Chapter 18
Marnie had been living in Wychwell just over six weeks when she first saw the ghost of the Pink Lady. The days had been especially warm and a thunderstorm was badly needed to puncture the heat. On the evening before the rain came, the air was so thick, it was almost unbreathable and despite having the windows open, she couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned until two o’clock then got out of bed to walk around the green to tire herself and reset her bedtime routine. Everything was so silent when she ventured out into the night. The whole of Wychwell was asleep, with their windows open at full stretch.
Marnie sat on the ornate memorial bench dedicated to Jessie Plumpton and marvelled at how different this place was to any she had ever been to. She had settled into village life far easier than she would have thought possible. She loved the fact that Plum Corner sold such a motley array of goods, though she much preferred to visit it on the days when the owner Roger Mumford was running it and not when Kay Sweetman was serving. She loved that the vicar was like an omnipresent being and Marnie bumped into him lots and he was always up for pleasant chat. She loved the gentle elderly people living there: Dr Court and his wife who were a sweet old cat-loving couple, and Cyril and Alice Rootwood who walked around the green three times a day with their tiny ancient Yorkshire Terrier, Richard. And Lilian and Emelie, of course. She often saw Emelie sitting out in the garden watching the birds gather around all the treats she laid out for them.
Ruby Sweetman hadn’t visited since with her ‘keep your enemies closer’ fake friend routine and Marnie was glad about that. She hadn’t spoken directly to Titus at all. He had passed her a couple of times in his E-Type Jag and she’d waved him on once when her car had had right of way, but he hadn’t given her the slightest acknowledgement as would have been polite. She’d bumped into his wife Hilary the previous week and they’d said hello. Hilary had asked how she was settling in and Marnie replied, very well thank you. The interchange had been no more than that but Marnie got a surprisingly warm vibe from her. And she’d been taken aback by her voice. She would have expected Hilary to have a mousey squeak, not one so resonant and beautiful. She could have read the news with that voice.
There was a massive full moon hanging in the sky like a giant shiny bauble. Marnie was staring hard at it, trying to imagine a face in it, when she felt a presence behind her.
‘Penny for your thoughts.’
Marnie whirled around to find Herv. ‘You scared the living daylights out of me.’
‘Or should that be nightlights. Mind if I join you?’
‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘It’s a free country.’
‘Couldn’t sleep?’ he asked, taking his place at the side of her. A respectful distance between them, she noted.
‘No. I thought a walk might help.’
‘Me too. Even though we are sitting.’
His accent was subtle but ridiculously attractive. Marnie felt her heartbeat increase both in speed and volume in the quiet. Bloody pheromones. They were slave to no one.
‘Lilian’s garden is looking really lovely at the moment,’ said Marnie eventually, feeling that the silence should be broken.
‘I do my best,’ Herv said, with a little laugh. ‘But Lilian, she is full of strange ideas and plant combinations in her effort to stamp out the past. Apart from the lake, the garden is totally different to how it was when I first came. She has changed everything her family had there, every shrub and flower. This year I have to put lilies everywhere. The big ones, the bright ones, the smelly ones.’ And he pinched his nose.
‘Stargazers?’ asked Marnie, with a smile.
‘She wants them everywhere,’ said Herv, nodding ‘I tell her, “Lilian, you shouldn’t try to change the past, it can’t be done and especially not with big smelly flowers”, but she doesn’t listen. She is stubborn like a mule.’ And he growled in amused frustration.
‘She’s been very good to me, mule or no mule,’ said Marnie.
‘Where did you live before you came here?’
‘South Yorkshire,’ she answered, being slightly evasive. She didn’t want anyone snooping into her background.
‘What did you do? Did you have a job?’
‘I was head of Beverage Marketing in a firm that produces coffee.’
‘You were?’
‘I was.’
He whistled, genuinely impressed. ‘What made you have such a life change?’
My lover’s pregnant wife tried to kill me in front of the whole building and I couldn’t stand the shame of going into the office again, she said inwardly and wondered what his reaction would be if she voiced it. That would stop his pupils dilating when he saw her.
‘I wasn’t happy. Sometimes you just need to get away.’
‘I recognise that feeling,’ said Herv. ‘When my marriage broke down, I had to get out of Norway. I wanted nothing familiar.’
‘You were married?’ She asked out of politeness, though she knew this already.
‘Yes, for two years only. I was happy. I thought Tine was too but she was . . . was happier with my friend.’
‘Ah,’ said Marnie, with a grimace. Happened to men too, of course; she knew that women could be twats as well.
‘Then she wasn’t happier with my friend and wanted me back. I couldn’t. The trust had gone. It was very hard for me. Maybe it was meant to be, because I came here and I feel absolutely in the right place. How could you not love this view?’
They both looked at the moon hanging above the manor. And then their eyes were distracted. A strange blush-coloured light was journeying slowly from left to right along the gallery.
‘Can you see that?’ Herv asked.
‘I most certainly can,’ replied Marnie with a gulp. ‘The Pink Lady?’
Herv was fascinated. ‘I have never seen it before. Wow, it’s amazing. I wouldn’t have believed.’
The pink light faded to nothing yet they carried on watching, waiting for it to make a reappearance, but it didn’t.
‘Do you like ghost stories, Marnie? Ghost films?’
Marnie’s warning flag shot up the pole. She suspected immediately where this could be going.
‘I can take them or leave them,’ she said, wrinkling up her nose.
‘There’s a cinema in Skipperstone . . .’
‘Anyway, I’d better get to bed, I think my walk has done the trick. Goodnight, Herv,’ said Marnie quickly and stood to go.
‘Oh, goodnight. Do you want me to walk you back?’
‘No,’ she said firmly. Too harshly. ‘Thank you,’ she added in a softer tone.
She was annoyed with herself then. He was only going to ask her to go to the bloody cinema with him, not propose marriage. God, she was ridiculous. But she knew what would happen and had to stop it from starting. They’d go out, he’d be kind, her starving heart would open up, fed by the morsels of his attentions. She’d fall hard and deep despite feeling that something wasn’t quite right because it never was, but she’d press the override switch and plough on, falling ever deeper and harder. Then the complication would start to show itself, because there always was one. Probably in this case that his heart was still full of his ex-wife, and then her world would come crashing down on top of her and she’d be capsized into a sea of heartbreak. Either that, or Ruby Sweetman would throw herself off a cliff and she’d be blamed for it all.
No. No. No. No. No.