Chapter 5
Being inside Dragonfly Cottage for a second time wasn’t quite as alarming as the first, especially as Rick immediately snapped into professional mode and produced a clipboard and pen.
He went right through the house with Vee, making copious notes and coming up with various suggestions that would improve her living accommodation as well as get rid of the detritus of years of neglect.
‘I don’t want to put you on the spot, but exactly how much can you afford to spend here?’ Rick asked, scribbling down the final in a list of figures and completing the sum that he’d clearly been working on in his head. He showed her the total, and she gasped.
‘Not that much. Maybe… two thirds of it, at a push? Is there any way you can pare it back a bit more?’
‘Well, I suppose there is, but to be brutally honest, the only way I can do a decent job for less and still make the place long-term liveable for you is if you do the decorating yourself as we go along.’ Rick looked Vee up and down, and she guessed he was taking in the general appearance of someone who looked to be a stranger to hard work and practical tasks.
‘Any chance of that?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows in what he probably imagined was a humorous expression. It wasn’t.
‘I suppose you think because I look after my nails and wear make-up I don’t know how to graft?
’ Vee said, through gritted teeth. She moved a bit closer to Rick, facing him squarely and narrowly resisting the temptation to poke him in the chest. ‘Well, let me tell you, that’s not the case.
Definitely not. Here’s a bit of backstory for you.
I’m an actor by trade. I was in a touring company until the work dried up.
I’ve done some modelling in my time, but I’ve also cleaned houses, waited tables, even done some gardening.
I once laid a patio for a friend, and I can paint and decorate too.
My most recent work was doing voiceovers and narrating audiobooks, but my dream is to work from home now I’m not handy for central London. Does that answer your question?’
Rick took a step backwards and almost fell over a heap of empty pizza boxes. ‘You were an actress?’ he said, after he’d regained his balance. ‘I might have guessed… I mean if you’ve been on the stage, what are you doing back here in this backwater? Should I have heard of you?’
It was an effort, but Vee forced a laugh.
Maybe she shouldn’t have bitten his head off like that.
‘I was an actor. And you’re not likely to have seen my name in lights.
I was touring in rep for some years. Small-town theatres and provincial halls, but since then I’ve had to find other ways to make a living. ’
‘And voiceovers? How can you do that from home?’
‘Well, a few of the narrators I know managed to transform a room in their houses or a summerhouse into a small recording studio in the pandemic, when they couldn’t go into work because of lockdown. I might do that… if I knew how to do the soundproofing and set it all up.’
The concept of tackling this kind of task was daunting. Vee sighed. There was always YouTube. This scheme would have to be put on hold until the house was in a much better state though.
‘And I want to rebuild the chicken house at the bottom of the garden and get some hens,’ she added.
Might as well get all the prospective jobs out there.
At least this way Rick would see that she had plans and wasn’t just some airhead who thought country living would be as easy as a picnic in the park.
Rick made another couple of notes in his book. He frowned. ‘You don’t want much, do you?’ he said. ‘I’m not sure you’ve really thought all this through. It’s three builders you need, not one.’
‘Look, let’s make a deal,’ Vee said. ‘You do most of the donkey work and the skilled stuff and I’ll muck in wherever I can. Where do we start?’
The sticky moment passed, and Vee breathed a sigh of relief.
She mustn’t antagonise the only person who was likely to help her.
Rick looked around with an air of anticipation.
It was as if he was looking forward to this, Vee thought incredulously.
She half expected him to rub his hands together.
It was a good job one of them was enthusiastic.
The filth, the stench and the sense of desolation were making her feel nauseous again.
‘We’ll begin tomorrow by making as many trips to the tip as we need. Have you got something to wear that you don’t mind getting dirty? If not, there’s a spare boiler suit I can lend you. It’s clean,’ Rick added, when Vee didn’t answer immediately.
‘Oh, I’m sure it is, I was just doing a mental trawl of the clothes I brought with me and realising nothing would be much good,’ she said hastily. ‘Yes, that’d be useful. I did such a big clear-out when I moved here that I haven’t much left.’
