The Sweetest Thing (21 page)

‘I can’t imagine you doing that now though, Jennie,’ Summer says, smiling. ‘You’re like a different woman. Another toast to your new home, and to the people of Talyton – let them eat cake, and lots of it!’

I’m surprised to find myself being woken by the sound of banging in the corridor outside the bedroom. I must be used to the cockerel by now. Ever so slightly hungover, I get out of bed and pull on some scruffy trousers and a T-shirt, thinking, I’ll have a bath after we’ve done the painting – if we do any painting.

I push the door open to find Hugo on the landing, on his knees, tapping nails into the floorboards outside the bathroom, with my sister standing over him.

‘Morning, Jennie,’ she says ever so sweetly, which isn’t like her. She’s putting on an act and I can feel the tension between us. She knows about last night. She isn’t stupid. ‘You look rough,’ she goes on.

‘Not as rough as Hugo …’

Sweaty and pale, he wipes his brow with the back of one hand, and I can’t help thinking from his subdued manner that Karen must have given him a good talking-to.

‘We found the hammer and nails out in the barn,’ she says.

‘My wife insisted that I made myself useful. There you go. All fixed.’

‘Thank you very much,’ I say. ‘Now there’s no risk of a repeat performance of last night.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ says Hugo, ‘I had a little too much to drink.’

‘I think we all did,’ Karen says, smiling wryly. ‘Hugo darling, you can get up off your knees now.’

‘I reckon we need a big fat greasy breakfast,’ I say, watching him stand up very slowly. ‘I’ll go and get started. Free-range eggs from our own chickens, and some locally produced bacon. And bread fresh from the oven.’ When I check the eggs in the larder, though, there are only two of ours, and a box of twelve that I bought from the Co-op the other day, having used all of the eggs I bought from Guy in my baking. When I check the fridge, the bacon’s completely disappeared.

I call Georgia in from the garden.

‘Have you seen your brother this morning?’

‘Yeah. Him and Josh are cooking breakfast on a camp fire.’ Her eyes shine with delight. ‘They collected lots of wood for it.’

‘And lots of bacon, I imagine.’

I manage to provide the rest of us with a breakfast of fried eggs on toast.

‘Are these your eggs?’ says Karen, picking a clean knife and fork off the draining board.

‘Oh, yes,’ I say, not wanting to disappoint my guests.

‘You can see they’re free-range,’ Hugo says, showing off his knowledge of fine foods. ‘Look how yellow these yolks are.’

‘I didn’t know hens laid them already date-stamped,’ my sister says, holding up an empty shell, taken out of the composting basket that I keep on the
worktop. Then she grins in a superior, big-sisterly way at having got one over on me and I can’t help smiling back.

‘You’d better be careful you don’t get done under the Trades Descriptions Act, advertising your cakes as containing free-range eggs from your own hens,’ Hugo says.

‘I did so much baking yesterday I ran out,’ I say. ‘I wouldn’t mislead anyone.’

‘Only your friends and family.’ He sighs and shakes his head.

I look to Summer for moral support. She’s smiling.

‘There go the cows,’ she says, waving towards the window. I move around to look at them, ambling back down the drive after milking. I can’t see Guy though. He must have gone by already to open the gate into the field. I wait, arms folded across my chest, to see him pass back towards the house. He strides past, his cap pulled down over his head, the peak obscuring his face. I make to raise my hand, but he doesn’t cast even a glance in my direction.

I feel a pang of regret.

Is he deliberately keeping out of the way because Hugo is still here? Have I offended him in some way? Does he not like my townie friends?

‘The jolly farmer must have done half a day’s work by now,’ Hugo says sarcastically.

‘Talking of work,’ says Paul, ‘what about this painting?’

We manage to paint one room: the drawing room. In spite of the dustsheets, the paint gets everywhere. I chose a soft antique pale green for the walls and white for the ceiling, and spend a long time admiring it after everyone’s gone home. Summer leaves me one more
example of her handiwork: a sign for the house made from a section of plank that Paul attaches to a stick and hammers into the lawn at the front. The sign reads: Jennie’s Folly.

