‘You’d be surprised how many people who’ve lived here all their lives don’t know of its existence. It’s a secret house.’
‘I suppose it’s because the lane looks as if it just fades away,’ she said. ‘The last thing you expect to see is a house like this. How long have you been living here?’
‘Oh I don’t live here,’ he explained, his easy smile rattling her a little. ‘The Sandersons own it, but they are away and I’m acting as caretaker for them. I’m a friend of Pamela’s and she knows I can rustle up a good breakfast so she roped me in for looking after things whilst they’re on this around the world cruise. It is their fortieth wedding anniversary so it’s been a dream for a long time.’
‘You have a light touch,’ she said, dabbing at her mouth with a napkin wondering when, if ever, she was going to break the news about her involvement with the house. ‘Are you staying here then?’
‘For the moment. Someone has to be here all the time or most of the time to take bookings, tidy up and cook the breakfasts and so on. I live in a caravan over in Cornwall near Tintagel. Once I’m there, a walk across the fields, down a path and I’m at this little beach with rock pools and a cove straight out of a kids’ storybook. It’s magical.’
‘It sounds idyllic.’
‘You could say that.’
‘You are not a Cornish man though?’
‘How did you guess?’ he grinned. ‘No, I’m from the London area. I worked in the city for years and then one day …’ he paused. ‘Sorry, I don’t want to bore you.’
‘You won’t,’ she said with a smile, surprised at the sudden flow of information from him. ‘I think I can guess anyway. One day you woke up and asked yourself what’s it all about? So you handed in your notice, sold up, decided to try and write the book you’ve been meaning to write and opted for the quiet life. Is that it?’
‘More or less.’ His smile was uncertain and she realized she might have sounded condescending, rude even. It was David’s influence, of course, for he had no time for so called opters-out. It was not something he considered an option for people in their prime. In fact, Francesca did wonder about his retiring and whether or not he would have been quickly bored out of his mind. ‘I thought long and hard about it,’ Gareth went on, cheeks flushed. ‘There were other things happening in my life at the time so it wasn’t a spur of the moment thing.’
‘You haven’t regretted it?’
‘Absolutely not.’
She noted the glance towards her left hand. Yes, she had signed in as Mrs Porter and she was wearing her wedding band and the unusual antique diamond engagement ring that had belonged to David’s late mother. It was a privilege to wear it and she had felt enormously touched when David produced it.
‘I admire your guts,’ she told Gareth, taking heed of his defensive tone and back-tracking. ‘It can’t have been an easy decision. I’ve worked for years in the city too and I know how it gets to you.’
Blessedly the phone rang at that moment and with a muttered excuse-me he was off. Francesca poured herself another cup of tea from the pretty china pot alarmed to find her hands shaking. What on earth was she doing here? Suddenly she was a small girl again sitting here in this room watching television or reading a book and her mother was there or, years earlier before James, her father. Curtains drawn across on a winter’s evening hearing the wind howling from the moor, night sounds that had scared her when she was little. In summer, the windows would be thrown open and the balmy air, fresh and sweet, would rush in.
Without warning, faintness came over her and she had to take a few deep breaths as panic battered her from all directions and she felt as if she was spinning like water going down a drain. She lowered her head, closed her eyes.
This was a mistake.
There were smothered voices here, echoes of the past and unseen eyes watching. She remembered her parents and wished their marriage had been happier. As a child she could not help and later she had compounded her mother’s unhappiness when she had allowed the accident to happen to James. As a direct result of that, her mother had shrunk before her eyes, all that wonderful exuberance stripped away.
She lifted her head as the spinning mercifully ceased, her heart stopped its alarmed hammering and she could breathe more easily. Out in the hall, she could hear Gareth’s voice on the telephone and she roused herself, dug in her handbag and quickly checked her hair, her lipstick, although she could do nothing about the shocked look in her eyes.
The room had been neutralized, stripped of its heart. There were not many original features left and yet the alcoves were still there, although the shelves that had once been crowded with family paraphernalia were long gone.
Underneath all the changes, it was still Francesca’s home.
What was she hoping to achieve by coming back?
Whichever way you looked at it, it was a big mistake.
Chapter Eight
ROSEMARY WETHERALL TURNED out to be a very chatty, energetic heavy-set lady in her mid-fifties. Greying hair cut in an uncompromising chin-length bob framed an interesting intelligent face. Her arrival did not go unnoticed, gales of laughter and her strident voice coming close to raising the roof. Taking a breather after her long day in what was the guests’ sitting room, Francesca listened in with a smile as Gareth took the lady’s particulars before leading her upstairs to the Bluebell room.
She collared Francesca in that sitting room about five o’clock that evening coming to sit opposite on one of the comfortable sofas. According to Gareth, the Sandersons occupied just a couple of rooms at the back of the house when the B&B was occupied giving the guests sole use of the sitting and dining-rooms.
Francesca put down the magazine she had been reading although reading was the wrong word for she had just been leafing through and scarcely seeing it, her mind elsewhere. She was tired from the drive and the excitement, but as the B&B was just that, bed and breakfast, she would have to go out later to eat.