By the look on his face, Vee thought Rick was about to start asking her more about her previous life and there was no way she was getting into that discussion. ‘If we’ve finished here, shall we take my case and my bags back to yours?’ she said. ‘I’ve used up enough of your time already.’
He nodded and began to head for the door with Vee’s rucksack over one shoulder and her travel bag in the other hand.
‘You bring the wheelie case and lock up,’ he said.
‘I’ll be glad to get home, I’m starving.
I’m planning on getting a pizza delivered later, you can join me if you like.
I mean, I’m not saying we should always eat together, it’s just that as it’s your first night and everything… ’
His voice tailed away as Vee considered the suggestion.
She didn’t want to get into the sort of arrangement where she’d be obliged to schedule her meals around Rick, but she would need to eat at some point and a takeaway pizza would be quick and easy, especially as it seemed that he’d at least mastered his earlier grumpiness…
if only for now. ‘Thanks, that’s kind of you,’ she said, following him with her case and locking the door behind them with relief.
Once her belongings had been delivered to Rick’s house and she’d unpacked, Venetia had an overwhelming urge to get out into the fresh air for a while on her own.
Rick was absorbed in making a plan of the work he was going to do on the cottage and there didn’t seem to be anything useful she could contribute at this point, so she swapped the sassy boots for trainers, excused herself and set off towards the centre of the village.
As she walked, Vee had the strangest sensation of travelling back in time, and it wasn’t a happy experience.
After ten minutes of wandering through the rest of the estate where Rick lived, passing rows of similar Victorian semis in varying states of repair, she came to the village church.
It was surrounded by an attractively rambling graveyard and fighting her first impulse to run in the opposite direction, Vee turned to go in, making her way under the arch of the ancient lychgate and along the cobbled path towards the church entrance.
The past came to meet her as she walked, and she steeled herself against the rush of memories.
All these places had to be faced at some time and now was as good a time as any.
The peace of her surroundings enfolded Vee as she moved further into the churchyard and it gradually edged most of the unsettling thoughts out of her mind.
She breathed deeply, appreciating the scent of newly mown grass.
Not nearly so unkempt as the garden at Dragonfly Cottage, even so the graveyard also seemed to be a work in progress.
An elderly man with cropped grey hair and a neatly trimmed moustache was finishing off the task of tidying the areas between the graves by chopping away at tufts of grass with a pair of shears.
As she passed him, he stopped to greet her.
‘Mornin’, ducky,’ he said. ‘Welcome to St Stephen’s Church. Are you a visitor to Willowbrook?’
‘Not exactly,’ Vee said. ‘Well, no, not at all really. I’m living here now. I grew up in the village and I’m back. Dragonfly Cottage in Fiddler’s Row was my old home… and it’s my new one, for that matter.’
‘Really?’ said Sid. ‘I must know you, in that case. Oh, hang on a minute… you’re not… you can’t be… surely?’
He paused, slid his spectacles to the end of his nose, and viewed Venetia over the top of them with keen interest. She waited, tension making her stomach churn.
‘The eldest Prescott lass! You are, aren’t you?
I’d know those eyes anywhere. You have such a look of your grandma.
She was a big friend of me and my missus, in fact I’ve only just been sprucing up her resting place.
’ He jerked his head towards a corner of the churchyard that was in the shade of a large yew tree.
Its gracious branches spread over several headstones, neatly cared for but mostly bare.
However, in front of the central one sat a stone jar containing a bunch of orange and crimson flowers.
‘It is you, isn’t it? Young Venetia? You probably don’t remember me, I’m Sid Potter.
We lived at the other end of Fiddler’s Row when you were growing up.
We did miss your gran when she passed away.
She made the best cakes in the whole of the village, and she was kindness itself to my Jenny when our two were little.
I still miss her, although a lot of water’s flowed under the bridge since then.
She was a good ’un, was Isabella.’ He paused, then pulled out a large cotton handkerchief and blew his nose noisily.