Chapter One
ONE
THERE’S A DEAD deer in the way. No question of getting past it, not on this narrow country lane. The taxi rolls leisurely to a halt, headlights illuminating glistening clots of blood on matted fur, a mouth held in a permanent scream. The engine trundles softly.
After a minute, I lean over from the back seat. ‘Can’t you do something?’
The driver glances at me in the mirror. ‘I don’t know what to tell you, love,’ he says. ‘I can’t get round that.’
‘Isn’t there another road?’
He shakes his head. ‘Nah.’
‘But this road has to come out somewhere, hasn’t it?’ I’m trying my best to keep the frustration from my voice, but he’s not making it easy for me.
The man purses his lips and blows out through them. ‘Not unless I go all the way back up the Warminster road and loop round.’
‘Can’t you – I don’t know – move it?’ I wave at the deer. Its eyes are stuck open in a sorry gaze, as if still trying to bargain with whatever it saw during those last moments.
He shrugs. ‘I’ve got a bad back.’
I glance at my pocket watch, angling its face to catch the last of the September evening light. First the delayed train, now this: not a good first impression. ‘All right, I’ll move it, then.’
The driver guffaws, though I wasn’t joking. ‘Look, love,’ he says, with a scratch of the nose. ‘The village is just over there. See the lights? It’s five minutes’ walk, tops.’
I look out at the dim, muddy road. The overgrown verge.
The tiny glimmer of yellow showing through the trees.
‘You want me to get out here?’ I’m regretting the skirt, smart hat and dress shoes I let Gladys talk me into wearing.
Just for the first day, so they know you’re a nice girl, like.
After all the things that have been said about me, I couldn’t help but find this funny.
‘Can’t be far,’ says the driver. ‘Be near on half an hour to go the other way.’
At least I don’t have much to carry – just the one suitcase and Dad’s old holdall. I climb reluctantly out of the cab.
‘Straight up the road to the village, then it’s a track on the left,’ says the driver. ‘You’ll be fine, love; can’t miss it.’
I was meant to be greeted at the station by a Mr Reacher – the estate manager I’ve been exchanging letters back and forth with in preparation for today.
But whether because of the late train or another reason, when I arrived, I found that he’d buggered off, leaving this prepaid cabbie in his place.
Must cost a fortune, the distance we’ve travelled.
I consider making a last-ditch argument in favour of moving the deer – if only to get the fare’s worth out of him – but then I look at the creature’s sharp-twisted neck and think better of it.
There’s the grunt of a revving engine and the taxi begins to reverse, not waiting to see me on my way.
Probably wanting to get home. Wife, kids, evening paper to read.
Besides, even in my nice-girl skirt, something in the way I carry myself always seems to kill any gentlemanly impulses.
Intentional, of course. The headlights swing round into the hedge as the taxi finds a place to turn.
Then just the receding glow. Then darkness.
Once my eyes have adjusted, I heft up the suitcase and step on to the verge, trying to avoid anything that might be a bit of deer.
It’s not a five-minute walk. It takes a quarter-hour to find the ‘track on the left’ – which is, in fact, on the right.
But here it is, a hand-painted wooden board: Harfold Manor.
I thought it sounded rather grand when I first read the advert in the Morning Post, but what I’m currently seeing is a lot of mud, and I suspect the place has been misrepresented.
Still, I’ve been lucky to get the job; it’s not as if people up and down the country are jumping at the chance to employ a woman gardener.
Especially one without any formal horticultural qualifications.
I didn’t expect to hear back when I sent the letter of application – not least because the listing was a good few weeks old by the time I’d convinced myself to write.
But then the reply came almost immediately, as if there’d been no deliberation at all.
Reacher’s abominable small handwriting offered me the job then and there, laying out the terms of employment. He didn’t even ask for a reference.
My way to the manor is completely dark, sloping down between steep wooded banks that blot out the final wilt of twilight.
I slide and stumble as I go, caught off-guard by sudden changes in texture, sudden obstacles.
The fucking dress shoes. If I ever see that taxi driver again …
Finally, I reach the end of the track, the bleat of a lantern coming into view.
A pair of gate-posts part the trees. When I get closer, I see that two leaping rabbits or hares or suchlike are carved into them, one on either side.
Between them, a set of cast-iron gates bear a swirling design. Shut tight.
