The kitchen was long – twice the length and more of the front room and fitted with new oak units masterfully made to look as if they were as old as the cottage itself.
‘Jessie was a wonderful cook,’ said Lilian. ‘She baked the most delicious fruit pies. All from the fruits that grew in and around Wychwell: bilberries, wild strawberries and raspberries, blackberries and apples, peaches and plums. Let me show you outside.’
Lilian unlocked the back door and they walked into the garden.
‘Herv hasn’t had time to keep on top of this as well but he has assured me he will make it a priority to sort it out for the next tenant.’
The grass was overgrown, as were the raspberry bushes and brambles that enclosed the garden but that didn’t detract in any way from a loveliness that made Marnie catch her breath and she didn’t really know why. The lawn sloped gently down towards a curling ribbon of stream and there was a bench situated near the bank so one could sit and watch ducks and geese glide past. There was a bridge – one person wide – across to the woodland on the other side, the probable site of Margaret Kytson’s cottage, Marnie recalled from the book. All unspectacular ingredients of a scene, but together they formed something tranquil and beautiful.
‘There is someone I could let this cottage to, but he’s not the right fit so I’ve been thinking about giving him one of the others. You, however, are,’ said Lilian, resting for a few moments on the bench. ‘As soon as we began communicating via the Sisters of Cheesecake, I thought, Marnie would be perfect for Little Raspberries.’
Marnie smiled, but awkwardly. She wasn’t quite sure what Lilian was saying.
‘I know you can’t remember much of the interchange you and I had that first night, but your typing didn’t indicate you were that inebriated, give or take the odd spello,’ said Lilian with a soft smile.
‘Trust me, I was way beyond drun—’ Marnie interrupted.
‘Please, let me finish,’ Lilian interrupted back. ‘You were speaking from the clear, calm eye of some storm happening inside you. A deeply desperate and distressed place. Don’t ask me why I know that Little Raspberries and you are a match because I have no rational explanation. I just do and I don’t tend to ignore my intuition when it shouts. I felt the same when I heard about Jessie Plumpton needing a place and it was the right decision to let her have it.’
Standing facing her, Marnie was struck by how green Lilian’s eyes were. Cat-green, like her own. They went very well with the witch costume. It all added to the bizarreness of the day.
It wasn’t that Marnie wasn’t tempted. It would be luxury to sleep and not be afraid of being awoken by mad Suranna Fox turning up on her doorstep, or to live in a place where she had no chance of bumping into someone she knew from work. But she’d be bored out of her tree living here. She was a doer, not a relaxer. She couldn’t sit in a garden for more than five minutes without having to get out a notepad and scribble down some ideas for how to put Café Caramba coffee in front of an even wider audience of consumers and drive it home to Laurence that he’d been wise to give her a chance at heading up a department.
Laurence.
The name yelled in her brain. Oh lord. What would he have had to say about what had gone on? Not only were two of his workforce involved in an illicit affair, but one of that workforce’s wife had come in and gone all Bruce Lee in front of the whole trading floor. He would be beyond fuming. Could he sack her? Probably not for bonking a fellow executive but he’d find a way of winkling her out of the door. He’d take the man’s side of course and use what had occurred as an excuse not to elevate women to the top positions. She’d done a huge disservice to the sisterhood.
Lilian stood up.
‘If you ever want to get away from the rat race or need somewhere quiet to stay, then come and spend some time in Little Raspberries,’ she said, again linking Marnie’s arm for support.
‘I will,’ said Marnie. ‘Promise.’
‘All is not well behind that smile of yours, Marnie Salt,’ said Lilian, without missing a step. ‘You can’t fool me.’
They walked back through the cottage and whilst Lilian locked the back door, Marnie poked her head into the spacious larder. Mrs McMaid used to have one that led off from her kitchen, stocked to the gills with wonderful things that she hadn’t seen before – clumpy brown sugar and sticky green angelica, home-made butter with salt crystals in it and clotted cream with its rough, crusty top.
‘There’s someone else I’d like you to meet,’ said Lilian, as they wended back to the centre of the festivities, though she had to take a breather outside the post office. She was old before her time, thought Marnie with a sad inner sigh. They headed towards a road that Marnie presumed wound its way up to the manor house. Kytson Hill, a pointy sign indicated. A pale-green cottage stood back from it. They had to bend under the low-hanging boughs of a large apple tree in the front garden to continue down the path. Before Lilian’s hand touched on the handle of the door, it opened and an old lady emerged, wearing a long black dress and a cape, with her hair in twin white buns by her ears. She looked like a negative of Princess Leia’s grandma.
Lilian greeted her warmly. ‘Emelie, come and meet Marnie.’
‘I was just on my way,’ said Emelie, shutting the door behind her. She held her hand out towards Marnie. ‘I’ve heard so much about you from Lilian.’
‘All good, I hope,’ Marnie smiled back at the sweet-faced Emelie.
‘All very good,’ said Emelie, nodding her head.
‘How are you today, my dear?’ asked Lilian, giving her friend a kiss on her cheek.
‘I’m fine. More to the point, how are you?’ asked Emelie. ‘You look pale.’ She reached up and touched Lilian’s face gently in the manner of someone who was very fond of her.
‘It’s the black, sucks all the colour out of your skin,’ said Lilian, waving away any inference that she could be less than well. She took Emelie’s arm. For all her age, the older lady was steadier on her feet than her friend.
‘Have many people arrived?’ asked Emelie, a soft lilt to her words, Marnie noticed, and the hint of a speech impairment in the way she pronounced her ‘r’s.
‘The usual piddling amount,’ sniffed Lilian.
‘Ah, that’s a shame. But, so long as the May Queen is crowned to protect us all, it doesn’t matter how many people witness it.’ Emelie patted Lilian’s hand and smiled at her. It sounded to Marnie as if they all needed protecting from Titus Sutton more than from a long-dead witch.
They went back down the hill to the green where a small crowd, but a crowd nevertheless, was gathered now. Three children were holding the ribbons attached to the maypole and were running around it, weaving the strands into a tangle, then running the opposite way to unravel them. A woman was adjusting the flowers in the May Queen’s hair, personal-stylist-style.
‘Lionel, come and meet my friend Marnie.’ The vicar was duly summoned over.
‘Ah, this is your famous Marnie. We’ve met, sort of,’ he said, holding out his hand and Marnie’s joined it in a firm shake. ‘But nice to meet you formally.’ He had taken out the tooth plate and his real teeth were even and displayed beautifully as he smiled.