Farm Fatale

by Wendy Holden

  Reeling into the sitting room of Number 2, Rosie hurled herself on the sofa and gave way to tears again. Moving to the country had not been a wonderful new start, but a slow and painful end. And whose fault had that been? Hers? Mark's?

  "Or Matt bloody Locke's?" Rosie howled, pounding the cushions with her fists so that clouds of dust exploded into the sunbeamslanted air. Now, with hideous clarity, she recalled his mocking voice. "More's the pity." Well, he was too bloody right there. More's the pity, Rosie thought, I ever clapped eyes on him. It had been Matt, she now remembered quite clearly, who had walked her home, drunk and distressed, from the party. And straight into her career as the scarlet woman of Cinder Lane.

  Feeling Mrs. Womersley's disapproval beaming through the dividing wall like a laser, Rosie decided to go out. The cottage and its contents were a constant reminder not only of what had ended but of what was yet to be resolved. She would have to leave the village, of course. She could not afford the cottage on her own, and the publisher's advance from A Ewe in New York would clearly not be enough to cover the mortgage for long. But what was there to stay for, in any case?

  Yet the thought of going back to London was not a welcome one. The property boom in the capital having penetrated even the consciousness of one as vague as she, Rosie was aware that returning might mean not so much broom closet as shoe box. Matchbox, even.

  She could move in with Bella—temporarily, of course—as Bella would insist Rosie did the moment she found out what had happened. There was a spare bedroom next to Ptolemy's suite. A port in a storm, Rosie supposed, even if sharing a landing with the Antichrist was a far from inviting prospect. But Bella need know nothing about what had happened. Yet.

  By now, Rosie had reached the top of the hill. She gazed miserably at the village spread around and beneath her. Never had it looked so perfect. The pond on the green sparkled, the rose-towered church stood proud in the sunshine; even the roofs of Cinder Lane cottages running up behind it looked an adorably rickety huddle. Beyond the village, hills rose like green waves into the next valley, then the valley beyond, and beyond that until, finally, they flowed into the purple sea of the moors. Could she really leave all this behind? Did she have much choice?

  Rosie jumped as someone suddenly appeared beside her. Someone with black hair and a great deal of eyeliner.

  "Hey, there," drawled the girl from The Bottoms. "That's a bit of luck. I was just coming to check you out. We never introduced ourselves the other day." She stuck out a narrow hand heavy with silver rings. "Iseult. How's it going?"

  "Rosie. And badly." One of the many recent decisions Rosie had made was to stop saying things were all right when they weren't.

  The girl nodded. "Me too. My stepmother's driving me crazy. I sing in a band called Thrilled Skinny, right, and she won't even let me play my goddamn demo tapes. Says that if that's the future of music she doesn't want to be alive. And I'm with her on that. I don't want her to be goddamn alive either. So"—Iseult looked Rosie swiftly up and down—"what's eating you? Man trouble, at a wild guess?"

  "Among other things."

  "Thought so. That boyfriend of yours seems to have moved in with us." Iseult fished out a cigarette pack and offered Rosie one.

  Rosie shook her head vigorously. "He's not my boyfriend. Not anymore." Was this why Iseult had come to look for her? Mark had been in residence at The Bottoms for a week or so now; were the Grabsters already desperate to get rid of him?

  "No?" Iseult's lighter clicked and she disappeared behind a cloud of smoke. "But you wigged out completely when you thought he'd handed in his lunch pail. Better dead than alive, was he then?"

  "Sort of."

  Iseult drew on her cigarette sympathetically "So what are the other things? That are wrong, I mean."

  "Oh, just that I might soon be homeless as well. My boyfriend paid half the mortgage," said Rosie, resisting the temptation to add "sometimes." "So I might have to move back to London."

  "Far out." Iseult opened her blue eyes wide. "I mean, that's cool, isn't it? You'll be able to get out of this shithole and back to where the action is. I only wish I could."

  Rosie looked at her in surprise. "But you've only just got here, haven't you? Rapturous reunion with your father and all that?"

  "As soon as I persuade Dad to up sticks and come back to London, we're out of here," said Iseult decisively. "I'm here on a rescue mission, see. Dad can't stand the friggin' country. Hates it. Don't you?"

  Rosie paused. In the adjacent field, a bird spilled a succession of high, pure notes on the air. "No," she said, her heart lifting as she recognized a lark, then lowering again as she remembered Mark's comment about fizzing noises and modems. How could she have lived with him for so long?

  "But you can't possibly want to stay here."

  "Actually," Rosie said as the realization crystallized, "I do."

  Isuelt's brow knotted as it wrestled with what was obviously to her a conundrum of spectacular proportions. She inhaled again and blew out contemplatively. "Well, I suppose I can understand it in your case. You have pretty good reasons, after all."

  Rosie was staring at the two collapsed dragons, just visible in the valley after the next one. Their crumpled tips shone in the sun. Warming their old bones, she thought, her mind suddenly full of Jack and the afternoon when they had eaten the cheese and, afterward, shared that amazing kiss—although in retrospect perhaps that was the wrong way round to do things. He'd been so charming then. Damn him.

