Echoes in the Cotswolds Read online

  ‘Well – would it be out of the question to be here for Wednesday night? And stay till Saturday? Then if I’m not home until the middle of next week, maybe come back on Monday for a night or two?’

  ‘Three nights,’ Thea calculated. ‘They can probably spare me for that long – although poor Drew’s got a terribly busy workload this week.’

  ‘I would be eternally grateful. I realise I sound stupidly paranoid – but the way things are … Honestly, Thea, if I couldn’t find somebody to be here, I’d never be able to have this operation at all.’

  There are other house-sitters available, thought Thea. But Lucy was paying handsomely, and Thea did feel a certain degree of obligation, given how badly she had managed the previous commission in Hampnett. The surprise was that Lucy would even consider using her again. ‘None of it was your fault,’ she had insisted generously. ‘I think you coped magnificently. Anybody else would have run away screaming after the first night.’

  When Lucy hesitantly explained precisely why she wanted a guard for her empty house in a peaceful little town, Thea understood that she had very probably been stitched up.

  But by then it was too late to change her mind.

  She sat down with Drew after lunch and gave him her full attention. Over the washing-up she had been struck by the idea of asking Andrew’s wife, Fiona, if she had any spare time to help with the burials, which she immediately conveyed to Drew.

  ‘She works,’ he said dismissively.

  ‘Not full time.’

  ‘What were you thinking she could do?’

  ‘Some heavy lifting,’ said Thea without hesitation. ‘Like Maggs always did. Fiona’s used to it, after all.’ The Emersons had been farmers until very recently, with all the hay bales and feed bags and floppy newborn calves that had to be routinely shouldered by everyone, male or female. ‘She could probably do a removal, if it came to it.’

  ‘My head’s all over the place,’ Drew complained, passing a dramatic hand across his brow. ‘I can’t think straight.’

  ‘Come on, then,’ she ordered, leading him into the office that had originally been a dining room. ‘We’ll write everything down, starting from this afternoon. One funeral tomorrow, two on Wednesday and three on Friday. Is that right? And a man coming today to make all the arrangements for one of the Friday people.’

  ‘One on Thursday as well. The biggest one of them all. Seven altogether.’ He groaned. ‘It can’t possibly be doable. What on earth was I thinking?’

  ‘It’s absolutely doable. Don’t be so pathetic.’ She sat down next to him, in the seat designated for relatives who came to arrange a burial. ‘Can I write on this?’ She tapped a lined notepad lying on the desk. Without waiting for an answer, she wrote ‘Monday’ at the top and underlined it. ‘Somebody has to go to Stow this afternoon. That’s the first thing. What’s the person’s name?’

  ‘Adrian Waters.’ He consulted a page of notes. ‘Two o’clock tomorrow. The relatives are carrying and lowering.’

  ‘Great. That’s him sorted, then. And you’ve got one of the graves dug for Wednesday, did you say?’

  ‘Penelope Allen,’ he nodded. ‘Half past ten.’

  Rapidly Thea filled the page and moved onto a second and then a third one for Thursday and Friday. She listed the tasks to be fulfilled and likely people to be doing them. At several points she wrote ‘family?’ as possible participants.

  Drew watched her, half amused, half impatient. ‘This is my job,’ he protested. ‘I shouldn’t need you to do it.’

  ‘I know. But another pair of eyes can’t hurt. You were getting all overwhelmed and panicked. You would have forgotten something. Writing it out like this makes us feel we’ve got it all under control.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I must admit it does feel much better now. Although it’s never that simple. The families always want to talk. They expect me to be available most of the day of the funeral. You know what they’re like. Somebody phones at seven in the morning to tell me they can’t find their husband’s favourite tie. And afterwards they call to thank me and talk for an hour. I won’t have time for any of that this week.’

  ‘Let Andrew do it,’ she said decisively. ‘He doesn’t need his back to take phone calls.’

  ‘Good idea – but they won’t have his number, and once I answer the phone, I won’t be able to just pass them over to him.’

  ‘Get him over here, then. Sit him down with the phone and let him be useful. It’ll take his mind off his bad back. He can arrange any new funerals for next week as well, come to that. He’s always saying he’d like to do more of that.’

