I know,’ Adam was murmuring, staring into her eyes. ‘But you’re here now, and you couldn’t have come to a better place.’
Tess wished she wasn’t here, in the gooseberry costume she’d been afraid of donning. She cleared her throat, and said nothing, and as the silence between her two companions grew more intense, and they held each other’s gaze, Tess wanted to hold up a banner:
IF YOU’RE GOING TO SNOG…
GET ON WITH IT!
Just as she was wondering if staying for dinner was a massive mistake, Mick appeared with a notepad, humming to himself, one bandy leg tapping out a rhythm on the floor.
‘Ready?’ he said, eyes flicking from Francesca to Adam.
‘Oh, hello, Tess! Didn’t see you there. Any reply from that advert yet?’
‘None yet,’ Tess told him. ‘Thanks, though.’
‘When’s the new job start then? You looking forward to it?’
‘Week after next, Mick,’ she said.
Mick whistled through his teeth. ‘Is that right?’ He smiled kindly at her. ‘Well. You done all right for yourself, haven’t you? Langford College, eh.’
Francesca looked impressed. ‘What, the residential place? Is that Langford as in Langford, here? I hadn’t realized.’ Tess nodded, ignoring the churning feeling in her stomach.
‘That’s the one,’ Mick said. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Good to see you, Tess. Look at you and Adam here, your little husband, eh?’ He grinned in delight. ‘That’s what she used to call him,’ he told Francesca.
Adam rubbed his head with his fingers. ‘Oh, God,’ he said, in mortification.
‘These two,’ said Mick, jabbing his pencil in the air with delight. ‘When they was little, well—you couldn’t see the daylight between them! Like a little pair of Siamese twins. Her so dark, him so blond, riding their bikes down that lane there.’ Mick’s rich, slow voice was like the scene-setting narration at the beginning of a nature film. ‘It were ever so sweet. We all thought so.’
‘Mick,’ Adam said firmly, coming up for air. ‘Leave it.’ He smiled shamefacedly across at Tess and she shook her head, smiling back at him in embarrassment.
‘Aah,’ Francesca said, and patted them both on the back. ‘That is so sweet. Now, Mick,’ she said, getting down to business. ‘This roast with all the trimmings, what is it?’
‘Chicken, did it myself this afternoon,’ said Mick.
‘Great,’ said Francesca. ‘I’ll have just the chicken, and a green salad—no iceberg please—and some of that potato salad you made for lunch if you can lay your hands on any? And I want a glass of the Chablis—shall we just get a bottle?’ Adam and Tess nodded mutely at her. ‘That’s that, then!’ she said happily, as Mick scribbled away and then turned to Tess.
‘Er…’ Tess said, at a loss. ‘Er…Same for me?’
‘No problemo,’ Mick said, scribbling it down with a flourish.
‘I’ll have the fish and chips, please, Mick,’ said Adam. ‘And a pint of Butcombe when you’ve got a minute, but I’ll have a glass for the wine just in case. Need a hand?’
‘No, you’re all right,’ said Mick, and he walked off. Francesca turned back to them.
‘That’s adorable. So you were boyfriend and girlfriend?’
‘No,’ said Tess, a little bit too quickly. Adam glanced at her.
‘No,’ he echoed. ‘Just—when we were little, five or six. That’s what some of us—’ he glared at Tess, before grinning at her—‘used to go around saying.’
‘So the two of you never…’ Francesca made a strange flapping gesture with her hands. Tess and Adam both stared at her, then at each other, in bewilderment.
‘Joined a hand puppet society?’ Adam said. ‘No. We never joined a hand puppet society together.’
‘You know what I mean,’ Francesca said.
‘No, I don’t,’ Adam said, shaking his head at her wickedly. ‘What?’
‘I don’t know…’ Francesca had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Had a little teenage romance when you were younger. I don’t know,’ she repeated. She looked at Tess. ‘Come on, you must have thought about it, at one stage or another.’
‘Not really,’ said Tess.
‘Er—no,’ said Adam. He shook his head.
‘So you never had a moment? You’ve just always been friends?’ She shook her head. ‘That’s weird.’
They were both silent.
‘It may be, but it is true,’ said Tess eventually, aware she sounded very prim.
‘Yeah, nosy girl,’ Adam told Francesca, and she nodded.
‘I believe you. Thousands wouldn’t.’ Tess took a sip of her drink, and Adam did the same. As if realizing the conversation needed changing, Francesca said, ‘So. It’s always quiet around here, you say? No crazy rock festivals down the road or anything?’
‘I don’t knew about that,’ Tess began, and then there was a loud noise, and the door to the pub across the bar flew open, banging loudly against the wall, and a middle-aged man burst in, palming his hair firmly onto his shiny forehead as he hurried into the bar.
‘A’right, Mick!’ he called loudly to the landlord, pushing a stool out of the way and knocking over a chair.
‘A’right, Ron,’ said Mick.
‘Meeting’s starting in five minutes, that all right with you?’
‘No probs,’ said Mick. ‘Not many people in tonight, anyway, you can have the place to yours—’
‘Save the water meadows!’ Ron shouted suddenly, with enormous vigour. Francesca jumped; Tess dropped the fork with which she had been toying. Even the more stoic Adam blinked in surprise.
‘All right, Ron?’ he called. ‘How’s it going?’
Ron turned around at that. ‘ ‘Ullo, Adam!’ he said, coming forward. ‘Good to see you! It’s been a while, you all right?’ He peered, mole-like, at Tess. ‘Hullo there, Tess.’ Tess held up her hand, and Ron’s gaze moved from her to Francesca, and turned back to Adam. ‘Right you are,’ he said to him, clearly meaning, Go on, son. ‘You coming to the meeting tonight?’
‘No,’ said Adam. ‘We’re just having some food.’
‘Suggs is organizing it, Adam, didn’t he mention?’ Ron said firmly.
‘Yes, he did.’
‘You don’t agree with them building over the water meadows then, do you? Letting that Mortmain woman get away with it again, eh?’ Ron’s voice rose, his nose twitched, as he waggled a finger—benignly—at Adam.
‘You know me, I don’t like taking sides,’ Adam said easily.
He smiled at Ron, and just as Tess was looking at him curiously, Francesca said, in her charming way, ‘Ron—it’s Ron, isn’t it?’
‘Yep,’ said Ron, non-committally.
‘Sorry to be stupid, I should know this, but what exactly is going on with the water meadows? I only got here a few days ago.’
‘You haven’t heard about it?’ Ron said incredulously, as if the idea that this wasn’t front-page news across the country hadn’t occurred to him. ‘That’s strange. You know the Langford water meadows, right?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Francesca said politely.
‘You never heard of them? That’s—’ Ron scratched his head, as if he could scarcely conceive of such a thing. ‘Only the most precious bit o’ land for about a hundred miles, that’s all. There’s more wildlife, more plants, more birds sighted only on the Langford water meadows than anywhere else in the country. And they want to fill it in, drain the land and sell it off so we can have a bloody shopping centre there!’ He was shouting again now, his burr more pronounced than ever. ‘That bloody Mortmain woman, she’s got it all stitched up! What’s she want the money for anyway? She ain’t got no one to leave it to. And she thinks she can can ride roughshod over us all. Again!’
He held a finger up to heaven and his eyes looked skywards; he reminded Tess of a Roman statue.
‘Wow,’ said Francesca. She turned to Adam. ‘Is that true?’ she asked.
Adam nodded slowly. ‘Yes,’ he said. There was unease in his voice and Tess remembered what it was that had been bothering her; the truth about Adam and the bursary, how Leonora Mortmain had always been so unpleasant to him in particular ever since. ‘Yes, I suppose it is true. But it’s done, isn’t it? The council’s given initial early approval—’
‘What does the council know?’ came another loud voice from behind them, and Adam stood up, laughing, his deep voice echoing around the pub. Beside them, Mick put down the tray of drinks and started laying out cutlery, as Adam hugged the bearded man next to Ron.
‘You bastard,’ he said fondly. ‘I didn’t know this was happening tonight.’
‘Tess!’ said the stranger. ‘I didn’t know you were going to be here.’
‘Suggs!’ Tess said turning round. She hugged Adam’s best friend, squeezing him tight.
‘Look at you, with two ladies, you smooth bastard,’ Suggs said, sitting down happily next to Francesca. ‘I’ll join you, shall I? Meeting doesn’t start for a few minutes.’
Ron was still hovering behind Tess and Adam. ‘We need you to sort out the leaflets,’ he said, tetchily.
‘Andrea’ll do that,’ Suggs said easily. ‘I haven’t seen Tess properly since she got back. Mick, do me a favour and bring me a pint of the good stuff, will you?’ Mick shook his head, smiling indulgently. ‘Thanks, mine host.’ Suggs leaned forward. ‘You lovely ladies signed the petition yet?’
‘No,’ said Francesca. ‘Just show us where, though. They can’t do that, can they?’
‘Looks like they are,’ said Suggs, and Ron nodded. ‘It’s a right fucker. You’d think they wouldn’t be allowed—the council wouldn’t let it happen.’
‘They have, though,’ said Adam evenly.
Suggs turned to him angrily. ‘I know you love them Mortmains, because that stupid cow paid for your education and you feel like you have to crawl to her, you little sucker.’
‘She paid for you to go to school?’ Francesca said, bewildered.
‘Shove off, Suggsy,’ said Adam, tugging his hair and looking uncomfortable, but Suggs ignored him.
‘Enough’s enough,’ Suggs went on. ‘There’s a lot of people in this town who think she’s gone too far this time.’ He paused for dramatic effect. ‘You know, the Mortmains have been shafting the good people of Langford for years and she’s no better. There was Ivo Mortmain, Victorian feller, he got a girl from the town pregnant and then killed her father when he came to complain. Shot him in the face! And old Mrs Mortmain’s father, he sold a whole bit of land by Thornham and they made it into horrible box houses, not fit for a pig to live in. That were fifty years ago! And she—she turfed out the old people in the alms houses by the church fifteen years ago, just because she wanted to sell them on.’ He gripped the back of Adam’s neck. ‘Remember how angry your ma was about it?’
Adam grimaced. ‘She went round to see her.’
‘She did?’ Tess said. Adam nodded.
‘Well, exactly,’ Suggs nodded meaningfully at him. ‘His mother in a bate—you wouldn’t want to see it.’ He smiled. ‘She stormed round there and tried to persuade her, but it didn’t have no effect. Why would it? And now this. Well, we won’t put up with it any more. It’s time it stopped.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Ron.
‘Oh, right,’ said Francesca, but Tess was looking at Adam, whose expression was set. ‘What do you think, Adam?’ Francesca said innocently.
‘I’m not saying she’s a nice woman, but I don’t take sides,’ said Adam. ‘Sorry.’ Tess and Francesca stared at him in disappointment. ‘Excuse me a second,’ he said, and got up and left.
By the time he came back, the pub was full to bursting with locals, and the mood was jolly if increasingly rowdy. Placards were being passed around, chairs were scraping on the floor, and at the front a sharp-faced woman was filling out forms, waggling a pencil at someone. Adam sat down.
‘What was that about?’ Tess started to say, but Adam held up his hand.
‘Hey, sorry. Sorry, T.’ He turned to her, and there was a look of desperation, almost, in his eyes. ‘Please, let’s not go on about it. It’s just the hypocrisy of it, that’s all.’
‘What do you mean?’ Francesca cried. ‘How can it be a good thing?’
‘I’ve lived here my whole life,’ Adam said with a twisted smile. ‘I’m just saying sometimes there are ulterior motives to things. I’m not exempt, but it’s not as simple as it seems, is all I’m saying. That development would give people jobs, it’d increase tourism. It might not be such a terrible thing.’
‘But the water meadows,’ Tess said, a catch in her voice. ‘How can you say that?’
‘Yes, and do you really want more tourism?’ said Francesca, curiously. ‘Don’t you want to find other ways of sustaining the town?’
Tess loved her then, for not being a pushover. Adam looked at her, and nodded slowly. He scratched the back of his neck.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Just—anyway.’ He cleared his throat. ‘T, how’s the hunt for a flatmate going?’
‘It’s not,’ said Tess. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’
‘Where do you live?’ Francesca asked politely.
‘Just past the church, towards the old hall.’ Tess turned to her. ‘I’ve got to find someone to share the rent, otherwise I’ll have to move out.’
‘What’s the house?’ Francesca said.
‘It’s a cottage really. It’s tiny, but it’s so sweet. It’s called Easter Cottage.’
‘How many bedrooms?’
‘Two,’ said Tess. ‘In fact I—’ Their eyes met across the table.
‘Can I come round tomorrow?’ said Francesca.
Tess looked at her. ‘Francesca—you mean—’
‘And if you find someone long-term, I’ll move out straight away, we can put it in my lease. Promise.’
‘Go on then.’ Tess’s shoulders slumped, and she breathed out, smiling at Francesca.
‘Are you—sure?’
Tess looked at the beautiful girl opposite her, and ran over the evening thus far in her head. Then she looked at Adam, who winked gently at her, holding her gaze. She smiled at him, then back at Francesca, as the noise from the bar grew louder. She raised her voice.
‘Never been surer about anything.’
