Farm Fatale (44 page)

    "And what the hell difference does that make?" demanded Bella. "He's rich, isn't he? And gorgeous. That's a bonus, darling, let me tell you." She was, Rosie could tell, thinking of Simon.

    "Yes, but I've done gorgeous," Rosie said, thinking of Mark. "And I'm not sure it suits me. Matt's a business arrangement. Nothing else."

    She had just put the phone down when Duffy burst in with the afternoon post. Which, Rosie saw in mingled exasperation and amusement, comprised nothing more than a flyer advertising the takeaway services of the Indian restaurant in Slapton.

    "Boyfriend gone, has he?" Duffy's eyes were darting about. "I hear he's moved into The Bottoms. Odd business, that, isn't it?"

    Rosie shrugged, determined not to be drawn into an explanation. "These things happen."

    "Not round here they don't. Not usually, anyway. Nice for him, though; it's very posh there." Duffy flicked a disparaging glance around the kitchen whose messiness, without Mark around to complain about it (yet fail to address it personally), had reached unprecedented levels. Still, Rosie thought, if it put the postman off, she had no intention of tidying it up.

    She gave no further information and waited for Duffy to go away. She had not forgotten his role in the breakdown of her friendship with Jack, even if, with hindsight, she suspected he had done her a favor. Jack's rejection had been a shock but was preferable to spending the rest of her life being compared to some impossible ideal. Especially an ideal who had made off with a sheepnut salesman from Chesterfield. But it would have done no harm to remain friends, although, given some of her remarks—
all
of her remarks actually—last time they had met, that seemed an unlikely prospect.

    She ran some water over the pile of pots in the sink, hoping this would hint to Duffy that his presence was not desirable.

    It did not. Or, if it did, he ignored it. Rosie realized Duffy had no intention of going until he had found out what he wanted.

    "Is it true you're doing a painting of Matt Locke?"

    "Possibly." Rosie, although too truthful to lie, was determined to confirm nothing.

    "Dame Nancy used to do that. Stripped off for artists when she was a struggling actress and had no money. Then she realized she could strip off for directors and make lots of money. That's what she told me anyway." Duffy sniggered.

    "Matt Locke," Rosie said firmly, "is
not
stripping off."

    Duffy looked triumphant. "So you
are
doing it then!"

    Rosie took a defiant sip of coffee. "As I said. It's a possibility." Appallingly rude though it felt, she was determined not to offer Duffy any form of refreshment whatsoever.

    "Nice, it must be," Duffy said, almost wistfully.

    "What must be?" Rosie felt lacerating guilt about the coffee.

    "Meeting people like Matt Locke. Becoming, ahem, good friends with them."

    "I'm not good friends with him," snapped Rosie, exasperated. She wondered why Duffy had ever vacillated about journalism. He was wasted on the Royal Mail, when a brilliant career on a tabloid could so clearly have been his for the taking.

    "More than that, is it then, eh? Thought so, after the party." He winked at her.

"No! Do you understand me?
No!"

    "Love to know a famous person, I would," Duffy said. "What decided me to become a postman in the first place was when I read that Julie Christie once went out with the bloke who delivered her fan letters."

    "Really? Where did you find that out?" Despite her irritation, Rosie was finding it hard to keep a straight face.

    "
Daily Mail
, of course," said Duffy. "I thought, Hang on a minute, I might get lucky as well. Not with Julie Christie, obviously."

    "No," said Rosie. It was difficult to imagine the exquisite film star and the red-faced, roll-eyed postman as an item.

    "Don't think she lives round here, for one thing," Duffy continued blithely. "Anyway, it didn't work out with the postman. But she definitely had a thing about letters. Went out with Terence Stamp after that."

***

Duffy had just left when there was another knock at the door.

    "Oh, hi," said Iseult, trying rather too hard to sound casual. "Just passing."

    Rosie was not naturally suspicious, but she thought this odd. Passing
where
, exactly? Cinder Lane led nowhere apart from Spitewinter Farm, and it seemed unlikely Iseult was dropping in on Jack. Her dislike of farm animals seemed to be one of the few areas in which she had anything in common with Samantha. Puzzled, Rosie struggled with the bottom half of the stable door to let Iseult in.