Jennie’s Folly? Summer’s probably right, I muse as I look at the debris that’s accumulated from the party: empty bottles of champagne; sugar soap and brush cleaner; spattered dustsheets; mounds of washing – extra sheets and towels. I feel overwhelmed. It’s Tuesday morning, and all the time that I’m clearing up, I’d prefer to be baking. I fancy cooking some apple and cinnamon muffins to fill Adam up. He’s always hungry, that boy, I muse fondly.

Glancing out of the window, I notice the postman cycling along the drive.

‘Lucky!’ I call, but it’s too late to intercept him. He races out to the hall, barking hysterically. I follow, finding him jumping up at the letterbox where he makes a grab for the post and tugs it through. It would be all right if he stopped there, but he doesn’t.

‘Lucky, no! Bad dog.’

Growling, he attacks the post, shaking it and ripping at it with his teeth, until it’s torn to pieces and he’s standing over it, panting.

‘I’d really rather you waited until I’d read it before you shredded it,’ I scold him. I squat down to examine what’s left: it’s all junk mail, apart from the dreaded credit-card statement. ‘At least you chose the right day to do it.’ I give Lucky a quick stroke, then pick up the pieces and stick them in a drawer.

I decide to take the bottles to the recycling centre on the Green. Sophie and Georgia come with me, Georgia hopeful that we’ll see horse-riders on the old
railway track – we have done when we’ve been down this way before, during a recce of our new surroundings.

The Green is bordered by two bridges. The Old Bridge that carries traffic from Talyton St George to the coast has recently reopened after repairs to flood damage. The New Bridge is a footbridge across the river.

‘Your Auntie Karen lost her shoe from that bridge,’ I tell the girls as I drive across the Old Bridge before turning into the small gravelled car park that also contains the recycling centre. ‘She sat on the edge of the wall, swinging her legs, and her flip-flop fell into the river. Granny was not pleased. She said, “Karen, flip-flops don’t grow on trees.”’

‘Fancy not knowing that,’ Sophie says. ‘What happened to it?’

‘I don’t know. I expect a cow ate it, or it floated out to sea.’ I remember being secretly pleased because Karen had chosen flip-flops identical to mine and now she’d have to have a different pair.

On the way, Sophie has counted the bottles in the boxes, and divided the number by three to work out a fair allocation for each person to dispose of. I get the green ones minus four.

It feels as though half the population of Talyton St George is out on the Green, some walking their dogs and others using the recycling facilities. However, no one else seems to have quite so many bottles to dispose of as we do, and each bottle falls into the bottle bank with an attention-seeking smash.

‘Hellooo! How lovely to see the Copeland family out and about.’

It’s Fifi in a long black coat with purple trim, and
purple heels which match her earrings. I can’t help blushing, as if I’ve been caught out doing something I shouldn’t.

‘Goodness gracious me,’ Fifi exclaims very loudly, ‘someone’s been having a party.’

‘I had a few friends down from London for the weekend.’ I can see her mentally adding up the number of bottles still left in the boxes and dividing the figure by ‘a few’. Perhaps I should have exaggerated and made it a much bigger party, because I believe I’ve gone down in Fifi’s estimation. I can just hear her talking to her cronies. ‘That Jennie Copeland. A waster and drunkard … and in front of her children. Not the calibre of person we wish to encourage.’

‘It was a housewarming party,’ I say.

‘And a painting party,’ Georgia cuts in.

‘How odd,’ says Fifi, apparently more accustomed to getting the professionals in. ‘If you’re struggling to afford a painter-decorator, perhaps you shouldn’t spend all that money on champagne.’

‘Mum didn’t buy it – Uncle Hugo brought it with him,’ Georgia says. ‘He said he tripped over a floorboard, but we all know he was drunk.’

‘Georgia, Fifi doesn’t want to know all this,’ I say, watching the gleam in Fifi’s eye. ‘I’m sure she’s very busy.’

‘Oh, never too busy for a chat. I dropped by here in my official capacity as local councillor to check all’s well – there’ve been some problems with rabble on the Green.’

