Just Desserts

by Jan Jones

  ‘Wasn’t that –?’ began Leo.

  ‘Yes,’ said Penny, hearing her voice catch. ‘Yes, that was Tom. I saw the green car pull out of Fellrigg Farm. It looked familiar … and then it came in here …’ She took a deep breath. ‘OK, I’ll say it. Why would a committed workaholic be visiting Fellrigg Farm in the middle of the day when Billy Fell is out on the land?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Leo. ‘Let’s go to the farm and find out.’

  Penny swung to face him. ‘Leo, we can’t!’

  ‘Sure we can. I’m a journalist, remember? I can ask about the missing aeroplane while you grill Mrs Fell for guilty clues.’ He laid his hand gently on hers where it still clutched the handbrake. ‘Penny, you want to know what is going on, don’t you?’

  Penny thought of her daughter, wearing a chunky yellow bracelet she disliked and needing ‘time for them’ out of her normal routine. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I do.’

  At the farm, Rachel Fell, a well set-up young woman a little older than Lucinda, was emerging from the whitewashed dairy. In contrast to a lot of farms in the area, there were no outbuildings at Fellrigg with tumbledown stone walls, missing windows, or a patched-up roof. There was an air of … not prosperity, exactly, but not hand-to-mouth living, either.

  Rachel looked wary as Penny got out of the car, but her expression changed to polite interest as Penny greeted her and introduced Leo.

  ‘I’m a journalist with the Messenger,’ said Leo smoothly. ‘I’m looking into an old story about Andrew Collins, a test pilot who was supposed to have crashed around here somewhere.’

  ‘Grandad’s your man for that if he did. Won’t you both come in? I was just going to fix Grandad up with a bite to eat for his lunch.’

  ‘Billy not around?’ said Penny, trying to sound off-hand.

  Rachel laughed. ‘He’s taken his pack-up into the fields. One thing after another at this season. He won’t be back until suppertime, I daresay.’

  And while Penny, with her mind in turmoil, studied the composed farmer’s wife for signs of dalliance or guilt – and failed to see either – Leo lucked on the exact story he’d been trying to track down!

  ‘A plane crash, you say?’ Grandad Fell was a bright-eyed old man ensconced in the comfortable chair by the range. Now he cackled. ‘Any number of crashes up here, son. You’d think they’d see the mountains coming, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘This would have been in the fifties. Andrew Collins was the pilot. I believe he came from Salthaven originally. That may have been why he was here.’

  ‘Aye, he did. I remember that. They never found him. They searched Long Tarn, you know. Brought up divers and equipment – didn’t find anything.’ He snorted with suppressed mirth. ‘Useless lot. I could have told them they wouldn’t.’

  Penny drank her tea, listening with half an ear as she watched Rachel move competently around the farmhouse kitchen, making the old man’s lunch and seeing to her rising bread. Penny knew her vaguely, a pleasant, wholesome girl who wasn’t at all the sort to attract Tom. So what could be going on?

  ‘Did you know Andrew Collins? Can you tell me a bit about him?’ asked Leo.

  ‘I can. Right daredevil he was, up for anything. Came back here after flying fighters in the war. Couldn’t settle. Went off again after this pilot’s job as soon as he heard about it. I reckon he’d have paid them to fly their planes.’

  Leo listened, made notes, asked more questions, and finally rose. ‘Thank you. You’ve been very helpful. I suppose you don’t know anything about Lowdale Screw Fittings?’

  The old man cackled again. ‘The secret laboratory? Sorry, lad.’

  ‘You don’t know anyone who works there?’

  ‘Nobody does. It doesn’t exist, does it?’

  ‘I’ll see you out,’ said Rachel. ‘I’m off to check on my cheese, Grandad.’

  He looked put out to be deprived of his new audience. ‘You do too much, young woman.’

  ‘Give over, you’ve had a nice chat today and the children will be back from school to bother you before you know it.’

  She ushered them out, saying in a cheerful voice that he couldn’t get it into his head that the farm didn’t make as much from the crops as it had in his day so everyone had to find other ways of turning a profit. ‘And I’d rather make dairy products from our own animals than take in bed and breakfasters. Your home’s not your own, is it?’

