Chapter Two
Imogen drifted awake to birdsong and opened her eyes to see faded chintz curtains, the fabric worn practically transparent.
As they billowed at the open window, she glimpsed a hazy blue sky, framed with honeysuckle tendrils, and the tops of the fruit
trees in the orchard. The bed, the only piece of furniture in the room, stood on bare floorboards. The removal men, exhausted
after the long trip from Wimbledon, were not pleased when she asked them to take it right up to the little attic room, rejecting
the larger bedrooms on the floor below.
She jumped as a soft weight landed on her chest with a thud. Tango yawned widely in her face and then stalked, tail held high,
to his favorite spot at her feet, leaving four perfect paw prints in mud on the white pillowcase.
“How on earth do you manage to keep all that muck on your paws as you come up the stairs? What do you do? Walk on your knuckles?”
she scolded as he purred like a chainsaw and dribbled, ignoring her until she shoved him ignominiously onto the floor with
her feet.
He had spent the first few hours in his new home cowering in the bathroom cupboard. After a night of cautiously patrolling his new domain, he had mostly regained his usual savoir faire, and he made it clear he was in the mood for a hearty breakfast.
She rolled out of bed. Feeling lightheaded, she pulled on yesterday’s clothes and gingerly descended the steep attic stairs.
Tango insisted on staying just half a step in front of her, continually in danger of an inadvertent kick, as she tried to
hurry him on. Ignoring the bathroom for the time being—there had been no hot water the previous night, and she had mentally
added this to her Urgent Tasks list—she padded barefoot across the wide, sunlit hall and through to the kitchen at the back
of the house.
Despite the promise of another hot, cloudless day outside, the flagstones in the north-facing kitchen were cold underfoot.
Giving the cast-iron range in the chimney recess a doubtful look, Imogen went first to the deep stone sink with her kettle
and then across to the modern gas cooker she had thankfully spotted tucked into the corner. With the kettle heating, she dug
a big earthenware mug out of the first box she saw in the selection piled against the huge wooden dresser.
Then she delved into the “essentials box” Sally had packed for her. It came up trumps. Not only had it provided the vital
instant coffee, Sally—who pretended to despise Tango—had also thought to pack two tins of cat food and—miracle of miracles—a
tin opener. Tango, who looked as if he had expected no less, hovered mewing as Imogen dusted off one of her best saucers and
loaded it with cat food on the floor.
She poured boiling water directly onto the coffee granules—sadly, the magic box hadn’t managed to produce a bottle of milk—then opened the back door into the kitchen garden. Cradling her mug in both hands, her bare feet winced across the gravel path that dissected the overgrown parterre garden. She pushed through the ivy-trailing archway in the stone wall and, thankfully for her now bruised feet, reached the dew-soaked lawn beyond. The grass was overgrown, and the bottoms of her jeans were soon wet through.
The last time she had seen this garden, she was being ushered by the local estate agent, who had largely ignored her, keeping
up a constant patter with Nigel as he asked tedious questions about deeds and dry rot guarantees. Imogen had wandered off
in a reverie, drinking in the springtime freshness and ravishing prettiness of the gardens that were then more abundant than
abandoned. She had daydreamed about their children playing football on the lawn. In her imagination, there was even a family
dog—a red setter—barking frantically and trying to steal the ball.
Three months on, the neglect was more obvious, with rose branches straggling to the ground and the contents of the flower
beds spilling across the width of the paths. The weeds were winning the battle too, with bindweed smothering plants and shrubs
in a blanket of heart-shaped leaves.
She headed for an arch cut into the yew hedge. This, Imogen thought, was the house’s best secret. Directly on the other side of the yew hedge was a fast-flowing stream with a tiny wooden bridge leading into an orchard with some fifteen or twenty mature fruit trees in a meadow. Beyond them was a low stone wall marking the edge of the property and a gently rising hill dotted with grazing sheep. Probably half a mile farther was a Georgian mansion. Imogen had been intrigued by it, asking the agent to tell her more, but he confessed he was new to the area and had simply dismissed it with a wave of the hand as “the old manor house.” No longer a family home but a conference center or something similar, he thought.
There was an apple tree in the orchard with its trunk split low down into three sturdy branches. She hauled herself up into
this rough seat, sloshing her coffee a little in the process.
In the weeks since Nigel had died, she had got used to a constant gnawing anxiety, reliving the moment when she heard the
news about his death twenty times a day, each time with a flip-flop of the stomach and a lurch of shock. Eating little and
sleeping less, Imo—reliant on the carefully rationed diazepam her London doctor had persuaded her to accept—had become quite
fragile.
Of course, the plan of action when Nigel was with her had been perfectly sensible.
He: rising commercial lawyer, soon to be offered partnership in prestigious London law firm.
She: perfect wife maintaining children, dog, and roses around door of picture-postcard house.
