Fear in the Cotswolds (7 page)

‘I know,’ said Thea. ‘I can’t get my car out. Has a snowplough been through the village?’

Janina shook her head uncertainly. ‘A tractor from the farm by the church pushed it aside, up to the top road. We wanted to see how it was this way, didn’t we, boys?’ The children nodded without enthusiasm. All four let their gaze settle on the inadequately cleared road. A single track
ran down the middle, two black lines of dirty crushed snow, with grey ridges on either side, and the road verges still virgin white.

‘I like your dog,’ said Ben, who had clearly been eager to embrace the spaniel from the first few moments. His fearlessness endeared him to both Thea and the dog. Janina laughed quietly. ‘His mother says he should not be so friendly with dogs, but he has a special feeling for them.’

‘It’s OK,’ Thea assured her. ‘She won’t hurt him.’

‘I know that. In Bulgaria sometimes they have rabies, but here the dogs are harmless.’

‘This one is, anyway,’ said Thea, thinking of bull terriers trained to attack by their inadequate masters, and then to the depressing conversation she had had with Lucy about the endless betrayals of dogs.

They seemed to have reached a hiatus, and Thea found herself hoping the others wouldn’t abandon her for a few more minutes. ‘I can’t get my car out,’ she told them again. ‘It’ll have to wait until the snow melts, I suppose.’

‘Have you got food?’ Janina asked with belated concern. ‘You could walk to Northleach, perhaps.’ She grimaced doubtfully at the prospect.

‘Oh, I’ll be fine. There’s plenty of food.’

She was increasingly desperate to tell the story of the dead man in the snow, the disappearing body and her consequent embarrassment – but she couldn’t broach such a subject in front of children. The prospect of returning to Lucy’s Barn and its disconcerting mysteries was less and less attractive as the minutes passed.

‘What time is it? The party, I mean.’

‘Two o’clock,’ Janina told her.

‘There must be a lot to do. How many are coming?’

‘Seven or eight. It’s all done. We had a lot of extra time to prepare.’ Janina rolled her eyes expressively, and Thea glimpsed the long snowy days spent trying to keep two young boys amused and reassured in the absence of their mother.

‘You can come if you like,’ said Nicky, and Thea almost hugged him.

‘Oh! Are you sure? What about my dog?’

‘Both of you,’ said the child. His big brown eyes met hers and she wished she could read the thoughts behind them. At four, she wasn’t sure a birthday fully registered, apart from the presents and the fuss. What did ‘being born’ mean to somebody his age, especially if there had been no more babies after him? This anniversary of his birth must seem arbitrary and inexplicable – but still this little boy was rising to the occasion,
and asserting his claim to be special at least for a day.

‘But I’m not dressed for a party,’ she said, looking down at her old trousers.

Janina and Nicky both laughed at this. Benjamin looked less amused. ‘The knees are dirty,’ he observed.

‘It’s only wet, I think,’ said Thea. ‘I stumbled on the snow and landed on my knees. I could go back and change.’ She cast an unenthusiastic glance at the snow-covered track back to Lucy’s Barn. ‘And catch up with you later.’

‘No, no,’ said Janina firmly. ‘Come with us now. We can have a small lunch and you can be a big help with all the coats and boots and stuff like that.’

Thea dimly remembered children’s parties, and the miraculous mountains of clothes and possessions that accompanied four-year-olds everywhere they went. They would bring presents for Nicky, and even possibly contributions of food, as well as the inevitable outdoor clothes. Hats, gloves and scarves would augment the coats and boots. ‘Right,’ she said.

Nicky looked up at the au pair. ‘Will George come?’ he asked in a hesitant voice. ‘I want George.’

Janina squeezed his hand, through two gloves. ‘No, I don’t think so, darling. I haven’t seen him
since the snow started. He won’t want to come out.’

It seemed that the party was to be significantly diminished by the absence of this George, but when Thea raised an enquiring eyebrow at Janina, there was no responding explanation.

The walk to the boys’ house was over half a mile, and Thea found herself relieved that she had Hepzie with her for the return journey, which was likely to be in darkness. Even so, she shivered inwardly at the prospect. Would one of the party parents give her a lift, she wondered? Not down the final leg, obviously – and that was the part she was already starting to dread.

