It's Raining Men Part 9

Chapter 20.

Joan Hawk was changing. She had been working at Carlton Hall for nearly three months now and, though the changes had been subtle ones, they hadn't escaped Gladys Coffey's notice. First it was the introduction of heels replacing the flat ballet shoes she had worn in the early days. Then it was longer lashes, false or mascara Gladys wasn't sure, but they were definitely longer. Then it was the presence of glossy lipstick pink after week three, now the shade was veering towards red. Then the shapeless dresses were replaced by skirts and blouses, open to three b.u.t.tons at the neck. Today, Joan's hair was hanging free in two dark curtains framing her face, no longer secured by a hoop of elastic.

'Good morning, Gladys,' said Joan with her usual wide smile.

'Morning, Joan,' returned Gladys.

She's started to disapprove of me, thought Joan sauntering past her. It amused her.

There was something not quite right about Joan Hawk, Gladys thought, watching her hips sashay down the hallway and into the study where Lord Carlton was waiting for her. She wondered where Joan had been because she had no business to be up that end of the house. Gladys knew Joan had been regularly snooping because she had laid little traps for her. Hairs Gladys had stuck across cupboard doors had disappeared; deliberate sprinklings of dust had been unsettled. Most annoyingly of all to Gladys, Joan had slipped under her radar. Enquiries to people she knew in Wellem had brought no information about her. Gladys was convinced that, despite Joan's supposed knowledge of the area which could easily have been gleaned from books Mrs Hawk had no more been brought up in Wellem, than she herself had had an affair with the Shah of Persia.

She had tried to broach the subject with Lord Carlton only yesterday but had been surprised at his reaction.

'What is it you're trying to tell me, Gladys?' he had snapped and he had never snapped at her in the forty years she had been working at the house.

'I don't think Joan is a local girl,' said Gladys.

'If she says she is, then she is. Why would you question her?'

Gladys had been reduced to stuttering something in her defence, but it sounded childish and ridiculous.

'Badly done, Gladys. After having to suffer working with Flora and Doris, women of the highest incompetence whom you engaged to "help", it's a blessed relief to have the enormous burden of running the estate and all that entails taken from me. It's been a living nightmare, these past years. Do-able when I was younger, but not now, Gladys.' Then he had delivered a mighty hammer blow. 'And if I hear you have been stirring up trouble behind Joan's back, I'm afraid we shall have to think about parting company. Even after all these years, Gladys. I'm too old for politics and back-biting.'

He had walked off from her shaking his head and she had felt wounded by his coldness. She couldn't leave Carlton Hall. It was as much her home as her cottage near the village square was probably more so, because she had spent more of her life here than there. Her mother had been the housekeeper here before her, and Gladys would come here often as a small child to help her mum dust or sweep the floors. Looking after the present Lord Carlton was Gladys's life. She would be lost if he let her go.

But Gladys Coffey could no more have stopped her instincts buzzing when her radar picked up a threat than she could have controlled the tide. She knew that Joan Hawk was not who she claimed to be; something was up. And there was too much at stake for her to do nothing about it. Gladys had been hardwired into doing what she had always had to do: her job was to protect Edwin Carlton and his interests, as she and her family had protected his father before him. She would risk all she had to do that. So she would just have to be more subtle in her detective work in future.

The trouble was, times were changing fast. For a start there was that Internet thing that could spread information and rumours around the world in seconds. The world was shrinking and their peaceful, isolated life was under threat. People were even starting to come to Ren Dullem. That hadn't happened for many years. Gladys knew that yesterday the first lot of offc.u.mdens had arrived in the cottage Gene Hathersage had decided to rent out.

From now on Gladys was going to have to be very watchful and very careful.

Chapter 21.

Clare was still in bed when Lara and May returned to Well Cottage. May put the battery back in her phone to find there was another missed call from Michael from the previous evening. Just seeing his name on the screen pierced her below the rib. She should go into Contacts and edit his name to 'lying d.i.c.khead' because that's what he was. So why was she suddenly having a rush of missing-him feelings? How long would it take her stupid heart to catch up with her more sensible and dignified brain?

She handed the phone over to Lara, who was eager to get them out of this mess. Lara fiddled with the phone then growled to the heavens.

'I can't believe it. There's no signal. What a G.o.dforsaken hole.' She thought for a moment, tapping the phone against her lips. 'Okay, here's what we do. We'll book in at the spa and just leave the cottage. I'll pay for it.'

