Chapter 4
Bridge had been there for over an hour trying to read a dated, yellowing periodical taken from a stack of vintage magazines by the fire, when the noise of a car engine pulled her thoughts away from the running sore that was Luke Palfreyman. Outside, she could see that an impressive peacock-blue Range Rover was nosing slowly into the parking lot. Nice. Surprising, though. She’d imagined Luke rolling up in the vintage Aston Martin he’d always said he’d buy if he won the lottery. He might not have won millions, but he’d certainly earned them these past five years, selling his veggie burgers. She quickly reached for her bag, pulled out her mirror, and refreshed her red lipstick. She’d hidden behind this same shade (Rich Bitch) for years. It didn’t go with her flame-bright hair, she knew that, but it made her look potent, in control, even if she didn’t feel it. Like now.
She gave her hair a quick brush, hoping to restore it to its artificially straightened glory, but that was a hope too far. She returned her attention to the Range Rover outside and saw that there was someone sitting in the passenger seat. Surely he hadn’t brought Spanish Carmen with him. Not to discuss his divorce. That was the sort of shitty trick he would play, two against one. She felt her ire rising and prepared to do battle by summoning up her inner Boudica.
The car drew up next to her Porsche, and the driver got out: a tall, solidly built man in his fifties, was Bridge’s rough guess, wearing a bright orange jacket with the hood up. He tripped and slipped around to the trunk to retrieve a large bag, then went around to the passenger side to open the door for an older, thinner gentleman wearing the same style ski jacket but white with color splashes on it. They clung to each other as they battled their way through the snowflakes toward the inn door, blasting in gratefully, bringing the weather with them.
“Thank God,” exclaimed Orange Jacket, putting the bag down before shaking off the snow that had settled on him. He noticed Bridge then. “Hello,” he said politely, his eyes honing in on the brandy on the table in front of her. “Isn’t this weather awful? I bet that tastes extra nice sitting in here, looking out there.”
“Are you the landlord?” asked Bridge, ready to apologize for breaking in.
“No, just weary stragglers,” said the older man, dropping heavily onto a cushioned bench.
“So you don’t work here, then?” asked Orange Jacket, flipping back his hood, unzipping his coat.
“Nope. I’m a weary straggler, too.”
“Lucky you found it like we did, then. I dread to think what would have happened if we hadn’t.”
He approached the bar.
“There’s no one around,” said Bridge. “Seems the place is only open for prebooked dinners. I helped myself to this, in case you’re wondering. I’ve started my own tab under the circumstances.”
“What, the door was left open?” asked Orange Jacket. His accent was unmistakably East London, his voice gentle and at odds with his big build and shaved head. Bridge had always been good at picking out where people hailed from.
“I broke in,” said Bridge. “It was either that or freeze to death in the car.”
“Good grief,” said the older man; by contrast his voice was refined and rich as a rum-soaked fruitcake. “You could have died if you hadn’t engaged in criminal activities. And so could we, no doubt. Dear lady, we are indebted to you.”
His response coaxed a smile from Bridge.
He unzipped his coat, then freed his arms from the sleeves. He had a lot of hair for an elderly gent, was Bridge’s initial thought: salt-and-pepper curls that fell softly past his shoulders, and his thin face suited the beard and mustache combo. He was wearing a dapper waistcoat and a Chanel scarf tied at his neck as a cravat. He looked not unlike the illegitimate child of Charles I and an aged Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.
“Looks like we will be here for a quite a while, surviving on those packets of chips until we are discovered at Easter, draped over the bar,” said the younger of the two men, taking both jackets and hanging them up on the hooks at the side of the door.
“Well, seeing as it appears we will be spending some hours in each other’s company, I shall make introductions. My name is Charlie,” said the elder of the new arrivals. He made an extravagant hand gesture toward his companion. “And this is my husband, Robin.”
Husband, thought Bridge, glad she hadn’t had the chance to put her foot in it, because she’d presumed they were father and son.
“I’m Bridge. Short for Bridget, but no one has ever called me that.” No one she wanted to remember, amended an inner voice.
“I’ll find a kettle and we’ll have a nice cup of tea, shall we?” said Robin.
“No, I want what she’s having,” Charlie replied with definite protest.
“Not a chance,” Robin came back at him.
“Purely for medicinal purposes,” said Charlie in a wheedling tone. “Oh, go on, you miserable fart.”
