The First Time I Saw Your Face (7 page)

He’d have no problem remembering to answer to that brilliant first name and good old Matt didn’t even appear on any social networking sites.

Big, anonymous Bristol was perfect too. Mack knew it almost as well as he knew Bath, and unlike Bath, nobody in the frozen north would have visited it looking for bloody Jane Austen and want to talk to him about it.

The only thing that would scupper everything was if low-profile, low achiever Matt Harper suddenly embarked on some publicity-grabbing behaviour such as running naked through a load of nuns. On a chatshow.

The buffet trolley started its lumbering journey along the carriage and he got out some cash from his wallet. That was all that was in there since he’d emptied out anything with his real name on it. The one thing he’d hung on to was his passport, currently safely locked away in his suitcase. O’Dowd would have a fit if he knew, but Mack would need it if he had to fly home quickly.

He flicked through some of his guides to Northumberland laid out on the table, but his brain couldn’t take any more forests and castles and miles of sodding coastline. He opened up one of Matt Harper’s West-Country walking books unearthed in a bookshop in Bath. Fortunately
A Guide to Dorset Coastal Walks
and
A Walk Around North Somerset
were slim little volumes he could easily read and more or less memorise, not some five-hundred-thousand-word tomes on kayaking in the melt water of the Himalayas. Also, not once did the words ‘Because I am six foot seven and have bright ginger hair’ appear. The writing was nicely anonymous too, but skull-crackingly dull – if Matt Harper had been walking the Hanging Gardens of Babylon he would have spent half an hour describing the soil.

Putting down the walking books he opened O’Dowd’s file, skimming through the details on Cressida Chartwell yet again – a BAFTA and Olivier Award; what the bookies were giving as odds for her winning an Oscar within two years of arriving in Hollywood; past lovers. There wasn’t so much on this Jennifer, and what he did know depressed him – particularly that she was secretary of the Brindley
and Yarfield Drama Club. Great, the north, the countryside and amateur dramatics; throw in a bit of morris dancing and he’d be reet ecstatic, pet.

The only other facts were about her schooling (bright girl), her gap year (VSO in Botswana) and the drama degree at Manchester University (dropped out a couple of months shy of graduation). Silence for twelve months before she’d gone to work in the local library in a place called Tyneforth. Been there ever since.

No significant boyfriends among the guys she’d dated at university and a complete drought since. After reading that, Mack had invented himself a girlfriend. If this Jennifer was desperate for a man, it was best to get it clear from the start that he wasn’t offering anything more than friendship.

There was no photograph of Jennifer in O’Dowd’s file and somewhere in the back of Mack’s brain a question formed about that before he shrugged it off.

Mack felt the train start to slow again as they came into some godforsaken place called Doncaster, and he looked up at the luggage rack again. The rucksack and fleece were just two of the things he’d bought during a depressing afternoon kitting himself out for a ‘holiday in Scotland’. Among his other purchases was a thing called a ‘wind-proof, waterproof outer shell’, but which looked suspiciously like a cagoule to him, two pairs of heavy-duty walking trousers and some thick socks. The fact that the things made him look like a twit and were either itchy or slippery wasn’t mentioned in any of the sales patter.
By the time he was looking at walking boots he wanted to run out of the shop screaming.

Thinking about Phyllida had brought him to his senses. Neither Tess nor he had told her that her potted-drink supply had dried up, but she had obviously discovered it herself, as she’d left the house in a door-slamming tantrum. Mack had felt the walls vibrate in his own flat.

With the sound of that slamming door still in his head, Mack had settled on the pair of walking boots that hurt him the least. He was a keen walker, he had to remember that. My how he loved walking – preferably from a car to a house. In a small act of rebellion, he had added a bright bandana to his pile of purchases and, when he had got back to the flat, relished making all his outdoor gear look used. He had especially enjoyed going over the walking boots with sandpaper: giving them a taste of what they would be doing to his feet.

The rest of the shopping trip had been occupied with buying the other props that would help him play the character of Matt Harper. Even though it pained him, he had bought a sludgy-brown cord jacket that he thought said ‘author’ better than his leather one; a selection of hearty jumpers to replace his normal slogan-bearing T-shirts and a couple of pairs of hideous jeans. Next stop had been a ‘gentlemen’s shoe shop’ for a pair of brogues that made him depressed just looking at them.

