Chapter 39
Marnie hardly left Little Raspberries for the next three weeks. She didn’t need to go up to the manor, she didn’t want to bump into Herv. More importantly she didn’t want to bump into Herv and a woman. Especially not one so damned physically perfect. What could be more damaging to the ego than to see the man you wanted to whisk you off to bed taking a woman home that he’d whisked off to bed the night before. Some perfect being that he’d have perfect sex with: no wet patches, no cramp, nothing but the sort of fantastic mutually satisfying screamy stuff that appeared in Hollywood films. The Pritt Stick had failed to hold and she found herself in bits again.
She wanted to leave Wychwell; she was about as popular here as a force twelve gale in a confetti factory. The new owner had done her no favours at all by putting her in charge of rescuing it because she’d only be remembered for making them all pay higher rents and being outed as a marriage-wrecking bitch. She decided that she would stay in Wychwell until she had set it up for its future success and had exhausted all avenues to find Margaret’s grave, then she would go. She’d start again somewhere else where no one knew her and she would never tell anyone her secrets again, because that was the only way she could assure they wouldn’t bite her from behind.
Maybe it was something to do with her Irish traveller parentage. People were instinctively suspicious of her, saw her as trouble personified and her destiny was to keep moving on. Maybe that’s why any attachments she made were transient, unstable, fleeting because that’s what the stars had dictated for her. Maybe she couldn’t fight fate and so shouldn’t even try.
Other than going for some shopping, she didn’t venture out. She worked from her laptop on the kitchen table, throwing herself fully into future plans for Wychwell and how best to use the remaining cash in the village account. Speculate to accumulate would be her advice: rebuild the derelict cottages, turn at least a couple of them into businesses. A teashop would be good, she’d decided. They could give the Tea Lady a run for her money. Winter House was perfectly placed for that. It was small, but it could be extended at the back. A conservatory, west-facing, so it would have all the sun in the afternoon. Or would Summermoor next door be better because it had a larger garden?
The new properties would all be rented out on short leases. It was important any new people fitted in with the old residents; Lilian would have asked for that. Okay, it was maybe taking the duty of care thing a bit far, but she considered it important. The village hall needed knocking down and rebuilding. It didn’t even have a toilet and probably transgressed every building law in the country. It seemed as if it had been originally constructed by a blind school-leaver with his plans upside down.
She contacted a few builders and asked if they had the manpower and the time to complete the suggested renovations that she emailed over, then took the names of those who did and sent them to Mr Wemyss for the owner’s approval to forge ahead getting quotes. Then she played around with some figures, projecting the income if all the houses were full and paid their rents. The Lemon Villa would make a great B&B or a hotel, but she suspected that Titus wouldn’t be moving out any time soon. If ever.
She had immersed herself so much in her plans that she lost all track of time and dates, especially as she hadn’t even switched on her TV to see what was going on outside Little Raspberries. She suspected it was the same old, same old though: stabbings, bombs, disasters; there would be no wonderful news to lift everyone’s mood. She hadn’t missed being part of the larger world in the weeks she’d been a virtual hermit but she realised that she did need to go up to the manor and take another look through those old ledgers to try and locate Margaret Kytson’s well because it was nagging at her brain. Plus she remembered that she had promised Emelie a cheesecake and hadn’t delivered on it. The next day was Saturday; no one would be working up at the manor then. She wouldn’t have to make small talk with Cilla and Zoe or witness first-hand the abhorrence that Herv must have for her. She drove to the supermarket for cheesecake ingredients and was delighted to find the fourth Country Manors book was out on the shelves – All Manor of Hell, which was great timing as she’d just finished the third one. After she had made an apple strudel cheesecake that night, she put on her pyjamas and started reading it.
Manfred, thank goodness, had got his manor back but his long-lost sister had turned up and there was a very dodgy attraction between them which had to be resisted. The fact that the sister was called Lalique Hartman was further indication that the worlds of Wellsbury and Wychwell were too intertwined for comfort. Marnie couldn’t put the book down. The sparks from the unrequited passion were flying off the page. Their illicit love struggle was fabulous. Illicit. Where had she seen that word before recently?
Then she remembered picking up a ball of discarded paper in Emelie’s house with that word on it. Illicit . . .forbidden . . . love.
Surely not . . . Don’t be daft, Marnie. Emelie is not Penelope Black, she told herself. Still, she would have to ask.
Marnie realised she was anxious as she set off across the green towards Emelie’s house the next morning. It was the first time in three weeks she had walked the length of Wychwell and she felt as if eyes were following her every footstep. It was probably true as all Una Price did was sit in her window and spy. She would be the first person Marnie would ask to join if they ever set up a Neighbourhood Watch scheme.