“A very, very small one, then,” Robin relented with a tut.
“I presume that’s your Porsche next to our car,” said Charlie as Robin called out a few cautious hellos at the bar in case what Bridge was telling him wasn’t true.
“Yes, it is.”
“Very nice, love the red color. But I imagine it wasn’t great in the snow.”
“Crap,” replied Bridge, moving to sit across the table from Charlie, hoping it would be warmer away from the window. “I consider myself lucky that I made it this far before either crashing into a tree or being buried under a drift.”
“So what are you doing up here, then?”
“I was meeting someone,” said Bridge without giving details, before taking a large gulp of brandy. The mere thought of what she was here for had the tendency to drive her to drink.
“Oh dear, I hope they found somewhere to take shelter,” said Charlie.
“I hope so, too,” said Bridge, but she wasn’t convinced that Luke would have. This was too important to him. Getting her out of his life was too important to him.
Robin went behind the bar. He took two glasses, held one up to the brandy optic and one up to the malt whisky, then he delivered the glass containing the brandy into the eager hands of his partner. Charlie lifted the glass, savored the fumes, and sighed.
“Oh, darling, it’s been too long,” he said, addressing the contents before sipping.
Robin crossed to the window, gazing out onto a landscape of dark skies and snow. The flakes were falling large as pennies. “Looks like we’re here for the night,” he said.
“They have three bedrooms upstairs,” said Bridge. “The beds aren’t made up, but there’s plenty of duvets and sheets. I went for a snoop.”
“I can see headlights in the distance,” said Robin, squinting.
Bridge’s heart made a treacherous bounce in her chest as if preparing to break out and lay down a red carpet. Hearts could be terribly immature at times.
“It’s a voiture splendide,” Robin said. “Maserati, I think. Emerald green, beautiful.”
It had to be Luke, thought Bridge. He was not only a Maserati sort of guy these days, but he’d always had a thing about green cars.
Robin’s running commentary continued. “Yes, it’s pulling in. Man and a woman from what I can see, unless my eyes deceive me.”
Luke and Carmen, thought Bridge. Great.
Charlie was fiddling with his phone. “I can’t get a signal.”
“No signal, no Internet. I just managed to get through to someone to let them know I was safe, but then the line dropped and I haven’t been able to get it back,” said Bridge. “There’s a phone on the bar, but the landline’s dead, too.”
Robin left his space by the window to open the door for the newcomers. In rushed a young blond-haired woman followed by a man and half a ton of snow, as if the weather sought to take refuge with them. The wind whistled a howling protest as Robin shut it out. The male newcomer had very dark hair. Definitely not Luke.
“Thank goodness this place is open,” said not-Luke.
“It wasn’t, this young lady had to break in,” said Robin, bobbing his head toward Bridge.
“An obvious emergency,” said Bridge quickly in her defense. “It doesn’t look as if it’s open again for another two days; at least, that’s what I gathered from the note stuck in the window.”
“It’s mad out there,” said the blonde, putting down her handbag and a red suitcase to peel at strands of her long hair that had glued themselves across her pale-skinned, pretty face. Bridge’s brain was quick to sum people up, always had been: the blonde was reed-slender, young, not one who had embraced the present trend for slug eyebrows, spider-leg eyelashes, and inflated lips, which was refreshing to see. The man, tall with the sort of build that suggested he worked out in a gym, but not obsessively. Dark hair cropped just at the point where it had begun to curl, light gray eyes, an attractive rather than handsome face with his nose a little crooked, maybe from an old rugby injury. Bridge wondered what their relationship was: brother and sister, friends? She didn’t get the couple vibe from them, but they looked good together.
“We should hole up for an hour or two until this subsides and then try and get back home,” said the man, his accent polished private school, confident and deep in tone. His overnight bag, Bridge noted, was black leather, stylish, understated.
“Unless home is within skiing distance, I wouldn’t bet on it,” said Charlie. “I think it’s wise to presume you’re here for the night with me—I’m Charlie—my husband, Robin, over there, and our new friend Bridge.”
“Jack and Mary,” said Mary, liking how their two names sat together in a bracket.
“Hello,” said Jack in the manner of someone who thought introductions were unnecessary because he wouldn’t be there long enough for them to mean anything.
“You certainly won’t be going anywhere for a while, so I’d take your coat off if I were you and relax with us,” Charlie continued.
