The Lost Guide to Life and Love (12 page)

‘I guess so.’

‘Well then. Hello, cousin!’

I grinned back. ‘Hello, cousin Matty. How very nice to meet you.’

We shook hands and now my eyes were getting used to
the light, I studied my new-found relative. I’m tall, but she towered over me. Even without make-up and in her battered work clothes she looked stunning, dazzling in the gloom. She was, I thought glumly, exactly the sort of woman that lived in Clayton Silver’s world. This long-lost cousin was already making me feel like the poor relation.

But I had to be sure. ‘You
are
the model. I mean it is you, isn’t it? The one they call Foxy?’

She sighed. ‘Yes I am. That’s me. But look, it’s only a job, OK? I mean it’s a great job, but that’s all it is.’

‘But…’ I still couldn’t get my head round this. ‘Why are you here? What are you doing?’

‘Well, today,’ she said in a slightly impatient way, ‘I’ve been ruddling the tups. Do you know what that means?’

I shook my head. Hadn’t a clue.

‘It means I get a big bucket of sort of paint and I get the tup—that’s the ram—and daub the paint all over his chest, so that when he serves—i.e. has it off with—the ewe, she is left with a bloody great daub of paint on her back. So we know which ewes have been served. OK?’

‘OK,’ I said, a little grumpily, ‘thanks for the lecture.’

Matt relented, looked suddenly young and vulnerable, and added in a kinder tone. ‘Look, this is my home. My parents, my brothers and sister are here. It’s where I belong. It’s where I come back to. Where I escape to. Where I get things into perspective and realise what really matters. I come back whenever I can.’

‘Don’t you like being a model then? The jet-set life and all that?’

‘Of course I do, most of the time. It’s a great job as long as you don’t take it too seriously. But it’s like being on a ride at the fair, you know? It’s different and it’s fun and it’s all very exciting, but it’s not real. Whereas this—’ she waved her arm round the little building, the sheep trying to get
shelter under the grey rocks, the hail slashing down on the fellside—‘this is real.’

A bit too real for me, right now, I thought, shivering.

Matty stood for a moment at the empty window, gazing out at the hail as the wind whipped her hair around her face. She scrabbled in her pockets and found an elastic band. Underneath her thick woollen gloves she was wearing another pair, skin-tight thin cotton that she didn’t take off.

‘So are you one of the people staying up at the cottage?’ she was asking, as she tugged her hair through the band. ‘Are you researching your family roots? Just about everyone else seems to be these days.’

‘Well, yes. Only it’s just me. My boyfriend and I, well, my ex-boyfriend and I seem to be going our separate ways.’

‘Oh dear. Sorry. That’s a shame when you’re on holiday.’

‘Sad really, very sad, but not, actually the end of the world,’ I said. ‘Quite the opposite, even. Anyway, it’s a working holiday and he couldn’t work without the Internet and phone reception.’

‘What does he do?’

‘Journalist.’

‘Ah.’

I could feel her tensing slightly and she moved away from that subject quickly. ‘So how’s the family research going?’ she asked. ‘Have you found out quite how we’re related? Are you descended from the ones who went to America or Australia?’

‘I don’t quite know exactly. I’m not doing my family history, never really thought about it much, to tell the truth. But since I’ve been here…well, I’m sort of intrigued. I’d heard of Granny Allen, of course, but I didn’t even realise until I told my mum where we were going that this is where she came from. My mum can remember coming here when
she was a little girl, playing in the stream by the packhorse bridge with her cousins.’

‘Well, in that case, it was probably with my mum. She was born here and bred up here. You’ll have to talk to her about it. Come back down with me once this storm has stopped.’ Matty’s smile was genuine and welcoming. ‘Mum would love it.’

We listened for moment. If anything, the storm had got worse. I looked around the building in which we were sheltering. It had an earth floor, smelt not entirely pleasantly of soil and stale grass and was clearly used as a storeroom, stacked high as it was with blue and yellow plastic sacks, and huge drums of different chemicals and bales of hay.

‘Make yourself comfortable,’ said Matty. ‘We might have a long wait.’ We settled down on a couple of bales. They always look quite comfortable, but they were itchy scratchy even through my jeans. ‘Lie down, Tess,’ she said to the dog who curled up between us and I was glad of her warmth against my leg. The wind and the hail blew through the empty window and down the back of my neck, the plastic bags fluttered and the door rattled. But it was still a lot better than being outside.

