by Wendy Holden
It stood to reason. The previous occupants had been model tenants, and model tenants would never have lived at the next-door cottage, with its gate like broken teeth and overgrown garden where piles of plastic rubbish showed between the nettles.
Nell had hoped Angela was exaggerating about the neighbour, but this did look horribly like a place where some nasty old man would peer scornfully at the world through windows which, even from here, had a smeared look to them. A big laylandii hedge divided the two gardens: shaggy and wild on the messy side, neatly cropped on the other.
Nell headed for the picket gate and opened it. The stone path was neatly swept and entirely clear of the dandelions which infested the next-door garden.
She decided to delay the excitement of opening the little white front door. Instead she went to the front window. It was scrupulously clean and looked into a cosy sitting room.
She was relieved to see that it was furnished. There was a small, comfortable sofa and a couple of chairs. A small TV stood in the corner. There was a large, flat, rustic stone fireplace, clearly very old, into which a wood-fired stove had been fitted. Nell imagined herself opening the little glass doors and putting logs inside and was warmed by the very thought.
On the wall was a black-and white photograph. It was of a couple: a wartime wedding, by the look of it, a handsome young man in air force uniform and a beautiful, smiling blonde with a flower pinned to her jacket. It seemed to Nell that there was something familiar about her.
But mainly she thought that it was odd, to leave a wedding photo behind. Especially an old one like this; the previous tenant’s grandparents, presumably. Had they departed in such a rush they hadn’t even taken their family pictures? Had the antipathy of their elderly neighbour been so unbearable they had cut and run that suddenly? She forced the thought away; nonetheless, a disquieting shadow had been cast on her sunny imaginings. She moved round the corner to explore the garden.
It shone in the sun, orderly and colourful, even by Edenville’s zinging standards. Nell buried her nose in a flowery bush next to the wall. The petals, white and waxy, packed a punch so sweet and powerful it made her head spin.
Her ears were full of birdsong, which seemed to get louder and more excitable all the time. Were they talking about her, and what she was doing? She could almost feel them watching with their little black eyes, feel their birdy interest.
Nell looked happily around. She was wondering what the various flowers were called. She thought she could identify some snapdragons. Some sunflowers were leaning up against the greenhouse and looking very cheerful. And that was definitely lavender over there by the wall. But these blazing yellow and orange flowers by the path, what were they? She would buy a flower identification book, Nell resolved, moving into the greenhouse.
My, but it was hot in here. The air was close and thick and smelt tangy. Nell spotted with delight, among some pale and hairy leaves, the red shining globes of tomatoes. And was that really a vine, growing all along one side? Big, crinkly leaves were hiding clusters of little green dots. Were they grape bunches in embryo? And, on the shelf which stretched round all three sides, were lots of little orange plastic pots, each holding a small green spurt of leaves.
It all looked so amazingly well kept. Not remotely as if the inhabitants had driven off for ever with all their chattels. Rather, it looked as if they had just stepped away.
CHAPTER 36
This, did Nell but know it, was exactly what had happened.
George Farley had just watered his lettuce bed. The tidy leaves sparkled in the light. The sun was slanting through the polished panes of his greenhouse from whose open door the warmed air pulsed, tangy with the sharp tomato smell of geraniums, the sharp geranium smell of tomatoes.
His old upright aluminium sun-chair, its blue cotton seat weather-faded, its white plastic arms cracked and warped, had stood invitingly behind the greenhouse. The house wall nearby was radiating heat. Perhaps just five minutes then, George had thought to himself, sitting down and tipping his hat over his face.
It was so peaceful in the garden. So gloriously calm now that those dreadful people next door had gone. The old man drifted into sleep.
Beneath his faded cotton sunhat, he dreamed of his wife. As always in his dreams she looked young and beautiful, the way she had when they met. Tall and pale like a lily; a gilded one too. Her pale gold hair rippling with the Lincolnshire breeze, her eyes as blue as his RAF uniform. He’d just arrived from training in London as a rear gunner. She had just arrived too, as a volunteer. The base was the nearest to where she was spending the war with her aunt, away from the London bombs. The particular London bomb that was Edwina had blown him to smithereens. He had never had a chance.
