In the late afternoon, we sat behind the counter in our work area.
“Awfully lucky we have a school half-day Thursday,” she told me. “I’m going to scout out the best location for our watercolor challenge: Brushes Up for St. Swithun’s! I’ve sorted the categories into under-twelves, teens, adults, and superadults, and the prizes will be awarded on his festival day. Wasn’t it incredibly generous of Nuala to offer to bake a cake depicting the church? She can make the most wonderfully amazing creations.”
Good old St. Swithun. He was one of those fellows with a story you don’t mind telling the little ones—and his tale, as so much else in Britain, was tied to the weather. If it rained on St. Swithun’s Day, July 15, forty days of rain would follow. If sun, forty days of sun. Fingers crossed.
Just before five o’clock, Willow straightened the counter and readied to leave.
“Now, Julia,” she said to me in her teacher voice, “I’ll see you later in the week. Meanwhile, you have a lovely evening and day off tomorrow—I know how much you look forward to it.”
True. As much as I enjoyed being manager of the TIC, I blocked off the hours between five o’clock closing on Sunday and opening Tuesday morning to do absolutely nothing. I’d lie in bed Monday morning as Michael trekked off to a meeting or whatever film location they had. I might spend the day reading, sitting out in the back garden, or choose to go up to Bury Saint Edmunds for a spot of shopping or off to Cambridge to visit Beryl or a friend. On my day off, my life was my own.
“Thanks, Willow. Cheers.”
I locked the door behind her, went back to our work area, and switched on the kettle. I rummaged in the tin—coming up with the last two in a packet of malted milk biscuits—before ringing my sister.
She answered with, “Took you long enough. Well, so?”
“There was a bit of a problem,” I replied.
My older sister, Bianca Broom, lived in Cornwall—I called it the ends of the earth. She was married with four adorable children, aged from twelve down to…what was Estella now, eighteen months? But no matter how far away or how busy her world, Bee kept her finger on the pulse of my life. Naturally, in the weeks leading up to Vesta and Akash’s wedding, she’d been able to winkle out of me my belief that Michael was on the precipice of proposing. She expected news the second it happened.
“He didn’t ask?” Her voice rose, sharp and high, and then dropped to a muffled tone. “No, Enid, it’s all right. I’m talking with Auntie Jools. Yes, of course, you may.”
Therein followed a brief conversation with my nine-year-old niece about her desperate need for a cat and canvassing support for an appeal to her father. Only after I had promised to put in a good word did she hand the phone back to her mother.
“Michael’s sister has come to visit,” I told Bee. “Pammy.”
“Not the one with the string of breakups?”
“Yes. She stayed last night. It put everything else on hold, you might say. But she should’ve left by now.”
“Then what are you doing still at the TIC?”
How does she do that? “Work,” I blurted out. “I had a few things to catch up on.”
“Is that so?” Bee asked, heavy with sarcasm.
“Look, I only wanted to let you know what happened. Or didn’t happen. And I will ring as soon as…” I had to raise my voice toward the end, what with the shriek of a toddler in the background and Bee shouting, “Emelia, see to your baby sister, please! Yes, tea is coming, Emmet—can you not wait two minutes?”
“Bye!” I called, but I doubt that she heard.
* * *
—
When I locked the TIC door, I stood for a moment, unable to move. At last, I looked at myself in the glass door. “Just walk home, will you?”
Pammy’s car—a ten-year-old dark blue Ford Fiesta with a dented passenger door—had not budged an inch as far as I could tell. I had expected as much, but had been afraid to admit it even to myself, as if thinking it would make it so. Michael sat in his own car, parked behind her. He’d switched off his engine, and now sat gripping the steering wheel, his forehead resting against his hands. I stopped ten feet from the cottage, and his head rose.
He met me at the door, and we looked at each other.
“I rang Pickle,” he said. “She won’t take her, but she wished us luck.”
“Miles?” I asked, key in hand.
“Yeah, I rang him, too. He laughed.”
