‘Sam, I’m fine, honestly, it probably sounded a lot worse than it was.’ Sam looks at Mark, who nods and asks him, ‘Is there somewhere where we can talk?’ Mark turns to me. ‘Meg, maybe you could see if Jessie is OK?’
‘Sure, and I’ll make us some tea,’ I smile, before making my way to the kitchen.
I put the kettle on and then sit next to Jessie. She doesn’t move. I edge closer and put an arm around her. We sit silently for a few minutes until she subsides into me and sobs for a good few minutes. Eventually, and all cried out, she leans back in her chair.
‘Oh Meg, I am so, so sorry,’ she says, her voice trembling. ‘And I will totally understand if you want nothing more to do with me …’
‘Hey,’ I lift her chin and look into her eyes, ‘why on earth would you say that?’
‘Because I’m a mess!’ She looks away. ‘And I’ve brought trouble to your door.’
‘No you haven’t. Sebastian did. You didn’t make him come to my house. It’s not your fault. He’s a grown man who makes his own decisions. You are not to blame. Do you hear me?’ I say firmly, and Jessie nods.
‘But I should have left him ages ago, I can see that now … and I should never have told him that you agreed with me, in that I needed time to think; but he was so angry, furious when I suggested we needed time apart and I felt helpless, hopeless, in that moment. I felt so desperate. It was as if I needed to somehow show him that I wasn’t the only one who thought so, to somehow give credibility to what I was saying. Sebastian never listened properly to me, he never took me seriously, but then why would he? I’m feeble. I’m pathetic. I’m a terrible person. You know, I didn’t even have the courage to tell him it was over. No, I shouldn’t have mentioned you at all … I should never have dragged you into my shambolic life.’ She sniffs before reaching for a tissue from a box on the table.
Silence follows.
‘That’s a lot of “shoulds”,’ I smile gently. ‘How about you go easy on yourself for a change? Stop telling yourself off. It’s going to be fine. I promise you. You’ll see, and you are not feeble or pathetic or terrible. Now, I’m going to check on the children and then I’m going to make you a nice cup of tea,’ I tell her, patting her shoulder as I go.
‘Meg, I really am terrible,’ Jessie says quietly, and I stop moving. I turn back to see her face is ashen as she stands up.
‘What is it?’ I ask softly, touching her arm. She looks petrified. A short silence follows. She closes her eyes and then takes a deep breath, before telling me.
‘I’m pregnant!’ she sobs. ‘And Sam is the father.’
‘Oh.’ A short silence follows. ‘Does he know?’ I ask softly, conscious that Mark and Sam are in the next room. I close the kitchen door just to be sure they can’t hear us. Jessie shakes her head. ‘Oh Jessie, why haven’t you told him?’ I ask gently, remembering how she didn’t touch her Pimm’s at the meeting that time, or my elderflower fizz in the garden – it makes sense now.
‘I don’t know. I, just, I … I guess I was in denial for a while, and then I got scared. Scared of what Sebastian would do, what he still might do. He’ll take the triplets away from me.’
‘He can’t do that,’ I quickly say.
‘But he said so – when he found out that Sam had been in touch, and that I went to the funeral, he told me that if I saw him again, then he’d make sure I …’ Jessie drops her head into her hands. ‘Meg, I don’t know if I can go through with this pregnancy. I can’t risk losing the children that I already have, I just can’t do that.’
‘That’s not going to happen,’ I say, going to her and putting my arms around her again.
Show day. And the weather is glorious. A cloudless blue sky and the already warm sun is dazzling and hazing over the fields beyond the stream at the end of my garden. It’s only early, but I’ve come down here to sit on my tree stump beside the magnolia bush and enjoy a mug of tea before the day really gets under way.
Drawing in a big lungful of the fresh-mown-grass aroma, I wave over at Gabe, who is cutting his lawn one last time in the hope of winning a rosette today as part of the Garden In Bloom section of the village show. I sigh quietly. It’s lovely that everyone is so excited about the whole day, but I just can’t seem to summon any real enthusiasm. I know I should feel driven and motivated to save my school, but somehow, ever since I met Dan, and then he left so abruptly, things seem to have changed.
