While the afternoon sun shone down on Bruncliffe, lighting up the imposing Victorian town hall with its front-facing gables and mullioned windows, and turning the glass of the estate agent’s, the bank and the newly refurbished bakery into a blinding brilliance, towards the back of the marketplace, on a narrow road that led up to the fells, the autumn light had already faded. Low-slung in the sky and unable to reach over the three-storey stone buildings that lined this tapering street, the sun had left long shadows in its place: shadows which reached across from one side to the other, casting into shade the hairdresser’s with its sign bearing a sheep and a pair of clippers beneath the words ‘Shear Good Looks’; and the slim building next door with ‘To Let’ plastered across the ground-floor window. Likewise, the stones of the pub opposite – the oldest pub in Bruncliffe and the smallest – were unlit by the warming sun. Hunkered down on this neglected byway that had once been the thoroughfare for the town, lacking hanging baskets of late blooms, windows bare and without a single advertising board outside, on that afternoon the ancient hostelry seemed as surly and ill-humoured as the man who ran it.
‘How was it?’ A pint of Black Sheep thumped onto the bar, a meaty hand held out as the question was posed.
‘Grim. It’s not right burying a young man like that.’ Seth shook his head and fished in his pocket for coins, unwilling to give the landlord of the Fleece a penny more than was due. It wasn’t solely on account of his pub’s name that Roger Murgatroyd was surreptitiously known as Fleecer; the man’s reputation for being slow to return change making the nickname more than apt. Being of wide girth and a short temper, however, he was unlikely ever to become acquainted with this epithet. Instead, he was more commonly hailed as Troy.
‘Surprised there’s not been more of it,’ came the gloomy response from Troy, as his fat fist closed over the proffered money. ‘With the way the economy’s been going.’ He nodded towards the windows on either side of the door, through which could be seen the premises next to the hairdresser’s. ‘From what I hear, it won’t be long until that’s closing up for good.’
Seth took a sip of beer, refusing to be drawn, and acknowledged to himself that, despite the truculent nature of its host, the Fleece always guaranteed a good pint.
‘I mean, a dating agency, for Christ’s sake. Thought Delilah would have known better, being raised in these parts.’ Troy continued to glare at the building, the first floor of which housed the offending business. ‘It’s like that rabbit-food shop on the high street, or that fancy cafe the Metcalfe widow opened. It won’t be long before they’re closing their doors, too, because there’s no place for the likes of them around here.’
Seth took another sip and declined to enlighten the man on the other side of the bar that, actually, the organic food store was in talks to move to a bigger place and Lucy Metcalfe’s Peaks Patisserie had just taken on two more members of staff. He simply drank his beer and allowed Troy the floor – the same tactics he’d deployed for decades to gather information.
‘Dating agency! Pah!’ Troy turned to the old man. ‘Would you use one?’
‘Nope.’
‘Do you know anyone round here that would?’
‘I can think of one or two that should,’ Seth replied, with a cackle.
‘Well, you wouldn’t catch me setting foot in the place,’ said Troy.
Seth raised his glass once more, because there was no reply to be made. After all, it was well known throughout the dale that the landlord of the Fleece was only married thanks to the freakishly hot summer of 1995.
With the sun shining down from clear blue skies that year, the residents of Bruncliffe had basked in the unnaturally good weather, none more so than confirmed bachelor Roger Murgatroyd, recently appointed landlord of the Fleece on his father’s retirement and a man whose moods were closely tied to meteorological conditions – commonly agreed to be the reason he was still single. It was into these rare circumstances that the young Kay Hartley had unwittingly stepped.
Over from Skipton on a day out, she’d been in a party of girls who, finding themselves on the back road of Bruncliffe, had entered the Fleece. Being first through the door, Kay had been momentarily blinded in the sudden gloom and as her focus struggled to readjust, she’d become aware of the vibrant personality behind the bar. Troy’s head was thrown back in laughter, a rich peal of enjoyment issuing forth. She hadn’t stood a chance.
She’d come back the following weekend. The weekend after that, with the heatwave still holding firm, Troy – high on sunshine and something he presumed was love – had recklessly proposed. Kay had accepted. And a month later, on her wedding day, the skies clouded over, the rain arrived, and her groom retreated back into his normal sulk, his cheerful alter ego only emerging whenever the sun turned the Fleece golden and the mercury climbed the thermometer. Which, in Bruncliffe, was not as often as you might think.
