By the time she reached the gate, there was no one in sight. Just a badly parked shiny black BMW which had churned up the mud going into the farm. In the distance, she could see two figures – a man and a woman it looked like – wandering down towards the woods. She shivered. The rain was starting to come down in sheets, now. She didn’t envy them. It was cold and wet out, and it was a bit of a schlep to the woods.
‘Come on, kids, let’s get you home,’ she said. She cast one last look back at the fields. She wondered who was planning to buy Blackstock Farm, and if they would be keeping it as farmland. There had been a lot of developers sniffing around Hope Christmas of late, and even talk of building on the lower slopes of the hills Marianne loved so much. Whoever was looking around Blackstock Farm, clearly wasn’t a farmer. She shivered again. For some reason, she had a bad feeling about this …
Pippa Holliday walked slowly up to the back field, where she knew that Dan was working on repairing some fencing that had blown down in recent storms, rehearsing what she was going to say. A sharp shrill wind was blowing down the valley, and she felt cold to the bone, despite the layers of warm clothing – stupidly she hadn’t worn her hat, and her ginger curls were damp and wild. ‘Hi Dan.’ She ran over in her head what she might say. ‘You know Christmas Day was supposed to be about us …’ – no that wasn’t right, it wasn’t about them anymore, it was about the kids … ‘Dan, would you mind awfully,’ – god no, she sounded like something out of a seventies sitcom. Best come clean. ‘Dan, I have a problem …’
She found him sitting down on a log, taking a break, with a flask of tea beside him, staring down the valley, into the fields below. It was a gloomy dark day, with storm clouds rolling over the hills in the distance, making them look threatening and hostile.
He looked startled to see her, as if he’d been thinking about something else entirely.
‘Hi,’ he said, running his fingers through his dark hair, his blue eyes brooding and sad – as they seemed to have been ever since the catastrophic accident nearly two years ago, when Dan had fallen from a tree and suffered a terrible head injury which had changed their lives forever. Dan wasn’t the same person anymore, and though much better than he’d been, still suffered from blind rages and occasional depression. Pippa had thought she could live with that, Dan hadn’t wanted her to and moved out.
Pippa felt absurdly awkward. A year on from their separation, and it still felt no easier. This was ridiculous, he was the father of her children and she was going in a new direction with someone else – it was time she got over Dan.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Dan, there’s something I need to run by you, about Christmas …’
‘Fire away,’ said Dan, still staring intently towards the fields below.
‘It’s about Richard,’ Pippa said. She was always loath to bring up her new partner’s name in front of Dan, but she had no choice, so, hesitatingly, she told him how Richard’s plans had changed and he had nowhere to go, ‘… so I know it’s not ideal, but would it be ok if he was there on Christmas Day?’
‘Sorry, what?’ Dan looked up at her, as if really noticing for the first time she was there. ‘What do you think they’re doing out on Blackstock Farm?’
He hadn’t been listening at all. Pippa looked where he was pointing. She could see two small figures trudging back from the woods below them, up towards the farmhouse, which had been empty for some months. She could make out a car parked in the farmyard.
‘Do you think someone’s buying at last?’ she said, all thoughts about Richard temporarily forgotten. She, Dan and Gabriel whose farms all bordered their neighbour’s, had been fretting about what would happen to Blackstock Farm for several months. If a farmer didn’t buy, there was plenty of room for development which could have a huge impact on all of them.
‘Could be,’ said Dan. ‘I’ve been watching them for about half an hour. They’ve looked over the whole site really thoroughly.’
‘You never know,’ said Pippa brightly, ‘maybe it’s being bought by a farmer.’
‘You know Old Joe let it go to rack and ruin,’ said Dan. ‘I doubt anyone in their right mind would touch it as a farm. There’s too much to do.’
The rain was starting to come down in sheets now. It was too cold and wet to be up here. Pippa watched as the two figures made their way back up the field. They didn’t look like farmers.
‘We’ll just have to wait and see, I suppose,’ she said, trying to stay cheerful, but her heart wasn’t in it. Something rotten was coming to Hope Christmas. She could feel it in her bones.
‘The farmhouse itself needs a lot of work,’ Jenny Ingles was explaining to her client, as she opened the gate to Blackstock Farm. He was a rather good-looking city type, with fair hair and a charming smile. He clearly wasn’t used to the country though, and was inappropriately dressed in a thin suit, a barely warm winter coat, and smart shiny shoes, which were likely to skitter all over the icy courtyard. Unlike Jenny, who had tucked her red hair into a warm woolly hat, and was muffled in a puffer jacket, scarf, long skirt, woolly tights and fur-lined boots.
Her potential customer didn’t seem all that interested in the farm, focussing on something apparently more vital on his iPhone. ‘And as you can see,’ Jenny continued, ‘there are lots of outbuildings, and plenty of space and a great view of the woods and hillside, part of which belong to the farm. Let me show you inside, it’s freezing out here.’
‘That won’t be necessary. I’m more interested in the land. But I suppose the main building can stay. It might make a decent welcome lodge,’ said her companion, finally looking up from his phone. Really, so very rude, Jenny thought. She wondered why he’d come. He hardly looked the farming type, but no one had shown an interest in Blackstock Farm in months, and she could do with a sale before Christmas. She and her boyfriend, Tom, were planning a skiing trip over the festive season; a bonus would come in handy. ‘Can we walk down to the woods from here?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Jenny, grateful that she’d had the sense to dress up warmly, ‘but are you sure? It’s likely to be cold and muddy.’
Dark storm clouds were rolling over the hills and the temperature felt like it had dropped a couple of degrees. A few streaks of sharp cold rain fell, making Jenny shiver.
Flashing a devastatingly winning smile, her client said, ‘I’ll manage. I’m sure it will be fine.’
Jenny led him to a gate in the furthest corner of the yard. It was a good ten minutes’ hike down to the top part of the woods, and despite her boots, her feet were like blocks of ice when they got there, and her skirt was soaked through at the bottom where it had trailed in the wet grass. Keen as she was for this sale, as the rain started to fall in earnest, Jenny cursed her enthusiastic companion (who apparently didn’t notice the cold) for dragging her down here. On a sunny day in June it would have been lovely …
‘This is perfect,’ he was saying. ‘We could do so much with this.’
‘Oh?’ she asked. She’d assumed he was a townie looking for an escape to the country, but now she was intrigued. ‘What did you have in mind?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t reveal that,’ he said, ‘but I can tell you that my company will be very very interested, indeed. This is just what we’ve been waiting for.’
He smiled that dazzling smile at her again, and she felt herself go weak at the knees. If she didn’t have a boyfriend …
‘Right, I think I’ve seen all