Lots of Love (3 page)

Theo put up a sterling fight. He wanted to stay in Spain. He loved the climate, the golf and the people. He had never enjoyed the petty-mindedness of Oddlode and, because he had spent so much of his time there travelling to and from London, he’d never fully joined in village life as his wife had. To retire to Goose Cottage would mean continuing the B-and-B to provide an income, and he hated strangers tramping around when he was trying to read the
Telegraph
over breakfast.

He offered his wife a compromise. They would sell Goose Cottage and buy somewhere smaller in the village – perhaps one of the little cottages that nestled to the south of the green, once alms-houses and peppercorn-rent artisan cottages, now beloved of weekenders and young couples intent on turning a profit. Goose Cottage was far too large for them anyway, and Ellen and Richard showed no signs of starting a family . . .

That was when Jennifer woke up and realised that her dream had never really come true. She didn’t particularly like Oddlode any more, either. Not modern Oddlode, with its unfamiliar faces, its youth drug problem, its constant threats of development and, most especially, the way she was now perceived as an old-guard bossyboots. She loved her dream cottage, and she loved the magnificent manor, the noble church, duck pond, post-office stores and olde-worlde pubs. It was the people she didn’t like nowadays. So many old friends had moved away, and she’d alienated the few who remained by being absent so often that she missed the day-to-day gossip – also because her fabled archness and snobbery had ripened rather than mellowed with old age. Perhaps most tellingly, to be seen to ‘downsize’ to a smaller cottage in the village would crucify her. In Spain, high up on their hill in the beautifully restored
finca,
she and Theo were king and queen of the castle.

So when Jennifer found out how much Goose Cottage was worth – almost exactly ten times what they had paid for it eleven years earlier – she was left in no doubt that they should sell. If it went for the asking price, they could afford to visit Oddlode in pure luxury, staying in nearby Eastlode Park – one of the most expensive country-house hotels in England – for a fortnight every year for the rest of their lives without denting the capital in the investment accounts.

But Goose Cottage had not sold for the asking price: it hadn’t sold at all. Nobody, it seemed, wanted to buy Jennifer Jamieson’s dream.

At first, they blamed the market – putting a property up for sale in the first week of January was bound to mean a slow start, however much Jennifer had wanted to spend one last Christmas there before selling. Yet almost six months later, it had attracted just one laughable offer, so low that when he received the fax, Theo had suggested to the agents that they had mistakenly left off a zero.

The Jamiesons were baffled. Property in Oddlode was like gold dust because the railway station made it possible to commute to London. The junior school was reputedly the best in West Oxfordshire and had a ferocious waiting list: it was far too small to accommodate every pupil whose eager parents longed for their child to be taught there. For-sale signs rarely stayed up in Oddlode for more than a fortnight. Goose Cottage was often talked about as ‘the prettiest in the village’. Why didn’t anyone want it? The agent – the best in the area, everyone agreed – seemed equally baffled.

The Jamiesons needed to get to the bottom of the problem, but Theo’s health made travelling difficult and neither relished the prospect of returning to Oddlode. In fact, now that her mind was made up, Jennifer flatly refused to return to see her dream cottage on the market. She had said her farewells at Christmas, contacted a reputable removals and shipping company, who were poised for action, and that, as far as she was concerned, was that. She refused to let Theo travel alone. But with no holiday rental from Goose Cottage now that it was for sale, things were desperate.

Which was where Ellen came in. Unlike Goose Cottage, the Shack (a far less des. res., built from a flat-pack and perched jauntily on a clifftop) had sold before the agent’s brochures were printed. It had sold before either Richard or Ellen was ready, before they had divided up their few possessions, found homes for their pets or applied for their visas, in Richard’s case to Australia, in Ellen’s to the World.

Detouring via Oddlode
en route
to the World would not have been on Ellen’s travel itinerary had she found time to write one, but saying no to her mother was not an easy option. She could use her time there to plan her trip, Jennifer pointed out. She could treat it as a holiday, enjoy the cottage – she’d hardly stayed there, after all.

