dragging a heavy burden. She stared into the shadows beyond the boundary hedges. Where had they gone? She saw now that there was rabbit fencing round the orchard, and on the far side of the hedge an electric fence and beyond that a field of grazing cattle. Of course the men could have vaulted the hedge and fences. Once out of her sight they could have put down their burden, and he, miraculously alive again, could have run with them lightly tiptoeing, probably laughing, out of sight of their audience.
She walked back again, searching meticulously, more thoroughly now, determined to find at least a trace of them. There was a tiny core inside her, growing steadily more afraid. She walked up to the corner of the orchard, along the back hedge, looking at each tree, quartering the ground. She did the whole thing twice, gridding backwards and forwards beneath the tall, old-fashioned, ancient apple trees heading back towards the house. Of the sword, the shoe, anything at all in fact, she found no trace. There was nothing in the orchard.
She began to retrace her steps back towards the open sunlight and the tourists and the people in their costumes, enacting scenes from a Tudor past, and looked at them suddenly with different eyes, knowing in some inner part of herself that she alone of all the people there had had a glimpse of the real thing…
‘Corinne?’ The voice behind her stopped her in her tracks. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’
She turned.
The lover. Repentant. Charming. Rueful. ‘Please?’ He held out his hand.
She was still a little shocked. Still slightly shaky, she realised, suddenly. Had it not been for that, she might not so easily have decided that she needed someone to have tea with.
Anyone, as long as he belonged to the present.
The Cottage Kitchen
When Roz first saw Fen Cottage it seemed like home. The kitchen was the only thing which stopped her from making an instant offer. The rest of the cottage was idyllic. It had low beams, thatch, three small charming bedrooms with tiny windows, a pretty sitting room which looked out onto a flower-smothered terrace and a dining room with a large inglenook fireplace. The kitchen was a lean-to. It was long, narrow, dark and basic. She thought, made a few sketches, did some calculations, crossed her fingers – the numbers didn’t quite add up – and made an offer. It was accepted at once.
It was eight weeks after that first enchanted viewing that she closed the door for the last time on her London flat, took a deep breath and headed for the country. It was only six months before that, that she’d first realised she wanted to leave London at all. Thanks to modern technology – she worked from home as a PR consultant – she could live where she liked. Nothing was keeping her in town except habit. Certainly not men. Her last relationship had gone the way of the others before it – fun while it lasted, but somehow not completely satisfying. She had not, she supposed, met her true soul mate yet, and perhaps now she wasn’t going to. The thought, to her surprise, did not worry her. In fact, she felt a sudden sense of freedom.
She turned one of the bedrooms – the nicest – into an office. It had a view across the wild, tangled garden (a future project, that) and over the hedge towards the fields. She established contact with the rest of the world via phone, fax and modem, and in the evenings began work on the dining room. It was going to be the new kitchen.
It obviously had once been the kitchen of the house, or so she thought. She could see the vestiges there. In the inglenook, behind the electric fire, was the bread oven, a salt box, even the iron upright of the sway which had once held a pot over the fire, all invisible beneath an encrustation of centuries-old soot.
She began on the floral wallpaper, the top layer of about six, pulling it off in great flapping wedges. Then, to tackle the Edwardian brown-painted cupboards, the Fifties light fittings and the damp floor, she decided to call in the help of a local builder. She had already had two quotes when Edwin Fosset appeared.
‘I hear you want some work done.’ He looked down at her gravely from gentle grey eyes. He was tall and thin with a kind, lived-in face, attractive in its way, the kind of face she trusted instinctively. In fact, within seconds she felt she had known him all her life. She found herself showing him inside and went to fetch her sketches.
He looked at them critically. ‘It could be a nice room. No problems as far as I can see. I can get started straight away.’ He shivered. ‘It’s chilly in here. Perhaps I should start by opening up these windows and letting in some sunshine!’
That was one of the problems. The room was extraordinarily cold. And depressing. When she stood in it she could feel all her buoyancy and energy draining out of her, as though someone had pulled a plug in the soles of her feet.
She mentioned it to her first guests, her new neighbours, Bob and Julie, who lived up the lane. They admired the living room and the bedroom, came with her into the kitchen while she made coffee and agreed with her that it was too small, then carried their cups with her into the old dining room. ‘This is such a nice room. Potentially,’ she added.
‘Ah,’ Bob said. ‘Potentially.’
‘And what does that mean?’ Julie said, as she stood looking round. ‘Potentially!’ She echoed his voice. ‘It’s a lovely room! Look at the view across the orchards.’
Roz had her eyes fixed on Bob’s face. ‘Don’t tell me. Someone died in here.’ She tried to make it a joke, but it was a thought that kept on occurring to her with depressing regularity, one that had been suggested by several London friends who, on agreeing to visit at some time in the future and promising to bring food parcels as though there were no Sainsbury’s outside the M25 ring, invariably asked with mock caution if there was a ghost and, if so, was it friendly?
Bob shrugged. ‘I’ve never heard of anyone dying in here. But the Grahams, who you bought it from, never used this room. Betty said it was always cold, even in the summer. One of Jim Fosset’s boys is going to work for you, isn’t he? He would know.’
‘Boy?’ Roz giggled. ‘He must be heading towards forty!’
Bob smiled. ‘But this is a village, Roz. People are defined by generations. And the Fossets have been here hundreds of years. The boys’ grandmother ran the village school, and their great-grandmother was cook up at the hall in the old days. And their great-great grandmother was -?’ He hesitated, glancing at his wife.
‘Don’t tell me. She was a witch?’ Roz looked from one to the other expectantly.
Julie shrugged. ‘Not that I’ve heard. I haven’t any idea what she was. I wonder where your builder fits in. He sounds older than the sons, so he might be the cousin who went off and made good. The one who went to university and is reported, by village gossip, to have made a lot of dosh. If that’s true, why is he back here doing work as a jobbing builder?’
‘I got the impression he is a craftsman,’ Roz put in defensively. ‘Perhaps he likes being a builder.’ She had a sudden depressing vision of her newly-acquired friend leaving her amid piles of hammers and dust-sheets to go and attend to his investments. She was intrigued nevertheless.
She found herself thinking often about Edwin’s strong brown hands as he handled his hammer and shovel. His quiet, reserved charm appealed to her more than that of the more extrovert men who had come and gone in her life up to now. She had to admit she found him very attractive. But she was not in the market for a man. What she wanted was a kitchen.
Only two days later Edwin climbed up the stairs to Roz’s study and tapped on the door as she finished a phone call to New York. ‘Can you come down?’
‘What is it?’ She felt a twinge of anxiety.
‘There’s something I want you to see.’ More than that he would not say, and she had to follow the enigmatically silent figure down the twisting staircase into the dining room where he had been digging up the floor to lay a damp-proof course.
‘You haven’t found a body, have you, Edwin?’ She tried to make it a joke. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to unearth something in here.’
He grinned and his face lightened visibly. ‘No, it’s not a body. Look.’
She peered into the earth and dust. ‘What exactly am I supposed to be looking at?’
He sighed. ‘Look. Here.’ He squatted on his haunches and scraped at the loose soil.