'Don't be ridiculous,' said May, squeezing her arm. She didn't want Lara to be upset. It wasn't the end of the world that a mistake had been made. May was just happy to be anywhere but Surbiton expecting Michael to turn up with a charm offensive.

'No, I got us into this mess, I'll get us out.'

'There's a landline phone. I'll ring directory enquiries,' said May, crossing to the table in the corner where an ancient black Bakelite phone stood. 'I'll see what the spa say. Fingers crossed they'll understand.

'Bet it doesn't work,' tutted Lara, cross now that she had destroyed her phone and couldn't retrieve the booking confirmation to see what it said.

The old phone did work though. May rang and wrote down the number for the spa at Wellem and then rang it. The half of the conversation Lara was listening to didn't sound too promising.

'They've got no vacancies,' said May, covering up the mouthpiece as she conveyed the message to Lara.

'None at all?' groaned Lara. 'They must have. Speak to the manageress.'

'I am. But she's not being very helpful.'

'Let me have a word,' said Lara, who had a much more authoritative voice than May's gentle tones.

'Be my guest,' replied May, handing over the phone. Lara was so much better at confrontations than she would ever be.

'Good morning,' began Lara in her best I'll-get-my-own-way-so-let's-not-waste-time-t.w.a.tting-about-shall-we? voice. 'I understand you have no vacancies.'

'That's correct,' said the voice at the other end, immediately summoning up in Lara's head a picture of a woman whose mouth was stuffed with Krug-soaked plums.

'My friend has, of course, explained to you-'

'I'm afraid there are no vacancies however much you want to dress up the facts. Not until the seventeenth of October,' said plum-filled-gob woman with an exasperated little laugh. Was everyone in the area determined to be impolite and unhelpful?

'I'm sure if I were Kylie Minogue arriving with an entourage you'd find us a vacancy,' Lara snapped.

'Probably, but you aren't, are you?' And with that the phone went down before Lara could answer her, which was just as well because Lara's face was turning puce.

Lara put the receiver back on the cradle and tried not to scream. It was only then she saw the writing on a piece of paper tucked underneath the phone: All phone calls will be billed separately.

As if the man wasn't getting enough of their money.

Lara's next call was to the Superior Cottages Holiday Agency but apparently the girl who had made the original booking had left, and though the manageress made a lot of sympathetic noises, she did point out that if the booking was incorrect the error should have been pointed out at the time. She pulled up the confirmation email at her end and the booking read: We l l Cottage, Dullem. So no, they couldn't have a refund. Lara, for once, found herself beaten.

'What the h.e.l.l are we going to do?' she said. She felt like crying, which wasn't like her at all. She was Miss Super Efficient, who never made mistakes and never took no for an answer. 'Shall we go home?'

May was horrified at the idea. Home was the last place she wanted to go. She wanted to be as far away from Michael as possible, and the bonus for her was that if they weren't in Wellem, as he thought, there was no chance that he would turn up out of the blue. 'Why don't we stay?' she suggested.

'Here? In this . . . this . . .' Lara was going to say dump, but it wasn't really. A little shabby in a chic kind of way, but clean and cosy and so very peaceful. And the terrace was lovely. The thought of going back to Surrey and picking up the pieces of her relationship, sifting through them for any hope, turned her cold. That was if any of that relationship still existed. She couldn't be sure that Tianne hadn't bagged all her clothes up and left them out for the Monday bin men. And as her flat was being rented out, she didn't have a home of her own to go back to. She was between the devil and the deep blue sea. And, at this moment, the deep blue sea was marginally closer.

'Morning,' said a voice, interrupting her thoughts. Into the lounge walked Clare, in very baggy pink pyjamas, rubbing her hands together. 'What's happening? Are we heading up to the spa, then? I want to check out the super-duper pool with the Grecian pillars.'

'Do you want the bad news first,' replied Lara, 'or the really bad news?'

'And how does he get off charging one hundred and fifty pounds for a bit of bacon and cheese?' Lara snapped, looking in the fridge at the contents of the far-from-luxury hamper. She heard a snap behind her and turned to see Clare putting on some rubber gloves.

'You're not serious,' she said, guessing exactly what was going to happen next.

'If I'm going to be staying in this cottage, it's getting a fettle,' Clare said. Her words came back at her as a faint echo she couldn't remember the last time she had used the word 'fettle'. The first time she had used it in front of Ludwig he had said, 'I have lived in England since I was ten years old and I have never heard this word. What on earth does it mean?' Then he had tried the word in his mouth and laughed like a drain for no real reason, which set her off laughing and they fell onto the sofa and the laughter gave way to some serious snogging. She stole a look at her watch and wondered what time it was in Dubai. And what Lud would be doing. And with whom.

