Chapter Fourteen
Chaos.
Vicky had been delighted when Dan the builder had rung to say that a last-minute delay on another contract, due to an unforeseen problem with the drainage on the site, meant that he could fit in the work on the cottage straight away, if it was convenient.
Since then it had been full on. Scaffolders had arrived at seven thirty the next morning so the men could get started on replacing the cracked roof tiles and the guttering.
The second-hand furniture shop on Church Road had been very happy to take Molly’s bed and the recliner, but the mattress and the sofa were now sitting in the front garden waiting to be collected by the council’s recycling lorry.
Keeping them company was a large yellow skip now full of building debris, including the old toilet and sink from the bathroom. The bathroom had been tiled and the new items installed — Dan knew someone who could come and repair the enamel on the bath.
The cottage was full of noise and dust, loud music blasting from a radio, and half a dozen beefy young men working around each other as they rewired the electrics and replaced the radiators. They were a friendly bunch — she knew all of them by name now, and how much sugar they liked in their tea.
She had been glad to escape to the garden most of the time, where there was plenty of weeding to do. In the evenings she’d been able to sit down at the kitchen table with her laptop and do some work on her book.
She had created her two main characters. She could see them so easily. Lady Cecily, lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth Woodville, was fair, delicate. An English rose, but with a steel core and a deep loyalty to the queen.
And he — Lord William Beaufort — was tall, with wide shoulders and a face carved in strong planes and angles. And dark, dark eyes that could glint in sardonic amusement, or glow with a warmth that could ignite the fires inside her.
Her sketch of the genealogy had made William a cousin of the Duke of Somerset. She had decided that he had been wounded and captured in the Battle of Losecoat, and was being held at Ludlow Castle.
She had already written the scene when the two had first met. The queen had sent her with a special ointment to dress his wounds — a slash on his forehead and a sword-thrust beneath his shoulder. She had enjoyed writing that — Cecily’s first reaction to a glimpse of his hard-muscled chest.
Now she was going to write a scene where they would almost kiss. With a coffee close to hand she closed her eyes and let her imagination roll...
“You’re leaving tomorrow.”
“Lord Richard has negotiated an exchange of prisoners.”
“I’m glad for you.”
“Are you?”
“Of course. You’ll be back with your own people, your friends.”
“Yes. But...” He lifted his hand and touched her cheek, so gently. “You’re crying.”
“I’m not . . . I am. I’ll miss you. We’ve been . . . friends . . .”
“Yes . . .”
Did she lean in to him, or did he lean in to her? Gazing up into those mesmerising dark eyes, she felt as if she was melting inside. Her lips parted as his head bent over hers...
A clatter of footsteps on the stairs drove them apart...
Vicky dragged in a long, ragged breath. She had been drawn right into it — and it hadn’t been Lord William in the vivid scene, but Tom Cullen. Her heart was racing, the image of that hard-boned face had seemed so close to hers — so close that she could almost feel the heat of his breath against her cheek.
Oh, boy . . .
Quickly she saved the file and put the laptop aside. She urgently needed a coffee... No, not coffee — she was going to have enough trouble getting to sleep. Camomile tea might help — if she had any. Or maybe a strong hit of whiskey.
Molly had left a half-full bottle of rather good eighteen-year-old triple-distilled Irish malt in the walnut sideboard, with a set of fine crystal tumblers. She poured herself three fingers, laughing as she toasted herself.
“Oh, Lord William — you’re absolutely gorgeous. You’re going to be one heck of a problem for poor Cecily.” And the same could be said for Tom Cullen.
Draining the whiskey, she went up to bed.
* * *
“How’s it going?”
Vicky rolled her eyes at Debbie’s question. “Don’t ask! I’ve been exiled from the sitting room while they’re sanding the floor — there’s dust everywhere.”
She spread a generous scoop of rich Devon cream onto her scone and smeared a little jam on the top.
