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  Sleep was not so forthcoming for Sarah. She had fallen asleep and then woken up with a pain in her hip from a lumpy bedspring. She’d tried shuffling around in the bed, but the mattress was so dished in the centre that she just kept sliding back onto the offending spring. In the end she put the light on, stripped off the bedclothes and picked up the edge of the mattress to turn it over. When she had it vertical she spied a thin red folder that had been lying under the middle of the mattress. She slid the folder onto the floor and completed her mattress turning operation. She did not look at it until she was back in bed with the bedclothes around her. It was obviously Jenny’s medical file on Peter. There were three vivid colour pictures from some sort of scan on Peter’s brain – they meant nothing to Sarah – and a number of letters from consultants in London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Amsterdam. They all said the same thing, which was basically, ‘we understand your predicament, but the tumour is too deep to be operable.’ There was one exception, a letter from a surgeon in Maine who said that she could operate, but if she did so she couldn’t guarantee getting the complete tumour out and Peter, if he survived, would undoubtedly be severely brain damaged following the operation and need lifetime care. Sarah sat still for a few minutes and then made an instant decision. She pulled on her boiler-suit and padded downstairs. She’d just burnt the last letter, and the wallet file itself, when she heard a noise behind her and turned round. Rupert was watching her wearing a pair of red striped flannelette pyjamas that should have been in a museum. He nodded in approval and said, to Sarah’s total dismay, “I should have burnt them a long time ago,”

  There was another creak from somewhere and Jill idly wondered where it came from. The roof? The support beams? Some pipe cooling down? She turned over. Her life was changing and changing fast. She’d settled down into a working from home routine while looking after Harriet, but her routine had been disturbed, severely disturbed, by Colin. She met him at a conference and she had given him her email address for further information. Within a week he sent an email asking her out to dinner. She didn’t accept, but they’d exchanged a number of emails, a large number of e-mails. Then the met again and the upshot was she’d moved up here to be near him knowing that he couldn’t move the farm to London. Now they were practically engaged and she was sleeping, for the first time, in his house. She smiled to herself; she liked the house, and his parents, which was just as well for she could see her future mapped out. Marriage to Colin, and the farm, and life in this house till she died. She said to herself longingly, “I wish,” just before she fell off to sleep.

  Julia stared at Buster, “You can’t be serious, we only met two days ago.”

  “I can and I am.”

  “People don’t just live together out of convenience.”

  He gave her a lingering smile, “I’ve fancied you since I saw you ploughing last summer. You look grand on that tractor, hair blowing in the wind, concentration on your face and total competence in your movements.”

  She fidgeted on the seat, “Then you’re enamoured by a fantasy.”

  He shook his head, “Not now I’ve met you in the flesh, your all I imagined and more.”

  He looked her straight in the eyes, “Believe me I’ve seen all types of women in numerous countries and in these last years with Maria and Jeremy lots of fancy women, but you’d knock ‘em all into a cocked hat as far as I’m concerned.”

  She shook her head, “But you don’t really know me, there’s not been enough time. I’m just a school teacher, probably a boring schoolteacher, who’s lived all her life, apart from teacher training college, here in the country.”

  He treated her to a wonderful smile, “Nothing wrong in that is there? I tell you I’ve seen the world and most of it is not worth seeing.”

  She became all wistful, “I’d like to see the Taj Mahal by moonlight, surf on a sandy Australian shore, ride the rapids in Canada and ski in Norway while the Aurora Borealis shine overhead.”

  He said quietly, “Well we could do those things, we’ve got the money.”

  She laughed at the thought, “We’d soon get through our £400,000 at that rate.”

  He tossed a small key onto the table in front of him, “Not if I know Jeremy and Maria, they were going via London for one reason only, to pick up something at a bank deposit box and my guess would be diamonds.”

  Julia raised an eyebrow, “How would they get them through customs and why would they bother if they can transfer money anywhere in the world?”

  Buster grinned, “Swallow them in London and net the proceeds in Portugal, or if they’re in Jewellery form just be blatant and wear them.” He leant back, “and as for transferring money a lot can go wrong. The police can follow the funds if your careless, other compatriots may divert the funds and, believe it or not, they could get caught up in somebody else’s scam. No, they’d want a little insurance and diamonds are the best way of providing it.”

  She suddenly laughed, “So you’re offering me trips to romantic places and diamonds.”

  Buster shook his head and looked at her intently, “No I’m not, I’m offering love and commitment; diamonds come later.”

  “Pardon?” Said Sarah as her heart missed several beats.

  “I should have burnt them long ago.”

  Sarah swallowed, she felt like a naughty schoolgirl caught smoking behind the bicycle sheds. She mumbled, “I just didn’t want you upset by them.”

  He leant against the doorpost, “Anna showed them to me years ago, I can never understand why people write letters like that.”

  Sarah looked at him in bewilderment and then realised that he thought she was burning something else. “Letters like that?”

  “Poison pen letters telling her she was a lousy mother.”

  Sarah recovered her equilibrium, “Any idea who sent them?”

  “None whatsoever, but they stopped when the Trembine Arms closed and the Jacksons moved away.”