Twenty years on, Kay Murgatroyd had never complained about how the Fates conspired against her. Instead, to the amazement of the locals, she’d stayed in the town and in her marriage, a regular feature behind the bar and a genius in the kitchen. And, if truth be told, it was her influence on the pub that kept the regulars coming, even when Troy refused to yield to pressure from competition and revamp the faded interior, its two rooms decorated with floral carpet and brass-laden walls.
The slam of a van door and the clatter of ladders caused Seth to turn from his contemplation of the pub’s decor.
‘What’s he parked there for?’ muttered Troy, scowling at the vehicle outside the window. ‘He’s blocking the light.’
They watched, with the curiosity common to people in small towns when witnessing something out of routine, as the driver carried his ladders across the road, propped them against the glass front of the building opposite and then returned to his van.
‘Window cleaner?’ suggested Troy.
Seth shook his head. Knowing the perilous state of Delilah Metcalfe’s finances, he doubted she’d be spending good money on something she was able to do herself. Plus, if she was going to have the windows cleaned, she’d use her cousin’s husband’s brother, who had a thriving business nipping up and down ladders with a wet sponge. Although, having experienced the man’s efforts, Seth rather suspected he’d done his training on a ship: nice clean circles and not one corner touched. So perhaps Delilah had called in an outsider after all. Because that’s what the man leaning into the white van was.
‘Afternoon!’ Rick Procter’s voice rang out from the doorway and a large group of sombrely clad people from the funeral followed him into the pub, Ash Metcalfe and his oldest brother Will amongst them, as well as the stocky figure of Harry Furness, the livestock auctioneer. ‘First round’s on me, in memory of Richard.’
A crowd of bodies made for the bar, blocking Seth’s view out of the window. Pint in hand, he got up and wandered over to the door.
‘What’s up, Seth? Do we smell or something?’ called out Rick.
‘He’s being nosy,’ said Troy, tipping his head towards the activity outside as he started pulling pints. ‘Know anything about it, Will?’
‘New tenant,’ came the succinct reply.
‘What kind of business?’ asked Rick, watching, along with everyone else, the man climbing the ladder across the road.
Will shrugged, the taciturn farmer never one to talk much, especially about family concerns. ‘Delilah didn’t say.’
‘I don’t think she knows,’ volunteered his younger brother. ‘It’s all been a bit rushed. Someone contacted Taylor’s two days ago and agreed a lease for some kind of office set-up. Not sure what, though.’
‘We’re about to find out,’ said Seth, as the man they were all staring at began fixing letters to the glass in front of him.
It didn’t take long. Three simple initials in gold, neatly spaced across the window. Three simple initials which, as the sign-maker came down the ladder and gave the onlookers a clear view of his handiwork, set the pub abuzz.
‘Christ!’ muttered Ash, looking from the ground floor to the floor above and then back again.
‘Wait till Delilah sees this,’ said Rick over the raised voices filling the room.
Seth drank the last of his pint and headed back for another. Not because he was thirsty. But because this was turning out to be a day filled with trouble, and one beer simply wouldn’t do.
* * *
It hadn’t taken long to leave Bruncliffe behind, the houses giving way to fields and then to the steep valley sides. He’d followed the road as it turned between the hills, the sun sliding from his back as he entered the darker dale of Thorpdale where, before long, the tarmac ended, a rough track taking its place, making the Royal Enfield judder and bounce beneath him.
He slowed down, not wanting to wreck the bike as he negotiated around the holes pitting the lane, deep enough to cause damage, no attempt having been made to fill them. It was worse than he remembered. Either they’d had a run of hard winters or no one was taking care of it any more.
One look at the land alongside suggested it wasn’t just the track that had been neglected. Fields unkempt, not a sheep to be seen. Gates hanging from broken hinges, the stone walls that criss-crossed the land crumbling in places. It didn’t give the impression of a prosperous farm. But then it hadn’t been doing well when he’d left, foot-and-mouth seeing to that. Even so, he hadn’t expected this.
He eased to a halt, engine idling, and stared up the length of the dale, a small house visible in the distance on a spur of land, two streams running either side. Behind it, the towering mass of the fell looming over it all.
Twistleton Farm.
With a sense of foreboding, he turned the throttle and headed for home.
* * *
Back in Bruncliffe, in an austere room overlooking the marketplace as befitted a man of prudence, Delilah Metcalfe was equally apprehensive.
‘Delilah, dear,’ the man behind the desk said, twisting his computer screen to face her. ‘The figures don’t lie. You’re badly overdrawn, you’re trying to handle two mortgages, and the money simply isn’t coming in. As your bank manager, and a friend of your father’s, I’m deeply concerned. Something is going to have to give.’
