Even on the motorway the next morning, Laura’s yellow and cream dolly car – a near-extinct Citroën 2CV that needed pushing up hills – stood out. For the last two junctions, Laura had gradually become aware that on every side of her and in front and behind she was hemmed in by sleek saloons and executive coupés in metallic navy, silver and black. Jack needed the Volvo for work, of course – he needed the boot space for ferrying furniture to and from clients’ houses. She’d been adamant about not having a van as their main car, and the Volvo had been the compromise, but it had been on its last legs when they’d bought it as it was all they’d been able to afford of the model.
Still, she could only get up to two-thirds of the speed of all the other commuters in Dolly, and had trundled along in the slow lane since joining the M11. Her sole company – the radio didn’t work, and CDs, much less MP3s, hadn’t been invented when this car was built – was a pale blue Rover, which she’d sat behind ever since they’d both emerged from the Dartford Tunnel. It was driven by a white-haired, tweed-jacketed man accompanied by his wife, who kept handing him sandwiches, and Laura was passing the time trying to guess what was inside them – chicken salad? Cheese and pickle? Egg and cress? Perhaps he was a potted-meats man. Nine-thirty in the morning was too early, she reasoned, for coronation chicken.
She was settling on ham and mustard when her junction came up and she reluctantly peeled away from them, resisting the urge to wave goodbye. She followed the signs for Riverton, as Fee had instructed her to. The roads became ever narrower, ever leafier, and she slowly became aware of an indigenous predilection for floral-stickered wheelie bins, glossy red Cinquecentos and candle shops.
After a few miles, a sign for ‘Ottersbrook’ took her off to the left, and she was soon driving past a set of white picketed mock-gates that heralded the boundary of the village. There was a newly built housing estate to her right, with boxy red-brick maisonettes set along a series of sweeping cul-de-sacs. The village store seemed to be set in a scarcely adapted house that had simply given over its ground floor to washing powder, fresh bread and bags of jelly sweets, and a couple of young girls – aged twelve, maybe thirteen – were sitting on the railings of the disabled-access ramp, dipping sherbet Dip Dabs.
There was no pavement to speak of, and the lawns of the central village houses ran down to the road. The abandoned bicycles and Nerf guns casually left out overnight showed that this was a close-knit community-watch neighbourhood.
Laura glanced down at the directions Fee had written in her large, looping script – all the Is dotted with hearts – with her gold metallic pen. She was only twenty-three, and sometimes the nine-year gap between them was glaringly obvious.
‘Past the village store on the right . . .’ she murmured. ‘Done that. Follow road to the end, turns into unadopted road . . .’ Oh great, because Dolly couldn’t even make it over gravel. ‘Last house on left, look out for the . . .’ She squinted. ‘What’s that say? Ca . . . ? Camel? Candle? Tch, what’s she on about?’
Dolly bumped along from wheel to wheel, as if she was doing a commando crawl down the unmade track. ‘As if there are any camels in Surrey, Fee. There probably aren’t even any mongrels,’ she mumbled, just as a long brown face peered over the hawthorn hedge and spat at the window.
‘Oh my God!’ she shrieked, slamming on the brakes and bringing the car to a skid-stop with the front left and back right wheels in potholes so deep that Dolly’s tummy grazed the muddy lane. She sat with her hands on the steering wheel and stared unseeing through the windscreen for a moment. Had that really been a . . . ? She got out, leant one arm over Dolly’s roof and one foot on the door frame, and stared at the camel that had gone back to eating sloe berries, masticating quite disgustingly, so that a velouté of black foamy spit collected in the corners of its mouth.
It stared back at her, clearly unrepentant at the mess it had made of her window, and for a moment she wondered how it might be possible to exact revenge on a hostile camel.
‘Her name’s Sugar,’ a voice called out.
Laura looked over, to find a rosy-cheeked woman with deep-set blue eyes and a jumble of black curls piled high walking down a garden path towards her. She had an orange-faced toddler on her hip who looked like he shared the same table manners as the camel, and a white duckling was waddling alongside her feet. ‘You know, one hump or two?’
