As she approached the end of Herv’s lane, she sent a silent prayer upwards that she wouldn’t see that blonde woman coming out of his house again. Or see him either, not smiling at her, disappointment and revulsion dulling his blue eyes. She jogged up Kytson Hill and felt a sigh of relief escape her when she reached Emelie’s cottage without incident. The door was ajar and Marnie could hear Emelie coughing from the end of the path. She knocked.
‘Come in,’ said Emelie hoarsely.
Even with the fresh air blowing into the house, that smell of damp was awful and much stronger than it had been the last time she’d visited. Emelie looked delighted to see her.
‘Emelie, you sound terrible,’ said Marnie, giving her a hug.
‘Oh, I’m fine.’ Emelie waved at her concern as if she were batting it back to her. ‘Is that a cheesecake?’
‘A belated one,’ said Marnie. ‘So I made it extra-large by way of compensation.’
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Emelie. ‘We will both have a piece now. I insist.’
‘I wasn’t going to argue with you,’ replied Marnie.
Emelie walked into the kitchen, her back bent. She looked fragile and her long printed skirt was hanging from her.
‘Is your arthritis playing up?’ Marnie asked her.
‘Always,’ chuckled Emelie and began coughing again.
‘Emelie, that damp is doing you no good at all.’ Marnie wished she hadn’t left it as long to come over now. She made a mental note to put this at the top of Herv’s list of to-do’s. There was a patch of wall behind Emelie’s TV that appeared as if it would crumble if touched. That couldn’t be good near electrics. The damp had to be coming from underneath the house. Maybe there was a water leak. She should check it out. ‘Emelie, can I look in your cellar?’
‘There is no cellar here,’ Emelie replied. ‘Marnie, I can’t pick up the tray. Would you?’
Marnie went into the kitchen and carried it through for her. Emelie’s typewriter wasn’t out today, she’d been reading rather than writing. The first Country Manors book was open and face down on the table.
Marnie, nodded towards it. ‘Isn’t it great?’
Emelie wrinkled up her nose. ‘I’ve had it for a while. I bought it to see what all the fuss was about. I’m not sure that I do though. I’m just skipping through it, not reading it in any great detail.’
‘You should,’ said Marnie. ‘It’s as if it was written by someone in Wychwell itself.’ She watched for Emelie’s reaction at her theory, but there was none to indicate her big secret had been discovered.
‘I can’t imagine who,’ she sniffed. ‘I think that Miss Black is very clever, and good luck to her, but there are much more erotic books on the market which don’t use all that gratuitous language. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, for instance. I remember reading it when I was young, and falling madly in love with the writing. It felt so illicit’ – that word again, Marnie noted – ‘and so passionate. The lady and the gardener.’ Marnie wasn’t sure if she winked then or if her eye merely twitched as they sat down at the table. ‘Anyway, Marnie, tell me what you have been doing since I saw you last,’ and the conversation was pulled away from the mystery of the Country Manors author’s identity. Marnie respected that and didn’t ask her outright if she was Penelope Black. Emelie would have told her had she wanted her to know.
‘I’ve been busy working out the future of Wychwell,’ Marnie replied, cutting Emelie a slice of her special Austrian cheesecake. ‘It’s a shame it will have to let other people in, but if it doesn’t it will die.’
‘Of course it has to expand,’ stressed Emelie. ‘Dear Lilian realised that too late.’ And she began coughing again, a horrible rasping sound and Marnie hurried to fetch her a glass of water.
‘Right, that does it,’ she said sternly. ‘You are to move out of here and we are going to get that damp sorted before you come back.’ A thought came to her. ‘Why not live in the big house for a while? You can play at being lady of the manor.’
Emelie both smiled and shook her head. ‘No, I wouldn’t want that at all. I’ll leave here in a box and not before. Tell Herv to come over and see what he can do if you must.’ She lifted up her fork and started on the cheesecake. ‘Oh my, Marnie, this was so worth waiting for.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Marnie said. ‘I shut myself away. I didn’t want to see anyone.’
‘I am sorry that I told you what Kay said,’ Emelie sighed. ‘I really didn’t want to, but I had to. But still, I have felt quite bad about it.’
‘You did the right thing,’ Marnie assured her. ‘I did need to know.’ I did need to know what booted me out of Herv Gunnarsen’s heart.
‘You haven’t seen Herv since, I take it?’ Emelie asked, as if picking up on her thoughts.
Marnie shook her head, tried to look nonchalant and failed. ‘Have you?’
‘Last week,’ said Emelie, after a marked pause.
‘Was he alone?’ Marnie didn’t want to ask, but her mouth had turned into a masochistic bitch.
Again Emelie hesitated before replying and didn’t answer the question directly, which told Marnie everything. ‘He was driving.’
He was driving that woman home after a night of adventurous shagging. He was probably falling asleep at the wheel because they’d been doing it all night. Marnie felt stupidly tearful, and the forkful of cheesecake she’d just eaten felt like a rock in her stomach.
‘I’ll leave him a note to come and see you as soon as possible,’ said Marnie.
‘Why don’t you talk to him, tell him your side of the story?’
‘I think that boat has sailed,’ replied Marnie. ‘Kay did a proper hatchet job there. Of all the things she could have told him about me, that was a direct hit in his Achilles’ heel.’ She was going to cry again and could barely hold it back. She needed to go up to the manor, do what she had to and then get home again, back to the sanctuary that the four walls of Little Raspberries afforded her, where it was all too easy to imagine there was no world outside it.
Marnie pushed her cheesecake around on her plate but she hadn’t eaten any more by the time that Emelie had finished hers.
‘It’s no reflection on my baking,’ Marnie tried to joke, but she could see that Emelie understood.
‘Don’t throw it away,’ said Emelie, ‘I’ll polish it off later. It’s nice to see the sun out, I was beginning to think it wouldn’t make an appearance again until next year with all the rain we’ve had recently.’
Marnie didn’t know what the weather had been like for the last three weeks, give or take the days when she had journeyed over to the supermarket, and then she hadn’t taken much notice of it. She’d felt as if she were living under her own personal cloud dispensing a never-ending supply of drizzle.
The front door to the manor was unlocked and Cilla was in the hallway dusting.
‘Oh hello, stranger,’ she said with a delighted smile, when Marnie walked in, and then explained that the family had had a few days away in Whitby for a relative’s wedding, so they were making up their hours. ‘Herv’s around too, he couldn’t get a lot done in the garden with it being so wet this past fortnight,’ she added and Marnie thought, great.