by Joyce Cato
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
CHAPTER 1
Thunder was distinctly threatening to grace the sultry August afternoon with its noisy presence when Monica Noble prudently brought in the last of her washing from the line and entered her cheerful yellow kitchen.
Pushing the damp dark hair back off her forehead, she walked to the fridge and, pouring herself a long glass of deliciously cold lemonade, swallowed two-thirds of it thirstily before starting on the folding. She was just about finished when her husband, Graham Noble, walked in from his study and put the kettle on. He’d been the vicar of their small Cotswold village of Heyford Basset for the past twenty years, but only a married man for nearly two of those years.
‘Is Mrs Parsons all right?’ Monica asked, knowing that he’d just had an appointment with one of the villagers, whose husband, due to a degenerative illness, would shortly be in need of a wheelchair.
‘She’s remarkably cheerful, all things considered,’ he agreed with a small sigh. ‘I’m not sure that the reality of their situation has sunk in just yet. I’m getting on to Social Services first thing.’ He poured hot water from the kettle into the teapot and said softly, ‘You’ll have a cup, won’t you?’
Monica, putting the washing to one side, walked up behind him and slipped her arms around his waist, offering comfort and support. At thirty-six, she was nearly fifteen years her husband’s junior. Not that the age difference was particularly noticeable, since Graham looked a good decade younger than his fifty-one years. He was also one of those dark, lean, poetically good-looking men who seemed to have a magic formula against age, and who wore a handsome face with effortless ease and a complete lack of vanity.
No wonder the ladies of his parish had been rather put out to hear of his marriage to a widow from London, especially one with a rebellious teenage daughter.
Graham felt his wife’s arms snake around his waist, and reached down to cover her hands with his. To say that Monica had come into his life and changed it as radically as a tornado was something of an understatement, and he was still saying thanks for her in his nightly prayers. And he expected he’d still be doing so when he was in his nineties.
‘Oh, that’s the afternoon post,’ Monica said, hearing a distant rattle out in the hall. She moved off to collect the usual mixture of bills, circulars, and – at times – heartbreaking letters that came to the enormous vicarage.
The building itself was a 300-year-old edifice that had been converted into twelve flats just over a year ago. An event that had not been entirely successful, since it had resulted in the murder of one of the tenants. Monica, however, was determined to put that terrible memory behind her, even though she herself had been instrumental in solving it. Besides, new people had since moved in, and with all the flats now full, the vicarage was once more a home, a place of noise and busy human interest. The Nobles inhabited Flat 1, with its own private entrance on the ground floor, and sweeping views of the huge communal gardens and the river beyond.
Monica was absently sifting through the post as she walked back to the kitchen, being careful to separate family mail from Graham’s work-related correspondence.
Graham, in his habitual lightweight black trousers, blue–grey shirt, and pristine white dog collar, was sitting at the table sipping hot tea, apparently impervious to the enervating weather.
‘Hello, there’s something here from James,’ Monica said, recognizing the handwriting of the Reverend James Davies, one of Graham’s oldest friends, and the vicar of the large village of Caulcott Green, situated about six miles away. With a smile, she passed it across to her husband.
She then opened the telephone bill and blanched. Carole Anne Clancy, Monica’s daughter (who was sixteen going on thirty), hadn’t been any too happy to leave the bustle of London behind along with her school and her vast network of ‘in’ friends for the peace and quiet of the rural Cotswolds. And because their change in lifestyle had been rather enormous, Monica had been prepared to be patient with her, and maybe just a bit too indulgent. Like allowing her to speak to her friends on the phone at all hours. But perhaps now, two years on, it was time that she started taking on a few more of the responsibilities of an adult.
Like paying her own share of the telephone bill!
‘What do you know about sweet peas, Mon?’ Graham asked, making his wife blink at him blankly, and trawl her somewhat erratic memory for any horticultural data that may have come her way. Unfortunately, not a lot had, it seemed.
‘Huh … they climb up sticks, they’re pastel in colour, and they smell nice,’ she said vaguely. ‘Why?’
