Toni was disappointed not to be offered accommodation at the hotel when they agreed to employ her as part of the catering staff for the summer. She had not yet passed her driving test, and home was forty miles away. ‘I can’t do it, then,’ she told the man interviewing her.
‘Why did you apply for something so far from home?’ he wondered.
‘I thought it would be good experience,’ she said, sounding feeble in her own ears. ‘I’m going to university next year, and wanted to see what it was like, fending for myself.’
‘You’re only seventeen,’ he pointed out.
‘I know I am. That’s why living in sounded a good idea.’ How to explain the feelings of claustrophobia and frustration that had been building up for months, living with six other people? ‘I’m actually quite capable of looking after myself,’ she asserted. ‘And I’ve got an aunt living not far away.’
‘You could stay with her, then,’ he suggested.
‘I could ask her, I suppose,’ she said doubtfully. That was not at all the plan. It would be too much like being at home, with young children getting in her way. Toni had had enough of children, at least for a while. She wanted to get out into a world full of adults, and learn some of the quirks of human nature. She was intending to study psychology once she got to university, and life in a hotel seemed to her the ideal source of material to analyse.
‘Well, we really would like to have you here until September. It’s booked solid, and it’s never easy to find the right people for the work. You strike me as unusually bright and energetic for an English girl. It’s mostly the Poles and Ukrainians who get the jobs, because they try so much harder. That’s fine, but the guests really like a chat sometimes, and I think they’d go for you.’
‘That sounds ominous,’ she said with a little smile.
He laughed. ‘Sorry. Bad choice of words. We take care of girls as young as you, don’t worry. Everything’s perfectly respectable here.’
‘I don’t think I can take the job,’ she said regretfully. ‘Not if I can’t live in.’
He scratched his thinning hair. ‘Well, maybe I can do a bit of juggling. Phone me this evening, and we’ll have another little talk about it.’
‘Okay, then.’
She went back to where her mother was waiting outside in the car, and explained what had been said. ‘They really want me, but they don’t think I can live in. So I said that wouldn’t work. And he said I should stay with Thea and Drew, but I don’t really want to. Anyway, they’re ten or twelve miles away, so that’s not going to work, is it? I’ll be working evenings a lot. How would I get back there?’
Jocelyn rolled her eyes. ‘I said it was a mad idea, coming up here like this. Especially Lower Slaughter. It’s got so many bad vibes for the family. I don’t know why I let you talk me into it.’
‘Because the money’s good and you’ll be glad to get rid of me for a couple of months.’
There had been an emotional argument the previous day, leaving Toni confused but more determined than ever to have her way. She’d found the job advertised online, standing out like a bonfire from any of the other places wanting staff. The building was gorgeous, the area a honeypot for rich tourists. But Jocelyn kept referring to an event a few years earlier, just after Granddad had died, which involved both Toni’s aunts, and left the whole family horribly shaken. ‘It’s the same hotel,’ Jocelyn wailed.
‘So what? They won’t make the connection, with my surname being different. And look what they’re paying! They must be really grand. They’ll teach me a whole lot of useful skills.’
‘I thought you wanted to be a psychiatrist, not a chef.’
‘Psychologist,’ she corrected for the hundredth time. ‘And cooking’s always going to be important. I can have it as a second string.’
Toni was a painfully sensible girl, as Jocelyn regularly remarked. Sporty, popular, hard-working and unnervingly well balanced – a paragon of a daughter that her parents regularly asserted had been left by the fairies in place of their actual child. The other four were like feral creatures by comparison.
They were expected at Broad Campden for tea – an event that carried some significance for the sisters, who did not meet very often. Jocelyn was younger than Thea, but they had been bracketed together as ‘the little ones’ by an older sister and brother. They had shared one of Thea’s house-sits in Frampton Mansell at a time of crisis for Jocelyn, with a resulting embarrassment and near-estrangement born of intimate revelations concerning Jocelyn’s marriage.
