Twenty-three
With shaking hands, Clare unfolded the page, saw Victor’s greasy fingerprints, and let out an audible groan. The same leaflet as downstairs. Why hadn’t she looked at it on Saturday? The answer was simple: why would she, when she’d read it so many times so could virtually recite it? She reread the rude version, cringing at the words.
She took it downstairs, poured her lukewarm tea down the drain before making herself a fresh brew. She took a sip, peering at the leaflet. Something about it was resonating. She recognized some phrases. She had read them before. Where? She spluttered hot tea back into the mug. No! It couldn’t be. It looked like the first draft she’d written as a joke. Had Richard paid a cyber expert to hack into her files and steal a copy?
Or had someone done this the old-fashioned way? The farmhouse was never locked. There wasn’t anything worth stealing. Richard or one of his lackeys could have crept in when she was out walking Stop-it. Maybe that was what the person in the blue car had been doing; keeping an eye on her routine in case they needed to break in a second time. She wouldn’t put it past Hastings to prowl round her home. Or ask his brother to. What was it Sam had said on that walk? I’m pretty good at sneaking round unobserved.
Richard had approached the planning application like a bowler at a skittle alley. With his first ball he’d shattered the village – most of the pins – and he was now picking off those still standing. Just like he’d threatened he would on that Bank Holiday Monday in his brother’s kitchen. Fred, first; now, her. What would he do to fell Anna and Ivy?
She reread the poisonous leaflet, counting the libellous phrases. It accused Richard of theft, corruption, bribery ... She might as well hand him the keys to Orchard Farm and head back to London with her tail between her legs. Then she remembered the sum he wanted. He would bankrupt her. She would lose her flat. Suddenly, she felt nauseous. Richard’s goal wasn’t to get money from her – it was to destroy her. An undischarged bankrupt couldn’t practise law.
Clare slumped at the kitchen table. Was he that spiteful? She should never have agreed to spearhead the fight against him. She should have left it to Anna. Clare wasn’t part of Brambleton, hadn’t been part of it for years, but because she’d taken him on, raised the village against him, he was out to crush her.
Determined to check her facts, Clare pulled out her laptop and searched for the original draft of the leaflet but couldn’t find it anywhere in her files. Had the thief stolen a copy, then deleted it? That made little sense. Why erase evidence of her authorship? Clare questioned why she couldn’t find the first draft of the leaflet. There was only one logical answer, because she had deleted it. And she realized she could prove she had done. As a lawyer, and being cautious, she had not enabled the automatic delete function on her trashcan. To permanently delete files required manually emptying it. She clicked on that icon and found what she was looking for.
Clare chewed at her lip. She was already stretching the bounds of her imagination, envisaging Richard stealing files from her computer – but surely him rummaging in the digital trashcan on the off-chance there was something in there he could leverage was a step too far? So how did Richard get his hands on the deleted, unverified version? It had only existed for a few hours. Then she remembered that, for a laugh, she’d sent a copy to Anna, Ivy and Fred. But none of her friends would have given it to Richard, would they?
Back upstairs, Clare tidied away the mess, asking herself how she’d allowed this to happen. She folded a couple of sweaters, wishing she had just accepted that a canny man had bested her mother out of the farm. After their estrangement, Clare hadn’t expected or wanted to inherit. When she’d discovered what Richard had done, she should have buried her mother, appointed an estate agent and gone straight back to London.
But after decades fighting for the underdogs, Clare was always going to try to right a wrong. When Anna alerted her to the planning application, Clare’s automatic response had been to protect vulnerable people from a bully, especially when Richard’s plans threatened her mother’s orchard. That was naive – she should have realized how tenaciously Hastings would fight. It wasn’t just her leading BARS which irked him. She suspected he was annoyed by the way she fought tooth and claw. That was her style, to keep going, determined to find a way to win.
