by Agatha Frost
“Nowhere.” Jessie shrugged. “What’s the big deal?”
“Where’s nowhere?” Julia shook Jessie’s shoulders. “Where have you been? You said you were going to help me with the bake-off.”
“Just around.”
“Around where specifically?”
“What’s got into you, cake lady?” Jessie pulled her arms away from Julia and brushed the creases from her black denim jacket. “Since when have you wanted to keep tabs on me every second of the day? I’m eighteen!”
Julia felt the people close to them starting to notice something was going on. She inhaled deeply to calm herself, realising she was compounding witnessing a man dying with missing Jessie all morning.
“I’m sorry.” Julia hugged Jessie again before kissing her on the forehead. “I was worried about you, that’s all.”
“Well, you don’t need to worry.” Jessie wiped the kiss from her head. “I’m fine. I need to go and call Billy. He’ll never believe what he’s missed.”
It didn’t take long for Johnny Watson, The Peridale Post’s editor and one of Julia’s oldest friends, to turn up with his camera and notepad.
“I was supposed to cover the bake-off,” Johnny said, fiddling with his glasses. “Sounds like I missed a lot! Me and Leah got stuck in the snow on the top road. What happened?”
“A man died from an anaphylactic shock thanks to a peanut-loaded red velvet.”
“Is it true what they’re saying?” Johnny whispered as he leaned in. “That it was the Tony Bridges?”
“Word really does travel fast around here.”
“I think we’re about to set a sales record for the paper.” Johnny clicked his camera and took a picture of the packed café. He pulled out his notepad and flicked to a fresh page. “In your own words, what happened?”
“Johnny—”
“The people deserve to know!” Johnny jumped in with a cheeky smile. “C’mon, Julia! Help an old friend out. He’s a celebrity! I promise I won’t even cite you. You can be ‘an eyewitness’ and still get your story out there.”
“You know me better than that, Johnny.” She patted him on the arm as she shook her head. “Sorry.”
Johnny slapped his pad shut and shrugged. “You can’t blame a guy for trying, right? It was worth a shot.”
Despite Julia’s refusal to give him a story, Johnny hung around, and it turned out she was the only one unwilling to spill the beans to the paper. The other witnesses practically fought each other to give Johnny their accounts of the tragedy. Julia tried to ignore the noise as she served people their promised free drinks, but the snippets she did hear were already wildly exaggerated.
“According to Amy, Bev said ‘I’ve poisoned you, ha!’ while Tony was ‘waving his hands around and trying to strangle her’,” Julia said to Barker, who was in the kitchen helping Jessie whip up some sandwiches to pass around. “I don’t remember any of that happening, and I was stood right next to him.”
“Don’t worry, Christie will be able to tell the fact from the fiction,” Barker assured her. “Half their statements will be useless, but he needs enough that match up to put together the timeline. The ones that don’t fit in will be discounted.”
“And yet I bet Johnny still prints them in the paper.” Julia picked up a finished tray of sandwiches. “I wish I’d stayed at home and watched a film after all.”
After everyone, including Julia and Barker, had given their witness statements, Julia locked the café and set off into the night towards Dot’s cottage to collect Vinnie.
“We’re looking after him?” Jessie cried as they added more footprints to the green. “For how long?”
“As long as it takes for Katie to be able to fly home.”
“But babies cry.”
“I know,” Julia replied.
“And poo.”
“We’re aware,” Barker jumped in.
“Why couldn’t he stay at the manor?” Jessie frowned. “That crazy housekeeper could look after him.”
“Hilary is probably looking after Katie’s dad, who, if you recall, is very old and wheelchair-bound and needs a lot of care and attention. We could ask to swap if you really don’t want to have a baby in the house?”
Jessie huffed and shook her head. “Whatever. But if he stops me sleeping, I’ll—”
“Throw a tantrum?” Barker cut in. “Then we’ll have two babies to look after. That’s no way to talk about your uncle.”
“Uncle?” Jessie cried.
“Technically,” Julia said with a chuckle.
“But he’s one!”
