CHAPTER 47
Harriet
Dorset
Harriet had gathered the eggs, fed the pigs and returned the swill bucket to the food store in the old cow shed. It was cold, but the hens were still laying, bless them.
She went back inside. ‘I’m just nipping into the village,’ she told her mother. They had run out of milk. ‘Will you be all right?’
‘Of course I will, Harriet.’
Harriet narrowed her eyes. She didn’t like this quiet, pensive version of her mother and she still wasn’t sure that she could be trusted.
She also wanted to pull her mother into her arms and comfort her.
But she didn’t do it. Harriet wasn’t much use at comfort, she had always known that.
Mother’s problem was that she had allowed herself to become too dependent on Father.
So that when he died . . . when he died .
. . The dream nudged at Harriet’s subconscious and she pushed it away.
Not now. Not ever. Well, it had taken the life out of Mother too.
‘I won’t be long,’ Harriet said.
‘When do you think Joanna will be back?’ her mother asked.
Joanna, Joanna. But Mother missed her, of course. Like Harriet, she had got used to Joanna being around. And Joanna was so much better in the giving comfort department.
‘I don’t know.’ Harriet pulled her jacket from the hook by the door.
‘In a day or two, I expect.’ She wound a scarf around her neck and opened the door.
But what would happen when Joanna moved out?
When it was just the two of them again, Harriet and Mother and all the tensions that seemed to exist between them? She sighed.
Harriet decided to walk into the village – that way she’d stand a better chance of spotting the prowler.
She hadn’t decided what to do about him yet.
As far as she knew, he hadn’t been back to the cottage, but the phone had rung a couple of times and when she’d answered, there’d been only silence on the other end.
This could be a coincidence, but Harriet was still uneasy, quite sure that he was still around and on the prowl as it were.
It was a cold but sunny mid-November day; a light frost still sparked the tips of the grass blades and undergrowth, and the sea air was invigorating.
Harriet could see Owen’s tractor in a far-off field, and in the distance the sea shimmered between the gentle curves of the Down.
She thought of that conversation she’d had with Owen by the mulberry tree.
She hadn’t seen him since, but he’d waved to her from afar a couple of times when he was out in the fields working and she was confident that their relationship had returned to normal.
He hadn’t mentioned any dinner invitation again, naturally . . . But she only had herself to blame.
Harriet tramped off down the lane. She liked winter days like this one. They had a special sort of clarity about them and in winter she felt that the villagers could reclaim Warren Down and make it once again their own.
Summer would come soon enough. They needed the summer, they needed the tourists; more and more of the houses were being let out to holidaymakers.
By next April, Harriet would again be baking cakes and opening up the café in Big Barn for the walkers.
Another cycle, another year. But for the people who lived here all year round, they were still a community.
This was still their landscape, their home.
Harriet thought of the prowler. And that home had been invaded.
There was no sign of activity when she cautiously passed the house he’d rented.
Harriet walked on. In the village, she bought the milk, chatted to Maurice, the delivery man, and spent fifteen minutes passing the time of day with Linda (goodness, if she lived in this street, she’d never get anything done).
She was just thinking she should get back home when she spotted him – the prowler – cycling up the lane towards her.
What now? How could she avoid him? Abruptly, she ducked back inside the shop, without warning.
Linda, who had been in the middle of describing how her husband Eddie had woken her up in the middle of a nightmare thinking he was being strangled by the new James Bond, stood in the shop doorway and eyed her curiously. ‘What’s the matter, Harriet?’
‘Nothing.’ Quickly, Harriet turned away, pretending to inspect the magazines on the rack. ‘Just need to get . . .’ she mumbled, ‘my Cosmopolitan.’
Cosmopolitan? What was she thinking? That a one-night stand had made her sixteen again? She stared vacantly at the cover.
‘Cosmopolitan?’ Linda followed her inside, which was good, as her bulky frame hid Harriet from view. ‘I would have thought you were more People’s Friend, dear.’
Harriet was tempted to tell her about Scott and the camper van. That would show her what Harriet was really made of. The sensuality that she had always kept hidden – so well hidden that she hadn’t even known about it herself. But she held back. She didn’t want the whole village to know.
And there he was. Close up. He swung his legs awkwardly off his bike, almost falling over as he did so.
Harriet restrained a chuckle then dodged behind a card stand as he peered into the shop.
That was a close thing. It was fortunate that Linda had a generous rear end, otherwise he would have spotted her, for sure.
And she didn’t want him to spot her, at least not yet.
Not until she’d decided what to do about him.
As she came out from behind the stand, now holding a birthday card which proclaimed ‘Happy Birthday, Grandson’ (that would be news to everybody), she saw him lift a brown paper package from his bike rack. Hellfire . . . She had to grip Linda’s shoulder for support.
‘Harriet, what is it, dear? Are you all right?’
Fortunately, he was out of earshot. But Harriet stared after him. She’d recognise that brown paper package anywhere. Mainly because it had fluorescent blue tape stuck all over it – Harriet had run out of the brown stuff.
‘I’m fine.’ She stood there and let the full implications dawn.
The prowler who had been hanging around Mulberry Farm Cottage was the mystery recipient at a PO box address, the scientist who was employing her as a typist. What did it mean?
She took a ragged breath. Harriet was working for the prowler.
And the prowler who had been hanging around Mulberry Farm Cottage was so interested in Harriet that he’d employed her to type out his scientific manuscript.
Hell’s bells . . . It was much more of a tangled web than Harriet had suspected. What now?