‘So when did you first come up with the idea of using Deerwood Farm this way?’ the young reporter was asking Shelley, pencil poised over his notebook with a small tape recorder spinning away on the kitchen table between them for backup.
His name was Martin Coolidge and he was, Shelley gauged, around Hanna’s age, twenty-two or twenty-three, and he had the engaging, though comical look of Clark Kent about him. All slicked-down hair, dark-rimmed glasses and intelligent blue eyes. She could tell he was trying to make himself seem older and more experienced than he probably was; however, he must be good if he’d managed to get a job with a national newspaper. He’d be really bloody good if he went to the loo and came back with his pants over his trousers and suddenly took off over the fields on a rescue mission.
Since she was getting used to doing these interviews now, mostly with local media, though not exclusively, she could answer his question straight away. ‘It was my daughter’s idea originally,’ she explained, admiring the pastel-coloured tulips he’d so thoughtfully brought with him and she’d already placed in a vase. If he’d done his research before coming here he’d already know about Hanna, but he wouldn’t be doing his job if he didn’t get the full story from as many sources as possible.
‘You have two daughters, is that correct?’ he asked.
Shelley nodded towards the family portrait that sat proudly over the sideboard, where much chaos and clutter still reigned and the female bronze dancer continued to wait in her niche for her partner to come home. Though Shelley had long ago accepted that wasn’t going to happen, there was still a part of her that hoped they’d be reunited one day – this was the part, she realized, that wanted to believe that she’d be with Jack again when her time came. Hanna and Zoe had commissioned the large portrait a couple of Christmases ago, giving the artist a family photograph to work from. It showed them as young girls of nine and seven, with Josh aged four, all clustered around their parents, Jack at the heart of the group looking so lifelike and there that Shelley often felt his eyes following her about the kitchen; sometimes she even sensed him speaking to her in a voice no one else could hear. ‘The children are much older now, of course,’ she said, wondering where the years had gone, with the girls now in their twenties and Josh not far off joining them. It was Hanna who conceived this project of ours – I’m sorry she’s not here for you to interview right now, but she should be back any minute.’
‘That would be great,’ he confirmed. ‘The photographer’s due about midday. Do you think she’ll be around by then?’
‘I’m sure she will. In the meantime, I’m here to do my best for you.’
He smiled in a way that made her feel quite maternal – and willing to be rescued, should he turn out to be an actual superhero. ‘Hanna’s put a lot of work into getting us to where we are now,’ she told him, ‘and we’ve done our best to support her all the way.’
‘So what actually gave her the idea?’ he prompted.
Shelley sipped her coffee and savoured the moment, for she always enjoyed this part of the story. ‘I’m sure she’ll tell it better than I can,’ she said, ‘but here’s my version. She was still only fifteen when she decided to give us the fright of our lives by running away from home. She certainly succeeded in that. It was a terrifying time for us all, not knowing where she was, if any harm had come to her, if we’d ever see her again … Luckily she came back. The police found her living in a caravan – a squat really – over at Perryman’s Cove with a bunch of homeless kids. They were mostly a year or two older than her, but they’d been subjected to some very different life experiences to any that she’d had. By comparison she’d had quite a sheltered upbringing, although it hadn’t all been easy. Her father’s death when she was eight hit us all very hard. It’s not easy to get over a sudden loss like that, and my husband was a wonderful father.’ As her voice trailed off for a moment she was thinking of the gossip Zoe had brought home from school all those years ago about him being unfaithful, but she’d never heard anything like it since. She’d probably have made herself forget all about it if the image of the girl at the crematorium didn’t still haunt her from time to time. Who was she? Had she even been there because of Jack? It shouldn’t have mattered after so long, but sometimes it did.
‘Anyway,’ she continued, bringing herself back to the present, ‘before she took off Hanna had already started staying out for long periods of time and never telling anyone where she was or who she was with … It turned out she’d been connecting with kids on the street who were so obviously worse off than she was that she started to feel guilty about her own existence, and resentful in a way she couldn’t understand. She was too young, and still too traumatized by her father’s death to know how to process things properly. She felt as though she needed to live with these kids, to lose her own pain in theirs and get a proper understanding of what things were really like for them. So she moved into this caravan, watched them drink themselves senseless, take drugs, sell themselves on the street, fail to connect with any sense of self-preservation or dignity … Most had lost all contact with their families if they even had one, and many didn’t. They’d spent a good deal of their lives in care of one sort or another, residential, fostering, difficult adoptions, and by the time Hanna got to know them they were on their own. Of course social services are supposed to provide some sort of transition process when a child leaves care, a support network, counsellors, help with jobs and finding homes, but what is supposed to happen and what actually does are two different things.’
