Authors: Victoria Connelly
‘Follow me,’ he said, ‘and I’ll show you a slightly happier room. Maybe we can even find a drink there.’
Going down more stairs and walking through the great hall, he ushered her into a room at the end of a short corridor, tucked away from the prying eyes of tourists. It was an office. An ancient computer slumbered on a rickety-looking desk strewn with papers. Henry obviously didn’t have a secretary or, if he did, they were very slovenly because there was mess everywhere.
Molly’s eyes settled on a pile of empty bottles in a glorious glassy mountain in the corner of the room.
‘No recycling facilities near here, then?’ she smiled.
Henry turned sharply and saw where she was looking. ‘Er, no,’ he said. ‘We’re a little out of the way. Now, I’m sure there’s an untouched bottle here somewhere.’ He bent down to search underneath the desk and Molly found herself staring at the rather shapely view he presented to her. Why was her heart beating like jungle drums? Was she still thinking about Andrew Fellowes? She must be. She couldn’t possibly be fantasising about Lord Henry, could she, even if he did have the most dazzling eyes and the sexiest of smiles?
‘Here we are!’ he said, standing up with a bottle of white in his hands. ‘Fancy a glass – or a mug?’
Molly nodded, trying to hide her grin. No wonder there were so many bottles if he made a habit of chatting up stray tourists. Had she stumbled across the local Lothario? The bevy of bottles in the corner was probably the result of dozens of secret sessions at Whitton, but it was none of her business what a lord got up to in his own castle. She tried, instead, to focus on what she’d seen of the castle so far: walls that were in serious need of repointing; the lack of any furniture, which didn’t exactly help to recreate what the castle must once have looked like; and encroaching damp in the second-floor bedchamber.
‘Listen,’ she said, her voice darkly quiet, ‘I’d very much like to make a donation.’
Henry walked across the room and offered her a Snoopy mug of white wine.
‘Thank you,’ Molly said, aware that he had inched into her personal space in a rather predatory way, his head almost touching hers.
‘You smell of lavender,’ he said.
‘Do I?’ Molly replied, knowing full well that she didn’t.
‘It’s trapped in your hair from the gardens.’
‘Is it?’ Molly said, not believing him for a moment. ‘Look,’ she said, trying to get back to the matter in hand, ‘this donation – it’s got to be confidential.’
‘Of course,’ he grinned, his features blurring as his forehead touched hers oh-so-lightly.
‘That’s absolutely clear?’ she said, suddenly feeling as if she’d drunk a whole bottle of wine rather than half a Snoopy mug.
‘So, tell me,’ Henry said, his breath warm on her face, ‘is it a nice, voluptuous figure?’
Molly could feel herself blushing again, and felt a warm shiver travel the length of her spine as his arm encircled her waist. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.’
Wasn’t it all just a little too easy, Tom wondered as they pulled away from The Bloom Room? He always got a little suspicious if things went too smoothly, as if the gods were leading him on, waiting for the right moment before throwing a colossal spanner in the works. He just couldn’t shake off the fact that it had all been incredibly straightforward so far. The flower had led to a florist who’d told him of another florist – the florist’s possibly owned by the person he was after, and now he’d got a contact number for this woman’s brother. It just seemed far too easy. Still, he had no proof that this Molly Bailey was the one who’d left Barton five grand richer.
He looked down at the business card the lady from The Bloom Room had given him. Molly Bailey. He flipped it over. Marty Bailey. Molly and Marty. Tom smiled. Maybe they were twins. Whatever they were, they were the only lead he had so far.
He reached for his mobile phone and rang Marty’s
number.
‘Hello?’ It was a woman’s voice, and she didn’t sound at all happy at being disturbed on a Sunday afternoon.
‘Hello,’ Tom began, ‘I was hoping to speak to Marty Bailey.’