He had also bought various pairs of spectacles off a stand because they made him look more studious and could be left on tables and in bars in a forgetful, vague
way. Being absent-minded was a character trait he had observed made others drop their guard as they kept an eye out for you, rather than on you. For the same reason he bought a load of notebooks and put his name in all of them.

He had only just got his coffee and a bar of chocolate from the trolley when his mobile rang and, seeing it was O’Dowd calling, he went and sat in the loo.

‘Listen,’ O’Dowd said, plunging right in without any pleasantries, ‘a Third Party’s going to meet you at Newcastle Station with a key to a rented house in Brindley – No. 3 Brindley Villas. It’s just up the hill from the Rosebys’ farm. He’s got cash for you, too, whenever you need more just call him; he’ll give you the number. Don’t worry, he can keep a secret or I’ll drop him in a bigger load of shit than the one that’s waiting for you. He’ll give you a mobile phone as well.’

‘I’ve already got one.’

‘Really? I thought we were talking via cocoa tins and string. Listen, turnip head, the new phone is the only one, from here on in, that you use. And no phoning my office and leaving a message. There are just three people who know what you’re up to: you, me and the big bastard upstairs, so keep it that way or everything will leak out like an incontinent nun’s knickers. Anything else?’

‘Yeah, those diaries and that photo.’

O’Dowd just laughed.

Mack struggled back to his seat and drank his lukewarm coffee, but stowed his chocolate bar away for later.
He was tempted to ring Tess. That last view of her, waving him off at Bath Station with Gabi up in her arms and Joe and Fran by her side, had cut deep. Especially the way Joe had looked at him as though the travel-book story had stuck in his throat.

Hard when someone you admired smelt a rat and that rat was you.

He had to keep reminding himself he had no choice and once it was over and O’Dowd was off their backs, he could pay off his debts, even get some help for Phyllida if she’d agree to it. Although more likely he’d be standing in a courtroom while Cressida Chartwell’s lawyers tore him into little pieces.

Him in the dock or his family in purgatory? Bit of a nobrainer and if he played it right, he might get away with it.

With that thought he looked defiantly out of the window and was aware of a new feeling stirring within him, one he hadn’t experienced for quite a while. He certainly hadn’t expected to experience it now.

There it was, though – the thrill of the chase, no mistaking it.

CHAPTER 5

Jennifer drove off the main road and down the track, bumped over the cattle grid and stopped the car. There were snowdrops here, but the daffodils were still cowering, barely out of the soil, as if saying ‘You’re joking, we’re not going out there yet’. She turned off the engine and listened. Nothing.

Here, on this small road looking out on the hills and down to the river, she felt the embarrassment and anger that had stayed with her since yesterday’s Armstrong and Araminta incidents seep away. Thank goodness for half days. Sometimes she just needed a rest from pretending everything was fine; from that new tendency she had to want to smooth over any unpleasantness as though it was somehow her fault and not the other person’s.

She reached for her jacket, aware that the hard brightness in the sun gave a false impression of how warm it would be, and got out of the car to look at the sheep. It was the Bluefaced Leicesters up here, heavy with lambs.

When she was little, she had thought them ugly, all
bony-nosed and arrogant. Now, if she heard anyone else say that, she bristled. They were pedigrees, beautiful in their own way and the farm’s reputation as well as her family’s was bound up with them.

Besides, these days, who was she to call anything or anyone ugly?

‘Not long now, ladies,’ she called and laughed at their complete lack of interest.

The wind was picking up, whipping the little bits of wool caught on the fence and, down by the river, she could see the branches of the trees swaying. Up here the trees had long ago been moulded into shape by the prevailing winds and now gave the impression that they were leaning forward as a preamble to setting off for a walk, the wind at their backs. The lichen on them made them look as if they were already in strange, fluorescent bloom.

Everything was simpler out here: sheep, earth, grass, trees, sky. She could usually stay here for hours just breathing great lungfuls of the purity, but not today: the wind had ice in it and despite her jacket she was starting to feel chilled. Back in the car, she turned up the heater.

Passing the large Suffolk ram, she slowed the car and wound down the window. He was a big-shouldered lad who, despite looking chunky and cuddly, could break the neck of a more delicate Leicester in a scrap.

