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  Olly’s turn to laugh. ‘Don’t you make it happen in bed for your wife, Guy? OK, OK, I’m going! I’ll call again when you’re feeling less stressed. I really do want to talk to you.’

  Spiteful, sulky, Guy called after him. ‘Should’ve made it a dozen roses, Olly, she might not have realised how broke you are!’

  Guy left very soon after a long telephone conversation of ‘been inconsiderate’ and ‘work everything out’. Before he went, he ratted on Olly with thorough rancour. ‘He’s in really deep poo, basically. Ran up God knows what bills when he was doing well, then surfed from one credit card to another, applying for them all, moving the balance and taking advantage of the free credit period. Then new card applications began to be refused. Do you know what they charge on unpaid balances?’

  She had some idea. And it reinforced her suspicions about what was bringing Olly back into her orbit. He needed somewhere to live and someone to subsidise him for a bit. She felt a moment’s sympathy. It couldn’t be easy for him, he seemed to be paying pretty dearly for his mistakes. Then she hardened her heart.

  No sympathy from Tess Riddell, today!

  Hoisting Toby into a more comfortable position, Ratty matched his pace to hers, rubbing shoulders. ‘You know something, Princess, I love you when you’re angry.’

  ‘You should have heard me when my father rang ... Good God!’

  Carola’s house. Decorated barge-boards, repro-medieval front door, bullions in the bay window, pierced ridge tiles, statues, a koi carp pond and bridge guarding the front door, an arch and a pergola.

  ‘Wait till you see the inside,’ hissed Angel, as Carola opened the door.

  ‘You’re the last,’ Carola reprimanded gently, towing them across the hall to the sitting room like a tiny blonde tug. ‘Come and join us!’ Tess, gazing around from the back of the group, felt her lip curl. As a compulsive viewer of how-to television programmes, subscriber to every glossy home monthly, Carola obviously fancied herself as a designer and decorator.

  The intensity of the effect was difficult to absorb. Rugs hand-hooked, embroideries and tapestries on walls that were dragged, ragged, marbled, stencilled and sponged, doors scumbled or crackle-glazed, curtains swagged-and-tailed, scalloped, fringed or valanced. Tess’s artistic soul was offended.

  Carola suggested Angel leave ‘the kiddies’ with her ‘brood’ in the playroom. Formerly the dining room, until Carola and her husband – who commuted and very sensibly spent as much time at work as possible – extended the sitting room to football pitch proportions, it was manned by a ‘village girl’. Carola called her children ‘honeee’ and never told, always asked. ‘Now, can you play nicely? Can you do that for me, honeee? Mmmm? Oh, I expect you’ll do as you like, as usual!’ The grinning face of the eldest girl as she rolled backwards into a toy box suggested that Carola was right.

  The meeting gathered round an oval dining table big enough to host a conference. Carola took the head, dispensing with the formality of being elected chairperson. ‘I’ve put the extra leaf in so there should be room. Does everybody know everybody? Does everybody know Tess? I’ll just go round – Elaine Tubb, from The Three Fishes, Kelly, Hazel and Sarah from Mums ’n’ Tots, Ida, Hubert, Rose and Grace from Church. OK? Now ...’

  Tess exchanged smiles with Gwen Crowther then sighed deeper into her chair, almost slipping from the taut Regency-striped fabric, and only half listened whilst Carola ran through details of the upcoming Feast. ‘Sponsorship – Ratty?’

  Ratty saluted. ‘One stall, ma’am.’

  ‘Elaine, can we count on The Three Fishes for another? We’ve got corn dollies, hand-knits, tombola, white elephant, candles and aromatherapy oils, and then the table-toppers.

  ‘Raffle – a hamper (ta, Gwen), half-a-doz bottles of wine from The Three Fishes (thanks, Elaine), oil change and service from MAR Motors, cut-and-blow from Angel, hand-knitted Dennis the Menace and Bart Simpson, half a day’s gardening from the landscape man. And hand stencilling from me.’

  Ratty whispered, ‘Hope I don’t win that!’

  Oblivious, Carola ran on about erecting the stalls, decorating the stalls, filling the stalls, manning the stalls. Dismantling the stalls and turning them into tables for the finger buffet at the evening dance.