‘He’s not available at the moment. Can I take a message?’ the woman asked, sounding as clipped as a professional secretary. Tom imagined her sat at a highly polished desk with a memo pad in front of her and a very sharp pencil hovering for his message. He thought for a second. What could he say? That he was possibly chasing after this man’s sister for a possible story which might possibly be big?
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Could he call me back?’ Tom gave his mobile number and thanked her.
‘Who was that?’ Flora asked.
‘An angry wife,’ Tom said.
‘Are all wives angry?’
Tom laughed. ‘Most of them are most of the time.’
‘Why?’ Flora asked.
He started the car up. ‘Because they have husbands.’
Tom and Flora spent the rest of Sunday afternoon driving round the Eden Valley before heading into Penrith for a nutritious chip supper. I’m a terrible father, Tom thought. If the upbringing of his daughter had been left to him alone, Flora would starve one moment, on a diet of baked beans and soup, and have a cholesterol problem the next with endless bags of chips and takeaways. That, he thought, was the real reason for having two parents. A child had to have a fair shot of being looked after properly.
They ate their chips and wandered around the shops, the evening light mellow on their bare arms. It was then that Tom
remembered something.
‘Come on,’ he said, leading the way.
Tom and Flora walked towards the church of St Andrew’s.
‘I once read something rather interesting about this place,’ he said, eyeing the beautiful red sandstone of the buildings, which were positively glowing in the rosy light of evening. ‘There!’
Flora gazed over into the churchyard. ‘What is it?’
‘What do you think?’ he asked, wanting her to try and work it out for herself.
‘Is it a grave?’
‘Yes.’
‘But it’s enormous.’
Tom nodded.
‘There must be a lot of people in it,’ she said, her face a mixture of wonder and horror.
‘Or one very big one,’ Tom said, looking across at the four hogback tomb covers carved from red sandstone and covered in intricate designs.
Flora looked up at him. ‘A man –
that
big?’
‘A real giant, apparently. Fifteen foot tall.’
There was a large intake of breath from Flora. ‘But he wouldn’t be able to fit in any of the shops.’
‘Oh, he lived a long time ago – hundreds and hundreds of years ago – when they didn’t have shops.’
‘That was lucky, then.’
‘Yes,’ Tom replied, loving his daughter’s innocent logic.
They turned to walk back towards the car, each thinking giant thoughts. Tom wondered what would happen if they dug the grave up to find no body there at all – just a load of old myth. It was best left undisturbed, wasn’t it, so it would
continue to fill people’s imaginations?
He stifled the urge to laugh. Wasn’t he a kind of archaeologist? Wasn’t he in the very process of trying to dig some dirt about Molly Bailey, or whoever it was who had left Barton five grand? Would it all be best left to the imagination – the safe, secretive place beyond public scrutiny? Probably, but that wouldn’t pay the bills, he thought. Dirt was meant to be dug. Stories weren’t stories until they were told. He was the mere teller, that was all.
It was a strange job when you thought about it. He was a professional nosy parker. He’d often wondered what he’d do if he wasn’t a reporter, but nothing had ever tempted him.
‘You want to keep your options as open as possible at this stage,’ the middle-aged careers officer at school had told him, her breath stinking of cheese and onion crisps. He had, of course, made the grave mistake of telling her that he wanted to be a writer.
‘That’s not a career option,’ she’d told him, not noticing that he was slowly inching his chair away from her. ‘You can’t just become a writer.’
Tom had wanted to ask why not, but realised that that would probably necessitate a long answer and prolong his death by cheese and onion, so he quickly mumbled something about becoming a journalist. It was a word he’d always liked and the images on TV of crowds of people hanging round trendy places to thrust a tape recorder at some celebrity had always struck him as fun.
The careers officer had seemed better impressed by the word ‘journalist’ than ‘writer’, and had thrown some leaflets at him. And that had been that. Fourteen years later, and he still hadn’t pushed his tape recorder into a celebrity’s face.