It was midday when they got there, and she wondered where the morning had gone. Everything took so long, trudging through the snow and stopping to gaze at the transformed landscape every few minutes. Janina’s employers lived in a large detached house, constructed of
the ubiquitous Cotswold stone sometime during the nineteenth century, or so she judged from the mellow colour and generous size. Even in the snow, it was obvious the house had had a couple of centuries to settle into place and took whatever the elements threw at it completely in its stride.

It lay to the west of the church, down a small road which had been comprehensively cleared of snow as far as the boys’ house. Beyond their entrance, there was still a foot or so waiting to be shovelled away. Janina led the way around the back, where everybody ritualistically divested themselves of damp outerwear in a small room boasting a row of coat hooks and racks for boots. ‘How very organised,’ Thea remarked, thinking of a Victorian household with a routine for everything.

Trooping through the kitchen into a handsome room with a high ceiling and warm terracotta-hued carpet, they encountered a man holding a cloth with which he had apparently been cleaning a window.
How about that – a male cleaner
, Thea thought with amusement. Then he looked at her, following up quickly with a questioning glance at Janina, and she realised he must be the man of the house.

‘This is—’ Janina began, then put a hand to her mouth, with a girlish chuckle. ‘I forgot your name,’ she confessed.

‘Thea. Thea Osborne. Pleased to meet you,’ said Thea, proffering a hand.

The man took it in a dry, gentle grip and smiled into her eyes. ‘How do you do?’ he said with equal formality. ‘I’m Simon Newby.’ He was tall, with Nicky’s dark eyes and Benjamin’s long face. A certain languid air reminded Thea of Janina’s criticisms of him – lazy, beer-drinking. But now she saw them together, it seemed to her that there was a relaxed atmosphere between Simon and the nanny that was at odds with the earlier description.

‘Janina and the boys asked me to the party. I’ll try to make myself useful.’

‘Do we know you?’ The question was as gentle as his handshake, but he obviously needed to hear the answer.

‘No, you don’t. I’m house-sitting for Lucy Sinclair. You probably know her.’

‘You saw a dead body in a field yesterday,’ he stated carelessly. ‘I’ve heard all about you.’

Thea glanced worriedly at the two boys, but they were absorbed in a corner with what had to be Nicky’s new birthday presents, the boxes still in evidence on the floor. Hepzie had joined them, politely watching their faces for any signal as to what was expected of her. ‘Oh?’ Thea said.

‘The police photographer is my brother. He came over here last night to bring Nicky’s present
and he told me the whole story. Pretty pissed off he was, to be honest. Says he’s sure he’s caught a cold from so much standing around in the snow, and was crying off the party. That’s a shame, because the boys are very fond of Uncle Tony. And vice versa – see all the photos to prove it.’ He waved a hand at a wall on which hung eight or ten framed photographs, in sepia and black and white. They were all studies of the two boys, with Benjamin, somewhat to Thea’s surprise, obviously the favoured one. The photographer had caught the less overtly attractive child in quirky, characterful poses: Benjamin eating an ice cream with his face besmirched; the two brothers hand in hand under a big tree; Ben looking back over his shoulder, someone perhaps having just called his name. The word that came to Thea’s mind was
innocence
. Tony had managed to eradicate the slightest suggestion of unsuitable feelings associated with these images. How brave, she thought, in these paranoid times, to get so carried away with photographing children. Nicky’s long eyelashes and round cheeks made him a natural subject for the cameraman – but Tony had chosen instead to focus on the longer face and smaller eyes of the older boy. Although Nicky had not been entirely ignored; the pictures of him verged on the saccharine almost to the point of parody. There was some sort of message here, she felt – one that
perhaps she would rather not probe too deeply.

‘Wow!’ she exclaimed. ‘They’re brilliant. He seems to have a lot of talent.’

She realised that she had not taken a great deal of notice of the photographer in the snowy fields, except to register that he was in his thirties with wavy brown hair and narrow shoulders. Simon was superficially similar, she supposed, and a few years older.

‘We think so,’ smiled Simon. ‘But he has difficulty making a living at it. Hence the police work. They pay rather well.’