  ‘No indeed,’ said Penny. ‘Do you sell at the farmers’ market?’

  ‘Internet, mostly. I’ll give you a card.’

  ‘It’s impossible,’ said Penny as she drove away. ‘Tom cannot be having an affair with Rachel Fell.’

  ‘Is that why you didn’t ask what he was doing there?’

  Penny didn’t dignify this with an answer. ‘I suppose you’d like to see Long Tarn now?’ she said, changing the subject.

  He grinned. ‘Might as well while we’re here.’

  The tarn was only a short way inland, nestled in the bowl of the hills. Leo got out of the car, shading his eyes against the autumn sun. ‘Collins ditched here?’ he said, sounding puzzled.

  ‘Not according to Grandad Fell. He said nothing was found. Don’t you like the idea?’

  ‘Frankly, no. It’s too tidy. Too accessible a site. Too near the road. I don’t believe in it.’

  ‘Come to think of it, nor do I,’ said Penny. ‘We used to come up here for picnics. No one – not Mum or Aunt Bridget or Grandma Astley – ever suggested an aeroplane had once crashed into it.’

  They looked at each other. ‘I’ll do some more digging,’ said Leo.

  ‘Try the Over-60s group at the library,’ suggested Penny. ‘Some of the older people might remember.’

  ‘Good idea. How about us looking at that blocked-off road now?’

  ‘All right, but there’s nothing to see.’

  Leo’s grin was wolfish. ‘That’s what interests me. If there isn’t anything to see, why block it off?’

  ‘It used to run all the way to the look-out post on the edge of the cliff. When the post was declared defunct and the cliff edge cordoned off as dangerous, the road was closed.’

  ‘Defunct and dangerous? Excellent. I’m always suspicious of two excuses where one would do.’

  Penny tutted and drove him as far as they could get down the disused track. ‘See? Nothing here. Lowdale on the right, farmland on the left.’

  He got out of the car and gazed over scrub filled with gorse and brambles. Penny looked past him, at the old airfield buildings behind the wire fence and the earth-moving equipment ready to expand the Screw Fittings site. ‘You can see where the road went originally. Down to the edge of the cliff and along round the perimeter of the airfield. But with the new grid criss-crossing the Enterprise Park, it wasn’t needed.’

  ‘What’s on the other side of this hedge?’

  ‘Another farm. Deep End. And before you get any ideas, that’s private property with strictly no admittance. The glint of water you can see through the hedge is Deep Tarn. It’s called that for a reason. People have drowned there.’

  Leo’s attention sharpened. ‘Is that so?’ Before she knew what he was about, he’d scrambled onto the bonnet of her car. ‘Tell you what, this farm isn’t as welcoming as Fellrigg. Very run down – and it looks as if the boundary is electrified.’

  ‘Leo! Get down! What are you doing?’

  He gazed across the unkempt hedge to the farm on one side, before turning to stare at the Enterprise Park on the other. ‘Fixing the lie of the land in my head.’

  Not just in his head – he was taking photos with his phone. Way over to their right, Penny saw one of the Screw Fittings builders spot them and call across to his mate. ‘Time to go,’ she said. ‘You are plain dangerous, Leo. Do you want to climb in through the sun roof, or would you prefer to use the door like conventional people?’

  ‘Is everything all right, Lucinda?’

  It was Sunday and Penny couldn’t leave the question any longer.

/>   Her eldest daughter immediately looked defensive. ‘Of course everything is all right. Why wouldn’t it be? Apart from not having enough time in the day, that is.’ She put the schedule for the Salthaven Show that she’d been leafing through back on the table. ‘They really ought to update the medal classes for the show. There’s never anything quick involved. Who on earth makes jam these days? Why don’t they have a cup for the healthiest sandwich or the most nutritious packed lunch?’

  ‘Frances entered a peanut butter and bacon roll once, for the unusual ingredients prize, don’t you remember? Yours is a good idea. You’ll have to suggest it to the committee. The show schedule isn’t set in stone.’

  ‘I might, at that. What’s Leo doing here?’