  She closed the stove doors. “I’m sorry if I was presumptuous, I just thought…”

  He stood upright and stared at her in a tender manner, “Please don’t be sorry, it’s nice to know that someone cares about my feelings rather than my physical well being.”

  “Aren’t they linked?”

  He turned away, “Probably.”

  She watched him leave and realised that she now had another problem, that of finding the poison pen letters and disposing o them out of Rupert’s sight.

  To Julia’s amazement the sheets in the spare bedroom were actually made of silk, she slipped between them and felt the luxury of them. She thought over her day and Buster’s final outburst about offering love first and diamonds later. She’d told him she’d think about it merely as a way of letting him down lightly, but as she lay in the silk sheets she began to think about it more seriously. So far in her life she’d been a total disaster area as far as men were concerned. There was something about being a PE teacher and a country girl that put men off, she’d been the only girl in her year not to have an escort to the end of year ball, not just in the final year, but every year. She’d begun to believe that she’d be a permanent wallflower and now Buster had come along with protestations of love. The question was, could she love him?

  Buster sat in the room below and worried. First of all he worried that he’d said too much too quickly to Julia and that in consequence she would be frightened off. What he’d said to her was true, what he’d omitted was that after seeing her on the tractor he’d avoided her like the plague because if Maria had got even a hint of his feelings for Julia she would have unmercifully have sacked him as she’d instructed him to stay away from the locals at all costs. Secondly he had a more serious worry he hadn’t shared with Julia. Jeremy and Maria’s laptops may be in the house, but their electronic diaries weren’t. He’d searched their bodies, their briefcases and their bedroom, in fact all the usual haunts. He knew if there was one thing both of them would never leave behind it was their diaries as they doubtless contained a
ll the information they needed about contacts, bank account numbers and suchlike. The problem was, if they were not in the house, who had them and why?

  Chapter 14

  The Morning After

  Harriet awoke, as usual, about 6am. She lay in bed for about half an hour and then, ever so quietly, climbed out of bed to look at the bookshelf. Most of the books looked boring, but there was a little cluster of books at one end of the shelf that looked more friendly. She took out the first book and looked at the cover. She climbed back into bed and started to read Animal Farm by George Orwell.

  Colin woke up around the same time. He crept to the bathroom and sluiced his head under the tap; late nights and short sleeps didn’t agree with him. By 6:50am he was down in the kitchen loading up the Aga with coke and putting the kettle on. He turned the radio on low and looked out of the window. It had stopped snowing and looked dreadfully cold. He could clearly see across Lower Field to the station, except that the station was hidden from view by a long snow-dune. He listened to the weather report as the female announcer gleefully told him that the temperatures had dropped to well below freezing with the low temperatures due to last for a day or so, She went on the say that the worst of the snow was over, that was unless you lived in East Anglia as Norfolk, Lincolnshire and Suffolk could expect more snow from the East by mid-afternoon, but this was not expected to reach the Midlands before the following day. He turned the radio off and automatically noted that the wind had dropped to a gentle breeze. He wondered if it was worth trying to clear the snow from the lane.

  Norman stirred into life about half an hour late and found himself poised on the edge of his bed with the naked body of Petra lying face down between him and the wall. He smiled in recollection of their ‘practise at bedroom scenes’ and at the gentle odour of her sweat. He noted that she had stubble under her arm and a small black tattoo of a butterfly on her right shoulder blade. He sighed contentedly and then heard Mark walking about in the room above. He froze in absolute panic. His parents had an en-suite bedroom that had a tiny sink and a shower cubicle, but his father preferred to come into the main house’s bathroom for his morning shave and the luxury of a bigger sink. Normally he’d been and gone before Norman got up, but these were not normal times and if his father should discover Petra going back to her room…”

  He kissed her on the ear and she opened an eye. He whispered, “It’s morning!”

  She groaned and mumbled about the time. He whispered, “It’s gone seven thirty.”

  She rolled over, “Is that all? Sod off and let me sleep.”

  Rebutted he didn’t know what to do next. In the end he crept out of bed and, following nature’s call, went to the bedroom. He was very careful to close his bedroom door behind him.

  Norman need not have worried as his parents were sitting up in bed drinking a cup of tea. Jenny sipped her tea and enjoyed the luxury of tea in bed; for years they had got up at the crack of dawn to run the farm, but of late with both full mechanisation and Colin they had taken to getting up later. In any case with the snow there was nothing Harry could do on the land. “Seems a nice lass,” she sighed.

  Harry seemed to instantly know who she was talking about. “Young Jill? Reckon she’ll be good for Colin, can’t understand why he hasn’t brought her here before.”

  Jenny could have told him, but she refrained. “Harriet’s a nice girl too.”

  Harry nodded, “Aye, she’ll make a nice granddaughter.”

  Jenny pondered on this, it had not occurred to her that if Colin and Jill married Harriet would become a de facto granddaughter. She’d always expected the normal sequence of marriage, birth and then grandchildren. She contemplated the prospect of a near teenage granddaughter and found it agreeable. She then jerked out of her cogitation, “Pardon dear?”

