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FEBRUARY BROUGHT SNOW. It settled across the paddocks and filled the trenches the builders had dug.
The CCTV went up, and the cans stopped arriving, maybe because of the cameras, but as likely down to the blanket of white that showed every footprint. Probably kids, the police had said. Hettie wasn’t convinced. They told her to keep an incident diary, to make a note of unusual events.
Driving on Hardacre Lane became treacherous as fresh fall covered frozen layer. On the yard they slipped, scattered salt and slipped again. Hettie wrapped the water pipes in blankets. Riding anywhere but in the arena became nigh on impossible. She and Zoe raked drifts of snow off the rubber surface, and hours gained from cancelled riding lessons were swallowed up exercising horses owners couldn’t reach. They lunged the horses and schooled them, but there was no hacking, no hunting and no competitions ran.
The horses looked out over stable doors at an expanse of white: white sky, white roofs, white ground. The world grew smaller as Hardacre shrunk into icy solitude.
Bring on spring. It became an over-used phrase between Hettie and Zoe. Monica, the new groom, blamed her arrival for causing the white-out. Monica had taken up temporary residence in the bungalow with Hettie, and Zoe had stayed over too, since the most recent snowfall.
Hettie welcomed the company. Her bungalow felt like a bunker, their escape from the harshness of winter, and the spirit of the blitz saw them laughing through the pain of thawing toes and hostile weather.
The snow and the company kept Alexander away. He had turned up once in the practice Range Rover, but found Zoe and Monica there.
‘Boyfriend?’ Monica had asked, when he left without coming in.
‘Ex-boyfriend.’ She nearly said ‘it’s complicated’, but in truth their arrangement was anything but. He turned up, they shagged, he went away again. So it wasn’t as if she would miss him, not this time. She watched the red lights of the Range Rover reversing out onto the snow-banked lane and fade as he drove away.
Bert had delivered beef stew, cooked by her mum, and enough for all three of them. It was in the oven now, heating through. ‘Shall we treat ourselves and open a bottle of wine to go with this?’
They ate on their laps, with the telly on, in jodhpurs and thick socks, fleeces and sweatshirts. Kitten tiptoed between them, Pig begged for scraps and the forecast warned of further snow.
‘Maybe we’ll lunge the horses tomorrow then.’
It had become a running joke. All three of them were fed up with standing in the arena, turning circles while their feet froze and the horses they lunged got bored.
‘Your mum’s a good cook.’ Monica scooped up another forkful of stew and spoke with her mouth full. ‘Why don’t we try some team choreography?’
‘What, like a quadrille or something?’
‘Can’t be a quadrille, there’s only three of us. What would that be, a tri-ille?’
‘Four, if Bert would do it.’
The plan snowballed, a bit of fun, a break from the dreary, and the next day they dragged Bert into their game.
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ALL FOUR WERE IN THE arena as snowflakes floated over the fence, shouting ideas from rider to rider, scarves across noses muffling their voices. Bert looked lost.
Lockie threw some impressive bucks and tried to drag Hettie to the other end of the arena every time they attempted to line the four horses up together. Bert put his foot down. ‘Won’t help us if you’re back in plaster. Back off and order the rest of us. You’re good enough at that.’
Hettie narrowed her eyes at him.
They invented new names for the dressage moves so Bert would be able to follow them. ‘Sideways, loop-de-loop, canter!’ Lockie bucked again.
Bert confounded their joshing of him by executing a near-perfect display of flying changes. ‘Show jumped as a lad. Nothing to it.’
They tugged off their scarves and dropped their fleeces over the gate. The horses steamed, and Bert’s face got rosy.
Tiff arrived in Gregor’s new black Wrangler as they were cooling the horses off. ‘A quadrille, how exciting! Can I film it for the Facebook page?’
Hettie laughed. ‘Not yet you can’t, and I wouldn’t hold your breath.’
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ANNA TOLD BERT OFF when he complained about his aching muscles. ‘Well, if you will try to keep up with those youngsters. I need you fit and healthy for our wedding, Bert O’Brien.’
‘Plannin’ on using me, are you?’
It was going to be a small affair: registry office, family, dinner at the Swan. The Meltons were included as Bert’s family, and Natalie and James would be witnesses. Bert and Anna had booked a week away in Spain. Bert had a new suit. Anna had gone shopping in London with Natalie for her dress: palest blush, simple, neat on her trim figure. She tried it on again to show Hettie and did a twirl in front of the mirror. Hettie came over emotional.
