In the woods resided a widow, Margaret Kytson. Some in the village, fearing the increasingly psychotic and paranoid Dearman might point the finger of blame at them, suggested that Margaret could be a witch stirring up evil. Indeed, Margaret grew medicinal herbs to trade for goods and was said to have a black cat. The villagers arrived mob-handed at Margaret Kytson’s cottage and found no cat but a newborn baby. In a kangaroo court, she was found to be guilty of witchcraft against the Lord of the Manor and sentenced to be thrown, along with her cat, down her own well which tapped into a natural spring. When no cat was found, Dearman was led to believe the cat was changed into the child to disguise it and invoke sympathy. Upon death the cat would show its bones, he was told.
As Margaret and the crying child were lowered into the well, she cursed the villagers and said that no one who bore the Dearman name would ever know happiness. The well was immediately demolished and covered over to seal in the bad luck and Margaret’s cottage was burnt to the ground.
Six months later, Elizabeth Dearman gave birth to a healthy son and Edward knew that he had done the right thing in executing the witch and the child. As he rode into the village with his newborn to show the villagers his heir, his horse bolted and threw them to the ground, killing them both instantly.
Fearing the wrath of Margaret, the village (called Aldwell originally) was renamed Wychwell, in an effort, maybe, to appease her spirit. The well still exists somewhere in the woods and though the exact location cannot be traced, it is thought to be somewhere to the south west of the village (see Chapter on Little Raspberries).
Elizabeth married Edward’s younger brother John, and had five children by him: Henry, William, James, Nicholas and Anne. By adulthood only James and Anne were still alive. James had married Catherine Blount who was barren. Desperate for an heir, it is said that he impregnated his own sister and he and Catherine raised the issue as their own. Anne, who was unmarried, was declared mad when she had safely delivered twin boys and interred in Bedlam asylum.
Flipping heck, thought Marnie, reading the first pages of the book which Lilian had given her that afternoon. She was home by herself waiting for a delivery from Ping Pong’s Chinese takeaway in Eccleshall Road. Justin had sent her a cheeky text saying that he wished he were snuggled up in bed with her instead of in the midst of people he couldn’t stand and that his son had broken out in spots, which was probably the onset of chickenpox. She wasn’t stupid, she knew he was laying the foundations of why the children wouldn’t be getting to know about the divorce this weekend. She ached to be with Justin openly and completely and though he informed her of all the tiny steps he and his wife were taking to dissolve their marriage, she was starting to question whether they were just walking on the spot. But then again, she had never been in a relationship with anyone who had children before. She wondered if Gwyneth and Chris had taken this long.
There was an old adage that you could fool everyone else, but not yourself; but it was rubbish because Marnie was very good at doing exactly that. She had learned to rationalise away anything that threatened to bash her in the heart, that held up a pin to those little bubbles of tenuous delight that came her way so rarely. The skill was born from some internal self-preservational part that wanted to see her happy, but this frustrating situation with Justin had gone on for so long now that it was really contesting her powers of self-delusion. Her brain was starting to ask itself some awkward questions and despite all the expert assurances Justin gave her, she was finding it harder and harder to keep convincing herself that she wasn’t being spun a very elaborate yarn.
Angrily, she picked up her mobile and replied to Justin’s message in emphatic capitals:
I DONT THINK THIS IS WORKING. LET’S CALL IT A DAY.
Her finger hovered over the send arrow. She imagined him falling into a tailspin on receiving it. Then she imagined him replying with a cool, YEAH, WAS THINKING THE SAME.
She flew into a panic and deleted the text. What on earth was she doing? He’d told her he knew that this wasn’t a traditional courtship but she had to trust him. He was under a lot of pressure. She should give him the benefit of the doubt. She’d promised she would. Not all men were bastards.
The doorbell rang and just for a second, her heart gave an excited little kick that it might be Justin surprising her after all. But it wasn’t. It was her chicken and mushroom Cantonese-style arriving from Ping Pong’s.
Chapter 7
Two more weeks passed with Marnie still in limbo. She’d been right, of course. The children still didn’t know that Justin and Suranna were separating because the little boy had been quite ill with chickenpox, which he kindly then passed on to his sister and you couldn’t drop a bombshell of that magnitude into the laps of poorly children, could you?
On the Wednesday of that week, Marnie walked into the massive atrium of Café Caramba and immediately felt something strange in the air, something amiss, something not quite right. It was nothing she could put her finger on: the snooty receptionist ignored her as per usual, there was the regular buzz as people rushed past her on the escalator to go to one of the two floors above, either because they were late or keen; but it was present like a gas in the air, waiting for the moment to jump out of the cupboard dressed like a clown to scare her half to death. Or maybe it was the warm wind of change for the best, she thought hopefully. They couldn’t carry on treading water for ever.
She got off the escalator and, as always, made a right through the first set of double doors where the Product Development team were having their usual morning huddle. She said a cheerful good morning to Sweaty Andrew, who replied a cheerful good morning to her boobs. Then she walked past Justin Fox’s office, giving him only a cursory glance, which belied the thump in her heart. Oh, how she wanted to stop and flash her secret smile to him that said, ‘Remember what my lips were doing to you yesterday afternoon on the back seat of my car?’ All the more reason to keep her attention fixed forward. The affair had remained secret for almost two months and that was because they’d never let their guard slip. Careless talk costs lives, as they said in the war, adapted to her own version: stupid mistakes result in all sorts of crap.
Straight on through Merchandising, then a right into her own department. Her mood immediately sank to find that Elena was back at her desk after a week and a half off with ‘women’s complaints’. Starved of a counterpart with whom to gossip, Vicky had got on with her work and kept her head down.
‘Nice to have you back, Elena,’ Marnie lied sweetly.
‘Good to be back.’ Elena’s reciprocating smile was as false as her natural pout.
In her bag, Marnie’s phone bleeped. She pulled it out to see a reminder flash up for the Wychwell May Day fair on Sunday. Marnie winced guiltily. She wouldn’t be there, despite giving Lilian the impression she might. The weather forecast was brilliant for the weekend and she had decided to take the bull by the horns and insist that Justin spend Saturday with her moseying around the villages of Derbyshire and then they stay in a hotel overnight so she could – at last – wake up with him the next morning, which happened to be her thirty-second birthday. She’d found a beautiful olde worlde hotel off the beaten track with a suite that had a huge four-poster bed and a hot tub for two on a private patio. It hadn’t been cheap but it would be worth every penny.