  “I said it’s not Jill and Harriet I’m worried about, it’s that man Buster, whatever is Julia thinking of?”

  Jenny put her cup down on the bedside cabinet. “He’s Julia’s choice dear, would you rather she paired up with that disgusting son of the Bottomleys or that weird looking farm-hand from Cleest Farm that is always finding excuses to come over?”

  Harry sniffed, “She could always find herself a nice teacher.”

  Jenny was quiet for a moment and then said softly, “Harry dear, this is the first man she’s brought home in how many years? The last one I recall was that spotty young man called Theo who she brought home from college and who broke her heart by asking somebody else to the end of year ball. She’s not the catch of the year anymore and frankly if Buster will make her happy and give her a secure home then he’s good enough for me.”

  Harry caught the undertones in her voice, but decided – even knowing that he was on dangerous ground – to persist. “But we know nothing about him. I mean, what does he do? And if he’s in cahoots with that Jeremy fellow then that’s not a good endorsement as I would trust him to mow my lawn.”

  Despite his best attempts to avoid eye contact Jenny fixed him with a no nonsense stare. “I seem to recall that my parents thought that you were a useless yokel and wanted me to marry a nice solicitor or a dentist, but not a farmer.”

  He gave a low chuckle, “Yeh, they did give me a hard time at the beginning.”

  Jenny continued with her stare, “And did it make any difference? Not a jot, in fact their antagonism to you made you more exiting for me.”

  Harry got the message, “All right, I’ll back off, but believe me if he hurts her I’ll run my tractor and plough over his private parts.”

  Jenny burst into laughter and, eventually, Harry joined in.

  Jill rolled over and watched her daughter reading. She was an avid reader, especially since they’d moved out here, and would read everything and anything. Jill glanced around and took in the room. Obviously a woman’s room, but not truly feminine. There was a proper dressing table, but few cosmetics on it. Piled in the corner was a couple of pairs of hockey boots and what looked like well-used football boots. Hanging on the wall was a pristine hockey stick with some sort of brass label and a pair of crossed lacrosse rackets. So Julia was obviously a sporting person, Jill shivered, she’d hated sports at school and found her sport’s mistress an ogre of the worst kind. She sat up and Harriet looked at her, “Have you ever read Animal Farm?”

  Jill yawned and tried to get her brain into gear, “A long time ago.”

  Harriet snorted, “Well I think the pigs are real mean!”

  Rupert chewed on his toast and watched Sarah as she drank her tea. It was obvious that she disliked tea with milk made up from evaporated milk. He resolved to find her some real milk for her tea, in fact it somehow became terribly important for him to find her some real milk. She watched him eat his toast made from stale bread that she would have given to the birds long ago and wondered if he really didn’t know about Peter’s medical condition. After her scare of the night before she’d found the small bundle of poison pen letters in a top drawer and, when Rupert was in the bathroom, had burnt them in the Aga. She’d read a few of them, they all appeared to be in the same vein. However, if the accusations were correct, Anna was not the all embracing epitome of motherhood that Rupert believed. The letters accused her of carrying on with the landlord of the Trembine Arms and frequently getting so drunk that she couldn’t even crawl home.

  Simon woke up about eight o’clock when he heard the muffled sound of Jill and Harriet talking in the next door room. He rolled out of bed and stared out of the window. More snow must have fallen and it looked mighty cold even though no snow was falling at present. He wondered if he could walk to the main road and thumb a lift. Although he was being made welcome the incarceration in the farmhouse was beginning to drive him crazy. Being here was not in his plan, in fact it was messing up his life.

  Julia slowly rose from the depths of a deep dreamless sleep to a warm comfortable place where she was so cosy she could have been in heaven. She lingered there as long as she could, but nature has a way of calling and, ult
imately, she became awake enough to pad across to the en-suite bathroom and go to the toilet. She came out of the toilet, wrapped a bright-white bath-robe around her and sat down in a low armchair to gaze out of the window. ‘Window’, she thought, ‘this house is all windows.’ There was a thought at the edge of her brain, but it wouldn’t come, so she dismissed it and thought of Buster. She was beginning to like him, but knew that she hardly knew him. She tried to think what she did know. Well, he was six years older than her, left school at fourteen, used to be a member of a boy’s club and boxed for them for a while and had driven round half the world with the British Army before becoming a minder. He’d also been tender to her and was very protective of her. But was that enough? She sighed to herself, it was certainly enough for a start. She suddenly jerked up and realised that she’d either been asleep, or near sleep, in the chair. She called, still sleepy, “Come in.”

  Buster walked in carrying a tray with a full breakfast of boiled egg, tea, toast and fried sausages, egg, bacon and tomatoes with all the trimmings. Now this sort of pampering, she thought, I could live with.

  Sarah looked up from her book, she’d found a copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in Anna’s room, and listened again. Once she was sure that somebody was knocking at the front door she went and opened it as she was alone in the house with Rupert and Hoof off for a walk. A duffel-coated, gum-booted figure with a multicoloured bobble hat stood on the doorstep. It pulled down a woollen scarf to reveal a woman’s face. She proffered two pints of milk. “Hi, I’m Julia from over at the farm, Rupert says that you need milk.”