She had a tinkling, well-bred laugh and her smile was like a sunburst. He felt its heat both within and without. There was a rosy tinge to her creamy cheeks.
And she had always looked that way to him, ever after. The old lady, the ill lady, he had never really believed it, even when it was there before him. And now, in his dreams, she was young again, and would be for ever. He wished he could join her. He was so weary, so lonely. They said it would get better with time but it had only got worse.
The sun shone red through the blood in his tightly shut eyelids. He was waking up. Time, George realised, to go and shut the greenhouse. He took a deep breath, opened his eyes and, with a heaving grunt, raised himself out of his chair.
Someone, he realised, was in the greenhouse. He stumped over, summoning his breath. The hideous possibility that it was his former next-door neighbours flashed through him. Last year the child had picked all the grapes long before they had ripened. Then stamped them into the floor because they tasted sour.
He could see someone through the tangled green of the tomato plants. Not the little girl, thank God. Nor her mother. They were both dark-haired.
This person was very fair. Tall, like Edwina, and with his wife’s pale hair.
The old man stopped. Through the vine leaves pressed against the greenhouse window, it was hard to make her out. He could see a curve of pale cheek. A flash of pink lip. The resemblance made his heart hammer. Was it her? Come to fetch him, at last?
He stretched out both hands imploringly. ‘My darling.’ She heard him, and turned. Looked out, smiled.
The first Nell knew of it was when she heard the voice. A sort of cry. She looked up from examining the grape bunches to see a man flailing around in the garden.
She rushed outside. Her hazy, immediate impression that she knew him strengthened into certainty. This was the old man she had seen in the graveyard. Lovingly tending his wife’s grave. Telling her his news and how much he missed her.
‘Mr Farley!’ Nell exclaimed. What was the old man doing in her garden? Was he a friend of the horrid man who lived next door?
He lunged at her, his eyes fixed and wild. Their hands met in mid-air. Then he fell to the ground, so suddenly and heavily it was all she could do not to fall with him.
Nell fought for her balance, then felt his pulse. Faint, slow, but there. She dragged out her mobile and punched in 999.
‘Heart attack?’ The operator sounded sceptical. ‘I’ll get someone to call you. Can you confirm the telephone number I can see on my screen?’
The old man’s breathing was rasping and laboured. ‘But why does someone have to call me?’ Nell’s voice was sharp with panic.
‘Just to run through a few questions.’
For all his weak heartbeat, George Farley was clinging powerfully to her hand. His face was grey but the bright hazel eyes were trained on her. They were longing and pleading, as if she were the only hope of saving him.
‘Look, he’s really ill,’ Nell told the operator. ‘He’ll die if you don’t do something.’
The other end sighed. ‘We’ll send an ambulance as soon as we can. But I should warn you, they’re
busy this afternoon. It might take a while.’
Nell patted the old hand. He resisted as she tried to peel off his fingers. The bright eyes widened anxiously and a faint whimper came from the wrinkled old throat.
‘I’m not going far,’ she told him. ‘Just to get help.’
She charged to the edge of the garden, to where it overlooked the road. She would flag someone down. The very next person who came along.
Dan and Dylan were driving back from Byron House when Dan’s mobile rang. As Dan was driving, Dylan answered. He hoped it wasn’t Mrs Turner.
It was not. An imperious voice now boomed into his ear. ‘This is the Lady President of the Chestlock Golf Club. I need you tomorrow. The man who mows our course has let us down and I hear from several of my lady members that you provide a good service.’
Dylan took down the details. By the time he had finished they were approaching Edenville.
The return from the Byron House end of Chestlock came through the back of the village. It had a different feel to the rest of the settlement. Possibly it was the oldest. The straggle of houses here were plainer and smaller, ending in a couple of cottages which were plainest of all. As they approached, Dylan noticed that while one of them had a beautiful cottage garden, the other was the opposite extreme, an utter bomb site.