“Fourteen-months,” Julia corrected her.
“That’s the same thing!”
“Not according to Katie.”
Even though Julia didn’t resent having to look after her baby brother, she was relieved to find out that Dot had fed him his dinner and milk, and even more relieved to see him fast asleep on Dot’s sofa after his bedtime bath.
“He’s been as good as gold,” Percy said as he passed Julia the sheep toy. “It’s always a pleasure.”
“Can’t say his father was like that,” Dot said as she pushed a hand through her curls. “Let’s just say there’s a reason I only had one child. Vinnie is a delight compared to Brian.”
Barker headed back to bring his car around, leaving Julia to pick up Vinnie, who, thankfully, didn’t stir from his deep sleep. After loading the car and fastening Vinnie into his car seat, they set off on the slow journey up the snowy lane to their cottage. Vinnie remained silent while Julia unfastened him, and he didn’t even wake up when Jessie slammed her car door. The moment they stepped over the threshold, however, Vinnie woke up and exercised his lungs to prove it.
Chapter Five
Julia couldn’t bring herself to set a 6:30am alarm for the morning, but, as it turned out, she hadn’t needed to. At 6:30am sharp, Vinnie woke up and rattled the side of his travel cot. Still half-asleep, Julia managed to snooze through her baby alarm clock for three minutes, but when the grace period was over, Vinnie tossed his head back and belted out his tearless cries.
Barker shot up in bed, panting as though waking from a bad dream. “What’s going on?”
“Go back to sleep,” Julia said, pulling Barker back down to his pillow. “It’s Vinnie. We’re looking after him, remember?”
“Oh, yeah.” Barker relaxed back into his pillow, his eyes closing. “Do you want me to get up with him?”
Julia appreciated the offer, but she wasn’t upset when Barker resumed his snoring. Knowing there was no sense in them both missing out on sleep, Julia pulled on her slippers and dressing gown before lifting Vinnie out of his cot. His head rested on her shoulder, and the crying stopped.
“You’re getting heavy, big boy,” Julia whispered as she carried him through her dark cottage and into the kitchen. “Aren’t you glad Sue brought us her spare highchair last night?”
Julia slid Vinnie into the pink plastic chair before making him up a bottle of milk for his first feed of the day. While Vinnie drank his morning milk, Julia made herself a much-needed cup of peppermint and liquorice tea. Tony Bridges’ death didn’t cross her mind until the toast popped out of the toaster.
“Why would Bev want to kill Tony like that in front of so many people?” Julia mused to Vinnie as she munched through her wholegrain toast loaded with butter. “Do you think something’s fishy too?”
Vinnie burped, and a milk bubble emerged from his nostrils. Julia couldn’t help but laugh, and Vinnie joined in. She finished her toast and grabbed her phone from the counter. She was relieved to see a text message from their father, sent in the early hours of the morning.
“Dadda landed in Ibiza and found a hotel. Oh dear, he says mummy has fractured her leg in two different places and is waiting to go into surgery.” Vinnie let out another giggle before resuming his milk. “Looks like we’re going to be spending a lot of time together, kid.”
After replying to her father and sending a picture of Vinnie to show that ev
erything was going fine, Julia took him and her tea into the sitting room. She flicked through the channels until she landed on cartoons. Thankfully, Vinnie’s attention was captured right away, leaving her to scribble in her notepad and sip her first tea of the day.
She flicked past her recipe for the lemon and Earl Grey cupcakes, which nobody had got to try, and started on a fresh page. In the middle, she wrote ‘Tony Bridges’ in a circle before writing everything she knew around his name. The first words she wrote were ‘arrogant’ and ‘egomaniac’, followed by ‘well-advertised peanut allergy.’ After filling that page with information on Tony, she flicked to the next page and headed it with ‘CONNECTIONS!’
She wrote down ‘Camila - the wife’, ‘Bev - the ex-wife’, and ‘Oliver - the assistant.’ She almost put her pen down to stare at the notes, but she remembered another connection. ‘Coffee-throwing lady - who is she???’