As she approached the end of Herv’s lane, she sent a silent prayer upwards that she wouldn’t see that blonde woman coming out of his house again. Or see him either, not smiling at her, disappointment and revulsion dulling his blue eyes. She jogged up Kytson Hill and felt a sigh of relief escape her when she reached Emelie’s cottage without incident. The door was ajar and Marnie could hear Emelie coughing from the end of the path. She knocked.
‘Come in,’ said Emelie hoarsely.
Even with the fresh air blowing into the house, that smell of damp was awful and much stronger than it had been the last time she’d visited. Emelie looked delighted to see her.
‘Emelie, you sound terrible,’ said Marnie, giving her a hug.
‘Oh, I’m fine.’ Emelie waved at her concern as if she were batting it back to her. ‘Is that a cheesecake?’
‘A belated one,’ said Marnie. ‘So I made it extra-large by way of compensation.’
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Emelie. ‘We will both have a piece now. I insist.’
‘I wasn’t going to argue with you,’ replied Marnie.
Emelie walked into the kitchen, her back bent. She looked fragile and her long printed skirt was hanging from her.
‘Is your arthritis playing up?’ Marnie asked her.
‘Always,’ chuckled Emelie and began coughing again.
‘Emelie, that damp is doing you no good at all.’ Marnie wished she hadn’t left it as long to come over now. She made a mental note to put this at the top of Herv’s list of to-do’s. There was a patch of wall behind Emelie’s TV that appeared as if it would crumble if touched. That couldn’t be good near electrics. The damp had to be coming from underneath the house. Maybe there was a water leak. She should check it out. ‘Emelie, can I look in your cellar?’
‘There is no cellar here,’ Emelie replied. ‘Marnie, I can’t pick up the tray. Would you?’
Marnie went into the kitchen and carried it through for her. Emelie’s typewriter wasn’t out today, she’d been reading rather than writing. The first Country Manors book was open and face down on the table.
Marnie, nodded towards it. ‘Isn’t it great?’
Emelie wrinkled up her nose. ‘I’ve had it for a while. I bought it to see what all the fuss was about. I’m not sure that I do though. I’m just skipping through it, not reading it in any great detail.’
‘You should,’ said Marnie. ‘It’s as if it was written by someone in Wychwell itself.’ She watched for Emelie’s reaction at her theory, but there was none to indicate her big secret had been discovered.
‘I can’t imagine who,’ she sniffed. ‘I think that Miss Black is very clever, and good luck to her, but there are much more erotic books on the market which don’t use all that gratuitous language. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, for instance. I remember reading it when I was young, and falling madly in love with the writing. It felt so illicit’ – that word again, Marnie noted – ‘and so passionate. The lady and the gardener.’ Marnie wasn’t sure if she winked then or if her eye merely twitched as they sat down at the table. ‘Anyway, Marnie, tell me what you have been doing since I saw you last,’ and the conversation was pulled away from the mystery of the Country Manors author’s identity. Marnie respected that and didn’t ask her outright if she was Penelope Black. Emelie would have told her had she wanted her to know.
‘I’ve been busy working out the future of Wychwell,’ Marnie replied, cutting Emelie a slice of her special Austrian cheesecake. ‘It’s a shame it will have to let other people in, but if it doesn’t it will die.’
‘Of course it has to expand,’ stressed Emelie. ‘Dear Lilian realised that too late.’ And she began coughing again, a horrible rasping sound and Marnie hurried to fetch her a glass of water.
‘Right, that does it,’ she said sternly. ‘You are to move out of here and we are going to get that damp sorted before you come back.’ A thought came to her. ‘Why not live in the big house for a while? You can play at being lady of the manor.’
Emelie both smiled and shook her head. ‘No, I wouldn’t want that at all. I’ll leave here in a box and not before. Tell Herv to come over and see what he can do if you must.’ She lifted up her fork and started on the cheesecake. ‘Oh my, Marnie, this was so worth waiting for.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Marnie said. ‘I shut myself away. I didn’t want to see anyone.’
‘I am sorry that I told you what Kay said,’ Emelie sighed. ‘I really didn’t want to, but I had to. But still, I have felt quite bad about it.’
‘You did the right thing,’ Marnie assured her. ‘I did need to know.’ I did need to know what booted me out of Herv Gunnarsen’s heart.
‘You haven’t seen Herv since, I take it?’ Emelie asked, as if picking up on her thoughts.
Marnie shook her head, tried to look nonchalant and failed. ‘Have you?’
‘Last week,’ said Emelie, after a marked pause.
‘Was he alone?’ Marnie didn’t want to ask, but her mouth had turned into a masochistic bitch.
Again Emelie hesitated before replying and didn’t answer the question directly, which told Marnie everything. ‘He was driving.’
He was driving that woman home after a night of adventurous shagging. He was probably falling asleep at the wheel because they’d been doing it all night. Marnie felt stupidly tearful, and the forkful of cheesecake she’d just eaten felt like a rock in her stomach.
