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Her son grinned back at her, his angelic face flashing a mischievous grin, and she forced herself to focus once again on the road. Oh bum, she thought, why now? Why today? She needed to pull over and somehow lever a Smartie from her daughter’s nose without causing long-term damage. She imagined a repeat of the Blu-Tack-in-ear incident and, remembering the doctor’s words, winced.
‘Antonia will be OK, but this is not a rerun of ER, Ms Compton. It’s best if you leave it to the professionals.’
‘Mummy.’ She glanced in the mirror at Freddie’s chocolate-smeared face. ‘Look.’ He pointed.
She turned quickly in her seat. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘A horse.’
She flicked her eyes back to the road and let out a scream. ‘Oh bugger!’
Slamming on the brakes, the car came to an abrupt halt as she narrowly avoided driving the Nissan Micra up the rear end of the animal. The rider turned and scowled, backing his horse up in an over-the-top dressage-like fashion and moving alongside her now-open window.
‘You know, you could kill someone like that, yah?’ He looked down at her, his eyes narrowing. ‘That was awfully dangerous.’
Anna watched his mouth, trying to make out exactly what he was saying. It appeared he was speaking from the back of his throat and not actually using his lips. ‘Pardon?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘I mean, you need to be more careful. There’s a hunt on, yah?’
‘A hunt?’ she repeated.
‘Yah, you know, horses, dogs, a fox.’ He scowled again.
‘Oh, a hunt. Right.’ While the man in the strange black riding hat and red jacket ranted, she took the opportunity of having come to a standstill to turn and look at Freddie again. ‘Freddie, where’s the chocolate?’
He smiled and held up his hand to reveal a green palm with rapidly melting chocolate stuck to it. Anna smiled with relief. ‘Good boy. Just eat it.’
‘What the…?’ She jumped at the touch of something wet and slimy running up and down her forearm and swivelled in her seat, coming face to face with the horse happily nuzzling her steering wheel.
‘You’ve made a friend,’ the man on top of the horse said and smiled.
When he smiled, he didn’t look quite so officious. She thought how he actually looked like a normal human being and less like a Stubbs painting brought to life.
‘The name’s Spencerville…’ He paused. ‘Horatio.’ He held out his gloved hand and she shook it.
Anna snorted.
‘What’s so funny?’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘Nothing.’ She laughed. ‘Well, it’s just funny to hear someone introduce themselves using their surname first.’
Clearly affronted, he hit the flank of his horse with his crop and started to trot. ‘Well, there’s nothing funny about driving at speed. Just be careful, yah? You could injure someone, yah?’ He rode off down the road. Oddly, Anna couldn’t see any other riders.
She revved her engine in annoyance. ‘How dare he bloody tell me how to drive. Horatio…’ she muttered. ‘Who’s even called bloody Horatio? Riding around like a Rear Admiral.’
‘Mummy,’ Antonia’s voice came from the back.
‘Yes?’ she said, taking the turn towards Trumpsey Blazey.
‘Why was that man dressed silly?’
Anna smiled.
‘He looked like a plonk-ah,’ Freddie said.
‘Freddie, I’ve told you not to use that word.’
‘S’OK, Mummy, I don’t think you’re a plonk-ah.’
‘How kind.’ She slowed the car as they approached Trumpsey Blazey: their new home. Tears filled her eyes at the sight of the Cotswold stone bridge crossing the infant Thames and the chocolate-box thatched cottages either side. This was all theirs to enjoy.
The news had come out of the blue. Anna had been battling with the children over the merits of eating peas, in the kitchen, when she had received the letter from her dear aunt’s solicitor: she was to inherit her Auntie Flo’s country home. Auntie Florence was stepsister to her mother, Linda. There had been very few details, but the idea of moving from their tiny, mildew-covered, two-bed flat in London to the fresh country air was beyond exciting. It was her chance to give her children a better way of life. After all, she had failed at marriage with their father, Simon. She was, she hated to admit, lonely too. So very lonely, and when she thought about her aunt and remembered how very active her social life had been, she thought that, yes, she too could have that! This might be the way of making everything better. After all, she thought, in the midst of dreaming up freshly baked pies from her Aga, she had just received the dreaded news that her children would not be afforded the privilege of places at the best state school, but the one ten miles away that was deemed ‘dire’. She had phoned Simon (the ex) to explain the situation. She had thought this would be an appropriate time for him to step up, show himself to be the man and father he should always have been.