‘Because he has to be on constant call,’ nodded Thea.

‘Right. That’s the bit he hadn’t really bargained for. When the mobile went off yesterday, he says he was only half dressed, and in the middle of doing something tricky on the computer. But at least he only had a mile or two to go.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes…he lives just the other side of the A40, at Turkdean.’

‘Oh, I know Turkdean,’ said Thea, remembering a brief visit there a year or so before. ‘Well, he probably got there ahead of the others. They came out from Cirencester. What a waste of time it was for all of them, though. I felt really bad about it.’ The impossible mystery of the vanished body washed over her again,
leaving her paralysed for a moment. ‘And very confused,’ she added.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ said Simon, his attention on his older son, who was sitting on an old armchair, cuddled up with Hepzibah, as if the dog had been his for years. ‘At least, I don’t suppose it was. Tony said there was absolutely nothing there.’ He frowned as if the puzzle were too hard for him, as well.

‘I really did see a body,’ she said defensively.

‘I believe you. It’s too bizarre to be a complete invention. Even Tony believed you, more or less.’

‘It’s not true that there was absolutely nothing, either. There were marks in the snow.’

‘Mmm. That was all he had to take pictures of. He was rather looking forward to his first corpse, you see, in a professional way. There’s a whole procedure laid down for getting the picture as accurate and helpful as possible.’

‘Oh dear. Well, the body might yet turn up, I suppose, and then he’ll be needed again.’

‘You’re still sure he was dead, then?’

The relief of finally being able to talk about it was enervating. She looked for somewhere to sit down for a moment. ‘I certainly don’t see how he could have recovered enough to just walk away,’ she said from the small sofa she’d sunk into.

‘Have you ever seen a body before?’

‘Oh, yes. And I’m perfectly certain that the man I saw yesterday was just as dead as the others.’

This, on a raised note, attracted the attention of Benjamin, who turned round and stared at her with very much the same expression as when she had first met him. A look that said he had a distinct impression that she was mad.

‘Sorry,’ she muttered to Simon. ‘He wasn’t meant to hear that.’

‘Lunch!’ Simon clapped his hands in a parody of a children’s television presenter. ‘Come on, everybody, into the kitchen.’ In a low mutter to Thea, he added, ‘That’ll distract him, you see.’

Benjamin wriggled slowly off the chair, sighing deeply. Not a happy child, Thea diagnosed. Must be missing his mother, she supposed.

Over lunch she asked Simon about his hotel job. ‘Assistant manager,’ he nodded. ‘I get a lot of the unsocial hours. It’s relentless. We do a lot of conferences – something I’m not at all sure is worth all the hassle. The rooms are all full, but it’s at a reduced tariff, and the catering’s a nightmare.’

‘How big is it, then?’

‘Fifty-five rooms. Not massive, but we can fit seventy or so in, provided there are plenty of couples.’

‘At conferences? Unlikely, surely?’

‘You’d be surprised. I’m not saying they’re all married to each other, obviously.’ He grinned significantly, and she gave a smile in return that took an effort. When had she become such a prude, she wondered? What did it matter to her what businessmen got up to at their silly conferences?

The party ran its course, with Simon far more involved than Janina had led Thea to expect. He operated the music for musical chairs; blew up an endless supply of balloons to replace those that one small boy persistently burst; wiped up spilt juice and diplomatically intervened in an epic conflict between Benjamin and a screeching girl who had been delivered along with her younger brother who was apparently Nicky’s best friend. Thea had been intrigued by the woman who brought them – at least fifty-five, with an intimidating fringe and sturdy leather boots. Grandmother, Thea concluded. Ages of the party guests ranged from two to six, with the noisy girl the undisputed senior. They all lived within two or three miles of Hampnett, it seemed.

Nobody mentioned the absent Bunny directly, but Thea quickly gained the impression that the party was going with a much greater swing without her than it would if she had been there.
There was an air of mischievous liberation, especially in Simon, that suggested the lack of a repressive hand that would otherwise have held sway.

