Where Happy Begins

Chapter 1

I gave a start as the steam train let out a long whistle and we chuffed briefly into the darkness of a tunnel before breaking back out into the bright sunshine.

This was the final leg of a journey to my new employer.

On a steam train. How this branch line had survived the swathe of cuts by Dr Beeching in the sixties was a mystery, but the fact it still had a steam train running along it was slightly surreal.

Judging by the other occupants of the carriage, it was hardly overrun with passengers.

A gently balding reverend was sitting by the window opposite me, his nose buried in a cosy crime novel by a rather more famous reverend.

He’d nodded at me in a benevolent way when I’d sat down but that was the extent of our interaction.

Two rows up was an older, efficient-looking woman who kept sneaking glances at me when she thought I wasn’t looking and making notes in a small pocket notebook.

It was like sitting on a train with Miss Marple.

I waited until she snuck the next glance and smiled at her.

She froze momentarily, gave a fittingly economical smile before scribbling something else in her book and then stashing it away in a cavernous patent leather handbag that could have doubled as a mirror for me to do my make-up in.

Not that I wore make-up much any more. These days I preferred ten more minutes in bed over getting my base perfect.

A good slather of SPF over my moisturiser and I called it done.

The countryside meandered past the train window as I shuffled to get comfortable.

The seats on this unusual last leg of my journey certainly had more padding that the previous, regular trains which I was grateful for.

Mind you, so did I, thanks to a winter spent with my ankle in plaster, drowning my sorrows in buckets of tea and a truckload of custard creams.

I had made the rookie error of developing a moral conscience while working for a high-profile advertising agency.

With forty on the horizon and getting closer every day and a comfortable pension pot building up, I really was old enough to know better.

As I say, rookie error. And when this error came to the notice of management, it was suggested that perhaps my position was no longer needed in the department.

I’d fully intended to leave at some point – but only when I had a fully formed plan in place.

I liked a plan. I functioned well with a plan and being unemployed was definitely not the plan.

Neither was slipping on ice on the way home from being let go.

So, once I got home from the hospital, I washed down the appreciably strong painkillers with a bottle of wine and in a very short space of time, I’d gone from being employed on a good salary with excellent prospects to being unemployed and plastered – in more ways than one.

And now I was on my way to a new job and a new life.

Although it hadn’t been on my bingo card, hopefully, this would in fact be the opportune time to make a change.

I’d been in the advertising world since I left university and it had been fine, but was “fine” really enough for something you spent so much of your life doing?

As the years went on and social media took over, I’d got sick of encouraging people to get more, spend more, acquire more, more, more.

So, I’d done as all sensible people do when they are three sheets to the wind, post being made redundant and discharged from hospital: I had turned to the website for The Lady magazine.

And that’s where I’d found the position I was now travelling to take up.

Under-gardener required to assist head gardener on large estate.

Competitive pay.

Live-in if required (small cottage within estate grounds).

All maintenance and utilities covered, along with wood provided for wood burner.

Meals are not provided but successful applicant will be welcome to help themselves to fresh produce from the kitchen garden.

Apply to Edward Ashington, Ashington Manor, Herefordshire.

The train began slowing as a compact station slid into view.

Victorian wrought-iron pillars with curlicue twists supported the canopy that extended from a beautiful red brick building.

A sign made in a period style indicated the entrance to the café and shiny, green, painted benches flanked the main waiting room door where a porter, complete with uniform and cap, stood waiting with a trolley.

It wouldn’t have surprised me if the Railway Children had come barrelling down the platform calling to their daddy. It really was quite beautiful.

A mobile phone rang, unbelievably loudly, shattering the illusion. Miss Marple answered it. On speaker. While holding it to her ear.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, Gran. I’m waiting on the platform.’

‘The train’s just pulling in, dear.’

A pause.

‘I know. I can see it.’ A thin thread of amusement laced itself through the words. ‘I’m on the platform,’ the voice repeated.

‘Oh! How lovely. Where are you?’ She turned, peering through the late-afternoon sun and surprisingly clean windows, to the platform beyond.

I did my best not to look too conspicuously but obviously, I followed her eyeline.

A tall, sandy-haired man in a checked shirt, cargos and work boots was waving.

‘There you are, dear!’ She waved enthusiastically back.

The man outside gave her a thumbs up as he returned his phone to his pocket and the train gave a polite squeal and came to a gentle halt.

I stood and slung my tote onto my shoulder and then pulled up the handle of the suitcase standing next to me.

The reverend stood too and I gestured for him to go first before I wrangled my suitcase back up the carriage.

It’d had a wonky wheel ever since a return flight from Tenerife a couple of years ago.

Replacing it had been on my list of things to do but I’d never quite got around to ticking it off.

I gave it a yank and it meandered awkwardly beside me like a small child who didn’t want to be going wherever I was headed.

Lumbering it out of the train door with an audible ‘oof’, I tried to cajole it away from the platform edge while I double-checked my instructions.

Unlocking my phone, I scrolled down through my emails.

‘Emmeline Buchanan?’

My head snapped up and met the eyes of my fellow traveller’s grandson. Another pair of older ones was once again regarding me curiously.

‘Umm, yes. That’s me.’

He stuck out a hand. ‘Isaac Woodhouse. Pleased to meet you. I’m your lift back to the estate.’

‘Oh, right. Thanks.’

‘And your new boss.’ He looked down at me, intelligent eyes assessing.

‘Lovely!’ I replied.

The corner of his mouth twitched.

Lovely?

He already had hold of his grandmother’s suitcase and made to pick up mine.

‘Oh, it’s OK. I can manage.’

His eyes narrowed the smallest amount. ‘I’m sure but I saw the uncertain trajectory that case has. It’ll be quicker this way.’

And with that, he bent, grabbed hold of the handle, lifted the case as though it didn’t contain a good part of my worldly possessions and marched off ahead, his grandmother keeping pace with him, despite her petite size.

I set off with a start, taking two steps to his one, and caught up as they stopped by a battered old Land Rover.

‘Your carriage awaits!’ He pulled open the passenger door and gallantly assisted his gran in then closed it behind her. His gaze swung round to meet my confused one. ‘I’m afraid you’re in the back. That all right?’

‘Oh. Yes, of course.’

‘I’m sure you’re used to that with your experience.’

‘Yeah, yes. Of course. All the time.’

Isaac pulled open the back door and I hoiked myself none too elegantly into the back and took a pew on one of the homemade-looking bench seats that ran along either side. The cases followed me in.

‘Comfy?’ he asked.

‘Absolutely,’ I lied with a wide smile.

He nodded and closed the door.

Comfy was not the first word I’d have used.

Or the second, and probably not the third.

But my sit bones being pummelled by a hard wooden bench as we rattled along a country lane was the last of my worries right now.

My main concern was the look that my new boss had given me as he closed the door. He knew I was lying.