Chapter 29
There couldn’t be many people who were blessed with such a beautiful walk to work, Julia thought, a little smugly.
She cast an approving glance at the flowerpots on either side of Mrs Curtin’s gate.
They were large, and thickly planted with daffodils and narcissus, their yellow and white heads bobbing enthusiastically like a class of agreeable nursery school children.
The first early roses were coming into bloom, but the true heroes of the season were the rhododendrons and azaleas.
They waited all year in their modest greenery in the dappled shade, and when spring came, they burst forth in every shade of pink and red and purple, so thickly flowered that there was barely a branch or leaf to be seen.
Julia was tempted to take a photograph of a particularly exuberant specimen to send to Jess in Hong Kong, but she was running a minute or two behind schedule – something she seldom did, and didn’t like.
Resolving to take a snap on her way home, she continued on her way, walking briskly through the tiny pink-white petals drifting down from the cherry blossoms like confetti to lay scattered on the pavement.
The large ginger cat was sitting at the top of the street on a small stone wall.
It really felt like Julia had been seeing this cat all over Berrywick recently.
She decided to approach him and make friends.
He seemed open to the idea, and allowed Julia to scratch him behind his ears.
He looked at her and then jumped off the wall, reappearing a second later with a sock in his mouth, which he dropped on the wall near Julia.
Like a gift. On a hunch, Julia looked behind the wall.
There was a small pile of objects. A glove. A ring. A dishcloth. A toy.
Julia took out her phone and dialled.
‘Hayley,’ she said, when the phone was answered. ‘I’ve found your thief.’
Julia needn’t have hurried after her successful cat-crime solving, because she still arrived her habitual two minutes early, at the same time as Diane, and Wilma arrived her habitual two minutes late.
Wilma lived under the demanding rule of a big square sports watch and, in order to please it, always moved at a pace somewhere between walking and jogging.
Despite this, she was always late. She was recognisable at a distance for this distinctive swift gait, and the regular raising of her left arm as she checked her heart rate.
‘Here she comes,’ said Diane. ‘I, for one, am super excited to hear the latest news about Douglas.’
‘I wonder if they met up,’ said Julia. ‘It seemed to be heading in that direction.’
‘Oooh, I do hope so,’ said Diane, actually rubbing her hands together in eager anticipation.
‘All those years with Nigel, and then losing him so horribly to cancer. It’s difficult to imagine being in another relationship.
It’s no wonder she was nervous,’ said Julia.
Not for the first time, she felt enormous gratitude for having met Sean at their book club soon after she moved to Berrywick, thus avoiding the necessity of navigating dating services.
‘Morning!’ Wilma called as she approached, not even a little bit puffed.
She stopped in the doorway and touched the screen of her watch to start or stop something, to clock in or clock out.
‘How are you, Julia?’ she asked, reaching into her bag for the key to the shop.
‘Very well, thanks!’ said Julia. ‘I had an enjoyable walk, admiring the spring flowers.’
‘I think this might be the best week of the whole year for the Berrywick gardens,’ said Wilma with a blissful smile. ‘I don’t know when I’ve seen the village looking so lovely. The flowers, the trees… glowing… Everything just looks so… happy.’
Diane and Julia exchanged glances, confirming their shared suspicion that Wilma had, in fact, met up with Douglas and it had gone well.
She swung the door open, and they went in.
‘I’m putting the kettle on,’ said Diane, determinedly. ‘And then, Wilma, we want a full update on the squash-playing businessman from Hayfield.’
This was not only a breach of the usual protocol – they had their first cuppa at ten – but it was very forward.
It was the sort of thing that generally annoyed Wilma, who took her role as boss of the shop very seriously, but she laughed gaily and said, ‘Well, all right, then. Get that kettle on, Diane!’
‘Don’t tell Julia anything interesting while I’m gone,’ Diane shouted over her shoulder as she disappeared into the back room.
Having been thus instructed, Wilma and Julia found themselves in awkward silence.
‘I thought I’d sort through the costume jewellery,’ said Julia, at the same time as Wilma said, ‘We should start thinking about the summer display.’
Their laughter broke the awkwardness and they sat in comfortable silence waiting for their tea.
‘Here we go,’ said Diane, bustling in with three mugs on a tray. She put it down on the counter, took a mug for herself and said, ‘Okay, tell!’
‘Well,’ said Wilma, reaching for her mug. ‘I took Julia’s advice. We met up for a walk on Friday, and you’re right, it was less stressful than sitting across a restaurant table.’
Diane and Julia nodded their approval of this plan.
‘I was worried he might be a slow coach,’ said Wilma with a hint of distaste, ‘but gosh, quite the opposite. You should see that man go!’
They all shrieked with laughter.
‘Oh, you two, get on with you. You know what I mean.’ Wilma blushed, but she was grinning like the cat who got the cream. ‘Anyway, we walked along the river path, and we didn’t stop talking for a minute. Like two old friends, we were.’
‘Oh, that’s lovely,’ said Julia. ‘What a good start. And you can tell a lot about a person on a walk.’
‘That’s so true. He was friendly to the dogs we met along the way, and very courteous to Aunt Edna, who nearly gave me a heart attack when she stopped to ask us when we were having children!’
There was more shrieking, and Diane shook so much with laughter that she spilled her warm tea all over her lap.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll clean it up later,’ she said. ‘Go on, Wilma.’
‘We had only agreed to an hour or so for a walk, but we stopped for lunch at The Swan. I felt sure we could manage a meal over a restaurant table by that point, and I was right. It was a beautiful day, so we sat outside. He knows a lot about trees and plants and such, does Douglas, but he tells you about it in a nice way. He doesn’t go on and on. And he asks questions, and he listens.’
