‘Hello, Maryam,’ Beryl said. ‘I’m just going to grab a few essentials, the cupboard’s bare after my holiday.’
‘Oh, yes, I remembered you’d be home today. How was the trip? Did you dance until you dropped? I’ve heard hair-raising tales about what you ladies get up to when you go off on your travels.’
Beryl laughed. ‘We did indeed, and I loved every minute but coming home to an empty fridge is always a bit depressing. I was wondering, do you think your lovely Rashid will deliver my shopping if I decide to place a bigger order from now on? I’d like to give you locals some extra business if I can.’
This was true enough, even if it was Anthea’s driving that had nudged Beryl into making the change. The corner shop was well-stocked, and coming along the road for a good old natter was always a treat.
‘Of course he will,’ said Maryam. ‘You can phone your list in if you like.’
‘Even better, I can email it. I’m right up to date with the computer lark now, you know. Mind you, that won’t stop me popping in every few days to check on new deliveries of the fresh stuff. I’d miss our chats if I didn’t keep an eye on the shop. Nice sari, by the way,’ Beryl said, looking the other woman up and down admiringly.
‘A present from Rashid’s sister,’ said Maryam. ‘Hot pink isn’t really my colour, it’s more a shade you or your glamorous friend Winnie could carry off, but I thought I’d branch out with something different, so as not to offend her. Any news?’
Beryl prided herself on keeping everyone up to date with local gossip, so she relayed her information about the return of Venetia Prescott. ‘Of course, you won’t know the family, being fairly new to Willowbrook, so it’s as well to be aware of what’s happening. She’ll be living in what was her mother’s house next door to me, so you’ll probably see quite a lot of her.’
‘That sad old place?’ said Maryam, putting a hand to her mouth. ‘The poor woman. She’ll surely not move there in the state it’s in, will she? Those last tenants weren’t welcome at this shop. They ran up a bill before I could warn Rashid not to give them credit. He’s too kind-hearted, that man of mine, and they fooled him with a proper sob story.’
‘I know they did. Let’s hope Venetia is a breath of fresh air,’ said Beryl.
‘You must remember her well. You’ve lived in the village for so many years, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, we’ve definitely got history. Ah, well, nice to see you, dear. I’m going to have a quick whizz round the shop to pick up some bits and bobs. I’ll be sure to tell Venetia when I see her what a great little place you have here.’
Beryl’s thoughts were troubled as, ten minutes later, she paid for her small basket of shopping and made her way back home. It was one thing talking about her prospective new neighbour but quite another preparing to actually meet her in the flesh after all this time. She only hoped that when Venetia Prescott finally decided to grace Fiddler’s Row, they could somehow put the past behind them. Although she’d pretended to be keen to keep her own counsel earlier, Beryl had been longing to tell Winnie and Anthea what she was pretty sure really went on all those years ago. It wouldn’t do to blab though. Some secrets were best kept under wraps. Definitely for now and possibly… forever.
2
Beryl would have been irritated to learn that she’d missed the start of the next part of the ongoing saga of Dragonfly Cottage because Venetia Prescott had arrived at number four Fiddler’s Row a whole hour earlier and was now sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, wondering what the hell she was doing here.
If Beryl’s house had felt musty on this rather chilly September afternoon, it was nothing to the damp, cloying atmosphere that hung around this cottage. There was a smell of stale cigarette smoke and something less tangible but equally nauseous that caught at Vee’s throat and made her feel even gloomier than she had when she left her previous home. It was the scent of despair, she decided, glancing round at the few pieces of battered furniture and heaps of empty beer cans and wine bottles that had been left behind when the final tenants departed.
I must be crazy to be thinking of living here, Cass. The last people must have been dancing and singing as they left, it looks as if they had the party of a lifetime before they went.
Vee had promised to update her younger sister Cassie about the house as soon as she landed in Willowbrook.
The place is a disaster zone. I can’t make it work for me here. I just can’t.
But even as the ping of the sent message echoed around the largely empty space, Vee knew that her words were meaningless. She had to stay in Willowbrook because she’d completely run out of options. Her last relationship had been dead in the water for years, and when she’d told Nigel that she was going to take possession of the house left to herself and her sister Cassie by their mother, he’d not even bothered to raise any objections. Her little car was about the only thing Vee was missing from her former life. That decrepit green Mini had been with her through a lot of tough times. It felt like an old friend. She loved driving, but the car was showing definite signs of ageing, and she knew she wouldn’t have been able to pay to get it through its next MOT, let alone afford petrol, so it had to go. The cottage was all she had left now.
Vee’s sister, who had decamped to America some twenty-five years previously and now lived in Boston in a glorious clapboard house with her glamorous wife Marissa, wanted nothing to do with their legacy.