Trees heavy with summer growth overhung the quiet, green lane. Banks of summer flowers filled the hedgerows. It was all very peaceful. So when a woman suddenly appeared in the middle of the road it took both Dylan and Dan by surprise.
‘Who the ’ell’s that?’ asked Dan.
Dylan knew exactly who the hell. He had last seen her screaming at him out of a pub window. His first instinct was to swerve round her and speed on.
‘Bloody ’ell, slow down,’ Dan advised. ‘She might want a lift or summat.’ He wound down the window. ‘You all right, love?’
Nell hurried over. Surprise and anger flared within her as she recognised Adam Greenleaf. ‘You!’
Yet there was nothing for it but to call a truce. For now, anyway. At the moment, all that mattered was George. ‘I need you to help get someone to the hospital,’ she gasped. ‘He’s in the garden. It’s going to take both of you to carry him.’
Dan leapt out immediately, his long legs eating up the few feet between the car and the garden gate. Dylan scurried after. The sight of a large old man on the grass was unexpected.
‘George Farley,’ Dan muttered, crouching down beside him.
‘You know him?’ Dylan asked.
‘Yeah. Good bloke.’
‘I think it’s a heart attack,’ Nell bleated from behind. ‘But they say that the ambulance will take a while. We’ll have to put him in your car.’
Dylan thought of his car. Not only was it tiny but the back seat was crowded with garden equipment. They could hardly lay the old man on top of the strimmer.
‘We can’t move ’im,’ Dan said flatly. ‘If ’e’s ’ad an ’eart attack, it’ll strain ’is ’eart even more.’
The old man’s face was now a sickly yellow. Beneath his jutting eyebrows, the bright hazel eyes were closed.
‘We can’t just leave him here!’ Nell wailed, watching Dan link his enormous fingers, place the heel of his right hand on the old man’s chest and start to push down with the full weight of his massive body.
‘We’ll have to,’ Dylan said, glancing at Nell over his shoulder. Her eyes were round and blue and he could see the dislike in them. But also the anxiety, which made something turn within him. ‘Until the ambulance gets here. And it’ll be on its way, don’t worry.’
Who was he to sound so sure, Nell wondered angrily. To sound so anything? Adam Greenleaf looked much dirtier than he had outside the pub. His shirt was grubby, his dark hair tangled, his jeans filthy. He looked sweaty, stubbly and unshaven.
‘Come on, lad. Come on.’ Dan, pushing, was muttering to George. Dylan could tell that he was flagging, losing hope.
‘I’ll take over,’ he offered. ‘I know what to do.’
He’d picked up all sorts of things during his time in the burns unit, and afterwards on the general wards. The ability to perform CPR was one of them. It was hard work; soon he, too, was gasping with the effort. Beneath him, the old man seemed still.
‘Do you really know what you’re doing?’ Nell asked, tersely.
Oh, where was the ambulance? Did either of these men have a clue?
Dylan pumped harder, more determinedly. He intended not just to save the old man but also to prove to Nell that she had got him wrong, that there was good in him and he was not the contemptible creature she obviously thought him.
He looked at her, and she at him. As their eyes locked, Dylan felt a great force surge within him and roar down his arms into the old man’s chest. This was followed by a movement, a flicker, then a definite ripple below his down-pressing hand. This resolved itself into a faint but steady beat. The old man’s heart had started again.
‘He’s alive,’ Dylan said. As George Farley coughed in confirmation he sat back on his heels, panting. He did not look at Nell.
The wail of an ambulance siren could now, finally, be heard in the distance. ‘Oh, thank God.’ Nell rushed to the wall to flag it down.
Thundering through her body, besides her relief, was the knowledge that Adam Greenleaf had performed this miraculous deed. He had saved George right before her eyes. She had seen him do it.