‘That must be it,’ said Toni, as they drove slowly through the village. ‘That looks like a hearse outside.’
‘So it does,’ said her mother. ‘I wonder what the neighbours think about that.’
‘They probably think it makes them special. I would, anyway. See how shiny it is.’
‘Old, though. I think they got it pretty cheap.’
Thea came to the door, and led them into the kitchen. Drew’s children were at the table with electronic gadgets. The dog was doing her best to attract attention, which Toni gave very readily. Drew himself was elsewhere.
Jocelyn and Toni gave an account of their day, laying out the dilemma for Thea’s consideration.
‘Haven’t you got a bike?’ she asked. ‘It would take less than an hour to cycle to Lower Slaughter from here. Much less, probably. We’d love to have you to stay over the summer. We’ve got a spare room.’
‘Spare cupboard, more like,’ said Stephanie. ‘Big enough for a hobbit, just about.’
‘It’s perfectly big enough,’ Thea said. ‘There’s a full-sized bed in there to prove it.’
‘Except it’s folded up,’ argued Stephanie.
‘I have got a bike,’ said Toni thoughtfully. ‘But ten miles seems an awfully long way. I’ve never been more than about two. I’d be scared.’
They all looked at her with varying degrees of sympathy and scepticism. Jocelyn spoke first. ‘I’d be scared to let you,’ she admitted.
‘Well, it’s just an idea,’ said Thea. ‘Oh – here’s Drew.’
The husband and father entered the room with a wary smile. ‘So many females!’ he said.
‘There’s me,’ Timmy reminded him. ‘I’m not female.’
‘Thank goodness for that. Hello, people. Good to see you.’ He had met his sister-in-law and all her children at his and Thea’s wedding. Even with guests limited to immediate family and closest friends, the numbers had swelled to over twenty. Toni had been selected as the nearest thing to a bridesmaid, carrying flowers and watching over her aunt. She had felt conspicuous and did not enjoy it very much.
Between them they explained to Drew about the job and the hotel and the cycling idea. He expressed no opinion on any of it, for which Toni felt grateful. She had already concluded that Drew was a very nice man. The funeral business intrigued her, and the children were no worse than her own numerous siblings. Their lack of a mother made them more interesting, too. A summer spent with this family might turn out to be exactly what she was looking for, combined with the novelty of working long hours in the hotel.
‘Okay, then – thanks,’ she said, when they’d stopped talking. ‘I’ll do that. If you’re sure?’
‘That was quick,’ said Jocelyn, with an anxious frown.
‘Does that mean you’re really going to stay here, in the little room?’ said Stephanie.
‘Oh, good,’ said Thea, a notch less heartily than was called for. Toni caught the tone and shot her a questioning look. If her aunt was going to see her as a nuisance, that could spoil the whole thing.
But it was soon smoothed over, and in a jerky, interrupted fashion, the decision was eventually made. Toni should phone the hotel, accept the job, and practise her cycling. Drew would unfold the spare bed and move the boxes and bags that cluttered the little room.
After a meal together, during which Thea and Jocelyn reminisced across forty years, mother and daughter took their leave. ‘You will watch out for her, won’t you?’ pleaded Jocelyn. ‘It seems terribly sudden. She’s not eighteen yet.’
‘Eighteen is more than old enough to manage something like this,’ Thea began, but was quickly silenced.
‘Don’t start that again,’ her sister said. ‘We all know your views about mollycoddling.’
‘See you next week, then,’ said Thea to Toni. ‘It’ll be an adventure.’
‘And we’ll love having you here,’ said Drew.
It worked out much as expected. The cycling was exhausting on the first day, tiring on the second and almost easy by the third. There were hills and valleys, and the bike lacked many modern refinements to make such terrain easier. The work at the hotel was menial, but there were breaks and diversions enough to render it acceptable. The worst part was cycling back to the Slocombes’ after dark. Headlights dazzled her, and her own lights never seemed bright enough to convince drivers that there was a cyclist to be aware of. ‘I’m going to be killed, I know I am,’ she panted, as she got in at midnight one night. Drew was still up, unusually, because he’d taken a phone call about a death that evening.
