Jane
drums her fingers on Clio’s steering wheel. The road ahead of her is completely
blocked by a small white pick-up and a vast black four-wheel-drive, parked side
by side facing in opposite directions. The drivers, with their heads out of
their windows, are deep in conversation. She’s been there for five minutes.
Such behaviour is not unusual and when Jane
first encountered it she found it quaint. She laughed about it with William
over their evening drinks.
‘You realise that for
many people who work in the countryside', he said, 'it’s the only social contact they have.
Of course they’re going to take their time. And anyway it’s extremely rude to
drive past somebody you know without stopping to talk to them.’
Jane’s mind boggled not only at the
isolation William’s words revealed but also that you might pass an acquaintance
in a car in the middle of nowhere. How come, with all the people she knew in
London – many hundreds probably if not thousands, she’d never once bumped into
any of them by accident?
‘You should get out and introduce
yourself,’ he said. ‘Join in. They probably know who you are already.’
But she never has, and she certainly isn’t
going to today.
Rain is streaming down the car’s windscreen
and wind is sending a hail of twigs on to its roof. Every so often an
extra-strong gust shakes the vehicle like a dog who's making sure that the rabbit clamped in its teeth is properly dead.
Both men look extremely dubious and as soon as she stopped she engaged the door locks. The
one in the four-wheel-drive has long curly black hair and whenever he glances in Jane’s direction she gets the impression he’s laughing at her. All she can
see of the one in the pick-up is the back of a bald pink head, rolls of neck fat and
an arm bursting out of a red-checked shirt.
Worst of all, it’s already ten to nine and
if she doesn’t get a move on soon she’s going to be late for work again. No way does she want to encourage
the conversation.
She’s already encountered a flood which
involved a long detour round unfamiliar lanes with only her new compass to
guide her, and then she spent ten minutes crawling behind a vast brown and
white horse and its vast female rider, her only amusement working out which
bottom was bigger.
What else is in store? Fallen trees?
Hedge-cutting? Stray sheep? Cattle crossing? Bewildered rabbits refusing to get out of the way? She’s had them all at one time or
another.
Oh for those simple journeys to work in
London. A twenty-minute walk if the weather was fine and a twenty-minute bus
ride if it wasn’t. Totally predictable, totally anonymous, no animals of any
kind.
She
stops outside Henry’s office and checks her watch. Nine o’clock exactly. Phew.
She’s managed to make it on time, even if on time wasn’t good enough for her
father who served in the navy during the war. ‘If you’re not ten minutes early,
you’re late,’ he used to say. Blow that. Why can’t he get out of her head?
She’s run all the way from the carpark,
waving a quick hello to Lauren in reception before taking the stairs two at a
time. She hasn’t even stopped to leave her coat and bag in her office. She’s
still panting as she pushes open the door.
Sam is already there. She sits
the opposite side of the pale oak table, her laptop open in front of her and a
mug of coffee by her side. A brief interval of sun haloes her fluff of pink
hair. She’s wearing a black polo-neck and black leather jacket, as ever making
Jane feel dowdy even though she thought she looked quite chic first thing when
she put on her navy cords and navy Shetland jumper.
Henry has his back to her and is bending
over some papers. He’s in butter-yellow moleskin trousers today, the exact same
shade as his hair. She wonders if he chose them deliberately.
The two of them appear to be sharing a
joke.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ says Jane, as much to
announce her presence as anything, seeing as neither of them has yet looked in
her direction.
‘Oh for f--k’s sake,’ says Sam, raising her
head a fraction. ‘She’s hardly through the door and already she’s apologising.’
‘Sorry,’ says Jane again before she can
stop herself.
Sam bursts into raucous laughter, opening
her mouth so wide that Jane can see her rows of silver fillings.
Jane pulls out a chair the near side of the
table where she always sits. She may be the last in every time, but at least
she gets the view.
Henry, to one side of her, carries on shuffling papers.
The
offices take up the south-facing arm of Courtney Manor stables, with the
editorial department on the first floor and everyone else underneath. Sam, Jane
and the Editorial Manager squash into half the first floor while Henry has
the other half. His plate-glass windows give on to a landscape that includes at least half of rural Devon and stretches all the way to the long curves of Dartmoor.
Jane concentrates on the view in an effort
to soothe her head. It was only yesterday, Tuesday, that she crawled out of her
sick-bed, and even then she didn’t get dressed. She spent the day in
her dressing-gown stuffing down food – scrambled eggs on toast, falafel and onion bhajis bought as nibbles for William, soup out of the freezer.