    "Who are you?" demanded a high, cheeky voice. Iseult turned to see Satchel standing behind her, gawking with unfettered curiosity.

    "An undercover cop," said Iseult, not batting a midnightblue eyelid.

    "
Can't
be," said Satchel triumphantly. "Police only came round to our house last night."

    Iseult looked at Rosie with a raised eyebrow. "There goes the neighborhood," she drawled.

    Rosie finally conquered the lock and let her in. "They used to drive Mark mad, but I don't mind them. They're rather sweet, in a noisy, irritating sort of way."

    Iseult raked the cottage with her sharp stare. She was clearly wondering how anyone in their right mind could live here. Rosie was, in fact, beginning to wonder the same. She braced herself for reports of her ex-boyfriend's bliss among the manifold comforts of The Bottoms.

    "How's Mark?" she asked, assuming this was the reason for Iseult's visit. Best to get it over with.

    "Being driven slowly insane." Iseult grinned. "He and my stepmother spend all day in what Samantha calls the gaze-bow working on some cheesy film script. At least Mark works on it. As far as I can make out, Samantha loafs around with her feet up banging on about her glorious Hollywood past."

    "Oh, of course. Her glorious Hollywood past." Rosie dimly remembered the
Punkawallah
conversation during the
Insider
shoot.

    "But as far as I can make out, Hollywood totally passed on
her
. Her entire career is TV bit parts, a high spot doing a margarine ad, and a movie that went straight to airline."

    "What's 'straight to airline'?"

    "It's when the movie sucks too much even to go straight to video," said Iseult gleefully. "
Punkawallah
, it was called."

    Rosie felt a smile pull hard at the corners of her mouth. "How's it all going for you, anyway?" she asked. "Your various plots and things?"

    "OK. The dad one's going like a train. Almost literally—he's desperate to get back to London now. So desperate that I'm having to put the brakes on it a bit."

    "But I thought you hated the countryside."

    "I do." A guarded look rippled across Iseult's resolute features. "But it might do me some good to stay on the scene a bit longer. Now that
he's
here…"

    "Who?" The possibility that she meant Mark suddenly burst on Rosie. She looked at Iseult in horror. Surely…

    Iseult fumbled in her bead bag and produced a small plastic box. "Like, could you give my demo tape to Matt Locke?"

***

As Rosie left her cottage at the appointed hour the following morning, Satchel, Blathnat, Arthur, Guinevere, and Dungarees were noisily trying to bump-start the still noisier VW camper van down the lane. Dirtier and rustier than ever, a dingy curtain hanging askew in its grubby back window and its interior crammed with broken furniture, the van, which exploded periodically in a cloud of filthy smoke, looked fit only for the least choosy of scrapyards. As it jerked hysterically past the church, something large, smooth, and shining purred alongside it. It was the Mercedes, with Murgatroyd at the wheel. Climbing into the gleaming vehicle, Rosie felt horribly selfconscious, all the more so when, as the big silver car pulled sleekly away, she caught a glimpse of Mrs. Womersley at the window. Lips pursed in disapproval, no doubt.

    Matt was in the long gallery, pacing up and down and talking agitatedly into his mobile. "Look, Geordie, can't you tell them to get stuffed? I'll deliver when I'm ready, and I'm not ready yet…No, I told you, I'm not ruling out collaboration, but I'm
not
doing it with bloody Posh Spice." Spotting Rosie, he raised an eyebrow, cut the conversation short, and shoved the phone in his pocket. His hand, Rosie noticed, was trembling.

    The smile of welcome Matt gave her did not disguise how tired he looked. Or how miserable.

    "What's wrong?" Rosie asked, taking out her pencils. The knowledge that the drawing sessions were entirely therapeutic was far from flattering but oddly relaxing. It clearly didn't matter how it turned out and she was being paid anyway. And, as power play went, a nursepatient situation was a lot easier than a rich-rock-star-and-poor-artist situation.