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_ebdbcb2e-94d2-5351-9168-a8ea8302dc22)
One week later, Tess nodded at the portrait of Jane Austen, as she had taken to doing before she went anywhere, and stepped out of the front door of Easter Cottage. She looked gingerly about her, and then up at the sky. It had rained for the last five days, rained as she and Francesca lugged sodden cardboard box after box into the tiny little house which was now Francesca’s home, rained all that evening as they hopefully opened the back door onto the tiny little garden, where Tess had fantasized that they’d have drinks; it rained the next day, when they stocked up on food, the day after, when Francesca bought a DVD player and huge flat-screen TV without telling Tess and Tess told her she’d have to take them back; the day after that, when they sat on the sofa all afternoon and evening, made mojitos, ate Pringles and watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding (great), 27 Dresses (crap), You, Me and Dupree (which they thought was possibly the worst film ever made) and Pan’s Labyrinth—well, the first five minutes, before agreeing that yes, it was probably a masterpiece, now was not the right contextual time to dive into said labyrinth, but they should definitely keep the DVD player and the huge flat-screen TV and watch Talladega Nights instead. And it was still raining the next day, when Adam took them to the pub on Easter Sunday for lunch.
Tess had the house. She had the housemate, she had some friends. It was spring. All she had to do now was start her job. Start the process of living her life here, in this town, seeing some sort of vista stretch out ahead of her. But still, on this, her first day in her new job, it was raining.
‘Byee!’ called Francesca, from inside the cottage. Tess turned round and looked back through the front door, which opened directly onto the cosy sitting room. There, lounging on the sofa, in an embroidered silk Chinese dressing gown, watching TV and munching on toast, was her new flatmate who, this time just over a week ago, she’d never met. Tess smiled.
‘Byeee!’ she called back. ‘Francesca, remember to call BT again about the broadband, will you?’
‘Sure, sure,’ Francesca said reassuringly. ‘Good luck! Have a great time!’
A great time. Tess shut the door behind her and opened up her umbrella. She wasn’t sure about that. Her heart was in her mouth and she was tired, not having slept at all the previous night. She fingered the brochure in her bag, already heavy with textbooks and notes. Langford College had three components: year-long intensive A-level courses, in languages, History of Art, Classical Civilization, English and so on; the shorter options, intensive bursts devoted to one specialized area, anything from cookery to flower arranging to Roman Poetry, usually over a period of a few weeks; and then finally there were visiting professors who gave one-off lectures, an open-air private theatre down by the lake, lovely accommodation—all in the dramatic surroundings of Langford Hall, one of the best and earliest examples of neo-Gothic Victorian architecture, predating even Pugin.
It was a five-minute walk away, standing at the edge of the town in its own grounds. Her first class wasn’t till three. ‘The Splendour That Was Rome’, a two-month course of four classes a week, culminating in a trip to Rome where she, Tess Tennant, would be leading ten people on a tour of the ancient city. And here she stood, on a wet, grey street, shaking with nerves, wishing she could run back inside her nice new cosy home and stay on the sofa with Francesca, watching DVDs all day.
No, she said firmly. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Who could she be today, to get her through this? Maria singing ‘I Have Confidence’ in The Sound of Music? Too chirpy. Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant’s Woman? Too…prostitutey. Lizzy Bennet. Yes, when in doubt, think of J. Austen on the wall and Lizzy Bennet. Calm, funny, her own person. Tess set off down the street with something approximating a spring in her step; if Lizzy Bennet was alive today, she reasoned, she could easily be Tess, setting off to teach Roman history to a group of retired posh people. Actually, she was more convinced Lizzy Bennet would be an ethical trader at KPMG, storing up a handful of assets in advance of any impending market collapse which she would then redistribute to deserving causes, but never mind. Twirling her umbrella, she tripped across the uneven cobblestones to the end of the street, where Lord’s Lane met the high street, the main road that led out to the edge of town.
‘Tess?’ called a voice from behind her suddenly, and Tess swivelled round wildly. She was unsure where the voice had come from; that was the unnerving thing about living in Langford, she had realized. You were never quite sure who knew you and who didn’t. In London, no one knew you. It was kind of nice. Sometimes.
‘Tess! Yoo hoo!’
Walking along the high street towards her was a vaguely familiar woman, neatly dressed in a Husky jacket and head-scarf.
‘Tess! Ah. I knew it was you,’ said the woman, smiling broadly, showing enormous teeth. ‘I said to myself, I bet that’s Tess!’
Diana? Carolyn? Jean? Tess asked herself wildly. Something like that. God, it’s on the tip of my tongue. Audrey? Jean? It’s Jean, I’m sure it’s Jean.
‘I’m doing your course!’ the woman said, proudly. ‘Present from Jeremy! Bless him.’
Jeremy…Jeremy and…who the hell was it? Tess racked her brains for the magic formula of garbled couples’ names. Something and Jeremy…And then realization dawned.
Jan and Jeremy! Jan Allingham! Of course. ‘You are? That’s great! Hello, Jan!’ Tess said, smiling brightly at Jan Allingham (for it was she), who held out her hand.
‘Well, here you are, here we are,’ said Jan, briskly patting her short, rigidly waved hair. ‘We’re going to be your first students, you know.’
Tess looked at her watch in alarm. It was just before eleven. ‘The first class isn’t till three,’ she said.
‘Oh, I know, I know!’ Jan cried. ‘I wanted to come a bit early. Get my bearings, complete the registration forms, have a look round.’
‘Oh!’ said Tess, weakly. ‘That’s very…That’s great!’
‘You enjoying being back then, dear?’
‘Yes,’ said Tess. ‘It’s great. Very excited about teaching, too.’
‘You seen lots of Adam, then?’ Jan asked, tapping Tess’s arm. ‘Shall we carry on walking?’ she said, as she carried on walking. ‘The two of you when you were little—so adorable.’ Tess smiled politely. ‘Isn’t it funny, when I can remember you peeing into a potty! And now you’re going to be teaching me!’
‘You only moved here when I was a teenager,’ said Tess firmly.
‘Oh, well, details!’ Jan cried happily. ‘Now, who’s this flatmate of yours, that gorgeously glamorous girl, the one who I keep seeing with your Adam? Andrea’s seen them together a few times, says they’re quite the item.’
Tess nodded. ‘Francesca. Yes. She’s absolutely lovely.’
‘So nice for Adam after everything—’ Jan mouthed the word everything. ‘It must be good for him.’
Since there was no answer to this but a short, sympathetic Mmm, Tess said, ‘Mmm.’
‘A nice steady girlfriend. And rich too. I heard she was a banker.’
They turned onto the high street, which was almost deserted, its shops dark and the houses forbidding, in the soft March rain. ‘I don’t think they’re actually boyfriend and girlfriend—’ Tess began timidly, but Jan interrupted her.
‘Diana! Hellooo!’ she called loudly, as a figure in front of them in a flared corduroy skirt turned around cautiously. ‘Diana! It’s me! You remember Diana, don’t you?’
‘Is that Tess?’ said Diana Sayers, walking towards them. ‘Hello, Tess.’ From under a short, severe fringe she nodded briefly at Tess, who smiled back, unable to remember where or how she knew Diana. ‘I’m taking your course, just off to have a look around and complete the registration forms, all that.’
‘Oh! How nice,’ said Tess, her mind racing. Vicar? Baker? Candlestick maker? ‘That’s—’
‘Bit of a busman’s holiday for you, isn’t it, Diana?’ Jan said, tapping Diana on the arm again, as if motioning her to move off like a carthorse. ‘I’d have thought you’d have had enough of schools for a while!’
Of course. Diana Sayers! Mrs Sayers, the Langford primary school secretary. Adam’s godmother. Philippa’s best friend, she hadn’t seen her for years, how could she have forgotten her?
‘I thought it was probably about time I actually learned something now I’m retired,’ Diana said gruffly. ‘Sick of children. Don’t care if I never see another one.’
‘Aaah. That’s nice,’ murmured Jan, not really listening, and Tess bit her lip, trying not to laugh.
‘Cross here,’ Diana commanded, raising her left arm high in the air, and the little crocodile obediently crossed the road.
‘Did you go to the meeting last week at the pub?’ Jan said. ‘Andrea’s furious with me for not going, but I had to wait in and pick Jeremy up from the station. Some stupid golfing day, bloody idiot. She said it went well,’ she added, inconsequentially. ‘Ron’s wonderful at organizing that sort of thing.’
‘Oh, I went,’ Diana said, nodding. ‘Only briefly though. Andrea’s started the petition, she’s going to take it round the town. I thought we should probably give copies to people like your Jeremy, Jan, get him to pin it up in the office? I mean, Thornham’s only a couple of miles away from here, they’ll be affected if this bloody superstore goes ahead too.’
‘I must say,’ said Jan, ignoring her. ‘That Family—I’ve broken with them. Simply broken with the Mortmains, and Carolyn Tey can waggle over to me with her big sad cow eyes all she wants and say, “Oh, Jan, I know Mrs Mortmain’s ever so grateful to you for your support,” when that damned woman wants the PCC to approve her horrible fence so she doesn’t have to look at any ordinary people. But they’re going to have to learn a lesson! We won’t take it any more! Ooh—’ she said, breaking off. ‘I do like your shoes, Diana. Where did you get them? I’ve been looking for something like that. Something a bit smart, but with a plimsoll lining.’ She emphasized the ‘l’s in plimsoll, so it sounded like pllllllimmmsollllll. ‘Can you walk far in them?’
‘Good grief, Jan,’ said Diana crisply. ‘Do concentrate! We need to stand shoulder to shoulder on this.’ She turned sharply towards them and said coldly, ‘Until we do—’
‘Goodness!’ Jan called. Tess looked up; there in front of them were the stone pillars at the start of the drive. ‘We’re here—and look who’s over there! Talk of the devil! It’s Carolyn and Jacquetta! We said we’d meet for coffee, but I wasn’t sure if they’d make it too! Tess, you remember Carolyn! I don’t know if you’d have met Jacquetta…’
Of course Tess vaguely thought she might, once, have met Carolyn, but she knew better by now than to admit that she actually had no idea who she was. She felt as if she were in a parallel universe, that this Langford, full of scary ladies in Marks and Spencer Footgloves, had been bobbing outside her window, waiting to pounce on her for the last few days while she watched TV or made food or walked to the pub, sandwiched between Adam and Francesca.
Carolyn was a fair, pretty woman with rather faded looks and an anxious expression. ‘Hello, dear,’ she said, nervously, as if she expected Tess to bite her. ‘This is very nice, isn’t it. You know—’
‘Jacquetta Meluish,’ said her companion, standing tall and pushing her wavy dark gold long hair out of the way, slowly and deliberately.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Tess. ‘Don’t you work in that shop on the high street? The one with all the nice cake stands and notelets in it?’
‘I own Knick-Knacks,’ Jacquetta said, slightly tightly. ‘Have done for ten years now.’ She pronounced it yiaahs. ‘I should tell you now, Tess, isn’t it?—that I received a First in Greats, Some Years Ago. I feel it best to be honest now, from the start, about my Unfair Advantage. Aha-ha-ha.’ She gave what Tess assumed she felt was a self-deprecating laugh.
Oh, God, Tess thought. She remembered with a flash of fondness Year Ten at Fair View, none of whom had ever given her this much grief. Yes, one of them had been found carrying a knife, but Tess had believed Carl when he said it was for cutting the twine on parcels. ‘I’ll go on ahead,’ she called politely, as the knot of women behind her waved and carried on chatting, while she set off up the short drive to the house, the words, ‘Really? This is your birthday present? Oh, he is wonderful,’ ‘I know, Richard said she looked quite mad,’ and ‘Well, of course, she complained to the diocese about him,’ echoing behind her, and the dark, forbidding house with its turrets stabbing the cloudy sky ahead. Francesca, the sofa and the TV seemed a long way away.
A couple of hours later, as Tess’s eye scanned over the list of her twenty new pupils, her heart sank. There were far more names on it than she’d expected to recognize; somehow the idea that she might actually be teaching people she knew hadn’t occurred to her, much less that they’d be the parents of people she grew up with, or people her mother had served sherry to. Beth Kennett, the head of the college, a sensible woman in her late thirties, had explained it to her with a smile, handing her a cup of tea in the stately but draughty staffroom.
‘We always get an influx of Langford locals this time of year, I don’t know why. Perhaps they’ve been given it for Christmas. Derek always said it was most likely their New Year’s resolution to do something different, plus they all want the trip to Rome,’ she said, her eyes twinkling. ‘But Andrea was saying they’ve all been rather excited about you, you know. You grew up here, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Tess. She was still a little shaken from her walk in. ‘God, I had no idea. It’s been years—’
‘Well,’ said Beth kindly, ‘you just have to let them know who’s boss.’
Tess thought of Jan and Jacquetta. ‘That’s easier said than done.’
‘Come on,’ said Beth, a little briskly. She tucked her hair behind her ear, and jabbed a small finger onto the list of names. ‘There’s plenty of other people in the class too, you know! You’ve come from one of the toughest schools in South London. Wasn’t there a hostage situation there last year? This should be a walk in the park!’
A walk in the park. Tess cleared her throat, now, and looked up, as a watery shaft of sun shone through the huge leaded window of the room. Her notes, which she had written and rewritten, and her lesson plan, lay in front of her, on the old wooden lectern. She loved this moment, when she had them in the palm of her hand, when she knew they were to learn all these wonderful things, hear about these amazing civilizations, that would transform the way they saw their own world. She began:
‘Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome.’
The class looked at her as she spoke; they had ceased to be Jans and Dianas and Jacquettas; they were a mass of faces, the majority unknown to her. They were hers.
‘Some of you will know Rome; you might have been there already. I’m sure you all recognize the Colosseum, or know what a temple looks like. I know you’ve all heard of Antony and Cleopatra, or crazy Nero. Perhaps you’ve read I Claudius, or seen Gladiator. You know that Roman civilization is everywhere still among us.’
She paused. Her eyes ranged up, to the window.
‘But what I hope this course will give you is a full understanding of the grandeur and the glory that was Rome, why it is so important to us still today, and how it shaped the modern world as we know it. Everything from the month of August to the word “comprehensive” to the way we vote, with a bit of Star Wars, some wine, the best speeches you’ll ever hear and for some of you, a nice trip to Italy thrown in along the way.’