Her face split into a delighted chuckle – as though it was the first time she’d ever heard the joke – and Laura nodded, too shocked to find a laugh.
‘She’s the best landmark ever. Everyone in the village uses her as a reference. You know, “second left past the camel” and all that.’ Laura stared at her. The woman spoke at the speed of light. ‘Plus she’s a great security guard. Spits like buggery – I expect you just found that out. I heard your holler all the way back in the kitchen. No one’ll even try to walk past her on the lane. I’ve had to fit our postbox a hundred yards further back. Postman got fed up with it all.’ She smacked her forehead with her free hand. ‘Damn! I should’ve thought to mention it to your secretary and you could’ve picked the mail up for me on your way past. Never mind, you’re here now.’ She caught sight of Dolly – the automotive equivalent of a beached whale – shrugged at the sight and smiled. ‘I’m Kitty, by the way,’ she said, throwing open a small gate and thrusting forward a hand. ‘And this is Samuel. You must be Laura.’
Laura nodded. ‘That’s right. Pleased to meet you.’
They shook hands, and Kitty – now that she’d stopped talking – looked at Laura with interest. ‘Rob’s told me all about you. I’m so fascinated to find out how this will work. We l l , come on. Come inside. Everything’s a tip, I’m afraid. I haven’t even seen the cat for a month. I’m sure she’s been sat on or buried under a pile of washing,’ she said, leading Laura up the garden path and straight past the fat tabby sleeping in the wintry sun on one of the deep stone window-sills. ‘Have you had breakfast?’
‘Uh, well, I had a coffee and a Danish when I stopped for petrol,’ Laura said, trying not to step on the duckling that was waddling around her ankles.
‘That’s a “no”, then,’ Kitty smiled, leading her into a low-ceilinged cottage. It was a limed wattle and daub house with black timbers, tiny leaded windows and a climbing rose around the door. Inside it was predictably dark and beamy, with oak-panelled walls and a short, lethally steep staircase with child-proof gates at the top and bottom.
They stepped into the kitchen, clearly the heart of the house, for at one end of it there was an enormous inglenook chimney. An ancient racing-green solid-fuel Aga stood against the opposite wall, and there was a huge round table in the middle. The terracotta-tiled floor was covered with dozens of kilim rugs, all touching end to end like dominoes so that the overall effect was of a patchwork quilt. A small threadbare orange velvet sofa – pushed against a wall – was covered with an Ikea throw, and an Irish wolfhound was dozing happily on it. Unlike the camel, it clearly held no security qualifications whatsoever.
‘That’s Pocket.’ She winked. ‘You can guess why, can’t you?’
Laura nodded, quickly getting the gist. That dog was too big to fit in most cars, much less a pocket.
‘Don’t mind her. She’s the gentlest of giants. I always get her to look after Samuel if I have to help Joe in the yard with something.’ She lifted a heavy-looking kettle off a trivet and plonked it down on the Aga. ‘Joe’s my husband, by the way.’
‘Right,’ Laura replied, wondering where to place herself. There were towers of crispy, yellowing newspapers everywhere, a huge log basket by her knees, and plastic chew toys – whether for Pocket or Samuel, Laura wasn’t entirely sure – on the counters. ‘So is Samuel your first?’ Laura asked, reaching for some small talk.
‘My fifth,’ Kitty replied, pulling a tray of slightly overcooked bacon, sausages, black pudding and mushrooms out of the warming oven. As if on cue, a tousle-haired boy with bold, splodgy freckles wandered in through the back door, holding the duckling – or was it a different one? – under one arm. ‘Oh, Tom, there you are. Go and get me five eggs, there’s a good boy.’
Tom’s shoulders dropped automatically. ‘Oh, Muuuuum,’ he whined.
‘Go! And put that duck down. Your father will be after you in a minute to help with the hedging.’ Kitty wagged a stern finger at him and he turned in his muck boots and headed back to the hen house.