‘Please don’t be,’ he begged. ‘That would be a tragedy.’
‘I saw a very odd thing today,’ she went on, too fired up to contemplate going to bed. ‘Can I tell you about it?’
‘Go on, then. Ten minutes is all I can do before bed, though.’
‘There’s a patch of wasteland next to the hotel. I mean, it’s not full of rubble and junk. Just not used for anything. Lots of weeds and long grass. Anyway, I saw a woman, quite old, wandering through it, this afternoon, with a basket. She picked a few things, one at a time, very carefully – I couldn’t see what they were. I decided she must be a witch, making up a brew for a spell.’
‘Or a flower arranger?’
‘Or a poisoner. Some of those plants must be poisonous.’
‘Or gathering seeds for her own garden. Lots of things go to seed in July.’
‘She looked like a witch. Long skirt and ankle boots.’
‘Pointy black hat?’
Toni laughed. ‘No hat. Grey hair, tied back.’
‘Winemaking, and that’s my last idea,’ he said.
‘You should have been there. She was furtive. She didn’t want anybody to see her.’
‘Bedtime,’ he said. ‘What time do you start tomorrow?’
‘Eleven. Nice long break in the afternoon, as well. Not many bookings for dinner, so we can chill for a bit longer.’
‘Maybe your witch lady will come back and you can ask her what she’s doing.’
‘No way. I’d be too scared.’
The woman with the basket did come back, and Toni saw her again. It was three o’clock and the lunch was all done, everything washed and put away, tables cleared, ready for a fresh set of cutlery, glassware, flowers and menus for the evening. The staff each had an hour of freedom, though not everyone took the same hour. Hotel guests could demand snacks and drinks at any time, and someone had to be on hand to provide it.
Hotel guests, she had discovered, were a special breed of human being. They appeared to acquire a powerful sense of entitlement the moment they walked into the foyer. Complaints poured from them on every imaginable topic. Pillows were too soft, showers too hot, beds too close together, door locks inoperable, windows likewise, plumbing too noisy, soap too small. The list was endless, as well as being the source of hilarity in the staff quarters.
‘Sounds just like Fawlty Towers,’ said Drew, when she recounted some instances to him. ‘People expecting to see herds of wildebeest crossing the savannah in Torquay.’
The reference was lost on Toni, who could not remember ever seeing the programme, but she was pleased to have given Drew something to laugh about. Pleasing Drew had become quite important to her. The way he listened so attentively to everything she said, keeping his eyes on hers the whole time, made her feel warm and special. She found herself conjuring his face at odd times of the day, and thinking what a lovely man he was.
‘I might show up one day to have a look for myself,’ said Thea. ‘I could have afternoon tea and scones.’
‘You could,’ Toni agreed. ‘I could show you around, if it’s not too busy.’
‘I want to come,’ said Drew, boyishly. ‘I want to catch that witchy woman.’
‘What?’ said Thea, so they explained.
‘She’ll be making exotic salads or soups,’ was her first guess. ‘With wild garlic, or rosehips or something.’
‘I said she was a winemaker,’ said Drew. ‘Same sort of thing.’
‘No.’ Toni was emphatic. ‘It was much more suspicious than that.’
‘Have you seen her again?’ asked Drew.
Toni shook her head. ‘It was only two days ago. I haven’t given up hope that she’ll come back and I can get a better look at what she’s picking.’
‘We can’t both go. Someone has to be here when the kids get back from school.’ Thea had finally accepted that the routines of school formed the framework of her day, and nothing could take precedence over them. There was still another week to go before the end of term. Toni had been released early from her sixth-form college, much to Timmy’s envy. The summer holidays were regarded as a burden and a relief alternately by Thea, who claimed to have forgotten everything about the life of a parent of primary-age kids. ‘I think Jessica had a lot of friends she stayed with,’ she said vaguely. ‘Not to mention the cousins and grandparents. I don’t recall her being around very much.’