“But I’ve got my workroom done — I spent a very entertaining couple of hours yesterday assembling the cupboards and drawers to make the base for my desk. It’ll be great to be able to spread out in there. I’m getting a new desktop computer — the laptop’s fine for a while, but if I’m going to do some serious writing a desktop will be better.”
“Bill said they’ve got the new windows in. He said they look really smart.”
“They do. My new bed came this morning, so I’ll be able to move back into the main bedroom and get a good night’s sleep — that mattress in the spare room must be fifty years old and it’s as hard as concrete. And they’re installing the new kitchen next week. I’ll be glad when it’s all done.”
“I bet.” Debbie turned to say goodbye to a family who were just leaving. “Are you going to have a housewarming party?” she asked when she came back from clearing their table.
“I hadn’t thought of it, but... yes. At least a small one. You and your mum. And Bill, of course.”
Debbie’s blush told her everything.
“You’re still seeing him?”
Her friend’s shy smile put two tiny dimples into her cheeks. “Yes. We’ve been to the pictures a couple of times. And we’re going out to dinner tomorrow.”
“That’s good.”
“I . . . um . . . wanted to thank you.”
“What for?” Vicky bit into her scone, letting the cream ooze into her mouth.
“He... Bill... he told me what you said to him.” Again that shy little smile. “I suppose we both needed a bit of a push.”
Vicky laughed, shaking her head. “I’m getting to be a real interfering bugger.”
“Oh, no! At least, in a good way. Without it we’d both still be dithering around, I expect. And young Beth would have gone off to London, and heaven alone knows what would have happened to her.”
“I don’t think she’d have stayed, when it came down to it,” Vicky mused. “She may be only seventeen, but she’s got her head screwed on.”
“Even so, you saved her mum a lot of worry. And now she’s planning to go to university. That’s brilliant.”
Debbie’s mum came through from the kitchen with a fresh batch of cupcakes to put on the counter. “What time’s Arthur coming home?”
“I’m picking him up at two o’clock. I spoke to the social worker again — they’re arranging for a carer to come in to him, at least for a while, to help him get dressed in the morning and make him some breakfast, and then help him to bed.”
“That’s good. Brenda said you’re getting up a rota to go in and give him lunch.”
“That’s right. Bez is helping too, and Linda.”
Kate laughed. “Ah — so we’ll get to hear all the details then. Anyway, count me in. I’ll see to him tomorrow. I’ll take some meals down to pop in his fridge, that’ll just need heating up. And I’ll make some pasties, and the apple pie he likes — he can have them cold or heat them up.”
“Brilliant.” Vicky finished her coffee and glanced at her watch. “Anyway, it’s half past — I need to be going. He’ll fret if I’m late. See you tomorrow.”
* * *
“Well, here we are.” Vicky drew the car into the kerb and switched off the engine. “Home sweet home.”
“Oh, ah...” Arthur beamed with pleasure. “Thank you, my luvver.”
She climbed out of the car and paused to study the house. The garden was overgrown with bindweed and wild garlic, and the front door was in need of a coat of paint. Maybe there’d be a lad in the village who’d be willing to do a few odd jobs for a bit of extra pocket-money — she’d ask around.
Arthur was struggling with his seat belt, so she hurried round the car to help him out.
“Oops-a-daisy.” He stood up with some effort and looked around contentedly. “It’s good to be home.”
“You were spoiled rotten in that hospital,” she teased him. “You won’t have a dozen nurses fussing around you now.”
He chuckled as he took her arm to walk up the path. “That was a compensation. But, really, all I wanted was to come home.”
Vicky opened the door for him. Inside it wasn’t as bad as she had feared it might be — just the sort of mild neglect to be expected from an elderly widower with failing eyesight. A faint musty smell in the hall, dust-bunnies beneath the telephone table, a ragged cobweb in the corner of the ceiling.
She took him into the sitting room and settled him in a comfortable armchair. “There — you sit down, and I’ll make a cup of tea.”