Tidying away the last pair of shoes, Clare plodded downstairs, scanned the poisonous leaflet once more and sent it to Sally, asking her advice. But there was already the acrid taste of loss in her mouth. She received an instantaneous response informing her Sally was away on sick leave and not expected back until the new year. There were details of alternative contacts, but Clare didn’t know any well enough to share her shame with them, and suspected there was no rush; from partners’ meetings she knew defamation cases were slow.
As 8 December rolled around, the plan was for BARS and their experts to rendezvous at the Old Rectory. All except their lookout, Ivy, who was to text Clare when she spotted Sam’s horsebox heading away from the village. Each BARS member chose an expert to accompany on the site visit. Ivy claimed smell and Clare water. For reasons that escaped Clare, Fred wanted to deal with noise, which left Anna with visual and traffic.
When Clare arrived, tingling with excitement, there were already several cars parked outside Anna’s house. The front door was ajar, and Clare made her way to the kitchen where Anna introduced everyone by their names and specialisms.
Roger came in, trudged to the kettle and switched it on. Looking at his tight shoulders and the side of his pinched face, Clare questioned if she was relying on Anna too much. She didn’t want to drive a stake through the heart of her friend’s marriage. Clare cringed and looked away, telling herself it was safer meeting at Anna’s. Someone might notice strange cars parked at Orchard Farm, or outside the old almshouses. Clare’s phone buzzed.
Coast clear!
Clare’s expert was a man called Walter. He was short and slim with sandy-coloured thinning hair and wire-rimmed spectacles. The first time he spoke, Clare liked his authoritative voice – it cast her back to university days listening to law lecturers – but not what he had to say.
‘I’ve read their report. I was surprised, but you do realize it might be a fair assessment?’
She nodded but crossed her fingers.
Walter loaded his equipment silently into the boot of Clare’s car and she drove him to the village hall where Ivy met them, a school girlish grin on her face. Anna unfurled a copy of the site plan and briefed the team.
‘Can we pop up to the site and look for ourselves, I’d like to take some samples?’ asked Walter.
Clare exchanged a glance with Anna, then huffed, ‘Better not.’
‘Shame,’ said Walter, ‘I expect the Inspector will want to visit the site as part of the public hearing.’
They split up. Walter used a small handheld machine to measure the distance from the village hall to the River Shire. Hugging her jacket around her, Clare joined him on the riverbank. As she stood listening to the gentle roar of the gushing stream, she tried to dispel the feeling that her hopes were being carried away like the water cascading out to sea. Walter pulled on thigh high rubber boots.
‘You’re not going in, are you?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘I must test the water,’ he said, and explained he would analyse the pH level to assess the baseline water quality.
‘Right,’ she said.
‘You might as well leave me for a while. I want to take samples along the river; try and identify and quantify the different species of fish, invertebrates, algae and plants – assess the ecological health of the river. Fortunately, your opponent has conducted a hydrological study and set out the results, so I can critique his findings and check I agree with his conclusions on how, given surface water run-off patterns, those chickens would affect the water.’
Clare watched him wade off into the river, looking as content as she would be with her nose in an employment contract. Walter knew what he was doing. She hoped his conclusions matched her hopes.
It was two weeks before Christmas and the team were in the Smugglers Inn. The scent of mulled wine and pine needles filled the air, mingling with the comforting crackle of a roaring log fire.
Wrapped around the beams were branches of pine mixed with ivy and dotted with golden baubles. Candles flickered on every table, casting a soft glow on faces. Above the bar, strings of warm lights twinkled, their reflection bouncing off rows of polished glasses. At one end was a branch of mistletoe, waiting to catch unsuspecting couples, and in a corner, a Christmas tree decorated with what looked like ornaments handmade by the landlady’s children. Clare listened to the fading bars of Hark the Herald Angels feeling nostalgic for past Christmases with her parents, and later just her mother, in this pub. She smiled, realizing that this time she hadn’t moved the timeline of her memories to include Guy.