The migraine, which started on Saturday in Muddicombe
village shop at the end of her walk, turned out to be more vicious
than any migraine she’s endured for years. It was like one from the old days,
when she first began to suffer them, with both ‘upward vomit’ and ‘downward
laxative’ as Chaucer so neatly put it. It’s amazing how these literary references
return at appropriate times. Her old English teacher would be proud of her.
Migraines are fickle things. They can
vanish in a few hours or rumble on for days. From her current general yukkiness she fears this is one of the latter kind. She probably
should have spent another day at home but she was worried about taking too much
time off work as she doesn’t yet feel established. She supposes it’s the result
of having a job that didn’t exist before. Not that it bothers Sam.
It’s a pity she’s walked straight into one
of the weekly meetings. She hoped to avoid this week’s as they’re supposed to
take place on Mondays but unfortunately it was one of those times when Henry
was ‘delayed’ in London. God knows what he gets up to there. He says he’s
‘networking’ – trawling for new authors, keeping up with publishing trends –
but does he really need to do that now he’s employed her and Sam? It’s a bit
annoying and she wonders how Mrs Henry (as she’s always known) puts up with it.
‘For f--k’s sake,’ says Sam again. ‘Take your coat off. Settle down. Let’s get on with
this débâcle.’
She pronounces the last word ‘debbackle’
and Jane wonders whether that’s deliberate. She sees Henry wince but
it’s difficult to know which line Sam has stepped over this time. There are so
many.
‘Excuse me,’ says Henry, straightening up
at last. ‘I’m in charge.’
She might have guessed. He lets Sam get
away with homicide but some things are sacred: his family heritage, his three
out-of-control wolfhounds and his authority.
‘No you’re not,’ says Sam. ‘You’re never
here.’
Too true, thinks Jane. Why couldn’t she have said that
herself?
‘Roof
leak gone?’ asks Lauren.
Jane nods. She can’t speak at the moment, as
migraines both interfere with her ability to process words and make her weepy, which is an awkward combination.
‘I knew Vinnie would sort you out,’ says
Lauren, biting into a home-made white bread and ham sandwich. ‘He’s a good
lad.’
It’s lunchtime and they’re sitting under
the eaves of the middle arm of the stables. Because the Manor is a long way
from the nearest pub or shop, Henry has fitted the space out as a staff restroom,
installing a kitchen at one end and furnishing the rest with low tables and
armchairs.
‘How about that back door of yours?’ says
Lauren, ripping the foil off a strawberry yoghurt. ‘Not sticking any longer?’
Jane shakes her head. She’s clasping a
packet of her own home-made sandwiches - tahini and cucumber in organic
wholemeal spelt – but hasn’t managed to open it yet.
‘Excellent,’ nods Lauren. ‘Brad’s very busy
so I’m glad he got out to you so quickly.’
It was Jane’s domestic dramas that first drew
the two of them together, in spite of Lauren being thirty-six years younger
than Jane, eight inches shorter and three stone heavier.
One morning Jane just happened to mention that
there was an atrocious smell in her garden. She’d written it off as one of
those inexplicable rural phenomena but Lauren interpreted it differently.
‘That’ll be your septic tank,’ she
pronounced. ‘Probably needs emptying. I’ll get my cousin Nige out. He works for
Shhhifters.’
Jane had no idea she possessed a septic
tank, let alone what they did. Come to think of it, she still doesn’t. It’s not
something she wants to pry into.
Lauren it turned out lives in Muddicombe
like Jane, what’s more from a family that has lived in Muddicombe since before
records began. She's therefore related to or knows everyone, and whatever
Jane’s problem finds someone to deal with it. It’s like having an
entrée to the local mafia.
Jane tries to reciprocate by giving her
small editorial jobs. Lauren has been in reception at Courtney Press ever since
leaving school six years earlier and is desperate to move on.
Yoghurt finished, Lauren pulls open a
packet of prawn cocktail crisps and starts browsing on her phone.
‘Hey,’ she crunches. ‘This is interesting.
You know that Rick Rockford? Rick the Rock. The lead singer of Minotaur. Quite
hunky for someone that old.’
Jane stares at her.
Lauren, head down, carries on reading. ‘It says here that he’s retiring from life
on the road and coming back to live in Devon. I must tell my gran that. I’m
pretty certain she went to school with his mum. Did you know he came from Devon?’ She looks up.
‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Are you all right?’
Tears are streaming down Jane’s face. She
doesn’t know where they come from or why they’re suddenly here.
‘I’m not sure,’ she quavers.