He would work from his study at home on Mondays and Fridays, commuting to London and staying in a pied-à-terre for the rest
of the week. The mortgage would be large, and his career was at a crucial point, so cutting back on work would be out of the
question, but then, Imogen remembered, he had dismissed the idea of her sharing the financial responsibility.
“I thought I might take the chance to develop some of my illustration ideas—try my hand at some children’s books, perhaps,” she had suggested.
“I hardly think the income from your drawings is going to transport me to a life of leisure,” he told her crushingly, “and
anyway, I want you to settle down properly in our new life. It might not be a particularly feminist thing, but we’re a team,
Imo—and I need you providing the backup—food, house, ironing, all that Mrs. Hinch stuff.” He wrapped his arms around her waist
and consciously adopted his most charming smile. “And kids. You’ll have your hands full then,” he added, laughing at the expression
on her face.
“You know what they say about ‘behind every great man there’s a competent woman,’ or something like that...” he had said
as he searched for a more convincing alternative to the word competent , which was possibly not the most accurate epithet in Imogen’s case.
He had a point. Her stint as a temp at Nigel’s office had been a disaster.
After meeting him once at Sally and Alistair’s dinner party—where she admitted being sacked yet again—he had called her the
next day, not to invite her out as she initially imagined, but to let her know about a vacancy for an admin assistant in the
adjoining office to his own. Bemused by his offer, she telephoned the human resources manager as he instructed.
In the firm’s Mayfair offices, she had been even more puzzled when he ignored her for the first few days. She was acutely aware of his presence, passing close by her desk in his impeccable pin-striped suits and shiny shoes, usually in conversation with a colleague or barking into his phone. He had been working in the commercial law division next door to Imogen’s family law section that—as she had hoped—rewarded her yen for human drama with an almost daily sideshow of screaming divorcées. For pure entertainment, this was almost better than the reality shows she and her flatmates thrived on. They would wait for her arrival with chilled beer and peanuts in return for her regaling them with the dramatic events of the day.
Nigel had been right, of course. The pressure of her double life had started to show. At the time she was working all day
and then up painting and drawing half of the night in her little room in the shared house. Despite taking twenty-minute naps
in the staff room at lunchtime, she had one day fallen asleep at her desk. Exhausted by a particularly creative session of
painting the night before, Imogen had let her head slump onto her hand—just for a moment—early one afternoon. She was lulled
by the knowledge that her boss, a tyrannical older Scotsman called Hamish, had taken a well-preserved would-be divorcée to
lunch. The woman had shamelessly flirted with Hamish, clearly under the impression that flattery of her solicitor and not
her extremely rich ex-husband was the way to secure her the most favorable settlement.
Imogen had been woken by a deafening crash. Nigel, passing her desk and catching sight of Hamish emerging from the lift, had
swiftly toppled a pile of heavy files onto the floor. As the noise woke her, she felt him tugging her down off her chair,
giving her a chance to compose herself whilst pretending to pick up the files.
He stood up, apologized charmingly to Hamish for distracting Imogen with his clumsiness, and marched off, turning to give her a wink as he passed. From then, drinks to thank him had quickly progressed to lunch several times a week, then dinner, then weekends away, and—within months—she had accepted his proposal of marriage.
“These are the facts,” Imogen told herself briskly in the sunny orchard. “I am a dried-up old widow at thirty-two. I have
a lovely, but definitely bonkers, and hands-off mother. I have few real friends and a family house with no family. I also
have no job and, at most, a year of income to my name. To top it all, I am now living in the middle of nowhere, suggesting
there is little chance of any of the above omissions correcting themselves.”
Becoming the mad old woman who lives on the edge of the village in a decrepit, rambling house with about thirty cats, making
herbal potions and frightening the local children, is an attractive option, she mused. However, at my age one does worry about
peaking too soon...
She glanced at her watch. Nearly nine o’clock! She had been sitting in her tree for more than an hour. The early morning mist
had burnt away now, the grass was dry, and the sun was shining hot onto her back.
She wanted another coffee. With milk. And a bacon sandwich, she decided, jumping down and brushing off her jeans.
Never mind life’s huge questions, the smaller question was whether the ancient black bicycle, complete with basket in front of the handlebars, was still there. She had seen it tucked into a corner of the woodshed three months before. Given the state of it then, Imogen guessed it might have been left behind.
She was right.
“Yay!” she crowed as she disentangled it from a pile of firewood and dragged it out into the open. The tires were flat, of
course, but there was even a pump clipped to the bike frame. She pumped the tires up and took it for a wobbly test run along
the garden path. Embarrassingly loud brakes but otherwise, perfectly roadworthy.
Stopping only to put on some shoes and grab her wallet, she wheeled the old bicycle onto the lane and gingerly cycled off.
Middlemass was a picture-postcard village with expensive houses called things like “The Old Schoolhouse” and “The Old Bakery.”
