Very civilised. Very soulless. And very sad—not because it was ending, but because maybe it had never really begun. Already I was looking back and wondering what had kept us together so long.
‘Anyway,’ said Jake, ‘time to go. I’ve got an interview lined up in half an hour.’
We slithered our way out of the seats. A young woman pounced on our place with a triumphant shout of, ‘Over here, Mum!’
I paid the bill while Jake waited outside for me. ‘You know where I am,’ he said, as I came out pushing my purse back in my bag. ‘Keep in touch. And just be careful, Tilly.’
‘You’re worrying about nothing,’ I said, gathering all my bags in one hand, the other already in my pocket clutching my phone. He kissed me quickly on the cheek. And then we walked off in opposite directions.
Chapter Ten
For the next three days I threw myself into work. Granny Allen would have been proud. I’d visited a wonderful smokery by the sea—the most delicious smoked salmon and trout, and strings of kippers hung over piles of oak shavings that would make amazing pictures for The Foodie. Bill had told me about a family who made all sorts of things out of sloes—chocolates and cakes as well as sloe and damson gin. The daughter of the family took me out and showed me the hedgerows all around the farm, which were full of sloes they hadn’t picked yet, waiting for a good frost. I peered into the black twigs, not really sure what I was looking for, until I gradually spotted the lovely, purplish fruit, like tiny plums. I would never even have known there were sloes in there, but once you knew where to look there were masses. They were too bitter to eat alone but they tasted great in gin. I had just one mouthful and I could feel the warmth hit my system like the magic cordials from fairy stories. The family insisted I tasted everything—especially the chocolates—and then loaded me up with samples.
But it was a long drive to their farm in PIP and my head was rattling and my back aching when I got back. I went straight to the pub but the place was heaving. Even Becca was too busy to knit a stitch of her scarf, and Dexter was busy dashing between the kitchen and the bar. I couldn’t check my email as both computers were hogged by people working on their family history. Judging by the number of books, papers and printouts they had scattered around them, they were going to be a long time. Wearily, I got back into the van and headed for the cottage. I’d have to come back later. In the meantime, what I needed was some fresh air, so as soon as I’d dumped my bag, I changed into jeans and boots and set out.
To prove I wasn’t subconsciously looking for helicopters and Clayton Silver, I took a slightly different path, one that followed the line of the valley. Down in the distance, near the farm, I could see one of the Aldersons backing a trailer up through a gate. By the look of it—though it was difficult to tell from this distance and in all the layers of clothes they were wearing—it was Mrs Alderson on the tractor and a man who was at the gate, yelling instructions. Ahead of me, up the hillside of grass so pale it was almost grey, I could see the quad bike and Matt Alderson carrying a huge bale of hay as if it were as light as a feather, and throwing it down for the sheep, while a sheepdog ran round in little bursts, supervising everything, stopping every now and then to look at Matt as if to say, ‘Is this all you want? I can do lots more complicated things than this, you know.’ Then when Matt got back on the bike and bounced off down the fellside to get another bale, the dog leapt on the back and sat there, ears pinned back by the breeze, looking like a superior footman on an old-fashioned coach.
It took me a while to realise that the heaps of grey stones scattered on the hillside weren’t just natural outcrops of rock but had once been houses and barns, built with stone hacked out of the hill and now doing their very best to return to it. This little valley was less industrial than that on the other side of the hill. The ruins looked more domestic. This might always have been farmland, right back to when the Vikings worked their way up here. Though what sort of farms could they have been? They could barely have made a living, that’s for sure. Grass grew through the stones and sheep nibbled in what had once been someone’s kitchen or bedroom. Occasionally, the remains of low walls marked out what had once been a garden. Long ago, someone had tried to grow things here—with how much success, I wondered? Certainly now the only difference between the garden and the fellside was that the former gardens had a few more nettles.
The houses could never have been much more than two rooms and a single storey. The cottage where I was staying had clearly been extended and was a comparative palace. They seemed to have put more effort into their barns rather than their homes; the barns were higher, firmer, more solid and seemed to have lasted better. There was another building that even had a proper door, albeit one that appeared propped up rather than secured. It had a window, too, though no glass in it of course, and a small surrounding wall. I wondered what it could have been.