‘I’ll leave him a note to come and see you as soon as possible,’ said Marnie.
‘Why don’t you talk to him, tell him your side of the story?’
‘I think that boat has sailed,’ replied Marnie. ‘Kay did a proper hatchet job there. Of all the things she could have told him about me, that was a direct hit in his Achilles’ heel.’ She was going to cry again and could barely hold it back. She needed to go up to the manor, do what she had to and then get home again, back to the sanctuary that the four walls of Little Raspberries afforded her, where it was all too easy to imagine there was no world outside it.
Marnie pushed her cheesecake around on her plate but she hadn’t eaten any more by the time that Emelie had finished hers.
‘It’s no reflection on my baking,’ Marnie tried to joke, but she could see that Emelie understood.
‘Don’t throw it away,’ said Emelie, ‘I’ll polish it off later. It’s nice to see the sun out, I was beginning to think it wouldn’t make an appearance again until next year with all the rain we’ve had recently.’
Marnie didn’t know what the weather had been like for the last three weeks, give or take the days when she had journeyed over to the supermarket, and then she hadn’t taken much notice of it. She’d felt as if she were living under her own personal cloud dispensing a never-ending supply of drizzle.
The front door to the manor was unlocked and Cilla was in the hallway dusting.
‘Oh hello, stranger,’ she said with a delighted smile, when Marnie walked in, and then explained that the family had had a few days away in Whitby for a relative’s wedding, so they were making up their hours. ‘Herv’s around too, he couldn’t get a lot done in the garden with it being so wet this past fortnight,’ she added and Marnie thought, great.
‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ said Marnie.
‘I’ll send Zoe in with a coffee for you,’ said Cilla.
‘Oh it’s fine, I don’t want to disturb her.’
‘You won’t be.’ Cilla checked to make sure her daughter was out of earshot before continuing. ‘I’m trying to keep her extra busy if I’m honest, she’s been ever so down recently. We don’t know what’s the matter with her.’
Marnie remembered being that age. As well as all the hormones raging, her wings had been flapping like crazy. She wanted to fly the nest so much and live in a flat with Caitlin. Then Caitlin had decided she wanted to go off to university and Marnie met and moved in with Warren who was probably the worst of her exes because he became violent when he was drunk and he was drunk a lot. Then she left him to live in a house near Sheffield with six other people who kept themselves to themselves and weren’t the most hygienic people on the planet either, but she was happy there. She was perpetually skint and juggling finances between credit cards, but she somehow managed.
Marnie walked into the lovely dining room, shutting the door behind her. That first bedsit she stayed in would have fitted into here about eight times over. The people above her were noisy, the people below noisier still but she was standing on her own two feet and felt free, powerful, euphoric with independence. Lilian had once told her that she felt the same when her father died. He must have been an ogre, she remembered thinking.
Marnie could see that Herv was tidying up the plants around the lake. She sat on a chair which didn’t allow her sight of him because then it was slightly easier to keep him out of her mind. She started at the first ledger again, reading it with the express purpose of only looking for clues to where Margaret lay. She was ten pages in when there was a timid knock on the door and Zoe entered with a cup of coffee and some biscuits on a plate. Her hand was shaking, Marnie noticed, and she appeared to have the weight of the world on her shoulders.
‘Thank you, Zoe, that’s very sweet of you. I told your mum I didn’t want to put you to any troub—’ was as far as Marnie got before Zoe burst into tears, making Marnie rise from the table to shut the door and put her arms around the girl.
‘Zoe, whatever is the matter?’ she said. Zoe was breaking her heart. Marnie pushed her down onto a chair.
‘It’s my fault,’ said Zoe, face hiding in her hands. ‘I am so sorry, Marnie. It was too late when . . . I shouldn’t have . . . Oh, Marnie, I can’t stop thinking about it . . .’
‘Zoe, what is it, because nothing is worth getting in this state for. What shouldn’t you have—’
‘Please don’t tell my mum,’ Zoe implored her.
Shit, she’s pregnant, thought Marnie.
Zoe groaned loudly before continuing, bent over as if she had been hit by a wave of central pain. ‘Marnie, it was me that told Kay Sweetman about that man you were . . . I’m sorry.’ She dissolved again. ‘She told me to spy on you. She said that you were up to no good and after Lilian’s money and I should report back on anything I heard of interest.’
The realisation dawned. Oh God, thought Marnie. So that’s where it had come from.
‘It’s fine, Zoe, go on,’ Marnie reassured her.