Tess unclenched her hands, which she realized had been scrunched up at her sides, as the class gave a small, appreciative laugh, their upturned faces watching her. Someone opened an exercise book; someone else uncapped a pen, someone cleared their throat. They were relaxing into this. Now it could begin; she looked around, wondering why she still felt uneasy.
Then the door opened. Tess looked up at the creaking sound, to see a silhouette ahead of her. A pair of eyes bore into her with dark intensity. Leonora Mortmain, dressed in black, her hand clutching a stick, began her descent into the bowels of the classroom, looking at no one. She nodded, unblinking, briefly acknowledging Tess’s eyes on her, and Tess nearly reared back in shock—so wizened was the face in front of her, so emotionless and yet intense her gaze. Her progress was slow but steady, and gradually everyone turned around to see her, Leonora Mortmain, the most hated woman in the town, walking down the steps of her old family home, and when the class saw who it was, a couple turned back but the rest, horrified, began to mutter amongst themselves. Diana Sayers looked murderous; Jan Allingham shook her head. Slowly, Leonora Mortmain lowered herself into a chair in the front row, and nodded slowly, as if granting permission for the lesson to go ahead.
‘She—’ ‘Why?’ ‘I can’t believe—’ Like reeds by a stream, the rushing whispering began, until Tess rapped on the lectern, and some of them jumped; not Leonora Mortmain, however. Tess clapped her hands.
‘Silence, please.’
She had forgotten, too, the calm that came with being in charge of a class: she had no command over her own life but here, here was different. They were instantly quiet. ‘Thanks. Now, let’s begin. I want you to listen to this. I’m going to read you a speech, one of a series written by the greatest orator who ever lived. If you have an enemy—’ she cast a quelling glance around the room—‘tackle him like this. If you want to make your case against them, say it like this.’
Holding up Cicero’s Philippics, she began to read, her hands shaking only slightly.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_6efa688d-f9a8-5b24-aab9-680b2115010a)
Dear Tess,
Hi. I hope you got my message. I still have your old writing bureau in my attic, the one you stored there after the burglary. I’m selling the flat as we’re buying a house and so I should like to give it back to you. Ticky and I are going to a wedding in Dorset next month. May I drop it off then?
I hope your new life in Langford is going well. Will
Dear Tess,
Hi! How’s it going in the countryside? Danced round any maypoles yet? How’s the job? That’s great news about the house, but who the hell is this random girl you’re moving in with? Sorry about all the questions, I need an update!
It’s all cool here. Cathy has settled in OK, I think it’ll be fine living with her. Anil asked me out. We’re going to the cinema next week. No big deal, he’s nice so we’ll see. Crazy John had a party upstairs with his crazy crackhead friends on Saturday, someone called the police and he got taken away! Can you believe it. Mr Azeem’s got burned down last week, they think some lads did it.
The reason I was emailing as well is because Will aka Wuell phoned yesterday. He didn’t know you’d left London. He was a bit surprised. Anyway, he said he’d tried your mobile and you hadn’t answered, a couple of times. He wanted your address. And he says he wants to be friends. That was what he wanted me to tell you! He said he’s going down to Dorset in a couple of weeks, he’ll be in touch and maybe try and pop by with Ticky (that’s her name, right?). I said nothing. Tess, I hope that’s OK. Didn’t know what else to do.
Also you still owe me ?7 for the bills, remember. Sorry to chase
Speak soon Tess.
Meena x x x
Hi Meena,
Long time no e and I’m really sorry I haven’t been in touch properly. It’s been really hectic here—started job two weeks ago, been trying to sort everything out and prepare all the courses and stuff. Apologies.
The job is going well. It’s odd, going from teaching some bored 14 yr olds to all these super-keen people who’ve PAID to have you TEACH THEM. It’s posher than I’d realized, standards are v high—I don’t know if I’d have come here if I’d known, I’d have been too scared. But teaching people who want to learn…great.
Francesca is really cool, you’d like her. Except she’s even messier than me, you wouldn’t like that. She got made redundant so she decided to escape from London for a few months. She’d been here on a school trip and always liked it. I thought she might be a bit too Londony, but she’s hilarious. She’s got something going on with Adam, you remember my old friend Adam? They are ‘seeing each other’, but they’re both being hilariously casual about it. MUCH LIKE YOU AND ANIL. That is SO COOL Meen—so the date was this week? Tell me how it went?
It’s so lovely here, Meen, when are you coming to stay? Most days I come back from college and Francesca’s here and we watch TV and slump on the sofa or I cook and potter around the house, or else go to the pub which is about five minutes away, with Adam and Suggs and people from college. I can go for long walks whenever I want, and it’s getting lighter in the evenings and it’s so beautiful. I’m happy here.
Last, not long till I go to Italy in June!!!! A whole week in Rome—only drawback is it’s me and loads of crazy middle-aged people who ask questions the WHOLE time, but still, it’ll be lovely.
Lots of love
Tess x x x x
PS Sorry, just reread your email. Will pay money back asap.
PPS And Ticky…………Ticky!!! Fucking TICKY WHO CALLS THEMSELVES THAT.
‘Tess?’ The white wooden front door, which swung alarmingly at the slightest touch, was flung suddenly open as Tess, who had been typing furiously at the computer, swivelled round.
‘Oh, hi,’ she said, as Francesca barrelled into the sitting room of Easter Cottage, a small but light room which doubled as a hall, storage area, sitting room and dining room. ‘Where have you been? Wow.’ She deleted the last line of her email to Meena, then pressed ‘Send’. ‘Look at all those bags!’ she said, standing up, her heart beating. ‘Wow,’ she said again.
‘I know,’ Francesca panted. ‘Done some shopping.’ She dumped the bags carelessly on the wooden floor and slumped onto the sofa. ‘I’m completely and totally exhausted, Tess.’ She kicked off her gold flip-flops; constraints of weather and water never really affected Francesca’s footwear choice, Tess had noticed. The flip-flops skidded next to Tess’s school shoes; sturdy brown slip-on brogues, covered in mud.
‘Where did you go?’ said Tess, crouching over the bags. ‘There’s loads! How did you find the shops? It’s a small town!’
‘I wanted some retail therapy,’ said Francesca. ‘Some stuff for the house.’ She held up a small blue cube. ‘Look! Got this at that really cool shop up by the lanes, the one that sells Alessi stuff. It’s a lamp.’
‘Right,’ said Tess. ‘Wow, it’s…’
Francesca was pulling other things out of the bag, Mary Poppins-like. ‘A plate from Arthur’s! Decoration for the side table!’
‘What side table?’ Tess asked, looking around her.
‘The side table that I bought at the antique shop! The one next to the butcher’s, after the car park!’ Francesca was beaming. She pushed her hair coolly out of her eyes. ‘This place is going to look amazing, once I’ve finished—’ she halted. ‘We’ve finished…er, doing it up.’ She looked up at Tess, who was standing over her, her hands on her hips, and said breezily, ‘It’s marvellous. Great, isn’t it?’
‘Great, if you’re paying for it,’ said Tess, firmly. ‘Francesca, I’ve barely got any money for, oh, I don’t know. Silly things, like forks, and Pantene.’ She took her hands off her hips, knowing she looked a little confrontational, and tried to let her arms swing casually by her sides, as though this was normal, as though it wasn’t really, horribly tricky. Less than a month they’d lived together and she really didn’t want it to be a mistake. She didn’t want Meena to say, ‘I knew it’d never work out. Crazy idea!’
She hated flatmate confrontations and was still amazed at how perfectly normal people could behave so strangely when sharing accommodation with others. Money. It was always about money. Will’s hideously posh but otherwise polite flatmate, Lucinda, had suddenly announced that Tess should contribute to the rent when she was staying the night there, that they should keep a note of the days she stayed over and split the monthly rental three ways on those days. In their third year of university, Tess’s friend Emma had perfectly calmly announced one morning that she thought Tess should pay her two pounds fifty for letting her borrow her silvery top the previous night. Francesca was kind of the opposite; Tess could feel herself turning into Lucinda or Emma.
Yesterday Francesca had said, without irony, ‘Do you think we should just buy a proper dinner service? There’s a lovely one I saw online at Selfridges. It’s only a couple of hundred quid or so.’
Tess watched her new flatmate now. ‘But it’s—’ Francesca began.
‘Francesca!’ Tess said, exasperated. ‘I don’t want a plate. Or a side table. Or a dinner service for eighteen people when we’ve only got three chairs! Stop spending money to make yourself feel—’ She stopped, aware the words were too far out of her mouth. Francesca stared at her. There was silence in the little sitting room. The last of the day’s light shone bravely through the dusty windows.
‘…Sorry.’ Tess cleared her throat. ‘I’m sorry. That’s really rude of me.’
‘No,’ said Francesca, scratching her neck with her nails; it left red lines on her pale skin. ‘I’m sorry. I’m crazy. I need to calm down and…’ She blinked, suddenly. ‘I just need to take it easy. Right.’ She looked around her, as if ‘easy’ was just something she could physically pick up and start taking. ‘I’ll take this all back…’
Tess picked up the blue lamp, which was lying lopsided on the tatty old brown sofa. ‘This is lovely,’ she said placatingly. ‘Why don’t we keep this?’
‘Oh.’ Francesca smiled. ‘OK. I love it actually. And the plate?’
‘I don’t need a decorative plate.’
‘That’s not the point,’ Francesca said. ‘Was it not William Morris who said, “Have nothing in your homes that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful”?’
‘I do not believe it to be useful or beautiful,’ said Tess, putting her hands back on her hips.
‘OK, OK,’ said Francesca, snatching the plate out of her hands. ‘I’ll put it in my room. I’ll—she narrowed her eyes. ‘Where’s your sense of fun, Tess? God, I bet you’re a bossy teacher.’
Tess thought fondly of that morning’s class on Virgil’s Georgics, in which she and her students had talked about the world of the hive as parallel with the Roman Empire. They had a) read the material, b) answered the essay questions, and c) listened in rapt silence as Tess talked about Virgil’s ideas of Rome and the countryside. Then, over coffee (Jan had made a walnut cake), all had discussed the relevance of the Georgics today to farming and the countryside. Andrea Marsh, who was not only the college’s secretary (every employee at the college was allowed to take one free course a year) but the cofounder of the campaign against the water meadows and kept bees, was particularly interesting.
‘The English bumblebee could be extinct in five years,’ she kept saying. ‘And no one knows why. If they’d listened to Virgil in the fourth Georgic, it’d all be OK. If we didn’t have these ridiculous ideas about twenty-four-hour shopping and eating huge strawberries grown in Chile in December and destroying our countryside to build brand new things—’ she cast an angry look at Leonora Mortmain—‘then we might be OK. He knew that!’
But Leonora had said nothing. She reacted to nothing. She just sat still, until Carolyn Tey—who was devoted to her, a sort of lapdog—offered her a slice of cake.
‘Do try some, it’s quite delicious,’ she’d said, her blue eyes bright with hope.
‘No, thank you,’ Leonora Mortmain replied. ‘I have had enough.’ She clamped her thin lips together. Tess wondered once again why she was there, as she didn’t seem to be enjoying the classes—but how could she tell? Leonora never reacted to anything.
She’d been teaching for a fortnight, and she was still surprised by how much she loved it. It was a treat to teach a class that didn’t lounge in its chairs, picking its nose, staring up at her with eyes full of near-psychopathic loathing. It was a treat for her to say, ‘Who wants to start reading this passage?’ and to see ten hands shoot up. It was a treat for her to watch the awkward Ron Thaxton, whom she had come to see was extremely shy, blossom in the class, talking fluently and articulately about Augustus, about battle strategies, his stuttering anger almost gone.
And then it was a treat for her to walk the ten minutes home, threading into town, her bag swinging from her arm, popping into shops here and there that sold things you actually needed, like a needle and thread, calling hello to people as she went. She was starting to recognize faces now, old and new. Some people remembered her from before, they asked how her mum and dad were, what Stephanie was up to. She thought of London now, of travelling back home, squashed on the tube, dodging the dog shit and the cracked pavements that had once tripped her up, the rain and the unfriendly faces. Tess hugged herself; it seemed so far away. She thought of Will, his huge face like a blank canvas, looming over her the night of Guy’s wedding, as he said, ‘But Tess, don’t you see? We’re not the same sort of people. We want different things.’
She had cried, she didn’t understand what he meant. ‘But I love you!’ she had cried, clutching at his shirt—why had she done that?
‘I don’t think you do,’ Will had said, removing her hand. ‘You don’t love my friends, you were bored the whole way through the reception. Lucinda’s a really interesting girl, you could have bloody made an effort. You’re so—rigid, Tess, it has to be on your terms or not at all.’
Tess shook her head, remembering it now. Dumped because she wasn’t nice to a girl called Lucinda who wanted to charge her rent and who made a living from making stuffed animals. What a diss. But…was he right?
‘Penny for them,’ Francesca said softly, standing behind her. ‘Hello?’ Tess started.
‘Sorry, I was miles away,’ she said, and blinked.
‘Are we all OK then?’ Francesca asked. Tess nodded. Francesca patted her housemate on the arm. ‘Fancy a glass of wine before I shoot off?’
‘Sure,’ said Tess, going through into the little kitchen, which looked out over the handkerchief-sized garden via a rickety old glass-paned door. She opened the drawer, looking for the corkscrew and glanced up at the sky. ‘Hey, it’s stopped raining!’
‘It has,’ said Francesca. She slapped her hands on the sides of her thighs. ‘Spring is here, and I’m ready for romancing.’ She looked up around her, her eyes sparkling. ‘Isn’t this weird? Us, here, in this house? Isn’t it strange, completely bonkers?’