A pair of cheery paramedics hurried up the path. ‘That’s all right, we’ll take over.’
Within seconds, or so it seemed, they had buckled the old man into a stretcher and were loading him into the waiting vehicle. Dylan was watching, but all he was really seeing was the way Nell’s hair rippled and flashed in the sunshine and breeze.
Dan nudged him. ‘Come on. They don’t need us now.’
CHAPTER 37
Nell sat with one of the paramedics at the back of the ambulance. George, across the small aisle, lay strapped to a bed in an oxygen mask. His eyes remained shut but his face was pink now. He was also breathing regularly. He would live, the paramedic said.
The vehicle was grinding and swaying along, and Nell was staring at the floor. But she was not seeing it. Instead, she was back in the old man’s garden, examining what had happened, replaying the dramas of the last half hour in her mind.
George’s against-the-odds survival was of course the main event. But scarcely less extraordinary was Adam Greenleaf’s role in the proceedings. The man Nell had written off as a bounder and a cad had proved to be a hero of the first water. He had acted decisively and saved a life. Which changed things, of course. How was she to think of him from now on?
The ideal answer to this would have been – not at all. But he kept turning up; he obviously lived somewhere in the area. It seemed likely that she would see him again, and if so, what would she do, or say?
Nell lined up her new knowledge of Adam Greenleaf against what she already knew. Had she somehow misjudged him? Got it all wrong?
But no. She could not have misinterpreted what had happened in the Apples and Pears. He had acted deliberately to deceive her. She had absolutely no doubt about that.
The novel was the proof. He had had a copy of All Smiles, as had she. Somehow he had known that was the prearranged signal. Perhaps he had cyberstalked her? It was the first time that this thought had occurred to Nell and it seemed suddenly horribly likely. What other explanation was there? How else could he have known about the book?
The only possible conclusion, Nell decided, was that Adam Greenleaf was good and bad at the same time. He had been deceptive towards her and heroic to George. His heroics were obviously much more important than the deception, but it didn’t mean that the deception hadn’t happened. And if he’d really stalked her online, it had been worse than she first thought. She had, Nell decided, not withou
t a certain relief, been right all along to avoid him.
That was definitely the safest way, not least because there was something about those dark eyes and that tall, rangy body that she was finding it rather hard to forget. It was as if Adam Greenleaf had found the chink of doubt in her mind, slipped through it and lodged himself there.
The paramedic was speaking to her. Nell looked up, confused, into the cheerful face above the green boiler suit. ‘Sorry?’
‘I was just saying that they did well there, your friends,’ he said.
‘They’re not my friends,’ Nell answered quickly.
The paramedic looked surprised. ‘I thought he were your boyfriend. The dark-haired one. Or your husband.’
‘Absolutely not,’ gasped Nell, horrified at precisely how unhorrified this suggestion made her feel.
‘Sorry, I’m sure.’ The paramedic raised his eyebrows.
Nell rushed to make amends. ‘I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just that . . .’ She hesitated. ‘I guess I’m not really in the market for romance at the moment.’
‘Broken heart, eh?’
‘Something like that.’
‘But not like his?’ The paramedic nodded at George. ‘Different sort of broken heart, that.’
Nell agreed, and was grateful when the ambulance man said no more. It was not long before he started chatting again, however.
‘Know him, do you?’ He nodded at George.
Nell smiled and shook her head. ‘I think he’s a friend of the man who lives next door.’
The paramedic’s easy grin had faded. ‘Man who lives next door? Just moved in there, have you?’
Nell nodded, choosing her words carefully. ‘Yes, and I’ve heard the neighbour’s quite difficult.’
‘That man’s gone,’ said her companion. ‘And difficult was the word, from what I hear.’
Nell felt a warm wash of relief.
‘Him and his wife and the kid,’ the paramedic added.
‘I hadn’t realised he was married,’ Nell said, surprised. Wasn’t the difficult neighbour over eighty? She wished this garrulous man would shut up. He seemed to have a genius for difficult topics.