He wasn’t writing now, only listening, intently, as his tape recorder absorbed her words along with the distant sound of clacking and tinny bells that had just started up.
‘Hanna was deeply affected by what she witnessed while she was in that caravan,’ Shelley continued. ‘She told me afterwards that she felt really close to her dad while she was there, as if he was guiding her, keeping her safe and showing her what to do. It was very moving to hear her say that, and to realize how deeply she believed it, because she was right, Jack would have wanted her to help those less fortunate than herself. He’d be so proud of her if he were here now.’
She paused, half expecting Martin to glance at the portrait, or to fire more questions at her, but it seemed he wanted to hear the story in her words, however they came.
‘It’s quite amazing really,’ she said, ‘or I think it is, that such a young girl with so little real knowledge of the world could feel such empathy and compassion for those who’d never known what it was to be loved and cared for. She was in no doubt about what she wanted to do when she came back. It took her no time at all to tell me. I put her in the bath and it all just came tumbling out. “We have to do something to help these kids, Mum,” she informed me, as if I’d already objected and she was getting ready to fight. “We can’t just let them drift into the gutter or prison as if they mean nothing to anyone. They’re human beings, for God’s sake, and no one’s looking out for them.”
‘Of course I agreed with her that it was appalling, and yes we did have a duty as a society, and as individuals, to do what we could to help. “I think we have to use Deerwood,” she told me. “I think we should turn it into a place for them to come when they leave care at sixteen to prepare them for the wider world.’” Shelley smiled at the memory of Hanna’s skinny body in the bath, pale, thin and seeming so small to be bottling up so much worthy ambition. Yet the fervour in her big blue eyes, the steel and determination that had emanated from her, had made her seem so like Jack that Shelley had taken her seriously from the start.
‘It was true,’ she told Martin, ‘that in my heart of hearts I thought the scheme was crazy, a kind of impulsive, romantic reaction to the tragedies she’d seen. On the other hand I never did anything to try and dampen or criticize her aims. At best she might actually make it work, at worst she would learn some extremely valuable life lessons in trying. What I hadn’t expected was how quickly the rest of us would get on board. We were fascinated by her efforts, energized by her, and we all wanted it to work as much as she did. So we helped her to take on the system, invested in various building works here at the farm, raised funds in any way we could and guilt-tripped the authorities into matching it. It was amazing the way the project seemed to take on a life of its own, and it was happening so fast. By the time Hanna finished sixth-form college and announced she was done with education, we weren’t far off being ready to take in our first residents.’
She looked up as the door opened and Jemmie Bleasdale came in, laughing and shaking her head in mock despair. She was at Deerwood so often now that she almost felt like family; even Sir Humphrey had managed to morph into a milder, slightly more human form of his irascible self during the years since the tragedy of Jack’s accident. Shelley only wished she could say the same for their sons. Though she saw almost nothing of them now that all three lived in London, she was aware of the problems they often brought to their parents’ door, even if she didn’t always know the details.
‘Those lads out there are too hilarious,’ Jemmie informed Shelley, picking up the string bag full of fresh produce she’d left on the table. ‘You should see them, camping it up like … Oh, sorry, I’m interrupting. I just came back to collect this.’
‘No problem,’ Shelley assured her. ‘This is Martin Coolidge, who’s come to write about us. Martin, this is Lady Bleasdale, also known as Jemmie.’
With an engaging smile Jemmie shook Martin’s hand. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you,’ she told him, ‘and now I’ll disappear. Will I see you later, Shelley?’
Remembering her promise to go and help with a seating plan for Matthew Bleasdale’s upcoming wedding, Shelley assured her she’d be there and would have returned her attention to Martin as Jemmie left, were it not for the merry shimmy of jingles and a ludicrous kick-up of youthful limbs that came through the door.
