Chapter 16

Eventually they arrived at the town where Mum was planning to stay the night. It was called Totnes. Jess cheered up. It looked like the kind of fun, busy place where mobile phone credit would be widely available. What else mattered?

‘I’ve always wanted to come here,’ Mum said, parking erratically as usual, rather too close to a camper van. It seemed to Jess that her mother always wanted to go everywhere. Maybe she had not received the correct careers advice. Maybe she should not have been a librarian, but a travel rep. Although travel reps always had to wear such dismal uniforms. Jess could not imagine her mum in a sky-blue polyester suit, crisp shirt and idiotic cravat. Mind you, Mum’s usual clothes were in a weird class of their own.

Today she was wearing a pair of black loose trousers, lightly scattered with stars (and, to be honest, tea stains), a Bob Marley T-shirt and a cardigan knitted in Peru, showing native peoples involved in what looked like human sacrifice.

But, strangely, everybody else in Totnes looked remarkably similar. This was certainly Mum’s kind of place. Immediately after parking the car they found a tea shop, in response to Granny’s plaintive plea: ‘I’m gasping for a cuppa!’

The tea shop was called the Fat Lemon – a strange name for a tea shop, but somehow, Jess suspected, typical of Totnes. They had so far only walked down one street but had already seen three old hippies with beards and two middle-aged women wearing gipsyish skirts and headscarves adorned with sequins and fringes.

‘They have over seventy varieties of tea!’ exclaimed Granny, reading the menu. Seventy! This was somewhat excessive, surely.

‘What poetic names!’ said Mum. ‘Emperor’s Choice, Russian Caravan, Mountain Green . . .’ Oh no! She was doing that poetry-reading thing again.

Jess ordered hot chocolate and a fabulous cheesy vegetarian bake. She soon began to feel a bit more cheerful. She liked the Fat Lemon. It was a great name. Thomas Hardy’s parents should have called him Fat Lemon instead of Thomas. Fat Lemon Hardy – he could have been a jazz trumpeter instead of a tortured and tragic writer.

‘Feeling better, dear?’ whispered Granny.

‘Yes, thanks, Granny!’ Jess squeezed Granny’s withered old hand. It was like a bundle of twigs. Granny’s eyes sometimes had a faraway, cloudy grey look which only old people’s eyes seemed to have. As if they were looking into the next world, or something.

Jess was alarmed to feel tears gathering behind her face! Oh no! Hastily she switched into a different gear.

‘What are we going to see tomorrow, Mum?’ she asked.

Her mum looked startled. It was the first time Jess had shown any interest at all in the trip.

‘I want to take you to Berry Pomeroy Castle,’ said Mum. ‘They say it’s the most haunted place in the country.’

At this point everybody in the tea shop should have suddenly gone quiet, and a cloud should have covered the sun. But all the customers just went on noisily eating their vegetarian delicacies and arguing about herbs and crystals.

‘Great!’ said Jess. ‘I love haunted places! In fact, I want to be a ghost when I grow up.’

‘Don’t worry, dear,’ whispered Granny with a cheery wink. ‘You will be.’

In Totnes they were booked into a rickety old hotel in a fairly noisy part of town. Jess’s room had a grandstand view: street life bustled away below, like a scene in a movie. But nobody in Totnes even faintly resembled Fred.

Now was her chance to go and buy more phone credit. But she decided to dash off another quick letter to Fred first, so she could catch the afternoon post.

 

Dearest Fred,

We are now in Totnes, hippy capital of the south-west. Here you can buy handmade shoes cunningly crafted from recycled loo rolls. My granny was elated by a tea shop selling seventy different types of tea. But she just ordered the same old boring tea as usual.

My mum decided to splash out and be adventurous, so she ordered a quaint brew made from camel’s droppings in remote Poshbeckistan. But then she decided she didn’t really like it. That’s my mum’s life, summed up in a single tragic teatime.

Earlier we visited the tomb of a tragic guy called Tom, who wrote tragic novels about tragic people. It was a blast. He had a pretty tragic life himself. He only realised he loved his wife after she died. So he left orders that after his death his heart must be cut out and buried with her. I can’t decide whether this is unbearably moving or horrendously gross, but I demand the same tribute from you, or there will be trouble, big time.

Anyway, it has given me the idea of writing my will. If I die first, I want to be stuffed. I want you to take my lifeless corpse out to a nightclub every Saturday. You can do this small thing for me, can’t you? And for goodness’ sake make sure they get my eyebrows right. Halfway between witty Manhattan journo and crazy Egyptian princess living in a garret in Paris.

I hope you are working hard and averting your eyes from Charlotte’s cleavage, however wrinkly. But if this Rosie character is taking my place in your heart, be advised that I shall personally cut out the aforementioned organ after your death. In fact, why wait for your death? I’ll cut it out while you’re still alive, stuff it with chicken livers and toss it to the nearest wolves.

I’m in the mood now. I’m getting into my stride. I won’t rest until the pair of you are charcuterie. Hope you’re well.

Love, Jess.