There was a church with churchyard, which hugged the driveway to a grand old pile called Middlemass Hall—the Georgian mansion
she could see from the orchard—and just on the other side of the driveway, on the road toward the market town of Portneath,
was Storybook Cottage.
Her new home was about a mile from the center of the village, and she was soon cycling past the duck pond in the village center. She and Nigel had visited the house on a Sunday, and cricketers had been playing on the green, but on a weekday, it was deserted. The tiny selection of shops, the little village pub, and the primary school were all at the far end, near the duck pond and the cricket green. If any more serious shopping was required, presumably she would need to get to Portneath, which—according to the wooden road sign—was a bit further than she would like to go by bicycle.
No need to lock it up here, she thought, leaning her bike against the low wall outside the village shop. It was a combined
newsagent, post office, and convenience store all packed into a short parade of shops, each with a Georgian bay window. The
inside looked like a Technicolor version of the Old Curiosity Shop.
You couldn’t swing a cat in here without making contact with half the product range, she thought—or is the term retail line ? Not that I ever would literally swing a cat, she thought with a shudder, not even Tango, who sometimes deserves it. Actually, it hardly matters because there’s
probably some hygiene regulation that stops you from trying it anyway, she reflected idly as she wandered around the tiny
interior, lobbing items randomly into her basket. The legislation would be something like, “page 217, Section C, Subsection
2 b forbidding the aerial perambulation of felines.” Deliberating over spaghetti hoops versus baked beans, she was distracted
by the shop’s doorbell announcing a new arrival.
“Doctor, how lovely to see you,” squawked the well-covered elderly lady behind the till.
“Hello, Mrs. Pinkerton, how’s the knee today?” said the man. He was a tall, clean-cut, and strikingly handsome blond. He was
also wearing an impeccable suit and tie despite the promise of a hot, sticky day.
“Ooh—‘Muriel,’ please—it’s ever so much better now you’ve had a look at it, Doctor,” she simpered.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to do more than offer sympathy.”
“But that’s the thing, Doctor. I don’t know what you did, but I feel ever so much better,” insisted Muriel, breathless with
admiration as she took the money for his newspaper.
“Well, I know we doctors have a reputation for thinking we’re God, but I certainly don’t make any claims for the laying on
of hands.” At this he caught Imogen’s eye and gave her a wink.
She grinned conspiratorially back at him.
“Oh, you are a one,” said Muriel delightedly as she watched him sketch a wave and go, running down the steps to the path.
“Doesn’t know how clever he is,” she said to no one in particular, “and ever so handsome too.”
Dumping her basket on the counter, Imogen smiled distantly at the older woman as she recovered from the excitement of the
doctor’s visit, still enjoyably flustered and pink in the face.
“Stocking up, dear?” Muriel probed, eyes burning with curiosity.
“Yep,” replied Imogen, ignoring the implied invitation to explain herself.
“I think you’ll find we have most things here,” Muriel announced. “I always says to my husband, Ted, I says, ‘You can hardly
complain about people deserting the village shop if we don’t provide what they want.’?”
Imogen smiled distantly, hoping her lack of response would be noted as lack of interest. Which it was. No offense intended.
“Oh, yes,” Muriel continued, oblivious, settling herself more comfortably on her chair and launching into a well-rehearsed diatribe. “I’ve got no patience for them that say the supermarkets are taking over. It’ll be a good long time before my ladies—because that’s what I call them, ‘my ladies’—have got to get themselves over to the likes of Portneath, if I have my way. Are you going to be in the area long, my dear?” she asked, her new train of thought following without her drawing breath.
Imogen smiled and nodded vaguely, her mind back at the house and on her list of things to do.
“I said, are you going to be in the area long, dear, or are you just here on holiday?” she persevered, speaking loudly and
slowly like an Englishman abroad.
Imogen’s eyes widened. “Oh, sorry! Yes, I moved in yesterday. Don’t know how long I’ll be staying, though...” She trailed
away.
“You’ll be the new owner of Storybook Cottage, then,” Muriel proclaimed. “A lovely family house that, I’ve always thought.”
She looked at Imogen expectantly.
“Mm,” said Imogen, not having the faintest idea what she was required to say. “I expect so,” she added helpfully, as the woman
clearly wanted more. When even this didn’t do the trick, Imogen decided on a tactical retreat. She grabbed the bag of groceries
and left with a cheery wave.
“Well, she’s a funny one and that’s for sure, isn’t she, Paddy!” Muriel shouted across to the neat middle-aged man who was sitting behind the post office counter in the corner. He was methodically sorting notes and coins and keeping his head down. She pursed her lips, drew her pale mauve cardigan around her, and patted her matching hair, making a mental note to tell her sister Joan all about the strange new arrival. The satisfying thing about being back on speaking terms with her was that there was simply no one in Middlemass even half as interested in high-quality gossip as Joan was.