‘We are totally amazing,’ Josh informed her, still making his morris-dancer costume ring like a shop doorbell in a state of excitement. ‘We are going to put everyone to shame at that show, you wait and see. You should come,’ he told Martin. Then apparently realizing he had no idea who the young man was, he held out a hand to shake. ‘Josh Raynor, good to meet you.’
Half rising as he took the hand, the reporter said, ‘Martin Coolidge. Good to meet you too. You’re Hanna’s brother?’
‘One of my claims to fame,’ Josh replied drily. He was already six feet tall, and though not as filled out yet as his father had been, he was so like Jack in looks and temperament – even the sound of him – that Shelley often damned the fate that hadn’t allowed Jack to see his son grow up.
‘If you’re wondering about this weird get-up,’ Josh was saying to Martin, ‘then I should explain that I, along with my mate Sam and cousin, Perry, lost a bet. Well, looking at me, that’s probably a given. So we’re having to take part in the morris dancing competition at the county fair. We’ve just had our first lesson, and I’ve got to tell you, we’re demons.’
Laughing, Shelley said, ‘Martin’s here to write about Deerwood for one of the national papers. Is it the Guardian?’ she asked him.
‘The Saturday magazine section,’ he clarified.
‘Awesome,’ Josh responded, checking his mobile as a text came through.
‘I should probably tell you,’ Shelley said to Martin, ‘in case it’s of interest for your article, that Sam, the friend Josh just mentioned, is the son of the builder who’s done most of the work on the place. The boys act as labourers to earn some money when they’re back from uni for the summer and it was Henry, Sam’s dad, who won the bet that’s ended them up as morris dancers.’
‘So what was the bet?’ Martin asked, turning back to Josh.
Grinning, Josh said, ‘We reckoned we could construct a four-by-eight-metre drystone wall in a day, which we did, but then it fell down. Anyway, good luck with the article. Let me know if you want to see any of my projects. It’s not all about Hanna, you know.’
As the door closed behind him, Shelley was smiling and rolling her eyes in exasperation. ‘I’m dreading what’s going to happen when he finishes uni,’ she confided to Martin, ‘it feels empty enough around here already when he’s away.’ What she didn’t add was how afraid she was that it might feel like losing Jack all over again – or that Josh would go out into the world and decide not to come back. Of course he wouldn’t come back, he was a young man with his whole life ahead of him, and she wanted him to live it, just please God don’t let it turn out to be the other side of the world. ‘So where were we?’ she asked, checking the time and deciding she could spare Martin several more minutes yet.
‘We’d got to the point,’ he replied, ‘where you were more or less ready to take your first residents.’
Shelley nodded and inhaled deeply. ‘I’ll spare you what we had to go through with the authorities to get that far. Suffice it to say you’d have thought they’d be pleased to have someone willing to help transition these youngsters into a wider society and hopefully better life, but they definitely weren’t going out of their way to make it happen. However, in the end it wasn’t them who closed us down before we even got started, it was the wretched foot-and-mouth disease.’
Martin blinked, as though the news was a shock, but of course it wasn’t: the entire nation had known about it, and many, not only farmers, were still traumatized by the sheer horror and tragedy of it.
‘Obviously no one was allowed to come here while that was going on,’ she continued. ‘We had a D notice slapped on us, meaning we couldn’t move any livestock in or out, and it wasn’t possible for anyone to come onto our land without going through the whole disinfection and interrogation process. It was a terrible time; more stressful than anything I’ve known in all my years on this farm. We lived in daily terror of being ordered to destroy our sheep and pigs.’ She shook her head, still not quite over the anguish of those times. ‘We were lucky to come through unscathed,’ she continued. ‘Government inspectors were crawling all over the countryside. Many of our friends were made to destroy their herds. It was heartbreaking, ruthless … Well, I’m sure you remember. It wasn’t so long ago. You’ll know about the suicides and bankruptcies. Maybe you even reported on it.’
Martin nodded. ‘I did, and it’s not something I ever want to see or report on again. Actually, I almost changed career at the time. I’d only just got a job on a national, covering real news, and I thought that if this was how it was going to be, watching blameless and perfectly healthy animals be sent to their deaths … Then 9/11 happened and it was like the world had gone into meltdown. 2001 was a terrible year.’
