‘Childish?’ Andrea exploded. ‘Childish, is it, Jan Allingham, to care about what happens to your bloody town? I don’t think so! The planning meeting’s next Monday, and you know what she’s trying to do? That woman? Move it to when we’re all supposed to be in Rome, on our trip and send her solicitor along instead! She’s said she has a minor operation on the original day. My eye. So either we cancel the trip, which is all paid for, or we miss the meeting.’ She fingered the poppers on her quilted jacket. ‘Honestly, I don’t like to speak ill of anyone, but that woman—!’ She paused, and said petulantly, ‘Why’s she coming on the trip anyway?’
‘She’s on the course, like you all are, she presumably wants to see Rome.’
‘I don’t believe it, I’m afraid,’ said Andrea. ‘She wants to cause trouble. And ruin everyone else’s fun.’
Beside her, Diana nodded in sympathy, and Jan, who was rather bossy but liked to think of herself as fair to her fellow man and woman, looked thoughtful, as if she wasn’t quite sure what to say next. Tess clutched her cloth, not sure if it would be rude to go back to wiping the board, as the rest of the class milled slowly out. Deep down, though, she couldn’t help but agree with Andrea. Why was Leonora Mortmain coming to Rome?
‘Well,’ Jan said, after a pause. ‘I very much like your jumper, dear. I might have to get another one, in green.’
‘Oh—thanks.’ Tess patted the jumper awkwardly. She wasn’t any good at accepting compliments, and indeed she wasn’t sure this was one, really, since it was a fifty-five-year-old woman telling her she wanted to copy her style. Still, it was sweet of her. ‘Remember, next week I want those last essays about Augustus in!’ she called to the retreating backs of her pupils, glad of the chance to change the subject.
‘Bye, Tess!’ Liz called, slinging her bag over her shoulder. ‘Great class. Maybe see you in the pub over the weekend?’
Tess found Liz’s friendly behaviour daunting. ‘Sure!’ she called back. ‘Thanks, Liz!’
‘Well, I’m off.’ Diana appeared, winding a silk scarf around her neck. ‘Thank you, Tess, that was very interesting.’ She glanced at Jan and at Andrea, who was still muttering mutinously next to them. ‘Carolyn’s obviously gone on. I’ll walk out with you, shall I?’
‘Oh, thanks,’ said Tess, gratefully. She grabbed her bag.
‘We’ve got committee tomorrow,’ Andrea was saying to Jan. ‘Are you still coming?’
‘Of course I am!’ Jan cried indignantly. ‘Andrea, we need to stand shoulder to shoulder! Not face each other as enemies, like…that Roman general, at the gate! Oh, I’ve forgotten his name.’
Tess rolled her eyes and followed Diana towards the door.
‘I saw Adam last week,’ Diana said unexpectedly, as they walked down the drive, Diana pushing her bike. ‘He told me he spent last Friday being your paramour.’ Tess smiled.
‘He told you that?’
‘I’m his godmother, Tess. I do occasionally speak to him, you know. The old boyfriend turned up then, did he?’
Her tone was sympathetic. Tess said, ‘Yes. I owe Adam, big time I owe him.’
‘That’s what friends are for, I suppose,’ said Diana, in a curious voice. ‘Do you miss him?’
‘Adam? I—’
‘No, Tess! I meant the old boyfriend.’
Tess considered for a moment, the only sound around them the dripping rainwater of the recent shower along the driveway, and their steps towards the main gate. ‘Miss him? Not really. I miss the other things.’ She gestured with her hands, rather awkward at saying this to Diana Sayers. ‘You know.’
‘Well,’ said Diana, with her simple, disarming honesty. ‘Isn’t that nice? Not to miss him.’
‘Oh,’ said Tess, taken aback. ‘Yes. I suppose so, yes.’
‘So, how are your parents?’ said Diana, switching topic abruptly. ‘I must ring your mother, it’d be lovely to see them.’
‘I’m going down week after next, that’s funny,’ said Tess. ‘On the Saturday, just for the night.’
‘Isn’t that Adam’s birthday?’ Diana said. ‘He was talking about it the other day. Said he was going to have a barbecue, up at the cottage.’ She cleared her throat. ‘It’s good for him to have people round. I worry he doesn’t…’ She trailed off, wrinkling her forehead.
Tess remembered, with slow horror, that Adam had mentioned the barbecue to her the previous weekend, not once but twice. But, in the way that two sides of your brain can happily know that you’re doing two totally separate things and never does one talk to the other, now she realized with horror she’d booked the train tickets down to Devon, and happily agreed with Francesca that they’d go to Adam’s birthday together…Damn.
‘Oh. God, that’s so annoying,’ Tess exclaimed. ‘The tickets are booked—I have to go—God! Why don’t I think!’ She tapped herself on the forehead.
‘Don’t worry,’ Diana said, in quelling tones. ‘It’s Francesca Adam was worried about, you know.’
‘Yeah…’ Tess began, knowing that her not taking Francesca would be a big deal; he treated her a bit like a child, sometimes. When he wasn’t shagging her, that was, she thought meanly. She opened her mouth to try and explain this but then, from out of nowhere, a black Jaguar drove silently past them. Tess and Diana both craned their necks to see who was in it.
‘Well, I never,’ said Tess. ‘What’s Mrs Mortmain doing in that incredible car with that man?’
He was a large man, sleekly tailored in an effort to hide his burgeoning stomach, and he stroked his black hair back from his face as he leaned forward towards his fellow passenger, smiling ingratiatingly at her. She, however, sat upright, her mouth set.
‘Oh, Tess,’ said Diana, with a sigh. ‘He’s Jon Mitchell, the developer. He’s the one who wants to buy the water meadows. He owns Mitchell’s. That chain of DIY stores.’
‘My goodness!’ cried Tess. ‘That’s him?’ She watched the car disappear, and then said, darkly, ‘I don’t know how she lives with herself, that woman. I really don’t.’
‘It’s easy to have principles when you don’t have to apply them,’ said Diana softly. Tess spun round to look at her.
‘What do you mean? You can’t say you agree with her? With—what she’s trying to do to the town?’
‘Tess, the last new shop to open here was a tea shop, called Ye Tudor Tea Shoppe,’ said Diana, and there was a note of sharpness in her voice.
‘So?’ said Tess, who liked Ye Tudor Tea Shoppe. It had waitresses in old-fashioned uniforms, and everyone spoke to each other in a hush. ‘It’s Langford! What’s wrong with that?’
‘What’s wrong with it is that there’s no community hall here, and it costs four pounds to buy a pint, and if you grew up here and you want to buy a house, forget it, because a two-bed cottage costs about three hundred thousand pounds, and there are coach parties wandering the streets practically twenty-four hours a day,’ said Diana. ‘Look, I run a B&B in the summer, I’m as guilty as the rest of them. But we live in a community, not a heritage site, and I can’t one hundred per cent blame Mrs Mortmain for trying to breathe a bit of life back into the town, even if it is going to end up driving some of the tourists away.’ She paused. ‘Don’t tell the others, but I don’t care if I never see another tourist again.’ She gestured out, towards the water meadows. ‘I’d rather there was a supermarket and a John Lewis out there. I’d be able to get some decent curtains, for starters. And my godson and his friends—they’d have jobs, for another thing.’
Tess