We took deep breaths and opened the door, pushing as it caught on the sofa pillows, which had been piled up on the floor.
An empty plastic bag, caught in the breeze, rose up off the stairs and drifted toward the kitchen as if hitching a ride on the trade winds. Clothes were piled on every available surface and a few skimpy dresses hung from the rails of the staircase. Pammy sat cross-legged on our sofa.
“Back already—the time just flies, doesn’t it?” she asked brightly, picking up three empty mugs from the floor beside the sofa and taking them to the kitchen sink where they joined the breakfast dishes. “It’s terrible the two of you are forced to work on a Sunday—I just don’t know how you put up with it.”
“Why are you still here?” Michael asked.
“Why?” Pammy echoed. “Amy. It’s only that she asked could I hold off a day or so, you see, and I told her I was sure it would be fine, and isn’t it cozy here with the three of us?”
“You said one night.”
Pammy’s lightheartedness faltered at her brother’s words, her brows rising to a peak in the middle of her forehead. “I didn’t think you’d mind. It’s all right, isn’t it? I’ll be gone tomorrow. I promise.”
Promises, promises.
“Well, let me just see what I can do for our tea.” I moved into the kitchen and checked the cupboard—the last tin of tuna had vanished. I opened the fridge and bent down to take stock. Gone was the packet of Parma ham and the remainders of a spinach pasta salad. My tummy rumbled, and when I spotted an almost empty pot of clotted cream, I had half a mind to grab a spoon and finish it off on the spot. I could just do with a burger from the Stoat and Hare. I turned and gave Michael a baleful look.
“Here now,” Pammy said, “why don’t we all go down the pub?”
“No!” Michael and I shouted in chorus. The last thing we needed was for Pammy to find a new local and a new crowd and make herself at home. More than she already had, that is.
“I’ll nip over to the shop,” Michael offered, “and get something for our meal. Won’t be a minute.”
I retreated to the bedroom and changed clothes, going back down only when I heard him return. We made short work of an early dinner—a really lovely cassoulet that I would’ve preferred to spend more time over. Conversation centered on Pammy’s worry that Princess Margaret’s grandchildren weren’t getting their due—this according to the latest exposé in the Daily Mail. After Michael and I washed up, I announced I was going to bed.
“But it’s still light,” Pammy complained.
True. Outside, dusk had barely fallen. Summer evenings are meant to be enjoyed, and here I was about to be held prisoner in my own bedroom. But if lack of a nightlife was a strike against us, perhaps we could bore Pammy out of our home. It was certainly worth a try.
“Well, we both work,” I reminded her.
“But aren’t you always going on about Monday being your day off?” Pammy countered.
I’m far too free with information about my personal life, I decided. Before I could come up with a better excuse, Michael stepped in.
“Julia’s helping us with filming along the Little Ouse in Brandon tomorrow,” he said, and I was filled with gratitude for his lie.
“Oh, birds, right,” Pammy said. “Tramping along in the rain and mud and all that.”
“Yes, birds, mud, insects, the lot,” I said. “And so…” I stood on
the bottom step of the stairs as a thought occurred to me. “Listen, Pammy, what about your job? The one at the…” As the words left my mouth, I remembered what her latest job had been, receptionist in the office of a builder—a married builder, now her former boyfriend.
Pammy threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin. “I am currently seeking other employment.”
“Well, good luck,” I said and continued my climb briskly before she asked what vacancies there might be on the Fotheringill estate.
“I’ll be right up,” Michael said.
Hope blossomed in my heart—they would have a brother-sister talk. Michael would tell her in no uncertain terms to shove off, that there wasn’t enough room for three in our tiny cottage.
I made a show of closing our bedroom door to give them privacy, but still the murmur of voices floated up. I shouldn’t eavesdrop, so I created my own masking noise, washing out my uniform blouse in the bathroom sink, rummaging in the wardrobe for an empty hanger. I opened the window by our bed and hung my laundry off the latch to dry. My ears picked up a sharp note from Michael and a warbling response from Pammy. I got in the shower.