‘Lilian spoke about you so much that, in the beginning, I did think Kay might be right and I told her what I’d overheard you and Lilian talking about one day. I’m so sorry. As soon as I’d told her I knew it was wrong. And the more I got to know you, the more I liked you and we all knew that you and Lilian were fond of each other and not pretending and then when Kay told Herv about what I’d said, I could have died because she only wanted to stop anything happening between you and Herv because of Ruby and you’ve been so lovely to me and then you said that about supporting me in university and—’
The girl was in bits. It would have been cruel to let Zoe know the damage she’d caused, especially when her sole motive had been to watch out for Lilian, so Marnie swallowed it and held up her hand to stem Zoe’s tormented flow. ‘Okay, slow down, slow down. It’s fine, Zoe, really. You don’t need to worry. I know you were fond of Lilian and thinking that you were protecting her. The fault is with Kay, she should never have tried to manipulate you like that.’ She dragged her handbag towards her to pull out a packet of tissues. ‘And the offer for help with your university costs still stands.’
‘No, I can’t now. Not after what—’
Marnie interrupted her yet again. ‘Yes it does. We all make mistakes,’ she let loose a little laugh. Oh boy, don’t we just. ‘Is this why you’ve been so down? Your mum said you’ve been worried and that’s made her worried.’
Zoe nodded her head as she blew her nose.
‘Well stop it, now. We’re good, you and I, Zoe. Thank you for telling me. Now put it to bed, please. No harm done.’ No harm done? Oh, Zoe, if you only knew.
‘Three times I’ve got as far as your house to tell you and I chickened out on the doorstep,’ Zoe went on.
‘You silly girl,’ said Marnie. ‘If your mum asks why your eyes are so red, tell her that we’ve had a girl to girl chat about . . . about leaving home or something, otherwise goodness knows what she’ll think.’
‘I will,’ said Zoe. She stood up to go and then suddenly threw her arms around Marnie.
‘You are so lovely,’ she said, sniffing hard.
‘I know,’ joked Marnie. ‘Now cheer up.’
‘I will,’ said Zoe. Marnie escorted her to the door and opened it.
‘You won’t tell anyone?’ Zoe asked again.
‘No, and I don’t want to hear another word about it,’ said Marnie, sternly, which Zoe interpreted as kindness in context, although out of context it would have sounded harsh. As it did to Herv who had walked out of the kitchen to see Zoe standing there with bowed head, bloodshot eyes and red, salt-raw cheeks.
That’s all I need, thought Marnie. As if I couldn’t sink any lower in his estimations, now he thinks I’m bullying teenagers. She retreated into the dining room and, much to her surprise, he followed her.
‘I wanted to ask you about the lake,’ he said, his tone clipped and unfriendly. ‘Are you keeping it or filling it in?’
‘I’ll ask the new owner,’ Marnie said, in the same manner. ‘It’s not my call.’ She picked up her pen and scribbled the word ‘lake’ on her pad.
‘Why have you upset Zoe?’
‘I haven’t, actually.’
‘She was crying.’
‘As I said, I haven’t.’ Oh bollocks, could his timing have been any worse? And she couldn’t exactly explain what it was all about so she moved swiftly on. ‘Whilst you’re here, would you mind taking a look at Emelie’s cottage, the damp is terrible in it and she won’t move out so we’ll have to work around her. The wall behind her TV is especially concern—’
‘Is it true?’ There was demand in his voice.
‘Yes. Rising damp, I’m sure of it.’
He took in an angry breath and said something unintelligible under his breath, something Norwegian and most likely a string of expletives. ‘I don’t mean Emelie’s wall. Is it true?’ He knew that she knew what he meant. She knew that he knew that she knew what he meant: what Kay Sweetman had said. And actually, now she was thinking about it, he’d believed it and judged her without question, just as Fiona Abercrombie had done about the cheesecakes. Maybe he wasn’t so bloody perfect after all if he could take the gospel according to Kay Sweetman as the definitive version. Marnie’s temper went from 0–60 in a nanosecond.
‘Yes, all of it,’ she spat. ‘I’m a home-wrecking bitch because Kay Sweetman said I was so it must be true, mustn’t it? Happy? Right, now that’s sorted, I’m busy, Herv, so please sod off and leave me alone.’ He turned from her immediately and shut the door in such a way that it was less an incidental action than a statement of what he thought about her.
Marnie flinched as it banged hard against the frame and it felt as if it had banged against her heart as well and bruised it a little more than it was already. But she was cross too. What business of his was it anyway? He had no right asking questions like that when he was bonking blondie. Marnie wondered if he’d held her face as tenderly as he’d held Marnie’s in his cottage on Cheesecakegate day. No one had ever lit up every nerve in her body, just by brushing his fingers against her cheek. But Herv Gunnarsen was a hypocrite. What had he once said to her, something about letting the past settle and not raking it up, growing flowers from it instead – it was all rubbish, mere words that sounded nice but meant nothing. And she’d heard enough of those to last her a lifetime.