by Fiona Walker
Chapter 2
‘You look fabulous! Your hair’s so long! And you’ve lost weight!’ Dawn managed three compliments as she burst off the train to gather Kat into a hug, then added the kindly backlash, ‘A bit too thin maybe,’ as she leaned back to study her friend’s face. ‘Where’s the makeup? You’re so pale. Man, look at your hands! You need me!’
Kat laughed. ‘You look amazing too.’
‘Twelve months on the high seas, babe.’ Tall, curvaceous and currently bombshell blonde, Dawn was knock-out. She’d been back in England for a fortnight and the glowing Caribbean tan was not out of a bottle, the ultra-toned body shapelier than ever. With the whitest of bleached teeth and longest of French manicures, she radiated bootyliciousness, although there was something odd about her usually grey eyes.
‘Are those coloured contact lenses?’ Kat asked.
‘Purple-tinted. Aren’t they great? They’re back on trend. Remember when we wore them first time round and blinked all night like we had conjunctivitis? These are much better – you can even sleep in them. You wait till you see the turquoise ones. I brought them with me in case we go clubbing. I’ve got the most sensational new dress from Topshop. Man, this weather is biblical.’ She peered at the sheets of rain cascading down. ‘Hurricanes might hardly ever happen in Hertfordshire and Hampshire. As for Herefordshire, well… I still can’t believe you came out here because of a typo.’
When Kat had first come to Eardisford she’d been so desperate to get out of Watford that she’d taken the first job she was offered, even though a form-filling blunder meant it was a hundred and fifty miles from her chosen area: Herefordshire had appeared instead of Hertfordshire on the nursing agency’s books. Before coming here, she’d never believed real villages filled with ancient half-timbered houses existed beyond fairy tales, or night skies uninterrupted by light pollution. Rain, however, was a universal British staple.
‘You did bring boots and waterproofs, like I suggested?’ Kat asked anxiously. Turquoise lenses and Topshop dresses would offer scant protection against Lake Farm’s damp chill.
‘I’ll borrow something off you. I packed my old riding gear, though. I can’t believe you’ve taken it up – you always said you preferred the gym. Remember that place I used to go to every week out near Chesham because I fancied the instructor? He was lush. Turned out to be gay. There’s a retail park there now. I miss my dressage.’
Kat wasn’t sure what Dawn would make of the sanctuary’s unrideable pensioners, blind Sid and his lame companion, or Sri, with her curling ears and evil moods.
‘It’s mad I’ve not been to see you until now,’ she was saying, as they headed along the platform, dodging puddles, ‘but of course your boss had just died when I was on leave last year, and then there was all that fuss about the will and where you were going to live. All sorted now, though?’
‘Pretty much. The farm’s beautiful. I can’t wait for you to see it.’
‘Shame you’re not in the big house any more – I was dying to have a butcher’s. Don’t suppose we can sneak in?’
‘It’s all closed up.’
‘I bet you know a way in. We’ll stick on a couple of hard hats, pretend we’re from the Endangered Bats Trust and no one’ll notice.’
‘I bet you’d be noticed.’ Kat laughed. ‘You really do look fantastic.’
‘I’ll show you the pictures of the ship when we’re back at yours – I’ve got literally hundreds on iCloud.’
‘We’d better grab a coffee then.’ She steered away from the station car park. ‘There’s no phone signal or internet in the house, or anywhere in the village, really. Everyone on the estate uses walkie-talkies.’ Russ used his to listen to the gamekeepers in case they were tracking the wild boar or planning an illegal badger cull, but they mostly seemed to discuss the contents of their sandwiches.
‘That’s bloody medieval.’ Dawn extended the handle of her shiny pink wheelie case and followed her across the road to a new café that had recently opened boasting fair-trade coffee and free WiFi. ‘On the cruise ship, I couldn’t see land for miles but still had crystal clear reception and five megs connection.’