Growing up through what was left of a wall was a small twisted tree, branches covered with fruit. Apples, I saw, when I got closer, very small apples. I picked one and tentatively bit into it. Arrgghh! Nearly as bad as the sloes. So sour that I could feel my mouth drying up. I flung the apple along the fellside and startled sheep lumbered in all directions, protesting loudly. ‘Sorry, sheep!’ I shouted.
There was something else on the crab-apple tree, some unexpected splashes of colour fluttering from some of the furthest branches. Intrigued, I balanced on one of the stones that had rolled out from the wall and, with one hand hanging on to a spindly little branch, I leaned into the tree. With one final stretch, as small sharp branches dug into my shoulder, I managed to grab one. It was a ribbon, a velvet ribbon, deep and luxurious. Just like the scrap I’d found before and taken back to the cottage. I let the spindly branch whip back, jumped down off the stone and examined the ribbon carefully. Apart from the deep crease at one end where it must once have been tied and folded, it was as bright cherry red as when it was made. Was it new? Old? Hard to tell. But it certainly wasn’t nylon velvet. I rubbed it gently with my thumb; it was much too luxurious for that. Where had it come from? I couldn’t see many walkers going in for gaudy cherry velvet. I thought of tying it back on the tree again, like a Christmas decoration or a flag. But instead I put it carefully in my pocket. It was somehow too pretty and unexpected just to scatter to the wind again. But the other one stayed there, caught on twigs, reminding me of Tibetan prayer flags, snapping in the breeze.
The breeze was getting up. Colder, stronger, more of a wind than a breeze now. I pulled the collar up on my fleece. Looking up along the valley I could see thick dark clouds ahead. They were black and low and seemed to race up the narrow dale like a menacing incoming tide. Time to turn back. Would I get back before the storm broke?
No chance. I had barely turned round when the sting of hailstones bit into me, pounding my face, my head, my back. The icy pellets were like gunshot, freezing cold and incredibly painful. I yelled and put my hands up to protect my face from their sting. Whichever way I turned, there was no escape. I could hardly lift my head up. Could hardly open my eyes to see where I was going. I was barely twenty minutes from the cottage but there was no way I could go back in this. With that the black sky was lit up with a sheet of lightning. The thunder crash followed seconds after. I was frightened. No houses, shops or precincts to pop into for shelter. On that empty fellside, I felt horribly exposed and vulnerable.
I thought of that odd little building with the drunken, propped-up door. Maybe I could get into there and shelter for a while. Anything was better than this. Head down and into the wind, I made my way towards it, my feet slithering on the damp grass, which was already heaped up with hailstones. As I took my hands from my face and glanced up quickly, I could see that Matt Alderson had had the same idea and was heading down the hillside on the bike towards shelter. The sheepdog now wasn’t sitting up so jauntily, but lying as flat as it could make itself on the back of the bike.
Matt got to the building a moment before I did, jumped off the bike, balanced o
n top of the stone wall, grabbed the edge of the window above and with one swift supple movement, was through it.
There was something familiar about that movement. I had seen something like it very recently. I kept my hands away from my face and risked the pounding of hailstones to keep looking. The jump through the window had knocked off the cap Matt was wearing. Before I covered my face with my hands again against the driving hail, I just caught a glimpse through the empty window of copper-coloured hair, gleaming and dazzling through the darkness of the storm.
Baffled, but with no time to think, as the hail sent icy rivulets down my neck and my hair was plastered to my forehead, I made for the drunken door while another roll of thunder crashed above me. As I came near, it juddered open awkwardly as if on only one hinge. Behind it, beckoning me in to shelter, was Matt Alderson. But this was no young man. Matt Alderson was a girl and—despite the bundled layers of clothes—one I recognised immediately. Last time I’d seen her was in a glamorous nightclub in London, but this time her copper hair tumbled round the drenched shoulders of an ancient bulky waterproof, her feet were encased in solid green wellies, and a collie dog was twisting round her feet.