‘You have five children?’ Laura echoed.
‘Yes. All under eight, would you believe it? Tom there’s my eldest.’ She put a cup of blue-rinse tea in front of Laura. ‘Earl Grey okay? Help yourself to sugar,’ she said, pushing a bowl over, then picking up some of the bacon and sausages with a pair of tongs and dividing them between two plates. One of them had a massive chip on the rim and looked like it had at some point been glued back together again.
Tom came back in with the eggs, and Kitty hurriedly cracked them and scrambled them up.
‘Here you go,’ she said, setting the plates down on the table. The wafting aroma finally piqued Pocket’s interest and she raised a languid head as the two women began to eat.
‘This is wonderful, but really, you needn’t have gone to so much trouble for me,’ Laura said, watching Kitty heartily smack huge dollops of HP sauce on to her plate.
‘Nonsense. Rob said you were coming all the way from Suffolk. You must have been driving for what – three hours?’
‘Thereabouts,’ Laura agreed, munching on some sausage. ‘My car isn’t really geared up for motorway driving any more. I might have been quicker driving in reverse.’
‘She’s pretty, though,’ Kitty smiled, and Laura liked the way her eyes crinkled into themselves.
‘Yes.’ Laura took a sip of the tea. ‘It’s a lovely place you’ve got here. Have you lived here long?’
‘All my life. The farm’s been in my father’s family for four generations. I grew up in this house.’
‘Seriously?’ Laura exclaimed through a mouth full of food, suddenly ravenous. She’d been on the road since six this morning, and hadn’t appreciated quite how hungry she was.
‘Yes,’ Kitty said, spooning some beans on to the heel of a cob loaf. ‘Sometimes I think it’d be nice to have somewhere new, though, with bigger rooms and straight walls. I even went and had a look at the show home for the new estate on the edge of the village.’
‘But a new place wouldn’t be a patch on here. This is bursting with character.’
‘That’s estate agent speak for poky, with rising damp and no right angles or insulation,’ Kitty chuckled. ‘But no, you’re right. I could never leave this place. It’s just an idle fantasy for those days when it gets too much – you know, kids fighting, animals wandering in and out like they own the place, Aga’s gone out, half the roof tiles have blown off in the night. The thought of magnolia paintwork and wall-to-wall carpet, a thirty-foot garden and a damp-coursed utility room – aaaah, bliss!’
Laura nodded. Put that way, she could see the attraction.
‘I suppose you have it much the same yourself, don’t you?’ Kitty asked, wrapping her hands around her mug, her pretty eyes peering curiously over the steaming mug. ‘Husband, kids, animals . . . ?’
‘Boyfriend. And no kids. But we have a dog called Arthur. He’s gorgeous, an Irish terrier. He’s nearly four now. We love him to pieces.’
‘Have you been with your boyfriend long?’
‘Almost four years, although . . . we were friends before that.’
‘Oooh, think he might propose?’ Kitty asked excitedly.
‘No,’ Laura said briskly, wondering how, within five minutes of stepping into this stranger’s house, she was tucking into a full English and sharing her private life. She didn’t ‘do’ intimacy. With anyone. Well, possibly Fee, but she always complained it was more like surgical extraction than genuine intimacy. ‘I’m not sure marriage is ever going to be my bag.’
Or motherhood, she thought to herself as Samuel staggered back through. His face was still stained orange and he was sucking on a wooden Thomas the Tank Engine, the legs of his babygro sleepsuit tied round his waist to reveal a yellow-tinted and very low-slung nappy that hung to his knees.
‘Just look at him,’ Kitty tutted, a blend of adoration and exasperation in her voice. ‘I’d better change his nappy before Joe comes in and insists he lives out with the pigs. You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I’ll just be a sec.’
Laura watched as Kitty scooped Samuel into her arms and headed up the creaky staircase. Kitty was not at all what she’d spent most of last night bracing herself for. Given Rob Blake’s power-trip dynamics and ‘international set’ appearance, she’d been expecting his wife’s friends to be Russian models with endless legs and coke habits. But Kitty was so . . . well, normal.