‘Rabble?’

‘Teenagers. There was some trouble over the weekend,’ she says. ‘I believe it’s the same everywhere. The countryside is not immune from yobbish and anti-social
behaviour. It’s creeping in, like a disease, from the towns and cities.’

‘My son and his friends know how to behave,’ I say.

‘I’m not saying that they don’t.’

‘Adam stole the bacon,’ Georgia points out helpfully.

‘He took it without asking me first, that’s all,’ I say. ‘At least I know where he was this weekend – camping in the copse at home with his friend Josh.’ A slight feeling of unease creeps across the back of my neck, like a spider that I can’t shake off. Wasn’t one of the reasons I moved away from London so that Adam didn’t fall in with a bad crowd?

‘Anyway,’ Fifi starts again, ‘I’m on my way home from my weekly visit to Guy’s mother – I don’t think she has a clue who I am any more, but I do my duty.’ Fifi’s mouth purses. ‘I know poor Guy can’t get up there as often as he’d wish, so I share the burden.’

‘That’s very good of you.’

‘You didn’t happen to invite him to your party?’ she asks.

‘Actually, I did. He didn’t stay long … the cows.’

‘Is that what he told you?’ Fifi raises both perfectly plucked and dyed eyebrows. ‘I expect he was going over to Ruthie’s. Oh, that’s so typical of a man, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t understand.’

Fifi lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Guy and Ruthie are “good” friends, if you know what I mean?’

‘It’s really none of my business,’ I say. I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m a little upset that he might not have seen fit to enlighten me over his real relationship with Ruthie of Hen Welfare. However, I’m not sure that I believe Fifi. Guy doesn’t strike me as someone
who is economical with the truth – economical over the use of material goods maybe, keeping all that old stuff in the barn,
my
barn, imagining that I could put it to use one day – but he seems very straightforward. He tells it how it is. Not only that, I didn’t hear his Land Rover go out again after the party, and I would have noticed. My ears seem to be attuned to the throaty growl of that particular engine.

I don’t know why, but Fifi seems determined to make it clear that Guy is out of bounds to me, and he does seem to be keeping out of my way. It’s three days before he drops by again, and I find myself missing his company – for no other reason than he’s another grown-up to talk to, I hasten to add, although he’s also a fount of knowledge when it comes to country matters.

I wish he would turn up again – I’d like to clear the air after the other night with Hugo, if that’s what’s keeping him away – and I can’t think of an excuse to go up to the farm.

Today, Adam has been helping with the milking again. On the way back from letting the cows out, they both stop at the house. Adam goes upstairs to run a bath.

‘I thought I’d stop by to see how you were, Jennie,’ Guy says.

‘Have you got time for a coffee?’

‘I’m a bit smelly,’ he says, sniffing the sleeve of his boiler-suit.

‘You can take that off and leave it with your boots,’ I suggest, then it’s my turn to look abashed as he kicks off his boots, and rips the front of his boiler-suit apart, the studs unpopping to reveal an indecently tight-fitting grey V-neck T-shirt. He tugs the boiler-suit
down over his legs and feet. Underneath it he’s wearing jeans that are torn across both knees and, when he turns to put his things out of the way, I see they are also torn across one buttock, revealing dark-coloured pants and a hint of firm flesh.

‘I’m sorry – I didn’t dress up,’ Guy says shyly.

He can hardly look at me, although I can’t stop looking at him.

It’s strangely erotic, watching him strip like this, not that he’s anywhere near naked. I force myself to tear my eyes away and concentrate on something else, like baking cakes. I show Guy through to the kitchen.

‘Do you mind if I get on with this cake?’ I ask. ‘I’ve got to feed it.’

‘Not at all. Forgive me for interrupting.’ He sits down at one end of the table. I pour two coffees and put three apple and cinnamon muffins on a plate in front of him. Then I start fetching the tiers of Penny’s wedding cake from the larder, unwrapping them from their jackets of greaseproof paper, and releasing their rich, fruity scent.