CHAPTER 3
Malcolm and Fiona Davis had moved into the big house in Westlinke just over eighteen months ago, and since they’d arrived, their takeover had been nothing short of a coup d’état.
Having swingers move in next door was an endless source of irritation and, indeed, fascination.
At least Pat suspected them to be swingers.
She’d overheard Fi wax lyrical about ‘tantric sex therapy’, which sounded an awful lot like swinging.
Fi was one of those people who tapped repeatedly on someone’s arm when she talked, flicking her blonde hair about, laughing and pushing her bosoms towards her interlocutor’s unsuspecting chin.
‘Hurry up!’ Prichard called from the bottom of the stairs. ‘We’re not even fashionably late now. We’re rudely late. Hahaha! There won’t be any vol-au-vents left.’
‘Well, you can’t expect a generous buffet from an orthorexic,’ Pat declared as she descended the stairs. ‘Fi controls food and probably everything else.’
She had changed into an elderly pair of black leggings that bagged at the knee due to wear, or loss of elastane, or both, and had donned some slightly newer hiking boots with odd laces, thick socks and a large navy ribbed jumper.
She had managed to run a comb through her grey bob but was obviously, belligerently underdressed. Prichard took in her outfit.
‘Nothing says “I couldn’t care less” more than some old leggings and a jumper.’ He laughed. He was used to her contrary nature and, indeed, secretly admired it. He was a people-pleaser himself. He knew it and it annoyed him.
‘Wait,’ said Pat, picking up a lipstick off the side. Looking into the large round mirror on the wall, she administered a slash of red. ‘There. Now no one can say I didn’t make an effort.’
A few minutes later, having walked down the path and round the corner, Pat and Prichard found themselves in Fi’s remodelled sitting room, up to their shoe leather in a thick clotted-cream shag-pile rug that seemed to float above the polished mahogany floor.
All Pat could think as she glanced down at her slowly disappearing feet was how tiresome it must be to vacuum and how impractical the colour was for seaside living.
But looking around Mal and Fi’s house, it was immediately clear that there had been little consideration paid to nature or the environment.
The Georgian manor had been stripped of all its distinguishing features in favour of a neutral modern makeover that pleased no one and offended even fewer.
White leather sofas, white hydrangeas, white trinket trays containing little golden coffee beans, and enough scented candles to perfume a spa; Fi had employed an interior designer from Surrey who specialised in doing up mock-Tudor mansions in gated communities.
‘Pat!’ exclaimed Malcolm as he approached, waving a bottle of cold champagne. ‘Can I offer you a glass of fizz?’
In his late forties, with a pink open-necked shirt, a suggestion of chest hair and the faded tan of someone who’d recently taken very early retirement (due to good fortune, or indeed making one) and wintered on a lounger in the Caribbean, Mal was on the social end of the spectrum.
Jovial, ebullient. If Fiona ever let go of her short, tight leash, he might even have been the life and soul of a party or two.
But every time his face flushed with enjoyment, or he laughed too enthusiastically or slapped one too many backs with his flat, fleshy palm, Fi would announce, not even suggest, that it was time to leave.
As a result, Mal was wary of appearing to have too much fun.
The swinging appeared to be on Fi’s terms or not at all.
‘Very kind of you,’ smiled Pat, watching as he poured champagne into a heavy cut-glass flute, then glanced furtively over at his wife before adding in a little more.
‘Don’t tell Fi, whatever you do,’ he whispered. ‘I’m supposed to be rationing the stuff. Prichard? Fizz?’
‘It would be rude not to,’ Prichard snorted, proffering his empty glass.
Mal took a step backwards and flashed a confident smile. ‘Have you met your new neighbour yet?’
Standing with her back to the double-glazed sliding doors with a view onto the garden, the crazy paving and the permanently bubbling hot tub was a diminutive figure with cropped hair. Her silhouette moved forward.
‘I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,’ she said in a husky voice, thrusting out her right hand, which was strapped up with a bandage. ‘Dorna Braddon. I’m new round here. I’m the one who’s been building the new house at the end of the lane, with the hedge.’