When I emerged from the bathroom, pulling on my nightshirt, Michael sat on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees. I stood in front of him, and he rested his head on my stomach, his hands wrapped round my calves.
“Her life is always in bits,” he murmured. “I don’t know why that is. They’ve all given up on her, and it makes me feel as if I’m her last hope. But she knows she needs to move on, get hold of herself. She’ll be gone tomorrow—the next day at the latest. And then”—his fingertips danced lightly on the backs of my knees—“we can pick up where we left off.”
He looked up at me, and I saw his eyes change from gray to clear blue—as if clouds had been swept away. I rested my arms on his shoulders and kissed the corner of his mouth where it tugged up into a smile. His hands traveled up my thighs.
“All right if I come up and use the loo?” Pammy shouted from below.
Chapter 4
“You’re gone today, right?” Michael asked his sister the next morning as he glanced out the window at the lashing rain.
From the sofa, with a mug of tea on the floor beside her, Pammy waved her phone. “Ringing Amy now.”
Michael and I were out the door as quick as hares, but we had to huddle in the next doorway, sheltering from the heavy shower. He grabbed my hand.
“I’ll see you there?” he asked.
“Yes. I might stop in Bury first—you know, for a bit of shopping.” It was, after all, my day off. I left him at his car, pulled the hood up on my mackintosh, and walked to the lockup where my own little Fiat stayed. It was off a lane and behind Nuala’s Tea Room, and I could see Ms. Darke herself filling the window display with plates and platters piled high with cakes and scones and flapjacks and fruit tarts. Perhaps I’d come back early, sit at the little table in the far back, and hide behind an enormous slice of Nuala’s chocolate cake.
* * *
—
The rain dampened my shopping spirit, although I still managed to spend an inordinate amount of time trying on clothes in H&M. But I bought nothing—apart from a sandwich at the Debenhams café—before heading for Brandon. When I arrived, I parked near the bridge and walked down to the path along the Little Ouse, where Michael, Dad, assistant producer Basil Blandy, and the crew disregarded the rain and were busy watching a nestcam of fledgling Cetti’s warblers. I joined in, and then helped out with Dad’s script for a voice-over. After that, during a dry spell, he and I sat on the open tailgate of his old green Range Rover, drinking tea from dented tin camping cups.
“You and Michael enjoy the wedding?” he asked, looking down into his tea. Enjoy the wedding?—that wasn’t a Dad question. I narrowed my eyes at him in suspicion. I didn’t think Rupert had a clue what might’ve been in the works for Michael and me that day, but I could see my stepmum, Beryl, putting him up to it—after Bianca blabbed to her.
“Yes, we’re quite happy for Vesta and Akash.”
“Michael seems a bit off this morning.” Dad’s gaze darted at me and away, as if considering a connection between the wedding and Michael’s mood.
“We’ve a houseguest.”
He put down his tea. “You don’t have room for a houseguest.”
“Too right.” I told him the tale of Pammy and afterward heaved a great sigh. “Here she is making herself at home in our Pipit Cottage—and we’re being squeezed to the edges.”
Rupert got a faraway look in his eyes. “Cuckoos are brood parasites, you know. A cuckoo hatches in another bird’s nest and proceeds to eat all the food and grow and grow and often turfs the other birds out.”
Yes, that was it—we had a cuckoo in our nest.
“The thing about cuckoos, Jools, is that they aren’t always successful—otherwise we’d have no dunnocks or meadow pipits.” He swigged the last of his tea. “And they’re on the decline, and no one is quite certain why. One idea is that it’s their food source. Adult cuckoos need to eat a great deal before they begin migration. Hairy caterpillars—that’s what their diet consists of. They find them in open fields, verges, and hedgerows. These habitats are vital, but we’ve lost a great deal of them because of modern farming practices.”
That’s the trouble with having an ornithologist for a father—everything you say can be turned into a science lesson.