  ‘He was at a loose end. He gets bored all by himself on his boat. Besides, he took me out for a meal this week, remember? I thought I should return the favour.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mother, the paper was paying. You do realise he’s too young for you, don’t you?’

  There were times when Penny had to remind herself quite strongly that she loved her daughter. ‘That’s just his irresponsible air. But apart from the fact that a four-year difference means very little once you reach our advanced age, Leo and I are simply friends. Everyone is allowed to have friends.’

  She carried drinks into the sitting room and was brought up short by the expression of concentrated pain in Leo’s eyes as he played trains on the carpet with Lucinda’s son, Bobby. The child was two, and endlessly endearing despite his parents providing him with purely educational toys and insisting he got the most out of every play experience. Penny remembered that Leo’s estranged son was six or seven. He must miss him.

  ‘We were over your way during the week,’ she said chattily to her son-in-law. ‘Leo is on the track of a test-plane that crashed somewhere near Lowdale in the 1950s.’

  ‘Really?’ Tom’s expression glazed, indicating that he was flicking through his internal database. He shook his head. ‘Sorry, don’t know of it.’

  ‘I’ll do some more asking around. Interesting countryside as soon as you get clear of Salthaven,’ said Leo. ‘Do you ever get out into it?’

  ‘I don’t have the time. I’m working.’

  ‘That’s a shame. Not even during your lunch breaks?’

  A very slight look of evasion slid across Tom’s face. That in itself was enough to shake Penny. Tom didn’t do evasion. ‘No, I generally eat a sandwich at my desk and work through.’

  ‘Tom’s work is very important. Mother, did I tell you what Bobby said at nursery this week? Mrs Field said it was really intelligent for a two-year-old.’

  It was all very much as normal – but it wasn’t quite. As Penny listened and watched in between putting the last touches to lunch, she wondered if the others had noticed anything wrong. But why would they? Frances, her younger daughter, habitually went round in a world of her own. Leo didn’t know Lucinda and Tom well enough to judge.

  Penny knew though. You can’t fool a mother. As it was, it wasn’t until she got out ice cream for dessert that she saw Lucinda’s eyes light up with unforced enthusiasm. At least that hadn’t changed. Ever since Lucinda was tiny it had always restored Penny’s belief in basic human nature that her poised, self-possessed eldest child lost all sense of her own importance when faced with ice cream. With any luck, this would mellow Lucinda into a more approachable mood, so she could actually talk to her and find out what might be wrong.

  ‘We had some lovely ice cream the other day,’ she said. ‘At the Dun Cow of all places. It was the most sublime –’

  ‘A plane crash?’ said Tom, interrupting suddenly. ‘Did you say earlier that you were looking into an old plane crash?’

  Leo nodded, eyes alert.

  ‘I’ve just remembered that the workmen resurfacing the road outside my window at work a while back were talking about when rescue services dredged the tarn in search of a ditched aeroplane. It was years ago and these men’s fathers used to laugh about it, for some reason. Might that have been the one?’

  ‘It could have been,’ said Leo. ‘Interesting that the dredging was seen as amusing. When was this? Can you remember the guys’ names or which tarn they were discussing?’

  But that was the limit of Tom’s knowledge on the subject. They had just been the road menders. He turned the subject to a discussion of Bobby’s nursery curriculum and how he and Lucinda were both hoping the Christmas production at the end of term wouldn’t interfere too much with the children’s progress.

  ‘He’s only two!’ said Penny, unable to help herself.

  ‘Christmas production?’ Frances emerged from her dream world. She was the artistic one in the family and now gazed at her nephew with speculative interest. ‘What’s he going to be? I can make him a costume.’

  Lucinda’s eyes met those of her husband, both of them clearly appalled at the thought of Bobby dressed in one of Frances’s fabulous ragbag outfits, yet scrupulously unwilling to discourage her in practising for her chosen career.

  At that moment, looking at her daughter and son-in-law united in alarm, Penny’s uppermost emotion was sharp relief that nothing was truly wrong between them. She was so grateful she dolloped more ice cream into Lucinda’s bowl and gave Bobby another helping of chocolate pudding. It said much for Lucinda and Tom’s state of mind that neither of them noticed.

