Lots of Love (15 page)

Equally surprised, Ellen recognised his name as one of the contacts her parents had given her. Now that she was away from the horseshoe, it seemed that her fortunes were changing. ‘Am I relieved somebody’s in the office!’ She laughed. ‘I need to talk to you about Goose Cottage – you see—’

‘
Very
nice property,’ Lloyd butted in, sounding like Tim Nice-But-Dim – killingly posh, gushy and softly spoken. ‘Needs a lot of work, of course, and probably overpriced, although I have to warn you the owners won’t budge in that department. Then there’s the neighbourhood disputes and the rather unfortunate right of way.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Ellen was astonished.

‘We at Seaton’s pride ourselves on our honesty,’ he announced breathily. ‘To mislead is to miss out, that’s our motto. But GC really is
very
pretty. Would you like a brochure? We have no colour ones left, I’m afraid, but I can run you off a photocopy. You’re lucky you caught me – it’s usually only weekend staff here today and they’re not in until ten, but I have a viewing this morning and need the keys.’

‘So do I. I need the keys to Goose Cottage.’

‘We don’t allow unsupervised visits, I’m afraid – I might be able to squeeze you in later this coming week.’

‘I live there.’

‘I think you’ll find it’s vacant.’ Lloyd’s voice – which to Ellen sounded affected now, like that of a bad disc jockey – was teasing.

‘No – I think you’ll find I’m living there. My parents did tell you. My name is Ellen
Jamieson.
I am the owners’ daughter, and I have accidentally locked myself out of the cottage. I’m calling you from a neighbour’s house, but I obviously need to get in. Your agency has the only set of spare keys in the UK, and I really need to borrow them.’

Lloyd was super-soothing. ‘Ellen! Of
course.
How foolish of me. Not a problem at all – if you come into the office with some ID, I’ll make sure the staff here let you have the keys for half an hour.’

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t. All my ID is locked in the house, along with my car keys, my dog and my clothes. I’m only wearing a dressing-gown. I’d really appreciate your help. Can you just detour here quickly with the keys?’

‘No can do,’ he said, in the same placating tone. ‘I have a VIP client viewing a thousand-acre estate at nine thirty. It’s an all-morning appointment. I know the properties in this area like the back of my hand, and there really is no other man for the job, otherwise of
course
I’d send a deputy ahead to greet the man’s helicopter so that I could personally let you into your house.’ His oily tone failed to mask the openly arrogant sarcasm.

Ellen bristled, although she knew that it wasn’t
his
fault she was in this predicament. But his ‘overpriced’ and ‘unfortunate right of way’ slips played on her mind so she let her anger bubble through her voice. ‘In that case, I’ll sort it out myself. But I do need you to meet me at the cottage tomorrow morning to discuss Seaton’s representation.’

‘I don’t actually have my appointments diary with me at this juncture.’

‘Oh, yes, you do,’ Ellen told him. ‘At this juncture, it’s the back of that hand you know so well. So grab a biro and write “Ellen Jamieson, nine o’clock, Goose Cottage” on it. I’m sure you’re aware that you have a great deal of explaining to do, and I’m giving you the opportunity to do it. To misjudge is to miss out, which is why I will see you tomorrow morning. If you’re not there promptly, I shall make my dissatisfaction abundantly clear to your superiors. Understood?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Good. I look forward to meeting you.’

‘And I you.’

Ellen hung up. ‘Toffee-nosed idiot.’

‘You are so utterly, utterly cool, darling!’ Pheely had been listening avidly, now eating chopped fruit from her coffee bowl. ‘I’d have burst into tears.’

Ellen glared at the phone. ‘Stuck-up twat. Trust my mother to appoint an estate agent who sounds like he’s swallowed enough silver spoons to measure J. Alfred Prufrock’s life into very old age.’

‘Gosh, you
are
refreshing to have around the place.’ Pheely giggled. ‘Oddlode hasn’t seen a Commie since Archie Worthington came home from his first term at university with a Socialist Worker T-shirt.’

‘I’m
not
a Communist.’

‘No, but you
are
an estate-agent
provocateur.’

Thank goodness for Pheely’s infectious ability to cheer.