‘Yes!’ Tess said, smiling. She was pleased to see her so happy. ‘Who are you getting ready to romance? Is Adam coming over?’
‘He sure is,’ said Francesca. ‘We’re going to try the pub at the other end of town, want to come? The Cross Keys, you know it?’
The door of the fridge swung wide open, knocking loudly against the wall, and they both jumped.
‘It always does that! So annoying. Ow,’ said Tess, putting the wine bottle firmly on the kitchen surface. ‘That’s a lovely pub,’ she added, rubbing her hand. ‘Right next to where we grew up. Adam’s mum worked there for a bit.’
‘What was she like, Adam’s mum?’ Francesca asked curiously. ‘Adam never talks about her.’
‘She was lovely.’ Tess took out some olives, bought the previous day from the Jen’s Deli on the high street where Liz worked. Jen’s Deli catered for tourists wanting a picnic. The olives were three pounds ninety-nine for a small tub. She tipped them into one of the little painted bowls that sat on the kitchen mantelpiece. ‘Ooh, I love this, don’t you? I feel as if I’m in a picture book, living in my own little cottage.’
‘You are living in your own little cottage,’ Francesca pointed out. ‘So am I.’
‘Oh.’ Tess took the nice new glasses out of the cupboard. Francesca lolled against the kitchen counter. She plucked an olive out of the bowl.
‘Has Adam always lived there, then?’
‘What?’ Tess opened the bottle. ‘Lived where? Here?’
‘In that house,’ Francesca said patiently. ‘Did he never live anywhere else, after she died? Am I going out with a man who’s never lived anywhere else?’
‘So you are actually going out with him?’ Tess said, trying to sound nonchalant. ‘Oh, my God!’ She swallowed, hastily, realizing she sounded like a teenager. ‘So have you—I thought you two were…’ She trailed off.
Francesca tossed her hair casually behind her back; Tess had noticed that, far from doing it to intimidate, she did this when she was feeling self-conscious.
‘Ahm. I don’t know. I suppose so. I’m seeing him.’ She raked a hand across her scalp. ‘We talked about it on the weekend. I don’t know what going out means these days, do you? It’s a bit juvenile, anyway. Like, sometimes it means one thing, and sometimes it means something else…you know…’ She trailed off, and Tess was pleased to see she was blushing.
‘You like him!’ Tess hit her housemate on the arm. ‘Oh, my God, how cool. And he likes you, it’s obvious.’
‘Is it?’
‘Absolutely.’ Tess thought back to the previous Sunday, when she, Francesca, Suggs and Adam had taken a picnic up to the ruins of Langford Priory, once the greatest monastery in Somerset before Henry VIII had given it a good going over. They had sat in the grass, perching on stones scattered around, looking down over the valley towards the town, and that’s when it had happened. Tess had asked Francesca for a knife, and Francesca had leaned into the bag to get one, her hair falling in her face and, without thinking about it, Adam had reached forward and gently tucked her hair behind her ear, his big hand touching her shoulder afterwards. He said nothing, Francesca said nothing, but Tess had watched them, with affection and a pang of loneliness, realizing she was aware of something they weren’t: that her oldest friend had fallen hook, line and sinker for Francesca Jackson.
She asked, a little shyly, ‘Can I ask—when did this all…happen?’
‘Oh—properly? Well, he came round to bring that spanner he’d promised? And he ended up fixing the door and then he stayed—and he stayed…’ She blushed.
She stopped, and looked at Tess guiltily, though why, Tess wondered fleetingly—there was nothing to be guilty about, it was nothing but good news. Why shouldn’t they have sex in the middle of the day, in her own home, while Tess was off wearing a sensible cardigan and shirt, teaching people about things that happened two thousand years ago?
‘That’s—it’s OK with you, isn’t it? It doesn’t make you feel weird?’
‘Of course it’s OK with me!’ Tess said. As she said it, she knew it wasn’t, it was a bit weird. It was her flatmate and her oldest friend, after all. She’d just have to get used to it, and then it’d be fine. And if she practised looking as if it was OK, it would be.
‘Oh, good,’ said Francesca. ‘I don’t want things to be awkward.’
‘Why would they be? He’s not my boyfriend.’
‘Exactly,’ Francesca said.
The words, No, he’s my boyfriend, hung in the air, unsaid.
‘So are you hanging out in the day then?’
‘Well, it was only Monday it happened. Sunday if you count the walk. So yeah, he came round on Tuesday too, and today—well, I’m seeing him in the evening so I—I wanted a distraction.’ She picked at the side of her nail. ‘And I went shopping.’
‘So that’s it,’ Tess said, smiling. ‘It’s a substitute for shagging.’
‘No!’ Francesca smiled too. ‘How rude. He’s—oh, man.’ She sighed, mistily. ‘He is so gorgeous. You have no idea. I just feel like…’ Her shoulders rose and sank again, and she gazed unseeingly past Tess, into the sitting room. Tess followed her gaze, almost desperately, hoping to see what Francesca saw:
A kiss in a sun-dappled glade.
A gorgeous man arriving at the cottage and sweeping you off your feet.
Mind-explodingly good sex…in the afternoon.
Instead, she saw:
The batteries from the TV remote control, which were always falling out (it had no back, mysteriously).
A stack of essays on Virgil and Rome spilling out of her cloth bag.
Her main school shoes, clumpy, sensible, covered in mud, lying next to Francesca’s strappy gold flip-flops.
Francesca was like Dido or Thetis, lying on a day bed eating chocolates, a cloud of hair tumbling down her back, whilst handsome suitors arrived to pay court and ravish her. She, Tess, on the other hand, was a dwarfish teacher with a pile of marking to do, a hair growing out of her chin and footwear that even Mary Whitehouse would say could do with sexing up a tad.
‘Drink?’ Tess said, practically ripping the cap off the bottle of wine and upending it into her glass. ‘When are you going out? You meeting him at the pub?’
‘No, I’m going to his house to pick him up,’ said Francesca. ‘Haven’t been there before. That’s why I was wondering what—’ she took a sip from her glass, and flicked her hair again.
‘What what?’
‘What his mum was like. If there’s anything I should know.’
‘If there’s anything you should know.’ Tess stared into the distance. ‘Ahh.’ She exhaled, through her teeth. ‘Philippa. She was wonderful. That’s all you need to know.’
‘That’s not very helpful.’
‘I know. Sorry.’ Tess thought back. ‘I can remember her, really clearly, after thirteen years. She was just a wonderful person. It’s a tragedy.’
‘What exactly happened?’
‘It was an aneurysm. She just—dropped dead in the street one day.’ Tess swallowed. ‘She was on her way back from the shops. Mum found her.’
‘That’s awful.’
Tess nodded. ‘It was. Her, of all people. Philippa was—she was really special.’
‘Like how?’
‘Like—when we were little, she treated us like we were people in our own right, you know? She’d give you little presents for special occasions, nothing much, just personal things that were just for you.’ There was the time when Tess was eleven, and had to have braces on her teeth for eighteen months, and Philippa had bought her a special two-year diary, to count down the days till they were off, and she’d scribbled little things in it. ‘Only a year to go now!‘ ‘Who’s that beautiful girl? It’s young Miss Tennant, the one with the perfect teeth!’
‘Aah,’ said Francesca. ‘Nice.’
‘She was nice. She—’ Tess started, and then she stopped. ‘She was lovely.’
‘What happened to Adam’s dad, then?’ Francesca asked tentatively. ‘You don’t have to tell me, but he hasn’t mentioned, and I sort of thought, was it something awful?’
‘Could be,’ Tess said, sipping her wine again. ‘No one knows.’
‘Knows what? How he died?’
‘No,’ said Tess. ‘There isn’t really a mystery there, I think he’s just some guy who she had a thing with. No one knew really where Philippa came from, that’s the weird thing. That house was empty for years, and then one day she just turned up.’
‘Like Mary Poppins?’ Francesca was smiling.
‘Sort of,’ said Tess, earnestly. ‘Honestly, she never really told anyone anything about herself. Mum asked her once, why she came to Langford, and Philippa said, “I don’t know myself, to be honest.” And then she never said anything again.’
‘No,’ said Francesca, fascinated.
‘Yep. And I’ve never understood it. Why did she come to Langford? Why? I mean—we were lucky she did, but—’
‘It’s interesting,’ said Francesca. ‘Wow.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Tess, though she felt a little guilty, giving up Adam’s family secrets like that. She looked out of the window, wondering. Really, she supposed, she didn’t know what the secret actually was, so how could she give it up? Adam himself didn’t know where he came from. That was how it had always been.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_388dc7f7-5744-5730-8b76-dc597cde53b6)
One Friday afternoon, just before the first May bank holiday, Tess sat on the sofa, putting on her shoes and humming loudly so she couldn’t hear anything that might be going on in the bedroom upstairs. She had been teaching all morning and was on her way out to get some food for their picnic. She, Adam and Francesca were going to the beach the next day and the fridge at Easter Cottage had never been quite so denuded. Two sex-mad grown-ups ate a lot, Tess had discovered. It was like living with termites and a team of Sumo wrestlers.
The noises that she had been pretending not to hear from upstairs grew unavoidably louder, a crescendo, and Tess banged her feet on the floor and started singing as she searched for her keys. Suddenly, almost abruptly, there was silence, and after a minute she heard footsteps on the narrow stairs, a slight stumble and then a muffled curse—as the owner of the feet narrowly avoided the stair with a missing chunk, especially hazardous without shoes.
‘Hey there, you!’ Adam called to her, still cheerful. ‘Coffee?’ Tess looked up at him, in disbelief, as he went into the kitchen. ‘Is that Francesca’s dressing gown?’ she said, watching Adam pull the Chinese silk carefully around him as he put the kettle on.
‘Why yes, and I think it’s just lovely,’ said Adam. He scratched his thick hair thoughtfully. ‘She’s given it to me.’
‘So I can hear,’ said Tess, unable to resist.
‘Ha ha,’ said Adam. ‘Very funny.’
‘It’s not that funny,’ said Tess, wishing she didn’t sound so grumpy. ‘Sitting down here listening to you two going at it hammer and tongs.’
‘Tess!’ Adam said mildly. ‘Mind your own business.’
‘My own business?’ Tess stood up and laughed shortly, swinging her bag over her shoulder. ‘Bloody hard to, when all I can hear is you two having sex when I’m trying to read in bed. I’ve had to buy earplugs!’
‘No, you haven’t,’ Adam said, but he looked a little fazed. ‘We’re having a great time. I really like her, what’s your problem?’
There was something ridiculous about him, standing holding the kettle, with the thin silk clinging to his legs, his tall, broad frame, as his hair stuck up comically on his head. A wave of fury washed over her, that he thought it was OK. That they both did.
‘My problem?’ Tess yelled. She shook her head wildly. ‘My problem is I moved back here for some peace and quiet, and there’s no fucking coffee in the jar before you look, because you two bloody drank it all, and there’s no food in the fucking fridge because you’ve eaten it all, and when I’m trying to watch bloody Antiques Roadshow all I can here is you two, bellowing “Yes! Yes!” at each other, like you’re watching a football match!’
Adam looked at her, as she took a deep breath and was silent, and he started laughing.
‘Or—anything,’ Tess said weakly, glad the tension was broken. She was being ridiculous. ‘You know. T4 and stuff. The Wire. Anyway, Antiques Roadshow is really good, I’ll have you know.’
‘Clearly,’ Adam said, shaking his head, still laughing.
‘Last week, they had a pensioner on it.’
‘No. Amazing.’
‘And she had a teapot Josiah Wedgwood designed himself. Himself.’ Tess nodded significantly. ‘It was worth over a thousand pounds. And that lady can now buy a new walk-in bath, for her husband Roger.’
‘To think you once played strip poker with the under-eighteens Hampshire cricket team,’ Adam said ruminatively.
‘Sshh.’ She drew a circle around her with her finger. ‘Remember. It’s in our—’
‘—circle of trust,’ he finished. ‘Sorry, I forgot about our circle of trust.’
They were both silent for a moment, and then Adam said, again, ‘Antiques Roadshow.’ Tess watched him, arms folded. Adam had a big, deep laugh, that seemed to take him over completely.
‘Hey,’ he said, eventually. ‘I’m really sorry, Tess. I should have thought about you more in this. It’s just—she’s great.’ He smiled. ‘I really like her.’
‘I know you do,’ she said, pleased for him. ‘Look, I’m just popping out to get some food and stuff—’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Adam. ‘Seriously,’ he added, as she looked at him in disbelief. ‘Francesca’s fast asleep and I need a new battery for the bike lamp, too. Give me five minutes. I’ll just jump in the shower.’
‘Er…OK,’ said Tess. Adam grinned.
‘Look pleased!’ he said. ‘I’ll give you street cred, Granny.’
As they walked along the high street, Tess carried her wicker basket over her arm. Adam shook his head. ‘I worry about you. You’re turning into someone from Cranford. My godmother Diana doesn’t have one of those, and she’s…older than you. Plus they’re completely unwieldy.’
‘O tempora, o mores,’ Tess said tartly and then regretted it.
‘You think Cicero was saying we should give up plastic bags and use wicker baskets, do you?’ Adam asked, innocently. ‘Don’t show off your Latin with me, Tess. You know you’ll lose.’
Adam’s brain was a source of mystery to Tess; he never forgot anything, a quote, a story, an obscure piece of syntax. She taught Latin and Greek, and she often couldn’t remember the word for ‘ship’ in either language. But she could remember what happened one summer ten years ago as if it were yesterday, or Stephanie’s wedding, or Will’s face as he told her he loved her for the first time…Adam, she knew, had trouble remembering his own birthday.
