Rumours (24 page)

‘We're taking over the world, pet,' said Caroline. She looked at Rachel. ‘You don't think one of them is really buying Longbridge, do you?'

Rachel shrugged. ‘That's the rumour.'

‘I wonder which?'

‘Do you actually know which is which?'

Caroline thought about it. ‘I can't say I do,' she said. ‘Shame it's not Gary Barlow, though.'

‘What about the daughter – there's a Fortescue daughter, isn't there?' Rachel had only lived in the village for a couple of years. ‘Some kind of scandal, there, so I've heard.'

‘Verity,' said Caroline. ‘No,' she shook her head. ‘It's not for her.'

‘Isn't there anyone in the outer family?'

‘I don't honestly know,' said Caroline.

Nora was suddenly back. ‘If the boy had only lived,' she said. ‘Little lad,' she spoke fondly. ‘It would all be different. Her Ladyship would be in the dower house – and the big house would be his. And he'd perhaps have a family – an heir, even – and—'

‘—and none of this would be worrying us,' said Marjorie, joining them.

‘—and you two have been watching too much
Downton Abbey
,' Caroline laughed.

‘Mind you, imagine if it does go to someone
famous
. The Fortescues are posh all right – but they've never been
glam
. Wouldn't you say, Nora?'

‘I wouldn't call Ant or Dec particularly glam,' said Caroline, ‘they're from my stamping ground.'

Nora and Marjorie tutted sympathetically.

By the time the primary school finished for the day and Rachel and Caroline returned for pick-up, Ant and Dec were no longer in the running: the Longbridge estate was variously being bought by a premiership footballer, or a Russian oligarch or as a tax dodge for someone overseas. People had been busy, Googling and scouring Elmfield Estates' website. The guide price was now known. It was spoken of in double figures only.

Fifteen.

It's on for fifteen.

Lydia should have been tickled by the rumours about the buyers but actually she was irked about the gossip because, two weeks after she'd signed the forms at Elmfield Estates, Longbridge had yet to have a single viewing. Stella had given Lydia her mobile phone number and urged her to phone any time, any day. Lydia, however, who hated traditional telephones, loathed mobiles even more. She'd phoned Stella's mobile for the first time that morning – but Stella had taken the call in Tesco where, she told Lydia, she was doing her weekly shop. Lydia found that so unbearably uncouth and had hung up immediately. On a mobile phone! In Tesco! On a Sunday!

Sitting in the kitchen, picking at a scone, Lydia eyed the phone fixed to the wall whilst Mrs Biggins bustled about pretending not to notice Lydia's agitation. Stella really must phone her back soon. It might be a Sunday but it really was most important.

Finally!

‘Yes?'

‘Lady Lydia? It's Stella Hutton. I'm so sorry about earlier. I'm home now. What can I do for you?'

Lydia imagined her surrounded by those ghastly plastic bags, no doubt with a phone tucked under her chin as she put the shopping away and closed kitchen cupboards with her foot and mouthed things at her child. Multitasking – wasn't that what they called it? If people were better at time management, there'd be no need to do two things at once.

‘I need to call a meeting and I need you to be here,' said Lydia.

‘A meeting?'

‘The village is chasing its tail with ridiculous tittle-tattle of who's buying Longbridge.'

‘You want to host a public meeting?'

‘Oh good God, girl – of course not! A meeting for those directly affected. For the people connected with Longbridge – those who work here or live in Longbridge property.'

‘You haven't told them?'

‘Don't speak to me like that!'

‘I'm sorry,' said Stella, who hadn't meant her tone to sound so flabbergasted. ‘I meant no offence.'

‘I've been waiting for you to sell it!'

‘I've been working round the clock these last ten days. I hassled the photographer and the printer as much as I could, but the packs only arrived on Friday. However, I sent out six straight away, having phoned those clients pre-emptively. They're all interested. I'm working as fast as I can. But discreetly.'

‘I know!' Lydia sounded frustrated, tired, overwrought. ‘I know! I just – I should have spoken to everyone by now. And I haven't. And that's just how it is. But I must – and I think I should hold a meeting for one and all.'

Stella imagined Lydia fearing some kind of peasants revolt, anticipating a flailing of pitchforks in the drawing room, the apple store being torched, the statue of Lord Freddie daubed with graffiti.

