‘Oh, right, er . . . yes, yes. That would be lovely. What time?’
‘Twelve. Can I tell her that would be okay?’
‘Yes. I’ll be there,’ said Marnie, catching sight of a figure walking past the end of the lane – the woman who had been adjusting Ruby’s hair at the May Day fair. Her mother, Kay, presumably. Bloody marvellous.
‘Good.’
‘Thank you . . . Herv.’ God, his eyes were ridiculously blue and they were trained very intently on her.
‘Oh and Velkommen til landsbyen, as we say in Norway. Welcome to the village.’
He really did have a nice smile. She felt something inside her chest respond to the curve of his lips and wanted to slap it.
‘Oh, cheers.’
‘A pleasure.’
‘Bye then.’
She shut the door on him, literally and figuratively. No, she was not going to give any man an inch for him to take a mile for a very long time – possibly ever. Not even a paragon of virtue such as Herv Gunnarsen. Lilian was right though, because if the way he had been looking at her was any indication, he had definitely taken a shine to her. His pupils had been so dilated that she could have climbed in them and cadged a lift up to the manor. Whilst she stayed away from men, her life was uncomplicated and stable. Let them in and chaos ensued. Message received and understood. Finally.
She went upstairs to wash the ‘sugar pillow’ properly off her face, wondering why Lilian had sent Herv down to ask her in person and hadn’t just phoned herself. The minx.
Marnie called in at the shop on her way to the manor for a bottle of wine, because she didn’t want to turn up empty-handed. A large woman with ankles so fat they looked as if the skin was melting over her shoes was talking in a low voice with another woman standing behind the counter – her second viewing of Kay Sweetman that day. Their conversation snapped off as soon as Marnie entered so it wasn’t difficult to guess what the subject matter had been, especially as the last words she heard were ‘. . . feet under the table’.
Marnie browsed around the small wine section whilst the air crackled with a silence so pregnant, it was calling out for gas and air. Ankle woman had finished shopping but she wasn’t going anywhere, probably because she couldn’t wait for Marnie to leave so they could carry on with their theories of why she was staying in Wychwell, and what Herv Gunnarsen was doing on her doorstep this morning.
Marnie lingered for far longer than she needed to out of mischief, forcing the two women to strike up a staged conversation to fill the silence.
‘Are you feeling all right now, Una? Derek said you had another one of your migraines at the weekend,’ asked Kay.
‘Yes. All that drum banging didn’t help. And he can’t do anything without making a noise. He’s like a carthorse. When he dusts it registers on the Richter scale.’
Ah. Una Price. The woman who put the mass of frown lines on lumbering Derek’s face. So that’s who ankle woman was.
Marnie eventually approached the till, feeling Una’s eyes sliding up and down her.
‘That’ll be eight pounds ninety-nine,’ said Kay with a shop smile that looked more like a grimace. It wasn’t hard to see who Ruby had inherited her string-thin, sneery lips from. Marnie slowly took the purse out of her bag, giving the questions time to rev up. She could feel them pushing at the starting gates in the women’s throats. When none were forthcoming, she turned to Una, looked her straight in the eye, smiled and said,
‘Phase Eight and Zara.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Una appeared puzzled.
‘You were staring. I presumed you were curious where my clothes came from: Phase Eight top and my jeans are from Zara.’
‘I wasn’t . . .’
‘Was it my hair? Leeds then – Russell Eaton. Or my shoes – Office. Or was it my make-up? Clinique foundation. It’s very good. This one is Vanilla.’
Una was flustered then, her cheeks started loading with pink.
Kay fumbled in the till for the change and dropped a pound coin on the floor.
Marnie stared silently at Una who clearly wasn’t used to face to face confrontation, preferring to operate behind people’s backs. Say what you like about Café Caramba, but they didn’t half send you on some really useful psychological tactic courses. It was amazing what havoc an intense gaze could cause. Equivalent of a laser gun when used properly.
Kay rose up from behind the counter and put the money into Marnie’s waiting hand.
‘Thank you,’ Marnie said, smile fixed on with superglue. She walked out of the shop with a swagger in her step and knew that she’d given the two women enough to chatter about for the rest of the day probably. You didn’t get that in a town corner shop, Marnie giggled to herself.
A man was watering the cheerful hanging baskets that hung at either side of the pub door. As soon as he spotted Marnie, he climbed down from the ladder and walked towards her, holding out a meaty paw.
‘Hello, we haven’t met,’ he said. ‘I’m David Parselow and you must be Marnie.’
He looked more like a butcher than a publican, thought Marnie, with his stout physique and fuzzy red sideburns.
‘I am. Nice to meet you, David.’
‘I heard that the vicar has been trying to bribe you with his bilberries,’ he grinned.
‘Oh the wine, you mean,’ said Marnie, after a moment’s confusion.
‘Don’t let yourself get acclimatised to his rot. I’ll leave you a bottle of my rhubarb and ginger on your doorstep later so you can try some proper stuff,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ said Marnie. ‘That’s very kind.’
He looked with disdain at the bottle in her hand, ‘I tell you, you’ll never drink that shop-bought stuff again.’
‘I shall look forward to being converted,’ Marnie replied.
As she walked past the green, she mused how strange it was that she liked some people on sight and usually got that sort of judgement right. It was when she fancied people that she got it so wrong.
Johnny Oldroyd was cutting the grass on the green with a drive-on petrol mower. He was wearing headphones and his mouth was moving as if singing to a track. He looked at total peace working in the sunshine as if he was content that Wychwell was the extent of his world and he wasn’t bothered about anything beyond those collapsed village walls.
She passed Emelie coming out of her sweet little cottage with a parcel as she walked up the hill towards the manor. Emelie was delighted she’d come to stay, she said, because Lilian was over the moon. Made a change to have a positive effect on someone, thought Marnie. More intoxicating than Lionel’s bilberry wine. When she reached the manor, Herv was on his knees at the side of the porch, weeding. He even looked tall in that position.
‘Hello again,’ she said, wondering if Kay Sweetman had a pair of binoculars trained on her ready to report back to her daughter.
‘Hello.’ He took an exaggerated look at his watch. ‘You’re late.’
‘I’ve been socialising with my fellow villagers,’ Marnie replied, not stopping to chat. ‘Enjoy the sunshine.’
‘Marnie.’ He called her name and when she turned, she found him standing. His body language suggested that he wanted to tell her something in confidence.