‘Hmm, I doubt that’ll be good enough, I’m afraid, so you might want to read up a bit on the subject. Apparently, you’re judging them at this year’s flower show at Caulcott Green,’ he added casually, smiling across at her with just a little wicked twinkle in his dark eyes.
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ Monica said weakly. ‘James has been organizing again, has he?’
‘James has,’ Graham confirmed. His old friend was rather noted for it. ‘And volunteering all and sundry for who knows what, it seems. We’re probably getting off lightly, knowing James. I’m judging the lilies, apparently.’
‘How nice of him to let us know,’ Monica said, with a wicked twinkle of her own in her cornflower-blue eyes. This kind of by-your-leave bombshell was typical of Graham’s friend.
Her husband laughed. ‘I know, I know. But he always means well. Besides, the Caulcott Green annual flower show is quite an experience,’ he assured her. ‘It’s been going on for donkey years; the whole village is determined to keep it up and running on tried and true, good old-fashioned lines. Tradition, don’t you know,’ he said, mock gravely. ‘Every year the same old die-hards set up the traditional stalls: white elephant, tombola, Aunt Sally, you name it. Everyone donates, everyone attends, everyone bakes cakes for the WI stall or whatever. I swear, between them James, Wendy, Sir Hugh, and the countess are utterly determined to hold onto this one piece of medieval entertainment in defiance of any television sensation, pop culture or computer game.’
Monica, who’d been thinking how quaint it all sounded, and how comforting, in this day and age, to know that not all rural pastimes were disintegrating and disappearing, found her attention snared. ‘The countess?’ she echoed, questioningly. And wondered what resident villager must have exhibited such excess signs of snobbery in order to be given such an unkind label. ‘Not a real countess, presumably?’
‘Oh, isn’t she though?’ Graham corrected her with a grin. ‘But strictly of the impoverished, and all-but-forgotten-and-extinct kind, mind you. Daphne Cadge-Hampton, Dowager Countess of Fulcome, to be exact. She lives in one of those big crumbling houses on the outskirts of the village,’ Graham explained. ‘Eighty if she’s a day, and a character that would have made even Oscar Wilde think he was overdoing it if he’d put her in one of his plays. She’s opening, of course.’
‘Opening what?’
‘The flower show. Do keep up,’ he mock-admonished. Monica threw the dishcloth at him, which he ducked expertly. He continued to read his friend’s letter. ‘Sir Hugh Featherstone is chairman of the flower show, by the way, and has his eye on the much coveted Cadge-Hampton gladiola cup this year by the sounds of it.’
Monica’s bright blue eyes, peering out from under her dark fringe, widened. ‘Do I want to know about the Cadge-Hampton cup?’ she asked cautiously.
Graham grinned. ‘It’s a monstrous piece of silver the late count forked out for back in the 1930s, and is the bee’s knees.’
‘Bee’s knees?’ her eyebrow elevated.
‘Bee’s knees,’ Graham echoed firmly. ‘It’s only ever awarded for really grade-A gladiolas, so it can go for whole decades without being given out at all. Sir Hugh covets it with a lust that is most unseemly.’ He put on his pompous vicar voice, then spoiled it by grinning. ‘The other hot area this year is the dahlias, apparently. That’s the only field that’s always wide open. It’s generally accepted that old Sam Dix will always win the roses, but nobody much cares about the other categories.’
‘Poor us,’ Monica said, reading over her husband’s shoulder and grinning. ‘I see James has nabbed the dahlias for himself.’
Graham laughed. ‘Probably because that’s the only way to stop world war three from breaking out. Nobody is going to lay one on the vicar if he awards the top rosette to a hated rival. Though, come to think of it, I’m not so sure.’ His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘Those dahlia-growers … ’ he lay his hand flat in the air and rocked it from side to side in a telling gesture, ‘they’re a dodgy lot.’
Monica laughed. ‘Like that, is it? Oh well, so long as I don’t get brained by a little old lady because I didn’t appreciate her sweet peas, I suppose I’ll survive.’