‘We’re too far from the exchange apparently.’ Kat ordered a flat white. ‘The villagers are clubbing together to get a transmitter on the church spire.’
Dawn eyed the waitress, purple eyes glittering. ‘Double half-caff, half-decaff skinny soy latte, and no foam.’
‘Sure.’ The waitress nodded, reaching for the soya milk.
‘All us spa girls drank them on the liner,’ she told Kat, who knew it had been a test of yokelness: Dawn thought anything west of Heathrow was Wales.
‘We’re closer to London than you were in your floating five-star, you know.’ She affected a West Country accent as they found an empty table by the window.
‘Could have fooled me. If I’m still sitting on a moving train when I reach the last page of OK! I’ve travelled beyond civilization. I could have flown to the Med faster.’ She looked out at the traffic whooshing by in the rain. ‘I miss having a car. I’ll get a new one when I’m sorted, but everything’s up in the air until we’ve sold the house.’
‘So you’re definitely selling?’
‘Prices are up again. Dave’s keen to get his cash out.’
When Dawn’s marriage had ended amicably but painfully in formal separation, she and plumber Dave had rented out their little Victorian terrace in Watford’s town centre, unable to face the trauma of selling it.
Dawn was always determinedly upbeat about the break-up, claiming everybody had seen it coming for years – a direct contrast to Kat’s split from fiancé Nick, which had been as sudden as a car crash – but Kat still felt bad that her friend had gone through it without her there as support, particularly when her Nascot Village beauty salon had gone bust after a huge hike in the rent not long afterwards.
Ever the optimist, Dawn had formed a plan to save money by working for a year on cruise ships so that she could buy out Dave’s share of the house, then set up as a mobile beauty therapist in an area where she already had many contacts and old clients. The house was Dawn’s pride and joy, lavishly decorated to her colourful taste, with bright pink feature walls and statement furniture.
Beneath the glossy veneer, Dawn looked drained and sad. ‘Dave’s fed up of waiting, and I can’t afford to take on his share, even with the amount I’ve saved. The house is worth a lot more than we paid for it – trust us to live in a recession-proof area. I need all my savings to buy equipment and set up the mobile business. I can’t face another cruise contract, Kat.’ She leaned forward and whispered, ‘It’s like working in a floating old people’s home. You know I joked I’d meet a rich husband? Well, I met hundreds, and their wives, average age seventy.’
‘You don’t want another husband yet!’ Kat feigned horror. ‘You’re the party girl, Dawn. Live a little. Play the field. Get divorced.’
‘Fair point.’ Dawn laughed. ‘It’s been two years since Dave and I split, but it feels like a lifetime. We’re going to get an internet divorce – it’s as easy as shopping on Ocado.’ The purple eyes glittered. Together for almost a decade, she and Dave were a long-term double act, but they’d grown so far apart in the final years of their marriage that they’d been in separate orbits. Now she wanted to explore whole new galaxies. ‘I’ve moved back in now the tenants have gone so I can smarten it up a bit for viewings. Mum’s helping after a fashion. She’s bought a steam cleaner off QVC. It’s like a sauna in there most days. The sofa’s dripping wet and the wallpaper’s all falling off. She sends her love and asks when you’re coming back to visit.’
‘Soon enough,’ Kat deflected, grateful to be spared an interrogation: Dawn had caught sight of her reflection in the window and let out a shriek before heading off to the loo to repair her rain-flattened hair.
Dawn had always been pernickety about her appearance. She’d also always asked a lot of questions; she joked she was Davina McCall in another life. The two f
riends had met at sixteen when Dawn was part of an influx from local Watford schools that had joined a bigger comprehensive’s sixth form to study A levels. Totally lost in a labyrinth of corridors between lessons on her first day, she had fallen gratefully on Kat’s help when the small, smiling redhead had bounced around a corner and said brightly, ‘Follow my lead,’ before taking her straight through the maze to their biology class. There, they’d bonded over a cow’s eyeball they’d had to dissect together. To Dawn’s awed admiration, Kat had plunged her knife straight in, before winking one green eye and admitting, ‘We did this at my old school last term. Half the class fainted.’