Vicky appears at the top of the path waving a phone in the air. She dashes towards Gabe and urges him to switch off the lawnmower at once.
‘Meg,’ she calls out. ‘Meg, you need to come right away.’ I jump up and tip the last of my tea out on to the grass before running over to her.
‘Is everything OK?’ I ask, over the fence.
‘Yes, yes, quickly. Cher from the Duck & Puddle is on the phone, says she needs to talk to you. It’s urgent. She’s been calling your house phone and …’ Vicky hurriedly hands me the phone which I press to my ear.
‘Hello, Meg?’ Cher pants, as if she’s been running too.
‘Yes, what’s the matter? Is everything OK?’ I ask, twiddling my silver rabbit on the chain, and thinking I’m not sure I can handle very much more drama. I’m still reeling from Mr Cavendish’s outrageous behaviour and subsequent arrest. That’s right, Mark called me yesterday to see how I was and to update me on the situation – Mr Cavendish is now banned from coming within a five-mile radius of Tindledale. Hurrah! And Jessie is thrilled with this news too, as it turns out that her husband has a pregnant mistress in Zurich, whom he lives with when he’s there … and to think that he had the cheek to castigate her for the indiscretion with Sam.
‘Yes, and no!’ Cher says. ‘Sorry, Meg, can you hold on for a second?’ There’s a muffled noise while I wait for her to come back on the line, interrupted by an intermittent beeping noise and a man yelling, ‘Keep going, that’s right, back it up mate, back it up. STOP!’ and then Cher is back. ‘Gosh, it’s all happening here. Meg, I think you need to come down here to the station car park before it’s completely gridlocked and I lose my mobile signal again – I managed to get one bar by waggling my phone around in the air near the little ticket Portakabin. I think they must have a Wi-Fi hub, or whatever they’re called, in there,’ she explains in a rushed voice.
‘What’s happened?’ I ask, trying to keep calm and glancing down at my pyjama bottoms, I was planning on having a relaxing bath to help soothe my back before putting on my navy and white polka-dot sundress and new, floaty, chiffon scarf. I treated myself to it online especially for show day – it has little rabbits on with diamanté studs all over it.
‘Um, six food trucks! That’s what happening right now. An enormous transporter turned up and is offloading them as we speak. All paid for, apparently, and the driver is refusing to take them away. What shall we do?’
‘Keep them there!’ I quickly say. ‘I’m on my way.’ And I hand the phone back to Vicky.
‘Everything all right?’ Vicky asks.
‘It sure is,’ I beam. Suddenly I am filled with a rush of energy and my heart is pounding fit to burst. So Dan didn’t let us down after all. But now I’m totally confused as well. What does it mean? Maybe Tindledale isn’t so dull to him, after all – why else would he supply the food trucks, and out of his own pocket too? But then what about his girlfriend?
But I don’t have time to work it all out – I have got to get to the station, and fast. Yes, we came up with a make-do solution for the catering today, but this is so much better! We are now going to have proper retro chrome food trucks with pink-striped awnings dotted around the village. Tindledale is going to look magnificent, and this will really give us the edge when the judges arrive later. ‘Right. Let’s get down there,’ I tell them, before going to leave.
‘Why don’t you go and get ready, and then I can give you a lift, if you like?’ Vicky offers calmly. ‘It’s a long way down to the station. It’ll give me something to do while Gabe perfects his garden.’ She giv
es Gabe an affectionate pat on the arm.
‘That would be a huge help. Thank you, and then I can whizz back later and pick up my bike,’ I grin.
‘No need, we can just strap it to the back of the car – the cycle rack is already in place,’ Gabe offers, and I give him a quick hug before bombing back inside and taking the stairs two at a time up to my bedroom.
Having showered, dressed and blow-dried my hair in record time, I’m just about to grab my Cath Kidston basket – having already packed it with everything I could possibly think of that might come in handy today – when Mum appears in a puff of bluebell-scented air. She’s fully clothed, thankfully, with a face full of make-up and hair that is all swingy and much more carefully blow-dried than mine.