‘Lady Lydia – it's a very stressful thing, selling property. Up there with death and divorce – and that's official. Let me handle as much of the hassle as possible.' Stella paused but there was no response. She wondered if she'd been hung up on again. ‘Would you like me to come to the meeting? A sort of living, walking, talking voodoo doll for people to stick proverbial pins – or pitchforks – in?'

Her words were met with silence. Had she said the wrong thing? Had that sounded irreverent? Was Lydia having second thoughts? It made Stella shudder. Perhaps she ought to go over there now. Will wouldn't mind, even if Lydia did. Stella couldn't risk Longbridge being taken off the market or handed to another agent. Though she felt she'd gained Lydia's trust, she sensed how precarious it was.

‘Would you?' Lydia's voice, hoarse, broke the silence just as Stella was about to end the call. Stella could sense her stiffen. ‘Thank you,' Lydia continued. ‘You can give them all the legal banter. Thank you, my dear.' And Lydia hung up.

Mrs Biggins continued with her generally pointless busyness in the kitchen, just casually saying, ‘Shall I fetch you a nice little sherry?' as if it was simply a perky little idea and not a medicinal suggestion.

‘Be a dear and do,' said Lydia, brushing away the sultanas she'd picked from the scone. ‘And then you go, Mrs Biggins. Your daughter will be expecting you.'

Fortified by the sherry, Lydia decided she'd walk to Xander's. She'd had enough of telephones for the day. She put on her comfortable shoes and chose the cross-country route. It was a warm afternoon. It was about to be June. Passing by the statue of Lord Freddie, Lydia glanced up and said, oh, don't look at me like that, before crossing behind the kitchen garden and along the footpath that skirted the farmland, to the gate in the hedge. Down Bridgeback Hill, noticing blackberries green and tight in the hedgerow and a red kite flying low. She was heartened that they were back, the kites. Such a familiar sight in her childhood and gone from the area for so many years. Lydia steadfastly kept her eyes on Xander's cottage; she didn't want to note whether Miss Gilbey was in or out. She didn't much care where the Georges were. But Miss Gilbey – the thought of Miss Gilbey without 1 Lime Grove Cottages, or that cottage with anyone other than Miss Gilbey in it, was frankly disturbing.

‘Well, hullo,' said Xander, wanting to comment on Lydia turning up unannounced and uninvited, but knowing that doing so wittily would meet with short shrift, and remarking upon it in any other way would seem petty and rude. ‘Will you come in? Have a cuppa?'

‘I was just passing,' said Lydia, though they both knew how unlikely that was.

Xander made tea, wondering if non-brand digestive biscuits would be an affront to Lydia. ‘Biscuit?' he asked. She was standing in the middle of the sitting area, one hand gently on the oak pillar, and she appeared to be taking in the surroundings as if seen for the first time.

‘You have done a lovely job in here,' she said.

‘Well, you paid for it,' said Xander.

‘Yes, but you
did
it,' said Lydia. ‘You've made it very – homely.'

He wasn't sure what to say. She looked tired, a little disorientated. ‘Biscuit?' he offered again. ‘They're only digestives, I'm afraid.'

‘That would be lovely,' said Lydia, remembering the uneaten scone, the scatter of sultanas strewn on the kitchen table back at the house. Lunch seemed too long ago to remember quite what she'd eaten.

Xander wasn't sure where to seat her. He didn't have a table, per se. Just a long breakfast bar dividing the kitchen area from the sitting area and backless stools which were high and inelegant. The Sunday papers were on the coffee table but these he moved into a pile and gestured to the leather tub chair for Lydia to sit. He poured from a teapot and had decanted milk into a small jug, well remembering Lydia's abhorrence of milk served any other way.

‘Goodness me,' said Lydia wryly, ‘leafless tea – or is that a magic pot?'

‘It's tea bags,' Xander admitted, sheepishly. ‘Sorry. But you're very honoured to be having a cup and saucer,' he said, pouring his tea into a mug. ‘It's the only one I have.'

Lydia took a sip. It was actually very good. ‘They're a marvellous invention, tea bags,' she said. ‘And this is a very decent brew.' She took a biscuit; looked at Xander sitting on his sofa, noticed he was in his socks and that they said Tuesday. ‘It's Sunday,' she said, raising her eyebrow archly whilst looking down her nose at his feet.

