Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
L aura stood the mugs on the draining board, went through to the dining room and looked askance at the colourful pile of graffitied folders laid out on the table. She wasn’t in the mood for work now, but she’d set aside the rest of Saturday morning to finish marking this lot. If she put it off now, she’d be doing it at ten o’clock on Sunday night. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Laura taught children with special educational needs, at a small, friendly school nestled in a crook of the South Downs, five miles from Charnley Acre. She loved her job; the hard work was satisfying and rewarding but not, unfortunately, in a financial way. This wouldn’t have been a problem if Spindlewood wasn’t rapidly turning into a money pit. As if to remind her of this, a gust of wind set the dining-room windows rattling. On the sill of the smaller window, a small pool of rainwater had gathered in the night. Laura ignored it, sat down, and opened the top folder. A stream of wonky writing met her, pages of crooked lettering with hardly any breaks between the words, but there’d be a story in there somewhere, with any luck. Pushing the problem of the house and its ever encroaching needs out of her mind, she picked up her pen. Spindlewood had waited long enough. It could wait again, at least until after Christmas.
The windows of the elegant, oak-panelled dining room overlooked the front of the house. Hearing the sound of an approaching vehicle, Laura looked up. Moments later, she was opening the door to her friend, Emily, and Wilf, Emily’s ten-year-old black-and-white whippet.
‘Saved by the bell.’ She gave Emily a kiss on the cheek.
‘I didn’t get to ring it. Saved from what?’
‘Marking.’ Laura raised her eyes.
‘If you will be a teacher, what d’you expect?’ Emily came into the hall, bringing a wave of cold air with her. She went straight through to the kitchen, Wilf trotting behind her. ‘Two mugs? Have I interrupted a Saturday morning lovers’ tryst?’ She pointed meaningfully up at the ceiling.
‘I told you, I was marking. And no, Spencer’s not here, if that’s what you mean,’ Laura said. ‘If you must know, it was Clayton Masters. He came to see me earlier. We had things to discuss.’
Emily looked surprised. ‘Clayton, as in man of the soil? What were you discussing? Garden pest control?’
Laura laughed. ‘I’ll tell you, if you let me get a word in edgeways.’
She grabbed her navy-blue duffle coat from the hook on the back of the door. Since Clayton’s visit she’d felt strangely unsettled, and now she wanted to be outdoors again.
Emily shrugged, caught Wilf by his collar and followed Laura out into the garden. Passing the shrubbery, they went up the short flight of stone steps and headed along the path that led beneath the rose arch. Beyond the arch, the path opened onto a circular paved area with a carved stone bird bath in the centre and a blue-painted iron bench facing it. Laura sat down and Emily followed suit. The bench felt damp and chilly, like the day itself.
Laura loved the garden in winter, as much as she did the rest of the year. Orange leaves clung stubbornly to black branches, scarlet dogwood lit the shrubbery, and they’d seen several roses still in bloom along the path. The bare twigs and stems of resting plants had a charm of their own, creating stark but beautiful shapes in the borders, as if they’d been sketched in ink by an artistic hand.
Emily wasn’t prepared to wait any longer. ‘So, come on then. What’s afoot with the cute gardener?’
Laura smothered a smile at her friend’s description of Clayton but didn’t pick up on it; that was one conversation best left alone. She told Emily about the Christmas trees. Again, surprise crossed Emily’s face. She did a little double take.
Laura frowned. ‘It’s not that wild an idea, surely?’
‘No, I suppose not. I was only thinking that after the ruckus in the Goose the other night you might have been a bit more circumspect, that’s all.’
‘What ruckus?’
‘Surely you’ve heard. It’s all over the village!’
‘Not quite all over if it hasn’t reached here.’
Laura was puzzled. She didn’t have to stay that way for long. Clearly with some delight, Emily launched into a wildly vivid account of the stand-up row between Spencer and Clayton that had, apparently, happened in the Goose and Feather last Monday night. Emily hadn’t been there at the time, she said, but it seemed that those who were had made no secret of what was said, or rather shouted, by both parties. Unsurprisingly, it was all about the development site.
Laura sighed. ‘Are they still arguing about that? I thought everyone had got over it.’
‘You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you?’
Emily’s version of events was typically colourful, becoming more so as she warmed to her story. Accusations had flown from both sides, Laura heard; some reasonable, others not, but spewed out in the heat of the argument. Laura took some of this with a large pinch of salt – Emily loved a drama – but the fact that there had been an argument couldn’t be disputed.
When Emily had finished her story, Laura sat quietly, trying to take all this in. The rancour between the two men was baffling, as well as acutely sad. Surely Spencer understood why Clayton was so strongly opposed to his scheme? In his line of business as a property developer, he must face opposition all the time. He was used to handling it, and it wasn’t personal. What was different about this particular dispute that had caused him to make a spectacle of himself in public? And, as for Clayton, from what Laura knew of him, virtually fighting with Spencer in the pub seemed entirely out of character. Laura felt a rush of shame for Spencer, having acted so unprofessionally. She wasn’t too keen on her gardener’s involvement, either.
But it did explain Clayton’s hesitation over accepting her offer of the use of her garden. He couldn’t have known that the pub episode had passed her by.
