Messy gabbled jovially as she and Chloe clambered into the Land Rover, fighting their way between horses’ head collars, bits of bind-a-twine, stray potatoes gone to seed, and piles of empty paper sacks. ‘I hope,’ she said, ‘that the state of this car isn’t any sort of indicator of what’s to come!’ The truth was, after such a long wait, she was relieved to see any car at all. ‘You know I hadn’t even taken a number for Fiddlefrom. Fiddleforth. I was beginning to wonder if the whole conversation hadn’t been a dream!’
Les looked at her morosely for a while, only faintly noticing that she had been talking, and certainly not expecting to make a response. Suddenly his face lit up. ‘Well I never!’ he said. ‘But you’re that fat lady off of the TELLY!’
‘Of course I am. Who did you think I was?’
‘I SAW YOU ON TELLY!’
‘Did you watch Question Time?’
‘A few nights back, it was. I don’t know why. A bit like one o’ them quizzie things.’
She’d been without any adult company, brooding solidly, ever since the BBC car had dropped her back at the cottage, and now here was a friendly face. Well, a face. It was all she needed. She couldn’t stop herself. ‘Didn’t you think Morrison was a creep? Or have I lost perspective on this? I mean – honestly, Les. Tell me honestly. Was I being paranoid? Was he exploiting my situation?…I felt so incredibly patronised…’
Les gazed at her long and hard before slowly turning away to start the engine. In the four hours it took to return to Fiddleford he didn’t speak another word. Chloe fell asleep.
It was eleven o’clock by the time they arrived.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Jo nervously, rushing out of the house to greet her. ‘You must be exhausted. Les wasn’t – Les, why didn’t you call? You left the map behind. We’ve been worried to death.’
‘I don’t like maps.’
‘For Heaven’s sake!’ Until she came to Fiddleford Jo hadn’t really believed such stupid people actually existed. She sighed with the usual mixture of boredom and exasperation that overcame her when dealing with Les’s ‘working’ methods. ‘Les, you can’t not like maps. There’s nothing not to like about them.’ She sighed again, and was preparing (professional as always) to deliver an easy-to-understand discourse on the subject, when Grey, Charlie and the General came wandering out to join them. ‘Oh look, here are the others,’ she said with relief. ‘This is Grey…Grey, this is Messy. And Chloe…Who’s actually asleep, poor little mite…’
Grey shook Messy’s free hand without a great deal of interest but then seemed to reconsider, and bent down to scrutinise her more closely. ‘Oh!’ he said, pleasantly surprised. ‘You look much better than you do in the pictures.’
‘Depends which pictures,’ Messy muttered grumpily, but she blushed. It was the nearest thing she’d had to a compliment for a long time. ‘They tend to choose the ugly ones.’ She looked up at him with a smile. ‘You’re not so bad-looking yourself.’
‘Aye,’ he said, relinquishing her hand, gazing at her curiously. ‘It’s been said.’
‘And, er – Messy, this is my husband, Charlie.’
‘Hello, Messy. Welcome to Fiddleford,’ said Charlie. ‘You’re our first guest, as I expect Jo explained. So I hope you won’t be too disappointed if things don’t run perfectly straight away—’
‘And this,’ said Jo quickly, ‘is my father-in-law, General Maxwell McDonald.’
‘Crikey,’ said Messy doubtfully.
The General stepped smartly forward, determined to present a good face, however he might have been feeling. ‘But most people just call me General,’ he said, bowing slightly to avoid eye contact. ‘Well come in, come in, for Heaven’s sake. Somebody get the child to bed and then perhaps Miss Monroe would like a drink?’
They walked together into the hall. Messy looked up at the large gilt chandelier hanging from the ceiling, and then at the magnificent mahogany staircase sweeping up to the landing thirty-five feet above her head.
‘Crikey,’ she said again.
Weighed down by the child and still enormous, even in these vast surroundings, Messy looked very ill at ease standing there. It reminded Jo of the first time she came to Fiddleford, when in spite of all her kneejerk disapproval (of inherited wealth and environmentally unsound houses) this hall had still intimidated her. ‘I know it’s large,’ she whispered apologetically, ‘but we don’t actually heat the rooms we don’t use. And of course,’ (she lied, entirely unnecessarily. But she was nervous) ‘we grow all our own vegetables.’
Messy, who always imagined people were patronising her, buried her face in her daughter’s cheek and pretended not to hear.
‘Chloe’s in the smaller room, next door to you,’ said Charlie as they climbed the stairs together. ‘And there’s a bathroom up at the end. On the left. I’m sorry,’ he turned back to look at her, ‘Jo says it’s absolutely unheard of not to have adjoining bathrooms when you go to hotels these days, but then Fiddleford isn’t exactly a hotel. So I hope you can forgive us.’
‘I must admit,’ said Messy, puffing slightly, not quite keeping up, ‘it’s beautiful. Of course. But it isn’t exactly what I expected.’
‘Oh dear.’ He paused in front of her bedroom door, put down the three large suitcases he had been carrying. ‘What exactly has Jo been telling you?’
Months ago, before they were married, his and Jo’s relationship had nearly ended because of her unnerving inability to distinguish fact from fiction. Charlie knew (to his cost) that when she was working, and she set her sights on something, she was capable of telling any number of lies in order to bring it about. He had watched her in amazement. She lied so automatically sometimes, she didn’t even seem to notice she was doing it.
‘She told me it was a refuge for celebrities.’
‘Oh!’ He sounded relieved. ‘Well it is. Or it will be. But not just for celebrities. Obviously. That would be very unfair. It’s for anyone who’s being attacked, really. For anyone who doesn’t stand a chance to stick up for themselves because whatever they try to do or say it gets drowned out by a sort of mass jeering, or sneering, or general bullying. If that makes any sense. Which I’m sure it does to you, Messy. After your last week.’
‘You don’t need to feel sorry for me,’ she said curtly.
‘No, no. Of course not.’
‘Am I the only guest you’re feeling sorry for at the moment? Or is the tall guy, Grey—’
‘Grey? Oh no. Grey lives here.’
‘He looks very familiar. What’s his second name?’
‘McShane. Grey McShane. You may remember—’
‘The sex offender?’
‘Well, he isn’t actually—’
‘You’ve asked me and Chloe to stay here with a sex offender in the house?’
‘You shouldn’t—’ Charlie made an effort to smile – ‘believe everything you read in the press.’
‘He was convicted. I remember reading about it. He went to prison.’
Charlie shrugged. ‘He has a bad reputation. But that’s the whole point of this place. Who did you think you were going to find here?’ He opened her bedroom door, switched on the light and quickly slid