The Perfectly Imperfect Woman

by Milly Johnson

  ‘What?’ asked Marnie, because it clearly wasn’t nothing.

  Emelie reached over and put her small hand over Marnie’s, a gesture of comfort to offset something nasty to come. ‘I really don’t want to tell you this, Marnie, but I think I should. When we came out of the Lemon Villa after the meeting on Tuesday, Kay Sweetman shouted something to Herv which we all heard. Ruby asked him if he wanted to go for a drink and he said that he didn’t. Kay . . .’ She paused as if she wanted to get her next words exactly right. ‘. . . Kay said that he should be careful who he mixed with’ – she swallowed – ‘. . . that . . . that you broke up a man’s marriage, a man with children and a wife who was pregnant, and that’s why you came here. To get out of the situation.’

  ‘Oh shit.’ Marnie felt as if a rug she had been standing on had suddenly been snatched from under her to reveal a massive hole. One above a sewerage pit.

  ‘I said to her, “Kay Sweetman, that was a terrible thing to say” and she said, “Well, it’s true” and I reminded her that people in glass houses should never throw stones. She shut up very quickly then and ran on with Ruby asking her what I meant. I shouldn’t have said it but I was very angry for you.’

  Marnie’s head was in her hands. Everyone here now, as well, thought she was the world’s biggest slut. Herv thought she was the world’s biggest slut. Could Kay have told him anything worse, given his history? And how did Kay know? Marnie had only ever told Lilian. She’d told her everything. Kay could only have got it from Lilian. So, how much else did Kay know about her?

  Marnie began to cry. She didn’t want to but a wave of black despair engulfed her. The shame of Herv knowing about Justin wounded her with a rabbit punch that took her breath away.

  ‘Oh you poor girl.’ The compassion in Emelie’s voice made Marnie’s sobbing worse before she got control of it.

  ‘It’s true, Emelie. But he lied that his marriage was over. I ran away because I couldn’t stand that anyone thought I was the sort of person that would . . . that could . . . And now I’m going to have to run away again because everyone here thinks I’m a . . .’ She couldn’t say the word because it was one that belonged to other women who didn’t care what carnage they caused with their selfishness. It was like waking up and finding she’d been branded on the forehead with the word as she slept and couldn’t get rid of it.

  Emelie’s arms slid around her and Marnie clung to her and for a moment it felt as if she was holding Lilian because she caught the scent of her dear familiar perfume, the briefest ghost of it, then it was gone. Then Emelie pulled Marnie to her arm’s length and spoke to her in a firm voice.

  ‘You will not leave here, Marnie Salt. Kay Sweetman’s word is not very reliable and won’t be as easily believed as she imagines. She doesn’t think anyone knows that she had an affair with Titus Sutton, but they do. I think it is very likely that Ruby is Titus’s daughter. Lilian certainly thought so. And I am sure Hilary suspects. Why she has stayed with such a brute, I have no idea. Whoever the new owner of Wychwell is values you, Lilian loved you like a daughter and I too think you are a beautiful person. Wychwell is a much richer place for you being in it so no more of this nonsense about leaving.’ She let go of Marnie to open a drawer in the dresser behind her, brought out a pressed linen handkerchief and pushed it into Marnie’s hand for her to dry her eyes.

  ‘ “If anyone can find Margaret Kytson and her baby’s grave, Marnie can”, that’s what Lilian used to say to me. You wouldn’t let her down now, would you?’

  *

  Kay was serving in the shop when Titus walked in and asked for his usual cigarettes.

  ‘I want a word,’ she said and came from behind the counter to shut the shop door, dropping the catch. ‘The other night, Emelie Tibbs made some comment about people like me not throwing stones when living in glass houses.’

  Titus looked bewildered. ‘I have no idea what you mean, Kay.’

  ‘She knows about us,’ said Kay in a low voice.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. That was years ago.’

  ‘She knows. And she made sure that I know she knows.’

  Titus didn’t look perturbed at all. ‘Why on earth did that crop up?’

  ‘Because . . . because I’d told Herv Gunnarsen that she’– and she thumbed in the direction of Little Raspberries – ‘had to leave her last job for having an affair with a married man.’