She noticed Pocket was staring at her through one open eye – doubtless getting ready to lay her claim on the scraps – and she got up, taking the plates over to the worktop by the sink for something to do. Pocket followed at a trot. Laura found a bowl of leftovers on the windowsill and proceeded to scrape the bacon rind and beans into it, tossing a few stray pieces of eggy bread to Pocket, who caught them in clashing teeth.
‘What are you doing?’ a voice asked abruptly.
Laura wheeled round to find the silhouette of a tall, rangy man in overalls and gumboots standing in the doorway.
‘I was just giving her some titbits.’
‘And who said you could do that? She’s diabetic.’
‘Oh! I’m sorry.’
‘As you should be.’
Laura shifted her weight nervously from foot to foot as the man stared at her. She felt strange to be the one standing so familiarly in the man’s kitchen, at his sink, whilst he hovered at the threshold as if he was the visitor.
‘I’m Laura. I’ve come to interview Kitty for a necklace I’m making for Cat Blake’s birthday.’
‘I heard.’ From the withering tone of his voice, he clearly didn’t approve. A nigh-on twenty-thousand-pound piece of jewellery that required people to be interviewed was clearly a ridiculous frippery in his book. He stepped out of his boots and into the room, and as he came out of the light, she saw that he was younger than he had at first appeared – mid to late thirties, with pale blue eyes in a long, rectangular face with greying stubble. He walked towards her, his eyes staying on her all the while. ‘And I suppose that’s your car that’s just been abandoned in the middle of the lane.’
‘Oh – yes. The camel gave me a fright and I ended up in some potholes.’
‘Damn near drove over it in the tractor. Useless car for driving around here,’ he muttered rudely as he poured himself a cup of tea.
‘Well, to be honest, when I was told I was coming to Surrey, I didn’t expect I’d need an off-roader,’ Laura replied, her hackles rising at the sustained attack.
‘I’ll have to pull it out. You’ve managed to well and truly strand yourself,’ he grumbled.
‘I’m sure I’ll be able to manage,’ Laura replied stiffly.
‘Oh no, let Joe help you. It’ll only take him a second,’ Kitty interjected, and Laura looked up to find her standing by the doorway.
‘Where’s Tom?’ Joe asked her brusquely.
‘Waiting for you. Probably playing in the barn.’
Joe shot his wife a look and, stuffing his feet back into his boots, stomped out into the yard without another word, taking his tea with him.
‘Don’t mind him,’ Kitty said breezily as she began clearing the table. ‘He’s better with animals, that’s all.’
Laura nodded politely as Kitty slid the dirty plates into a bowl of soapy water. ‘Was he a farmer when you met him?’
‘Yep, his family owned the neighbouring farm. I always say he asked for my land in marriage,’ she chuckled. ‘I’ve known him since I was five. We were at school together.’
‘Are your children going to carry on with the farm?’
‘Who knows? Tom’s saying he wants to. That’s why he’s home today and not at school. Joe’s usual man’s having an op, so he’s kept him home to help out with the hedges,’ Kitty rambled, cleaning the plates vigorously and handing them to Laura to dry. ‘But he might change his mind as he gets older. There are no guarantees, are there?’
Within a few minutes, the washing-up was done and Pocket was back on the sofa, sleeping soundly again.
‘Well, where would you like me to interview you about Cat Blake?’ Laura asked, folding the tea towel over the Aga rail to dry. Kitty was easy company, but after Joe’s hostility, Laura was keen to get her work done and get out of there.
‘I thought we could do it on the way to Samuel’s music group,’ Kitty smiled, drying her hands.
Laura’s face dropped. ‘Sorry?’
‘He’s got his music group in half an hour – a dozen three-year-olds banging the cymbals. Really it’s hell on earth, but it’s a lovely walk and I can show you the village. We can talk then. Come on.’