They both knew why. Jennifer’s hatred of Richard had made those few stays uncomfortable. Her obvious jubilation that the relationship was over was so infuriating that Ellen longed to tell her to get stuffed. She’d always disliked twee, over-perfect Goose Cottage and blamed it for her father’s ill-health. She had eventually agreed to go there for her father’s sake. She could have stayed in Cornwall with friends until she was better organised, but she had known that, sooner or later, Theo Jamieson would defy his wife and come home to try to sort things out. She hated to think of him away from his precious Spanish coast, stuck in a village he disliked, living in a house that had almost killed him in the making.

She planned to make her stay as short as possible. She would get the cottage sold, find homes for Snorkel and Fins, plot out her trip, book her first flight, pack her rucksack and leave. With any luck, it shouldn’t take more than a fortnight.

Back at the jeep, Fins was looking out of the hole in his basket again, his swivelling head resembling a fluffy black and white periscope.

While Snorkel jumped back into the car, Ellen quickly checked the surfboards on the roof rack, still annoyed at herself for not taking the money that Foley’s Sports in Bude had offered her for them. By telling them to shove their paltry hundred pounds where the sun didn’t shine, she was still lumbered with the last thing that a Cotswold tourist needed. By contrast, she’d taken fifty pounds for her bike from Trisha at the pottery, and now wished she’d held on to it for a few more weeks. The lanes here were cycling heaven and she needed to stay fit.

Her T-shirt was dark with sweat now and felt disgustingly clammy. She grabbed the top bag from the boot and dug inside it for a fresh one. She checked around – there hadn’t been a car in sight the entire time she’d been walking, so she was hardly worried – then quickly set about swapping, forgetting that she was still wearing a baseball cap, anchored to her head by the ponytail pulled through its back. With her face full of hot, wet cotton and her arms trapped above her shoulders, Ellen swung her head around irritably, trying to get the neck of the T-shirt beyond her ponytail and the cap’s peak.

Of course, that was the exact moment when the first traffic the lane had seen for twenty minutes rounded the corner. And it wasn’t any old traffic. It was a huge lorry with three surprised faces lined up at the windscreen. Ellen knew this because it drew level just as she broke free of her wrestling hold.

Amazingly, her dark glasses and baseball cap had stayed on, affording her a degree of anonymity, if little modesty. She had no choice but to brazen it out. Holding the T-shirt to her chest, she saluted them as they passed. She didn’t even get a beep in return. On the rear of the lorry was emblazoned ‘Horses’.

‘Welcome to the Cotswolds,’ Ellen told Snorkel and Fins, as she pulled on the fresh T-shirt, ‘where legovers happen from mounting blocks, going out on the pull means clay pigeon shooting, and sharking is what American tourists call the prices in the antique shops.’

Orchard Close was a tidy, modern council estate built of Cotswold stone. The residents took a great deal of pride in it, and most of the immaculate little front gardens were a triumph of psychedelic geometry as rectangular flower-beds overflowed with primary-coloured blossoms, like ballpits in a children’s playground. Which was why the few unkempt gardens stood out. And of those, the Wycks’ was by far the most disorderly. Nettles and sedge swayed at waist height to either side of Ellen as she let herself through the broken gate and made her way gingerly up the uneven path, anxious not to get stung on her bare legs.

Loud drum ’n’ bass was thumping out of a top window, which was, she saw, not open as she’d first thought but simply missing an entire pane of glass. When she knocked on the door, a thunderous bark made her step back. A moment later something that appeared to be the size of a small rhino started throwing itself bodily against the other side of the door, snarling madly.

Ellen decided to wait a safe distance away, noticing as she retreated that one of the downstairs windows was broken too, the smashed pane patched up with cardboard and gaffer-tape. Several ancient bicycle wheels and half a lawnmower were propped up against the wall.

The drum ’n’ bass kept thumping, but nobody came to the door. Bracing herself, she knocked again, but there was no reply. The barking rhino let out a demented howl and tried to eat her through the letterbox, foiling Ellen’s plan to take a peek through it.

She looked up at the glassless window and shouted, ‘Hello,’ a few times. Nothing.

A group of kids who’d been practising BMX tricks on the road when she arrived had cycled up and were now studying her thoughtfully as she hung around the Wycks’ front door wondering what to do.

‘You Wycky’s new girlfriend?’ asked one.

Ellen gave him an ‘uh?’ look over her shoulder. She hardly thought she looked like the type who would go for Reg Wyck who, from what little she remembered, was about sixty, wore the same stained overalls everywhere, looked like Lester Piggott and had the easy conversational patter to match. ‘Is he in, do you know?’ she asked, picking her way back towards the gate. ‘Or Dot, maybe?’