  Leo saw the exact moment when Penny relaxed. Good, he thought. Lucinda might be a tiresomely self-satisfied young woman, but he didn’t want Penny worried about her. He chuckled inwardly at Bobby’s chocolate-smeared face. His parents were going to notice any moment now and there would be an outcry. A civilised one, because that was the sort of people they were. This was all to the good, because Tom wouldn’t be able – out of sheer good manners – to avoid Leo’s innocent questions about the comings and goings at Lowdale Screw Fittings.

  Accordingly, when Lucinda gave a faint scream at her son’s face and Tom urged her in a low voice to clean Bobby as if it didn’t matter and not give him complexes for life about eating chocolate, Leo struck.

  ‘I suppose you’re used to roadworks up at the Enterprise Park, are you? There looked to be a number of new developments when we drove past. Very encouraging in a recession.’

  As he had hoped, Tom glanced at him in a harassed way, caught between politeness to a guest and concern for his son’s psyche. ‘Some, yes. But it’s only usually a case of leaving five minutes earlier to get to work on time.’

  ‘Isn’t it noisy with all the workmen clattering about? And the comings and goings? I noticed a digger and trucks outside the Screw Fittings place. There was enough building material piled up to last into the middle of next year.’

  ‘Yes.’ Tom gave a distracted look at Bobby. ‘Yes, it’s always busy there. But it doesn’t really bother me. Once I’m inside, I’m inside.’

  Leo could well believe that. ‘Good thing, though, if they’re keeping local firms in business.’

  Tom frowned, his attention caught. ‘It’s odd you should say that. When our offices were being spruced up over the summer, we used local men. But none of the lorries going to Lowdale Screw Fittings are from this area at all. I’ve noticed when I’ve been stuck behind them.’

  Leo would have bet on that too. He exhaled with satisfaction and proceeded to extract details in a delicately unobtrusive manner. One thing about geeks, they might only focus on one thing at a time, but they had tremendous powers of observation when forced to be idle.

  ‘Thank you for lunch,’ he said to Penny as she saw him out. ‘I’ve got a fair bit to work on now.’

  ‘Glad to be of service. Off you go, or you’ll miss the bus.’

  ‘I can’t run for it, that’s for sure, not after that meal.’ Behind him, he heard the sitting-room door opening. In a moment of pure devilry, he wondered what sort of outcry he’d provoke if he brushed Penny’s cheek with his lips.

  ‘Don’t even think it,’ she said.

  He quirked his eyebro
w at her. ‘You can read minds?’

  ‘Believe it.’

  He laughed. ‘See you soon.’

  Penny shut the door, chuckling. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ she asked Lucinda.

  But her daughter was now in a hurry, having seen Leo safely off the premises. ‘We have to go. I need to read through the Salthaven Show schedule again and work out what I’ve got time to make before next week, and Tom has an important meeting to prepare for tomorrow.’

  Was it just bending down to pick Bobby up that had brought that faint wash of colour to Tom’s face? Penny felt a chill of worry all over again. ‘I hope you’re not working too hard, Tom. You both need to spend time with Bobby – children grow up so fast at this age.’

  ‘We do know, Mother,’ said Lucinda. ‘We’ve read the books.’

  Humph. Penny cast around impotently for something she could do. The memory of her meal with Leo gave her an idea. She’d book them a nice dinner out for Lucinda’s birthday – not at the Dun Cow, however good the ice cream – with a taxi to take them there and back so they could have a drink, and she would babysit.

  ‘And I don’t care if they think I’m bossy,’ she said to Leo when she met him in the town centre for coffee next day. ‘Didn’t you think something was wrong between them?’

  Leo’s smile was wry. ‘I don’t have the greatest of records regarding relationships. They were united over Bobby, that’s for sure.’

  Penny put her hand on his arm. ‘Oh, Leo, I’m sorry. I saw your face when you were playing with him. It’ll work out – you’ll get more frequent access to your own son if you keep trying.’

  ‘Only if my ex-wife has a personality transplant.’ He took a quick breath and changed the subject. ‘I’ve been checking up on those firms Tom mentioned. The ones working for Lowdale Screw Fittings. He was right. None of them are local.’