She nipped out to the car to fetch his suitcase, then put the kettle on and made two cups of tea, which she put on a tray with a plate of Bourbon biscuits, and carried them through to the sitting room.
It was a cosy room, if a bit cluttered and faded, the chintz upholstery and curtains and the extensive collection of china cats evidence that a woman had once reigned here.
Several framed photographs were lined up along the tiled mantelpiece. Vicky moved closer to study them. “May I look?”
“Of course, dearie, if you like.”
She picked up one of them — a proud young Arthur in his wedding suit, his darling Betty at his side in her long white dress and veil, clutching a bouquet of roses and lily of the valley, gazing up at him in open adoration. “Well, weren’t you a handsome chap!” she remarked.
He chuckled. “Oh, ah — I was that.” He took the photo from her and gazed at it, a smile of wistful reminiscence curving his mouth. “And my Betty, she was a real beauty.”
“She was.” She picked up another photograph — a lad of about twelve, proud as punch in his Scout uniform. “And this is Simon?”
“That’s right.”
Another photograph. “And his wife and kids — your grandsons. They’re nice-looking kids.”
He nodded, beaming. “Take after their grandmother.”
The couple in the picture looked to be in their forties, the two boys in front of them early teens. “This must have been taken a few years ago?”
“Oh... yes — maybe. I don’t remember.” He waved his hand in vague dismissal.
“And that’s Niagara Falls in the background?”
“Mmm.” He was busy dunking his biscuit in his tea. Vicky smiled to herself — he never liked to admit that his memory sometimes had gaps in it.
She wandered round the room looking at the pictures on the walls — mostly rather kitsch pictures of cats, clashing with the flowery wallpaper.
“Betty was fond of cats?” she asked, amused.
“Oh, ah — allus had cats when she was alive. I didn’t mind ’em — could be a bit smelly, some of ’em, but they was mostly right enough.”
“You don’t have one now?”
He shook his head. “Last one took itself off somewhere after she was gone. Never saw it again. They have a way of finding themselves a cosy billet, do cats.”
She just hoped that was true, and that the poor creature hadn’t met a more unfortunate fate, but she didn’t say anything.
There were more family photographs on the oak sideboard and on top of an upright piano. But it was a framed portrait that caught her eye — a charcoal sketch, recognisably by the same hand as the portrait of Molly. In the bottom left-hand corner was the same rabbit-ears signature.
“Oh!”
Arthur looked over, smiling. “Ah, yes — that’s my Betty, God rest her.”
She gazed at the sketch, feeling a small surge of excitement. The portrait was very similar to the one of Molly, while still being undoubtedly the woman in the wedding photograph. It took a clever hand to do that.
“Do you remember who drew it?”
“O’ course I do!” Clearly indignant that she might think he had forgotten. “It was John. Foreign guy. That wasn’t his proper name, o’ course — it was some funny foreign name. But I always called him John — that was near enough.”
“He was... a friend of my Aunt Molly’s?”
“Oh, ah.” His pale eyes twinkled with mischief. “A bit more ’n a friend, I reckon.”
Vicky gazed at the portrait, with its rabbit-ears signature. John... Molly’s lover, who had painted her portrait and written that poem.
“So he lived here in Sturcombe?”
“I told you — he lived with Molly. They met up in Spain or some place and came to live here. Must have been maybe ten or fifteen years they lived here. Then he upped and got ill and died.”
“Oh...” So that was what had happened to Aunt Molly’s poet. Vicky brushed a tear from the corner of her eye — it was so sad. “When was that?”
He grunted. “A while ago.”
“Do you remember when he died?”
“O’ course I do.” He glared at her. “It was not long after that test match when that young Botham chap scored a century and took ten wickets. India, that was. Great performance — never been bettered, before nor since.”
“Cricket?”
“Well, it wasn’t table tennis.”
Vicky laughed. “You’re an old devil. Do you mind if I take a photograph of the picture?”