‘Hello there, I’m exhausted,’ the newly arrived lady came bounding in, sinking thankfully into a chair tossing aside the mountain of cushions. ‘I’ve ordered coffee and cake. Gareth asked if you wanted some too.’
‘No thanks. I’m fine.’
‘Don’t mind me. Carry on reading by all means.’
‘I’ve finished. Have you had a long journey?’
The polite enquiry was the signal the lady needed. Within moments, even before the coffee arrived, Francesca had ascertained that she was a professor, a lecturer in politics and economics at a northern university taking time out to do some walking in an area of the country that she knew very little about.
‘It was an awful drive down,’ she told Francesca. ‘It went on forever. But it looks as if it will be worth it. I find myself enchanted already. We’re in for a good dry spell apparently. Are you staying long, Mrs Porter?’
‘I’m not sure how long exactly,’ Francesca said carefully, smiling but mindful that Miss Wetherall, a nice enough woman, was probably not averse to having a walking companion and she had no intention of being roped into that. ‘Are you?’
‘Just a couple of nights.,’ she explained. ‘I’ve got two walks planned and then I’m moving on to base myself near the Lizard to do some of the Cornish coastal walk.’
‘Are you meeting up with anyone?’
‘Absolutely not. I like to do my own thing. I usually walk with other people which is fine but it does have disadvantages. It means that you can’t always go at your own pace. I like to stop and admire the view.’
‘Isn’t it a bit risky walking on your own?’
‘Not a bit of it.’ She seemed surprised. ‘People are neurotic these days about the dangers we women face when we go it alone. Statistically you know there are no more murders nowadays than there were fifty years ago and no more child abductions either. I reckon I will be much safer here than in any city you care to mention. In any case, if anybody cares to attack me I shall give them a run for their money I can tell you.’
Francesca smiled. She imagined she would.
‘Obviously I am not completely foolish,’ Rosemary went on with a wry smile. ‘I shall let Gareth know tomorrow what my intended route is and what time I expect to be back. I know it’s supposed to be a lovely day but it’s wise to have a back-up in case I fall and break my leg and find myself stranded in the middle of nowhere.’
‘Have you a mobile?’
‘Oh yes but from past experience reception can be a problem when you need it most.’
‘Don’t I know it?’
‘I’m Rosemary,’ the lady said with a smile.
‘Francesca.’ For a moment she was tempted to tell Rosemary about yesterday and the eventual phone call to the distraught Selina, but Rosemary did not give her the chance, ploughing on and asking her if she did any walking.
‘I haven’t walked seriously for years. I used to do some long walks with a group when I was at university up in Scotland but I was a lot younger then.’
Rosemary laughed. ‘You are a mere babe. Do you fancy a walk? You could join me if you like? It’s only about ten miles, not very strenuous.’
‘No thanks. I don’t have any suitable shoes,’ Francesca said knowing it was a lame excuse, but sensing that the offer was made out of politeness rather than a genuine need for companionship. ‘Sorry but I really don’t have the time for walking. I have things to do.’
‘Fair enough. As I say I’m quite happy walking on my own. However …’ she flashed a rueful glance Francesca’s way. ‘Eating out alone is another matter entirely. Would you care to join me this evening at one of the restaurants in town that Gareth has recommended?’
It was all said in a friendly fashion, no strings attached, and Francesca felt a little guilty at putting her off but just now it was the last thing she wanted as she felt she was in danger of confessing all to an amiable stranger and Rosemary did have a dangerously sympathetic air about her.
‘I’m so sorry, I would love to but I have plans,’ she told her, smiling yet uncomfortable in having to keep refusing the poor woman her company. ‘I used to live round here and I’m meeting an old friend.’
‘How lovely. It’s always super to catch up with old friends.’
Francesca was not sure whether or not she believed her, but it was the best she could manage. The lie, though, as lies do, created a difficulty and she was forced to go out of town later to avoid an accidental meeting with Rosemary, ending up eating a fish and chip supper in the car. It was astonishing that the fish and chip shop she remembered was still there in a nearby village, but she felt out of place now in the little queue, gone so long from here that she was instantly picked out as a visitor.
The chip shop was family owned and, to her surprise, she recognized the man behind the counter, older but unmistakably the same man who had sold her and Izzy fish and chips twenty two years before.
‘Hello,’ she said brightly when it was her turn.
‘What can I get you, madam?’ he asked with an answering smile.
Clearly, he did not recognize her.
No matter for, sitting eating them back in the car, the chips hot, salty and vinegary, the fish white and flaky in its crisp batter it was one of the best meals she had had for some time.
Returning to Lilac House, hearing the voices of the other guests in the sitting-room where it seemed the professor was holding court she crept past and up to her room, quickly using the bathroom she was sharing with Rosemary before locking herself in her room.
She was worried now that she had been unnecessarily abrupt and had somehow upset the lady but it was not fair to spoil her walking holiday and having to listen – however sympathetically – to someone else’s problems would certainly do that.