  ‘While I’m out in the rain and wind doing the dirty work.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘The forecast is horrible for Friday – did you see?’

  ‘I never bother to look more than two days ahead. It won’t be right, anyway. Friday is ages away.’

  ‘You sound like Timmy,’ said Drew with a smile.

  ‘Do I?’ She paused, holding her breath. ‘Actually, there’s something I haven’t got round to telling you.’

  ‘About Timmy?’ Alarm filled his face.

  ‘No, no. About me. And Northleach. Nothing drastic – just that Lucy’s had definite confirmation that she’ll be done on Wednesday. There was a chance it would have to wait till Friday. She’s going in very early that day, and wants me to be there overnight for three nights.’

  ‘I always did think you’d be going on Wednesday. You make it sound like new news.’

  ‘Do I? I wasn’t sure you’d heard it as definite before. And knowing what hospitals are like, it’s still not a hundred per cent. The uncertainty must be awful for poor Lucy.’

  Any other husband would have drawn suspicious conclusions long before this point. Any other husband would think she had been so unusually helpful and attentive as a way of compensating for a very inconvenient absence. But not Drew. He merely looked at her, and asked ‘So when are you going?’

  ‘She wants me on Wednesday evening. She says I can come back here on Saturday night, but I don’t think she’s very keen on me doing that. She’s hoping to be home on Monday. That leaves the house unguarded on Sunday, but it seems she’s less worried about weekends.’

  ‘Am I right in thinking she’s a very anxious person? That’s the impression I’ve been getting. What can possibly happen to her house for a few days, anyway? People go off on holidays, lock the door, cancel the milk and everything’s fine.’

  ‘I know. I expect it’s mostly the worry over the operation. She’s been agonising about a whole lot of “what-ifs” and got herself in a stew. After all, it’s quite a big thing she’s having done, and they’re not sure exactly what they’ll find once she’s on the table. Nobody’s going to feel very relaxed about something like that, are they? It’s all very scary, by any standards.’

  ‘Poor woman,’ said Drew. He sat back in his chair. ‘You know something? I’ve a nasty feeling that I ought to feel more sympathetic towards people with problems like that. All I can do is think – well, nobody’s dead, what are you so upset about?’

  ‘It’s your job,’ she reassured him. ‘And you’re brilliantly good at it. Almost everybody shies away from death, and won’t let anybody talk about it. I mean – remember that marvellous woman who kept saying how glad she was her husband had finally died? I bet you were the only person she knew who she could talk to honestly. Everybody else would have expected her to pretend to be grief-stricken. And you help them to understand the whole business. The way death’s at the absolute heart of everything, even if nobody will ever admit that to themselves. I heard you just the other day saying that to somebody. That girl whose granny had just died. Wasn’t she doing philosophy at college or something? You sat down with her for about an hour in here, just letting her try to work it all out. Honestly, Drew, you’re much better than any vicar – or doctor or anyone.’

  ‘Blimey!’ he said. ‘That’s twice in one day you’ve told me what’s what. It�
�ll get to be a habit at this rate.’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s not the sort of thing a person says very often. I guess we both needed a bit of reminding, that’s all.’

  ‘That girl reminded me of Stephanie – if “reminded” is the right word. She’s how I hope Steph will be when she’s twenty. I had no idea she and I were in here so long. It felt like a real privilege to be talking to her, oddly enough.’

  ‘Well, at least you left the door open. We could all hear you. I think Stephanie was even more impressed than I was, actually.’

  ‘Isn’t it her chess day today?’ he asked, in a fairly obvious association of ideas. ‘We’re still all right about that, are we?’

  ‘Oh yes, I think so,’ said Thea. ‘I think they’re good for each other.’

  Ever since Christmas Stephanie had gone across the lane to play chess with a male neighbour in his sixties. They all called him ‘Mr Shipley’ and treated him with a degree of deference. Drew had buried his sister, and Thea had invited him to a Sunday lunch many months earlier. He collected antique glass and seemed to have independent means. Regular trips to London were assumed to have a romantic purpose – probably with another man. Information concerning his private life remained in very short supply. Stephanie’s eager anticipation every Monday afternoon convinced Drew and Thea that the friendship was perfectly wholesome. ‘We talk about philosophy mostly,’ the child reported.