“What time is it?” Jessie croaked as she stumbled out of her bedroom, eyes half-closed and hair standing on end.
“Just past seven,” Julia said after checking the clock on the mantlepiece. “Go back to bed. You can get another hour in.”
“I’m up now.” Jessie pushed on the bathroom door and locked it behind her. The sound of the shower started immediately.
Julia was anxious to talk to Jessie about what’d happened yesterday, but she knew the more she tried to push it, the more Jessie would push back. There was every possibility Dot and Percy had been mistaken, but Jessie wasn’t acting like her usual self, and that scared Julia.
While Jessie was in the shower, Barker walked into the sitting room in his underwear, scratching under his arm and yawning as wide as a hippo. After kissing Julia on the top of the head, he collapsed into the sofa next to Vinnie, who was too engrossed by a cartoon pig to notice anything going on around him.
“Do you want me to look after him while you’re at work?” were Barker’s first yawned words. “I don’t mind.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I think I’m going to stay home with him today. Jessie offered to run the café on her own. Mondays are usually quiet, and with the snow, I doubt many people will be venturing out, even if they are dying to gossip about what happened yesterday.”
“Oh, yeah.” Barker blinked hard after rubbing his eyes. “I’d forgotten about that. Are you going to be looking into it?”
“What gives you that idea?”
“Your notepad.” Barker nodded at the pad she had unsuccessfully tried to push up her sleeve when she’d heard him coming. “You only use that when you’re trying to suss something out or when you’re writing recipes, and something tells me you aren’t working on recipes at seven in the morning.”
“I’m not looking into it,” Julia said, which was the truth, “but I’m also not not looking into it.”
“Something feel off?”
“Hmm,” Julia hummed through a mouthful of tea. “Can’t you feel it?”
“I can.” Barker stretched his arms above his head and let out another yawn. “It’s too neat and wrapped up. Ex-wife kills ex-husband with peanuts in front of everyone and then denies doing it. If I’d gone to those lengths to kill my ex-wife publicly, I’d at least want to brag about it.”
“Remind me never to divorce you.” Julia tossed her pad onto the side table next to her tea. “I don’t know. Let’s see how things unravel. Perhaps Bev has already confessed everything.”
“And if she hasn’t?”
“Then we’ll see.” Julia shrugged. “What are you doing today?”
“Writing.” Barker looked at the dining room door; his eyes filled with dread. “I lost all of yesterday. If I don’t rewrite at least two scenes today, I’m toast. Speaking of which, is there any bread?”
“There’s two for you, and two for Jessie,” Julia said, kissing him on the hand as he passed. “Put some clothes on. You’ll catch your death.”
By 8am, Jessie was at the café to start the day’s baking, and Barker was shut in the dining room with a large mug of coffee and a stack of fresh paper to feed his typewriter. Vinnie devoured his breakfast cereal in what felt like minutes, and by 8:30am, he was down for his first hour-nap of the day.
Julia could have spent that hour doing anything she wanted, but with a sleeping baby and a frozen winter wonderland outside, she felt trapped in her cottage with only Vinnie’s snores and Barker’s rattling typewriter to keep her company. She sat on the couch and brushed Mowgli, reducing his fluffy Maine Coon fur by half while Vinnie’s cartoons played in the background, not that she was focussing on the adventures of the tiny pink pig and her friends; her mind was fixed on Tony Bridges. It didn’t take much to conjure up the look of fear she had seen in his eyes. He had known he was going to die.
“Do we have a dictionary?” Barker asked as he hurried into the sitting room, breaking Julia from her thoughts. “You looked miles away then.”
“Dictionary?” Julia shook Tony to the back of her mind and tried to remember where she’d put it. “Under the armchair next to the window.”
Barker lifted the chair and pulled out the giant leather volume, which had been acting as a leg for the wonky chair for the best part of three years. Barker patted the book and smiled his thanks, leaving the chair slanted.
“What a boring day,” she whispered to Mowgli.