Unburdening herself to a stranger though was tempting for, for whatever reason, she had been unable to talk about things that really mattered to the people she loved. The die was cast as soon as it happened. There had been one moment when it might have been different when her mother had asked if she wanted to talk, if she had anything to say, but the opportunity passed and after that it became harder and harder as her mother became more and more detached from her. She went through the motions, never neglecting her physically, keeping her clothed and fed but emotionally the neglect was complete.
Francesca had not talked, really talked, to anybody about James and the effect his accident had on her. The nearest she came to it was in the years she spent with her first love Andrew but in the event she was too ashamed of how she had acted, worried that he might see her differently. For wasn’t it true that she alone had been responsible for shattering her mother’s hopes and dreams for her only son and destroying her mother’s love for her? Not only that, she had single-handedly been responsible for snuffing out all her mother’s exuberance. Her mother, a bright light of a lady, was never the same afterwards; she became a mere shadow, and it was all her fault.
Not many daughters could lay claim to that.
It had been far too great a burden to bear for the young girl she had been at the time and she had never truly come to terms with it. Counselling had been offered, but her mother had refused outside help. They just had to get on with life for nothing could change what had happened.
If only.…
It was a long time before she slept.
Chapter Nine
NEXT MORNING BY the time she got herself down to the dining-room the other guests were already out and about. The guests, as Gareth had explained last night, generally liked to breakfast together sitting at the big rectangular table and the Sandersons approved of that because everybody got to know everybody else. If it was a wet day, breakfast could stretch well into the morning. As well as Rosemary there were two older couples so that the four available rooms were all occupied.
It was just as well that, with high pressure anchored over them, the next few days promised to be warm and sunny and everyone was anxious to make early starts. After her tearful outburst yesterday, coming out of nowhere as it had, Francesca was nervous that she might lose it suddenly in a room full of strangers and make a fool of herself. Tears embarrassed everybody and she had no wish to let people know her situation.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said, checking the empty dining-room as Gareth appeared, looking as if he had been up for hours wearing a blue and white striped apron and a welcoming smile.
‘No problem. Can I get you a full English breakfast?’
‘Goodness no. Please don’t bother cooking just for me. Toast will do. And some coffee would be lovely.’
‘Coming up. Did you sleep well?’
‘Yes thank you.’ Another quick lie, but a white one for there was no need to explain her sleep patterns to him. Ever since David’s death it took her forever to get off and, irritatingly, she usually woke up early too. She often dreamed of David and last night had been no exception, although there had been no repetition of that night just a couple of days following his death when, turning in a trance-like state in the early hours, she had felt David’s presence strongly beside her – his hand had been in hers and surely she had not imagined the weight of his body on his side of the bed. A visitation of his spiritual being maybe, although she had not discussed it with anybody particularly Selina who would think it creepy and, in any case, it felt too private a thing. She remembered waking up the following morning relaxed and with a smile on her face.
‘Just toast it is,’ Gareth repeated, looking closely at her. ‘If you are quite sure?’
‘Quite sure, thank you.’
She took stock of the dining room when he was gone, but it was all different, the solid old-fashioned furniture mixing surprisingly easily with the modern décor and again there was a big display of flowers on the wide window ledge. She asked about the flowers wondering whether he was into that as well, but he explained that a woman from the florists came and changed the displays every week. Pamela liked those little important touches.
After presenting her with toast, thickly cut granary b
read with a little pot of marmalade, Gareth, asking her permission first, hovered. So, as she munched on her toast, finding herself hungrier than she had thought, he quietly went about his business, clearing away dishes and tidying up, having provided not only the toast and coffee but a newspaper. It was not her usual but it gave her something to do, a distraction from having to make conversation. This was the only time of day she occasionally missed cigarettes, but it was a fleeting fancy and she knew she would never go back to them.
‘So, you’re from London, Mrs Porter?’ he said at length, giving in and sitting himself on one of the dining chairs opposite, probably realizing that she was in no particular hurry to go anywhere.
‘I’m not from London, but I’ve been working there for many years,’ she told him and then, as the silence lengthened, she felt obliged to carry on, hiding the slightest sigh as she put the newspaper aside. ‘I’m in the process of selling my husband’s house there. I’m being pushed on a completion date so I have to get my finger out and get something else before I find myself out on the street. Hardly that,’ she added with a little smile. ‘But I am beginning to feel a little pressured.’
‘Moving house is a horror. They say it rates only second to losing a spouse,’ he said with a shudder.
‘Yes, well …’ she felt herself flushing.
‘Are you looking for something down here?’
‘Good heavens, no. We …’ she hesitated but it was stupid not to say it and she imagined she could rely on his discretion. ‘My husband died recently. We had the house up for sale because we were intending to move to Yorkshire. We had it all arranged, had got the house up there, but that was really David’s dream. I don’t think it’s mine and I couldn’t face moving up there on my own.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘It’s all right. You haven’t.’ She flashed him a smile.
Just Another Day Page 6