‘Survive what?’ asked a voice, proceeding from a blonde vision that had appeared in the doorway.
Monica observed her daughter with a fond eye as she sashayed across the kitchen, oozing near-fatal ennui, as only a teenager can. ‘Survive the Caulcott Green flower show,’ she said, and waited for it.
She caught Graham’s eye, and found him also tensed for the attack. For Carole Anne persisted in thinking that anything less grand than a first night at the opera was well below her attention. So it was hardly surprising that their jaws dropped with surprise when she swung around from the contents of the fridge that she’d been fussily contemplating with a smile on her face and her big blue eyes wide with interest.
‘Really? When’s this?’
‘Er … a week next Saturday.’ Monica, only by dint of having had more practice, recovered from the shock first.
‘Great. Can I come?’ Carole Anne asked, oh-so-casually tossing her long, silk-straight blonde locks over one nicely tanned shoulder. She was wearing very short white shorts and a pink and white sleeveless top that didn’t quite reach her navel. No doubt she felt she was overdressed.
‘Of course you can,’ Monica squeaked, foolishly hoping that, finally, her daughter was beginning to recover from her permanent countryside-blues sulk.
She really should have known better.
‘OK. I’ll have to buy a new outfit then,’ Carole Anne said sweetly.
Graham blinked. ‘For a flower show?’ he quavered. Even after two years of practice, he was nowhere close to playing in Carole Anne’s league yet.
Carole Anne gave her stepfather an amused, reluctantly fond smile. ‘’Course,’ she said scornfully. It was a constant source of annoyance to her that she found herself rather liking Graham Noble. When she’d told all her friends that her mother was marrying a vicar – a vicar of all people – she’d basked in all the horrified sympathy that had flooded her way, doomed as she was to suffer the slings and arrows of her stepfather’s piety and tyranny.
So it was really jarring to her that she found Graham so likeable. Not to mention the fact that all her friends, both old and new, thought him ‘hot’. Still, she was beginning to look on him, not so much as a real dad, obviously, but as something akin to a favourite uncle, maybe.
‘Er … OK then,’ Graham agreed, forgivably losing his head. He reached for his wallet and extracted some ten pound notes.
‘Fine,’ Carole Anne said, graciously accepting the cash. ‘I’ll put the date in my diary.’ They watched her saunter back out, as waif-like as she’d sauntered in, and looked at one another in blank amazement.
‘Something’s up,’ Monica predicted gloomily.
‘Has she got her exam results yet?’ Graham asked cautiously, and their eyes met in mutually panicked understanding.
Carole Anne wanted to be either a computer games designer, or a supermodel. She hadn’t yet made up her mind. And whilst she had the brains and ability to be a computer whizz-kid, she also, unfortunately, had the face and physical wherewithal to at least think that she had a chance of being a model as well.
She’d inherited her natural father’s blond hair and her mother’s big blue eyes; she had an elfin face that was all her own, and a wispy, yet somehow quite substantial figure that had attracted boys like bees to honey pots ever since she’d hit puberty.
‘No, I’m sure the exam results haven’t been published yet,’ Monica mused. And although prayer was usually her husband’s department, she hadn’t spared her own knees in getting down on them and asking the Almighty to make sure that Carole Anne’s grades were all straight As. Because Carole Anne had stated that if they were, she was definitely going on to do A-levels and then, hopefully, to university to take a degree in computer science.
If not, she’d run away to London and become the next Kate Moss.
‘Well, I suppose I’d better give James a ring and tell him that we accept his orders … sorry, I mean his gracious offer,’ Graham corrected himself with a wicked little smile. ‘He could have given us a little more notice, though.’
Monica shrugged. ‘I suppose he’s had other things on his mind,’ she said her voice full of sudden sympathy.
Graham looked up and then went a little pale. ‘Of course he has. I wasn’t thinking.’
Six months ago, Wendy and James Davies had lost their 8-year-old son Thomas to that parental nightmare that was meningitis.