‘Dot ain’t there – saw her leave a while back, din’ we?’ said one of the bikers, who was checking out the jeep. ‘Nice motor – what are those things?’

‘Surfboards.’ Ellen grinned.

‘Cool!’ The boy dropped his bike so that he could climb up to take a better look, driving Snorkel mad as she jumped between the seats inside trying to scrabble her way out and make introductions.

‘Oi – look all you like but don’t touch, okay?’ Ellen warned cheerfully, glancing back at the house. ‘Is anyone in there?’

Another of the boys, who was staring at Ellen’s long, tanned legs in the same awe-inspired way as his mate was staring at the surfboards, nodded mutely. Then, to prove a point, he put both little fingers in his mouth and let out a shrieking whistle. The rhino dog took this as a cue to throw itself at the door even more violently, growling and snarling so much it sounded as though it was ripping apart a mud hut. A moment later, the drum ’n’ bass was cut and a head appeared through the missing window.

Ellen’s memories of Dot and Reg might have been vague but she knew that neither had a buzz-cut, a pierced eyebrow and a home-made blue-ink tattoo on their neck.

‘Whatdyawant, Kyle?’ He glared at the boy.

‘Lady here to see you, Wycky,’ Kyle shouted. From the fear in his voice, Ellen thought, ‘Wycky’ was clearly a force to be reckoned with. And, having been asleep, he looked as though he was in a very bad mood.

‘Eh?’ He yawned widely, showing a lot of gold teeth, before noticing the jeep, then Ellen, and blinking hard to make sure he really was seeing what he thought he was.

‘I’m Ellen Jamieson!’ she called, hopping back down the path and trying to be heard over the rhino dog. ‘I’ve come to collect—’

‘SHUT THE FUCK UP, FLUFFY!’
he yelled.

Ellen balked in surprise. Then, when the rhino dog suddenly stopped barking, she chewed back a wry smile because maybe she wasn’t so unlike her mother, after all.

Fluffy wouldn’t win any obedience classes at Crufts: within seconds he was barking again so loudly that the door rattled on its hinges.

‘I’ve come to collect the keys,’ Ellen called up to ‘Wycky’, miming unlocking a door.
‘Goose Cottage.
Keys.’

‘Eh?’ he shouted, not hearing a word but using his high vantage-point to look down her T-shirt and decide that perhaps this was worth getting out of bed for. ‘Hang on – I’ll come out.’

Ellen turned away and lifted her face to the sun, anticipating a short wait. She almost jumped out of her skin when, the next moment, he landed beside her.

‘Christ.’ She looked from him to the window and back. It was certainly a novel route to the front garden, but she guessed it avoided dealing with Fluffy. And he clearly used it often because the BMX kids, who were still hanging round the jeep, didn’t look remotely surprised.

‘Saul Wyck,’ he introduced himself, checking out her body slowly with the bluest pair of eyes Ellen had ever seen.

‘Ellen Jamieson.’ She eyed him through her shades in return. He was a few inches shorter than her, and built like a boxer with vast, muscular shoulders and a legion of small scars embossing his face. It was quite a handsome face, although its belligerent expression did it no favours. ‘Are you Reg’s son?’

‘Grandson.’ He narrowed one bright blue eye and studied her suspiciously. ‘Why d’you want to know?’

‘I’ve come for the Goose Cottage keys – I’m Theo and Jennifer’s daughter.’

‘First I’ve heard of it.’ He crossed his arms defensively.

‘Your grandmother’s expecting me.’

‘Nan’s out – gone to the market. Won’t be back till teatime now.’

Ellen glanced at her watch. It was only just after midday. Dot hadn’t given her much grace to be late. ‘Is Reg around, maybe?’

‘In the pub.’ He looked over his shoulder at the jeep, taking in the loaded roof racks and boot crammed high with bags and boxes. ‘Always is on a Saturday.’

Ellen remembered her father telling her that Reg was a big drinker who rarely moved from the bar of the Lodes Inn from sundown on Friday until last orders on Sunday. Stories of his drunken antics were village folklore. ‘Oh – right. Maybe I should pop over there and see if your nan’s left the keys with him.’