‘You could hardly tell I was pregnant, I was lucky,’ Jasmine smoothed her hand over her almost flat stomach. ‘I was four months in before I even had a clue she was on her way.’
Her mother screaming at her. ‘How could you not know?’
‘She’s beautiful,’ Marnie said, speaking to drown that voice in her head.
‘Isn’t she?’ said Dr Court.
‘Two pushes and a shove and she was out too,’ said Jasmine. ‘I didn’t even have time for gas and air.’
Gabrielle sobbing. ‘I’m glad it hurt. I’m glad you needed stitches. They should have sewed it up completely then you couldn’t ruin anyone else’s life, you bitch.’
The baby smelt of talcum, milk and something else that Marnie couldn’t define. Something that drifted up her nostril and found the place in her brain that recognised it and remembered.
Marnie felt the baby’s mouth gently butt against her shoulder. She placed her cheek next to her head, soaking up the warmth, the scent, the fragility, the life. It was sweet and unbearable and too much.
‘I think she might be hungry,’ Marnie said.
‘I’ve just fed the little madam,’ Jasmine said with a tut of joyful exasperation. ‘Come on, you.’ She picked Sophia from Marnie’s shoulder. The baby was wearing a white Babygro, soft as newly fallen snow. Her small fist was now in her mouth and her dark blue eyes were fixed on Marnie from over her mother’s shoulder as she stepped into the cottage. The sight grew suddenly painful.
‘Congratulations, she’s lovely,’ Marnie smiled and walked quickly away from the Court family before they wondered why her eyes were wet with tears.
Her head swung around to Herv’s cottage as she was about to pass it, looking for signs of life. Looking for a woman wearing his shirt opening the bedroom curtains, but they were closed. She wondered if he was still sleeping or still out. Her damned heart was incorrigible. She didn’t need Herv Gunnarsen wafting his Norwegian pheromones her way and making her second-guess what might or might not be going on in his life.
Little Apples was one of the prettiest cottages in Wychwell, if one of the smallest, with very thick stone walls and a roof that had been put on in pre-spirit level days. The windows were tiny, but there were a lot of them. She knocked on Emelie’s green door and heard a ‘come in’ from the other side of it. Tentatively she opened it a sliver but stayed on the doorstep. ‘It’s me, Marnie,’ she called.
‘I said, come in,’ ordered Emelie cheerfully.
Marnie walked in, after wiping her feet on the doormat. A damp smell met her nose first before the scent of freesias, clustered in a pot on the telephone table by the door. Emelie was pulling a sheet of paper out of an old-fashioned typewriter which sat on a table at one end of her lounge. She balled the paper in her hands.
‘The words won’t come to me at all,’ she said, shaking her head.
She had her lovely hair plaited over the top of her head today and was wearing a white blouse gathered at the neck and a long heavily flowered skirt. She looked as if she had climbed down from an alp.
‘I wondered if you were up for showing me where those strawberries were,’ said Marnie. ‘But if you’re busy . . .’
‘No, I’m not busy. I can’t think straight today – ’ she tapped the side of her head ‘ – I’m getting old.’ Then she laughed as she launched the paper snowball at a mesh bin full of others, but it missed. Emelie bent to pick it up and stalled halfway with stiffness.
‘I’ll get it for you,’ said Marnie.
‘Thank you,’ replied Emelie. ‘Today my head and my body are united in defeating me. I’ll go and get my boots. A walk and a stretch will do me good.’ She pointed towards Marnie’s trainers. ‘Your shoes will get ruined in the mud. You can borrow a pair of my wellingtons if you’re a size three or smaller.’
‘Four and a half,’ said Marnie. ‘It doesn’t matter, they’re old ones.’
Marnie picked up the paper ball and noticed a clutch of words on it as she transferred it to the bin: illicit, forbidden, love.
‘You like writing then?’ she asked.
‘Poetry mainly,’ nodded Emelie, slipping her foot into an ankle boot. ‘But I’ve been working on something else for a while now. It’s a secret,’ and she winked.
‘Sounds intriguing.’
‘All will be revealed one day.’
Marnie noticed on her bookshelf there were the three Country Manors sitting alongside a collection of importantlooking hardbacks. She wondered how many more shelves in Wychwell held copies of that trilogy.
‘Do you have anything to collect the strawberries in?’ asked Emelie.
‘I’ve got a carrier bag in my pocket,’ replied Marnie.
‘Take a basket,’ said Emelie, pointing into her kitchen where there were three woven wicker shoppers of differing sizes hanging from nails in the beams. ‘It’s nicer to collect fruit in baskets, it doesn’t get spoilt as much.’
‘Thank you again’ said Marnie, reaching up and unhooking the smallest. She put it over her arm and felt instantly like a country girl.
‘Aren’t you going to lock your door?’ asked Marnie, when she and Emelie walked outside.
‘What for? Hardly anyone locks their doors in Wychwell. It’s one of the advantages of living behind the times,’ chuckled the old lady.
The lip of the woods was just behind Little Apples and Marnie knew why Emelie had her sturdy boots on. There was a lot of mud.
‘The rain comes down the hill and settles here,’ explained Emelie as Marnie tried to negotiate the sludge, hopping between islands of more solid ground. ‘It’s got worse the last couple of years. Climate change I expect, that’s what everyone seems to blame for everything these days.’
The woods were very pretty, Marnie found. They reminded her of the forest in her favourite childhood book, The Enchanted Wood, where the trees were darker than they should be and whispered ‘Wisha-wisha-wisha’ to each other. Gabrielle had scribbled all over her book but Marnie had been disciplined for the defacing. Then after she’d dobbed her sister in, she’d been put on the naughty step for telling tales – she could never win.
‘In April the woods are like a carpet of violet with the bluebells,’ said Emelie, stepping over the tree roots as surefooted as a goat. ‘And in autumn it is like walking in gold.’
Everything was eerily still in the woods. Marnie felt as if she were being watched.
‘There are owls in here at night,’ said Emelie. ‘And I’ve seen a deer. A beautiful fellow with fine antlers.’
‘Do the woods belong to the estate as well?’ asked Marnie.
‘Oh yes.’ Emelie sighed. ‘You know, I hope the new owner doesn’t want to cut down trees to make Wychwell bigger.’
‘Surely not,’ said Marnie. ‘It’s big enough.’
‘I’m glad to hear you say that. Some people think that you’re the new owner, Marnie, and all this talk of a manager is a smokescreen.’ Emelie’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
‘That’s boll— . . . rubbish,’ Marnie threw back.
‘Your ears must have been burning considerably last night. I went for my dinner with Lionel in the Wych Arms. The air was quite thick with the mention of your name.’ She had an impish light dancing in her eyes. ‘And I did hear about Derek leaving Una.’