Lots of Love (14 page)

She wasn’t wearing a watch, but she knew that it was probably only about seven o’clock. She had the Wycks’ set of keys and the only others that she knew of, apart from those in a drawer in a
finca
on the Costa Verde, were with the estate agent. She wasn’t sure that Seaton’s office opened on a Sunday.

Snorkel was barking at each of the low windows of the bunkhouse in turn, gazing at Ellen in confusion as she begged to be let out.

Ellen guessed that the easiest solution was to smash the glass in one of the french windows and retrieve the keys.

She went on a quick recce, but the quarter-inch safety glass, which ran the length of the doors, would take more than a woman in a dressing-gown to break – and she risked hurting herself and Snorkel in the process, not to mention infuriating her mother. She couldn’t hope to reach round to the low dormers from the balcony, and the hatch that led up from the carport was now blocked off by flooring that had been laid above it.

Ellen needed a locksmith. She also needed a telephone. Then she remembered that her mobile was not locked inside Goose Cottage with her clothes.

Still keeping half an eye peeled for Fins, she nipped across the lane and headed into Goose End, letting herself through the heavy arched doorway to the magical garden. It was even more dreamlike first thing in the morning, swathed in mist and dappled sunlight, the sculptures looming out of dark shadows. As she passed them, Ellen could now distinguish the damage beneath their green boas of ivy, bindweed and lichen. Limbs and heads were missing, noses chipped off and expressions distorted by vandalism.

She tried to remember the way through the twisting foliage labyrinth, but she was soon hopelessly lost, pushing her way through the same gap in a hedge and ducking under the same rails continually as she wound her way round in ever-decreasing circles. Her bare feet meant that she had to look down rather than around her, careful not to step on brambles, nettles or root clumps. The same sculptures jumped out at her again and again. Eventually she stopped in her tracks, retied her dressing-gown belt and pulled back her hair from her face in defeat. She didn’t even know how to get back out on to Goose End. If she’d had Snorkel with her, she was certain the dog would have found her way through to her giant new friend.

Now that she’d stopped, she could hear the wind chimes that hung from the eaves of Pheely’s cottage, but it was impossible to determine which direction the noise was coming from. Then she had an idea.

‘Meeeoooooow!’ she called. ‘Mew, mew, meeooooow!’

Nothing.

‘Woof,’ she tried another tack. ‘Woof! Woof!’

‘WOOF!’
came the bass reply, terrifyingly loud even at this distance.

Hamlet had answered.

Keeping up the conversation, Ellen hopped over the tangled undergrowth. Within minutes, the cottage was in view, misted in a cool, dark shadow, a thin plume of smoke puffing from the Rayburn’s chimney. At one of the big windows, Hamlet’s huge face stared at her in wonder; he had been conversing with a funny-looking dog.

As she approached the door, Ellen guessed that at least she’d find out where Pheely slept.

It took ten minutes to rouse her. Accustomed to Hamlet’s window-rattling call, Pheely ignored the resounding barks, and was deaf to the door-knocking and cries from Ellen that accompanied them. Making her way round the outside of the cottage with trepidation – there was a surprising amount of broken glass – Ellen peered in through the windows and saw that the huge open room was unoccupied. Then, at the far gable end of the cottage she spotted a narrow window and peered inside to see a small bedroom tucked behind the chimney breast. The bed was piled high with more clutter and paperwork, but it, too, was empty.

‘Who is it?’ called a sleepy voice above her.

Ellen tipped her head back and saw a lot of dark curls spilling out of an even tinier window, one that made the Goose Cottage attic shoeboxes look like office windows in Milton Keynes. Pheely could barely fit her face through it to peer out.

‘Pheely – it’s Ellen. I’m really sorry! I’ve locked myself out and need my phone.’

‘Come in, darling – the front door’s unlocked. I’ll be down in a sec.’

Ellen waited in the huge downstairs room, battling to keep Hamlet’s snorting nose out of her dressing-gown until Pheely appeared through a door that was almost hidden in the tongue-and-groove beside the fireplace.

‘Daddy’s secret lair,’ she explained, yawning widely and wading through the clutter in the direction of the kettle. ‘It would be very romantic to think he bedded local damsels in there, but actually he pickled onions. It was a bit of a passion of his – he’d pickle all sorts of fruit and veg when he needed a break from sculpting. I’ve never been able to get rid of the smell – stick your head round and have a sniff. Doesn’t bother me, but Dilly hates it.’