‘It used to be a chapel,’ said Matty. ‘One of those strange sects that flourished for a while in the eighteenth century. I don’t think they had many worshippers, even then.’

I wanted to ask her about it, all sorts of questions about the people who had lived up here where there was hardly even a hint of a road any more. But there was something else I wanted to know even more.

‘Why did you jump out of the window at Club Balaika?’ I blurted out. ‘Why have you gone into hiding? Why—’

‘Ah, it was
you
in the Ladies at Balaika!’ She gave me a quick look and her expression—just for that moment—was very much top model rather than northern farm girl. ‘I knew
I’d seen you somewhere before. Strange.’ She looked at me, studying me. ‘When I saw you then, at the club, I thought I knew you. Must be the family likeness. But, as you noticed, I wasn’t in the mood to stop and find out. Anyway,’ she went on, reaching to stroke Tess’s ears, ‘if you have or had a journalist boyfriend, you should know better than to believe everything you read in the newspapers. I have
not
gone into hiding. I have
not
reneged on my contract. I have
not
run away. Honestly, reports like that make me so
angry!
The simple truth is that I was booked to do the
Virgo
shoot in Egypt this month and it’s been put back a few weeks so everything’s on hold. Suddenly I had a free diary, so I thought I’d come home. Pretty normal sort of thing to do, wouldn’t you say? And as you might have noticed, home is not a place where you sit round on your bum all day. There’s always plenty of work to do, so I do it.’

‘But I still don’t understand why you jumped out of the window.’

‘Oh that.’ She grinned. ‘Simple. I was bored.’

‘Bored?’

‘Oh God yes! I was there with this group of lads who run one of the indie music channels. I don’t even know why I went, really. Nice enough lads, but so…
young
and totally up themselves. It was bad enough when they were talking about work but then they started on cars…Honestly, it was worse than being in The Miners’ Arms on darts night. I just couldn’t be doing with it. And there was also…’ she hesitated for a moment. ‘I don’t know, there was a funny atmosphere there that night. That Maynard who’s got the shooting rights in the next dale was there. I just felt…well, that it somehow didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to be there any more.’

I remembered how I’d queued with Jake, desperate to get in. I couldn’t be that blasé.

‘I was going to leave, perfectly tidily and respectably through the front door,’ Matt continued, ‘but then I saw the security people getting jumpy and I recognised one of the bodyguards so I guessed the princes were probably arriving and I knew all the paps would be there. And I couldn’t face it. I just thought there must be a better way out, and there was.’ She grinned again. ‘Good, wasn’t it?’

‘Fantastic,’ I said. ‘I was well impressed.’ And if I thought about her uneasiness about Clayton Silver and his friends, I pushed it to the back of my mind.

Now I knew we were cousins, the atmosphere was easier between us.

‘I didn’t know we had a supermodel in the family,’ I said. ‘How come you got to do that? I don’t suppose there are many girls from here who do something so exciting.’

‘Well, my mum did,’ she said. ‘So you can forget about us all being little country bumpkins as soon as you like.’

I blushed. ‘Sorry.’

‘You’re all right. Don’t worry. Mum won a competition when she was a student—her flatmate entered her for it.’

Suddenly it all made sense. There was definitely something about Kate Alderson, a natural poise that marked her out. I thought of that perfect skin, the little scarf that was eminently practical but also had an undeniable dash of style. Once you knew, it was easy to believe that she had once been a model.

‘Mum had all sorts of modelling jobs down in London, some of the big names too. She did a lot of magazine covers and some catwalk. And she could have done a lot more. But she’d already met my dad by then, known him forever, really. He farmed over in Cumbria with his brother. So when my grandad—Mum’s dad—was too ill to run this place, Dad came over here. Modelling and farming don’t mix really. Especially when we’re all the way up here.
But Mum did a bit for a while. Brought in some very useful money. There’s not much money in hill farming. Great life, but no money. She used some of her modelling money to buy a bit more land and a tractor. Said she brought it as her dowry and Dad only married her for the tractor. Don’t laugh—that can be too near the truth in this part of the world.’

‘So did you always want to be a model too?’