‘Foxy?’ I said, stunned. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
Chapter Eleven
‘Actually,’ said the tall girl politely, if rather frostily, ‘I hate that name. I prefer to be known as Matty, short for Matilda, after my great-great-grandmother.’
‘And I,’ I said, equally politely and also just a bit frostily, ‘am known as Tilly, short for Matilda, after my great-great-grandmother.’
This formality would have been more impressive if both of us hadn’t been dripping wet and squelching through the puddle in the muddy doorway.
Matty frowned. ‘Your great-great-granny wasn’t Granny Allen too, was she?’
‘She was, yes.’
‘Granny Allen who lived in this valley? In our farm and the cottage above it?’
‘The very same.’
We looked at each other for a while in the gloom of the building while the hail rattled the roof. Then Matty laughed and said, ‘Then we must be sort of cousins, mustn’t we?’
‘I guess so.’
‘Well then. Hello, cousin!’
I grinned back. ‘Hello, cousin Matty. How very nice to meet you.’
We shook hands and now my eyes were getting used to the light, I studied my new-found relative. I’m tall, but she towered over me. Even without make-up and in her battered work clothes she looked stunning, dazzling in the gloom. She was, I thought glumly, exactly the sort of woman that lived in Clayton Silver’s world. This long-lost cousin was already making me feel like the poor relation.
But I had to be sure. ‘You are the model. I mean it is you, isn’t it? The one they call Foxy?’
She sighed. ‘Yes I am. That’s me. But look, it’s only a job, OK? I mean it’s a great job, but that’s all it is.’
‘But…’ I still couldn’t get my head round this. ‘Why are you here? What are you doing?’
‘Well, today,’ she said in a slightly impatient way, ‘I’ve been ruddling the tups. Do you know what that means?’
I shook my head. Hadn’t a clue.
‘It means I get a big bucket of sort of paint and I get the tup—that’s the ram—and daub the paint all over his chest, so that when he serves—i.e. has it off with—the ewe, she is left with a bloody great daub of paint on her back. So we know which ewes have been served. OK?’
‘OK,’ I said, a little grumpily, ‘thanks for the lecture.’
Matt relented, looked suddenly young and vulnerable, and added in a kinder tone. ‘Look, this is my home. My parents, my brothers and sister are here. It’s where I belong. It’s where I come back to. Where I escape to. Where I get things into perspective and realise what really matters. I come back whenever I can.’
‘Don’t you like being a model then? The jet-set life and all that?’
‘Of course I do, most of the time. It’s a great job as long as you don’t take it too seriously. But it’s like being on a ride at the fair, you know? It’s different and it’s fun and it’s all very exciting, but it’s not real. Whereas this—’ she waved her arm round the little building, the sheep trying to get shelter under the grey rocks, the hail slashing down on the fellside—‘this is real.’
A bit too real for me, right now, I thought, shivering.
Matty stood for a moment at the empty window, gazing out at the hail as the wind whipped her hair around her face. She scrabbled in her pockets and found an elastic band. Underneath her thick woollen gloves she was wearing another pair, skin-tight thin cotton that she didn’t take off.
‘So are you one of the people staying up at the cottage?’ she was asking, as she tugged her hair through the band. ‘Are you researching your family roots? Just about everyone else seems to be these days.’
‘Well, yes. Only it’s just me. My boyfriend and I, well, my ex-boyfriend and I seem to be going our separate ways.’
‘Oh dear. Sorry. That’s a shame when you’re on holiday.’
‘Sad really, very sad, but not, actually the end of the world,’ I said. ‘Quite the opposite, even. Anyway, it’s a working holiday and he couldn’t work without the Internet and phone reception.’
‘What does he do?’
‘Journalist.’
‘Ah.’
I could feel her tensing slightly and she moved away from that subject quickly. ‘So how’s the family research going?’ she asked. ‘Have you found out quite how we’re related? Are you descended from the ones who went to America or Australia?’