“No — you go ahead, dearie. It’s a pretty good likeness, though it does look a bit wonky, like. And that funny thing he’s done with her hair — my Betty never had hair like that. Still, I suppose he done his best.”
“Yes . . . I suppose so.”
* * *
“There was a portrait of his wife on the wall.” Vicky pulled her phone from her pocket and opened the image to show Debbie. “There’s one like it of Molly at the cottage, though that’s an oil painting, not a charcoal sketch like this one. But it’s by the same artist. He signs his work with what looks like a pair of rabbit’s ears.”
Debbie peered closely at the image, her eyes widening. “We’ve got one like that! It’s of Granny.” She beckoned to her mother. “Mum — come and look at this.”
Kate put down the cloth she had been using to wipe some empty tables and came over to peer at the image on Vicky’s phone.
“Oh, yes — that’s just like my mother’s picture. A little bit weird, I always thought, with the hair like that. But Mum was fond of it.”
“Did she tell you anything about the man who drew it?” Vicky asked.
Kate thought for a moment, shaking her head. “Not really. She said that he was Spanish, and very handsome. But that’s all.”
“Arthur said he was foreign — he called him John, but he said that wasn’t his real name. He lived here with Molly. He wrote her the most beautiful poem — I found it in a book when I was clearing out the bookshelves.”
“Well I never!” Kate laughed. “She really was a one, wasn’t she?”
“She certainly seems to have been a free spirit,” Debbie remarked. “Living with a man without being married would still have been a bit of a scandal in those days, especially down here. We’re about fifty years behind the times.”
“I wonder why they didn’t get married?” Vicky mused.
“Maybe he was already married.”
Kate nodded. “If he was Spanish he was probably Catholic. He might not have been able to get a divorce back then.”
“I’d really love to find out a bit more about him. Arthur said he died just after Ian Botham got ten wickets in a test match.”
Kate laughed. “Trust Arthur to date things by cricket!”
“We could look that up. It’s a good place to start, anyway. Wait — I’ll go and get my laptop — it’ll be easier to search on that.” Debbie hurried away upstairs, while her mother went to serve some customers who had just come in.
Debbie was back in a moment, and set up the laptop at Vicky’s table. “There. I just need to go and empty the dishwasher while you start searching.”
“Right.” She started with a search for Ian Botham — it didn’t take long to find a stack of news items about his spectacular achievement in the test match. “Here it is — February 1980. So, let’s look for Spanish artists who died that year.”
There were plenty of famous artists listed, but some were still alive and others had died in the wrong year. She scrolled down a little further — and hit pay dirt.
“Yesss!”
Kate hurried out from behind the counter. “You’ve found him?”
“I think so.” There was a bubble of excitement in her voice. “His name was Juan-Jorge Conejero. I think conejero means rabbit warren in Spanish — that’s probably why he signed his work with what looked like rabbit’s ears.” She clicked on the link to a webpage. “This is him.”
Debbie and her mum leaned in to look at the image that had popped up on the screen. “Oh... He really was very good-looking, wasn’t he?” Kate chuckled. “Lucky Molly!”
“There’s a few of his paintings on here.” She scrolled down. There were several portraits similar to the one of Molly, some abstracts and still lifes, and half a dozen landscapes — wild, surreal, as if on another planet. “He seems to have been quite famous — some of these are in the Pradera in Spain.”
“I wonder if yours is worth anything?” Kate mused.
“It could be. I’m really not sure if I should sell it, though. Molly was obviously very fond of it. She had it hanging in her bedroom.”
Debbie shook her head decisively. “But it might mean you could pay the tax and keep the cottage, wouldn’t it?” she pointed out. “Molly would want that.”
Vicky frowned. “I suppose . . .”
“Of course she would. Anyway, why not just see if it’s worth anything first, then you can have a think about it.”
Vicky nodded thoughtfully. “You’re probably right.”
“Do we still have the one of Granny, Mum?” Debbie asked. “It didn’t get thrown away when she died?”