'Well, I don't know about you two, but I'm starving,' said May. Her stomach was making all sorts of feed-me noises. 'Shall we go and find somewhere to eat and do a bit of exploring before you whisk out your bleach?'

On cue, Lara's stomach grumbled. She'd been so cross she'd forgotten they hadn't had breakfast. And she didn't fancy cooking up what that man had left on the table. Luxury hamper indeed. She'd get her money back for that as well or die in the process.

They walked down the hill again and Lara showed Clare where the rude Hathersage bloke lived and the shop of staring people.

'What the heck are those?' Clare asked, pointing upwards. 'I've never seen such pathetic clouds in my life.'

'G.o.d knows. This place is weird with a capital "W". The people are even weirder.' As Lara said this, they pa.s.sed a row of houses and in every one of the five a curtain drew back and a male head was seen, candidly staring out. 'See? I'll have a complex by the time we get back home. If we get back home. We might have been imprisoned in a new Wicker Man and burned by next week.'

'Can you smell the sea?' said Clare, pulling the salt air up into her lungs. She could live without the promise of a gorgeous spa pool if she was able to swim in the sea, which she would much prefer, if she were honest. She was a bit concerned about the hygiene of pools but not at all about the sea, even though Lara had once teased her about whales weeing in it. Clare loved the sea. She had always wanted to live by it, but had never had the chance work kept her away. And being near to the great expanse of water now brought all those longings flooding back. She could have been living in Dubai, she thought, with the ocean on her doorstep. Lud was a strong swimmer too. They loved to swim together . . .

She shook the thought of Lud away. There was no point thinking of him now; she had made her bed and would have to lie in it, and it was a bed without the once-loving German man who had ranked her above his work. She couldn't have Dubai and him if she wanted the job of a lifetime and her parents' approval and there was no point in choosing a man for whom she was obviously losing her value. There had only been one decision she could have made in the end.

Coming up the hill was a crocodile of ten small children all waving home-made flags with lettering on them: Dullem Summer School. They were led by a very good-looking male teacher with curly blond hair and Paul Newman baby-blue eyes. As they pa.s.sed, he and the children all male stared at the women in the way that May and Lara were fast becoming used to.

'What the heck is wrong with us?' hissed Clare. 'Have they never seen a stranger before?'

'Tell you what I haven't seen yet any women,' said May.

They carried on wending their way down the hill, pa.s.sing a cute little school on the right with a tiny square of playground. The building looked as old as the rest. A row of houses on the left looked abandoned, the roof crumbling in on three of them. Ribbon-thin cobbled streets, far too narrow for cars, spidered off on both sides of the road and looked ripe for exploring.

May sighed. 'This would be so beautiful if it weren't for those d.a.m.ned clouds casting a grey gloom over everything.' She visualized the sun lighting up the white-painted buildings and shining down on the pocket-sized beer garden of the pub they were just about to pa.s.s, the Crab and Bucket. It had a chalkboard sign outside which read: Today's special, fisherman's pie.

'Nice name. Are we going in, then?' said May.

'What, and have the whole pub stop drinking and stare at us? No, thanks,' said Lara.

'I'm not going into the bar with my eyes,' added Clare.

'Well you can't go in without them, lovely,' laughed May. 'Anyway, you have beautiful eyes.'

'Which just happen to be different colours. Why couldn't they both be green or blue? Why did I have to have one of each?'

'Vive la difference,' grinned Lara.

But May knew where Clare was coming from. Like her friend, May wanted to blend in and not stand out. If there had been an operation to shrink her and totally erase that silver line of scar from her face, she would have had it immediately.

'They'll burn me for being a witch,' Clare went on.

'Well, let's carry on a bit further and see if we can find a nice cafe,' May suggested, noticing another curtain twitch in another house. Jesus. It was like being in a John Wyndham novel. She'd bet anything that when they got to the heart of the village they would encounter a load of white-blond kids and some walking man-eating plants that turned everyone blind.

They pa.s.sed a butcher's shop, a greengrocer and an equally small bakery, all of them with just enough room for the counter and two customers. The shopkeepers no surprise stopped serving to look at the three strangers pa.s.sing by the windows.

'Still no women,' said May, out of the corner of her mouth. 'That's bizarre.'