  ‘Although they can hardly leave the door open, can they?’ His expression suggested that he hadn’t liked the implication behind Thea’s earlier remark. ‘Which I did not do deliberately, let me tell you. The office was cold, and I was hoping to get some warmer air coming in if the door was open.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she smiled. ‘I feel just the same as you about that sort of thing. It’s no way to live, expecting everybody to have lascivious motives all the time. Even so, it did cross my mind that Stephanie could be developing feelings for Mr Shipley that need to be acknowledged. You know what it’s like when you’re twelve.’

  ‘Not really. I have a feeling it’s different for boys.’

  ‘Everything’s incredibly intense. You can’t imagine how passionately I adored my French teacher – though I think that was fourteen, actually. Anyone who takes you seriously at that age is liable to become an object of worship. When the French teacher left, I instantly transferred my affections to Mr Clarke.’

  ‘History,’ Drew remembered. ‘Yes, you told me about him.’

  ‘It all seems a thousand years ago now,’ she sighed. ‘Just a faint echo somewhere at the back of my head. I can’t properly remember what it was like. I just know it felt terribly important.’

  ‘But she can still go and play chess with him?’

  ‘So long as it’s all right with him, I suppose. I did wonder if we should have a little talk to him about it. It might be awkward being the object of adoration.’

  Drew said nothing, but tapped his fingers on the desk as if waiting for a change of subject. Thea fell quiet for a moment and then said, ‘Your customers must fall for you sometimes. All that heightened emotion and you so sweet and sympathetic with them. It’s obvious, really.’

  ‘Luckily it doesn’t last very long.’

  ‘Unless it’s Greta Simmonds.’

  Drew laughed uneasily. Greta Simmonds had fallen for his charms to such an extent that she’d left him her house. He and Thea were living in it now. If they were entertaining echoes from the past, then Greta had to be one of the primary ones.

  ‘So it’s all right for me to go to Northleach, then?’

  ‘You aren’t really asking for my permission, are you? I thought we decided we weren’t that sort of couple. And I thought it was all settled months ago.’

  ‘I’m consulting your wishes, and your convenience. It’s not the same thing. And I’m trying to avoid making the same mistakes again as I made last year. We are a couple, after all – of whatever sort.’

  ‘We’re being ever so serious today, aren’t we? Checking that things are all right, and working as a team. It’s nice,’ he added hurriedly. ‘Very nice, in fact.’

  ‘That’s all right, then. And listen – I’m going to keep in better touch this time. I won’t just disappear and leave you to make the best of it.’

  ‘If I remember rightly, it was more a case of me not wanting to give you the full story, if we’re talking about when you went to Barnsley. I never did understand why you felt so guilty about it.’

  She shook her head, feeling suddenly too weak to attempt any further soul-searching. She had done her best, and Drew showed no signs of annoyance or wounded feelings. His funerals would all get accomplished somehow, of course. After this hectic week, it was almost certain there’d be a period of inactivity and scanty income to balance it out.

  ‘I’ve got to collect one of the Friday people from Cheltenham,’ he said glumly. ‘Did I mention that? I hate Cheltenham – I always get hopelessly lost.’

  ‘So do I. And no, you didn’t specify that it was there. I thought they were all local. When would you have to go?’

  ‘It’ll have to be Wednesday afternoon, I suppose.’

  Thea consulted her untidy list of tasks. ‘What’s the name? Which one is it?’

  ‘Julia Edwards,’ he said automatically. The names of his customers fixed themselves firmly in his mind from the first time he heard them. ‘She’s ninety-eight and lives with her granddaughter, who is sixty or so. They’re keeping her at home until I arrive to remove her.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Thea, tapping the relevant line on her pad. ‘And making their own coffin. Good for them. So you don’t really need to go until Thursday, do you? When did she die?’

  ‘Saturday night. It’s iffy leaving her till Thursday, although the weather’s not particularly warm.’