‘Never really thought about it, though I always liked looking at the pictures of mum in her modelling days. Most I’d done was a couple of charity shows in the village hall. I didn’t mind it. But I always wanted to be a photographer.’

‘A photographer?’

‘Yeah, I was always impressed…Dexter. You know Dexter, who runs the pub now?’ Did I imagine it or did her voice go odd when she mentioned him? No, it must have been the effect of hailstones down the neck of her jacket. ‘Well, when I was a kid, well, early teens, he was working for an agency and doing a lot of work for himself. He had a studio in an old workshop down the dale and I thought he was wonderful, used to follow him around asking about cameras and pictures. I must have been a real pain in the arse, but he was really kind, answered my questions, even gave me my first camera and then, when he saw I was serious, helped me choose the next one. I was only a kid, but he really listened to me. I had the photography bug and he taught me a lot. He was so lovely, so patient…’ She paused and looked thoughtful, then shook her head as if to clear it. ‘When I thought of studying photography at college, he helped me look at courses, told me what to look for…

‘But he went down to London and got married and I ended up on the other side of the camera. Long story, but to do with an old friend of Mum’s. And yes—’ she
grinned—‘it was exciting for a farm girl like me. I thought it would be a good gap-year thing, but that was five years ago and I still haven’t taken up my uni place yet.’

‘Will you?’

‘Don’t know at the moment. I’m not going to do modelling forever. Well, you can’t anyway, can you? It’s not really a job for a grown-up. But it’s good money and I have some plans, some ideas—but we shall see.’

I remembered my suspicions. ‘So Dexter isn’t secretly gay then?’ I asked.

‘Dexter? Gay?’ Matt hooted with laughter. ‘Far from it. Whatever gave you that idea?’

‘Well, I thought you were a bloke when you were in the pub. Dexter’s eyes lit up when he looked at you, so—’

‘Did they?’ she asked eagerly, ‘Did they really?’

She smiled to herself as she looked out through the open window and then said, ‘Anyway. I think that storm has moved away, the hail seems to have turned to rain. I think that counts as an improvement. Do you want to give it a go?’

‘Yes please.’

This time, Matty left through the door, but it was such a fiddle to open it, and then try and close it so it didn’t blow down, that I could quite understand why she’d gone in through the window. I climbed on the back of the quad bike and felt the rain soak straight through my jeans as we shot off back down to the farm, this time with Tess loping alongside us.

I squelched into the farm’s back kitchen, a huge stone-flagged square room, with a stone sink, two big freezers, a rack of ancient-looking coats and a row of industrial-strength wellies with waterproofs abandoned on top of them. In one movement, Matty stepped out of her boots and over-trousers, hung up her waterproof and shook out
her hair. I’d taken my jacket off but was still struggling to undo the wet and knotted laces of my walking boots. When I did and saw that my soaked socks left wet, muddy footprints, I took those off too and padded barefoot into the warmth of the main kitchen.

It was just as I had always imagined a farmhouse kitchen to look. In the centre was a long table, with a high settle on one side and solid-looking chairs on the other. Behind was a vast dresser, its shelves full of interesting plates and jugs and mugs, as well as bits of paper, keys and notebooks, photographs.

One wall was taken up by an Aga, the alcoves alongside it full of pots and pans. From a huge steaming casserole, Mrs Alderson was ladling something that smelt delicious into a row of foil containers, lined up on a big tray. She worked quickly, methodically.

‘Hello, Mum,’ said Matty, passing me a warm towel with which to dry my hair. ‘I found a long-lost cousin up on the fellside. I thought I’d better bring her home to meet the family.’

Mrs Alderson looked up. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I did wonder…’ She filled the last of the foil trays. ‘Matt, take these through to the back to cool down, please.’

As Matty manoeuvred the huge tray, Mrs Alderson piled the empty casserole into the sink, along with the ladle, wiped the Aga and the table and then looked at me kindly.

‘Tilly Flint,’ I said, ‘short for Matilda. My mum’s Frankie, formerly Thwaite. She came to stay here when she was little.’

Mrs Alderson laughed. ‘Ah, yes, I remember Frankie. We have some photos somewhere. She came to stay one summer when I was a child and insisted on keeping up with us, balancing on the bridge, wading across the beck, even though she could only have been four or five and the rest of us were about ten.’