“One of our organic farmers has a new field that he’s left for meadow this season,” I replied. “And all the edges to his fields—full of leaves those hairy caterpillars feed on. You should do some filming out there.”
There you are—I am my father’s daughter.
“That’d be grand,” Rupert replied and then came back to the topic at hand. “She’ll be gone soon, won’t she—Michael’s sister?”
“Yes,” I said in a rush. “Today. Tomorrow.” Next year.
My blood froze.
* * *
—
I left them to it and wandered down the high street of the quiet town until I came to a window that held a single plate with half a Victoria sponge, dusted with confectioner’s sugar. “Minty’s Tea Room,” the sign overhead read, although much of the green lettering had flaked off, leaving behind only the impression of an apostrophe.
I stepped inside and glanced round the space, empty of customers, as I shed my mack. Décor was in short supply—faded red, white, and blue plastic bunting stretched above the windows, and on the wall, framed portraits of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II. I recognized them as paint-by-number—we’d had the same as children. To my left, two plastic tables with faded cotton cloths, with a farther table on the other side of a set of shelves, which were sparsely stocked with specialty leaf and bag varieties. To my right, the long glass case held three rather lonely-looking offerings—two-thirds of a walnut-and-coffee cake, an uncut loaf of gingerbread, and five fruit scones.
“Hello, good afternoon.” A young woman wearing a black dress, white apron, and a cap that looked as if she’d pinned a doily to her head dropped off a stool and scurried over to me, clasping a notepad to her chest. “Are you expecting anyone else?” she asked in a hopeful voice.
“No, I’m alone,” I said.
“Oh, well then, sit where you like, and I’ll come to you.”
I took the table behind the shelves and asked for a slice of gingerbread and tea.
When both arrived, the waitress retired to her stool and I stuck in, finding the fare to be surprisingly good.
Another customer entered, a man who walked straight through the shop, past me, and stopped short only when he arrived at the back wall lined with baking supplies. He had well-cut, thick salt-and-pepper hair, wiry eyebrows, one of those chiseled faces, and a dark Burberry trench coat with what looked like a tailored suit beneath. He glanced round, ignoring me, and abruptly pivo
ted, running into the young woman, who had crept up behind him with her notepad.
She gasped and jumped back. “Hello, good afternoon. One?” Her nose twitched.
“Do I look like two?” he asked sharply.
“No, sir, you don’t. Please, sit where you like and I’ll come to you.”
He chose the table just the other side of the shelves from me, trying out and rejecting three plastic chairs as if he were Goldilocks, before settling in the fourth, which must’ve been just right. The young woman edged up to him.
“Now, sir,” she said. “What would you like?”
“Do you have any plain scones?”
The woman threw a look over her shoulder at the glass case as if another plate might’ve sneaked in while she was busy elsewhere.
“No, sir. But we have fruit scones.”
“Fresh?” She nodded rapidly, setting her doily cap to wobbling. “Right,” he said. “Fruit scone. Tea—your own blend. And I don’t want bags.”
“Yes, sir. That is, no, sir. Thank you.”
Off she scampered. I peered through the shelves at the fellow’s back as he sat motionless, hands folded on the table. I know your type. Nothing’s ever right for you, is it? Behind the counter, dishes clattered and the water steamer hissed, followed by a familiar mechanical humming.
“Don’t use the microwave!” the man shouted.
A small shriek, and a dish crashed to the floor. “Yes—sorry, sir. Won’t be a moment.”
When the woman brought out the tray, I could hear the rattle of crockery, and I hoped she wouldn’t drop the whole thing.
“Would you like butter, sir?”
“Is it real butter?”
A pause, and then, in a hopeful voice, “It’s buttery spread.”
“If it isn’t real butter, I don’t want it. I’ll have jam.”
I’d tell him where he could put his jam, but the young woman said nothing, only fetched a small pot and beat a hasty retreat after she’d delivered it. I finished, gathered my things, and approached the counter. As I handed over my money, I announced, “I so enjoyed my tea and gingerbread. Are you the baker?”
Farewell, My Cuckoo Page 3