Drew’s children had yet to make any serious friends at the new school, despite having been there for two terms. They had no plans or projects in mind for the holidays, and there was no suggestion of a family week at the seaside. The presence of Toni was celebrated as a welcome break from the usual pattern, even though she was out almost all the time.
It was the next to last day of term when Thea fulfilled her promise and called in for tea at the Lower Slaughter hotel. She pulled rank over Drew, leaving him to receive the children when they got home from school by bus. ‘It’s my niece,’ she reminded him.
The hotel was dauntingly luxurious, and she would never normally have thought of entering its portals. She even knew a moment of doubt as to whether they would actually let her in. Was Toni allowed to have non-resident visitors? How much would they charge for a cup of tea? But nobody accosted her, and she was relieved to see a couple in their thirties wearing very ordinary clothes, coming down the staircase. What had she expected, she asked herself. Diamond tiaras and mink coats? People were people, and there were all sorts of reasons why they might spend two hundred pounds on a night in a hotel. Honeymoons, escapes, or just a wish for the experience – for one perfect night of their lives.
She went through to the lounge without anyone challenging her, and waited for Toni to appear. The instructions had been precise: Meet me in the main lounge, and we’ll find a corner somewhere for a chat.
It happened exactly that way. Carrying a tray containing a pot of tea and two cups, Toni led her aunt up two flights of stairs to a door onto an open terrace on the first floor. It had a low wall around it, and overlooked hills and woodlands to the north-west, with Upper Slaughter the only visible settlement. Getting her bearings with difficulty, she worked out that Notgrove and Naunton were in that rough direction, but that in general there were miles of sparsely inhabited landscape, giving the lie to claims that England was grossly overpopulated, with no space for any more people or houses.
Tables and chairs were scattered across the space, all of them unoccupied. ‘Nobody much comes out here,’ said Toni. ‘It’s my special place. Look at the wonderful view.’
‘I am looking,’ said Thea. ‘It’s fantastic.’ She had been worried that memories of her previous stay in this village would taint the day, but nothing she could see carried any painful associations. It felt like quite a different hotel from the one at the centre of that horrid experience, now fading into the past.
‘Oh – she’s there! I didn’t think she was ever coming back.’ Toni pointed to some land perhaps eighty or a hundred yards away. ‘Look at her.’
Thea quickly located a woman with a basket on her arm, looking like a Victorian watercolour, except that this was someone of at least seventy and therefore probably insufficiently winsome for an artwork. ‘Hush. She’ll hear you.’
‘I don’t think so. And if she does, she won’t spot us. People don’t look up this high. I sit here and watch them come and go, and they never once notice me.’
‘Good place for a sniper,’ said Thea.
‘Perfect. I wish I’d got a telescope. I could see what it is she’s picking, then.’
Thea squinted into the late-afternoon sun. ‘Can’t see a thing,’ she complained. ‘She’s against the light.’
‘Watch for a minute.’
They kept up the scrutiny, tracking the woman’s erratic progress across a small triangular patch of ground that lay between two fields. It had overgrown hedges and no visible gateway into it. Thea was reminded of the burial ground that Drew had inherited in Broad Campden. An anomaly of history, somehow dropped off some old deeds and ignored by the Land Registry. The countryside abounded with such slivers of land, despite the high value attached to any little patch of grass these days. They became invisible, except to the plants and small animals who enthusiastically colonised them.
‘Doesn’t it look suspicious to you?’ Toni murmured. ‘I think we should see where she goes, and find out what she’s doing.’
‘There are so many innocent explanations,’ Thea demurred. ‘But it does seem a bit odd, I agree.’
The woman had moved out of the sunlight to a shadowy stretch of hedge, where they could see her plucking small quantities of some kind of plant. ‘Deadly nightshade, I bet you,’ said Toni.