Kate thought for a moment. “Yes, we’ve still got it — it’s in the back of my wardrobe.”
“Would you sell it?”
“Yes — why not? There’s not much point in keeping it tucked away. I don’t suppose it’ll be worth anything like as much as your portrait, but even a couple of hundred would come in handy towards a new freezer.”
While Kate hurried upstairs to fetch the drawing of her mother, Vicky and Debbie put their heads together to look up a couple of auction houses that sold modern art.
“This one looks the most likely — Cottesmore. I’ve heard of them, anyway. They’re in Kensington, and they seem to sell quite a lot of this kind of thing.” She typed out an email and attached the images of Molly’s portrait and Arthur’s and Kate’s sketches. “I don’t suppose we’ll hear anything for a while — it could be weeks.”
She needed to be sensible, she reminded herself — not let herself get carried away with the idea that the painting could really be valuable.
Sensible. Ugh!
* * *
“This is the most tedious part of the job.” Lisa pulled a wry face. “Doing the staff rota. No matter how carefully you do it, someone will come and complain that they always have Wednesday afternoons off, or they need to take Friday because it’s the kids’ sports day.”
Vicky laughed.
“I usually do it,” Lisa explained, “because poor Mike gets in a terrible tizz, trying not to let anyone down, bless him. This is the spreadsheet. I work on a three-week rolling repeat — that way everyone knows in advance what shift they’re on and there’s plenty of time if there does need to be changes. Really, most of the staff are very good and willing to be flexible — this is a happy place to work; a lot of our people have been here for years.”
Vicky studied the spreadsheet while she sipped her coffee. “That looks clear enough. When I worked in the café while I was at uni we had a similar system, and I’d sometimes help draw up the rotas when the manager was busy.”
“Great — I’m sure you’ll soon get the hang of it. If you have any problems with it, you can always give me a call. Finished your coffee?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“Good.” Lisa put down her own coffee cup and rose to her feet. “Now I did give you a quick tour of the rooms before, but let’s have a proper look now, and I’ll show you how to check that the cleaning and maintenance are up to standard.” She lifted a clipboard down from a hook beside her desk. “This is the checklist. I do a walk-through once a day — that’s usually enough.”
“Right.”
“Now, as you walk through, check that there’s nothing left where someone could trip over it, and that there are no rucks or tears in the carpets. Particularly the stair carpet.”
Vicky nodded. “Health and safety.”
“That’s right.” Lisa’s eyes danced. “Number one priority. Not just to avoid getting sued, but guests with broken legs are so not a good advert for a hotel.”
Vicky laughed. She was trying hard not to think about Tom. How could he be such a rat as to be looking to play the field when he was married to such a nice woman? And how could she be such an idiot as to still feel that treacherous tug of attraction when she knew he was such a cheating rat?
Well, hopefully she had made it clear that she wasn’t interested in being his bit on the side. Over the past two weeks she had spotted his car driving past a couple of times, but she had managed to avoid bumping into him — even at Sunday’s cricket match.
Should she tell Lisa what had happened? That question had been tugging at the fringes of her mind for the past few weeks. She had decided against it — unless he tried it on again. Partly out of cowardice. And maybe Lisa already knew what he was like, and chose to ignore it? Maybe she thought that preserving her marriage for the sake of the children was a price worth paying?
“Let’s use the lift.” Lisa pressed the call button. “We can start at the top and work our way down. How’s Arthur, by the way?”
“Very happy to be home.” Vicky smiled. “And his new carer is very good — he knows just how much fuss to give him while letting him be as independent as he’s able to be.”
Lisa nodded as she stepped into the lift. “My husband said it’s worked out for the best in the end. He was lucky — if he’d fallen after he got indoors he might not have been able to get help, and he could have been there for hours, even days.”
Vicky felt as if her smile was fixed in place with superglue. Her husband. Don’t think about him.