  ‘I see.’ Titus guessed easily why she had done that. Kay had always been a vicious cat. Partly the reason for the initial attraction was that wicked, sexy spark in her, but also why their affair was short-lived. Luckily for him, Kay had never wanted to share her daughter with her real father. Quite the opposite in fact, which suited him perfectly. He dismissed the whole thing in five words. ‘Village gossip. Deny, deny, deny.’

  ‘I don’t want Ruby to know,’ snapped Kay.

  ‘I don’t either,’ he snapped back. ‘There’s nothing to know. None of them can prove anything so it never happened as far as I’m concerned. Senile old woman’s tittle-tattle.’

  ‘Good.’ Kay felt sufficiently assured to let that matter drop and move on to another. ‘Have you found out anything else about you-know-what?’

  ‘No, but I think it’s pretty clear why she came here. I can’t see there’s a lot we can do other than wait for her to start demanding DNA tests. I’m only surprised she’s taking so long about it.’

  David Parselow tried the shop door to find it locked. Kay waved at him to let him know she’d be just a tick. ‘Does Lionel suspect his daughter’s turned up to expose his holier-than-thou status for what it really is?’ she asked quickly.

  ‘I don’t think he has a clue,’ said Titus. ‘Yet.’

  *

  The sun streamed through the dining room windows of the manor and onto the ledgers as if it was trying to direct Marnie to the answer to the mystery which had held Wychwell in its grip for almost five hundred years, but it only highlighted the page showing details of the derelict cottages and there were no clues there.

  Hilary Sutton had the best idea, buggering off to a city where people were too busy to nose into your affairs. Maybe she should take a leaf out of her book.

  Chapter 39

  Marnie hardly left Little Raspberries for the next three weeks. She didn’t need to go up to the manor, she didn’t want to bump into Herv. More importantly she didn’t want to bump into Herv and a woman. Especially not one so damned physically perfect. What could be more damaging to the ego than to see the man you wanted to whisk you off to bed taking a woman home that he’d whisked off to bed the night before. Some perfect being that he’d have perfect sex with: no wet patches, no cramp, nothing but the sort of fantastic mutually satisfying screamy stuff that appeared in Hollywood films. The Pritt Stick had failed to hold and she found herself in bits again.

  She wanted to leave Wychwell; she was about as popular here as a force twelve gale in a confetti factory. The new owner had done her no favours at all by putting her in charge of rescuing it because she’d only be remembered for making them all pay higher rents and being outed as a marriage-wrecking bitch. She decided that she would stay in Wychwell until she had set it up for its future success and had exhausted all avenues to find Margaret’s grave, then she would go. She’d start again somewhere else where no one knew her and she would never tell anyone her secrets again, because that was the only way she could assure they wouldn’t bite her from behind.

  Maybe it was something to do with her Irish traveller parentage. People were instinctively suspicious of her, saw her as trouble personified and her destiny was to keep moving on. Maybe that’s why any attachments she made were transient, unstable, fleeting because that’s what the stars had dictated for her. Maybe she couldn’t fight fate and so shouldn’t even try.

  Other than going for some shopping, she didn’t venture out. She worked from her laptop on the kitchen table, throwing herself fully into future plans for Wychwell and how best to use the remaining cash in the village account. S
peculate to accumulate would be her advice: rebuild the derelict cottages, turn at least a couple of them into businesses. A teashop would be good, she’d decided. They could give the Tea Lady a run for her money. Winter House was perfectly placed for that. It was small, but it could be extended at the back. A conservatory, west-facing, so it would have all the sun in the afternoon. Or would Summermoor next door be better because it had a larger garden?

  The new properties would all be rented out on short leases. It was important any new people fitted in with the old residents; Lilian would have asked for that. Okay, it was maybe taking the duty of care thing a bit far, but she considered it important. The village hall needed knocking down and rebuilding. It didn’t even have a toilet and probably transgressed every building law in the country. It seemed as if it had been originally constructed by a blind school-leaver with his plans upside down.