‘Hello, Winston,’ she shouted and the ram took a few steps back, havered from side to side and then turned and ran.

All mouth and trousers.

Reaching a fork in the road, she hesitated and then turned left. The track here got bumpier and narrower until it ended in front of a small stone house with a green door. Right now the door was open and a young woman was struggling to peg out a variety of baby clothes on a rotary dryer. As she waved, the babygro she had been hanging out flicked up and over her face before she slapped it back with her hand.

‘Good drying day,’ she said as Jennifer got out of the car, ‘if you’ve got the strength to get the stuff hung out.’

Jennifer knew that in a straight fight between the wind and Bryony, her sister-in-law, the wind might possibly lose. The Suffolk ram definitely would. Bryony was a ‘direct from central casting’ farmer’s daughter and filled the role much more ably than Jennifer ever could. Hearty, a good rider, only ceding a few inches in height to Jennifer’s brother who himself was a big man, she approached everything with gusto, including motherhood. But today her eyes had a redness about them that Jennifer knew was not due to the wind.

‘How’s Louise?’ Jennifer asked, and as if on cue there was a loud bellowing wail from inside the house.

Bryony flicked her eyes skywards. ‘Teeth still giving her jip. There she blows.’ She hared off into the house, returning with Louise still bundled in her quilted sleeping bag. She was struggling and crying, her face pink and wet.

‘Now, look,’ Bryony said, leaning her head back to avoid Louise’s flailing fists, ‘what’s Auntie Jen going to think of you?’

Louise obviously didn’t give a damn and both women watched her continue to try and fight her way out of her sleeping bag and her mother’s arms. As Bryony was used to handling appreciably bigger livestock, Louise was wasting her time.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Bryony said wearily after one particularly bolshy struggle, and Jennifer wondered how much worse this would be for her when lambing was properly underway and Danny too busy to take some of the strain from her at night.

‘How about I take Louise for a couple of hours?’ she said. ‘Mum would be delighted, and you can have a sleep.’

‘No, no. I can’t let you do that.’ There was something in Bryony’s tone that told Jennifer she could be persuaded.

‘Come on, I’ll take your car with the seat; you can bring mine along later when you come and collect her.’

Jennifer was amused to see that once the decision was made Bryony set about getting her daughter bundled away with her customary vim, wrestling Louise into the car seat and pinning her down expertly with the straps. Louise looked outraged and reapplied herself to trying to make everyone’s eardrums bleed, but as Jennifer set off the crying lessened and when they reached the fork in the road, this time Jennifer taking the road on the right, it had stopped. Jennifer saw Louise’s hand go to her mouth. By the time Jennifer got her first glimpse of home, Louise was asleep.

Set down in the fold of the valley and surrounded by fields on all sides Jennifer likened Lane End Farm to a big
stone ship that had come to rest in a sea of green. The farmhouse itself was the bow, albeit a blunt one; the wide yard was the deck and the clutter of barns and sheds forming a U-shape on the other side of the yard, was a stern of sorts. With a stretch of the imagination you could see the sheep dotted over the fields as white flecks of foam.

In the yard, Jennifer stopped the car and gently lifted Louise out. A quick fluttering of her eyelids was her only response and as Jennifer manoeuvred past the coats and discarded wellingtons in the porch, she did not stir again.

‘Brought you a present,’ Jennifer said pushing open the kitchen door and her mother, putting a plate high up on the dresser said, ‘If it’s anything else that wants feeding, you can take it back,’ before turning and seeing it was her granddaughter. She took Louise into her own arms eagerly, a smile transforming her face. It was a face that, with its aquiline nose and high cheekbones, Cress always joked belonged to a duchess, but had ended up on a farmer’s wife. Her mother’s way of carrying herself too, with her back very straight and her chin lifted, added to the impression that she was slightly superior and not to be crossed. Mostly this demeanour was saved for those who angered her; with those she loved she was as warm as any apple-cheeked farmer’s wife, and with children she was a thing of putty. The only time that the family had to be wary was if she had on what Jennifer’s father Ray called her ‘lemon-drop
look’. Then you’d best keep quiet, find something that needed doing elsewhere and hope that it wasn’t you that had displeased her.