AAAA
IIII
Locksmiths of Market Addington were more than happy to take a Sunday-morning call-out – at triple-time plus VAT plus expenses – and promised that Ellen would be their top-priority emergency.

‘Just as soon as they’ve had a fry-up and read the sports section of the
News of the World,’
Pheely warned, as she saw Ellen out of the garden. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to stay? I promise they’ll be hours. Remember, you’re on Cotswold time here.’

‘I’d rather wait at the cottage.’ She had more faith in the AAAA
IIII
boys. ‘Thanks so much for getting up and letting me hog your phone.’

‘Worth it for the dew, my darling.’ Pheely took a deep, indulgent breath at the garden door, which was somewhat tarnished by her ongoing cigarette. ‘I might pop by with the Dane later to see how you’re doing. We can perv around the village spying on weekenders if you have time . . . although you may still be in your dressing-gown then, of course. I once called a local emergency plumber who said he’d be with me in ten – I didn’t realise he meant ten days later. Hamlet and I were floating around on the furniture.’

It wasn’t a hopeful prognosis.

With Snorkel gazing at her from alternate knee-height windows, Ellen sat in the Goose Cottage garden in her dressing-gown and watched the village wake up, an eye trained at all times for a black and white cat and a locksmith’s van.

First to emerge was Hunter Gardner
en route
to the village stores for his Sunday papers. He gave her a hearty wave as he passed and Ellen – who had been trying to hide behind some lupins – managed a vague smile in return.

‘Wonderful morning!’

‘Yes, isn’t it?’

‘You tidying up that garden? Awful mess.’

‘Yes, isn’t it?’

‘Rather an odd choice of gardening attire, hum?’

‘Yes, isn’t it?’

Thankfully this banter lasted only until he had marched beyond the garden wall and started down the Goose Lane hill towards the village green. Ellen had a nasty feeling that he had spotted her loitering in her dressing-gown earlier, which was why he was going the long way round.

Then, half an hour later, came the rather surprising sight of Giles Hornton in very skimpy nylon shorts and a Flora Marathon T-shirt jogging past, sweat already dripping from his moustache.

‘Fancy joining me for a run, O sporty new neighbour?’ Even at speed he managed to ooze slow, calculated charm as he leered at her over the hedge.

‘Another time.’

‘I’ll hold you to that!’

The white teeth flashed, the moustache glistened, and he tightened his buttocks as he ran on.

While Ellen paced the garden, batting grass with her hand and huffing impatiently, the village soon emerged in force – the hung-over dog-walkers impatiently rustling empty poop bags in their pockets, the kids on micro-scooters or ponies, youths on bikes, mothers with pushchairs, and ramblers with upside-down Landranger maps. Ellen lurked behind the lupins and watched the shadows shortening, trying to work out how long she had been waiting. It felt like hours. Her skin itched with the heat and frustration. Never a patient person at the best of times, she was starting to harbour fantasies about sledge-hammering the door.

She took yet another lap of the house, hoping to find a way in that she’d overlooked earlier. The hatch to the cellar seemed promising, until she spotted the huge padlock hidden in the weeds that had sprung up between the cracked paving stones around it. She peered through every window in case the automatic locks hadn’t engaged, but it was like Fort Knox. She could see the rose petals still lying on the sitting-room floor, her half-drunk mug of tea in the kitchen and the horseshoe on the dining-room window-sill.

Pheely was right. The horseshoe had brought her nothing but bad luck so far. She looked at the twisting nails poking out of it and something occurred to her. She could try to break in. Even though she couldn’t pick a lock to save her life, there were other ways . . .

Hunter Gardner was reading his
Sunday Telegraph
on his very clean decking now, a cafetière and a pair of binoculars on the small table in front of him as he enjoyed a little pre-church bird-watching. Ellen crouched down as she passed the gap in the laurels that masked the two gardens and headed for the carport to search for break-in equipment.

An extending ladder was suspended from hooks in the ceiling and conscientiously secured by a bicycle lock so that wannabe burglars – or locked-out daughters – couldn’t easily appropriate it to shimmy up to an open attic window. But, to Ellen’s relief, it had a combination lock. She could hear Snorkel trotting around and whining overhead as she set about trying a few codes that her parents favoured – various four-figure combinations of birthdays and the 90053 ‘goose’ code. At least it passed the time, and made her feel curiously sentimental as she tried out their anniversary and the year she had graduated.