‘Bit early for blackberries,’ said Thea. ‘But there could be rosehips.’
‘Hemlock.’
‘Wood sorrel.’
‘Hey – you really know your plants, don’t you! Did Uncle Carl teach you?’
‘He did. You remember him, of course.’
‘I do, absolutely. He took us all on nature rambles, like something out of the Famous Five. Showed us what was edible and what wasn’t. I thought I’d forgotten it all, but it’s coming back to me now.’
‘Did you ever try to dig down for the nut at the end of the wood sorrel root?’
‘Once or twice. I don’t really believe it’s possible.’
‘Neither do I. The root’s as thin as a hair. You’d have to be a fairy or a leprechaun to manage it.’
Toni laughed. ‘Or a witch, maybe. Don’t you think she’s like a witch?’
‘She is a bit. Oh!’
The woman had been stretching up for something in the hedge above her head, and stumbled backwards, almost falling. Her basket flew off her arm, and landed upside down.
‘Shh!’ adjured Toni.
But the woman had heard Thea’s gasp of alarm, and was looking their way.
‘Keep still,’ whispered the girl. ‘She won’t see us.’
She was right. The questioning face never raised higher than the ground floor of the hotel, with the blank side wall revealing nothing more interesting than a staff parking area. A car engine told them there was a vehicle coming or going, which would most likely divert the woman’s attention. After a few seconds, she returned to the calamity of her spilt gleanings, and knelt to recover them.
‘They’re obviously very important to her,’ said Thea.
She had realised that her own habitual curiosity was reflected in her niece – some genetic quirk had bestowed it on the girl. The resulting sense of fellowship was sweet, and made her smile. ‘You’re just like me,’ she said. ‘Nosy about people.’
‘I am. I’m burning to know what she’s up to. None of the theories can be right. She’s being so selective in what she picks. It’s not enough for jam or wine or soup.’
‘It might be if she just wants extra flavour.’
‘I know it’s poison. She’s planning to poison somebody.’
‘We’ll probably never know,’ sighed Thea.
‘If she comes again, I’m definitely going to follow her.’
‘You can’t. You’ll get the sack.’
Toni wriggled her shoulders in frustrated agreement. ‘Oh – I forgot to tell you. From this weekend, there’ll be a room here for me, if I want it. I told them I did. Is that okay? It feels a bit ungrateful of me, but it would obviously be much easier if I could live in. I need to move before Saturday. There’s a massive wedding that day, and we’ve all got to work overtime.’
Thea was surprisingly sorry to hear this news. ‘Oh, of course it would be better. But we’ve got used to you now. We’ll all miss you.’
‘I can come and see you on my days off. And it has been great to really learn how to cycle on the roads. It’s a brilliant sense of freedom. You can see why people rave about it.’
‘That’s good.’
When they turned back to check on the woman, it was to see her in the further angle of the little field, hitching up her skirt before clambering over a lower section of hedge.
‘She’ll break it down, and let animals through,’ said Thea. ‘That’s no way to behave.’
‘Can’t see any animals,’ Toni reported, standing up and trying to peer into the adjacent field.
‘She’s through it now. Must have used it before. I can never get over or through hedges, however hard I try.’ Then she thought of a hedge in Duntisbourne Abbots that she had got through, and added, ‘Hardly ever, anyway.’
‘Now we’ll never know what she was doing. It’ll haunt me for the rest of my life.’
‘No it won’t. I’m going to go down there and follow her. She’s got to have a car close by, if she doesn’t live in the village.’
‘I assumed she did live here. Why do you think she doesn’t?’
‘Because if people know her, they’re more likely to question what she’s doing …’ Thea paused. ‘Except, that’s not really true, is it? They’d notice a stranger more quickly, and be more suspicious. Silly me.’
‘We’re both silly. We’re playing a childish game, spying on her and making idiotic guesses about her.’
‘You started it,’ said Thea with a laugh.