‘Darling, I had to use the last of that bubble bath, hope you don’t mind,’ she says casually, spritzing her wrists with my new ‘signature scent’ (I treated myself to that too), after swinging her pashmina around her shoulders.
‘Um, oh, right,’ I mutter, and I take the perfume bottle from her clasped hand and hide it under the scarf in my basket, for me to use later.
‘Let’s go shopping on the weekend.’ Mum claps her hands together. ‘We could go up to London and make a proper day of it! New clothes. My treat!’ she says, glowing, before adding, ‘Whatever you want. And you could do with a pair of pretty heels to really show off your lovely tanned legs, if you don’t mind me saying so!’ And I spot her sneaking a look at my Joules navy festival wellies, which may not be her style, but they match my dress and are far more practical for cycling around the village in, and I imagine I’m going to need to cover a lot of ground in a short space of time today to keep an eye on everything. Suddenly I feel really enthusiastic about the day again. I really want to make sure Tindledale is in that top ten list in the Sunday supplement magazine. ‘Come on, what do you say?’
‘Muuuuuum!’ I exclaim, sounding just like Jack. ‘My clothes and footwear are fine. Anyway, I need to go. I don’t have time for this. Here,’ I press a bundle of show day pamphlets into her arms. ‘You can be in charge of giving those out.’
‘Sure. You know me, Megan, always happy to help out!’ she quips, before pursing her lips.
Sighing and shaking my head, I close the front door behind us and we make our way down the path to Vicky’s car – a cute convertible classic Beetle in cherry red.
‘Oooh, she’s a beauty,’ Mum trills, eyeing up the car. ‘But I’d better get my headscarf or my hair will be ruined,’ and she goes to dart back inside.
‘No time! Sorry Mum,’ I swiftly say, packing her into the back passenger seat before closing the door and jumping into the front with my basket on my lap.
We’re whizzing along the lanes, with Vicky carefully slowing down as we take a bend – you never know what livestock could appear at any given moment: deer, horses, chickens, peacocks, pheasants, rabbits, rams. There was even a pair of ginger-haired llamas in the middle of this lane last year; they had escaped from the fields on the other side of the valley. We are just about to pull into the station car park when something catches my eye.
‘STOP!’ I bellow.
‘What is it?’ Mum shrieks straight into my left ear, looking horrified as I swivel my head to bat her away from me. Vicky does an emergency brake, bringing the car to a sudden standstill.
‘I don’t believe it,’ I shout, getting out of the car and running to the hedgerow that runs the length of the field next to the station where the new houses are going to be built. I plant my hands on my hips and shake my head. Vicky and Mum are standing right behind me now. ‘Look at this!’ I lift a hand from my hip to point to a placard.
DON’T GO TO TOWN ON OUR LOVELY
LITTLE VILLAGE
No to new houses!
The words are written in big, bold, ugly black letters on a garish, fluoro orange background. It looks horrendous and hardly conducive to the ‘community spirit’ element of today’s Great Village Show.
‘This is definitely not what we want visitors to see as soon as they arrive for our village show – it’s not very friendly or welcoming, is it?’ I shake my head.
‘Certainly not. Here!’ Mum flings her pashmina in my face.
‘What are you doing?’ I say, sweeping myself free from the silky cloth, which I then roll up into a ball to hurl over my shoulder. It lands on the back seat of Vicky’s car.
‘Getting rid of this! What does it look like?’ Mum states, picking her way across the grass, with her five-inch heels sinking mercilessly as she grabs hold of an old fence post to steady herself.
‘But we can’t do that,’ I say, half-heartedly, really wanting to rip the sign down, but thinking: what if someone from the parish council has put it there? Or what if one of the school inspectors drives past at this precise moment and sees me, the acting head teacher, involved in an act of blatant vandalism? I’m sure that wouldn’t go down very well in their report.
‘Yes we can.’ It’s Vicky who takes action, and she’s bent down now, with her hands around the pole, trying to ease it free from the mud, but it’s no use, it’s not budging. I glance at my watch. It’s almost nine o’clock, and people are going to be arriving soon.
‘OK. Step aside,’ I say, like I’m some kind of heavyweight wrestler going in to the ring as I wade in and wrench the placard free. I have to give it three good tugs before it comes loose.