When the morning’s mail dropped onto the doormat just before 9am, she jumped up and ran to collect it, if only for something to do. She flicked through the stack of bills, but none of them interested her. Instead, she picked up that morning’s edition of The Peridale Post and unfolded it to read Johnny’s headline:
BODY AT THE BAKE-OFF! Beloved Radio DJ Dead, Age 52.
Johnny had picked a flattering photograph of Tony, showing him behind a microphone at the studio. Julia had always thought him good-looking, but that impression had faded after spending ten seconds in his company—not because he was any less handsome in real life, but because his personality had been ugly. She might have felt bad thinking ill of the dead, but as it were, she knew she wasn’t the only one.
She took the paper through to the sitting room and scanned through the story. It detailed Tony’s early days living in Peridale before moving off to London to work for the BBC. He returned to the Cotswolds in his thirties to start his radio show—not that he moved back to Peridale, instead choosing a more modern home in the neighbouring village of Riverswick, where he lived with his wife, Camila. The story was filled with inflammatory quotes from ‘eyewitnesses’, most highly exaggerated. Julia’s name was brought up a couple of times, once when being referred to as ‘Tony’s fellow judge’, and later again when Johnny decided to add in ‘Julia South-Brown refused to comment.’ Julia smirked, knowing Johnny had likely got a kick out of his little dig.
She tossed the paper onto the coffee table after she was finished with it. Tony’s terrible behaviour hadn’t been mentioned in the article. Julia suspected Johnny was holding that back for next week’s issue, to continue the story for as long as it sold papers.
Julia returned to the kitchen to refill her teacup, and when she spotted the dusty radio on top of the fridge, she pulled it down and tuned it to Cotswold Classic Radio.
“And of course, we’re still talking about our beloved Tony Bridges this morning,” the male presenter said. “If you haven’t already heard, Tony Bridges, presenter here on Cotswold Classic Radio for the past two decades, sadly passed away yesterday from a confirmed anaphylactic shock.”
“They’re saying it might have been murder,” a female presenter added, “although I legally have to say allegedly on the end of that.”
“Who would want to kill Tony?” said the man. “Coming up next, Bon Jovi’s classic ‘Living on a Prayer.’ This one’s for you, Tony. Hope you’re listening, wherever you are.”
Julia turned the radio off before the song started. Had she experienced Tony on a particularly bad day, or were the other presenters being professionals and saying what they knew the listeners wanted to hear? For
a moment, she genuinely wondered if her experience had been a singular one, but remembering how fragile Oliver had been made by Tony’s behaviour dismissed her misgivings. Oliver’s demeanour wasn’t that of someone experiencing their boss on a bad day, it was that of a boy who’d been systematically bullied by a man almost three times his age for a long time.
As Julia finished her second cup of tea, Vinnie woke, and, to Julia’s surprise, didn’t do so crying. After changing him, Julia dressed him for the day and left him playing with his toys under the dining room table with Barker while she showered and dressed. After wriggling into jeans and a thick jumper, she tossed on a scarf and a coat and peeled back the bedroom curtains to look at the weather. The snow had stopped, and she could finally see patches of her green grass again, but it still looked bitterly cold.
“I’m going to take Vinnie into the village,” Julia said as she coaxed her little brother out from under the table. “I think we both need the fresh air.”
“Yeah,” Barker said without looking up. “Okay.”
“And then I’m going to ask around and see what I can find out about the case.”
“No problem.”
“And after that, I might take off all my clothes and streak around the village.”
“Sounds good.”
“Are you even listening to me, Barker?” Julia planted her hands on her hips. “What did I just say?”
Barker looked up guiltily, his fingers still tapping on the keys.
“You look pretty,” he said before looking back at the paper. “Have fun.”
“C’mon, let’s leave Barker to his work,” she whispered to Vinnie as she closed the dining room door. “Maybe you’ll grow up to be the first man who can successfully multi-task?”
Luckily for Julia, Sue had also dropped off a pram the night before. It was a bright pink one she had bought before finding out she was having twins, so it was still unused. Vinnie didn’t mind the colour, and Julia quite liked how it complimented his tiny yellow winter coat.