Shelley nodded agreement; those particular nightmares still had the power to subsume all other thoughts, but that wasn’t what they were here for, so she quickly moved on. ‘It wasn’t until the following year,’ she said, ‘that we were able to look at Hanna’s project again. It turned out that we still had the heart for it – maybe we were more eager than ever, given how much we needed something positive to happen. There was a lot of red tape to go through again, but then one day, just over six months ago, we found ourselves with all the necessary permissions, health and safety certificates, criminal record checks, you name it, and miracle of all miracles, we finally welcomed our first transitioners.’
It still did seem like a miracle, in spite of all the problems they’d faced since, but she wasn’t about to make them a part of the story. They’d be ironed out one way or another, and talking the project down at this stage was going to serve no one, least of all those they were trying to help.
‘And so far it’s working?’ he said.
She smiled. ‘Most days. Kids of that age who’ve led the kind of lives they have are never going to be easy. However, most of them seem glad to be here. They understand that this can be a new beginning for them, an experience that will help to shape their futures in a way that’s far more positive than any they’d have grubbing around on the streets, having nowhere to go and no one to turn to. Sadly we can’t take extreme cases, we’re not qualified or practised enough yet, but we hope that’ll change over time. We’ll see.’
‘So how do you choose who comes here?’
‘It’s mainly down to social services, but the police and various charities are also involved. At the moment we’re only geared up for eight residents at any one time, but we’ll look into expanding if things work out.’
‘Where do they live when they’re here?’
‘You passed it on your way in, just before the footbridge. Henry, the builder I mentioned just now, has constructed a kind of hostel with eight small bedrooms and three bathrooms, a fully equipped kitchen and a large communal living space. Donations of furniture, bed linens, cooking equipment, you name it, came in from all over once word got out. So it really isn’t just our family getting behind the project, because a lot of farm families and nearby villages are doing their bit too.’
After jotting this down, he said, ‘And how long do you expect your current residents to stay?’
‘That will mostly depend on the individual. If all goes well we hope they’ll be ready to leave, with jobs and a place to live, within a year or two. Others might want to go on to further education – or go back to get the qualifications they missed out on. Again we’re working with the local authority on that.’
‘Do you have rules they must stick to while they’re here?’
‘Oh, we have plenty: a strict no-drugs policy first and foremost; general behaviour has to be acceptable, of course, everyone has to pull their weight around the farm, and we don’t house “guests” they might want to bring in from outside. Nor do we allow fighting or sex. The last is extremely hard to police, so we tend to turn a blind eye if we know about it. It’s important to remember that Deerwood isn’t a prison. The residents are over sixteen and are free to leave if they feel it isn’t working for them.’
‘And if someone drops out, there are always others to take their place?’
‘Indeed.’
Refocusing, he said, ‘So how exactly would you describe Deerwood and what you’re trying to achieve here?’
Shelley checked her phone as it rang and seeing it was someone from Dean Manor, probably looking for Jemmie, she let the call go to messages. Jemmie would be there soon enough. ‘I’d describe Deerwood first and foremost as a farm,’ she replied, ‘because it is still very much that, but in the sense you’re meaning it, I’ve heard it called a halfway house, a rehabilitation centre, a transition project … Some of the kids even refer to it as farm-school. I think that’s the term Hanna prefers, but you’ll have to check with her. Anyway, the important thing is that kids who’ve lived most of their lives in care and who have nowhere to go when the system spits them out, can come here to learn how to take the next steps. We place much emphasis on social integration, discovering the therapeutic value of nature and animals, basic survival skills, and getting in touch with themselves in a way they’ve never been encouraged to before.’
Noting this down, he said, ‘And you have experts helping you in this?’
‘We do, and I’m sure Hanna will put you in touch with them if you want to know more about them. Frankly, without them we’d never have been able to get off the ground, so their support is vital in every way. Thankfully, we are finding more and more experts are interested in helping us. We’ve even had a few get in touch from other parts of the country, and we’ve started to hear from university students who want to be involved as part of a degree course in social studies. It’ll take quite a bit of coordinating, but between us all I’m sure we’ll manage.’
With an ironic smile, he said, ‘I can see you having problems getting the residents to leave when the time comes.’
