The traffic was doing a slow-moving conga through Troughton. It halted completely outside the railway station, even though the traffic lights ahead were green. They changed back to red and then back to green and she was still in the same position and so Marnie presumed some poor sod had broken down. Other poor sods were waiting at a taxi rank to her left. There wasn’t a shelter, a couple had umbrellas or hoods up, but the woman holding an overnight bag off the ground and standing last in the queue had neither and she looked drenched.
Then Marnie realised who it was – Hilary Sutton. She had that thin stripey beige raincoat on which had been dyed dark brown with rain and her shoulder-length grey hair was hanging over her face in soaked rats’ tails. Even if she was a Sutton, Marnie couldn’t have left her like that. She pressed down the window and called out. ‘Mrs Sutton, want a lift?’
Hilary looked over, squinting in an effort to see who was calling her.
‘It’s me, Marnie. From Wychwell. Want a lift?’
Marnie was surprised that she accepted. She had thought that Hilary might have refused with a haughty, ‘No thank you.’ But she opened the door and said, ‘I’m very wet. Do you have something I can put over your seat?’
‘It doesn’t matter, it’s only rain, it’ll dry,’ said Marnie. ‘Get in.’
So Hilary did, after quickly whipping off her coat and putting it in the footwell. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ve been stood there for ever. I’m dripping all over your car.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Marnie. ‘It can’t be helped.’
‘I never usually have a problem getting a taxi there.’
‘Been anywhere nice?’ No sooner had Marnie asked the question that she remembered Titus saying his wife had been away at her poorly sister’s.
‘London,’ replied Hilary. ‘I go and see my sister one weekend every month. She’s not very well.’
‘Sorry to hear that,’ said Marnie. Ahead the traffic had started to move, albeit at a snail’s pace.
‘I like to go there. I like sitting on the train and reading.’
‘Me too,’ said Marnie.
Hilary opened up her handbag to get out a tissue and started dabbing her face with it. Marnie saw that she had a copy of the first Country Manors in there. She wouldn’t have thought Titus’s wife would have been the sort.
‘You too,’ said Marnie.
‘Sorry?’
‘Country Manors. You’re reading it too.’
Hilary looked slightly caught out, as she were ashamed of being seen with such a controversial tome. ‘Someone on the train gave it to me to try. Have you read it?’
‘I’m half-way through the second one.’ The car was picking up pace now, thank goodness. ‘I prefer it to the first but stay with it. The second one is a cracker, but you need to have read Buyers and Cellars for it to all make sense.’
‘I will. Thank you.’
‘She’s certainly done very well out of it, hasn’t she? The author?’
‘Has she? I don’t know.’
‘They say she’s earned ten million this year.’
‘Doesn’t make you happy though, does it?’
‘I think I’d be considerably happier with ten million in the bank. Wonder why she doesn’t reveal who she is.’
‘I worked in public relations in London before I married Titus and came to live up here,’ said Hilary. ‘I can tell you exactly why: because all that intrigue is very marketable.’
Hilary didn’t look like someone who had worked in public relations. She looked like someone who had never worked and did some needlepoint every so often when the job of counting her money became a tad too boring.
‘I thought as much,’ said Marnie, driving slowly through some deep pools of water at the side of the road. ‘Quite a change for you then, leaving a PR job in London to come up to Wychwell.’
Hilary didn’t answer for a while. When she did speak, she said something Marnie hadn’t expected at all.
‘I hate Wychwell.’
‘Really?’ She was even more shocked that Hilary had disclosed it to her.
‘When I married Titus, the deal was that we’d live there whilst his father was ill and then we’d move down south. I’m a city girl. I can’t be doing with all this green.’
The contemptuous way in which she said it, made Marnie chuckle and she immediately apologised for that.
‘I’m sorry for laughing. I’m just surprised.’
‘I like noise and shops and . . . life. If I didn’t have an injection of London in my veins every month, I think I’d lose the will to live.’
‘I like London, but I wouldn’t want to stay there all the time,’ said Marnie. ‘I’m a town girl. Or at least I thought I was, but I’m enjoying village life give or take . . . er . . .’ Hilary ended the sentence for her.
‘Busybodies. And there’s more politics in Wychwell than there is in the whole of the houses of parliament. And there’s no children in Wychwell, simply a load of empty houses and a few people who think they’re better than anyone else on the planet. Let me tell you, I was glad when I heard that you’d got the job of dragging it kicking and screaming into this century. I had a little giggle to myself when we were all in Lilian’s will-reading meeting. I thought good on you, whoever the new owner is. I did hope it was you.’
Marnie was touched as well as taken aback. ‘It’s not me, but thank you for that, Hilary. You’re one of very few supporters of change, though. I can’t imagine my proposals will go down well.’ She obviously hadn’t checked the Sutton bank account yet.
‘The shop and the pub haven’t got any customers. There will be even more houses empty when the old ones die. Wychwell will be a ghost village in fifty years if something drastic doesn’t happen. I might hate living there but I wouldn’t want to see that.’
‘I have plans,’ said Marnie, aware that Hilary might be fishing for information for her husband, but somehow she didn’t think so.
‘Good. You do what you have to,’ said Hilary.
‘I will.’
‘I liked Lilian,’ said Hilary. ‘I didn’t have much to do with her because I think she was wary of me, because I’m married to Titus. I always thought that was a shame because I admired her. I think we could have been good friends if I hadn’t had the Sutton name.’
They were just passing Scarpgarth Nursery school, which prompted Marnie to ask,
‘Do you have any children, Hilary?’
‘Couldn’t,’ she replied. ‘Titus wasn’t bothered anyway. He has a child. He doesn’t think I know, but I do. I always have. He’s never laid claim to her and I have no idea how he can do that.’
Marnie did.
A silence fell for a long minute then Hilary suddenly swivelled in her seat towards Marnie.
‘I’m afraid I’ve lied to you. I haven’t been to see my sister, I’ve been having an affair. There’s a coffee shop around the corner here. You don’t fancy stopping do you? I’ll pay.’
Hilary’s hands were shaking when she picked up her cup.