‘You don’t seem to understand,’ she said, trying to bridle her frustration as she pushed her carefully prepared documents across the desk towards him. ‘It’s an internet start-up. Of course it’s not going to make money straight away. But these figures prove it’s growing.’
‘All they prove is that there are a lot of lonely people in the Dales,’ he said with a sigh. ‘However, I’m not convinced that providing a dating agency for them is a viable way to make a living. Or run a business. So far you don’t seem to be reassuring me.’ He tapped the papers in front of him. ‘The Dales Dating Agency is entering its third year and you’ve yet to make a profit. In fact, it’s swallowing what little money you manage to eke out of the website design business. If you keep going at this rate, neither enterprise will survive. Nor, young lady, will your house.’
Delilah lowered her gaze, a familiar panic clawing at her stomach. Debt. So much of it. It wasn’t what she’d envisioned when, newly married and deeply in love, she’d established a business with her husband. They’d timed it well. The internet was expanding rapidly, broadband allowing for larger and more elaborate websites, which were becoming essential for commerce. And Delilah, with her talent for coding, her passion for IT and several years in the industry, was perfectly poised to make the most of it. Add in a partner with a background in graphic design, and the future looked bright for Bruncliffe’s first website development company.
It had been. They’d built up a solid client base and a great reputation. Then things had begun to fall apart. In the short space of a couple of years her brother Ryan had been killed in action, the business had been run into the ground by her husband while she was caught in the grip of grief and, finally, her marriage had collapsed, ironically just as she was getting the dating agency off the ground.
Delilah had been stubborn at the end, refusing to accept that it was best to close the two companies she’d set up with her husband and walk away, just as he was doing from their relationship. But the thought of failing in both love and commerce had galled her. Equally, the idea of giving the town even more to talk about had filled her with horror. So she’d taken on the house with the mortgage and the business premises, requiring yet more outlay. She’d had the web design service and the Dales Dating Agency transferred to her name. And she’d been slowly heading for insolvency ever since.
She stood to lose it all if she didn’t turn things around. Or, as the man across the desk was suggesting, cut her losses and focus on the venture that was more profitable. But something held her back. Some of it was pride – the fact that the dating agency had been her idea, established in the dark months before her marriage broke down, and her sole focus as her life fell apart. Yet underneath all that, she was convinced it would work, no matter what the locals said. Or the man opposite.
‘I know it doesn’t look good,’ she said, indicating the spreadsheet, which depicted a failing business in brutal rows and columns. ‘But some of it can be explained by the fact that I’ve introduced speed-dating sessions. It’s taken a bit of outlay to get them off the ground, but they’re becoming really popular and now I’ve even got people coming from as far as Reeth and Leyburn to take part. I’ve also got quite a few commissions for website designs coming in and I’ve rented out the ground-floor office, starting today. All I need is a little more time…’
Norman Woolerton ran a hand across his balding head and sat back to take in the words he’d heard on countless occasions in this small office, with its view across the heart of Bruncliffe. That’s what they always thought, the failing entrepreneurs protesting that their product simply had to find the right niche; the farmers pinning everything on the next lambing season; the business start-ups willing to throw good money after bad. In his forty-plus years working in the only remaining bank in town, and even more so since the crash, he’d seen them all. And had to keep seeing them around the town for years afterwards, as they tried to reconstruct their lives post-bankruptcy. He was loath to let Ted Metcalfe’s daughter follow the same path – not after what the family had suffered in the last few years. On a more personal note, his wife was Ted’s cousin and he’d never hear the end of it if he let a relative slide into financial ruin.
But … recently there had been a lot of ‘buts’. The blasted internet was the cause. While Norman could judge a traditional business by running an eye over the accounts, he’d found that his instincts, honed after years of living in the same place and understanding intricately the world of commerce in Bruncliffe and its surroundings, were less sure when it came to the internet. It opened up the world of trade beyond the fells and dales which he knew so well. And as for this business in particular …
A dating agency. The town had been alight with speculation when it was announced. The sceptics had dismissed it as another gimmick from a woman who couldn’t settle down. The pragmatists had pointed to an internet already swollen with websites aimed at singles. While the more malicious had poked fun at the idea of Delilah Metcalfe being an advisor on love.
The least likely person to be accused of being a romantic, she had a head filled with computer code, an outspoken manner as a result of being the youngest child with five older brothers, a painful disregard for sentimentality, and a right-hook that her oldest brother, Will, had passed on from his short-lived boxing career. But maybe she also had a head for business.