  She contacted a few builders and asked if they had the manpower and the time to complete the suggested renovations that she emailed over, then took the names of those who did and sent them to Mr Wemyss for the owner’s approval to forge ahead getting quotes. Then she played around with some figures, projecting the income if all the houses were full and paid their rents. The Lemon Villa would make a great B&B or a hotel, but she suspected that Titus wouldn’t be moving out any time soon. If ever.

  She had immersed herself so much in her plans that she lost all track of time and dates, especially as she hadn’t even switched on her TV to see what was going on outside Little Raspberries. She suspected it was the same old, same old though: stabbings, bombs, disasters; there would be no wonderful news to lift everyone’s mood. She hadn’t missed being part of the larger world in the weeks she’d been a virtual hermit but she realised that she did need to go up to the manor and take another look through those old ledgers to try and locate Margaret Kytson’s well because it was nagging at her brain. Plus she remembered that she had promised Emelie a cheesecake and hadn’t delivered on it. The next day was Saturday; no one would be working up at the manor then. She wouldn’t have to make small talk with Cilla and Zoe or witness first-hand the abhorrence that Herv must have for her. She drove to the supermarket for cheesecake ingredients and was delighted to find the fourth Country Manors book was out on the shelves – All Manor of Hell, which was great timing as she’d just finished the third one. After she had made an apple strudel cheesecake that night, she put on her pyjamas and started reading it.

  Manfred, thank goodness, had got his manor back but his long-lost sister had turned up and there was a very dodgy attraction between them which had to be resisted. The fact that the sister was called Lalique Hartman was further indication that the worlds of Wellsbury and Wychwell were too intertwined for comfort. Marnie couldn’t put the book down. The sparks from the unrequited passion were flying off the page. Their illicit love struggle was fabulous. Illicit. Where had she seen that word before recently?

  Then she remembered picking up a ball of discarded paper in Emelie’s house with that word on it. Illicit . . .forbidden . . . love.

  Surely not . . . Don’t be daft, Marnie. Emelie is not Penelope Black, she told herself. Still, she would have to ask.

  Marnie realised she was anxious as she set off across the green towards Emelie’s house the next morning. It was the first time in three weeks she had walked the length of Wychwell and she felt as if eyes were following her every footstep. It was probably true as all Una Price did was sit in her window and spy. She would be the first person Marnie would ask to join if they ever set up a Neighbourhood Watch scheme.

  As she approached the end of Herv’s lane, she sent a silent prayer upwards that she wouldn’t see that blonde woman coming out of his house again. Or see him either, not smiling at her, disappointment and revulsion dulling his blue eyes. She jogged up Kytson Hill and felt a sigh of relief escape her when she reached Emelie’s cottage without incident. The door was ajar and Marnie could hear Emelie coughing from the end of the path. She knocked.

  ‘Come in,’ said Emelie hoarsely.

  Even with the fresh air blowing into the house, that smell of damp was awful and much stronger than it had been the last time she’d visited. Emelie looked delighted to see her.

  ‘Emelie, you sound terrible,’ said Marnie, giving her a hug.

  ‘Oh, I’m fine.’ Emelie waved at her concern as if she were batting it back to her. ‘Is that a cheesecake?’

  ‘A belated one,’ said Marnie. ‘So I made it extra-large by way of compensation.’

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Emelie. ‘We will both have a piece now. I insist.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to argue with you,’ replied Marnie.

  Emelie walked into the kitchen, her back bent. She looked fragile and her long printed skirt was hanging from her.

  ‘Is your arthritis playing up?’ Marnie asked her.

  ‘Always,’ chuckled Emelie and began coughing again.

  ‘Emelie, that damp is doing you no good at all.’ Marnie wished she hadn’t left it as long to come over now. She made a mental note to put this at the top of Herv’s list of to-do’s. There was a patch of wall behind Emelie’s TV that appeared as if it would crumble if touched. That couldn’t be good near electrics. The damp had to be coming from underneath the house. Maybe there was a water leak. She should check it out. ‘Emelie, can I look in your cellar?’

  ‘There is no cellar here,’ Emelie replied. ‘Marnie, I can’t pick up the tray. Would you?’

  Marnie went into the kitchen and carried it through for her. Emelie’s typewriter wasn’t out today, she’d been reading rather than writing. The first Country Manors book was open and face down on the table.