‘The right Sunday is holey,' he said.

She looked at him, momentarily perplexed.

‘And the left Sunday is lost.'

She pursed her lips, as if to smile at such corniness was unthinkable, but the sparkle in her eyes said otherwise. They sipped in affable silence broken only by the soft munch of digestive biscuits. ‘And Xander,' she said, as if they'd been conversing soundlessly, ‘how are
you
?'

‘I'm very well – busy at work. Running. The usual,' he shrugged.

‘Why is there no woman here?' she asked, looking around her as if the heating wasn't on and it was cold and there was a window open somewhere.

‘How do you know there isn't a floozy whom I bundled into a cupboard when I saw it was you at the door?' he said.

‘Because I know you,' she said. ‘And we've been through this before.'

‘Is this a pep talk or are you just being nosey?'

Both Lydia and Xander were aware how he could time his impudence so perfectly, speaking to Lydia in a way that no one else dared to but that was OK in the instant.

‘Mrs Biggins said there was a rumour you had a young lady,' Lydia said blithely, ‘over in Standon.'

God. Siobhan. How had such non-news travelled? He hadn't actually thought about her at all. Seemed so long ago. Slightly unsavoury, to be honest.

‘Over and out,' Xander said, refilling their cups.

‘You need to make yourself available,' Lydia said. ‘I'm sure your mother says the same. If you're always out running, the young ladies won't be bothered to catch up, let alone wait.'

‘I'm proud to be a cheetah.'

Lydia looked at him through narrowed eyes. ‘Very droll,' she said, witheringly.

‘Life's good,' said Xander. ‘How are you? Longbridge?'

And, fleetingly, both Xander and Lydia thought of Stella.

‘I'm holding a meeting,' she told him, ‘to speak to those whom the sale of Longbridge will affect. It's on Wednesday evening. At seven o'clock sharp.'

Xander looked into his mug. Took a thoughtful sip. ‘OK,' he said.

‘It was my idea,' said Lydia brightly. She placed her teacup on the saucer which she placed carefully on her lap. She looked over to Xander who was dunking a digestive. He looked a little downcast. ‘Miss Hutton thinks it's a jolly good idea too,' she told him.

Xander's eyes darted up at her and she caught them like an expert fielder unfazed by a curve ball.

‘Well, Miss Hutton would, wouldn't she,' he said.

They held each other's gaze a moment longer until they were released by the sound of a sodden clod of digestive biscuit dropping into his tea.

Stella's mum came to babysit on Wednesday because, though Will had pleaded to come with her, Stella had said it was a school night and anyway the meeting would be boring and there wouldn't be biscuits. Will gave her strict instructions to bring home any if there were, and to tell an elaborate white lie if the pilfered napkin was mentioned. Sandie told her daughter to drive carefully, not to rush back and not to worry about anything at all. It might end with a good old shindig, her mother said. You might have fun. Stella doubted very much whether the tone would lighten beyond sombre, let alone loosen enough for cross-class socializing and merrymaking in the drawing room. She'd be leaving as soon as the meeting was over; she didn't want to be lynched by the mob and she certainly didn't want to cross paths with Xander. That he would be there was a given, but surely the gravity of the evening would deflect his memory from recalling the last time he'd seen her – and the presence of so many others would enable her to acknowledge him politely and fleetingly. She'd just nod cordially. And if he became the spokesman for the Voices of Dissent, then she'd simply address the rabble as a whole.

Stella had arrived early, as asked. The meeting wasn't in the drawing room, it was to be in the dining room and suddenly the whole thing seemed imposingly formal. Glasses of water had been poured and plates of the lightest, crescent-shaped biscuits made with ground almonds and dusted with Mrs Biggins' ubiquitous icing sugar, were placed on plates with doilies up and down the long table. Lydia was to sit at the head of the table, in a capacious dark mahogany dining chair, with maroon leather attached by a run of small brass studs to the seat and back. The other chairs around the table were the same – but without arms. Next to Lydia's place, a simple folding chair for Stella, like a pianist's page-turner. Fundamental, but to be inconspicuous. If every seat was taken, that would be twenty-one including her.