Shelley laughed. ‘We have people ready to help with finding homes and jobs, but again all untested as yet. Now, it sounds as though Hanna and Zoe have just turned up, so I’ll let them give you the guided tour. There’s quite a bit to see, and you’ll probably find the residents will be eager to talk to you. They’re enjoying the fame, that’s for sure. You probably won’t be able to get them to shut up about their ambitions for the place. It can be quite entertaining, if a little unrealistic. However, as we know, “Nothing happens unless first a dream.”’
A while later Shelley was driving through the country lanes on her way to Dean Manor, and remembering all the things she’d forgotten to tell Martin Coolidge. She wondered whether she ought to call Hanna or Zoe to make sure they added them in, although, knowing them, they’d cover all bases without prompting. She just hoped they didn’t get into how over-friendly some of the girls were being towards Josh. While Hanna and Zoe found it hilarious, Josh really didn’t, though he seemed to have it fairly well under control – and hopefully it would stay that way until he left for uni. The last thing any of them wanted was Josh becoming a father at nineteen, or finding himself accused of something he hadn’t done. That could turn very messy indeed.
Glancing at her phone as it rang she saw it was Jemmie and clicked on, even though she knew she shouldn’t while driving. ‘I should be there in less than ten minutes,’ she shouted into the speaker.
‘Oh Shelley,’ Jemmie’s voice was shaking. ‘You haven’t heard? Humphrey rang Deerwood …’
‘Heard what?’ Shelley broke in worriedly.
‘Something … Something terrible’s happened.’
Shelley started to brake. ‘What do you mean?’ she demanded.
As Jemmie answered, her words were drowned out by the sound of Josh’s motorbike zooming up alongside the car. Perry was riding pillion and they were waving frantically for her to pull over.
‘What is it?’ Shelley cried into the phone and at the boys as she came to a stop.
‘Oh, Shelley, Shelley, I don’t know what to do,’ Jemmie sobbed. ‘He’s dead. They’ve killed him …’
Shelley was stunned.
‘Keep calm, Mum,’ Josh cautioned, opening the driver’s door. ‘Sir Humph just rang Uncle Nate. Matthew Bleasdale’s been in an accident …’
‘He’s getting married in less than two weeks,’ Shelley shouted, as if it this could make everything stay normal, reinforce the fact that it had to.
The voice of Fiona, the Bleasdales’ daughter, came down the line. ‘Can you come, Shelley?’ she asked shakily.
‘I’m on my way,’ Shelley told her.
Josh had already handed the bike to Perry, and opening the driver’s door he drew Shelley out. ‘I’ll drive,’ he told her.
‘What does she mean, they killed him?’ Shelley demanded as Josh helped her into the passenger seat. ‘Who are they?’
‘I don’t know any details,’ Josh replied, ‘only that it concerns Matthew,’ and returning to the driver’s side he restarted the engine.
As he took them the rest of the way Shelley found herself fixating on how scathing Matthew Bleasdale had been about their social project. His brothers too, but they were hardly ever around. They had been lately, though, as preparations got under way for the upcoming wedding.
Dear God, she was praying inwardly as they sped through the lanes, please don’t let Matthew have got into some kind of altercation with one of our residents. Please, please, don’t let that be what’s happened here. If it had they could end up having to close the project down, and it did so much good …
‘Josh,’ she said shakily.
He turned to her, but she didn’t know what to say.
As Josh zipped along Dean Manor’s tree-lined drive towards the main house, Shelley was already clocking the blue flashing lights up ahead. Two police cars were blocking the front steps, and more vehicles she didn’t recognize were haphazardly parked on the forecourt. A group of suited men turned to watch Josh bring the Volvo to a stop.
As they got out Fiona came running out to meet them.
‘Shelley. Oh, Shelley,’ she cried, dashing straight into Shelley’s arms. ‘Thank you for coming. It’s so awful. Mummy’s in the drawing room. She keeps asking for you, but to be honest I don’t think she realizes what she’s saying. Daddy’s even worse.’
Slipping an arm around the girl, Shelley told Josh to explain who they were to the police, and took Fiona inside. Her heart was beating raggedly; her mind was frozen against the dread of what was about to unfold.
They’ve killed him, Jemmie had sobbed down the phone. They’ve killed him.
