‘She’s done something illegal, hasn’t she?’ he challenged his father. ‘That’s the only explanation that makes any sense at all.’
‘I honestly don’t know, son. And that’s the last I’m going to say on the subject.’ Digby drained his glass of port and defiantly poured another one.
Drew and Timmy made it home by eight-fifteen, when Stephanie was upstairs at the front window watching out for their headlights. They brought gusts of the outside world, disturbing the quiet and introducing topics that fitted awkwardly with the Christmas atmosphere. And yet none of the females in the family could resist asking endless questions, to which the males were more than happy to respond. An hour flew by, with them all flopped around the sitting room with the fire blazing up. Thea had made a rich, creamy soup from parsnips and onions and pieces of ham. ‘Unorthodox but delicious,’ said Drew approvingly.
‘We’ll be short of parsnips tomorrow,’ Thea warned. ‘But they do make wonderful soup.’
They then progressed to mulled wine and mince pies, as promised.
Jessica said little, watching the faces and trying to assess the implications of his father’s death for Drew’s marriage. Thea’s own father had died a few years ago, leading to a slow but steady fracturing of the remaining family group. The siblings saw much less of each other than they had when the patriarch had organised get-togethers. His widow seemed much less interested in maintaining the Johnstones as a unit.
When invited to give a summary of the visit, Drew grimaced. ‘She was completely different from how I remember her,’ he began. ‘She belongs to a choir which occupies half her time, volunteers all over the place, drives an electric car that cost a fortune and has a huge dog.’
‘The dog’s a monster,’ said Timmy with a shudder. ‘It chased me.’
‘You shouldn’t have run away,’ said his father, with scant sympathy. ‘It only wanted to play.’
‘You told me that Tim thought it was wonderful, when you phoned,’ Thea reminded him.
‘He did at first. But it has an unreliable temper. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have hurt him, all the same.’
‘So your mother’s all right?’ said Thea. ‘I mean, she doesn’t sound prostrated with grief.’
Drew paused. ‘No, she’s not at all prostrated. I got the impression they’d been living very separate lives for quite some time. It turns out he got a hefty windfall from the PPI thing – got some agency to dig it all out, and ended up with nearly forty thousand. Claimed he was “financially naive” and had believed all the stories he was told about needing to be insured. Spent most of it on the car. My mother’s gone astonishingly green, which is why she wants him to have a natural burial.’
Which got them onto the logistics of what was going to happen next. Drew, it turned out, had wasted no time in contacting a local green burial ground and fixing up a funeral for the coming Friday. ‘He’s having a cardboard coffin, and the choir are coming to sing at the graveside,’ he added.
‘In a snowstorm, most likely,’ said Thea. ‘Doesn’t it snow all winter up there?’
‘Not quite. We checked the long-term forecast and it looks reasonably mild all week.’
‘And then what?’
‘She wants to come and meet you and see Stephanie and mend bridges. She’s pencilled in 4th January. And she’s going to bring the dog.’
Timmy shuddered again, but Stephanie found herself curious to meet the animal. It couldn’t be entirely terrible if it had an old lady as an owner, she decided.
‘How long is she proposing to stay?’
‘Four days. Apparently there’s a concert on the 9th she has to be there for, with a rehearsal the previous day.’
‘Long way to come in an electric car,’ said Jessica. ‘Won’t it run out of power before it gets halfway?’
‘She’s coming by train. We’ve got to meet her in Oxford, probably. She can get a direct line to there.’
Thea made a soft puffing sound of indignation, but said nothing. Stephanie was half asleep, her mind forming pictures of a strange grandmother setting stones on top of each other in an effort to mend a bridge, with a massive dog at her side.
‘She sounds very organised,’ said Jessica neutrally.
‘She made Dad cut up logs,’ said Timmy unexpectedly. ‘She’s got a big, fancy woodburner, twice the size of this one.’
‘Are they green?’ wondered Thea. ‘I thought we weren’t meant to burn things any more.’
‘Apparently they’re fine if they’ve got all the latest attachments to control the emissions. And I wasn’t cutting the logs up, I was splitting them. It’s actually very satisfying,’ said Drew. ‘She’s got an acre of land, with lots of trees. She uses dead bits for firewood mostly, but sometimes there’s a big branch to lop off …’ he tailed away, suddenly aware that nobody really wanted to hear about his mother’s fuel arrangements.
‘An acre of land?’ Thea echoed, picking up the only interesting detail. ‘Maybe she should start her own burial ground, then?’
‘I don’t think so. Somebody’s got two horses on it at the moment. There’s quite a nice shelter in one corner.’
‘You obviously got the guided tour. What about the house?’
‘I think that’s enough for this evening, don’t you?’ said Drew, noticing his somnolent children. ‘It’s probably going to be an early start tomorrow.’
‘The later they go now, the longer they’ll sleep in the morning,’ said Thea optimistically. ‘You do hear of kids bouncing on their parents’ bed at 4 a.m.’
‘Not these two. I’ve got them better trained than that.’
‘And not me, either,’ said Jessica. ‘I always had to wait until seven. It was torture.’
‘Well, the turkey should go in by nine. Otherwise I don’t think I’ve got any deadlines,’ said Thea. ‘We can start on the presents after breakfast.’
Stephanie’s eyes flew open. ‘Presents! We haven’t brought