Walking back to the car, Tom said, ‘So what do you want to be, Flo? When you grow up?’
‘Oh, Dad!’ she groaned. ‘That’s sooooo boring!’
Tom grinned. He remembered how he’d hated that question when he was young. It had seemed an obsession with adults, as if they were jealous that they no longer had their youth, and their only consolation was to remind children that theirs wouldn’t last for ever either.
‘Sorry,’ he said as they got back in the car.
‘It’s all right,’ she said in a very adult way. ‘And, if you
really
want to know, I’m going to be a writer.’
Tom tried not to splutter. ‘A writer?’
Flora nodded. ‘Like Julia Golding.’
‘I see,’ Tom said, a little disappointed that she’d not said ‘I want to be a writer like my father’. She didn’t see him as a writer, did she? His stories didn’t count because they were nothing more than fact, and pretty fatuous fact at that. Most of the time he hated writing it, so he couldn’t really expect anyone to enjoy reading it, could he?
That was the whole point of this journey now. He was a man in search of a story – a decent story – a story worth writing and reading. A tale to stir the public imagination, and to waken them to the possibilities in life. But none of that was going to happen until he’d found the person he was after, and that wasn’t going to happen until he’d spoken to Marty Bailey.
Tom sighed and picked up his mobile phone.
‘Hello?’ the uncertain voice of the woman he’d spoken to before greeted him.
‘Hello,’ Tom echoed, ‘It’s Tom Mackenzie. I rang earlier to speak to Marty Bailey.’
There was a pause where Tom expected some sort of explanation as to why Marty Bailey hadn’t phoned him back.
‘Hello?’ Tom said again.
‘I’m sorry. He’s still not available.’
‘Oh,’ Tom said, tapping his foot on the floor of the car and thinking that time was money and he wasn’t earning any at the moment. ‘Maybe you could help me? Am I talking to Mrs Bailey?’
‘Yes,’ the lady said, her voice threaded through with suspicion.
‘So Molly Bailey is your sister-in-law?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK,’ Tom said. ‘Would it be possible to come round and have a chat?’
‘I don’t understand what this is all about.’
‘That’s why I think it would be best to have a chat. It would really help me out and wouldn’t take long,’ Tom said.
‘You’d be doing Molly a favour too,’ he lied, wincing slightly at his boldness. Still, it seemed to do the trick.
‘Where are you?’ she asked.
‘Penrith.’
‘And do you know where we are?’
‘No.’ Tom took a pen out of his shirt pocket and scribbled down the address as she dictated it quickly.
‘It’s about a ten-minute drive from Penrith,’ she explained.
‘Thanks,’ Tom said. ‘I’ll see you soon.’
Tom found the place easily enough. He was getting used to the winding country lanes and huddles of stone cottages. It really was a beautiful county, he thought. He could just imagine himself in a little whitewashed cottage with extensive
views over the sheep-scattered fells, bashing away at his laptop – Tom’s dream sequences invariably involved his own private laptop – before pulling on a pair of stout walking boots and heading, Wordsworth-like, to the nearest pub.
‘Am I allowed to come too?’ Flora said, pulling Tom out of his dream sequence.
‘Er,’ he hesitated. He wasn’t used to working with a kid alongside him. She might just put this Mrs Bailey off. ‘Best not, Flo. Not this time. This woman didn’t exactly seem friendly on the phone.’
‘OK,’ she said, not sounding unduly hurt.
‘You just—’ He was about to tell her to make a nosedive into a book but she already had. ‘I won’t be long.’
Tom got out of the car and opened the waist-high gate. Well, he
tried
to open it but it almost fell off its hinges. He looked up, half expecting someone to shout at him from one of the windows. Who did he think he was – breaking the gate like that? Nervously he tried again, managing to inch it open successfully.