Janina too seemed quite relaxed. She swung in and out of the kitchen with trays of delicious food designed to delight any small child, treading lightly and smiling broadly. Nicky followed her adoringly, finding pretexts to gain her attention, often winning for himself a quick hug. Thea remembered the conversation outside the church, when Janina had bemoaned the cruelty of gaining a child’s affection only to disappear from his life within a few months. She quailed to think of the pain of the inevitable separation.

Then she heard what the child was saying: ‘Where’s George? He said he would come to the party. I want him. He never gave me a present.’

Janina put her arms round him. ‘Maybe he’s busy with the snow. He might be working for people, digging it away from their doors. He likes to help.’

‘Yes. But I want him to help
me
.’

‘That is selfish, Nicholas.’ She tempered the words with a smile.

‘I want to go to his house and see him.’

‘You can’t. Tomorrow maybe. Now you have to be nice to your party guests.’

Thea’s own role was very small. She enforced a few game rules, selecting winners and consoling losers. She monitored food consumption, checking a chubby little boy after his fourth meltingly delectable home-made doughnut, and offering him a slice of fresh pineapple instead. She listened to garbled anecdotes about the snow from several youngsters who had been amazed at this unprecedented gift from Mother Nature. And before she knew it, it was four o’clock.

‘Gosh, I’ll have to go,’ she cried, feeling like Cinderella. ‘I’ve got animals to feed.’

Simon looked up from the party bags that were to be issued shortly. ‘If you wait until everyone’s gone, I’ll drive you,’ he offered.

‘I can’t. That’ll be another half hour or more.’ As yet, no parents had arrived to collect their child. If recollection served, it could be a very protracted process. ‘I’ll be all right walking. I’ve got the dog.’

The dog had to be enticed off the same armchair as before, where she and Benjamin had spent the major part of the afternoon. A flicker of worry about the withdrawn child went through Thea, and she began to say something to Simon about it, before he cut across her.

‘Dorothy’s dad might be going your way,’ he suggested. ‘They live in Northleach.’

‘Dorothy?’

‘The pugnacious one with the little brother.’ He indicated the child who had been fighting with Benjamin.

‘Ah yes. The ones that were brought here by their granny.’

‘Uh?’ Simon blinked. ‘Oh, no…that was Barbara. She’s their stepmother. But Bernard is meant to collect them, if I’ve got it right.’

‘So where’s their real mother?’ she asked boldly, always curious about unusual family patterns.

‘Philippa?’ His attention wandered back to the roomful of children. ‘She has them sometimes, but she lives in a flat and works full time. Barbara’s more or less retired, so she minds them mainly. Dorothy was born the same week as Ben. Bunny and Pippa got friendly at the clinic, or somewhere.’ He smiled tolerantly. ‘She’s a bit volatile, as anyone will tell you. Bernard is much better off with this one. She’s his third, and you couldn’t find three more different women.’

‘Unusual,’ said Thea. ‘Normally they just go for a younger version of the same person.’

Simon drew in a hissing breath. ‘Ooh… cynical!’ he reproached.

‘Not at all. Simple truth,’ she defended.

‘Anyway, he might be good for a lift.’

Thea was increasingly anxious to return to her responsibilities, and since there was still no sign
of any parents, she decided to walk. ‘I can do it in twenty minutes or so if I bustle.’

‘Up to you,’ he said, which made her blink. She realised she was accustomed to men who took charge and tried to manage her, which generally made her defiantly independent. Now this one was letting her go out into the freezing darkness alone, she felt a quiver of resentment.

‘Right, then.’ She retrieved the dog and went out to the boot room to collect her various garments. At least there was no new snow falling. And it wouldn’t really be dark once she got outside. The fluttering in her stomach was entirely groundless.

Calling brief goodbyes to Janina and the boys, she wended her way around the house and back towards the church. Two cars were approaching from the north, and she heard them slow and turn down towards the house she had just left.
They won’t be any use to me
, she thought, assuming they returned the way they’d come, up to the A40.

She was within sight of the turning down to Lucy’s Barn before a car came towards her. It was proceeding slowly on the inadequately cleared road, with its headlights on full beam. It passed her, leaving a wide berth, and she could get no glimpse of the driver. So much for any prospect of a lift, she thought. Besides, no car
would have ventured down the final quarter mile – and that was the part she had been increasingly dreading.