  ‘Now, Tess, I’m relying on you.’

  Having been concentrating on avoiding Ratty as he tried to pull loose the laces of her Doc Martens with his feet, Tess stumbled. ‘Me? Pardon?’

  Carola’s hair was even blonder than Olly’s. With the waxy transparency of skin and lips that were nearly colourless. If she ever got a commission to paint a ghost, Carola would be a great sitter – if she’d sit still for more than five minutes!

  ‘As our resident artist, would you be prepared to paint a picture for us? An original “Nigel” perhaps?’

  ‘Copyright,’ Tess intercepted hastily, although copyright rested with herself.

  ‘Oh dear. I was hoping yours could be top raffle prize? I was seeing you signing the work for the winner? For the photo to go in the evening paper.’ She made a rectangle with her hands and looked through.

  It wasn’t a bad idea. She could send the clipping to her agent. Tess agreed cautiously. ‘But I’ll create something new, specially.’

  Carola clapped. ‘Wonderful! It could be the start of something, a character just for the Feast every year! Perhaps something to reflect the agriculture all around us. A sheep?’

  ‘I come up with my own ideas.’

  ‘Oh, oops! Whatever!’

  Interminable, the meeting, with disgusting refreshments in the shape of sesame-seed toffee fingers, herbal tea and home-made wine. A long evening full of Carola’s enthusiasm and everyone else’s long-suffering cooperation.

  ‘Good job it’s for the village – and no one else wants to do it,’ Ratty observed as they marched back down Main Road, laden with sleepy children, hurrying to keep warm. ‘Or I’d have to pull her head off to shut her up!’

  Gwen brought Milky Bars out from her shop for the children and everyone shivered on the garage forecourt whilst the adults chose between Wagon Wheels and Mars Bars.

  And then it happened.

  One minute Tess was enjoying being part of the group, teasing Angel about whether or not she’d babysit on Friday evening, Ratty’s arm warm against hers as she opened the chocolate wrapper for a suddenly wakeful Toby, Ratty grinning down at her and calling her Princess.

  And then his attention was whipped away like a magician’s tablecloth. ‘Christ!’ he breathed.

  ‘Franca!’ Angel exclaimed in an odd voice.

  Toby was thrust into Tess’s surprised arms and Ratty stepped slowly towards a woman who was hovering outside the shop, grinning madly. Astride a bicycle, a steadying foot to the kerb, elbows on the handlebars, her chest was very much in evidence and her fair hair plaited into knobs above each ear. Her body looked as if she spent every day eating sensibly and working out.

  ‘’Ello,’ she called, accent French and sexy. ‘I am welcome?’

  ‘Franca!’ Ratty threw out his arms and homed in.

  Franca squealed as she was lifted clear of the cycle and swung into his embrace.

  ‘Here comes the mushy stuff!’ Pete joked. ‘They’ll be at it like knives again, you’ll see.’

  So. They had been at it like knives before. Which would explain Ratty’s turned back as he crushed Franca to him, the long and thorough kiss whilst one of Franca’s dainty feet curled up to her taut bottom and her hands locked behind Ratty’s neck.

  Angel and Pete, the children and Tess, waited like spare parts until Franca broke away from the embrace and waved. Ratty whispered in her ear, made her laugh, pulled her back for more kisses. ‘Tomorrow?’ she managed, giggling as Ratty pursued her lips. ‘Now I am busy!’

  And then Ratty was stooping to pick up the cycle, shouting, ‘See you!’ throwing his arm around Franca and hustling her around the corner and out of sight.

  ‘Fancy Franca coming back.’ Angel turned t
o take Toby, who was nodding again now. ‘I didn’t think we’d see her again.’

  Pete shifted Jenna in his arms. ‘Looks like she intends finding out if Ratty’s any less set against commitment. He looked pleased to see her, anyway.’

  ‘Very affectionate,’ Angel agreed. An uncomfortable expression passed over her face. ‘Coming in for coffee, Tess?’