‘It’s all yours, honey,’ Cassie had said, when Vee had tracked her down to the gym where a noisy personal trainer was impatient to move on with her sister’s never-ending quest for absolute fitness. ‘Go for it. Live the rural life again. Imagine you’re back in the eighties. I hope you get on okay, but I’d rather eat my own arm, as our dear departed ma used to say. Ciao.’
With that, Cassie ended the call before Vee had even had chance to ask how Cassie and Marissa’s son was doing at the moment. Finn was twenty now, a bright, genial boy, and news of his progress was always a joy. Vee made a point of marking his birthday and Christmas with as generous gifts as she could manage, and he never failed to thank her by email, but it would have been good to get some up-to-date family news today. She pulled a face at the phone. Cassie had no doubt gone back to the weights and treadmill with gusto. It was probably the last Vee would hear from her sister unless she made the effort to get back in touch herself.
It was getting harder and harder to keep the lines of communication open between them. As an exchange student, falling in love with Marissa and then much later marrying her high-powered American lawyer had changed Cassie’s life in so many ways and if it wasn’t for Vee’s keen interest in Finn’s life, she knew she’d have let things go even more. Cassie had only been seven years old to Vee’s fifteen when the family had moved away from Willowbrook for a new life in Cardiff. Unlike Vee, her sister had left behind a few small friends but no significant ripples.
The eight-year age difference hadn’t seemed so great in those days, but ever since Finn had come into all their lives, Vee had felt like an outsider. She loved her sister and would always want the best for her but the miles between them made a more comfortable sibling relationship tricky. FaceTime could only do so much in that respect.
Thoughts of the past made the present situation seem even more horrific. Vee pushed them away with her customary determination. It was time for a proper stocktake, and then she’d do what she always did in moments of crisis; make a to-do list. However, moving from room to room only served to send her deeper into the sense of foreboding she’d been fighting ever since she’d accepted that she would have to come back to Willowbrook. Dragonfly Cottage, once a warm and welcoming family home, now had not held on to one single hint of its former cosiness.
Downstairs held a living room and a kitchen, with a single-storey utility room and draughty bathroom extension tacked on the end. The kitchen was possibly the unhealthiest place Vee had ever seen. Grease coated everything, an abandoned frying pan in the sink still held the remains of what must have been the tenants’ last fry-up with half an ancient sausage clinging to the hot tap, and a dish that had once contained some sort of cereal was now full of cigarette ends, soggy with curdled milk. More empty cans had been abandoned under the table, spilling out their dregs across the tattered lino. The one window that should have given a pleasant view of the garden was streaked with years of grime. Fingerprints and other random smears decorated it on the inside and spiderwebs hung from every corner. It felt like the place where depressed flies came to die.
Vee pulled out her phone to call the letting agent, ready to blast him to high heaven for allowing the house get into this state, but the continuous engaged tone soon put paid to that idea. Her feet stuck to the floor as she made a quick exit. On leaving the kitchen and picking her way through the various discarded items of grubby clothing on the utility room floor, she found that the bathroom was also in a revolting state, but the two bigger upstairs rooms were, if anything, even more disgusting because they reminded her so strongly of how particular her mum had been about pretty bedlinen that always held the elusive scent of lavender. The bedroom that Vee’s parents had shared held the remains of a broken bed. It was without a mattress but festooned with discarded clothing, including a red satin thong, a pair of tattered boxer shorts and a couple of threadbare towels. The carpet was so dotted with cigarette burns that Vee initially thought they were part of the pattern. The back bedroom had two badly stained single mattresses on the floor and the smell of stale urine was so intense that Vee gagged. Worse still, if that was possible, the tiny box room turned out to be the place where the last tenants had left parting gifts of bag after bag of dirty nappies, which were spilling out in gay abandon onto yet another moth-eaten carpet.
Vee stumbled downstairs, still feeling sick from the rotten stench of the upstairs rooms, and made her way to the garden, where the fresh air did a lot to settle her stomach but not much to raise her from the depths of gloom. So this was where the missing double mattress had ended up, and the effort to burn it had not been entirely successful. Rusting springs protruded from the blackened remains. Broken tricycles and other mangled items of play equipment were strewn amongst the long grass. The apple tree in the centre of the garden was a poignant reminder of the day her father had planted it, to celebrate Vee’s tenth birthday. It was, of course, much bigger now, and the sight of it was somehow cheering. She headed for the tree and put her arms around it, taking some comfort from its steady support.
‘My, how you’ve grown,’ she said to it, echoing the words Aunt Yolanda had said to her, on each of Yolanda’s extended visits from her home in France. Her mother’s sister hadn’t been in contact for some time now, which reminded Vee that she really should check up on her elderly relative. That formidable lady must be in her early eighties by now. Vee’s mum, Tallulah, had reached eighty-five when she succumbed to pneumonia. Yolanda hadn’t come to the funeral. She’d sent flowers and a card with an ornate cross and some very attractive angels on it, but had made the excuse that her lumbago was playing up and she couldn’t travel so far.