‘I know I did. Let her get on with her winemaking or whatever innocent thing it is.’
‘I really would like to follow her,’ said Thea. ‘I’ve hardly ever done it, and I’m sure it would be fun.’
‘You’d have to keep me informed of where you were, on the phone. And I have to be back in the kitchen in about ten more minutes, so that won’t work. And she’ll be well away before you can get anywhere near her. Once across a couple of fields, she’ll be impossible to trace.’
‘I suppose so.’
So they left it, and spent the final minutes talking over Toni’s transfer to the hotel and whether she should leave her bike in Broad Campden or take it with her.
Thea went home to break the news that the very popular lodger was leaving them. It was hard to know who was most upset amongst Drew and the children. ‘She’s very good company,’ he said. ‘Makes me realise what I’ve missed by not knowing you at that age.’
Thea tried to overlook the very slightly creepy implications this sentiment carried. Husbands did lose their heads over nubile young girls, and it would be folly to assume that hers was an exception. Although he was, insisted an inner voice. They’d only just got married, for goodness’ sake. So she smiled, and said there did seem to be some similarities between her and Toni. ‘She’s more like me than Jessica is,’ she said.
‘We saw the witchy woman,’ she added. ‘I must admit she was behaving very suspiciously.’ And she supplied details.
‘Must be pretty athletic to get over a hedge,’ said Drew.
‘We thought she’d probably made a place, with footholds that didn’t show from where we were. And that means she must be local, I suppose. We wondered about that.’
‘You are two nosy women,’ he teased. ‘I think you’ve corrupted poor young Toni with your insatiable curiosity.’
‘I think she was already that way before she even came here. And hotels are a perfect breeding ground for that sort of interest. All those stories that you never hear the end of. People having illicit liaisons, or hiding from their in-laws, or spending money they never ought to have. It must be thrilling.’
‘I’m sure it is. Especially for someone planning to study psychology. She can construct all kinds of theories about what makes people do what they do.’
‘Including picking berries or seedheads in a neglected field, wearing a long skirt.’
‘I’m really sad that she can’t run to a hat as well. Even a floppy straw article would complete the picture.’
‘No hat.’
‘Pity. It would have proved conclusively that she’s a ghost. She might still be a ghost, of course. Who wears long skirts these days?’
‘Some old ladies do. Tall ones, with long grey hair. It’s a look.’
‘What did Toni decide to do with the bike?’
‘She’ll keep it with her at the hotel. Then she can go on exploratory rides when she has some time off. She seems quite smitten by the Cotswolds. I told her to go to Naunton, and Northleach and Winchcombe.’
‘And you can meet her at some of them, with Stephanie and Timmy. You’ll be wanting to have some outings with them. You’ll all go mad if you just stay in the house for six weeks.’
‘I thought we could set Stephanie to doing some grave-digging, and Timmy can man the phones.’
‘A hundred years ago, that’s exactly what we’d do. If they had phones then. Did they?’
‘In the big houses, yes. Just about. I’m sure we’ll all have a wonderful summer,’ she added bravely.
Toni was even more consumed by a need to know the end of every story than Thea had guessed. Despite the many distractions of the job, with the backroom gossip and the never-ending demands and the important upcoming wedding, the Case of the Woman in the Field maintained its place at the top of her priorities. She was perhaps gathering food for pet rabbits – or goats. That was Toni’s latest theory. New ideas occurred every day, only adding to the frustration of not knowing which, if any, was true. She couldn’t really be poisoning anyone, surely. Poisoning was very out of fashion as a method of murder, with the tox analysis so advanced at the pathology labs.
The morning of the wedding dawned slowly, with low cloud and the threat of rain. Hotel staff scuttled feverishly in all directions, carrying tables, flowers, dishes, luggage. Toni’s tiny room was barely accessible past a large pile of chairs that had been moved out of the banqueting hall, to create space for dancing. ‘Isn’t that a fire hazard?’ she asked, having been reading some health and safety literature. Nobody bothered to reply.