‘Bingo!’ It was her father’s birth year – as always a jolting reminder that he had seen out four more decades than her.

She carried the ladder to the front of the house and set it up by the only open window, stepping back to assess her chances of getting in before she tried out the perilous climb. The window really was very small and would take a lot of contortion to get through. She rubbed her mouth thoughtfully and looked round at the lane, praying for an AAAA
IIII
van to come trundling along.

The horseshoe’s bad luck was playing on her mind now. If bad fortune ran in threes, then she was really tempting fate. First the cat had escaped, then she had got locked out and now she was planning to scale three floors and clamber through a very small window. ‘Coward,’ she told herself, reknotting her belt and tugging her dressing-gown as far down her bottom as it would go. Then, making sure that the top of the ladder was firmly braced up against the thatch, she started to climb.

It was much easier than she’d feared, the ladder well secured and the thick ivy and wisteria that climbed the house providing plenty of steadying handles in case she happened to wobble. It wasn’t until she tried to get from the ladder into the window that Ellen encountered a hitch.

The most obvious way to go in was to clutch the top of the dormer, step away from the ladder and on to the sill then post herself through feet first like a human cannonball into a barrel. But the thatched dormer was almost impossible to hold on to, with its anti-bird chicken-wire hairnet and its alopecia straw. Her weight stayed too far back to maintain a grip for more than a few seconds, which wasn’t long enough to get through the window before falling backwards off the roof. After two or three false starts, Ellen concluded that it was way too dangerous.

She tried gripping the window-frame instead, but couldn’t get the leverage to move across from the ladder, which pitched sideways dramatically.

‘Try going head first!’ a voice called from the road.

Ellen glanced over her shoulder, and saw a figure squinting up at her through the sunlight. The curly hair, broad shoulders and freckles were unmistakable. It was Spurs Belling, dressed in ancient jeans and flip-flops. At his ankles were Hell’s Bells’ two black Labradors, panting.

‘You could offer to help,’ Ellen muttered, under her breath, as she twisted round again.

‘What on earth do you think you’re doing, young lady?’ bellowed a furious voice. Hunter Gardner had joined Spurs on the lane, now blazered and cravated for church, his bald patch gleaming with Brylcreem.

Ignoring them both because she needed to concentrate, Ellen saw that if she put one foot into the fairly pronounced dip in the stonework to her right, she would have enough purchase to push herself up into the window head first. Years ago, she had done a bit of barefoot rock-climbing in France, and remembered the principles enough to feel sure she’d be safe.

At that moment, Spurs and Hunter were joined by a sweating Giles on the way back from his run. ‘Bloody hell – what’s she doing up there?’

‘Stop her, somebody!’ Hunter roared. ‘Damn fool woman will kill herself.’

‘She’ll be fine,’ a voice reassured them, then shouted up at her, ‘Go for it!’

Ellen took one final glance over her shoulder: Spurs was encouraging her. He was standing to one side of the others – a cyclist and a fellow dog-walker had also stopped to watch – and he was the only one of her audience smiling, not remotely concerned for her safety. Suddenly she found herself grinning back. He understood that, however risky, this was better than hanging around for a locksmith.

‘Stop that immediately and come down!’ barked Hunter, now half-way along the drive.

If there was one thing Ellen loathed more than waiting around for hours, it was being spoken to as if she was a child. She hadn’t clambered all the way up here just to clamber down again. Her blood was up, her ladder was up and she was damn well getting up.

She swung her foot across to the hold, flexing her toes into the crevice until she was happy with the grip. Then, clasping the window-sill with one hand and pointing the other above her head to narrow her shoulders enough to get through, she sprang up into the aperture, twisting her body to get as far through as possible then hook herself in with her elbow.

It worked. She was half-way in, staring at the unmade bed she’d slept in the night before.

The only problem was that her bottom and legs remained outside. With nothing to get her foot on to to hoick herself further up, Ellen’s legs flailed hopelessly, acutely aware that any violent move might expose her naked bottom to the village.