Passing another officer at the door of the drawing room, Shelley followed Fiona inside and found Sir Humphrey standing in front of the enormous fireplace, his back to them as he ran trembling hands over the ornate family crest.
‘Shelley,’ Jemmie exclaimed, and seeming to spring out of the shadows she ran across the room to clutch Shelley’s hands. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she sobbed. ‘It’s so awful. Matthew’s … They’re saying … I don’t know what to do.’
Bewildered, Shelley looked to Fiona for an explanation.
It was another voice that spoke. Male, deep and drawling, but not quite steady. ‘We’re all in shock,’ he stated. ‘It’s … The police are saying his car went off the road …’ It was Charlie, Matthew’s twin, a tall, slightly overweight thirty-year-old with ruddy cheeks and bloodshot eyes. The younger brother, Felix, was with him, looking ashen and pinched, and clearly not as relieved to see Shelley as his mother and sister were.
‘What’s happened?’ she pressed, glancing round as Josh came into the room.
The Bleasdale sons looked at the newcomer, then at one another. Charlie said, ‘A motorcyclist ran Matthew off the road.’ The way he eyed Josh made Shelley’s heart turn over. Surely he wasn’t trying to imply that Josh was responsible?
‘When did it happen?’ she asked anxiously.
No one answered. There was such a strange atmosphere in the room now that she was becoming more unnerved by the minute.
Charlie said to Josh, ‘Have the police spoken to you?’
Josh’s handsome young features darkened. ‘Why would they need to speak to me?’ he countered, showing no reluctance to stand up to the older man, or much reverence for his recent loss.
Shelley felt so sick, so horrified by what was happening, that she barely heard the next words.
‘… no doubt thought you could get away with it,’ Charlie was saying savagely.
‘Stop! Stop!’ Fiona jumped in. ‘It has nothing to do with Josh and you know it.’
Charlie’s tone slapped her down. ‘Do we?’ he demanded. ‘He rides a motorbike, and so does that cousin of his, illegally in his case I might add …’
‘Leave it, Charlie,’ Felix barked. ‘I know what you’re thinking, but it won’t fly.’
Charlie rounded on him, so angrily he might have hit him had Fiona not stepped between them.
‘What’s going on?’ Jemmie cried in confusion. ‘What isn’t going to fly?’
Felix moved away from his brother and checked his phone.
Knowing they’d just abandoned some hare-brained scheme to land some sort of blame on Josh, Shelley turned to Humphrey as he mumbled, ‘We told him it would end badly. We said he needed to stop, to understand he’d never win with people like that.’
‘The old fool doesn’t know what he’s saying,’ Charlie growled, as though to distract them.
Felix snapped. ‘Pa, come with me. You need to lie down.’
Shelley watched them go, needing to understand what was happening, while wondering if she really wanted to. ‘Where’s Matthew now?’ she carefully asked Jemmie.
‘The police are going to take us to him,’ Fiona replied.
‘So what’s delaying them?’
Fiona shook her head; she seemed to have no idea.
Josh took Shelley’s arm and steered her to a far corner of the room. Keeping his voice low he said, ‘I think we should go.’
Having a feeling he was right, Shelley said, ‘But I can’t just leave Jemmie.’
‘You have to. If someone really ran Matthew off the road … You just saw what Charlie tried to do. If Felix hadn’t made him back off … Something’s going on here, Mum, that we really don’t need to be a part of.’
He looked so young and yet resolute, so wise to whatever further dastardliness Jemmie’s detestable sons might try to concoct, that Shelley had to agree.
She turned back to Jemmie. There was so much going round in her head, too much. ‘I’m truly sorry about Matthew,’ she said gently, taking Jemmie’s hands, ‘but Josh and I have to leave now.’ At Jemmie’s look of surprise and alarm she pulled her into an embrace. Her eyes met Charlie’s over Jemmie’s shoulder, and she had the satisfaction of seeing him flush with discomfort. ‘I know what you just tried to do to my son,’ she said quietly. ‘It would never have worked, but the fact that you even attempted it …’ She let her words trail off, not wanting to say more in front of Jemmie, and with a last apologetic glance in Fiona’s direction, she followed Josh out of the room.
Three days later the police came to Deerwood. They didn’t stay long; they were simply collecting statements from anyone who’d been in the vicinity of the ‘accident’ on the day in question.