It was curious, that tension that existed within him. She looked at him sideways as they walked along the street, he whistling, his hands stuck deep into his pockets. It was Roman, she supposed. Brilliant, practical, organized, neat—and yet chaotic, hopeless, romantic, kind at the same time. It was strange, she thought, that she, Tess, was now her teacher, and Adam, with all his brilliance—Adam was…what was he? She blinked, recalling herself to the present.
‘Er, I’m a bit sick of the deli. Cheese shop?’ Adam said, pulling her out of her reverie. She smiled at him as she spotted Liz putting a leg of ham back in the window of Jen’s Deli and looking up at the little high street in the sunshine. She waved at her.
‘Stop it,’ said Adam.
‘Oh, get over yourself,’ Tess said. ‘She’s in my class.’
‘Your class?’ said Adam.
‘Yes, absolutely,’ said Tess. ‘She’s pretty good actually. She’s coming to Rome. I’m part of her self-improvement programme. Just like you were,’ she added wickedly. Adam frowned as the bell sounded another lucky customer entering Mr Dill’s Cheese Emporium. ‘What do we need?’
‘Well.’ Tess tucked the basket—Adam was right, it was unwieldy—under her arm and counted off on her fingers. ‘Stuff for tonight. Stuff for our trip to the beach tomorrow. Hi, Andrea!’ She waved at Andrea Marsh, who was crossing the road.
‘Your window boxes are looking lovely,’ Andrea told her, but unwillingly, as if it cost her to do so. ‘Just going to see Miss Store, and I noticed them. Are they pansies?’
‘Yes! So glad you like them—agh!’ Tess swallowed, as a car drove past and Adam bodily dragged her up onto the pavement.
‘For God’s sake, be careful, T,’ he said, crossly.
‘See you at the meeting later!’ called Andrea, walking on.
‘Yes, absolutely,’ Tess called after her. ‘You going to that tonight?’
‘What?’ Adam said, looking back across the road. He was squinting at something. ‘Oh, the meeting? No, don’t think so.’
‘But everyone’s going,’ said Tess.
Adam nodded solemnly. ‘Who’s everyone?’
‘Well, you know.’ Tess waved her hands. ‘The people at the college—apart from Leonora Mortmain, of course—um, Ron, Suggs, Francesca—’
‘No, she’s not,’ said Adam. ‘We’re staying in and watching a film.’
‘But Adam—’ Tess remembered how curious he’d been about the campaign, the night of the first campaign meeting. ‘Suggs is organizing it. It’s going to be—’
‘Look how local you are these days,’ he said, mocking her. ‘Remember your first day back here, when you scorned the high street? Look at you now. Practically in bed with all the important people in town.’
Tess ignored him. ‘Adam, we should all go—’
Adam held up his hand. ‘I’m not going. Sorry. Let’s get some cheese. And then let’s argue about it some more.’
‘I’m not arguing,’ Tess said, even more patiently than he. ‘I am merely pointing out that—’
She swung the wicker basket behind her, as a soft male voice said, ‘Ouch.’
Tess froze, and looked up at Adam, who was gazing over her shoulder as if he’d seen a ghost.
‘Hi—God. It’s you. Forgot your name, sorry,’ said the voice.
‘It’s Adam,’ he said, and stepped a little closer towards Tess.
‘Of course. Tess’s old friend. Well, hi. I’m Will. Hi, Tess.’
She turned round mechanically, like a doll spinning on a music box.
‘Hi, Will,’ she said.
The last time Tess had seen Will was in January, at their friend Henry’s birthday drinks, at a pub on the New Kings Road. Tess had gone for one drink only and had waved, in a friendly, brisk way at Will on her way out, weaving through the crowded pub, heady with the scent of expensive perfume, cigarette smoke wafting in from outside, and lilies in huge vases on the bar, the smell of decay lingering behind their sweetness.
Will was holding hands with someone behind him; through the thick press of bodies around her she couldn’t see her face, but she knew it must be Ticky. Tess had smiled again at him, rolled her eyes as if she were fantastically busy and pushed past him mouthing ‘Bye’ as she fell out of the pub onto the pavement. There she had stood miserably in the sudden cold, her shoulders stooped, feeling like a total outsider. She hadn’t fitted in there, never would.
Now, she looked up at Will as he stood, tall and godlike on the high street. She remembered with a rush of recognition, like hearing a song that reminds you of a summer holiday, a curious feeling of alienation, of being different, an oddity, that came with being with Will.
‘Hello,’ Tess said, determined to be friendly and mature. She had practised just such a scenario with Meena in their flat—Meena!
It all came flooding back to her, now. The email! The bureau—oh, shit, that was why he was here.
‘Will, how are you?’ she said. She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, as Adam stood behind her. Gently he prised the wicker basket out of her hand, and put it on the ground. ‘And you must be Ticky,’ she added.
From behind Will stepped a tall, thin, fair girl, with the longest legs Tess had ever seen, enormous green eyes which bulged out from her tiny face. She was wearing what looked like a turquoise romper suit.
‘Hi!’ she said, slightly flatly, raising one hand. ‘I’m Ticky. It’s soooo great to meet you.’
Will, who was still gazing at Tess, nodded. ‘Hey, yous,’ he said—Tess had forgotten how soft his voice was. ‘You OK, hon?’
‘Super!’ Tess said, practically shouting.
‘Did you get my email, and the message? I’m sorry to just turn up here without warning, you know. But I did really want to give you back the bureau.’
He pronounced it ‘rally’ and ‘beeyurrrohw’.
Tess glanced from Ticky to herself as if mentally comparing their appearances. Hers (shortish, averageish, horrible black clompy shoes, top and cardigan—an old sage cardigan with big roomy pockets, oh, the inhumanity—and oh, dear God, was she really wearing an A-line skirt?) with Ticky’s (on-trend playsuit, honey-coloured limbs, soft blonde hair, cherry-red Havaianas). She gave a tiny groan, and Adam glanced at her.
‘Oh, the bureau!’ she said loudly. ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t get in touch with you. Of course!’ She leaned in what she hoped was a nonchalant way against the nearest thing, which happened to be the wall of the cottage next to Mr Dill’s, the cheese shop. Unfortunately it was a little further away than she’d calculated, and she fell against the old stone with a thump, jarring her shoulder bone as she did so.
Will shook his head. ‘It’s fine,’ he said, smiling kindly, and put his fingers together. Watching him, Tess realized that he looked a bit like David Cameron; how had she not noticed this before?
‘So,’ said Adam, from behind her. ‘What are you doing here? What—er, what a nice surprise,’ he added quickly.
‘Ah—we’re on our way to Lucinda’s wedding,’ he said, as if Adam would naturally know who Lucinda was. ‘It’s in Dorset, at her dad’s place, really beautiful. We’re staying at the Tailor’s Arms with loads of friends.’ Ticky lolled against Will as he said this. ‘So—we thought we’d stop off here for a pint, and give you the bureau. Pit stop!’ he finished. He looked round, trying to sound enthusiastic. ‘Lovely town, I must say. You live near here?’
‘Yes,’ said Tess, mechanically. ‘Just round the corner.’
‘Ah.’ He rocked on his feet. ‘And—great. So, everything OK with you then, hon?’
If you call me hon again I will bite off your head and store it in the bureau after you’ve gone. ‘Yes, great, thanks.’
‘Really?’ Will said, as if he knew this was rubbish but was keeping up the pretence.
‘Will was worried about you, when you didn’t reply,’ Ticky ventured suddenly, her voice rusty with misuse; she herself looked surprised that she’d spoken. Tess’s hands curled into fists; she tried to breathe. ‘He thought you were probably still—’
‘This all sounds lovely,’ came Adam’s voice behind Tess. He slipped his arm round her waist. ‘Where are you parked? Shall we show you the house, and we can unload the bureau?’
‘Great,’ said Will, looking with surprise at Adam’s hand on Tess’s hip.
‘Tell you what,’ said Adam. He smoothed back her hair, and kissed Tess’s forehead. ‘Darling, why don’t you carry on and go to the grocer’s before it shuts, and I’ll take Will and—I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.’
‘Ticky!’ Ticky said brightly. ‘It’s short for Candida.’
‘Of course it is!’ Adam said, nodding enthusiastically. ‘Very nice to meet you. Well, I’ll take Will and Ticky to the cottage and we’ll get the bureau inside. Sorry,’ he said, turning to Will. ‘You know us country folk. The shops round here shut at five, I’m afraid, and we’re going to the seaside tomorrow. Need to get stuff in.’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ Will said, nodding through his astonishment.
Adam took Tess’s other hand, and kissed it. ‘That OK with you, sweetums?’ He turned to Will. ‘She hates it when I call her that, don’t you!’ He squeezed Tess’s waist.
‘Sure do,’ said Tess, stepping into the role with an aplomb that surprised her. ‘Well, that sounds great, my little cutie-pie.’ She moved towards Adam, and made kissing sounds at him. He silenced her by grabbing her, dipping her and kissing her on the mouth.
‘Sorry,’ he said, turning back towards Will and Ticky as he flung her upright again. ‘Wow. We’re just still really in that honeymoon period, aren’t we, my love? Grrr.’ He slapped Tess’s bottom.
‘Grrr,’ said Tess, slapping him back. ‘My God, yes!’ she cried gaily. ‘We’re at it all day, I’m pleased to say!’
There was a silence. Adam cleared his throat and looked at the pavement, trying not to laugh. Will and Ticky stared at them, clearly rendered speechless: this wasn’t in their plan, it was clear. ‘Gosh,’ said Will eventually, clearly not sure what else to say. ‘Nice one guys.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Let’s get going then, shall we? Car’s parked just here—’ he pointed down the road—‘and off to the side.’
‘Then I think you’re in Tess’s street,’ said Adam. ‘Bloody marvellous.’ He turned back to her, solemnly. ‘OK, sweetums?’ he asked, his eyes sparkling. ‘Try not to miss me too much. I know I’ll miss you.’
‘What about Francesca?’ Tess said, trying not to smile at him.
‘I’ll just make sure she’s OK before we start unloading. Francesca’s my sister,’ he told Will and Ticky firmly. ‘And she’s ill. She’s very ill.’ They looked alarmed. ‘Er—with the flu,’ he amended hastily. ‘So I’ll just go and warn her not to come down while we’re carrying the bureau in. The chill might kill her. And—er, she might be infectious, so also you should keep away from her and not talk to her, if you see her.’
‘Yes,’ said Tess, marvelling at the fecundity of his imagination. ‘We’ve only just been given the all-clear ourselves. From the…clinic. So—er, bye then,’ she said. ‘Great to see you, Will. And Ticky.’
‘Absolutely!’ Ticky said with something like enthusiasm, banging her hands together. ‘Rally great.’
‘Yes,’ said Will, nodding ponderously. ‘Look, Tess—this is all fab, you know? Seems super for you, just—yah.’ He stepped back, nodding, his eyes half-closed.
‘Give my love to Lucinda,’ said Tess. ‘Hope the weekend’s fun. Sorry to dash off. I’ll see you later,’ she added, to Adam.
‘Mhhm,’ Adam said, with gusto. ‘Shall I just meet you in the pub in twenty minutes or so?’
‘Lovely,’ said Tess. ‘Perfect, in fact.’
He took her hand and kissed it. She clutched his hand back, inexpressibly touched by the gesture, and he shook his head and smiled at her.
She should have known as she walked into the Feathers a little later, her basket laden with food for three, that they’d be there; should have known that Will, totally intrigued, would want to stay for a drink before they set off again. He had a kind of prurient curiosity; she’d always found it rather contradictory, that he could be so concerned with wearing the right tie, and presenting the right face to the world and yet also so fascinated with the mundane, private details of people’s lives. How much things cost, how often So-and-So had sex, how big X’s new house was. She hadn’t noticed it, till it was almost over between them, of course. Harmless, yes; kind, patrician, with his curling upper lip and cufflinks; impressive, probably. Tall and strong, the kind of man who would protect you—yes, undoubtedly, apart from the time that pitbull had barked at them in the street and he’d pushed Tess in front of him.
As Tess walked through the bar to the terrace outside, directed there by Mick’s jerk of the head, and found the three of them sitting companionably, looking out over the great view across the valley towards Thornham, its church tower golden in the afternoon sun, she almost nodded to herself at the inevitability of it all, then remembered, with a start, the part she—and her new boyfriend—had to play.
‘Hello!’ she said, feigning a brightness she did not feel. ‘How nice!’
‘Well,’ said Will, standing up, his hands slapping the wooden table. ‘We thought it’d be nice to check out your new local pub. We’ve got ages to get to Dorset.’
Pointless to tell him that it wasn’t her new local, that she’d lived here all her life, known it longer than she’d known him, this view, these hills, the old city wall down to the left, covered in ivy; and Adam, standing next to him, watching him with amusement. Will never remembered what she’d told him. He’d visited her parents, he knew they’d taken early retirement and lived by the sea, but it wouldn’t occur to him to remember anything beyond that.
Channel one of the nice ladies of Langford, she told herself. Jan Allingham would know how to cope with this. Tess put her basket down on the table. ‘Who needs another drink?’ she asked, hoping against hope that the answer would be ‘Oh, no, thanks. We’ll be on our way now!’
‘I’d love another pint of Butcombe’s,’ Will said. ‘Thanks very much.’
Ticky smiled up at her, slightly vacantly. ‘Just a sparkling water for me, thanks, Tess.’
‘I’ll get them.’ Adam jumped up, and pushed her ahead of him into the shady corridor. ‘Hot air balloon,’ he said, briefly. ‘Just remember, hot air balloon. Over Bristol.’
‘What?’ Tess said, quite bewildered.
‘No time. Hot air balloon. Oh, and it’s been a month.’
‘What?’ she said again, exasperated, but Adam pushed her back out onto the terrace.
‘They’ll be gone soon,’ he said into her ear. ‘Go!’