  Tess looked over at the corner. Seeing once again Ratty disappearing without a backward look, pushing a cycle with one hand, squeezing a buttock with the other. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No thanks.’ She tried to think of something to add about an early night or a hot bath or making sure Guy hadn’t reappeared. But failed.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘Thanks for landing me in the shit with Angel.’ Pete stepped into his overalls, shrugging on the sleeves, flipping out the collar. ‘She sends you the following message: “You’d better have made the right choices, you unremitting bastard.” She’s not happy, Rats, with you for doing it, or with me for going along with it. I’m not thrilled about it myself.’

  Ratty kept his eyes on the radiator hoses he was examining, turning them towards the light, picking at possible rot spots with stubby nails.

  Pete pulled out the drawer of a tool chest. ‘And how was the night with Franca?’

  ‘Much as you’d suppose.’

  At the back of the garage Jos lifted his head sharply. ‘Is Franca back? You spent the night together, Rats?’

  Ratty selected a new jubilee clip, tested the screw. ‘She’s back at the Peterborough office for a month or two.’

  He could feel Jos’s stare like a prodding finger, before Jos returned to his work in silence. A silence he kept up more or less all morning.

  Until Ratty was on the forecourt and Jos must’ve thought him out of earshot. His voice came hollowly from under the ramp. ‘So he and Franca got it together again?’

  Muffled, Pete’s voice emerged from the foot well of a Rover. ‘Certainly looked that way last night, when Franca appeared. All over each other when last seen.’

  ‘Must be two years?’

  ‘About that. It was hot at the time.’

  Jos sighed. ‘I thought ... I thought he and Tess were heading for each other like a train crash.’

  ‘Looked that way sometimes, didn’t it?’

  ‘Was Tess upset?’

  ‘A bit quiet. Have you got my feeler gauges?’

  ‘Haven’t even got my own feeler gauges, look in Ratty’s box. She’s bound to feel …’

  ‘… a bit left out? Probably. Yes, probably.’ Pete tucked his hair back and straightened his back. ‘But you know Ratty.’

  The waste bin overflowed. Tess gazed down at her pad and hated the succession of cavorting hedgehogs. She wasn’t in the mood, that was the trouble; creative people depended on being in the mood. And she wasn’t.

  Or was it only the creative? Perhaps, some days, keyboard operators’ fingers were stiff and stupid, perhaps supermarket staff served only rude customers, perhaps butchers suffered from imperfect chops or lumpy sausages and bank managers felt like strangling their staff and machine-gunning the customers?

  She pencil-slashed at her page of hedgehogs, back and forth, until she’d spoiled the page and about eight beneath. She turned them, slowly, until she came to where the sheets were still unblemished and fresh. Then, skimming the pad violently against the wall, quite likely spoiled them, too. For a month now she’d been uptight, unsettled and irascible. Life had changed and she didn’t like it.

  Didn’t like acknowledging that Ratty’s infatuation with Franca had removed him from the position of ‘friend’. Well no, he was friendly when they met but he was no longer there for Tess, tugging her hair, calling her ‘Princess’ or ‘gorgeous, sexy woman’.

  It was Franca; Franca who walked hand in hand with Ratty and on whose temples kisses dropped. Sickeningly attractive, unfortunately, with her sexy French accent and pneumatic body, clear skin and pretty hair. Stupid, hateful hairstyle, why didn’t Ratty worry her to leave it loose? Or perhaps it was enough for him to see it loose at night. In bed.

  Worse, Franca had a history with those Tess considered her friends.

  Her friends. And though they remained her friends, she couldn’t shake off the feeling of becoming the second driver in a one-car team.

  Long days. Disregarding earlier intentions she bought a television and spent more time at home. Got into The Bill, a series of Channel Four documentaries and read Ceefax for hours. She even considered subscribing to satellite television.

  Then she could watch all day and all night, all those repeats and pathetic adverts appealing for charitable donations.

  And never do anything.

  And never see anyone.

  And never go anywhere ever, ever again.

  Someone at the back door. Tess ignored the rapping the first time, but when the five rapid knocks sounded again, she trudged downstairs, pulling her jacket on. She’d stepped down into the kitchen before seeing, through the glass, that it was Olly. She snorted. ‘Bugger!’ And opened the door.

  ‘I’m just going out for a walk. What do you want?’

  Olly took a step back. ‘Oh. Right.’

  They stared at each other. Olly looked more relaxed, the frown that had drawn a sharp line between his brows was missing.

