Lots of Love (4 page)

Saul cackled delightedly. ‘Won’t get no sense out of him. Besides, Nan wouldn’t trust him with them keys.’

Ellen took off her dark glasses and rubbed her eyes tiredly, not relishing the prospect of hanging around the village green until teatime with an overexcited dog and a furious cat. Even less waiting here with Saul and Fluffy. ‘Do you know where they’re kept?’

He rubbed his tongue over his teeth, blue eyes narrowed. ‘Might do.’

Ellen cocked her head. She was starting to find his surly attitude seriously irritating. She knew that he was probably only protecting her parents’ cottage by not trusting her word, but she hated being disbelieved. She mustn’t start a fight. She always did this.

‘Would you mind finding them for me?’ she asked, as politely as she could.

Not budging an inch, Saul carried on the teeth-rubbing routine, which was clearly intended to intimidate but made him look as though a stubborn raspberry pip was wedged between his molars.

‘You don’t look much like Mrs J.’ He took another long look at her legs and boobs. ‘D’you know your T-shirt’s on inside out?’

‘Okay,’ Ellen said impatiently. ‘I admit my mother doesn’t wear her clothes inside out. Nor does she bleach her hair, have three body piercings or a tattoo of the Burning Man on her shoulder – it’s true. But we’ve got the same nose and I can show you my passport if you want proof.’

‘I’d rather see your tattoo.’ He grinned, flashing the gold teeth again and a few broken ones too. ‘D’you like mine? Nice work, innit? Really detailed.’

For a moment Ellen thought he was referring to the stained blue blotch on his neck, which could have been anything from a spider to a swastika. But he was already pulling up his T-shirt sleeve proudly to reveal a colourful unicorn leaping across his biceps. It was very nice work, Ellen had to admit, although too garish for her taste, and she wasn’t too sure about the nubile vampire page three girl riding bareback on it, who was more like a busty Morticia Addams than Pamela Anderson.

‘Lovely – really good work,’ she said enthusiastically, eager to keep thawing him and get her hands on the keys. Mentioning the tattoo had clearly been an inspired move, if accidental.

‘Show us yours, then.’ He grinned, blue eyes gleaming like hot little gas flames. Perhaps he was thawing a little too quickly, Ellen worried.

Deliberately misunderstanding the suggestion, she turned and headed for the car to find her passport, her bottom now the subject of close examination. The bike kids, having become bored with looking at adults discussing keys, were winding up Snorkel by pulling faces at her. Fins had upped periscope again, and was glaring at them furiously.

‘Blimey.’ Saul cackled when she’d finally unearthed the little burgundy book and handed it to him. ‘Bit different there, aintcha?’

‘It was a few years ago.’ Ellen glanced at the fresh-faced girl with braided, multicoloured hair and henna-tattoo choker.

‘Ellen . . . Gabriella . . . Jamieson,’ he read out, hamming up his security check in a bad Dixon of Dock Green impersonation. ‘Sex . . . female. Mmm, I can see that. Born twelfth of the twelfth nineteen seventy-four. You’re quite old, arencha?’

Ellen tried to snatch back the passport, but he held it up teasingly, still leafing through.

‘Wow! Look at all these stamps.’ He whistled.

‘I travel a lot,’ she muttered.

‘I ain’t never been abroad.’ He snapped it shut and handed it back, surly and uncommunicative again, the tattoo’s company moment gone as he eyed her broodily from beneath his pierced eyebrows.

‘So is it okay if I take the keys now?’ she asked carefully, trying hard not to put his back up further.

‘Stay here.’ He nodded curtly, and swaggered to the door against which Fluffy had ceased hurling himself and was now just howling.

‘Jesus.’ Ellen held her breath as the door opened and something that looked like a giant sabre-toothed sheep flew outside with hackles raised. Saul grabbed its collar and hauled it back, slamming the door behind him.

‘Al’s Rottweiler got randy with the Old English Sheepdog that used to live at the Pheasant.’ The kids were back, hanging over the gate, eager to fill Ellen in on Fluffy’s lineage, which clearly fascinated them. ‘All the other pups died and Al was going to drown Fluffy ’cos his mum din’ want him, but Reg took him. He was only a few days old. My mum reckons Reg reared him on beer and that’s why he’s so mean. She says Fluffy’s a public menace and that Al should’ve drowned him after all.’

