Chapter 2 #2
What had I done wrong? Oh, there’d be something – most people cheat for a reason, even if that reason is as shallow and callous as I was bored, instead of something deeper like I had met my soulmate, the sex was mind-alteringly good, they made me feel alive, or my mother’s preferred reason with all of my stepdads: “He was a drunk who got a bit punchy-punchy when he’d had a few. ”
He’d told me I hadn’t seemed to need him any longer.
I had hated that. What was I, some fledgling who’d fallen from the nest and needed Oliver Ross, Lord of CrossFit, Vice-Captain of the Durham University Rowing Team, Head Boy of Dumfries Grammar School, Patron Saint of Protein Powder and Tough Mudders, to look after him?
When I met Ollie, I’d gone from being a broke waiter to getting my first job as a reporter at a finance magazine. Verity had got me the job, and even though I was earning shit money, I had business cards and could claim expenses. I was on my way.
Ollie in his swish suits, with his ￡100 holdall for his gym kit that went everywhere with him; with his uni friends who booked a villa in Nice every August; with their country pub Sunday lunches, and visits to Royal Ascot; his parents in their big house who commuted to Edinburgh and stayed at their pied-à-terre during the week; he was never the right fit for me.
His parents could tell – “Oliver told us you were from Poland, but your English is very good. We’d even looked up a few phrases in case, hadn’t we, dear?
” – his friends could tell – “Ollie said you worked in finance … oh, you report on finance. Well, all the same, right? Except for the size of your pay! Hahaha!” The only person who didn’t seem to realise we were doomed from day one was Ollie.
“Hello, stranger,” he said, whipping off his sunglasses and grinning at me.
He stood in the May sunshine at the bottom of the path, wearing his boat shoes, blue chinos, light blue dress shirt, and with his tousled light brown hair catching the light.
His confident smile made my heart soften a bit.
I did love him for much of those five years.
Perhaps from the moment that we sat down on our first date.
He hadn’t been to my house before, so I gave him the tour. The living room was deemed “very nice”.
“It hasn’t been decorated since World War One,” I replied.
“Yes, but it’s … homely?” he offered.
The kitchen was next. “Is this finished?”
“Mostly. There is a bloke from one village over, but I’m bottom of his list. He’s due to come back again in a few weeks and do the last bits.”
“Weren’t you getting this done over the winter? How is it still going on?”
There was a story I didn’t want to tell him.
“And, these are the animals,” I said, changing the subject.
Oliver liked animals – in theory – so I all but threw the cats at him and let Kennedy go wild.
“What’s upstairs?” he asked as Kennedy sniffed his crotch and tried to get his nose into the pockets of his trousers.
“More house.”
“Am I allowed to see it?”
I sighed. “It’s just the bedrooms and the loo.”
“Good. Busting for a whizz. Had way too much coffee this morning.”
So, we went upstairs. He poked his nose in my bedroom, and I made sure the visit was brief. I pointed at the bathroom and said I’d wait in the lounge.
When he came down, I handed him Kenny’s lead. “Consider this your workout for the day.”
He seemed amiable enough, and so we made our way outside and started down the lane. Ollie pointed at the field to our left. “Is that the path you can cut through to the village?”
I nodded.
“We don’t take that because it’s where …”
“Yes.”
“Understood.”
A few months earlier, just a week after moving here, I had found the body of a barmaid, Arabella Sweet, near the pub.
Her murder was pinned on her boyfriend. But it was my new boyfriend, Tarquin, who had killed her.
Then he tried to kill me and another person when we figured it out. I tried not to think about it.
I thought for a second. “Sorry, I’m being a mardy git. You’ve caught me in a mood.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Ollie said, lying, as he strained to keep Kenny from running off. “I assumed you’d be in an odd mood with me for just turning up and … the last few months.”
“It’s okay,” I said. More needed to be said, but I couldn’t face it.
He smiled at me in that way that spoke of unconditional love, so I quickly turned away from him and started pointing out local landmarks. “Church, pub, old manor house – Honningtons, home to Lady Georgiana Frobisher,” I said. There weren’t a lot of other landmarks.
Ollie nodded away as I nattered to distract myself, and we made our way into the village. I felt a shiver go down my spine as we neared the pub. I had been here once since I’d found Arabella’s body.
“You alright?” he said, as once more Kennedy tried his best to strangle himself with his lead as he took in every smell around him.
