A tall, solid-built man was lumbering towards them, the human equivalent of a Shire horse. He doffed the floppy hat he was wearing as he neared them and Marnie wondered if he was in character or if that was standard practice. He looked like the sort of person who would be polite and reverential.
‘Ah, Derek, come and meet my new friend,’ said Lilian. ‘Marnie, this is Derek Price, our churchwarden. Derek, this is Marnie. We met on the internet talking about cheesecakes.’
Derek smiled and it was an awful sight because he too was wearing the false cover over his teeth. Lilian chuckled. ‘You look quite the part, Derek.’
‘Everyone seems to be moaning about these teeth things, but I find mine surprisingly comfortable,’ he said, grinning again and talking perfectly.
‘Where’s Una?’ asked Lilian, looking around.
‘Oh, she’s having a lie down with a migraine,’ replied Derek, with an accompanying sigh. ‘I said I’d go and wake her up before the crowning. She doesn’t take the sun too well. Or the heat. Or the cold. Or the rain.’
‘No,’ was all Lilian said to that with a polite, but strained, smile. ‘Well, we’ll see you in a little while then, Derek. You and Una.’
Marnie noticed the stave of lines that were carved into his forehead. They looked like a musical score.
‘We’ll be there, don’t you worry.’
‘Poor Derek,’ said Lilian, when he was – just – out of earshot. ‘His wife is a harridan. It’s her that’s put the slump in that man’s shoulders and all those grooves in his forehead. He’s such a gentle soul, too.’
Were there any equal pairings in the world, thought Marnie as they walked on. She could be forgiven for thinking there weren’t, based on her own experiences.
‘You see that house over there,’ Lilian stretched her long arm out towards a very grand three-storey building with a pale yellow façade. ‘That is the Lemon Villa where Titus Sutton and his wife Hilary live. The very very very distant cousins who believe that when I shuffle off this mortal coil, Wychwell will be theirs. They are my only living relatives, you see.’
Lilian said that in the same way that Marnie admitted Gabrielle was her family.
‘I inherited Wychwell when I was thirty-eight and I didn’t want it, I don’t mind telling you that. I was more than happy to let Titus Sutton carry on running the estate.’ She sighed then, and the sound seemed to come from a place deep inside her. ‘I didn’t fall in love with Wychwell until years after I owned it, Marnie. I didn’t realise until it was too late how much it had been neglected. Half the properties are empty, most are in disrepair, four need completely rebuilding from the foundations up.’
Marnie noticed that there was no flaky paint on the Lemon Villa windows, no patches on the roof where tiles were missing.
‘I’m not good with accounts and even if I were I doubt I could have found in the ledgers where it all went wrong. Titus is very . . .’ she tapped her lip as she hunted around in her head for the right word, ‘. . . shrewd. It all looks perfectly above board, but I know it can’t be.’
‘You aren’t still letting him handle your finances if you feel like that, are you?’ asked Marnie.
‘I have no choice. Someone has to do them and he’s the only one who can understand his own bloody writing,’ said Lilian. ‘My father and Gladwyn Sutton pissed in the same pot, as they say. Old boys from the same school. Father couldn’t be bothered with paperwork and he paid Gladwyn handsomely to deal with it all for him. Then when Gladwyn died, his son stepped seamlessly into his shoes. I, as a mere woman, had no say in the matter. I’d go as far as to say my father loved him, as much as a man without a heart could love anyone. Titus was the son he never had.’
The next two cottages were joined together, the second obviously empty, the first covered in just-budding honeysuckle.
‘This is where my housekeeper lives.’ It was really quite substantial yet looked tiny when compared with its huge yellow neighbour. The sign at the side of the door said that this was The Nectarines. ‘Cilla Oldroyd,’ Lilian went on. ‘Her husband Griff used to be the estate groundsman but he retired early after a stroke. He’s getting better, but slowly. Their daughter Zoe helps her mother and their son Johnny is the assistant to my present groundsman, Herv. Johnny is the festival fool today, prancing around in a horse costume. You’ll have met Herv at the gate, the rather striking man who looks as if he’s just walked off a Viking longboat.’
Marnie couldn’t remember the man with the long blonde hair looking anything like a Viking. More like a young Hagrid that had fallen into a vat of peroxide and hard times. Then again her attention had been mostly fixed on those horrible teeth which she now gathered were (at least she hoped they were for his sake) false.
‘Lovely family, the Oldroyds,’ Lilian was saying. ‘You’ll like them. And Herv. Oh my, you will like Herv. Our May Queen is quite besotted by him.’
‘The woman in the green cape?’
‘The very one,’ answered Lilian. ‘Ruby Sweetman. She’s a teacher in Kettlebottom. She lives with her mother in Quince Cottage. Come, Marnie, I’ll show you.’
They walked past a couple more cottages, obviously derelict from their half-absent roofs and glassless windows.
‘I’ve never had a quince in my life,’ Marnie admitted, looking at the cottage, the epitome of twee, complete with fishing gnomes by the door, a metal fairy wind-chime hanging from the porch roof and pink lacy curtains at the windows – very next-door-Melissa style. ‘I’ve always wondered what they tasted like.’
‘You’d think they’d be sweet, wouldn’t you,’ said Lilian and then wagged her finger, ‘but not all fruits are, Marnie. Not all fruits are at all.’
Next to Quince Cottage was a shop with a rustic sign over the front door. Plum Corner Post Office. Even though it wasn’t on a corner. Marnie was having twee overload. Even Snow White would have thrown up at all this schmaltz. Next to this – and on the real corner – was a pub: The Wych Arms, complete with thatched roof and magpie timbering.
‘Nearly there,’ said Lilian, guiding her down a short potholed lane serving a single building. ‘I do so want you to like it. There. What do you think?’
It was a house, thought Marnie as they drew level to it. A small stone house with a dark pink door and bell-shaped pink flowers growing up the crumbly walls. The shabby window frames were also painted dark pink, though much of it had flaked off. The roof was intact but buckled in the middle, as if a giant had sat on it. Marnie couldn’t understand why Lilian was so keen to show it to her.
‘Come inside,’ said Lilian, reaching into a pocket of her black dress for the keys. She opened the door and walked in, knocking her witch’s hat off because the doorway wasn’t full size. Marnie followed and a smell of unlived-in damp greeted her nostrils.
‘Pongs a bit,’ said Lilian. ‘But then it has been empty for nearly a year.’
There was a sofa covered over with a plastic sheet and various pieces of dark wooden furniture dotted around the snug front room.
‘I had it refurbished for Jessie only months before she died. Poor dear was delighted but barely had the chance to enjoy it. She’d never had a TV in her life before that. She developed quite a thing for Craig Revel-Horwood. Look at the kitchen, Marnie.’