‘You mean this is your first day here too? How d’you know where to go?’
‘I just guessed.’ Kat had shrugged. It was true: finding the right classroom had been a combination of deduction and pot luck.
The two girls had gone on to train as nurses together and were part of the same close set of friends. Dawn was no shrinking violet, but she’d frequently followed Kat’s lead – everybody did. Brave, generous and not at all self-conscious, Kat was often first to volunteer to try a procedure or be the guinea pig in training, first on the dance floor or to the bar, first to try the water sports or eat local food on holiday, and the first to get her heart broken. Her early romances were legendary lessons in disappointment.
But it was Dawn who had been the first to get a serious boyfriend – jovial, football-mad Dave. She had dragged Kat along on endless double dates to try to match her up with Dave’s jolly, football-loving mates before admitting defeat. Kat preferred her men edgy and challenging.
She checked her Gmail account on her phone while she waited for Dawn to come back from the loo. It was packed as usual, mostly rubbish, but an official-looking communication from the estate’s solicitor made her heart lurch. She read the first few lines and snorted with irritation at the pompous tone.
‘Bad news?’ Dawn sat down, hair four inches higher, purple eyes repainted with mascara and liner.
‘The solicitor’s in a tizz. It’s a letter about the estate’s sale that I have to show to the charity committee. The one they sent in the post must have got lost, and they’ve been trying to ring me but our landline’s not working.’
‘And to think I get jumpy on my own even with a 4G signal on my iPhone in central Watford!’ Dawn looked horrified. ‘You mean you have no phone or internet or post and you’re living alone in the middle of nowhere?’
‘It’s only temporary.’ Kat smiled as the waitress brought over their order. ‘The overhead cable was running too close to a listed horse chestnut so —’
‘Hang on, trees are listed?’
‘Really old ones are. There’s a yew on the estate that’s at least four hundred. Anyway, someone official took the telegraph pole down and nobody’s put it back up yet. They’ve promised the line will be working again next week, and if there’s an emergency, I can usually get mobile reception in the tree-house.’
‘Is that in the listed tree or is it ex-directory?’
‘Ha-ha.’ Kat grinned. Not having the internet beyond a glacially slow dial-up connection didn’t bother her much, except when it came to keeping in touch with old friends, like Dawn, who weren’t easy to call by old-fashioned means. In the past year, their once-regular catch-ups had become frustratingly occasional and often second hand. Under cross-examination now, she remembered why it was sometimes a relief not to have hours of FaceTime with a friend who specialized in awkward questions.
‘What exactly is the deal with the farm?’ Dawn demanded, studying the bags beneath Kat’s dark green eyes. ‘I thought your old boss left it to you.’
‘It’s in trust. I’m just the tenant.’
‘But you’re safe to stay there as long as you want?’
‘Technically, yes, although it depends who buys the estate. Russ thinks they’ll try to find a legal loophole to get me out.’
‘Is he the hippie guy? The one who rescues badgers and foxes?’
She nodded, taking a sip of coffee.
‘You thought he might be a bit of a Communist freeloader.’
‘Not at all! Did I really say that?’
‘Didn’t he hijack the village cricket match to make some sort of revolutionary speech on your first date? Then he turned over the tea tables and made you pay for his supper later.’
Kat had forgotten the long email she’d written to Dawn about it. ‘That was the villagers versus estate workers match, and he thought the umpire was bent.’ It was the day Russ had swept Kat off her feet (almost literally as she’d been helping serve teas when he staged his Jesus-in-the-temple act with the trestles). ‘He still scored a hundred. Then he asked me out, but he left his wallet in the pavilion so I ended up paying. I really didn’t mind – he only ate the soup,’ she remembered fondly. ‘He told me cricket was invented by shepherds who played in front of tree stumps, so it’s a working-class farm labourer’s game.’