There was a pretty post office covered in ivy and next door to it a shop that, if the bay-windowed display was anything to go by, sold an a.s.sortment of sweets, gifts, pipes and wrapping paper. They pa.s.sed some more rundown cottages that looked on the verge of crumbling like shortbread biscuits, a shop with a window display full of blue school uniforms, then at last they were at the sea front and there they found a cafe called, not very imaginatively, the Front Cafe.

'Hallelujah,' said Lara. 'Now we're talking. Get ready for more stares.'

Seeing customers inside, she paused before pushing open the door. It wasn't pleasant being the focus of this sort of attention; in fact it was downright creepy.

'Let's just go in and get it over with,' said Clare. 'They'll take one look at my eyes and I'll be the one up for sacrifice, so you shouldn't worry.'

Lara opened the door and, sure enough, everyone's conversation cut off. Those in chairs with their backs facing them turned round to see the newcomers. Lara, May and Clare sat down at the nearest table and each picked up a menu, keeping their heads down until the novelty value wore off. Lara fished her gla.s.ses out of her handbag, grateful that whilst the words on the sheet were clear through them, the rest of the room was blurred. Ah, the joy of being long-sighted. It seemed ages until a general hum of conversation started up again and people returned their attention to their coffees.

'The waitress is a woman,' whispered Lara. 'They do exist in Ren Dullem after-' She bit off the rest of the sentence as a young, generously built woman with a very bonny face waddled over, taking a notepad out of her pink stripy ap.r.o.n pocket.

'What can I get you . . . ladies?' she said briskly, but pleasantly. She looked quickly from one to the other, her eyes reaching Clare last. And then a curious thing happened: her mouth rounded into a silent gasp and her whole face softened into a smile. Her eyes were locked on Clare's as if they couldn't believe what they were seeing. 'Oh, my.' Clare was used to people taking a second glance at her different-coloured eyes but she'd never had someone stare at them so brazenly.

'Erm . . .' Lara traced her finger down the page. 'Could I have a cheese and ham toastie, please?' It was a bit early for chips but she ordered them anyway.

'Same for me, but onion instead of ham,' said May.

'Quiche, please,' said Clare, avoiding the waitress's intense stare. 'And chips too why not? I'm on holiday. And three filter coffees?' She looked to the others for approval, and they nodded.

'Holiday? Here? Where are you staying?' The waitress's pen stilled on the paper.

'Well Cottage. It's-' began Lara.

'I know where it is. The Hathersage place.' The lady in the striped ap.r.o.n sniffed before turning her back. It's very likely that she has the same opinion of the wild man of Borneo as I do, thought Lara. She was rather glad that she wasn't the only one who found him boorish.

'Well, isn't this nice?' said May. 'Here we are at last. All together.'

Lara stifled a giggle then apologized. 'Oh, I'm sorry, May. It isn't nice at all. Have I totally b.o.l.l.o.c.ksed up everything beyond repair?'

'No,' said Clare. 'I'm looking forward to going in that sea and Well Cottage is very sweet. I had a lovely sleep I don't know about you two. I haven't slept through till nearly lunchtime in yonks. I was convinced I'd wake up at five as usual.'

'I bet you wished you'd known me better when you entrusted me with booking this holiday,' sighed Lara.

'Ah shush,' admonished Clare. 'I've got the sea to swim in and a cottage to clean. I'm more than happy.' She nudged Lara affectionately. 'You would be really sickening if you were perfect all the time.'

G.o.d, if they only knew, thought Lara.

'Well, you can add me to the happy list,' said May, combing her hair forwards with her fingers in an attempt to cover the scar on her cheek, a habit she'd had since childhood. Poor May, thought Lara. She was so self-conscious over that scar yet she guessed that others such as herself barely noticed it. May had told them that the neighbours' dog had jumped up at her when she was a little girl and sank its teeth into her cheek. Neither she nor Clare had been surprised to learn that May had been distraught to hear that the dog had been put down. Despite being so much taller and imposing than either Lara or Clare, May carried the most vulnerable air of them all. Lara, especially, felt very protective over her delicate soft-hearted friend.

May continued: 'I don't care where I am, I just want to be away from London.' Away from Michael, away from my house that is full of memories of him.

'Really?' Lara's eyes looked distinctly watery. She really did want them to convince her she hadn't made a total mess of things.

'YES. So let's forget about chasing up the Hathersages and just enjoy ourselves. Things sometimes happen for a reason,' Clare insisted. 'Que sera sera . . .'

'Okay. I believe you,' smiled Lara.

'At flaming last.' Clare punched the air in a gesture of victory.

'Your funny eyes seem to have bought us a way in with the cafe owner or the waitress or whoever she is,' said Lara.