Pat squinted into the low sun. Ah yes, that haircut, that short stature. ‘The woman who doesn’t own a dog lead.’
‘Oh, it’s you.’ Dorna laughed, withdrawing her hand. ‘The self-appointed park warden.’
‘The irresponsible dog owner,’ Pat reiterated.
‘I was very much in charge of my dog, actually.’
‘Watching it herd a flock of pregnant sheep off the cliff?’
‘Trigger was nowhere near doing that.’
‘Trigger would have euthanised about thirty ewes and their lambs had I not intervened.’
‘He was totally under control.’
‘Just put him on a lead. It’s not that difficult.’ Pat sighed and shook her head wearily.
This Dorna character seemed to be very pleased with herself, with her henna dye and her forearm of jingly-jangly bangles.
She even wore on her index finger, over the bandage, a thick silver ring, something you’d see on a teenage girl who’d treated herself to a shopping-centre afternoon with her friends.
‘What do you make of her?’ Pat whispered to Prichard while pretending to admire a display of cymbidium orchids, which turned out to be very convincing fakes.
‘A middle-aged woman with a ring on her index finger is either recently divorced or going through a midlife crisis where she’s trying to find herself.’
‘Haha, Prich, they missed that out of my psychotherapy training.’
‘Question is,’ continued Prichard, ‘which one is Dorna Braddon?’
‘Maybe both, or none. Or something else entirely,’ hissed back Pat.
‘Right! Evening! Evening, everyone.’ There was the tinkling sound of a knife tapping crystal.
‘Shush, shush, if you will. You’re not here to enjoy yourselves,’ joked Fi, with a flick of her blonde hair.
Her slim shoulders shrugged cutely up and down with self-satisfaction.
Pat raised an eyebrow. Half the village was here, flattening down Fi’s shag-pile rug and helping themselves to as much champagne as manners would allow.
There was Jacqui (with a qui) in her big long skirt, plonked on a white sofa close to the vol-au-vents on the coffee table.
Jacqui was a jewellery designer, with a gimlet eye for detail and a myopic inability to see the bigger picture, which Pat had always thought was a bit of a shame, especially since she ran the weekly art club in the village.
Standing by the door was the local member of Parliament, whose presence was clearly something of a coup.
He was wearing his portcullis lapel pin just in case people didn’t know how important he was.
Over by the window was Peggy, with her Brillo pad of grey hair, who ran the post office cum village shop, the church committee and the shoebox collection for children in need at Christmas.
She was also a fiendish Sudoku aficionado; she and Pat occasionally exchanged notes about this.
Opposite was nosy Bev, who’d lived on the village green her entire life and patrolled it with vigour and a twitch of her curtains on a daily basis.
No one managed to enter the Green Lion or stagger home without her knowledge.
Then there was the couple from Brighton who’d just bought the rose-covered cottage on the corner.
The pretty brunette wife, Lucy, was already something of a Fi Davis groupie.
Standing by the drinks table was a youngish-looking dark-haired man with a glint of a golden earring, who’d recently arrived in Westlinke and lived next door to the pub.
Pat thought he should just move into it and save on his heating bills.
Next to him was Diccon and his wife Marcia, who were living proof that opposites did attract.
He was extremely lean and she was large and fat, like something out of a nursery rhyme.
They lived in the other big house up the hill, which rumour had it had once appeared on Grand Designs, although no one had ever been invited in to verify that.
And then, of course, there was Prichard, who suddenly seemed to be enjoying Ms Braddon’s company rather too much.
He kept throwing his head back and honking at everything she said.
‘Thank you, thanking you,’ continued Fi, with another tap of her knife.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbours – and we are honoured today with our elected representative too.’ She looked over towards the door, grinned and bobbed a curtsey.
‘I just wanted to say how happy I am that you are all here to celebrate a bit of a launch – the proper one was in London, obviously – for my new brand, Vibrant-Sea!’
She gestured grandly towards a short black metal rack of clothing behind one of the white sofas. There was a faint ripple of applause, which she acknowledged graciously.