‘Who’s Al?’

‘Landlord at the Lodes Inn.’

So Fluffy was the result of a canine
Romeo and Juliet
union between Oddlode’s two rival pubs. ‘Doesn’t look like a pub lick menace to me.’ She glanced at the door, which was once again under assault. ‘More likely to bite than lick, I’d say.’

‘You not from round here, then?’

She shook her head.

‘Saul can sort you out with anyfink,’ they told her wisely. ‘He’s cool.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ She smiled weakly, and turned back to the house from which Saul was emerging, using the standard route this time rather than the window and fighting hard to keep Fluffy at bay.

He had a big bunch of keys in one hand – enough to access every house in Oddlode, it seemed – and set about peeling several off the ring.

‘You sure they’re the right ones?’ she asked, wondering if he knew what he was doing.

‘Yup,’ he muttered, clearly not entirely happy to hand them over, and cursing as the bunch twisted round in his hands.

‘Mum said to make sure the bunkhouse keys are with them.’

‘That’s these ones.’ He was still trying to pull apart a stubborn fob with grubby fingernails.

Ellen waited patiently, batting away a wasp that had come buzzing up.

‘You only staying a couple of days, yeah?’ he asked over-casually.

‘I said I’d stay until the house is sold, so I don’t know how long that’ll be.’ She hoped he wasn’t going to ask her on a date. However much she loved the idea of getting one over on her snobbish mother, who accused her of choosing men ‘beneath herself’ (Richard), she knew a dodgy and dangerous character when she saw one. Saul Wyck was not a man to encourage. Two glasses of house white and a bag of Scampi Fries in the local, and you could find yourself stalked for life.

But he seemed more interested in Goose Cottage.

‘Someone’ll want it soon enough, I reckon.’ He tried to prise apart the ring with his gold teeth. ‘Nice house, that. What’s going to happen to all the stuff in it?’

‘Most of it’s getting shipped to Spain, I think. Not my problem.’ She had only agreed to try to get a decent offer then wait until contracts were exchanged; she had no intention of overseeing another house move. ‘I’m just here to spruce it up a bit – although I’m sure your grandparents keep it looking really nice,’ she added quickly, realising this might cause offence. ‘Mum wants it to look lived-in, that’s all.’

He raised a scarred eyebrow and said nothing.

‘D’you know what day they come? Only I’d better make sure I’m there to let them in now they won’t have keys.’

‘Dunno.’ He handed over the keys, not looking at her. ‘Depends.’

‘That’s okay – I can ask your nan another time. Thanks, I really appreciate this.’

‘Sure.’ He rubbed his chin on his shoulder, glancing up.

At that moment, Ellen felt an involuntary shudder rattle through her. The expression in those blue eyes was totally unexpected: he looked angry. Furiously, murderously angry.

But just as suddenly he smiled it away. ‘Enjoy your stay.’

‘We’re so nearly there!’ she promised her stir-crazy pets, as she turned left out of Orchard Close and back over the mill-chase bridge. The old mill was still in a terrible state, she noticed, its forecourt full of clapped-out cars and rusting tractors. She would have liked to stop off at the post-office stores for some cigarettes, but Fins’ head was popping in and out of its peephole like a demented jack-in-the-box, and Snorkel was singing again. It wasn’t fair on them to delay their escape a moment longer. She tried not to look at the shop’s tempting Walls ice-cream board beside her as she waited to turn right opposite the wisteria-coated Lodes Inn and into Manor Lane.

The lane marked the start of the village’s ‘back loop’, which ran round the walled gardens and grounds of Oddlode Manor. To the left, the manor towered in splendid isolation among its formal gardens. To the right, a tight huddle of old estate-workers’ cottages and converted barns fought for space. As the lane swung round to become North Street, with the long drive to Manor Farm on the right, the cottages became much bigger and further apart. This was wealthy Oddlode, beloved of professional families and very rich weekenders. Most of the houses had at least one small paddock containing fat ponies or hobby sheep. Set back behind verges as deep and well-kempt as golf fairways, and shaded by a row of horse-chestnuts, North Street was
Country Living
heaven, lovingly tended by tens of Jennifers who had created their own dream houses and cottages over the decades.