Ivy, Fred, Anna and Clare were in a booth close to the warmth, with Stop-it at their feet.
‘How’s Jasmine Cottage?’ asked Anna, grinning.
‘Eh?’ said Fred, patting his pockets. ‘I think I’ve left the damn hearing aids at home.’
Anna raised her voice. ‘How’s Jasmine?’
‘Lovely and warm,’ replied Fred. ‘No need to turn the thermostat down when someone else foots the bill!’ Ivy opened her mouth to speak. Clare braced herself – if Ivy suggested Fred was being unethical, she might hurl her copy of the submission document at the woman. How ethical had Hastings been in serving his Section 21 notice?
‘There’s something bothering me about Fred living in Jasmine Cottage,’ said Ivy. Clare’s hands curled round her document. ‘How safe is he? Can he be evicted?’ asked Ivy.
Clare gave Ivy a dazed look. The answer hinged on whether Fred was squatting. She didn’t think he was. Fred hadn’t broken into the cottage and, fortunately, despite their efforts, Richard’s agents had made a mistake. They’d sent Clare an email, but hadn’t twigged she wasn’t the guest, and so a copy hadn’t been sent to Jasmine Cottage itself. ‘Don’t worry about him, Ivy. He’s not going anywhere anytime soon.’
‘Good,’ said Ivy, pulling open a packet of crisps. ‘I’ve had another ￡700 in cash donations, Gina has transferred ￡825 and Trish another ￡282, and my sponsorship has grown – wait for it – I’m running at nearly ￡500.’
‘Just when is this diet starting?’ asked Fred.
Ivy paused mid-crisp. ‘Umm, point taken,’ she said, tipping the rest on to the floor. Stop-it lurched forwards.
‘It’s just if we’re going to raise the money in time, you need to start soon,’ said Fred.
Clare agreed with Fred, but she also felt sorry for Ivy. The woman enjoyed her food.
‘Right, let’s start,’ said Clare, marking the date on the cover page. ‘Comments?’ She looked up and ranged her eyes over the others. No one met hers. ‘Even if you don’t have any suggestions, can’t you look for grammatical errors?’
‘Do we really care? It’s not an English Literature A-level paper,’ said Fred.
‘I care. I want this to be as well written as Richard’s.’
‘Isn’t what it says more important than how it’s put?’ said Fred. ‘It doesn’t need to be perfect.’
Clare realized that Fred had a point. It was the appendix with their own EIA which would win the appeal. Drafting the document was irrelevant – the group could compose Booker Prize winning prose, but what mattered to the Planning Inspector was professionals with credentials pulling apart Richard’s biased EIA.
Ivy was shovelling in a handful of nuts.
‘Didn’t you just say you’d started dieting?’ said Fred, knocking Ivy’s hand with one of his, spilling nuts across the table. ‘In fact, right now. Mineral water or diet drink, Ivy?’ he offered. ‘My round. Usual for everyone else?’
‘Pint please, Fred,’ said a male voice from the neighbouring booth.
Clare sat bolt upright. Anything they said in Sam’s earshot was bound to be reported to Richard. Her mind clouded with a vision of their row in his car nearly two weeks ago. She wasn’t having this. She rose, and with hands on hips, glared down into Sam’s smiling face. ‘You need to move. We’re discussing something confidential.’
‘Then do it somewhere private, not in the pub on a Friday evening,’ reasoned Sam.
He slipped out of the booth and walked to the bar. Clare could hear him chattering to Fred, asking if he was comfortable in Jasmine Cottage. Then Sam casually asked, ‘How short are you for the EIA?’
‘Fred, no!’ shouted Clare. Too late, she remembered he couldn’t hear her, but she heard his reply, ‘About seven grand.’ Clare feigned outrage but was secretly pleased. When Richard heard the size of the shortfall, he would assume they could never reach their target. The experts had been and were typing up their reports; how she would pay them would be next year’s problem.