  "Matt Locke, for example," pursued Iseult.

  Rosie came storming out of her reverie. Not this again. Had Duffy been spreading rumors to Iseult as well?

  "Whatever you've heard, it's not true," she said hotly. "I don't even know Matt Locke. I'd never seen him before the party and I never want to see him again."

  There was an astonished silence.

  "Freaky," said Iseult, giving Rosie the sort of mixed fear and pity look usually accorded to the terminally insane. "Because Matt Locke sure wants to see you again."

  "What?" Rosie was shocked. Then she seethed. Bastard. No doubt he wanted to hear firsthand what the results of his actions had been. No doubt, too, he would find the whole thing hilarious. What did the mess she was in matter to him, after all? He was rich, famous, invulnerable.

  "I've been trying to call you, but you haven't been answering your phone. He came round to The Bottoms to find out where you lived. Fortunately," Iseult said, grinning, "Mark was in the garden with my stepmother at the time." Her eyes widened with wonder. "Oh, man, he's gorgeous."

  "But what did he want?" As if I care, thought Rosie, tightlipped. Matt Locke was emphatically not gorgeous. As far as she was concerned, he had all the charisma of a tax return.

  "Your address. He has a message for you, although I got him to leave it with me." Iseult rummaged in her beaded bag, dragged out a crumpled envelope, and held it out. "Here."

  Chapter Twenty-one

  "Don't you want to know what it says?" Iseult, still holding out the envelope, blinked her kohl-lined eyes in amazement. "A megastar has just sent you a letter. An icon is trying to communicate with you. Aren't you interested?"

  "Not really." If it was Matt Locke, it was bound to be trouble. Rosie glanced suspiciously at the envelope, half expecting an evil green glow to be seeping from the sealed flap.

  "Can I open it then?" Iseult was clearly hell-bent on liberating the contents of the envelope.

  Rosie shrugged. "If you like."

  Iseult ripped the envelope almost in half. "Bugger," she said ruefully. "That'll halve its value at Christie's." She scanned the piece of paper inside and gave a long, low whistle. "Wow."

  Rosie said nothing.

  "Bloody hell," said Iseult, her eyes still glued to the paper while Rosie's eyes remained determinedly fixed on the landscape. "You've won the lottery."

  Rosie's neck whirled round in amazement until she realized Iseult must be speaking figuratively. Matt Locke might be an influential person, but she doubted
even he had a hotline to National Lottery Live.

  "A lot of people would kill for this," Iseult added after a minute or so's silence.

  "For what?" Rosie wondered how long the amateur dramatics would go on. From what she remembered of Dame Nancy and friends at the party, there was quite enough of that in Eight Mile Bottom as it was.

  "But you're not interested." Iseult gave her a wicked look. "It is an amazing offer, though. You can't possibly not do it."

  "What, for Christ's sake?" Rosie snapped. "Wants me to sing with him, does he?"

  Iseult's eyes widened. "It's good, but it's not that good. Sing with him—that really would be a blast," she added wistfully.

  "So what is it?" Rosie asked for the third time. Iseult seemed to have drifted off into a trance of some sort.

  "Oh. Sorry. Matt wants you to do a painting."

  "What of?" A watercolor of the village? Of Ladymead?

  "Him."

  "No way," said Rosie quickly.

  "Well, according to this you discussed it at the party. Or maybe," Iseult added, her eyes an innocent blue, "the champagne did."

  Rosie threw Iseult a furious look.

  "He says here he'll pay you a fortune." Iseult then named a sum so staggering that Rosie's brows, which had contracted with irritation, shot apart in amazement. She could not only buy the cottage with that but probably the rest of Cinder Lane as well. Yet she was determined not to be bought.

  "No," she insisted.

  "Why the hell not?"

  "Because Matt Locke is…a liar, he's laid waste to my entire life, he's single-handedly responsible for the fact that I have to leave the village, he's…Oh, I don't know." Rosie ran a hand through her hair and stared fiercely into the distance. "He's horrible."

  "Horrible? But he won the Most Gorgeous Man in the Universe title two years running. Not to mention being Best Dressed Male and Most Intriguing Star." Iseult blushed. "OK, I admit it. I've visited his website."

  Rosie shrugged. "I don't care."

  "How can you be so stupid?" snapped Iseult, abandoning any lingering attempt at appearing laid-back. "Think about it. You're having to sell your cottage and you obviously don't want to. For some insane reason, you even want to stay in the countryside. Now listen to me. If you do this bloody painting, you could buy any house in this friggin' village. Except The Bottoms, of course, although someone's going to have to when Dad and I go back to town."

  "They're getting divorced?" Rosie grabbed at the change of subject. Arguing with Iseult was not for the fainthearted. Beneath that frail exterior she had a will of steel and a juggernaut determination to get her way.

  "That's the idea," Iseult said airily. "Well, my idea. But I think Dad's coming round to that one as well."

  There was a silence. Rosie realized she was almost in awe of Iseult. "I'm off," she muttered. "Got some work to do."

  "Bet it doesn't pay as well as Matt Locke."

  Her face set, Rosie started to walk off.