It all passed in a whirl. The bride herself was from Burford, but her parents lived in Upper Slaughter and the groom was from Cheltenham. They each had large families and many friends. Toni was promoted to one of the waiting staff, carrying plates endlessly to and from the kitchen, struggling to remember all the rapidly learnt etiquette for handing food to people. There was no time whatever in which to think. The menu was relatively simple: choice between cream of vegetable soup and grilled sardines, then roast duck, and sherry trifle. But there were flamboyant accoutrements, and a few special diets to watch out for, which raised it well out of the ordinary. Seventy-five people sat down to eat.
The wedding service itself had been held in the local church, with an old-fashioned procession to the hotel. The wedding breakfast was at half past two. By half past four, ten guests had been prostrated by the most severe gastro-enteric trouble. Some vomited where they sat, including a boy of ten who had eaten far too much.
Ambulances were called, and one old man looked so close to death that the bride burst into screams at the sight of him. She herself appeared unaffected, but her new husband had disappeared into the Gents many minutes earlier, and failed to return.
Toni could not shake off a sense that she had blundered into the set of a disaster movie. People were panicking, throwing accusations and clutching their stomachs as if they’d been knifed. Paramedics materialised, kneeling beside white-faced victims and asking earnest questions. The moribund old man was carted away on a stretcher, with the bride calling ‘Grandad!’ forlornly after him.
And where was the groom? Suddenly that was the main question. ‘Rupert – where’s Rupert?’ everyone was wanting to know. A group of male friends went off in search of him, followed by the hotel manager who was almost rigid with anxiety and horror.
Nobody was in control, Toni realised. She concluded that she could do very little good where she was, so went outside to check the situation there. There were two ambulances already and a third was turning into the driveway. More guests were collapsing with every passing minute, some of them evidently unable to control their own bowels. ‘Good God, it’s like an outbreak of cholera,’ said an elderly woman. ‘I saw something of the sort in India, back in the fifties.’
The smells and sights were deeply disgusting, and getting worse. In those moments, Toni learnt that whatever vocation she might develop, it was not going to be as a nurse. Nor a doctor. Nor a paramedic. She was repelled by the whole business. She had to get away, and the only place she could think of to go to was her terrace in the sky, far above all this vile commotion.
Once there, she raised her head to the leaden sky and breathed in deeply. The rain had held off, by a whisker, but the air was moist and the light poor.
Then she saw the woman in the field. She was not carrying a basket, or wearing the same long skirt, but it was unmistakably her. She had her hands together under her chin, still posing as if for a Victorian painter, watching the scene outside the hotel, smiling broadly.
The door opened and Toni was joined by one of the junior chefs. He was twenty-four and there was a growing mutual interest between them. ‘Hi, Matt,’ she said. ‘Do you have any idea who that woman is, over there?’
He peered down. ‘Oh, that looks like Mrs Tompkins. She’s a brilliant cook – makes all sorts of chutneys and pickles and so forth. We buy them from her. She did the soup for the wedding today, actually. I thought you’d have noticed her delivering it this morning. She must have taken days over it.’
‘No,’ said Toni. ‘I didn’t see her.’
Matt went on, seeming eager to talk, ‘And I know her son. She had him late and he’s terribly spoilt. He wanted to marry Samantha, I think.’
‘Samantha?’
‘The bride. They must be quite miffed that this Rupert bloke got her instead.’
A piercing cry from below interrupted them and they both leant over the parapet to see what the trouble was. They could just see a stretcher being loaded into the newly arrived ambulance. The bride, in her frothy white dress, trotted alongside and then climbed in after it. ‘Rupert!’ she wailed, over and over again.
‘Uh-oh,’ said Matt, while Toni turned to look again at the woman in the field.
‘Probably not the wisest choice of soup-maker,’ she said. ‘Not with all that hemlock or toadstools or deadly nightshade that grows over there.’
‘Probably not,’ said Matt, with an uncontrollable giggle.