The bank manager picked up the papers she’d produced for him and glanced at the numbers again. Sensing him wavering, Delilah leaned forward.
‘I can do this, Uncle Woolly,’ she said, her childhood name for the banker slipping out unchecked in her desperation to get his approval. ‘The website was set up specifically for farmers, but word has got out and I’m getting people from all over the Dales. People who have lived here all their lives but haven’t had a chance to meet someone. Or have, and it ended badly and now they want to try again. It’s aimed at Dales folk. People like me. I know them. And this business is made for them. It will succeed. If you could just see to—’
He cut her off with a nod of his head. ‘Six months. I’ll allow you an extension on your overdraft for a further six months. But if in that time the business doesn’t show considerable improvement, then I’m sorry, but I’ll have to take the steps neither of us wants to happen.’
She was around the big oak desk, which had been his bulwark against the borrowers of Bruncliffe for almost half a century, and a kiss was planted on his whiskered cheek before he could protest.
‘Thanks. You won’t regret this, I promise!’
‘Make sure I don’t,’ said the bank manager gruffly as he straightened his tie and fidgeted with the keyboard in front of him. ‘Now get on with you. I’ve got another meeting to get to.’
Delilah gathered up her papers and was out of the door before he could change his mind. But her euphoria was short-lived. As she headed for home up the hill at the back of the town hall, she experienced a swell of trepidation for her future. She wasn’t to know that trouble was about to arrive from the past.
* * *
Derelict and abandoned. Scraps of machinery littering the yard. Slates slipped on the roof, paint peeling off the windows, a couple of broken panes. The chicken coop they’d made the year before she died nothing more than a jumble of rotting planks. And, encroaching on it all, the steep sides of the fells, plunging the small farmhouse into early shadow.
He pulled off his helmet, dumped it next to his rucksack on the ground and approached the back porch, heart pounding in his chest. The last time he’d been here, things hadn’t gone so well.
‘Dad?’ He knocked and pushed at the same time, the door squeaking open to his touch, and he stepped into the kitchen. ‘Dad? You home?’
Stupid question. Where else would the old man be?
It took a few seconds for the smell to reach him. Mildew with a tinge of something else. Booze? A bark of laughter escaped his dry throat and he glanced around, taking in the bottles that covered the small worktop. The crushed empty cans on the table. And the sink. Full of pans and dishes, thick mould flourishing across them.
It was bad. Worse than he’d anticipated.
‘Dad?’ he called again, the word coming back to him in an echo typical of an empty house as he stuck his head into the front room.
Cobwebs and a thick layer of dust on every surface. His father’s chair, sagging and worn, cigarette burns dotting the arms. The colourful rag rug, where she used to curl up with him next to the fire in the winter, the big book of bible stories a heavy weight across her lap. The rug was falling apart, the fabric frayed, bald patches where his father’s feet had rested. He crossed to the dresser, pulled open the cupboards to reveal bare shelves where once the best china had been stacked. Likewise, the drawer which had been filled with Sheffield’s finest cutlery was empty, the felt tatty and blotched with age and covered in a scattering of mouse droppings.
It was the same as when he’d left. Just dirtier.
He turned to go and noticed the space on the mantelpiece. Her photo. Gone.
‘Dad? You here?’ he asked with less certainty as he headed for the stairs. He took them two at a time, nervous of what he’d find.
Empty rooms. His own, smaller than he remembered. A musty duvet spread across the single bed, its faded pattern one he recognised. Nothing on the walls. He’d had no idols by then. Nothing to be proud of. A small collection of paperbacks. Crime mostly, which was ironic. And the rough-hewn desk he’d made in woodworking classes and had never used, academic study not fitting into his life on the farm.
Chest constricting as the past crowded in on him, he gave a cursory glance through the open door of the bathroom, recoiling at the smell of collapsed drains, and entered the front bedroom. Bed unmade, a tangle of sheets and bedspread on the bare mattress. The wardrobe hanging open, half of it empty, hangers strewn across the floor. The other half still filled with her clothes. A couple of dresses. Blouses. A hat on the top shelf he could never remember her wearing. He reached out to let his fingers trail across the fabrics, pulling them back hastily at the damp they encountered.
What the hell?
It had never been this bad.
A creak from below; the back door.
In two quick strides he was across the room and heading down the stairs, angry. As angry as the day he’d left fourteen years ago.
‘Dad!’ he shouted. ‘What’s going on—?’
A cold touch of metal on his chin pulled him up short on the bottom step. Just like the day he’d left, he was staring down the double barrel of a shotgun.