Anna moved into Bert’s cottage and the family house went on the market (for a sum neither Anna nor Bert could entirely believe). For the first time in her life, Anna would be free of financial worries. She studied the rooms in the wonky old cottage. Tiles on the floor, a ragrug. That could stay, but something other than beige on the walls would lift the room no end, draw the eye back to those wonderful gnarled and knotted beams. The maroon curtains were definitely going. She couldn’t picture the garden yet, covered as it was by its pelt of snow. There must be four inches at least.
She saw Celia’s head bobbing over the top of the hedge, coat pulled up around her ears, heading this way. She’d put the kettle on. Poor woman, a thousand and one worries on her plate at the moment. She opened the door. ‘Come on into the warm, Celia. I’ve just taken some flapjack out of the oven.’
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HETTIE WAS AT HER MOTHER’S house to clear out her old bedroom. She’d been putting the job off for weeks, but the For Sale sign was up now, so she really couldn’t delay it any longer.
She found the key in the usual place, beneath the third flowerpot from the left, under the larder window. Easy to find in daylight hours. She remembered it being more of a challenge in the days when she’d stumbled home in the dark from whichever pub Clare and she’d ended up in.
Her mum’s absence was obvious, even in the garden. The paths hadn’t been cleared of snow, and the shrubs bent beneath it. Hettie shivered. She had to give the door a shove to make it open.
Empty rooms with squares on the walls where their pictures had hung, and undressed windows. Swept and hoovered, of course, but the house looked sad and worn out. Someone would buy it as a renovation project.
Hettie wandered through the rooms. Her mum had kept this going all on her own. And worked, and raised her and Nat. It was impressive when you thought about it. A quarter of a century dedicated to her girls, with not much support and even less money.
She reached her old bedroom. The furniture had gone, most of it to the bungalow, but the floor was still stacked with boxes of old clothes, school books and knickknacks. It could probably all go straight in the bin. She sat on the floor, and cleared space around herself for three heaps: rubbish, charity and keep. She pulled the first box nearer.
Tempted by nostalgia, Hettie fed the keep heap. She shifted a few items from keep to charity, then decided she would have to be ruthless. Memories side-tracked her: old books, once-loved trinkets and curled photographs. School reports for the rubbish pile, but each one had to be read first. Her poor mum. All that nagging and she’d blown the lot in her final year. Fuck-up number one. She found her old diary with its pink and grey stripes, broken padlock and dog-eared cover. HETTIE’S DIARY KEEP OUT!!! She threw it on the rubbish pile then turned to the final box and sorted through it. Another hour and she was done.
It was cold in the house, and the dogs would be wanting their dinner. She plucked the diary out of the rubbish box and shoved it into her shoulder bag, then carted the boxes down to the Landy, wrenched the kitchen door shut behind her and slid the key into its hiding place for the very last time.
Inevitably the thaw came, bringing a rhythmic drip from roof and gutter, the inching ebb of snow and pools of sludgy green in the paddocks. Drips turned into streams. The ground emerged, dull and slimy. All but the children were glad to see the last of the snow.
Life resumed, unmuddled by inconvenience. Zoe went home, but Monica stayed. The builders came back, muttered among themselves and told Hettie they would start on the work next week. Owners and clients were re-energised after their enforced absence, and Redfern Equestrian transformed from an island of solitude into a hive of bustle.
They continued to work on their quadrille. Even Lockie was enjoying it now, sometimes a bit too much, but it made Hettie concentrate, and the moves were coming together. She might just let Tiff film them after all. It had to be worth recording the grin on Bert’s face. She could play it back to him every time he took the mick out of dressage.
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THEN THE PACKAGES STARTED arriving. The first was an empty lager can, delivered in the mail and addressed to Hettie with a typewritten label. The postmark was obscured, unreadable, but there was no doubt in Hettie’s mind now who it was from. She threw it in the bin, pushing it beneath the trash. A trickle of fear slipped down her spine.
She phoned Grace and asked her if she’d heard any gossip about Julian coming back. Grace hadn’t, but a few days later a card was delivered from one of those internet companies that printed the message, a Jack Russell on the front, HELLO HETTIE, in capital letters. Hettie noted the can and the card in her incident diary and phoned the police. She had to hang on the line while she was transferred between departments. She finally spoke to someone in an office two towns away, who seemed bemused, uncertain that a beer can and a single anonymous card could be considered threatening. ‘A late valentine maybe?’
Hettie didn’t mention Julian. Maybe she was just being paranoid.
She tried not to think about it, and the occasional panicky nausea made her cross with herself. She was damned if she was going to let that creep scare her again.