‘Yes, because of you. Well, I’ll tell you this for nothing, lady. I won’t have my daughter depressed. You stay away from Herv and stop coming between them.’ Kay’s finger was exercising so much it was gaining muscle.
That was it, Marnie decided. No more Mr Nice Guy. She was an adult now. And self-employed. She didn’t have to shut up and take any crap from anyone. She didn’t have to bite her tongue for fear of getting sacked. She didn’t have to stand the blame for fear of the naughty step or slapped legs. All the good that the strawberry-picking and slug-laughing and sunshine-sleep had done her today had been dashed away with a single wipe from Kay bloody Sweetman.
‘Shall I tell you something, Mrs Sweetman,’ Marnie got up slowly from the bench, her voice controlled, hinting at contrition. Kay Sweetman was a tall woman so Marnie still had to look up at her when she was fully on her feet. She smiled, giving no hint of the tirade to come. ‘If I want to talk to Herv Gunnarsen, then I will. If I want to snog Herv Gunnarsen till his lips fall off, then I will, subject to his compliance of course. And if I want to move Herv Gunnarsen into my house and have naked orgies with him and invite half of Skipperstone along to watch, then I will.’ Her voice was now at full volume. ‘How dare you walk into my home and lay down your laws, and if your twenty-nine-year-old daughter’s nose is put out of joint because the man she fancies doesn’t fancy her back then tough tits. Tell her to grow up and move on. Now get out of my house before I grab you by your scrawny neck and throw you out.’
Marnie registered the expression of horror on Kay Sweetman’s face. She’d taken the threat as a real one that would very likely be implemented – and she was right to. Marnie knew that she could look convincingly murderous because her mother had once told her that she was genuinely frightened of what she could be capable of, which had led her to the conclusion that her true parentage must be right at the business end of the dodgy scale.
Kay Sweetman began to scuttle back to the house, with Marnie in close pursuit behind her to make sure she went. It was as they walked through the kitchen that Marnie realised Kay would have seen the stack of flat-pack Tea Lady Bakery boxes in the corner. It didn’t help her mood.
When Kay was finally out of the house, Marnie called after her in a calm voice that belied her inner turbulence, ‘Thank you for coming. Don’t do it again.’
‘Not hard to work out why Herv Gunnarsen is sucking up to you and it’s nothing to do with fancying you,’ Kay threw back at her.
‘Goodbye, Mrs Sweetman.’
Marnie shut the door, none too softly. She had no idea what Kay meant, nor was she going to ask her, but still the words wouldn’t quite be as easily dismissed as the woman herself had been.
Chapter 31
Kay’s invasion of Little Raspberries totally ruined Marnie’s weekend. She had a dream that night riddled with vivid images of Titus and Kay hiding in her house, watching everything she did and then reporting it all back to her mother. Marnie woke up stressed and cross very early the next morning and decided that she might as well channel that black energy into compiling the first major report for Mr Wemyss to pass on to the new owner of Wychwell.
Based on what rental properties were going for in the Dales, she’d worked out what the Wychwell locals would now be paying if they hadn’t been so heavily subsidised. But as much as she would have liked to have slapped the standard market prices on people like Kay Sweetman, she knew that Lilian wouldn’t have wanted her to do that. The new rental system she’d come up with reflected the estate’s loyalty to them without being a walkover.
Considering the price would include all their utilities and maintenance, they really couldn’t complain. Marnie wondered, though, if the present residents did know that any maintenance work on their homes was part of their estate’s pledge to them, apart from the Suttons of course, who had taken full advantage of that perk. Judging by the state of some of the brickwork and windows, she thought they might not.
Marnie also suggested that the four derelict cottages be restored and rented out too. On the records they weren’t named after fruits like the others, but had their pre-Lilian names: Ironhall, Tin Cottage. Winter House, Summermoor. She asked that the villagers be given first option to rent any of the habitable cottages at the ‘special rate’. Johnny and Zoe Oldroyd and Ruby in particular, because it might do her good to put a little distance between herself and a mother who still treated her as if she were six. All remaining empty cottages would be offered to people further afield and used for holiday lets, at full price. More people in the village should increase the footfall into the shop and the pub and help their businesses so they wouldn’t need the estate funds propping them up as they had been doing.
She typed all this up and emailed it to Mr Wemyss so that he could forward it to the new owner. After her altercation with Kay, she was ready to let it ripple out towards the villagers that she wasn’t to be messed with.
Rumbles of thunder began in the early afternoon. The sky started to blacken by the second, the clouds grew pregnant with rain. They were in for some serious showers, but Marnie needed to go out for brown sugar. She could have got away with white, but she was a perfectionist and brown sugar was far superior in a toffee apple crumble topping, giving it a chewiness that a white version wouldn’t. It had just started to spit when she set off for the supermarket, heavy warm drops that the grass and the stream would welcome with open arms, she imagined.
There was a Tea Lady in Troughton, a small town with a big Tesco five miles away. Marnie thought she might kill two birds with one stone, see how her fare was going down and do her shopping straight after. She parked up in the supermarket car park and though the rain hadn’t reached Troughton yet, she couldn’t remember ever seeing the sky so dark during a midsummer day.
She had to wait ten minutes for a table to come free in the Tea Lady, but it gave her observation time. She watched the expressions of people partaking of afternoon tea and trying her squares of cheesecakes. No one was exactly jumping on their chairs declaring them the best they’ve ever tasted but there seemed to be a general air of ‘yum’ in the café.
When she was eventually seated, Marnie chose the cheesecake of the day – cherry and chocolate – and a pot of tea. And when she asked the waitress for the bill she asked if she could buy a cheesecake to take home because it was so delicious.
‘Isn’t it just,’ replied the waitress. ‘My favourite is the caramel and apple one, but it’s not on this week. We’ve got a new cook in and she’s fantastic. But we don’t do a takeaway cake service, I’m afraid.’
‘You should think about it,’ said Marnie. ‘I’d have taken a whole one off your hands.’
‘I’ll tell the boss,’ said the waitress, smiling at the tip the nice customer had pressed into her hand.
So they were going down well, thought Marnie as she headed back to Tesco. Rumbles of thunder immediately followed crackles of lightning. She ran in and bought her sugar as the announcement came over the tannoy that the store would be closing in ten minutes. The rain was bouncing off the floor when she went back to the car and though her head and shoulders were dry, her jeans were soaked from the knee down. It was now falling so fast, before she switched on the wipers, it looked as if she was in the mid-cycle of a car wash.