‘And then?’ Diane asked.
‘And then, he walked me home.’
‘Ooooh.’
‘And we saw each other on Saturday and on Sunday.’
‘OOOOH!’ said Diane, louder this time. ‘Saturday and Sunday. And, might I ask, did he go home in between?’
‘No, you may not!’ said Wilma, strict and blushing and smiling all at the same time. ‘Now, come on, ladies, let’s all get to work.’
Almost immediately, Julia regretted the idea of sorting through the box of jewellery donated over the previous few months.
The necklaces seemed almost spiteful in their determination to entangle, and her fingers felt like sausages in their efforts to disentangle them.
She abandoned them and concentrated on the earrings, which were much more compliant, and went on to the bangles, which she arranged on a wooden kitchen-roll holder, a solution she was rather proud of.
Before she knew it, the morning was gone.
After lunch, there was nothing for it but to tackle the necklaces.
She had picked up a knotted silver chain with tiny beads on little silver rings, regularly spaced.
Squinting through her glasses, she tried to prise apart a knot, but while she did, another piece of chain hooked onto one of the silver rings.
Everything was connected to everything else, was the trouble, ‘Just like life,’ she muttered grumpily.
‘You pull one thing and some other thing gets tangled.’
‘Talking to yourself?’
She looked up to see Jim McEnroe coming towards her. ‘Jim! I didn’t see you come in. I didn’t even hear the doorbell!’
‘You were concentrating very hard.’
‘I was, but I can stop for a minute,’ she said, putting the necklace down with some relief. ‘I was remarking to myself that, like tangled necklaces, life is complicated and interconnected.’
‘That’s very profound, Julia.’
‘I thought so.’
‘Speaking of entanglements, I’ve got news on the Murdoch Enterprises developments,’ he said, keeping his voice down.
Diane was ringing up a studded teenage girl’s purchase – honestly, the ugliest jumper Julia had ever seen in her life, which must mean it was terribly fashionable – and chatting so much as she did so that there was no way she would overhear them.
But Wilma, although some distance away dusting the window display, had the hearing of a bat, so one had to be careful.
‘It turns out they have two major developments planned, or in progress,’ said Jim. ‘One is a shopping centre, a bespoke boutique bijou what have you. And get this – they were denied permission to build.’
‘I heard about that. Was it an environmental issue?’ asked Julia. ‘Anything to do with birds?’
‘No, more interesting than that.’ Jim paused for effect. He was enjoying having the floor, keeping her in suspense. ‘Only one shopping centre in the area was going to get the nod. And guess who did?’
‘It was Meadow Court,’ said Julia, a little louder than she’d intended. Wilma and Diane both turned to look. “Marcia told me that they got the go-ahead, but I hadn’t realised it was one or the other.”
‘Got it in one,’ said Jim, pleased with himself.
‘Everything all right there, Julia?’ Wilma called pointedly from the window.
‘Everything’s fine.’
She turned her attention back to Jim. ‘And what is Murdoch’s other development?’
‘West Woods. It’s a housing development just outside Berrywick. To the west, as you can imagine.’
‘In the wooded area, too, I would imagine. I remember Zelda talking about it,’ said Julia, and then softly to herself, ‘habitat of the Lesser Spotted Squawker.’
A couple came into the shop. Tourists, judging by their pastel golf shirts, khaki trousers and big white sneakers.
The man’s face had burnt quite pink. He stopped at the hat rack and put a cap on his head – which was rather like closing the door after the horse had bolted, Julia thought, glancing at the peeling skin of his nose.
He gave himself a satisfied nod in the little mirror. He looked in Julia’s direction.
‘I’ll be right with you,’ she said.
‘Jim, I’ve got to help these customers, but I want to talk to you,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Can we meet after work? I finish at four.’
He looked at his watch and shrugged, ‘OK, I reckon I can amuse myself for an hour. In fact, you know what? I’ll go and have a chat with Mrs Murdoch.
I was planning to visit the offices tomorrow, but I might as well go this afternoon.
I’ll see what I can find out, and I’ll come by the shop at four and report back. ’
‘Don’t forget about the birds…’ she said.
He looked at her blankly.
‘The rare birds. The squawkers. I think they might be important.’
Julia rang up the man’s cap, along with a pretty coral necklace that his wife had chosen from a stand of necklaces that had been recently liberated from their entanglement. The fact that her work was already paying off gave Julia a pleasant feeling of mild achievement.
She bade the couple goodbye and put the box of jewellery donations away for the day. She was too antsy to do fiddly work. The last hour of the day dragged reluctantly by. Finally, it was five to four. Julia fetched her handbag from the back room, and stood at the counter waiting for Jim.
‘You’re in a hurry,’ said Wilma.
‘I’m meeting someone. He’ll be here at four,’ said Julia. The shop closed at four thirty (five in summer), but the last hour or so was always quiet, so one of the assistants usually left at four.
Four o’clock came, and then ten past. Julia’s handbag was still slung over her shoulder.
The meeting with Mrs Murdoch must have run on. Perhaps she had lots of information to share and beans to spill, Julia thought. Perhaps Jim would get his big story, and Hayley Gibson would get the information she needed to make an arrest. Julia’s anticipation was intense.
At quarter past four, Julia could bear the wait no longer. She phoned Jim’s number. It rang and rang.
Her anticipation had taken on an anxious edge. Was he all right? She hoped nothing had happened to him. What if he’d had an accident? There was no sense in waiting around thinking of doom and gloom scenarios. She would go and see if she could find him.