‘And does the working-class farm labourer still bowl you over?’
‘He’s a qualified arboriculturalist, actually.’ She knew she sounded chippy and defensive. ‘You’ll meet him later. He’s staying in the house.’
‘You’re living together?’ Dawn looked at her sharply. ‘Are you sure you’re ready?’
‘It’s been two years since Nick too.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
‘It’s only a temporary thing. Russ respects my need for space. We have separate rooms and he only stays over occasionally. He’s a free spirit – and he’s good company,’ she insisted, reluctant to admit that Russ – whose caravan was far from watertight – had stayed often in recent weeks, along with his dog Ché. He had also moved in a lot of musical equipment and amplifiers that blew the fuse-box on a regular basis. For a man who insisted he travelled light, he had a lot of stuff and liked to be surrounded by beautiful things. Unearthing a chest full of saris, floor cushions, tassels and decorative bandhanwar door hangings that dated back to when Constance had used Lake Farm as a retreat, he’d converted a corner of the sitting room into a Hindu love temple.
‘He’s into Tantric sex,’ she whispered to Dawn, whose eyebrows shot up.
‘Is that like Fifty Shades of Grey?’
Kat giggled. ‘No, that’s BM.’
‘Tantric sounds like copulating in a spray-tan booth – hang on, I think I’ve read about it somewhere, some shamanic foreplay thing that Sting did between saving rainforests.’
‘It’s a spiritual process that leads to the most mind-blowing sex of your life, apparently,’ Kat assured her in an undertone, not wanting other coffee drinkers falling from their chairs in shock. ‘He says it’s a way of retraining the mind so that the body can let go and reach the highest plateaux of pleasure.’
‘How are your spiritual pleasure plateaux?’
‘It’s early days. He doesn’t want to rush me.’ So far the Tantric sex experiment had seemed to involve a lot of meditation and listening to one another’s breathing while fully clothed, and no physical contact beyond holding hands.
‘You’re not feeling crowded?’
‘Quite the opposite, except perhaps when Mags and the band come round.’
‘Who is Mags?’
‘An old mate of Russ’s. They’ve played music together for years.’
‘Is he fit?’ Dawn asked hopefully.
‘He’s a she,’ Kat laughed. ‘And she’s scary but cool. She’s found me lots of volunteer helpers, so it’s a fair trade letting them rehearse in the house when the pub’s skittle alley’s busy. The sanctuary can be pretty all-consuming, especially in winter. Russ is helping teach me about animal behaviour and stuff, as well as how to live as self-sufficiently as possible. He believes at least eighty per cent of the food we eat should be home grown or foraged. I’m even learning some vegan recipes – you can cook pulses, but nothing with a pulse.’
‘He’s clearly nothing like Nick, I’ll hand you that.’
‘He is nothing like Nick,’ she agreed
flatly.
Dawn was wise enough not to push the point. ‘What would Constance Mytton-Gough have made of an animal-rights vigilante in her sanctuary?’
‘You sound like Miriam.’
‘Who’s Miriam?’
‘Constance’s goddaughter – she’s one of the trustees of the charity. She’s a bit of a do-gooding bossy boots, but means well, and is a total expert on anything with feathers. She’s really helped me out – they all have. There’s Tina, who’s been teaching me to ride and is brilliant with the horses – everyone calls her “Tireless Tina” because she has three kids under five, a layabout husband, God knows how many horses at home and still manages to fund-raise for the hunt, the school and now the sanctuary. There’s scary Pru, who’s ancient but used to farm Hereford cattle and knows lots about the livestock, and her sister Cyn, who’s much gentler – imagine Judi Dench in a Husky – and has a real knack with the feral cats. The queens wouldn’t come near Lake Farm at first and hung about the main house, but Cyn lured them over with a trail of home-cured ham. Ché kept eating it, which drove Russ mad.’
