Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
G illian made her way down the staircase, negotiating the tight turns as best she could with a basket of dirty laundry. It was bad enough having to do one’s own laundry, let alone dealing with a staircase as narrow as the back stairs at Kingsford Manor.
The bell rang out as she reached the bottom. Instinctively placing the basket down, she looked at it, picked it back up, and popped it into the kitchen. She may have been living in the equivalent of a rabbit hutch, but standards still needed upholding. Keeping her laundry out of sight was one of them.
“Morning. I hear you’ve met our new neighbour,” Bridget said as soon as Gillian opened the front door.
“Yes, I had a bit of a run-in with her yesterday. How did you know I met her?”
“I’ve just come from there,” Bridget replied.
Gillian’s face dropped as she closed the front door. “You visited her before me?”
Bridget bit her lip. “To be honest, it was a force of habit. It wasn’t until the door opened and she wasn’t you that I remembered you’d moved.”
“Honestly, Bridget.” Gillian frowned then, realising her friend was cradling Agatha. “Please tell me Agatha wasn’t at the manor too.”
Bridget nodded. “Curled up on your old Chesterfield.”
“Traitor.”
Agatha leapt from Bridget’s arms and ran into the kitchen.
“And I expect you still want me to feed you,” Gillian called after her. “Come on through, Bridget. Could you pop by again sometime and ask her about holding the flower show in the hall?” She kept her tone as casual as possible, not wanting Bridget to pick up on how desperately she didn’t want to be the one asking.
“I’ve already asked her,” Bridget said as she followed Gillian into the sitting room.
“What did she say?” Gillian asked, turning so abruptly Bridget almost walked into her.
Taking a step back, Bridget replied, “That you should ask her yourself.”
Gillian’s hands shot to her hips. “Well, really! That settles it then. The village hall it will have to be. I’m not going cap in hand to her. She should know her duty to the village. It will fall on her if the show is ruined.”
The village hall, although functional, was on the small side, and it failed to meet Gillian’s preferred aesthetic for events. A rather unappealing addition to the village from the seventies, its steel girders and flimsy plasterboard walls contrasted starkly to the charm a Tudor hall effortlessly provided.
“What was the run-in you had with her?” Bridget asked.
Gillian sighed, realising she couldn’t avoid explaining. “Her damn helicopter spooked Dudley; he threw me off.”
“Oh! Were you both okay?”
“Yes, thankfully. I thought I’d give the pilot a piece of my mind about where they could and couldn’t park their infernal machine, and it turned out she was the pilot!”
“You told her she couldn’t park on her own lawn?” Bridget snickered, barely containing her amusement. “Oh, Gillian, how embarrassing.”
“Yes, indeed,” Gillian sniped, “and thank you very much for your support.”
Bridget covered her mouth with her hand. “Sorry, Gillian. It must have been awful. Being thrown off by Dudley, I mean.”
“Yes, well, let’s have no more talk about it. How was I to know she was the pilot? She accused me of being misogynistic, you know!”
“Mmm,” Bridget hummed, still trying to contain her grin. “Oh, you’ve had your hair done.”
“Yes. I thought it was about time I got out a bit more,” Gillian confirmed, patting at her waves and grateful for the change in subject. Thinking of that woman made her blood boil.
“Nothing to do with the new lady of the manor to compete with?”
Gillian rolled her eyes. “Absolutely not.” The very idea was ridiculous. As if she had any reason to compete — especially with her .
“You know who she is, don’t you?”
“I don’t care who she is,” Gillian replied, walking over to the window. Picking up her binoculars from a small table, she pointed them at the manor.
“She’s Viola Berkley. You know, the classical singer,” Bridget said, knocking into the coffee table as she manoeuvred onto the small sofa. “She’s very nice and more beautiful in real life. It’s funny how television distorts people.” Bridget’s attention turned to a laptop waking up on the table.
“I can’t say I noticed.” That was a lie; it was about the only thing she had noticed when she spoke to the woman. Her flowing auburn tresses had caught in the wind, each strand shining like copper in the sun as they momentarily obscured her lightly freckled face and deep brown eyes. When the woman tucked them behind her ear, the sun highlighted the delicate contours of her face.
“You knew exactly who she was,” Bridget said, turning the laptop around. “You’ve got her Wiki page open!”
Pulled from her thoughts, Gillian replied, “I suspected, that’s all. Is it just her, or are we to be overrun by screaming children?”
“How far did you read on the Wiki page?”
“Not far. It would take all week to read her accomplishments.”
“If you’d made it to the personal life section you would know she’s not married and is a lesbian. I certainly didn’t see any children.”
Gillian dropped the binoculars, and they crashed onto the floor.