‘I wouldn’t worry,’ Emily said. ‘You know what pub banter’s like once it gets going.’
‘Hardly banter, if it was anything like you said.’
What was she supposed to do now? It wasn’t up to her to do anything, though, was it? If Clayton could ride this out and set up shop in her front garden, knowing her connection to Spencer and that he was likely to show up at the house at any time, then so be it.
The whole situation had blown up out of all proportion; that was the truth of it, Emily asserted now. She put it down to male pride. Put two women in that situation and they’d have agreed to differ and have done with it.
‘I do hope you’re right,’ Laura said.
She had an awful vision of her boyfriend and her gardener battling it out, possibly physically, in the middle of her lawn, with Christmas carols as incidental music. That would give the village something to talk about. Laura smiled to herself, and switched her thoughts back to the positive. The Christmas tree sales plot would bring an added air of festivity to Spindlewood and nobody, especially not the two supposedly grown men in question, was going to spoil it.
She got up from the bench. ‘It’s getting nippy. Let’s go in and I’ll make coffee, if you’ve got time.’
‘I’ve always got time,’ Emily said, pulling a face.
That wasn’t quite true. Emily, who described herself as joyfully divorced, was a journalist on the local weekly newspaper, the Cliffhaven News , and crammed her time off with endless activity. Her remark was an oblique reference to her forays into the world of internet dating, which had so far been a failure – according to Emily anyway.
‘No luck in the love market, I suppose?’ said Laura.
‘You suppose right. There was one bloke whose profile said he had his own set of power tools. That might’ve been handy. I could’ve sent him over here when I’d finished with him.’
They both laughed. Emily called Wilf, and they walked back along the rose path. Laura automatically looked up at the house as they reached the top of the steps. A couple of roof tiles had come loose, just above her bedroom window. Those would have to be seen to before the wind got under them and lifted them off completely. Each new failing the house displayed nailed home the truth that she couldn’t afford the upkeep.
Built in 1901 of Edwardian red brick, with tall chimneys straight out of Enid Blyton, and the turret with its gnome-cap roof, the house had been James’s dream before it was hers. But it hadn’t taken her long to appreciate its airy rooms and fairy- tale charm, at which point she’d fallen in love with the house completely. They’d bought it for a song because of its run-down state, then scrimped and saved, and lived in a couple of rooms with baby Holly until they could afford to make it habitable, doing much of the work themselves.
Even when Holly was growing up and had begun to look at life beyond the backwater of a Sussex village, they had never dreamed of selling. Instead they’d planned how they would spread themselves out and just enjoy living here.
And then, the unthinkable had happened: James had died of cancer, indecently fast, it seemed, once he’d been diagnosed. He’d been almost twenty years older than Laura, but still only sixty when he died. So much of James’s income as manager of a haulage company, as well as his inheritance from his parents, had been poured into Spindlewood. They would have made better plans for the future, had there been time, but all that had seemed such a long way off. Yet here she was at forty-five, having already been widowed for five years.
‘Every time I look at the house, I can’t help thinking it won’t be mine for much longer,’ she said.
Emily looked at her in dismay. ‘Oh, don’t say that, Laura. It’s so sad. You can’t think of selling up. All your memories are here.’
‘I can take my memories with me but what I can’t do is watch the place falling down around my ears.’ Laura laughed to lighten the moment. She didn’t want to feel sad. ‘I don’t expect it will come to that.’
They’d reached the back door. Emily went ahead and made straight for the kettle. Laura stood with her arms folded, gazing out of the window at the wintry garden.
‘Maybe I could take in lodgers. I’ve got two spare bedrooms and an attic with potential.’
‘You’d hate that, having strangers about the place.’
‘I know I would. I could put up with it if I had to, though. Plenty of people do. In any case, this house is way too big for just one person, two when Holly’s home, and she’ll be off before long, making her own life, as she should.’
Who was Laura trying to convince? Emily, or herself? The thing about the house being too big for one person had come from a throwaway remark of Spencer’s. He hadn’t actually said she should think about downsizing, but the implication had been there. He was good at that, dropping an idea into her head while pretending he wasn’t serious. She’d taken no notice at the time, but clearly his words had struck a chord, somewhere deep inside her brain.
She turned to Emily. ‘I really don’t want to sell Spindlewood.’
‘Then, of course you mustn’t. Anyway, if you moved into some pokey cottage, where would you put your mum and your sister and her lot when they come and stay, like at Christmas, for instance?’ Emily grinned. ‘You know the answer, don’t you? Marry Spencer, or at least let him move in. He’d soon sort the house out.’
It wasn’t the first time Emily had suggested that, and only half in jest.
Laura giggled. ‘He’d sort it out all right. He’d probably want to flatten the whole thing and build a block of flats.’ Emily raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t worry, I’m only joking.’
But already, Laura’s thoughts had veered away from the problems of the house. She and Spencer were going out to dinner tonight, to the Ashley Arms, in a nearby village. Should she tell him about Clayton’s Christmas trees being sold at Spindlewood, or would that be adding fuel to a fire that might be about to burn out of its own accord? He’d have to know some time, though, and there was no rational reason why he should make an issue of it. As usual, she was probably worrying for nothing.