‘I don’t quite know exactly. I’m not doing my family history, never really thought about it much, to tell the truth. But since I’ve been here…well, I’m sort of intrigued. I’d heard of Granny Allen, of course, but I didn’t even realise until I told my mum where we were going that this is where she came from. My mum can remember coming here when she was a little girl, playing in the stream by the packhorse bridge with her cousins.’
‘Well, in that case, it was probably with my mum. She was born here and bred up here. You’ll have to talk to her about it. Come back down with me once this storm has stopped.’ Matty’s smile was genuine and welcoming. ‘Mum would love it.’
We listened for moment. If anything, the storm had got worse. I looked around the building in which we were sheltering. It had an earth floor, smelt not entirely pleasantly of soil and stale grass and was clearly used as a storeroom, stacked high as it was with blue and yellow plastic sacks, and huge drums of different chemicals and bales of hay.
‘Make yourself comfortable,’ said Matty. ‘We might have a long wait.’ We settled down on a couple of bales. They always look quite comfortable, but they were itchy scratchy even through my jeans. ‘Lie down, Tess,’ she said to the dog who curled up between us and I was glad of her warmth against my leg. The wind and the hail blew through the empty window and down the back of my neck, the plastic bags fluttered and the door rattled. But it was still a lot better than being outside.
‘It used to be a chapel,’ said Matty. ‘One of those strange sects that flourished for a while in the eighteenth century. I don’t think they had many worshippers, even then.’
I wanted to ask her about it, all sorts of questions about the people who had lived up here where there was hardly even a hint of a road any more. But there was something else I wanted to know even more.
‘Why did you jump out of the window at Club Balaika?’ I blurted out. ‘Why have you gone into hiding? Why—’
‘Ah, it was you in the Ladies at Balaika!’ She gave me a quick look and her expression—just for that moment—was very much top model rather than northern farm girl. ‘I knew I’d seen you somewhere before. Strange.’ She looked at me, studying me. ‘When I saw you then, at the club, I thought I knew you. Must be the family likeness. But, as you noticed, I wasn’t in the mood to stop and find out. Anyway,’ she went on, reaching to stroke Tess’s ears, ‘if y
ou have or had a journalist boyfriend, you should know better than to believe everything you read in the newspapers. I have not gone into hiding. I have not reneged on my contract. I have not run away. Honestly, reports like that make me so angry! The simple truth is that I was booked to do the Virgo shoot in Egypt this month and it’s been put back a few weeks so everything’s on hold. Suddenly I had a free diary, so I thought I’d come home. Pretty normal sort of thing to do, wouldn’t you say? And as you might have noticed, home is not a place where you sit round on your bum all day. There’s always plenty of work to do, so I do it.’
‘But I still don’t understand why you jumped out of the window.’
‘Oh that.’ She grinned. ‘Simple. I was bored.’
‘Bored?’
‘Oh God yes! I was there with this group of lads who run one of the indie music channels. I don’t even know why I went, really. Nice enough lads, but so…young and totally up themselves. It was bad enough when they were talking about work but then they started on cars…Honestly, it was worse than being in The Miners’ Arms on darts night. I just couldn’t be doing with it. And there was also…’ she hesitated for a moment. ‘I don’t know, there was a funny atmosphere there that night. That Maynard who’s got the shooting rights in the next dale was there. I just felt…well, that it somehow didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to be there any more.’
I remembered how I’d queued with Jake, desperate to get in. I couldn’t be that blasé.
‘I was going to leave, perfectly tidily and respectably through the front door,’ Matt continued, ‘but then I saw the security people getting jumpy and I recognised one of the bodyguards so I guessed the princes were probably arriving and I knew all the paps would be there. And I couldn’t face it. I just thought there must be a better way out, and there was.’ She grinned again. ‘Good, wasn’t it?’
‘Fantastic,’ I said. ‘I was well impressed.’ And if I thought about her uneasiness about Clayton Silver and his friends, I pushed it to the back of my mind.
The Lost Guide to Life and Love Page 9