Walking up the path, his boots scuffed on the uneven surface. Looking down, he noticed that the path didn’t really have a surface; it was more like an unmade road. He grimaced, and then his eyes caught something: a huge hanging basket full of flowers. Tom didn’t normally go for that sort of thing; he always thought flowers didn’t quite work when suspended. Weren’t they meant to be rooted in the earth? But at least it looked as if somebody had tried to make the best of their home. Somebody cared even if they couldn’t afford to have their pathway resurfaced or their gate fixed.
Tom pressed the doorbell and waited. He was glad there was a bell because the paint on the front door looked as if it
had acute eczema. He didn’t have to wait long until the door was opened by a young woman.
‘Mrs Bailey?’
‘Mr Mackenzie?’
Tom nodded and extended his hand towards her, noticing how pretty her hazel eyes were but also how red they looked, as if she’d been crying.
‘Come in,’ she said somewhat formally, leading him through a grim-looking hallway which looked as if it hadn’t seen a lick of paint for a good few years.
‘I’m afraid my husband isn’t able to see you,’ she said, her eyes fixed to the floor and her cheeks seeming to flush red. ‘He’s unwell.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
Mrs Bailey looked up at him, and Tom almost felt his eyes watering in response to hers. She looked so sad.
‘Can I—?’ He moved a step towards her but she held up a hand and waved him away.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s not been an easy day. I’ll make us some tea, OK?’
Tom nodded and watched as she disappeared into the kitchen. It was a pattern he was used to. During his early days as a reporter, Tom had paid numerous house visits in order to interview people and no sooner would he get through the door than the kettle would go on. He liked that because it gave him a few valuable moments to absorb the atmosphere of the house and get a feel of the people who lived there. He’d soon got the art of dissecting a room down to two minutes flat: staring at photographs, looking for papers and magazines, and reading the spines of any books, CDs or films on show. You could tell a lot about people before asking any
questions. But this lady didn’t know he was a reporter so wasn’t it a bit odd that she should offer to make him a cup of tea before finding out what it was he wanted? Or had it been to allow herself a few moments to regain her composure?
When she came back through to the living room with two mugs of tea, Tom noticed that her face wasn’t quite so flushed.
‘Oh, please sit down,’ she said. Tom sat down on the sofa, his bottom immediately sucked in so deep that he almost hit the floor.
Mrs Bailey gave a nervous little laugh. ‘I’m sorry about that. It’s rather old. We keep meaning to replace it but just haven’t got round to it. Please, why don’t you sit on that chair?’ She motioned to a wooden chair in the corner of the room, a blush of embarrassment colouring her face.
‘No, no!’ Tom said quickly. ‘I’m very comfortable here, thank you.’
‘I rather doubt that,’ Mrs Bailey said brightly, her face lighting up at last.
There was a couple of seconds’ awkward silence. Tom was the first to speak.
‘I’d better tell you why I’m here,’ he said, attempting to sit forward in the sofa but finding it an impossibility.
‘You said something about Molly.’
‘Yes. I’m a journalist,’ he said, deciding to be absolutely honest, ‘and I think Molly might have a rather interesting story to tell.’
‘Story? Is Molly in some sort of trouble?’
‘No, no!’ Tom said quickly, knowing that people always jumped to the worst possible conclusion as soon as the media started to show an interest. ‘But I think she might have
recently…’ Tom paused. How much information was he going to have to give away in order to be able to get in touch with this Molly Bailey? ‘Mrs Bailey,’ he began again, ‘do you know where I can find Molly?’
Mrs Bailey’s pretty hazel eyes crinkled at the edges as if she was trying to weigh him up. He waited a moment without pressing her further.
‘She’s on holiday,’ she said at last, ‘but why should I tell you where she is? I don’t know you from Adam.’
Tom smiled. ‘I think you’d be interested to know her story.’
‘What story? She’s on holiday!’
‘Not just any old holiday, though,’ Tom said, hoping that it would be enough to drop hints and that maybe, that way, he could get the information he required.
‘What do you mean? There’s nothing special about Swaledale.’