While I’m distracted, my toe hits something unyielding and I go tripping forward.
Hands and knees in the mud. Hat knocked off and lost in the darkness.
My bags have landed a foot in front of me – thankfully still held closed by their straps.
Scrambling to my feet, I grab my luggage, and in this frenzy almost jump out of my skin when I look up to see a man now standing on the other side of the gates.
This newcomer is middle-aged, wearing a flat cap and tweeds.
Not tall, but broad-shouldered and stocky.
Wellies on his feet. A weathered tan to his skin.
He’s holding an electric torch, the beam of which he now sweeps over me like a nightwatchman.
‘Miss Morgan? That you there?’ He has a proper Wiltshire accent, the syllables swallowing one another up. ‘Blimey, what’s happened to you, then?’
I shake my head and move closer. He’s not dressed like an estate manager, so perhaps he’s the groundsman, mentioned in Reacher’s instructions. ‘Mr Allen?’ I guess.
He hesitates a moment as he takes me in, then slides back the bolt, pulling one half of the gate narrowly open. As I squeeze through, he puts a hand out for my suitcase, extends the other to shake. ‘Call me Tom.’ It sounds almost like ‘Tam’, the way he says it.
‘Vee,’ I say, then clarify, ‘Morgan, yes.’ It’s clear I’m not what he was expecting.
Unusual enough for a gardener to be female, but I’m also an odd age at twenty-five – too old still to be saving up for marriage, too young to have given up on the possibility.
I’ve got my dad’s ungainly height, my mam’s thick, black hair worn in a messy Eton crop.
A strong Cardiff accent. And I’m covered in mud.
Although maybe mud comes with the profession.
Tom trudges up the drive, nodding for me to follow. ‘We thought you’d be here round nine,’ he says. It doesn’t sound accusatory – just like a topic of conversation. Making small talk.
‘The train was delayed,’ I say. ‘Something on the line, I think it was. Then later, just outside the village, the taxi couldn’t get through. There was a deer. You know, dead.’ I have a sudden urge to pull a face to illustrate, eyes crossed and tongue lolling. Thankfully I fight it back.
Tom nods as if this is nothing unusual. ‘That’ll be that lot from Warminster. Always tearing about the lanes, drunk as you like.’ He looks me over again. ‘You’re best wearing white so they can see you in time to stop.’
I try not to recall the way the deer’s neck had been twisted. Its sorry eyes. The crawling feeling up my spine.
‘Mr Reacher said to apologize that he couldn’t wait for you, only he had to get off away to London.
He’s often up there on business.’ Tom leads me up the drive till we reach a fork.
The main path continues, fat and self-assured, with a gem of light at its end.
‘The manor,’ says Tom, nodding at it. We turn off and take a simpler, gravelled track to the cottage. My cottage.
I’d hardly believed my luck when I’d learned the job came with its own place on the grounds.
Are you sure this isn’t a bit impulsive?
Gladys had asked when I broke the news – which was rich coming from her – but I’d known there was no point in deliberating.
It was just what I’d been after: a chance to start afresh.
In the halo of Tom’s torch, I make out yellow Cotswold stone, a door that needs a paint. Crabbed windows with leaded panes. It’s perfect.
Tom holds out his hand. ‘Key,’ he says. The metal’s warm from his pocket. ‘Have the torch as well. We’re not on the electrics yet, but the gas comes out for you, and I’ve left some water. Me and the missus are up at the manor, if you have any problems. Round the back door.’
I nod. ‘And her Ladyship?’ Lady Lascy’s looping, fierce signature had sealed the employment contract – although it was Reacher who’d arranged everything. I imagine ladies don’t bother with that kind of paperwork. They have charity galas or what have you to organize.
‘Oh,’ says Tom, setting down my case on the front step. ‘No, you won’t see much of her, I don’t suppose.’ Leaving the remark to hang unexplored, he heads back toward the manor.
My key scrapes inside the lock, sticks for a moment, then turns.
The door opens inward. I expect a creak, but the hinges are well oiled.
The smell of still air and old, chilly buildings.
A narrow front hall with a side table, on which a key dish and a vase of dahlias have been set out for me.
I brush a finger over one of the blooms and smile.
Did Tom leave these? There’s something touching in the thought of a man like him out among the flowers, delicately selecting the best to cut.