  Thea could not repress the thought that any aroma of decomposition might just as well haunt Mrs Edwards’ granddaughter’s house as her own here in Broad Campden. Once in a while she wondered if any taint of the all-too-distinctive smell clung to the clothes of the Slocombes. Did the children go to school trailing clouds of mortality, thereby repelling potential little friends?

  ‘Well, that’s up to you,’ she said. ‘The satnav should be able to get you to the house, surely?’

  ‘Mm,’ said Drew. They had an elderly TomTom, which was not au fait with recent alterations to road layouts, and which seemed to find Cheltenham particularly challenging. ‘Sometimes it drops the signal at the crucial moment,’ he added.

  ‘Stephanie would tell you to use the phone, like somebody living in the twenty-first century.’

  ‘I would if she was there to hold it and tap it and stop it constantly switching itself off,’ he snapped, finally giving way to the stresses of the day. ‘When I’m by myself, the thing sets out to torment me. I’ll print out a map before I go – the old-fashioned way.’

  ‘It’s two o’clock,’ she observed with alarm. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere?’ Again she consulted her list, having forgotten what they’d decided. ‘Adrian Waters has to be removed from Stow. And then you’ve got to coffin him up and check that everything’s all right with the family. And you’ve got that man coming at four. Right?’

  The phone rang before he could reply. And while he was still speaking to someone who sounded like a bereaved relative, there was a knock on the door. Hepzie the spaniel barked. Thea opened the door to find Lucy Sinclair standing there, very white-faced.

  Chapter Three

  ‘Oh!’ said Thea. ‘It’s you. Come in. What’s the matter?’ It was only a matter of hours since they’d been speaking on the phone. Seeing the woman here in the flesh was unnerving. She could not recall an instance when one of her house-sitting employers had visited her in her own home and she realised that she did not like it. The two aspects of her life had always been kept as separate as possible, although she could not exactly say why.

  Lucy walked in carefully, as if expecting an ambush. For the second time in the past week Thea was
struck by the change in the woman she had known a few years earlier. Quite what had brought about the transformation remained unclear. From the confident, affluent owner of a large barn conversion surrounded by fields, Lucy was now transformed into the nervous inhabitant of a small ancient house in a row, with hardly a glimpse of a field to be had. All her pets had disappeared, too. In the process she had aged and now looked to be in her mid fifties, where before she could have passed for ten years younger. She was only an inch or so taller than Thea, with grey hair that looked as if it had been returned to the wild, with none of the dye so common in women her age. Her work had been as a computer fixer, with legions of desperate customers wanting instant rescue. Thea presumed that Lucy still did this work in Northleach, although she had not observed a comparable computer-filled space to the one in the previous house.

  ‘I had to speak to you face-to-face,’ Lucy said. ‘I couldn’t explain properly on the phone.’ She looked around. ‘Is your husband here? Oh – I recognise the dog.’ She bent down awkwardly to pat the spaniel’s head. ‘Do you remember poor old Jimmy?’

  ‘Very much so,’ said Thea, who had the dog slightly on her conscience, even after so much time. The rescued lurcher had shown more spirit than expected, and asserted his ancestral instincts to a fatal degree. Thea had not taken it well. ‘You told me he’d died.’

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Lucy. ‘Not long after you were there, actually. I had him put down in the end. He was an absolute wreck – not enjoying life at all.’

  Thea’s conscience twanged like a piano string. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I hope it wasn’t my fault. I don’t think he and I ever really understood each other.’

  Lucy worked her shoulders in a half-shrug. ‘Never mind that now. The thing is—’

  ‘Come in here,’ Thea interrupted, indicating the kitchen. ‘Drew’s on the phone in the office. It’s all rather hectic here this week.’

  Lucy settled at the kitchen table and started again. ‘The thing is, I came to the conclusion I should tell you more about what’s been going on with my neighbours. I was hoping I needn’t explain – that just having you in the house would be enough to keep everything – well, to prevent anything bad happening. It’s my own fault, I know. I’ve never found it easy to get along with people like them. To begin with I thought they probably meant well, but the truth is, they really don’t.’