‘Simon, it’s Anna.’ She had breathed deeply into the receiver. ‘The twins haven’t been accepted at Royal Oak.’
‘What?’ he screeched and, for once, she knew they were on the same page. ‘They’re not going to…’
‘Yes. Sully Oak.’
‘Oh, Anna, blimey.’
She knew then, in that shared moment of grief, that they had failed their children. What she wasn’t expecting was the next curveball.
‘Can’t you get more work? Surely, someone needs an article on…’ She could hear his brain whirring, grasping at straws. ‘On the micro-climate of Hammersmith.’
‘Thanks, Simon.’ She held back a sob. ‘Thanks for making me feel even more shit.’
‘Well, you know, if I had the money…’ He was a cameraman for the Beeb.
Anna was about to argue, knowing full well he’d just sold his house and shacked up with some bird from the PR department, but she held back. She reminded herself that she had what she wanted: her children. Nothing mattered but them and he had threatened, not that long ago, to take her to court for access to his children. Anna wouldn’t give him any room for manoeuvre.
She had hung up.
After receiving the news from her aunt’s solicitor, she had a good cry in the privacy of the loo (where she often escaped, glass of wine or Bailey’s in hand, for a moment’s peace).
She had adored her aunt. Flo had been a dear friend as well as surrogate aunt. The immense sadness that threatened to overwhelm her was tinged with a sense of hope. They could escape London and the poor state school. Within minutes, she was online checking out the Ofsted ‘Outstanding’ merits of Trumpsey Blazey Primary and reading about all the various clubs and village traditions they could be part of. There was even some giant pie-rolling competition. She chuckled at the thought of how much fun it all sounded.
Once Anna had had a quiet cry in the loo, she grabbed the twins’ hands and they danced and danced around their poky kitchen until Anna thought maybe she would jinx her luck by showing no remorse for her aunt’s passing. And so she solemnly toasted Aunt Flo with a Thomas the Tank Engine beaker. She knew neither Freddie nor Antonia really understood, but they affably joined in.
Anna could see the cottage so clearly in her mind’s eye; although, she realised guiltily, she had been so caught up in her own downward spiral of barely scraping by, that she had only exchanged letters with Aunt Flo in the last two years and had last visited the cottage ten years ago, Aunt Flo preferring to come up to London to visit.
She brought her mind back to the here and now as she scanned the small row of houses on the main high street, her heart lifting in anticipation at each house plaque she read. Anna thought she remembered the house standing gleaming and proud at the head of Trumpsey Blazey. Half an hour later, and with no one around to ask, she tried to bring up Google Maps on her phone. It was pointless as she couldn’t read maps, but she hoped for some sort of epiphany moment where all those years of orienteering the Bristol Downs at school would come into their own. Public-school education was character-building, her father had claimed when she phoned home asking – no, begging – to go to the local state comprehensive.
‘Dad, I hate it.’
‘You can’t hate it. You’ve only been there a week.’
‘Yeah,’ she had moaned, ‘but they sent us out into the countryside with nothing but the clothes on our backs and a map and compass.’
‘Weren’t you just on the Downs? I remember doing the same exercise when I was at the school.’
‘Yeah, but we had no food for hours. It’s clearly illegal and some form of child abuse.’
‘How long were you out there for?’
‘Two hours,’ she had wailed, thinking she might have broken him this time. ‘Then we were allowed back for tea.’
She had been greeted by the sound of a long, dead dialling tone.
Not dissimilar to the one she was hearing now. Not dead – but no signal, to her mind, was as good as dead. ‘Bloody hell. What is the bloody point of a mobile if you can’t be bloody mobile with it?’
‘Mummy, bad word,’ Antonia said.
‘What word?’
‘Buggy.’ She meant ‘bloody’.
Anna looked back at her daughter, who always achieved an enviable look of disgust that Anna one day hoped to mimic when she was telling them off.
‘Sorry,’ Anna said, exhaling deeply. ‘Only I can’t find it.’
A tap on the window made her jump and she looked outside. That Horatio person stood holding his horse’s reins and peering in at them. She rolled the window down.
‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Are you lost?’
‘Aren’t you meant to be with the hunt?’
‘Yes, but I’m taking Taittinger home.’
‘Pardon?’ she said, trying to hide her smile.
He looked at her disbelievingly. ‘Am I speaking a foreign language?’
She inclined her head. ‘Not far off.’
‘Tatty,’ he indicated the horse, ‘needs to go home.’