  Marnie, nodded towards it. ‘Isn’t it great?’

  Emelie wrinkled up her nose. ‘I’ve had it for a while. I bought it to see what all the fuss was about. I’m not sure that I do though. I’m just skipping through it, not reading it in any great detail.’

  ‘You should,’ said Marnie. ‘It’s as if it was written by someone in Wychwell itself.’ She watched for Emelie’s reaction at her theory, but there was none to indicate her big secret had been discovered.

  ‘I can’t imagine who,’ she sniffed. ‘I think that Miss Black is very clever, and good luck to her, but there are much more erotic books on the market which don’t use all that gratuitous language. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, for instance. I remember reading it when I was young, and falling madly in love with the writing. It felt so illicit’ – that word again, Marnie noted – ‘and so passionate. The lady and the gardener.’ Marnie wasn’t sure if she winked then or if her eye merely twitched as they sat down at the table. ‘Anyway, Marnie, tell me what you have been doing since I saw you last,’ and the conversation was pulled away from the mystery of the Country Manors author’s identity. Marnie respected that and didn’t ask her outright if she was Penelope Black. Emelie would have told her had she wanted her to know.

  ‘I’ve been busy working out the future of Wychwell,’ Marnie replied, cutting Emelie a slice of her special Austrian cheesecake. ‘It’s a shame it will have to let other people in, but if it doesn’t it will die.’

  ‘Of course it has to expand,’ stressed Emelie. ‘Dear Lilian realised that too late.’ And she began coughing again, a horrible rasping sound and Marnie hurried to fetch her a glass of water.

  ‘Right, that does it,’ she said sternly. ‘You are to move out of here and we are going to get that damp sorted before you come back.’ A thought came to her. ‘Why not live in the big house for a while? You can play at being lady of the manor.’

  Emelie both smiled and shook her head. ‘No, I wouldn’t want that at all. I’ll leave here in a box and not before. Tell Herv to come over and see what he can do if you must.’ She lifted up her fork and started on the cheesecake. ‘Oh my, Marnie, this was so worth waiting for.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Marnie said. ‘I shut myself away. I didn’t want to see anyone.’

  ‘I am sorry that I told you what Kay said
,’ Emelie sighed. ‘I really didn’t want to, but I had to. But still, I have felt quite bad about it.’

  ‘You did the right thing,’ Marnie assured her. ‘I did need to know.’ I did need to know what booted me out of Herv Gunnarsen’s heart.

  ‘You haven’t seen Herv since, I take it?’ Emelie asked, as if picking up on her thoughts.

  Marnie shook her head, tried to look nonchalant and failed. ‘Have you?’

  ‘Last week,’ said Emelie, after a marked pause.

  ‘Was he alone?’ Marnie didn’t want to ask, but her mouth had turned into a masochistic bitch.

  Again Emelie hesitated before replying and didn’t answer the question directly, which told Marnie everything. ‘He was driving.’

  He was driving that woman home after a night of adventurous shagging. He was probably falling asleep at the wheel because they’d been doing it all night. Marnie felt stupidly tearful, and the forkful of cheesecake she’d just eaten felt like a rock in her stomach.

  ‘I’ll leave him a note to come and see you as soon as possible,’ said Marnie.

  ‘Why don’t you talk to him, tell him your side of the story?’

  ‘I think that boat has sailed,’ replied Marnie. ‘Kay did a proper hatchet job there. Of all the things she could have told him about me, that was a direct hit in his Achilles’ heel.’ She was going to cry again and could barely hold it back. She needed to go up to the manor, do what she had to and then get home again, back to the sanctuary that the four walls of Little Raspberries afforded her, where it was all too easy to imagine there was no world outside it.

  Marnie pushed her cheesecake around on her plate but she hadn’t eaten any more by the time that Emelie had finished hers.

  ‘It’s no reflection on my baking,’ Marnie tried to joke, but she could see that Emelie understood.

  ‘Don’t throw it away,’ said Emelie, ‘I’ll polish it off later. It’s nice to see the sun out, I was beginning to think it wouldn’t make an appearance again until next year with all the rain we’ve had recently.’