‘What? Like a burning bush?’ replied Robin dryly.
‘A wooden signpost I mean, as well you know. Drive on a touch.’
For a man six months short of his eightieth birthday, Charlie had eyes like a hawk.
Robin pressed down the accelerator softly, crawled forwards: ‘Oh yeah, I see it now, what does it say?’
Charlie opened the window and snow flew in so he read quickly and closed it again.
‘It said Figgy Hollow, half a mile and a right arrow.’
‘What’s that? A village?’
‘I’ve never heard of it,’ said Charlie. ‘And I know these parts like the back of my hand.’
‘It’s a no-brainer, we’ll have to go there then.’ Robin just hoped the car would make it and not choke, splutter and stop as if they were in an old horror film, leaving them stranded at the mercy of some Yeti-like creature. ‘Someone’s bound to take pity on us and invite us in for some soup. Practise looking old and vulnerable.’
‘I am old and vulnerable. Figgy Hollow here we come then,’ said Charlie, annoying Robin even more by making it sound as if they were about to embark on a jolly adventure with the Famous Five and lashings of ginger beer.
* * *
Mary Padgett tried to concentrate on the road and not on her boss talking on the phone in that way he had when he was trying to hang on to his temper. She flashed a look at him in the rear-view mirror. Driving gave her the perfect excuse to glance at him every few seconds and she doubted she’d ever get tired of the sight. Jack Butterly was ten years her senior, just developing silvery sprinkles in his dark, cropped hair, and crinkles around his gorgeous grey eyes. He seemed to grow more handsome with each year that passed, as she seemed to grow more invisible. She loved her boss. Loved him with all her heart and not in an ‘I like working for him’ way, but an ‘I wish he’d lock the door, shove me on his desk and have his wicked way with me’ way, which is why she offered to drive him to a hotel in the north-east when Jack’s chauffeur Fred went off sick with his back – again.
Jack had been trying for months to fix up a meeting with the head of the Chikafuji Bakery company in Japan and the only time in the calendar Mr Chikafuji and Jack were both free was the early morning of Christmas Eve. Despite being very keen to hook up and make beautiful bun business together, Mr Chikafuji had been more difficult than a greased eel to pin down, so Jack wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to meet with him when he was over on a flying visit to the UK. Mary seized her chance to spend an evening in a gorgeous country house four-star hotel with Jack Butterly, an opportunity that looked set to crumble into dust, from what the fragments of conversation she’d overheard had intimated.
‘Yes, I can come over to Japan instead, do you have some dates… May? Is Mr Chikafuji not free before then?… Oh I see, he’s very busy is he?…’
Jack ended the call on his mobile with as much annoyance as it was possible to execute with one finger. It was an end to a call better suited to a heavy desk phone with a receiver that could be crashed down onto its cradle.
‘Would you believe it,’ said Jack. ‘Chikafuji’s plane has been cancelled from Brussels, so he’s going back to Japan instead and he hasn’t got space in his diary for a head-to-head until May. We might as well turn back. Ha.’ The note of laughter was anything but one of amusement.
Mary didn’t suggest that they should have had a video call. She had learned over the years that Jack needed the whole meet and greet experience, to make that initial face to face connection with a potential client, in order to absorb their essence, especially one of Mr Chikafuji’s calibre, and he was adamant that he couldn’t do that via a screen. Mary thought he could have made an exception in this case, seeing as Mr Chikafuji was so hard to get hold of in person, but she kept quiet so as not to exacerbate his mood. Jack scared some people, she knew. He was physically imposing, tall, with broad shoulders, a man who looked after himself and spoke with an impeccable private-school accent that had a tendency to make those with a dent in their confidence feel inferior. He was a hard-nosed, hard-working businessman who believed in his product and gave off an air of self-assurance like expensive cologne. His face had a default serious set; Mary had heard a few people say that it would shatter like stressed glass if he smiled, but she didn’t think that was true and how she wished she could be the one who made him smile. He didn’t scare her in the slightest either, because she could read him like a favourite book and she knew under that stiff, polished veneer was someone lonely, vulnerable, sad, mixed up.
Mary dabbed her foot gently on the brake, felt the Maserati skid slightly as it tried to hold traction. There were no other cars in sight but she wasn’t sure any more how much was road and how much was ditch. She made a measured five-point turn, set off back down the road they had just travelled, their freshly made tracks half-filled with snow already. She tried to keep her focus on driving and not on lamenting that her big chance to make Jack see her as something other than the PA who brought him coffee, fielded his calls and organised his diary and his dry-cleaning was now gone.
She’d bought a stunning red dress especially for the dinner they’d have had together in the hotel restaurant. She’d chosen it with care to make the best of her slender frame, to colour-contrast with her long, pale-blond hair and make her large, green-blue eyes pop. She’d bought red suede boots with heels that elevated her five-foot-three height without reducing her ability to walk in them. She’d blown almost the equivalent of her month’s wages on clothes for this one night, a stupid gamble. Thank goodness they were still in the bags with the tags and stickers on them so she could get a refund. But she didn’t want a refund, she wanted to wear them and have her night in the Tynehall Country Hotel ripping the scales from Jack’s eyes.
She had known it was ‘now or never’, and so it seemed that it was going to be never, thanks to the double whammy of the ever-unreliable Mr Chikafuji and the damned weather. She had known it was too good to be true: an all-expenses-paid night in a swanky hotel, Jack all to herself for a full twenty-four hours. One of her dad’s many sayings was that if a thing looked too good to be true, then that’s because it probably was and once again he was right. Mary sighed audibly then quickly checked the mirror to see if Jack had heard her, but he was too busy hunting for something in his briefcase to have noticed.
Mary carried on down the road, steadily. Her dad had taught her and her siblings to drive when they were fifteen on a patch of nearby farmland. By the age of sixteen, she could throw cars around corners and handle any motor with the skill of a copper chasing a drug dealer up the wrong side of the motorway. She drove much better than Fred did, who tended to press down on the pedals as if he was stamping on a cockroach with a lead boot. He’d been Jack’s father’s chauffeur, employed more for being on the old boys’ network rather than for his abilities, which was par for the course with Reg Butterly. Mary’s eyes flicked towards the satnav when it gave her an instruction to leave the motorway at the next junction and follow the A379 to Exeter. On the screen was a map of the south-west. Even brand-new Maseratis had their glitches, she thought. Luckily she knew she was heading in roughly the right direction, back to South Yorkshire, not Devon. Sadly.