  "Here." Iseult, striding after her, shoved the letter into Rosie's pocket. "You're crazy, you know. I'd give anything to be asked to do anything by Matt Locke. Hell, I'll even do the picture for you. I could always learn to paint…"

  I won't do it, I won't, I won't, Rosie repeated to herself. But her fingers inched toward the letter in her pocket. Round the corner, Iseult safely out of eyeshot, she tore it out and saw, eyes rounding with shock, that Iseult had not been exaggerating about the promised money. Hell, Matt Locke must be loaded. "Come round and we'll talk about it," the note invited in handwriting that was more carefully rounded and uncertain than the autograph slash she had imagined.

  Rosie arrived back at Cinder Lane to discover that Mark had taken advantage of her absence to come round and remove his clothes, books, and records.

  "He's left you, hasn't he?" shrieked Blathnat, who had returned as mysteriously as he had disappeared. As had everyone else. The row of clapped-out vehicles once again festooned the graveyard wall and Arthur's dreadlocked head was once again under the hood of his Transit. Just for good measure, Mr. Womersley was sitting outside his front door in the weak spring sunshine with his radio tuned to the local pop station. As a result, "I Feel Love" was pumping out. As Satchel roared by within inches of her on what was without doubt the noisiest, scrapiest, rattliest skateboard in existence, Rosie reflected that love was the last thing she felt at the moment.

  She looked at Blathnat indignantly. "That's none of your business."

  "Why not? My mum leaves my dad all the time. Although he's so pissed off with her at the moment he's threatening to throw her out. She was a waitress at this party, see, and—"

  "Get inside, you little bugger," yelled Dungarees, coming suddenly round the corner with her breasts, for once, closed to public view.

  ***

  When Rosie finally rang Bella, she had not intended to discuss the Matt Locke offer. But in the end it proved the only way of getting her off what was to her the intensely satisfying subject of Mark's unworthiness as a boyfriend and Jack's grumpiness. While managing to refrain from the exact words "I told you so," Bella, with the adroitness of a Catch Phrase contestant, pressed practically every other euphemism into service. She also made the anticipated offer of the room next to Ptolemy in her house.

  "You're very sweet," Rosie said, "but I want to stand on my own two feet."

  Bella sounded amazed. "But, darling, what on earth would you want to do that for?"

  When Rosie finally told her about the letter Iseult had given her, Bella was aghast at the idea of refusal. "But of course you must do it, darling, don't be silly. The money's more than enough for a deposit on a really nice property. Which is what you want, isn't it?"

  "Ye-es." The question was—where? Rosie had not yet mustered the nerve to tell Bella, who had blithely assumed she would be returning immediately to the capital, that the only nice properties she was interested in looked out over fields and were hundreds of miles from a Tube station.

  "Bel, I really don't want anything to do with him. Everything that's recently happened to me is Matt Locke's fault. Mark shouting at me; Jack—" Rosie stopped, unable to bear going through the entire unsavory episode again.

  "Jack what?"

  "Oh, nothing. Well, everything. If Kevin—I mean Matt— hadn't kissed me and hadn't been talking to me when Mark saw me, and hadn't hit Mark, and if Jack hadn't gotten to hear about it from that wretched bloody postman…"

  Bella whistled. "And you think that's all Matt Locke's fault?"

  "Definitely," Rosie said emphatically. "Well, sort of…"

  "Sort of nothing," Bella said briskly. "If you ask me, Matt Locke has done you the most enormous favor. Mark's a selfish, pigheaded bastard who's always treated you like shit, could you but see it, and Jack's macho pride has never gotten over his first wife pissing off and leaving him. Not that anyone in their right mind could blame her…" With what sounded like superhuman effort, Bella stopped herself.

  "Hey, don't hold back," snapped Rosie. "Tell it like it is. Don't pussyfoot around on my account."

  "Don't you see?" Bella urged. "Matt did nothing wrong at the party. On the contrary, from what you said, he saved you from some hideous lech. And you did nothing wrong either. Apart from not realizing who Matt actually was, of course, which was a bit dim, darling, let's admit it. Honestly, Rosie, do people have to go around with flags on their heads saying 'I Am a Celebrity' before you—"

  "But he hit Mark…"

  "My point entirely, darling," Bella said heavily. "Personally, I've wanted to hit Mark for years."

  Rosie felt her foothold on the argument, already weakened by Iseult, begin to slip. Her eyes ached. She longed to put the phone down and just sleep. It was all too much to think about.

  Bella, however, was determined not to let the subject drop. "This portrait is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," she said decisively. "Everything I've been saying from the start. Forget the heartbroken bloody farmer, go for the heartthrob rock star. He's been given to
you on a plate, darling. He's stinking rich—he could probably get Lucian Freud if he wanted. But he wants you. You, Rosie. And think of the money. If you don't like him, just think of it as another commission. It doesn't have to be personal."

  Rosie hesitated. There did seem to be a small grain of sense in this. Perhaps it was just possible to regard the portrait as routine work. Even if painting Matt Locke was as far removed as could be imagined from illustrating kumquats for magazine–food pages.