Mary took off her pink raincoat, a fashion rather than a practical piece, Bridge surmised. Jack, realizing that what Charlie said was probably true, removed his coat, shook the wetness from it. A vintage Crombie; Charlie recognized it because he knew class when he saw it.
“Where’s home for you two, then?” asked Charlie.
“Place called Oxworth; you won’t have heard of it,” said Jack.
“Oxworth in South Yorkshire? I know it well. In fact, I know every bit of Yorkshire. I was born in Whitby. I had an aunt whom we used to visit, she lived in Penistone, which isn’t far from Oxworth, is it?” replied Charlie before taking another sip of brandy and giving a shimmy of delight.
“That’s right,” said Mary, hanging up both her coat and Jack’s. “It’s very close to Penistone. What a small world.”
“What about you, dear?” Charlie asked Bridge. “I can’t place your accent.”
“I’m originally from just outside Derby,” said Bridge, although over the past years her accent had been ironed to neutral. She’d forced herself to talk like that at first; now she spoke that way naturally. The name Bridget and the accent that went with it belonged to a past that she had little fondness for.
“This snow is here to stay, and I imagine a road like this would be way down on the pecking order for sanding,” said Robin from his place by the first window, his legs drawing a modicum of warmth from the old-style radiator fastened to the wall underneath it. “There’s no light coming from those cottages across the way, is there?”
“They’re all empty,” said Bridge. “I walked across before I took a screwdriver to the door lock. No one in at the church either.”
“Then there’s no chance of them clearing round here, is there?” Robin surmised. “Any snowplows will be concentrating on the major roads, not single-lane country roads.”
“I have a meeting I can’t miss tomorrow lunchtime,” insisted Jack.
“Well, you’d better pray for a quick thaw, mate, or an AA man driving Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” At the rate the snow was falling, Robin thought that the second option seemed the more probable.
“We’re supposed to be halfway to the Cairngorms for Christmas by now,” said Charlie. “Five-star hotel and all the snow you can shake a stick at, except there isn’t any up there, it’s all down here. The world’s gone insane.”
“I thought everyone was more worried about global warming than this sort of thing,” said Mary.
“I could do with a bit of global warming now. It’s not very warm in here, is it?” said Charlie with a shudder.
Robin was instantly alerted to the comfort of his husband.
“Anyone mind if I light that fire?” he asked.
A general rumble of “No” and “Go ahead.”
“There’s a box of matches on the mantelpiece,” Bridge pointed out.
“Thank you,” said Robin. He took one out of the box, struck it, then poked it at the twists of newspaper under the front logs until the flame transferred.
“So, there’s no landlord here, then?” asked Jack.
“Not unless he’s hiding,” replied Bridge. “I gave the place a once-over when I arrived, apart from the cellar, but I did shout down and there was no answer. In short, there’s no one here but us chickens.”
“Which way to the ladies’ room?” Mary asked Bridge.
“I’ll show you,” said Bridge. “I need to go myself.”
“Mind if I go first?” asked Mary when they got inside. “I’m absolutely bursting.”
“Be my guest,” said Bridge.
“Thanks.” Mary rushed in, locked the door, made an eventual “ahhh” of relief sound.
“I’ve been holding on to this for miles,” she said through the door. “I was on the brink of having to stop the car at the next available set of trees. I’d have been mortified to have had to pull up for that reason.”
“You were driving?” asked Bridge.
“Yeah. I like driving. Especially that car.”
“So much easier for men, isn’t it?” said Bridge. “I do envy them the ability to just whip it out and siphon off. Where were you going?”
“Jack had a breakfast meeting in Tynehall first thing tomorrow morning. The plan was to get there today, rest up, have the meeting, and then drive home straight after.”
“Tynehall? You’re way off course. Were you traveling on the A1?”
“We were until a truck blocked it. There was a detour, then that detour got diverted…”
“Similar thing happened to me,” said Bridge. “Got totally lost. Me and the GPS.”
Mary flushed the toilet, opened the door.
“Is that your partner you’re with?” Bridge asked.
“Jack? I wish. Oops.” Mary slapped both hands over her mouth. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
Bridge chuckled as she went into the stall. “I won’t say a word. Promise.”
“Jack’s the boss, I’m the lowly PA.”
“Nothing lowly about being a PA,” Bridge corrected her. “The oil in the machine. Some of these execs don’t know how much their ‘lowly PAs’ actually do for them behind the scenes.”