Ticky patted the bench. ‘Your house is wonderful,’ she said, with the charm of the privileged. ‘It’s so cute!’ She smiled, displaying dazzling white teeth, as Will lolled beside her, his hand carelessly draped between her thighs. ‘I love it.’
‘Thanks,’ said Tess, sitting opposite them. ‘I like it.’
‘We got the bureau in, no worries,’ said Will. ‘Looks jolly nice in that little sitting room.’
She turned to him gratefully. ‘Thanks, Will. And—look, thanks a lot for bringing it all this way. It’s really sweet of you.’
‘No problemo,’ he said, with hearty gusto. ‘I’m—uh—I’m glad you’re all sorted now. Seems to suit you, out here.’
‘Thanks,’ she told him. ‘It does. I love it.’
‘Well, that’s really good,’ he said, staring intently between the slats of the table. ‘And you and Adam—that’s, yep.’
‘And it’s so romantic.’ Ticky interrupted her reverie. ‘Just so sweet, I love it.’
‘What’s so sweet?’ Tess said, blankly.
‘How you got together. His birthday present. That’s so sweet of you. I’d love to do that.’ She edged closer to Will, snuggling against him, and swinging her legs over his so she was almost sitting on his lap, like a little girl on Santa’s knee.
‘Do what?’ Tess said. They looked at her curiously. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, realization flooding through her. ‘Sorry! The hot air balloon.’ Bloody Adam, what was he thinking? ‘Yes, it was a lovely way to spend, er—to spend his birthday.’ His birthday was in the next couple of weeks, wasn’t it? Or was she dreaming?
Happily, Adam appeared then, carrying a tray.
‘We’re just talking about the hot air balloon,’ Tess said.
‘Oh, of course,’ Adam said, setting the tray down on the table. He wiped his hands.
‘That’s just fantastic,’ said Ticky. ‘So—impetuous, for a first date.’ Adam looked at Tess.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he said. ‘But when you know, you know.’ He paused.
‘You’ve known each other since you were—’ Will gestured towards the ground—‘yay high, what took you so long?’
‘It’s a good question,’ Adam said. ‘I don’t really know.’
He bit his lip and flicked a glance at Tess.
‘Me neither, sweetums,’ she said, but the name was starting to grate, now.
‘I forgot to ask you what you wanted,’ he said. ‘So I got you a pint as well. I know you love a bit of bitter. Hah.’ He laughed, nervously.
Bitter. She hated bitter, almost as much as she hated aubergines. ‘Oh,’ she said, narrowing her eyes as she took the drinks off the tray. ‘Thanks.’
‘You?’ Will asked. ‘You like bitter? I thought you never drank beer. You always said it made you, er—full of wind.’
There was a silence. Ticky swung her legs back and nodded sorrowfully at Tess, as if acknowledging a dreadful truth no one else was brave enough to admit.
‘Hey,’ Adam said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Tess does a lot of things these days she didn’t used to.’ He cleared his throat, realizing this was maybe a bit too much.
Tess kicked him under the table and took a deep breath, letting the scent of wood smoke and country air fill her nostrils, calm her down. Then she looked at Will, almost impassively. His hair was ever so thick; rudely so, corn yellow, almost ginger, it stuck out from his bowed head, veering alarmingly towards her. She saw, as if it were a scene from someone else’s life, a film, her hands running through that hair, the pleasure she once felt at being with him, in his rush-matted, neutral flat in Fulham, how correct and safe and proper she always believed she was as his girlfriend, when they were a unit, a neat unit of two. She shook her head, trying to recall this person she had been then.
They had discussed Aristophanes’s speech in Plato’s Symposium that morning in class. The Symposium said that humans were originally two people joined together until the gods, fearing their strength and their speed, had ripped them apart. So that humans are condemned to spend their lives merely one half looking for that other half and when they find the other half, they can finally be together with them for ever. Tess loved that idea, had always loved it. But was it true? Was Will, this person she had pinned all her hopes on, that other human? She couldn’t believe it now. Ticky was that person to him, it was absolutelyobvious. And she—she breathed out, raggedly, not sure she could go on with this charade, and suddenly felt a cool hand on her forearm.
‘You OK?’ Adam said in a low voice, as if it were just the two of them, as if Will and Ticky weren’t there, and she felt herself say calmly, ‘Fine.’
He squeezed her wrist, quickly, his thumb on the underside of her skin. ‘Yes.’ He turned back to the others. ‘Well, cheers,’ he said. ‘Great to see you both.’
They sat in silence again and drank their drinks, and Tess glanced at him, her mind racing.
‘Thanks, thanks a lot, bruv,’ she said, as they walked back down the high street later that evening. ‘I owe you.’
Adam stepped back and held his hand up. ‘No worries, g’friend,’ he said. ‘It’s his loss.’
Tess stared at him. ‘Are you drunk?’
Adam shrugged. ‘A bit, maybe. I did have four pints. I thought they were never going to leave! I’m sorry, I know he’s your ex.’
‘I know,’ Tess said, glaring down at the paving slabs, watching her feet step on each crack. ‘I know. He’s so different from me. He looks—’ she trailed off.
‘He looks like a member of the Bullingdon Club on his way to a reunion,’ said Adam, his tongue loosened by alcohol and release from stilted conversation. ‘I didn’t think people like that still existed.’
She wanted to be cross, but she couldn’t be. ‘You’re right,’ Tess said. ‘He was a bit like that. I don’t know, I just never saw that in him…’ She paused. ‘He wasn’t—I don’t know. He wasn’t a bad man. He isn’t a bad man.’
‘Never really knew what you saw in him, if I’m being honest,’ Adam said simply. ‘Sorry again. That’s rude.’
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I…I think I was looking for something. Something that wasn’t there.’
‘I have known you for a while now, you know.’ Adam poked her in the arm. ‘He just never seemed—’ He shrugged. ‘Oh, well.’
There was silence; it was a chilly evening, and the high street was virtually deserted. ‘You coming back to ours?’ said Tess.
It was an obvious question—they were nearly home, and Adam’s house was the other end of the town. ‘Um, if that’s OK,’ said Adam.
‘Of course it’s OK,’ said Tess. She laughed. ‘I liked it when you told them we were going to a Sandals resort for our holidays. Will’s face.’
‘I liked it more when you told them you liked it when I spoke to you in a Russian accent,’ Adam replied. ‘God only knows what they think now.’
There was a silence again. Tess said in a small voice, ‘It was—good to see him. But…I don’t really care what they think.’
‘Good,’ Adam said. ‘Neither do I, Tess.’ They carried on walking for a little while. ‘Listen, T—’ he said.
But at the same time Tess suddenly burst out, ‘I don’t know why I went out with him.’
‘Right,’ said Adam. ‘I have to say…’ He trailed off.
‘Two years, too,’ Tess said, faltering. It seems like a dream now, she wanted to say. But it wasn’t, because a few drinks with him again and she could see now what that time with Will had done to her. He was so…oh, she’d never really seen it before, but he was a little pompous. So sure he was right and reluctant to hear her point of view, as though she was a stupid little girl. He spoke slowly, and when she tried to interrupt him, he simply carried on talking. And the sex—what sex. At first—and she cringed to think of it now—she’d rather liked his professorial, grown-up way of treating her, had found it rather a turn-on that he was so formal, reserved, buttoned up. Now, when she thought of how she’d tried to get him to want her more, tried to excite him, it made her want to disappear, as fast as possible, into the ground. And she’d begun to think that was normal, that it would always be like that…She looked down at herself with disgust. He just hadn’t fancied her, that was all, and why would he? He was hanging on in there till something better came along, something Ticky-shaped, with honey-coloured limbs and hair and friends in common and…Ugh.
‘Penny for your thoughts,’ came Adam’s voice in the darkness, startling her. Tess laughed, hollowly. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘What’s on your mind?’
‘You don’t want to know,’ Tess said bleakly.
‘Come on,’ said Adam. ‘It’s me, T. I’ve just spent the evening pretending to be your boyfriend.’ He said, in a thick Russian accent, ‘We have no secrets, Misha.’
Oh, I was just thinking about the last time I had sex with Will, and he stopped halfway through and said, ‘Can we just stop this? Let’s just go to sleep, shall we?’ and then picked up the FT while I lay there, naked, next to him…
‘Seriously,’ Tess said, kicking a dandelion out of the way as they turned into Lord’s Lane. ‘You really don’t want to know. And I don’t want to tell you.’
‘Is this the Dealbreaker that you won’t tell me about? You are turning into a bit of a librarian, I have to say,’ said Adam smugly.
Tess stared at him with loathing, all former understanding and maturity between them gone. ‘What?’ she practically cried.
‘Well, T. All that chat to Will about the course you’re teaching. And all that stuff about Ancient Rome. I mean, no one likes all that better than me, but when you started going on about how the hole in the roof of the Pantheon was twenty-seven feet in diameter—well. Even I was a bit bored. I thought Ticky was going to fall asleep.’
Tess took her hands out of her cardigan pockets. ‘What the hell, Adam?’ she yelled. ‘Not this again. Don’t you find that interesting?’ Adam shook his head, smiling at her. ‘Well, you should,’ Tess told him tartly. ‘The Pantheon, it’s the greatest building ever! They still don’t know how it was built! And—boring Ticky, it’s hardly a difficult subject, is it? She’s about as interesting as a—a slice of brown bread!’ She pointed over her shoulder, as if Ticky were there. ‘Before it’s even become bread!’ She cast around her. ‘Like—when it’s flour! No, when it’s wheat! She’s like a field of wheat! Even more boring than that, like a—a—!’ She ran out of steam and stared at him. ‘I can’t believe you said that.’
Adam opened the door; she wondered, in the back of her mind, why he now owned a set of keys. ‘Tessa. I’m not having a go at the person who built the Pantheon, OK? I’m just saying, there’s a time and a place,’ he said, smoothly, waving tacitly to Francesca, who was sprawled on the sofa clutching a box of toffees, her long brown hair glowing against the electric blue of the Chinese silk dressing gown. She raised her eyebrows, waved at them with one hand, and popped another toffee in her mouth with the other. Adam took off his coat. ‘And the time and the place were not necessarily then.’
‘Sup?’ Francesca mumbled indistinctly. ‘Howas the jink?’
‘Awful,’ said Tess, bitterly. ‘He’s an idiot, she’s an idiot, I can’t see any reason why I was with him all that time, and, by the way, according to Adam not only am I really boring, but I’m turning into a sodding librarian.’ She kicked off her shoes.
Francesca raised her eyebrows again, as Adam moved over to the sofa and took her hand; he flicked each of her fingers, gently, looking down at her, and kissed her gently on the lips.
‘Librarians are great, my mum’s a librarian,’ Francesca said. ‘It’s not that. I think it’s more that you’re turning into an old lady.’ She nodded, as if she was glad she’d found the point of what Adam was getting at. ‘Mmm.’
‘Yes,’ said Adam. ‘That’s it.’
Francesca slid a toffee into his mouth, her thumb catching his bottom lip. Adam’s eyes glazed over.
Tess, still standing by the door in her bare feet, felt as if she might have been a novelty act they were keeping in a cage, like a female Elephant Man. Elephant Lady. Who has some interesting information about Roman temples. She sighed, wobbily, feeling the beer swilling around inside her. ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said, her voice aching, and it sounded as though she was merely grumpy. ‘Night.’
‘Night,’ Francesca called.
‘By the way, thanks again, Adam,’ Tess yelled as she stomped up the stairs.
‘Any time, T,’ Adam said. ‘Night, pet.’
There was silence from the sofa, as the TV talked to itself, and Tess closed the door to her room and leaned against it, staring blankly at the white wall opposite. What was happening to her? She felt as though was playing her own version of Snakes and Ladders, or some other board game. Someone who’d taken one step forwards, two steps back. From downstairs, she heard soft laughter and a low moan. Tess buried her head in the pillow, and finally let herself cry.
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_15e9a965-d1cf-5bee-b86d-55fcc9c4e29a)
The trip to Italy was the central plank of the Langford College Classical Civilization course. Around half the class were going; it justified the high fees and it emphasized that which could not be said out loud—that this was a course without qualifications, with a nice holiday at the end of it. Of course, it would be nice, no, desirable, to come out of it with a working knowledge of Rome and her Empire, and the miracle that was fifth-century BC Athens, but if you were aiming to be the next Erich Segal or Sir Kenneth Dover, you wouldn’t come to Langford College.
It seemed to be coming around incredibly quickly. One moment it felt as if Tess had been back for just hours; after Will’s visit she realized it was nearly four months since she’d returned to Langford. The feeling of shiny newness she’d had was starting to leave. She was in a routine.
But Langford was so beautiful, this time of year. How could she have lived in the city for so long, knowing what spring was like in the countryside? Sometimes, Tess felt almost drunk on its beauty. The frothing cow-parsley in the hedgerows, the birds that sang outside her window in the morning, the bright green of the lanes, cowslips and primroses and everything in bloom, the riotous signs of life bursting forth everywhere. In the town, people opened their windows and let down the striped awnings of their shopfronts; pots filled with geraniums appeared outside the pub, and the tables and chairs. Dark green bunches of asparagus were everywhere in the shops; cool, sweet winds blew through the backstreets, into dark rooms dusty from the winter. The town was coming alive again; she felt it, Tess felt it more than anyone.
‘Are you doing something different with your hair, dear?’ Jan Allingham asked Tess, a week afterwards, as she was wiping down the whiteboard. The class had broken up and her students were dispersing slowly, grey and ash-blonde heads grouped together, clutching their textbooks and notepads, talking earnestly, nodding to one another.
Tess turned around, the cloth in her hand. ‘Me? No, nothing. Literally. It’s far too long. I must get it cut, actually.’