‘He seems to be coping well,’ Monica offered hopefully after a short, painful silence had fallen between them.
‘Yes. Yes, I think so too – well, as well as can be expected. But Wendy definitely isn’t. I saw her a few days ago in Cirencester; she looked like a ghost.’
Monica bit her lip. ‘Well, it’s bound to take time,’ she said inadequately.
Also, it was always worse for a mother, she thought, but of course, wouldn’t have dreamed of saying it out loud.
Graham sighed, then nodded and went to his study to telephone them. When he came back he looked a little more cheerful. ‘Well, that’s all arranged.’
‘It’s being held in the playing field, I take it?’
‘Right,’ Graham confirmed. ‘With a bouncy castle, a vintage tractor display, and some sort of kiddies’ roundabout. Oh and a huge marquee.’
‘Oh, of course. Couldn’t not have a marquee,’ she agreed, deadpan.
Graham chose, judiciously, to ignore her. ‘I suppose the dreaded lab people will be there in force.’
Monica nodded. ‘I dare say. Are they still being a thorn in the village’s side?’
‘Bound to be,’ Graham said. ‘But I would have hoped, by now at least, that the community leaders were beginning to accept them. James has been desperately building bridges between the two factions for months now.’
Monica didn’t envy the vicar of Caulcott Green the task.
Nearly a year ago, Franklyn House, a big old place with a plethora of outbuildings opposite Sir Hugh’s own manor house, had been sold to Ross Ferris, a chemical manufacturer, who’d promptly converted the complex into a working research laboratory. And whilst it undoubtedly brought much-needed jobs to the area, the locals were hardly ecstatic about it. Complaints were constantly being made about the small incinerator, the potential, if unknown, hazards to their health, and the unnecessary secrecy of what went on up there. The current rumour doing the rounds was that it was government funded, and that all sorts of bacteriological germ warfare nasties might accidentally be let loose. (Or maybe not even
so accidentally, if you listened to some of the more vocal conspiracy nuts and anti-government enthusiasts.)
You name it, and some villager suspected it.
To make matters worse, Ross Ferris was not the kind of man to win friends and influence people. A bombastic, self-satisfied, self-made millionaire, he seemed determined to railroad everyone to his way of thinking, which seemed to be that what was good for Ross Ferris was good for everyone. He’d recently shouldered his way onto the local council, and was fast becoming the most despised man for miles around.
Sir Hugh, for one, positively hated his guts.
‘Things must have calmed down some since the last time we visited James and Wendy,’ Monica offered hopefully.
Graham looked rather doubtful, but agreed obligingly, ‘Yes. Perhaps.’
Monica rose and picked up the washing; a few days in the airing cupboard wouldn’t hurt them. As she passed her husband, she blew him a kiss. ‘You do take me to the nicest places,’ she said cheekily.
Dr Gordon Trenning, one of Ferris Lab’s top chemical and computer engineers, pulled his luxurious new BMW to a halt in a cul-de-sac of council houses, and turned nervously towards the girl sitting beside him.
Linda Gregson was in her early twenties with a mass of reddish-brown hair, deep brown eyes, legs that never stopped, and a predatory sexual nature that both thrilled and alarmed Gordon’s naturally cautious soul in equal measure.
‘You coming in?’ she asked nonchalantly, opening the door and swinging her legs out in a way that she’d once seen Beyoncé do in a pop video.
‘Er, I’d better not,’ Gordon said nervously. Linda’s father didn’t like him.
Like most unmarried women in Caulcott Green, Linda still lived with her parents. In the current financial market, it was hard for locals to afford a place of their own.
‘Chicken,’ she teased, but leaned back into the car and kissed him with some force, deliberately coating his thin mouth with ‘blush of dawn’ lipstick. ‘See ya tomorrow, then?’ she said, letting her hand linger suggestively against his thigh before getting out. Sometimes she found that his shyness and awkwardness around women brought out a spiteful streak in her nature.