“You sound as if you’ve been one yourself,” said Mary, turning on the tap to wash her hands.
“I was. Once upon a time. Among other things,” Bridge replied. The list of “other things” was long: factory worker, cleaner, dishwasher, barmaid, telesales operator, till operator, auction house administrator, PA to the owner of that company… managing director of her own property company.
“I’ve only ever had one job, apart from a Saturday job in Tesco,” said Mary. “I love it, though. I wouldn’t want to change. I think I found my perfect niche early. I’ve worked for Jack for six and a half years since I left high school. Well”—she began to correct herself—“I worked for Jack’s dad, Reg, for two and a half years at first, and then when he retired and Jack took over, I became his PA.”
“So that would make you about twenty-five?” asked Bridge, waiting for the answer before flushing.
“Yep. At least, I will be on Christmas Day.”
Bridge thought back: she’d been selling advertising space at that age. Working long hours selling a substandard product for a substandard rate of commission, then she’d stay behind when the others had gone to clean the building so she could at least take a semblance of a wage home. She emerged from the stall, went over to the sink, pushed some soap onto her hand from the dispenser before turning on the tap.
“What line of work is Jack in that you needed to travel so far for a meeting on Christmas Eve morning?”
“Scones,” replied Mary.
“Scones?” Bridge couldn’t help the hoot of laughter that escaped from her. She’d been expecting the answer to be on the lines of national security.
“Yep, scones. Just scones, nothing else. Butterly’s Scones. Jack’s grandad Bill set it up. Jack’s the third generation to run the company. Since he’s been top dog, he’s taken it to heights his dad and grandfather wouldn’t have even dreamed of. Anyway, a bakery owner in Japan contacted us to do business with him and I can’t count the number of times I’ve fixed up meetings only for him to drop out at the last minute. He was hopping over from Brussels on business today and I managed to persuade him to squeeze in seeing Jack in the morning before his plane left Newcastle. But he backed out yet again—just before we found this place. Jack’s furious and I can’t say I blame him.”
Bridge made a whistle. It all sounded very big business. “I didn’t realize there was such a demand for scones that you needed a whole factory to produce them and nothing else.”
“Oh, goodness me, yes,” said Mary with emphasis. “At capacity we can produce two million scones per day. We do every sort, too: raisin, cheese, cherry, treacle, gluten-free, vegan, different grades and prices and more long-lasting ones that we export. We run machines twenty-four-seven. There’s the demand all right, and it’s growing.”
It was on the tip of Bridge’s tongue to say You must have a word with my ex about the vegan scones, but she stopped herself. Why should she give Luke Palfreyman any mention where a possible business venture was concerned?
“Why are you here, then?” said Mary, trying not to stare too much at Bridge’s face. She thought she was beautiful, with her large hazel eyes and her brave red lipstick. It should have clashed with her fire-flame hair, but quite the opposite. It was amazing what a bit of chutzpah did for you. Her dad had taught her that word. Maybe one day she’d have some, too.
“I’m meeting my husband,” Bridge said, still washing her hands with the thoroughness of Lady Macbeth. “Soon-to-be ex-husband.”
“Oh, I see,” said Mary, though she didn’t really.
“Our marriage took a lot of… deconstructing.” Bridge chose the word carefully. It was a tame one to use to describe a war. “But we got there.”
“Good that you were able to sort everything out in the end, though,” said Mary with a little smile.
“We both figured we didn’t want the solicitors skimming off all our hard-earned cash, so we did most of our fighting without involving them, which was hard and probably stupid, but we managed eventually to come to an agreement that works for both. Neither of us wanted to step into another New Year without resolving everything, as we both intend to be married to our new partners sooner rather than later.”
“It’s a bit easier when you’ve both got someone else,” said Mary. “When my aunt and uncle split up, he got himself a young, glamorous girlfriend and my auntie was so bitter and jealous about it. She still is, and it’s been ten years since they got divorced. In fact she’s worse now than she was then. She can’t let it go.”
“Yes, well, neither of us wants to be like that.”
“Much better to be sensible and cut finally and cleanly,” said Mary, nodding with a sagacity that belied her age.
Bridge snapped out a paper towel to dry her hands. “Do yourself a favor, love, and stay single. The St. Georges of today are the dragons of tomorrow.”
Which was an odd thing to say for someone about to get married to a new partner, thought Mary as she followed Bridge out.