‘That’s my girl. Now get it in the back of the car,’ Mum shouts, right into my ear again, as Vicky and I drag the sign away. With the placard sticking conspicuously up out of the car from the back seat, Vicky puts her foot down and speeds us off to the car park, where Sonny and Cher take one look at the ugly orange sign before swiftly tossing it face down under the ground sheet inside the marquee.
‘We can deal with that later,’ Sonny says, wiping his hands on his black and white chequered chef trousers. ‘First we need to organise these.’ He points to the six super-shiny food trucks. ‘And then I need to get back to the pub.’
‘One of them can stay here,’ Cher says, having already loaded her trays of venison burgers into the little fridge unit in the nearest one.
‘And we’ll shift the rest wherever they need to go!’ Pete calls out from the window of his flat-bed truck, as he swerves up beside us into the station car park, with the engine still chugging and seven or eight farm boys on the back who all jump off and instantly start sorting out the keys and the paperwork with the delivery guy.
‘I called Pete too!’ Cher grins, lifting a giant catering bottle of ketchup into her truck.
After we’ve checked all the locations on one of the pamphlets, the farm boys pile into the food trucks and off they go, convoy style, up the steep lane back towards the village.
‘Hop in,’ Pete says to me. ‘You’re needed in the village hall! Sybs said something about a giant marrow!’
‘Oh God, no, not again! And the show hasn’t even really started yet.’
*
A few hours later, and with all potential disasters averted, I’ve dispatched Mum to listen to the brass band on the village green. She has already done a stint in my juice-bar truck, completely ignoring all instructions, as per the temporary events licence, to not start serving any of the wine until after eleven o’clock. ‘But darling, it must be gone eleven somewhere in the world. Where does it specifically say that it has to be here in Tindledale?’ she had said, and my mind had been boggled by her skewed logic.
Now Molly has volunteered to take charge of the truck, so that I can walk along the High Street to do a final check of the window displays. Fern will be here very soon with the TV camera and reporter, so I want everything to look perfect – Lawrence is bringing her to the village square at three o’clock to do an official ribbon-cutting ceremony around the commemorative stone, and I’ve already spotted a couple of judges wandering around the village with their clipboards – having finished handing out rosettes in the village hall to the best entries in the various produce categories, and with not one si
ngle cross word over a marrow. I had a quiet word with the two offenders from last time, telling them jokingly that they’d better behave this year or I’d give them each a half-hour detention, and they both laughed somewhat sheepishly but then seemed determined to set a good example to the actual school children in the village hall who, incidentally, were behaving impeccably.
Lots of the children were winning prizes, too – taking rosettes for the best-decorated hen’s egg, the prettiest pot of three dahlias, making a dragon’s nest from straw and glue. A boy in Year Six even won the Tindledale Trophy for his watercolour painting depicting a montage of hot-air balloons. Talking of which, there’s a red and white stripy one hovering overhead right now. Shielding my eyes from the bright sun, I take a proper look up. WOW! It’s truly spectacular, and I can’t wait to have a go. I make a mental note to head to the field where they’re taking off from, just as soon as I’ve seen the mini-carnival go by.
The whole village looks amazing – pristine, like something out of a film. Every single lawn and lamppost is tidy, with hanging baskets bulging with red, purple, pink, yellow and white flowers. Even Molly’s bush has had a trim, which will no doubt go down well with the WI woman and her husband on his motorised scooter. There’s a lovely, vibrant buzz in the village too; there are lots of people I don’t recognise, so they must be visitors, or potential newcomers intending to move here, with any luck. I smile at a family walking towards me, each of them eating with a fork from a plastic bowl.
‘Mmm, that smells delicious,’ I say, as they go to walk past.
‘It’s from the restaurant,’ one of the boys says, pointing to the end of the High Street.
‘Restaurant?’ I turn my head, wondering what he’s talking about.
‘Down the end and turn right,’ the dad says, ‘but be fast as these takeaway dishes are going like hot cakes,’ he laughs, lifting his bowl up as if to salute me.
The Great Village Show Page 21