Nothing was said about Josh and his motorbike, but rumours of a Honda Gold Wing (not the same model as Josh’s) being involved in the incident were spreading about the county like a summer muck spread.
Not long after the police left, Giles turned up.
‘Don’t tell me,’ Shelley quipped as she plonked a coffee in front of him, ‘you’ll give me the latest gossip for a fee.’
Giles’s grey-bearded face remained sober even as he grinned. ‘Word has it,’ he said, ‘that the twins, maybe all three brothers, were into some sort of money-laundering scheme that the Revenue caught up with. Someone who’s remaining nameless, if anyone even knows who it is, foreign, I expect, reckoned the Bleasdales were about to do a deal to get themselves off and land everyone else in it. So Matthew was sent to rest under a tree as a warning to the others that the same will happen to them if they don’t keep their mouths shut.’
Feeling the bafflement of what went on in other people’s families, the secrets and lies, and even the ignorance of what loved ones could be capable of, Shelley thought of Jemmie and Humph with nothing but sadness. How much they’d known before Matthew’s death she had no idea, though they’d obviously known something, or why else would Jemmie have said ‘they’ve killed him?’ when she’d called Shelley in a panic. As for Humph, it seemed highly likely that he’d been trying to help his sons out of the mess they’d got themselves into, and now he’d learned the hard way that his efforts had been in vain.
‘From what you told me about the day you were over there,’ Giles went on, ‘I’ve deduced – and my mate at Kesterly nick agrees with me – that Charlie, because he’s stupid and always has been, had the grand idea to try and blame Josh for the “accident” because Josh is known to roar about the countryside on that bloody noisy bike of his. Felix was a bit cleverer, I’m told; he made his brother let go of that nonsense before it even got off the ground. Tangling themselves up in false accusations was only going to land them in an even bigger mess than they’re already in. Best to play it down, go along with it being a tragic accident and that way their “business partners” might back off and leave them alone.’
Shelley looked up as Josh came in from the boot room, all long limbs and rain-soaked hair. ‘Hey, Giles,’ he said, helping himself to an apple and a towel. ‘You’ve heard about the money-laundering thing?’ He pulled out a couple of chairs, slouching into one and plonking his feet on the other.
Giles nodded. ‘Daft buggers. Trouble is, they always thought themselves cleverer than the rest of us, reckoned the world was their playground and they had a right to it all, and look where it’s ended them up.’
‘Do you reckon Charlie and Felix will go to prison?’ Josh asked, biting into the apple, and seeming not in the least bit sympathetic to the fate of the Bleasdale sons, or their wives, since both were already married with kids.
Giles shrugged. ‘Depends what the Inland Revenue have got on them, but I shouldn’t think they’d be squealing on anyone after this, so yes, it’s likely one of them at least will carry the can, if not both.’
Feeling again for Jemmie and Humph, and already worrying about how this terrible business was going to affect their future, Shelley looked at Josh as she said, ‘When you go off to uni promise me, if you need money, you’ll always come to me.’
Josh looked stricken. ‘Do I have to wait that long?’ he protested, ‘because Glastonbury’s coming up and they’ve asked me to play the Pyramid Stage.’
Shelley slapped his feet off the chair and sat down. ‘Stop talking nonsense,’ she chided, ‘and anyway, if they really were inviting you they’d be paying you, not the other way round.’
‘This is true, I think, but The Vet Shop Boys – we changed our name again, by the way – have been given a ten-minute slot at midnight in the New Bands Tents and I’m in dire need of a new guitar.’
Chuckling as he got to his feet, Giles said, ‘There are a lot of different ways to die, young Josh. Best you choose this one, is what I say.’
Scowling at the inappropriate timing of the remark, Shelley walked outside with him, and was about to ask if he thought she should go to see Jemmie when the phone inside started to ring. A moment later Josh called her back.
‘It’s Jemmie,’ he said quietly, his hand covering the mouthpiece.
With her eyes on his, Shelley took the phone and said, tentatively, ‘Hello. How are you?’
‘I’m sorry to bother you with this, Shelley,’ Jemmie sounded frail but coherent, ‘but I thought I should let you know that Charlie and Felix have been arrested and Humphrey’s collapsed.’