The lift doors opened and they stepped out onto the top floor. Like the ground floor it had a slightly faded grandeur, with a red-and-gold carpet, feather-patterned wallpaper and a fancy crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling. A vase of lilacs stood on a table in the corner, their fragrance scenting the air.
There were five doors on each side of the corridor. Lisa opened one of them with her pass-key. “This one’s empty, so we can go in. Every room has an en suite. It’s important to check them.” She led the way across the room to the bathroom. “Make sure there are fresh towels every day, and the complimentary baskets are full.”
She showed Vicky the checklist.
“Always check every light bulb. It’s something that Housekeeping is likely to miss, but it can be very irritating for the guests to go into their room and find the light doesn’t work.”
“Oh... of course, I wouldn’t have thought of that.”
“Hence the checklist. It’s very easy to overlook those little details.” Abruptly Lisa grunted and sat down heavily on the bed, rubbing her bump.
“Are you okay?” Vicky asked anxiously. “It’s not... ?”
Lisa laughed and shook her head. “Not yet. These are just practice contractions — Braxton-Hicks. They’re nothing. Ollie worries about me all the time, of course — you’d think a GP would take it all in his stride. They say doctors make the worst patients, and they’re just as bad when it’s their own families.”
“Uh, Ollie . . . ?”
“My husband. You’ve probably seen him at the cricket — tall guy, brown hair, glasses. He usually does the scoreboard.”
“Oh...” Vicky’s breath seemed to stop in her throat, her head spinning as if the planet had suddenly tipped off its axis. Fortunately Lisa didn’t seem to have noticed her reaction.
“He’d like to play, but he’s often on the call-out rota on Sundays so if there’s an emergency he has to dash off, which would be a bit disruptive to the team.” She stroked her hand over her bump. “I suppose it’s understandable that he’d worry. We’d been trying for a second for a while, but nothing seemed to be happening. We were starting to think about IVF, but then we went on holiday to Greece, and bingo!” Her eyes danced with merriment. “Must have been the sunshine — or maybe the ouzo!”
Vicky managed a laugh. She had a vague recollection of the tall man who had been keeping score at the cricket, at least until shortly after the lunchbreak. Then he had disappeared. So he was Lisa’s husband...
With an effort of will she brought her mind back to the conversation before the other woman began to think she was a bit odd. “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?” she asked lightly.
“It’s a little girl.” Lisa rose to her feet and led the way back into the corridor. “We haven’t chosen a name yet. I suppose we should — there’s only a couple of weeks to go.”
“So... um... are you related to Tom Cullen, who owns the farm next to me?” Vicky asked as she followed her.
“Tom? Of course — he’s Ollie’s cousin. Ollie’s a few years older, but they grew up like brothers — both being onlies. That was why I wanted a second one after Noah — there’s nothing wrong with being an only, but I do think they can miss out. I’m one of three. Do you have any brothers and sisters?”
“No — I’m an only too. But I have a stepsister. She’s a year older than me.” She smiled thinly. “She’s a bit of a mixed blessing.”
Lisa nodded agreement. “Sisters can be — even when they’re full sisters. Especially when they’re close in age. My sister Cassie and I fought like cat and dog when we were kids, but we get on much better now. Though of course that could be because she’s on the other side of the planet!”
“Oh?”
“She was always the adventurous one — she was never going to settle down in Sturcombe. She’s been all over — America, Africa, Australia. She’s in New Zealand now, bungee jumping and white-water rafting.” Lisa laughed. “She’s always sending me pictures of her doing something wild.” She pulled her phone from her pocket and clicked a few buttons. “That’s her.”
“Oh, wow!” A very pretty girl. Dark hair flying, face full of excitement, arms flung wide as she soared against a dizzying backdrop of steep mountains.
“That was at a place called Nevis Bungy — apparently it’s the highest bungee jump in New Zealand.” She rolled her eyes. “Trust Cassie. Anyway, as you can see, there are ten rooms on this floor. They’re all pretty much the same, so there’s no need to look in them all. Any questions?”