True enough, the hidden lobby behind the chimney reeked of vinegar. It led to a tiny spiral staircase that curled up to the little bedroom. Beneath it, another doll’s-house room – the one that Ellen had seen outside – was accessed by a door no bigger than a coal hatch.

‘What time is it? Ten? Eleven? God, I’m hung-over.’ Pheely yawned, as she filled the kettle from the workshop sink; the one in the kitchen was still heaving with dirty pans.

As she swept back to the Rayburn, Ellen saw that she was still wearing the same velvet top that she had been the night before and had wrapped a bed sheet around her waist as an
ad hoc
sarong. ‘I think it’s a bit earlier,’ she hedged guiltily. ‘I’m sorry about this – Snorkel jumped on the door and closed it. I need to call a locksmith, and I remembered you had my mobile.’

‘Of course I do.’ Pheely stretched her arms above her head, shook back her hair and went in search of her handbag. ‘Who’s Richard, by the way?’

‘My ex-boyfriend. Why?’

‘Can he be my text boyfriend? Your phone kept beeping with text messages from him when I got home last night. The only way to stop it was to send a reply. We had quite a jolly chat in the end. Oh, damn.’ She looked at the phone. ‘The battery’s flat. Do you have a charger?’

‘Yes. In the cottage.’ Ellen was looking at Pheely curiously. ‘Why didn’t you just turn it off if the text alert irritated you?’

‘Couldn’t work out how.’ Pheely handed her the useless phone. ‘Richard’s made it to Cairns and it’s raining nonstop. Apparently the apartment’s great, although the sea’s full of jellyfish and he misses Snorkel.’ She went in search of mugs. ‘He’s thrilled that you’re settling in so well here and have made such a gorgeous new friend, and he agrees that you shouldn’t be in any hurry to move on. Stay and relax, he says – and I agree. Seems a lovely chap. Shame it went wrong for you two, but I gather the rot set in a long time before you told him it was over. Tea or coffee?’

For somebody who couldn’t figure out how to turn off a Nokia, she was a whiz at reading and sending text messages on it. Ellen was too furious to speak, glaring out of the tall windows at the clay hobgoblins and elves, hating Richard for being so perennially indiscreet, and hoping that he got stung by jellyfish in the non-stop rain for at least a month as punishment for talking to Pheely out of context. His text had been a con. Ellen hadn’t been the one to say it was over. The truth was far more complicated and messy.

‘Can I use your phone?’ she asked eventually.

‘Of course.’ Pheely waved her towards an ancient, clay-encrusted trill phone on the wall.

‘Do you have a
Yellow Pages
?’

‘I have a lot of yellowing pages, darling.’ She laughed, looking around. ‘There might be a
Thomson’s
around here somewhere, if you have a dig . . . Doesn’t the estate agent have a set of keys?’

‘I don’t think they’ll be open.’

Pheely was tipping instant coffee straight from the jar into two deep bowls. ‘They always open on a Sunday through summer round here, darling – catching all that passing tourist trade.’ She splashed hot water on to the granules. ‘You would not
believe
how many people come to visit the Cotswolds for a day trip around a wildlife sanctuary and a cream tea afterwards, then head back home having bought a weekend cottage. Give them a ring.’

‘It’s . . . er . . . a bit early.’

Pheely splashed milk into the bowls of coffee and glanced up at a lopsided cuckoo clock. The next moment milk was cascading all over the quarry tiles. ‘Aggggh!’

It was twenty to eight. Even accounting for half an hour wandering around the Lodge’s lost gardens, Ellen was an early riser.

‘Okay,’ Pheely said, when she had recovered her composure. Hamlet began to clear up the spilled milk as she carried the bowls of coffee across to the phone. ‘In that case, try Dot. She’s always up at dawn.’

‘I have the Wycks’ only set of keys.’

‘I doubt that very much.’ Pheely gave her a wise look. ‘One of Reg’s nephews works at the heel bar in Market Addington. That couple literally have the keys to the village. Call them. The number’s here somewhere . . .’ She searched through an ancient roto-card device by the telephone. ‘Dot used to clean for Daddy – they still lived at Wyck Farm then, but they kept the number when they moved . . . Hang on – here!’ She reeled off a number.

Ellen started to dial, then paused at the last digit. ‘I’m not sure about this, Pheely. What about the Shagger thing and the fact they’ve not been looking after the house?’