    "Everything." Matt groaned. "Geordie's just called with the welcome news that my record company's threatening to drop me altogether if I don't finish the album soon. As if I give a fuck." From the despairing way he buried his head and sprawling, nervous fingers, however, it was obvious to Rosie that he did give a fuck. If not several.

    "Why's it so difficult?" She realized immediately what a stupid question it was. What did she know about hit albums? Hit singles, even? The only singles she knew about were flops. Like herself.

    "Same old sound, same old ideas." Matt rubbed his eyes again and looked blearily at her. "I need a shot in the arm, but fuck knows what. Apart from that, of course"—he rubbed his forearm meaningfully—"but I'm off that shit now." He looked broodingly out of the window, his lips pushed out in resentful, sultry fullness.

    Watching him, Rosie thought she had never seen anyone so despairing look so good. Almost tenderly, she sketched in the long, stray tendrils of hair that flopped over his face and wondered whether she should show him her drawings. They were, after all, going surprisingly well. They might even cheer him up.

    "I know it doesn't matter, but…" Rosie reached into her portfolio and fished out the work she had done so far, holding them up for Matt to see. "OK, they're only therapy, but—"

    "But they're
great
," Matt cut in, staring at them with what looked to Rosie suspiciously like amazement. "Really, they are. You're
good
. Very good."

    Rosie felt irrationally thrilled. Even at the beginning of their relationship, Mark had never been as unreserved in his praise as this. Looking into Matt's eyes, green as the parkland outside and glowing in admiration, all her nerve endings tingled.

    The door clicked at the end of the gallery.

    "Hey, Murgatroyd," Matt called as the butler glided silently up with a tray of coffee and biscuits. "Come and cast your expert eye over these."

    Murgatroyd carefully put the tray down. The biscuits, Rosie noted with interest, were shortbread—her favorite. Homemade too. Double favorite. "Very lifelike, sir. If I may say so, I think they do you justice."

    Matt whistled. "That's high praise from Murgatroyd," he said, grinning at Rosie. "He's very difficult to please. I've just had some photos done for the new album and he thinks they're all crap. Censored pretty much all of them, haven't you, Murgatroyd?"

    "With respect, sir, I felt some of them were less than flattering."

    "Murgatroyd has a very good eye," Matt enthused. "And a good ear too. He's an old rock 'n' roller himself at heart. Used to play in a band called Fast Joe and the Accelerators. Supported the Beatles a few times, he tells me. Although even
he
can't quite come up with what's needed for this sodding album. Not just a case of banging it all back through the reverb, is it, Murgatroyd? We were up all night trying to crack it."

    Rosie looked at the impassive butler in astonishment.

    "We were indeed, sir," he murmured.

    "Makes top shortbread too," Matt added, his thick white teeth sinking into one of the biscuits. "Buttery and crumbly, just like it should be. What's your secret ingredient, Murgatroyd?"

    "Rice flour, sir." Murgatroyd, Rosie saw, was red with pleasure.

    "Oh yes. I'd be up shit creek without Murgatroyd," Matt assured her. "My right-hand bloke he is. Brian Epstein and Jeeves all rolled into one. Even gets rid of the fans at the gate by telling them I've moved to Ireland for tax reasons and no one has any idea when I'm coming back. Oh, and not to take the soil because it's radioactive after Chernobyl. It works too. Used to be coachloads of girls when I first moved here, but now you only get the odd Spaniard or German.
Very
odd they are, some of them." He grinned. "Stuffing their knickers in the postbox and everything. Bras, garter belts, the lot. Mind you, it serves that nosy bastard of a postman right."

    Rosie smiled. "Yes. Duffy certainly could be said to take an intense interest in the correspondence he delivers."

    "And then some." Matt's spirits seemed to have risen like bubbles in champagne. Could it possibly have been the drawings?

    "Let's go out to lunch," he suddenly urged. "You'll have lunch with me, won't you?"

    Doubt and excitement coursed through Rosie before she realized the suggestion was hardly likely to be personal. No doubt Oakie had decreed that the next stage in his rehabilitation was the issuing of a social invitation.