“Oh, darn it,” she said as she picked them up and examined them. “They’ve broken. Good job I have a spare pair.”
A rumbling noise sounded outside. Gillian rushed to a tall bureau on the other side of the room and pulled open a drawer. Extracting a new pair of binoculars, she hurried back to the window and directed them at the manor again.
Gillian clutched her stomach. “She’s having a skip delivered!” Why on earth did the woman need one of those? Nothing in there is skip-worthy. “What was it like when you went in there? Was it as I left it?”
“Yes, it was bare from what I saw. She’d only brought the essentials like a coffee machine.”
Lowering her binoculars, Gillian turned to Bridget and glared. “A good teapot is an essential, not a coffee machine. These yuppies have no taste.”
“I hardly think you can call her a yuppy; she’s not much younger than us, for a start.”
“How old is she?”
Bridget’s eyes scanned the laptop. “Forty-four, according to Wiki; only eleven years younger than you.”
Not as much as Gillian had thought; she’d assumed the woman was in her thirties. Her youthful appearance certainly suggested it.
“Well, you know what these city types are like at any age. They have no understanding or appreciation for the countryside. Arriving by helicopter says everything you need to know.”
“How do you know she’s from the city?”
Gillian bit her lip before sheepishly answering. “I tracked her flight path; she came from Battersea.”
“Stalking her now, are we?” Bridget replied with a hint of amusement.
“I’m simply keeping myself abreast of any newcomers to the village and the threat they could pose.”
“Viola seems very pleasant and down to earth.”
Overlooking the fact Bridget was on first-name terms with her replacement, Gillian turned her attention and binoculars back on the manor. She could make out Viola striding through the front door. She flicked her long, auburn hair to one side, giving a hint of a tingle in Gillian’s stomach. Ignoring it, she watched as a man jumped down from the lorry and approached Viola, who pointed to an area of the drive and then disappeared back inside.
“She needs a cook and housekeeper,” Bridget continued, “so I gave her Mrs Johnson’s phone number.”
“But she’s mine!” Gillian cried, as a feeling of betrayal stabbed at her. “Why would you give that woman her number?”
“She’s not yours anymore, is she?” said Bridget, with a hint of challenge in her voice. “What reason would I have not to?”
“There’s another truck pulling up now. It’s Metcalfe’s,” Gillian snarled, ignoring Bridget’s question. “Damn woman is stealing my gardeners now!”
“You never used Metcalfe’s; you had your own gardeners.”
“And where do you think they went when I sold the manor?” The last three words stuck in her throat.
“Surely, it’s good if some of the locals can be re-employed. You wouldn’t want them to be unemployed?” Bridget asked, joining Gillian by the window.
“Of course not.” She just didn’t want Viola Berkley to have another thing of hers. “Are you stopping for tea?”
“No, best not. I’d better head off soon. I promised Viola I’d lend her a vase.”
“A vase?”
“Yes. It seems Elouise and Louisa dropped off some flowers as a housewarming gift.”
“They haven’t dropped any to me,” Gillian grumbled, lowering the binoculars.
“You’re hardly new to the village, are you?”
Gillian pursed her lips in reply. “Has everyone in the village visited her this morning?”
Bridget nodded at the binoculars. “I’m surprised you haven’t noticed.”
“As if I have nothing better to do,” Gillian exclaimed, cursing herself for allowing housework to distract her from all the action.
“The postman’s wife put it on the village WhatsUp group last night. I guess it was inevitable she would have a few visitors.”
“WhatsApp, Bridget. WhatsApp.”
Bridget pinked. “Oh yes! Of course, silly me. I know the major was there before me. I think he was asking about using the bottom field for the classic car show. He even asked her to open it.”
“The damn cheek of it. I’ve opened it since it began. It’s my job.” Did that blasted woman want everything of hers? “Did you know she hasn’t donated anything towards the restoration of the cricket pavilion? The lads are doing a sponsored run and came round for sponsorship last night. Her name wasn’t on the form, and they said they’d come from the manor.”
“I’m sure she would have contributed something; she’s ever so nice.”
“You’d better be off,” Gillian replied sharply, having heard quite enough about Viola Berkley. “You don’t want to keep the lady of the manor waiting.”
“I never have before,” Bridget said through a smug grin.
Gillian scowled at her as she retreated. Was there anything left that Viola Berkley could take from her? With her gaze fixed back on the manor, she pondered again why Viola would need a skip. What was she going to be removing? Bathrooms? Her beloved kitchen? Historic features that her yuppy brain couldn’t appreciate the true value of? Feeling her legs weaken at the thought of any part of her precious home going in that skip, Gillian looked around her. She was going to need to set up a permanent watching post with a chair, and another pair of binoculars would need purchasing immediately — to have one was to have none!