‘No need to mention it,’ Pheely said breezily, throwing open the windows. ‘What a beautiful morning! I really must get up before lunchtime more often – thank you for reminding me how lovely summer is, my darling. Mmm. It smells so – early!’

The phone rang at the other end of the line, and Ellen braced herself.

‘Yeah?’ The voice was deep, gruff and angry, and accompanied by a splenetic roar in the background. ‘Shut up, Fluffy!’

‘Er . . . is that the Wyck household?’ Ellen asked, because she wasn’t sure which of the family she was talking to, and because she always sounded just like her mother on the phone – Hyacinth Bucket meets Margo Leadbetter, with a touch of Clarrie Grundy.

‘Whatever it is you’re selling, I don’t wanna buy it, all right?’

‘Oh, I’m not selling anything. This is Ellen Jamieson – Theo and Jennifer’s daughter.’

‘Who?’

Clearly not Saul, then. It had to be Reg.

‘From Goose Cottage?’

‘Yeah, I know it. What about it?’

‘I’m sorry, but I’ve locked myself out and I understand you might have a spare set of keys.’

‘You already got them, aincha?’

‘Er . . . yes, but I was really hoping you might have another set?’

‘No.’ The reply was very defensive.

‘Oh, I see. In that case, I’m sorry to have bothered you, but while you’re on the phone perhaps we could arrange to meet this coming week?’

‘Why?’

‘Well, I couldn’t help notice that you and Dot haven’t . . . er . . . managed to do much around the house lately.’

‘I
am
Dot.’

‘Oh, God, I’m really—’

‘Reg ain’t got up yet, and when he does he’ll be straight down the— He’ll be indisposed. It
is
a Sunday, you know. We don’t work on the Lord’s Day, nor do we take his name in vain.’

Ellen felt her face burn. Not only had she mistaken Dot for her husband but she’d offended the poor woman’s religious principles to boot. ‘Of course you don’t work on a Sunday,’ she said, mentally adding
or any other day, as far as I can tell.
‘I only mention it now so that I don’t have to bother you again. It
is
rather urgent. Perhaps we could meet tomorrow.’

‘You accusing us of summit?’

‘No, of course not. But we need to have a chat about the state of the house, don’t you think?’

‘You need to talk to Reg. He runs that side of the business. I’ll tell him you called.’ With that, the line abruptly went dead.

Ellen replaced the receiver, noticing as she did so that Pheely was standing stock still on her terrace with her arms outstretched and her face tilted upwards. Apart from the bowl of coffee in one hand and the cigarette in the other, she looked surprisingly like the Angel of the North.

Ellen joined her outside and drank her coffee, passively smoking the cigarette with deep, grateful breaths and fretting about Snorkel as she told Pheely about the rose-petal message and the horseshoe.

‘God, why didn’t you come straight over here, my darling? I’d have been terrified.’

‘I think I’d find getting lost in your garden in the dark even more frightening,’ Ellen confessed. ‘Besides, the message was quite apologetic, if you think about it.’

‘Hmm – “thanks” for letting us treat your house like a squat for several weeks? Hardly. And Spurs is definitely behind that horseshoe. Ugh. How creepy.’ She shuddered dramatically, spilling coffee and ash.

‘Do you think so?’

Pheely wiped sleep from her big green eyes and fixed Ellen with an intense gaze. ‘I mean it – steer clear of him. He’s poison. Look at all the bad luck you’re already having this morning! That’s after just a few hours. Throw that horseshoe away, darling. Do it now.’

‘I need to get into the house first,’ Ellen reminded her. ‘Maybe I could borrow a ladder?’

‘Mmm, good idea,’ Pheely agreed distractedly, stooping to pull lichen from a stone goblin. ‘I’m sure Giles has one – he’ll even hold it for you and look up your dressing-gown as you climb.’

‘Even if I get inside the cottage, I still don’t know if there are any more keys to the bunkhouse there.’ Ellen sighed, rubbing her forehead. ‘I’ll have to get a locksmith.’

Having unearthed a three-year-old
Thomson’s Local Directory
from its hiding-place beneath a pile of old box files, Ellen found herself flipping past a huge full-page advert for Seaton’s. She dialled the number listed for their Morrell on the Moor office, hoping that there was an answer-machine.

‘Lloyd Fenniweather, Seaton’s. Hello?’ said a surprised male voice.