‘Right.’
‘It looks like you’re lost. Maybe I can help?’
‘We’ve just moved here.’ She lifted her chin. ‘I haven’t been here in over ten years and can’t remember where the house is. I inherited it from my aunt.’
‘What’s the name of the house?’
‘Primrose Cottage.’
His look changed to what she could only read as: pity? ‘Oh.’ He tried to recover and smiled. ‘Yes, everyone’s been wondering who was moving in there.’
‘Well, where is it?’ She fought off the rising irritation at this man’s ability to make her feel so ridiculous. He seemed so supercilious considering she had only just met him; but, she knew, it was also because she hated to ask for help.
He pointed towards a narrow lane leading up towards a small cottage on the hilltop. ‘There.’
‘Brilliant, thank you.’ As she put the car in gear, he leant in.
‘Look, I wonder if we might have a chat sometime soon.’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps a coffee tomorrow? I…’ He stopped, as if grasping for words.
Was he coming on to her?
‘Yes, maybe.’ Her mind raced with excuses. ‘If I’m not planting…’ She tried desperately to think of something country-esque and settled on vegetables. After all, she knew it wouldn’t be far off the truth: how hard could it be to grow vegetables? She would be the embodiment of The Good Life. ‘Potatoes,’ she announced triumphantly.
He smiled knowingly. ‘Ah, that old chestnut, planting potatoes.’
She nodded firmly and started to move off, leaving Horatio with his horse and a strange look of amusement on his face. The lane leading to the house was steep and rough.
‘Right, let’s go and see our new home.’ She drove along the bumpy lane to the house, about a quarter of a mile from the bridge, and at the top she stopped, her heart sinking. The downstairs windows were covered in ivy and the garden entirely overgrown with weeds. She could have cried if it weren’t for the sight of Horatio and Taittinger walking up the hill in her rear-view mirror.
‘Oh, why can’t he get lost?’ Horatio’s pity must have stemmed from his knowledge that the house was in need of that man off the daytime-telly home-improvement programme. Anna vaguely remembered a female presenter prancing manically from one room of tea-slurping builders, showing their bum cleavage, to another. All before said frilly presenter, along with the poor owners, who had never actually asked for a magenta-coloured kitchen, and the builders toasted their heroism and cried at their brilliance. The owners were then forced to smile at the camera and pretend they had always wanted a hot-pink kitchen with a life-size mural of their dead hamster on the main wall.
Anna felt humiliated. Turning to Freddie and Antonia, she put on a brave face. ‘How are you guys doing?’
‘I’m hungry,’ they chimed in unison and a lump rose in her throat. What had she been thinking? At least, in London, she had been able to provide the most basic of care for them: warmth and food. Now, she searched the derelict cottage for any signs of homeliness. It was a shell.
‘Me again,’ Horatio announced, out of puff, as he and Taittinger sidled up to the car and she put the window down once more.
‘I can see that. If you’ve come to gloat, please don’t.’ Her eyes smarted.
‘I didn’t think you’d be pleased.’
She bit back her comment and leapt out of the car, indignation flaring inside her. ‘But we’ll be just fine. So, Mr Horatio Spencer-what’s-it, if you wouldn’t mind leaving me and my children alone, instead of standing their looking on like we’re some sort of entertainment, then that would be most jolly.’ Jolly? Why did she use the word ‘jolly’? Help. Horatio was already rubbing off on her.
‘Jolly,’ repeated Freddie from the back.
Horatio was staring at her intently; maybe too intently. She shifted uncomfortably under his stare.
‘Listen, about that chat…’ She stared at him incredulously as once again he floundered. Who was this man? ‘I know what it feels like to be suddenly alone.’
‘I am not suddenly alone,’ she said, defensive. ‘I’ve been alone for years.’ Then she smiled, despite herself.
He grinned.
Her heart fluttered at his incredibly sexy smile but she pushed her shoulders back, more determined than ever. She was an independent woman, she said to herself, although she wasn’t entirely convinced at this point in time.
‘Thank you, I really appreciate your help,’ she said with sincerity. She knew she shouldn’t be so stubborn. Her mother’s voice rang around her head: ‘Anna, you are a mule, girl, a mule.’
Despite this, and ignoring the gnawing maternal guilt eating away at her stomach as she glanced in the rear-view mirror at her children giggling at Freddie’s burping-on-demand, she said, ‘We’ll be just fine.’