  Then he managed a smile, softening his face. ‘I still want to talk to you for a few minutes. I’ll phone.’

  Tess stepped through the door, closing and locking it behind her. ‘I shouldn’t think we can have very much more to say to each other.’

  ‘Right.’ He trailed back down the drive to his car parked in the lane. Tess pushed her way past it. She’d walk out of the village today, walk for a mile or two on the verges, gazing over the hedges and into the fields. Just this once she didn’t feel like threading her way through the village, having to wave at everyone at the garage or decide whether to call on Angel.

  She set off, hands in pockets, head down.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  When she looked behind, Olly was standing looking after her. ‘A walk,’ she tossed back, without pausing. Then she heard his running footsteps, catching her up.

  ‘I’ll walk with you for a few minutes.’

  She stopped abruptly. ‘Why don’t you just piss off?’ She strode away, leaving him standing in the road again.

  By the time she got to the first curve she’d begun to wonder uneasily what he could be up to. You never could tell with Olly, tricky, crafty Olly. Maybe it would be smart to know? She glanced back. He was still standing where she’d left him, slapping the fob of his keys against his palm and watching. She shouted, ‘All right, then! But get a move on!’

  With the length of his legs he caught up with her in seconds. Gazing away from him, over the fields, she snapped, ‘So? What?’

  He tucked his keys into his pocket. Took a deep breath, then sighed. ‘I decided I’d better say sorry.’

  She gave an incredulous laugh.

  Olly bit his lip. ‘I know it all ended in crap but I was thinking … when we were first going out, it was magic, wasn’t it?’

  And he actually seemed to be waiting for an answer. Tess shrugged, ungraciously, it had seemed like magic to her but she wasn’t going to admit it. ‘A bit late to realise that.’

  A car came up behind them and they hopped up onto the verge out of the way. The car stopped, a navy-blue Triumph Stag. Ratty leant over and wound down the passenger window and raised his eyebrows at Tess. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes!’

  After a long, appraising look at Olly, he turned back to her. ‘I expect you’ve got your mobile?’ He held his own mobile up to show her.

  She nodded, pulled her phone out of pocket.

  Ratty grinned. ‘Should the screen be blank like that?’

  She grimaced and switched it on. After a long look Olly’s way, Ratty drove off.

  Olly gave a half-laugh. ‘He made it
quite obvious he doesn’t trust me.’

  ‘Some people don’t like violent men.’ Bastard Olly. Fresh disgust flooded in at the memory of how he’d slapped her. She let the gusty little breeze push her into a crosser pace and watched the birds waltzing on the wind above the fields while Olly paced in his thin-soled, unsuitable shoes beside her.

  ‘I hadn’t really thought …’ he began. He paused, then tried again. ‘It didn’t seem like …’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t call myself violent.’

  Tess sighed. ‘Olly, you hit me!’ She turned ready to take out more of her frustrations on him.

  ‘Oh hell,’ he said.

  She let her mood carry her along. ‘If you touch me again I’ll see you in court.’

  They tramped on in silence, Tess pushing back tendrils of hair that the breeze teased free from her plait. God, she didn’t want Olly with her. And neither did she want to paint the raffle prize picture she hadn’t even started, but it was probably too late to get out of it. God. She needed a holiday.

  ‘I am sorry.’ Olly suddenly halted.

  Tess turned to face him. ‘It’s a bit late for that.’

  He inched closer. ‘But I am sorry. It sounds feeble, now, but in the heat of the moment … I was frightened, I’d just been threatened with bankruptcy and I lashed out. It didn’t seem like violence, precisely. And now I sound pathetic.’

  Tess said, flatly, ‘It is violence. You are pathetic. What about the other times?’

  She watched his lips thin. ‘I suppose you counted!’

  ‘I remember them all.’

  They glared at each other, defiance and guilt flashing across Olly’s face. It might be that standing up to him – now, when it was too late, secluded here in the leafy lane – was foolhardy to say the least. But Tess almost wished he would crack her one. She was ready for him this time. If his hand so much as twitched, she’d knee him so hard he’d still be spitting his balls out this time next week.

  But when it became obvious the silent staring contest wasn’t going to provoke him, Tess turned back towards Middledip. ‘And are you bankrupt?’