‘I did wonder.’ Jan bobbed up and down on the balls of her feet, and touched her top lip with her tongue. ‘It’s grown really fast, hasn’t it!’ She smiled at Tess. ‘And that’s a lovely jumper.’
‘Thanks!’ said Tess, touched. ‘I bought it—’
‘Is—is it from Marks?’ Jan said. ‘I think I have it in blue.’
‘Yes,’ said Tess. ‘It is.’
‘Great class today, Tess, thank you,’ said Andrea, popping up behind Jan, while Tess clutched at her hair and looked down at her jumper. ‘So interesting. I can’t wait to tackle my essay on Dido. Marvellous stuff!’
Next to her, Diana Sayers rolled her eyes. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I said I’d walk home with Carolyn. She’ll be waiting.’
‘Carolyn?’ said Andrea. ‘Carolyn Tey? Huh.’ She shook her head.
‘Ooh, Andrea,’ said Jan.
‘What’s wrong with Carolyn Tey?’ Tess asked, curiously.
‘Nothing, dear,’ said Jan. ‘Andrea’s just being a bit childish, that’s all.’ Tess followed her gaze out over the old polished floor of what once had been the Great Hall of the house, and saw Carolyn helping Leonora Mortmain out of the door. As usual, Leonora Mortmain carried no books, no notepad. She didn’t do any of the coursework, she didn’t answer any questions or contribute to any debate. She just sat and stared at Tess, almost unblinking, with a dark-eyed intensity written on her still, hawk-like face that Tess could neither become used to nor fathom.
The other members of the course were half locals, half actual real people, as Tess had started to think of the other hapless students who were unconnected with Langford. And the majority loathed Leonora Mortmain, her superiority and coldness, her seemingly callous determination to rip the heart out of the town. Carolyn Tey, whose father had been her local solicitor, was practically the only person in the class who would talk to her. But Carolyn was a dreadful snob, as Diana was always pointing out. Wasn’t her father the person who, fifty years ago, bought old Mr Crispin’s place Apple Tree Cottage, and renamed it Apple Tree House? People had long memories here.
‘Childish?’ Andrea exploded. ‘Childish, is it, Jan Allingham, to care about what happens to your bloody town? I don’t think so! The planning meeting’s next Monday, and you know what she’s trying to do? That woman? Move it to when we’re all supposed to be in Rome, on our trip and send her solicitor along instead! She’s said she has a minor operation on the original day. My eye. So either we cancel the trip, which is all paid for, or we miss the meeting.’ She fingered the poppers on her quilted jacket. ‘Honestly, I don’t like to speak ill of anyone, but that woman—!’ She paused, and said petulantly, ‘Why’s she coming on the trip anyway?’
‘She’s on the course, like you all are, she presumably wants to see Rome.’
‘I don’t believe it, I’m afraid,’ said Andrea. ‘She wants to cause trouble. And ruin everyone else’s fun.’
Beside her, Diana nodded in sympathy, and Jan, who was rather bossy but liked to think of herself as fair to her fellow man and woman, looked thoughtful, as if she wasn’t quite sure what to say next. Tess clutched her cloth, not sure if it would be rude to go back to wiping the board, as the rest of the class milled slowly out. Deep down, though, she couldn’t help but agree with Andrea. Why was Leonora Mortmain coming to Rome?
‘Well,’ Jan said, after a pause. ‘I very much like your jumper, dear. I might have to get another one, in green.’
‘Oh—thanks.’ Tess patted the jumper awkwardly. She wasn’t any good at accepting compliments, and indeed she wasn’t sure this was one, really, since it was a fifty-five-year-old woman telling her she wanted to copy her style. Still, it was sweet of her. ‘Remember, next week I want those last essays about Augustus in!’ she called to the retreating backs of her pupils, glad of the chance to change the subject.
‘Bye, Tess!’ Liz called, slinging her bag over her shoulder. ‘Great class. Maybe see you in the pub over the weekend?’
Tess found Liz’s friendly behaviour daunting. ‘Sure!’ she called back. ‘Thanks, Liz!’
‘Well, I’m off.’ Diana appeared, winding a silk scarf around her neck. ‘Thank you, Tess, that was very interesting.’ She glanced at Jan and at Andrea, who was still muttering mutinously next to them. ‘Carolyn’s obviously gone on. I’ll walk out with you, shall I?’
‘Oh, thanks,’ said Tess, gratefully. She grabbed her bag.
‘We’ve got committee tomorrow,’ Andrea was saying to Jan. ‘Are you still coming?’
‘Of course I am!’ Jan cried indignantly. ‘Andrea, we need to stand shoulder to shoulder! Not face each other as enemies, like…that Roman general, at the gate! Oh, I’ve forgotten his name.’
Tess rolled her eyes and followed Diana towards the door.
‘I saw Adam last week,’ Diana said unexpectedly, as they walked down the drive, Diana pushing her bike. ‘He told me he spent last Friday being your paramour.’ Tess smiled.
‘He told you that?’
‘I’m his godmother, Tess. I do occasionally speak to him, you know. The old boyfriend turned up then, did he?’
Her tone was sympathetic. Tess said, ‘Yes. I owe Adam, big time I owe him.’
‘That’s what friends are for, I suppose,’ said Diana, in a curious voice. ‘Do you miss him?’
‘Adam? I—’
‘No, Tess! I meant the old boyfriend.’
Tess considered for a moment, the only sound around them the dripping rainwater of the recent shower along the driveway, and their steps towards the main gate. ‘Miss him? Not really. I miss the other things.’ She gestured with her hands, rather awkward at saying this to Diana Sayers. ‘You know.’
‘Well,’ said Diana, with her simple, disarming honesty. ‘Isn’t that nice? Not to miss him.’
‘Oh,’ said Tess, taken aback. ‘Yes. I suppose so, yes.’
‘So, how are your parents?’ said Diana, switching topic abruptly. ‘I must ring your mother, it’d be lovely to see them.’
‘I’m going down week after next, that’s funny,’ said Tess. ‘On the Saturday, just for the night.’
‘Isn’t that Adam’s birthday?’ Diana said. ‘He was talking about it the other day. Said he was going to have a barbecue, up at the cottage.’ She cleared her throat. ‘It’s good for him to have people round. I worry he doesn’t…’ She trailed off, wrinkling her forehead.
Tess remembered, with slow horror, that Adam had mentioned the barbecue to her the previous weekend, not once but twice. But, in the way that two sides of your brain can happily know that you’re doing two totally separate things and never does one talk to the other, now she realized with horror she’d booked the train tickets down to Devon, and happily agreed with Francesca that they’d go to Adam’s birthday together…Damn.
‘Oh. God, that’s so annoying,’ Tess exclaimed. ‘The tickets are booked—I have to go—God! Why don’t I think!’ She tapped herself on the forehead.
‘Don’t worry,’ Diana said, in quelling tones. ‘It’s Francesca Adam was worried about, you know.’
‘Yeah…’ Tess began, knowing that her not taking Francesca would be a big deal; he treated her a bit like a child, sometimes. When he wasn’t shagging her, that was, she thought meanly. She opened her mouth to try and explain this but then, from out of nowhere, a black Jaguar drove silently past them. Tess and Diana both craned their necks to see who was in it.
‘Well, I never,’ said Tess. ‘What’s Mrs Mortmain doing in that incredible car with that man?’
He was a large man, sleekly tailored in an effort to hide his burgeoning stomach, and he stroked his black hair back from his face as he leaned forward towards his fellow passenger, smiling ingratiatingly at her. She, however, sat upright, her mouth set.
‘Oh, Tess,’ said Diana, with a sigh. ‘He’s Jon Mitchell, the developer. He’s the one who wants to buy the water meadows. He owns Mitchell’s. That chain of DIY stores.’
‘My goodness!’ cried Tess. ‘That’s him?’ She watched the car disappear, and then said, darkly, ‘I don’t know how she lives with herself, that woman. I really don’t.’
‘It’s easy to have principles when you don’t have to apply them,’ said Diana softly. Tess spun round to look at her.
‘What do you mean? You can’t say you agree with her? With—what she’s trying to do to the town?’
‘Tess, the last new shop to open here was a tea shop, called Ye Tudor Tea Shoppe,’ said Diana, and there was a note of sharpness in her voice.
‘So?’ said Tess, who liked Ye Tudor Tea Shoppe. It had waitresses in old-fashioned uniforms, and everyone spoke to each other in a hush. ‘It’s Langford! What’s wrong with that?’
‘What’s wrong with it is that there’s no community hall here, and it costs four pounds to buy a pint, and if you grew up here and you want to buy a house, forget it, because a two-bed cottage costs about three hundred thousand pounds, and there are coach parties wandering the streets practically twenty-four hours a day,’ said Diana. ‘Look, I run a B&B in the summer, I’m as guilty as the rest of them. But we live in a community, not a heritage site, and I can’t one hundred per cent blame Mrs Mortmain for trying to breathe a bit of life back into the town, even if it is going to end up driving some of the tourists away.’ She paused. ‘Don’t tell the others, but I don’t care if I never see another tourist again.’ She gestured out, towards the water meadows. ‘I’d rather there was a supermarket and a John Lewis out there. I’d be able to get some decent curtains, for starters. And my godson and his friends—they’d have jobs, for another thing.’
Tess had never heard the usually reserved Diana talk like this before. So she thought Adam didn’t have a job because there wasn’t an out-of-town shopping centre here? Tess didn’t know what to say. She looked out towards the disappearing car, the gates of the college. ‘I—I just don’t see why it has to be on the water meadows. And why we can’t act better as a community, that’s all. It’s nice living here,’ she said weakly, thinking of what she’d left behind. ‘It’s safe and cosy and—and nice.’
Diana gave her a strange look. ‘Nice? It’ll be dead in a few years if we’re not careful.’ She shook her head. ‘Forget I spoke. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Just tired, I expect.’ She collected herself, almost as if she was aware she’d said too much, and then got on her bicycle. ‘Bye, Tess,’ she called, leaving Tess in the middle of the driveway, holding her bag of books. She watched her go, bemused, and then set off back to Easter Cottage.
Tess told Francesca about this conversation, as Francesca mashed up the ingredients for mojitos in a large mixing bowl. ‘Well, she’s right, I don’t think all that tourism is good for the town in the long run. But who knows what the future holds,’ Francesca said, licking mint and sugar off her fingers. ‘But I’m telling you, when my six months is up, I’m not going back to work in the City, that’s for sure. Not that there’ll be any jobs there anyway.’
‘No?’ Tess handed her a glass, watching her curiously from the doorway of the kitchen.
‘No way,’ said Francesca. ‘Mmm. That’s nice. I’m staying right here. Trouble is, there’s nothing to do round here if you’re not a tourist or someone who wants to study stupid things like History of Art or Roman Civilization…’ She smiled. ‘I’m joking. But there is nothing else to do. So actually, I did something about it today.’
‘Really?’
‘Yep.’ Francesca’s eyes sparkled. ‘I’m helping Ron and Andrea with the campaign, volunteering. You know I actually trained as a lawyer.’ Tess nodded. ‘Long before I got sucked into the evil world of finance. I’m looking at the legality of what they’re proposing to do, because I’m sure there’s something fishy going on.’
‘Wow.’ Tess clapped. ‘That’s brilliant. Er—have you told Adam?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Don’t know why,’ said Tess. ‘It’s just—he’s so weird about the campaign. Have you noticed?’ She felt as if she were betraying something as she said this, but it was true.
‘He’s weird about it because he’s behaving like an adolescent,’ Francesca sounded firm. She poured a large slug of rum into the bowl. ‘You know, I love Adam.’ She paused. ‘I don’t mean like that. I—’ She smiled, mistily. ‘I really like him. But he’s got to grow up. Fine to stay here all your life, but not fine to use it as a stick to beat other people with when they dare to disagree with you about anything connected with Langford.’
Francesca had a way of saying things which summed up what Tess wanted to say so perfectly but couldn’t articulate without using five times as many words. Tess laughed. ‘I’d love to hear you say that to him.’
‘I have,’ said Francesca, and she smiled her cat-like smile. ‘He knows I’m right, he just doesn’t see it yet. But he will.’ She nodded and for some reason Tess shivered, as if a goose had walked over her grave. ‘I’ve got him where I want him. He just doesn’t realize it yet.’
‘Oh, Francesca—’ said Tess, not sure what to say next, because she knew Adam well, so well, knew how stubborn he was, how little he liked being told what to do, manipulated, which was why she thought he was such a bloody-minded idiot, still living in his mother’s house, still working shifts at the pub and the museum. ‘Please don’t get your hopes up with him. He’s…’ She said frankly, ‘He’s never going to change. He’s so stubborn.’
Something flickered across Francesca’s lovely face, but she said nothing. Tess got up. ‘What are we having tonight?’
Francesca looked blank. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, as well as the mojitos,’ Tess said. ‘Not that they won’t be lovely…’ She trailed off.
‘Dunno,’ said Francesca. ‘I haven’t cooked, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve made cocktails and it took bloody ages. You could have a bit of appreciation for what I’ve done, thank you very much.’
Tess ran over to her and hugged her, feeling her bony arms, her hand on her back. She was fragile, she thought, she’d be so easy to crush. ‘I do have appreciation for what you’re doing. I just assumed—completely insanely, obviously, that you’d made supper as well.’
‘No,’ Francesca said. ‘My plan was, we get trashed and then do karaoke with these cool new karaoke DVDs that I ordered from Amazon.’
‘Great idea,’ said Tess. ‘And we can have the rest of that shepherd’s pie I made yesterday. I’ve got some peas in the freezer.’
Francesca rolled her eyes, opened her mouth as if she would say something, then shut it. She smiled at Tess. ‘Bless ye, old lady. Come on. Give me your glass.’
CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_74365c77-0b15-5604-a505-18c569a8c01e)
Jan Allingham was in a flap. She was usually a rational woman, with an unshakeable faith in humanity, but when an event occurred to test this faith, she was conversely distressed out of all proportion.
She hated being late, even if it was only by a couple of minutes, and she was going to be late. If someone said ten o’clock, they meant ten, not five past ten. It was one of the things that drove her absolutely mad about her dear husband Jeremy, though time—thirty-five years of marriage—and wisdom—fifty-five years on God’s green earth—had taught her to accept with as good a grace as possible things like Jeremy’s breaking of his solemn vow that he would pick her up from the garden centre outside Thornham at twelve thirty. No, she had learned simply to smile and say, ‘Don’t worry, dear, thank you for coming.’ Conversely, of course, he was always absolutely furious if she was over a minute late to pick him up from anything—with the righteous indignation of the truly guilty.
It was thanks to Jeremy that she was going to be late for the committee meeting of the Save the Water Meadows Campaign. Bloody Jeremy, who had said she shouldn’t get involved, that it was asking for trouble, that it was putting other people’s backs up. Accept the inevitable, he’d said, looking at her over his copy of The Times that morning.
‘It’s going to happen,’ he said, his ruddy face creasing into lines as he munched his toast. ‘It’s inevitable, I’m afraid, dear. Market forces.’
Jan didn’t care about market forces. She whisked some cling film over the remains of the Galia melon pieces she’d had for her breakfast. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ she demanded, pushing the fridge door shut.
‘It’s got to do with the council and the Mortmains and a whopping great company that’s used to having its own way, that’s what they’re used to.’
‘Leonora Mortmain’s an evil old woman,’ said Jan, pettishly.
‘That’s the trouble with you lot,’ said Jeremy, putting down his paper. The phrase you lot infuriated his wife. ‘You think because she’s old and grim-looking and eccentric that she has no real power. She’s one of the most important landowners around here, she wields enormous influence. Just because she’s a woman and she hasn’t invited you all round for tea and cakes doesn’t mean she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s an impressive woman, I’ll give her that. Intelligent, too.’
Jan paused in her wiping down of the draining board. ‘How do you know that?’ she said, curiously.
‘Met her a few months ago when I had to value a couple of the cottages down towards the water meadows,’ said Jeremy. ‘Had a bit of a chat, actually. I told you.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ Jan said, exasperatedly. ‘You had a bit of a chat? With Leonora Mortmain? Typical you, Jeremy, that you don’t even think to mention it.’
‘Well, I did, and she was rather interesting. I reckon she was quite a gal in her time.’ Jan frowned. ‘Honestly, love. Something quite special, I bet she was popular with the…’ Jeremy recalled himself. ‘Anyway, her family’s lived round here for three hundred years, did you know that? Used to play in the meadows when she was a little girl, with the gardener’s son, or the vicar’s son or something,’ said Jeremy reflectively, picking up his paper again. ‘Got quite misty-eyed about it, in fact.’
Jan couldn’t imagine black-clad, iron-jawed Leonora Mortmain as a young girl, let alone one who did anything as fanciful as playing in fields. ‘Look,’ she said, whipping Jeremy’s breakfast plate smartly away from under him, much to his surprise. ‘She ought to know better. I didn’t move to Langford to spend my final days in a suburb of an out-of-town shopping centre. I moved here—we moved here,’ she amended hastily, ‘so we could live in a beautiful, historic town and enjoy all the amenities.’
‘Greg wants it to happen,’ said Jeremy, grabbing another piece of toast and defiantly buttering it on the tablecloth. Greg was Jeremy’s junior surveyor, who was rare in Langford, in that he’d lived there all his life. ‘Says it’s just what we need. Bit of reality. Plus he’s right, we don’t have a decent DIY shop round here for miles.’
‘Greg’s talking rubbish,’ said Jan firmly. ‘So are you, Jeremy. I know we need more jobs in the town, and it’s too expensive, and everything, but we don’t need that. Don’t take a sledgehammer to crack a nut.’ She thumped her hand dramatically down on the walnut kitchen surface, and looked out of the window of the bungalow towards the spire of St Mary’s church.
The Allinghams had moved to Langford from Southampton, seven years previously. Their youngest daughter Jenny had finally left home, and Jeremy had been offered a job in the local chartered surveyor’s office, four days a week, by an old friend who was retiring. It was to be his last job before he himself retired, and the plan, as far as he was concerned, was to spend more time playing golf and reading Robert Ludlum thrillers. In a decent place, where there was a decent pub within walking distance.
Jan had different ideas, however. She had, along with many children around the country, come on a school trip to the town and the Roman villa when she was a girl, and had fallen in love with the place. It had seemed to her, mired in suburbia, the height of Englishness, for her outwardly practical demeanour concealed—as is so often the case—an intensely sentimental, romantic soul. That, plus an unshakeable faith that what was right would always prevail, made her an optimist of the most terrifying order. Here, untrammelled by ugly modernity, was a place so unchanged that Charles I might well recognize the town that had hidden him, at great danger to itself, from the Roundheads. Here, too, was a high street down which Jane Austen had walked, where she would still feel at home. Living here was like a dream come true for Jan. Yes, of course, one had to live in modern times, but she had her hessian ‘Langford’s Own Plastic Bag’ bag for shopping at the farmers’ market, didn’t she? And didn’t she get the bus everywhere she could, instead of using the car, and didn’t she recycle everything, even though it meant driving the green box down the road as the recycling truck never seemed to make it into the cul-de-sac?
‘It’s the realities of the modern global economy,’ said Jeremy, taking his plate back firmly, and putting the paper down on the table. ‘If you want to be able to fly to Rome to waft around looking at old dead statues, you have to accept there are downsides.’
‘Look, I’ve got no problem with the modern global economy,’ said Jan, who had spent many years working for a luxury cruise company and was well aware of ‘market realities’, as the firm had been wont to call them just before they hiked up the prices. ‘And that’s rubbish, Jeremy, I’d go to Rome by coach if I had to, that’s how we went to Italy for our honeymoon, remember? It’s more that I don’t believe for a second this is going to help the town.’
Jeremy turned over a page of The Times. ‘Ah,’ he said, in placatory tones. ‘Twenty-three degrees in Rome. When are you off?’
It infuriated Jan when Jeremy patronized her like this. She had worked as long as him. Just because she was a woman, and a woman in her fifties who liked a tea shop and who fussed a bit—she knew she did, she tried not to—why should that mean that her opinion was risible? Her opinion and so many other women like her. It was sexism, that was what it was. She bit her tongue, as she had done so often in their marriage. ‘For every one job it creates, there’ll be four tourists who don’t come to Langford because they’re put off it by this horrible development, and that’s potentially far more jobs lost, not to mention what a violation of planning laws and everything else it is.’ She was getting worked up. ‘And I hate that attitude, Jeremy, that one that says it’s either or, that either you’re a fuddy duddy who’s clinging to some old tradition and can’t see the modern world around them or else you’re a dynamic thrusting young individual. It’s rubbish. This is about community!’ She banged her hand on the surface again. ‘It’s about the heart of the town! It’s about…’ She ran out of steam and looked at her watch. Damn it.
Jeremy said, after a pause, ‘I thought we drove to Italy for our honeymoon. We didn’t get the coach, did we? I had the new Austin. Green. Nice car, that was.’
‘That,’ said Jan awfully, picking up her bag, ‘is not the point, Jeremy. I have to go to my meeting now. Goodbye.’
The conversation with Jeremy—who was a fool, she had to remind herself—had made her late, and now she would be late for Ron and Francesca, the dear girl, who was so sweetly offering to help with the campaign. Jan hurried out of Water-meadows, the sweetly inaccurate and inappropriately named cul-de-sac where she lived, walking briskly towards the pub. She cut behind the warren of backstreets that formed the old heart of the town, where the lanes twisted and curled and where many a visitor to the town had found himself ending up by the old town walls that led down to the meadows, rather than the high street. Jan was a local though, of course, and it was with no little pride that she knew how to navigate her way through the maze, coming out at the back of the garden to Leda House, Leonora Mortmain’s home. The garden was huge for a townhouse; though she was trying something between a walk and a trot, Jan glanced up as she always did, at the rose that climbed up the back of the house, and took in the sweet smell of the garden stocks in the air.
Jeremy’s words rang in her ears. What was he doing, chatting away to Leonora Mortmain, and not mentioning it to her? For starters, she’d do anything to see inside Leda House (apparently, there was a Faberg?egg in the drawing room!). The idea of a teenage Leonora Mortmain, gambolling in fields with the butcher’s son or whoever, was ridiculous. It struck her then, and she slowed down, that it was probably something to do with the fact that she just didn’t seem like the kind of person who’d ever been a child. Much less been happy, been in love, got drunk, kissed someone she shouldn’t. Unimaginable, really! Jan thought of Jeremy suddenly with a smile, she didn’t know why. She turned the corner, onto the high street.
It was only five minutes past ten when she arrived at the Feathers, but they were five minutes too many. Mick was outside, wiping down the blackboard.
‘Hello, Jan,’ he said, standing up. ‘You here for the meeting? Francesca’s just arrived.’
‘Yes,’ panted Jan, practically running towards the door. ‘See you later, Mick.’
Inside, she found Ron, Andrea Marsh and Francesca, sitting around a table at the back of the pub. She bustled towards them.
‘Gosh. I am sorry, honestly. It’s been a bit of a hectic—’
Ron looked up, and Jan stopped as she saw the look on his face.
‘Council just called, Jan. It’s all over.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Jan, her breathing short. She put her hand on the table.
Ron’s face seemed to have aged twenty years in one day. ‘That old—that woman signed the agreement yesterday. Council’s approved it. The Mitchells have offered to finance some community park or something, so they’ve given planning permission for the shopping centre to go ahead. They start draining the land next month.’
Andrea gave a huge sniff; Francesca patted her hand. ‘I’m calling them this afternoon,’ Francesca said, drumming her pen on the table. ‘This isn’t over, Jan. I’m telling you.’
Jan smiled at her. ‘Of course it’s not,’ she said, steadying herself on the table and catching her breath. ‘We’ll fight it, and we’ll win.’ She raised herself up, with a proud expression. ‘Won’t we?’
But somehow, she didn’t believe it was true. It would take a miracle, and that sort of thing just didn’t happen.
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#ulink_2ba32c36-57fd-5928-871d-e3ba2bad0ed0)
A couple of days after the council had approved the application, the changes it would bring were already being felt. Tess noticed it as she walked to the college and saw people standing outside their front doors talking to neighbours, or little knots forming on street corners. The posters up in Jen’s Deli and the cheese shop, the sign outside the pub, they were still there: but they each had a thick black line through them. In the window of the Feathers that directly faced onto Leonora Mortmain’s house there was a sign: ‘HAPPY NOW?’
Andrea Marsh crept around with a face as long as a broom handle and Ronald Thaxton was a broken man. Langford was small enough that all of the main players were well-known, and Tess was in the deli one day with Francesca, sitting at one of the tiny tables squeezed into the shop, when a man came up to them.
‘Is there really nothing you can do?’ he said to Francesca. ‘I heard you were a lawyer, is the application all in order?’
He was about forty, rather sturdy and traditional-looking, wearing a battered old Barbour, and a neat, short blue tie.
‘Here’s your coffee, Tess,’ said someone, putting a tray down.
‘Thanks,’ said Tess absent-mindedly, not looking up but watching Francesca for her response. Francesca smiled, her most scary smile.
‘I’m afraid it is,’ she said. ‘The council is being extremely difficult about it, but it is all in order. I’m still—’
He interrupted her, putting his hand on the wobbly painted metal table. It lurched alarmingly to one side. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘But has anyone been in touch with English Heritage, or someone similar? Those water meadows are without equal in this part of the country. They can’t just drain them and concrete them over, there must be a law against it.’
‘You’d think,’ said Francesca, nodding up at him. ‘But I’m afraid not. Morely and Thornham have rich reserves of flora and fauna too, and since Langford’s the town, their reasoning is that it’s the one that can best support expansion.’
Tess, aware that someone was watching them, looked over and realized the person who’d given her the coffee was Liz. She was standing next to Claire, who was also in her class at school, a girl around the same age as her and Liz.
‘Hi!’ Liz said, waving. She wiped her hands on her apron. ‘Do you need anything else?’
‘No, thanks.’ Tess shook her head, almost impatiently, turning back to the stranger.
‘But that’s absolutely ridiculous!’ the man snorted. ‘I’m sorry, but—’
Francesca frowned at him. ‘It’s not my fault!’ she said, not unreasonably. ‘I’m on your side, remember! But that’s what they’ve said. We’re appealing, of course we are—’
He stood up straight. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, looking at her with an expression of remorse. ‘That’s incredibly rude of me.’ He held out his hand. ‘Guy Phelps. I own George Farm, just the other side of town.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Francesca said, as if she was well aware of George Farm and all its doings. She took his hand. ‘Francesca Jackson,’ she said. ‘And this is Tess Tennant,’ she added, indicating Tess next to her.
‘Nice to meet you.’ Guy Phelps shook Tess’s hand enthusiastically too, but returned his gaze almost immediately to Francesca and Tess went back to eating her carrot cake. ‘Well,’ he continued, as Francesca smiled politely up at him, ‘I’d better be off—thanks again,’ he finished, though he hadn’t thanked her before.
‘Nice to meet you,’ said Francesca.
‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do, won’t you?’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ said Francesca. She looked at Tess. ‘I’m sure there will be at some point. See you soon.’
‘She youw shoon,’ Tess added, her mouth full of cake.
As Guy Phelps departed, touching a finger to an imaginary cap, much to both girls’ delight, Francesca turned to Tess and said, exasperatedly, ‘Tess!’
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