At its far end, North Street forked into Goose End to the right, an unmade no-through-road leading past the Gothically decrepit old Lodge to the Odd river; and to the left, Goose Lane, which looped back to the main village road. And behind the deepest of plumped-up verges on the corner of North Street and Goose Lane, like little Miss Muffet sitting on her tuffet, was the ‘prettiest cottage in Oddlode’.

Ellen’s first impression as she swung into the gravel drive that had been cut into the verge was her usual one. How pretty. How twee. How Mum.

Under their neatly sculpted black thatched roofs, Goose Cottage, its dovecote and the converted barn always reminded Ellen of a raven-haired fairytale princess with two little sisters. Their black hair was braided and set, studded with tall chimneys like amber hairslides. Their tanned faces were exquisitely pretty with huge dark eyes blinking innocently in the sunlight. And those coy faces were covered with flowered veils – yellow climbing honeysuckle, purple wisteria, bright blue clematis, pink roses and white jasmine.

But Ellen knew these princesses were spoiled monsters. And they were looking surprisingly ragged, as though they’d had one too many late nights at society balls.

‘Blimey.’ She looked around her as she parked on the big gravel sweep between the garage barn and the cottage. She jumped out, letting Snorkel dash to the nearest patch of grass for a wee. The collie instantly disappeared into what had once been the Jamiesons’ front lawn like an explorer into the Brazilian jungle.

The grass was knee-high.

Anxious not to let the dog out on to the lane, Ellen went to close the gates, which had been open when she arrived – another curiosity. Jennifer never allowed the gates to be left open: Theo had started and finished every one of his daily trips to the station by jumping out of the car to deal with the wrought-iron monsters.

She turned back and leaned against them, staring up at the cottage. Most of the leaded mullion windows were almost covered by the climbers. The unruly honeysuckle hung in fronds from the stone sills like false eyelashes. The windows themselves were so dusty and rain-marked behind their flowered awnings that they looked like opaque glass. Jennifer’s ‘herb trough’ (as featured in
Cotswold Homes
magazine) was now frothing over with nothing but rampant sage and ground elder. There was litter everywhere – crisp packets, drinks bottles, empty cigarette boxes. A ripped blue tarpaulin had been discarded by the path, alongside a length of yellow hose-pipe and a compost bag crawling with wood lice. The potted bay trees that had once played sentry duty to the porch were lying on their sides, dead and brown-leafed.

When Ellen let herself into the porch there was a big bootmark on the lichen-green front door. She rushed to turn off the alarm, carrying Fins in his vibrating basket, but it wasn’t set. Ellen stood still and looked about her.

The flagstone floor of the dining room was coated with dried muddy footprints and the table piled high with unopened mail. The house smelt unloved and unlived-in dusty and stale, with an unexpected, familiar undertone of beer, cigarettes and greasy food, like a pub.

She soon found out why. As she turned left into the big kitchen, her mother’s pride and joy, she saw several cigarette ends on the quarry tiles, ground underfoot by whoever had smoked them. Round the corner, the long, scrubbed pine table was loaded to breaking point with empty cans and bottles, and the remnants of several takeaways, which had attracted a haze of flies and a scattering of mouse droppings.

‘Ugh – Jesus!’ Ellen took the cat basket through to the utility room and rested it on the surface, making sure Fins had a good view out into the garden through the long, low windows. She’d let him out as soon as she had fetched his litter tray from the car, but first she had to check that the house was empty.

It was, if empty meant no human occupants. But there were mouse droppings in most rooms, and a dead pigeon in the attic study. Nothing appeared to have been stolen just used and abused.

Whoever had been using Goose Cottage had confined themselves to three rooms and had taken full advantage of their plush surroundings. While the kitchen was clearly booze, food and party central, the sitting room was the ‘cinema and games room’, with the cabinet that housed the huge television and video gaping open and an unfamiliar PlayStation plugged in – Ellen was certain her parents didn’t own such a thing. Oddly, there were no videos or game CDs in sight, just saucers brimming with yet more cigarette butts, another collection of soft-drink and beer cans and a lot of stains on Jennifer’s cream furnishings.

Upstairs, the master bedroom was utter chaos. The bed had seen some serious action, and the culprits hadn’t been too fussy about laundering sheets or clearing away used tissues and condoms. To get them in the mood, they’d burned tens of fat church candles, which had dripped wax all over the furniture, left smoky trails on the pale walls and at one point, it seemed, set light to both a corner of one curtain and an entire pillow.