“Yup.” I pushed open the door to the pub. Inside, it was dead. Well, not completely, but there was a grand total of one other customer. An old man with a copy of the Daily Express sat in the corner with a Guinness.
In front of me, though, was Cytrine Hughes, the landlady of the Fox and Lamprey.
She was a large French Caribbean woman who wore bangles and a lot of leopard print.
“Arden!” she said in surprise and stopped wiping down the bar.
“Goodness, me.” She dropped the cloth she’d been using and came around with her arms open wide.
“It’s been too long.” She gave me a bear hug, which I awkwardly received.
“And who’s this?” she asked, meaning Kennedy.
“This is my rescue mutt, Kenny.”
“Ah, yes, Rita mentioned,” she said. “I’ll get him a bowl of water.” She stood up from where she’d crouched down to give him a scratch behind the ears.
“Cytrine, this is my friend, Ollie, from London. He’s visiting.”
“Lovely to meet you,” said Cytrine, and they shook hands. “I thought you were never going to come and visit us ever again, Arden,” she added, turning back to me.
“Oh, you know …” I mumbled. “Where’s Alan?”
Her face darkened. “At the bottom of La Manche, for all I care. That lying, cheating, no good— Twenty-five years of my life I wasted on that man! And all the time …” She caught herself and took a deep breath.
“Excuse me. I mean, Alan and I have agreed to separate. And the brewery has let me take over the licence of the pub as sole operator. They warned me this is my last chance after … you know, but I assured them it’d be fine; that the pub would make more money than ever now that he wasn’t here drinking half the profits when he should be working. ”
She beamed at us. “Sounds great, congratulations,” I said.
Her smile widened. “Go outside and find a table, everyone’s out back in the garden enjoying this very non-English weather. Two pints, I assume?”
We made our way outside, where half the village was congregated. All but a couple of tables had a family or a group around them. Ollie burst out laughing. “So, this is where everyone is. Out boozing. When they say it’s five o’clock somewhere, they clearly mean here.”
“There are lots of retirees in this village,” I said, but most of the people in the garden were our age or slightly older.
Cytrine brought us a menu and our pints. She waved at someone. “Woohoo, look at who it is!” she said and pointed at me. Within seconds, several people were headed towards us.
“Oh, God.”
“Who are all they?” Ollie asked as Kennedy tried to drink his pint.
“Arden, what a surprise to see you in a pub, not!” said Odette Douglas as she came over.
“I mean, you’re literally in a pub as well – I mean, hi Odette! Hi Tatiana!” I said to her daughter who was walking beside her.
“Did you hear?” Odette said before she’d even got near our table and turned to show us her profile. She cupped her belly in the long flowy maxi dress she wore and leaned back so her tummy protruded ever so slightly.
I stared at her for a second, before it clicked. “Oh! Oh, wow. Congratulations.”
“I’m nine weeks!”
I cocked my head. “Isn’t that very early to tell people?”
“Mummy’s very happy to be pregnant,” said the weird Victorian child that Odette swore blind was her actual daughter and not some orphaned ghost that haunted her.
“She told Daddy to lie on top of her and wrestle a lot, or she would divorce him after he lay on Arabella Sweet a lot and wrestled with her.”
Ollie choked on his pint.
“And now I’m having a baby sister, and we will call her Eurydice,” Tatiana informed us.
Odette laughed gaily and yanked Tatiana away, but not before her husband – Tommy, the aforementioned wrestling enthusiast – came up to join his wife and child. And his soon-to-be second child, who, despite Tatiana having already named, was far more likely to be christened ‘Daddy’s Last Chance’.
“Hello, Arden,” he said. Tommy was a smug man with a severe Napoleon complex. He was about five foot six, and this bothered him. He worked as a GP in Sittingston and had been one of the many, many men to enjoy Arabella’s company. A fan of mine, he was not.
He saw Ollie. “Friend?” he said. He was also a homophobe.
“Oliver Ross,” Ollie said. Ollie had a knack for knowing when people were twerps and trying to puff themselves up.
He stood up when he introduced himself, as he was taller than me he had at least six inches on Tommy, and deepened his voice to really draw on that Lowland burr.
It usually worked on annoying Englishmen.
Tommy looked him up and down and smiled. “Tommy Douglas. Dr Tommy Douglas,” he said and put out his hand for a shake. Ollie gripped it, and I saw Tommy wince.
“Pleasure,” Ollie said, locking eyes. To add to the scene, Kennedy stuck his nose in Tommy’s crotch.