*
Amir was regaling Blythe with his top tips for wooing clients, making her want to ram Blu-Tack in her ears, when she was interrupted by her mobile vibrating. She glanced at the screen and a mix of delight and trepidation permeated her system – it was her father. His calls were rare and almost always scheduled. This was an impromptu phone call.
‘Sorry, I need to take this,’ she said, waving for Amir to get his backside off her desk. Amir looked put out but left anyway, most likely to bestow his knowledge on some other poor soul.
‘Hi, Dad, this is a nice surprise. How are you?’
‘Busy. I assume you’re still working for Ludo Chadwick.’
She shouldn’t have been thrown by the lack of usual pleasantries, but she was. Her father was a very focused individual and sometimes he overlooked things like chit-chat. But then perhaps she was being overly sensitive; he had explained he was busy.
‘I am, can I help you with something?’ She’d been working her way up the ladder at Happy Homes estate agents since university in the hope of impressing her father – the London property specialist – maybe, at last, this was her opportunity. She’d had no reply to the email she’d sent about her record-breaking year of sales.
‘Of course. I’m sure you can. Hence my phone call.’ Blythe’s spirit soared. This was the moment she had waited years for. An acknowledgement from her father that she was competent in his eyes. It was an unexpectedly emotional moment, making her swallow hard before regaining focus. She had to get this right.
‘What do you need help with?’
‘Have you got a mobile number for Ludo?’
‘Yes, of course. I’ll email it to you right away.’ She put the phone under her chin and fired off an email. That was easy. She steeled herself for the big request. ‘What else can I help with?’
‘That was all. Thanks.’
Blythe blinked. Surely that wasn’t the only reason he’d called her. ‘Oh, right. So how’ve you been?’ She could feel her shoulders drooping with disappointment.
‘Busy, like I said. I’m afraid I can’t chat. Do we have a call in the diary?’
‘Not for another couple of weeks.’ Her voice was gloomier than Eeyore’s.
‘That’s great.’ He sounded chipper at the prospect. ‘I’ll speak to you then, Blythe. And thank you, you’ve been most helpful.’ The line went dead. She liked to think she could brush off her father’s limited interactions and how they made her feel, and sometimes she could, but not today. That feeling that she was never good enough. That however hard she tried he never noticed, praised or rewarded her. And after calls like this one it was like a part of her returned to that dejected little girl whose daddy had walked out and never come back. The six-year-old he’d had a conversation with earlier that morning when she’d caught him putting a case in the car when her mum was at work. And who told her it was a secret. A little holiday. But she mustn’t mention it to mummy. She’d been so excited she’d turned the garage upside down hunting for her bucket and spade.
But it had all been in vain when her mum had returned from a long shift at the supermarket only for her husband to tell her he was leaving while Blythe watched from the top of the stairs.
*
Blythe decided to go home via Murray’s house. She was still feeding the cat anyway, so she could write a nice note and leave it on the kitchen table with her business card – just in case whoever had inherited the property popped by. She let herself in and walked through the hallway, but a couple of paces in she sensed something was different. She reversed back. She glanced around: coat stand, mirror, Murray’s slippers and the small telephone table – everything was in place. She shrugged her shoulders and carried on through to the kitchen. She got out the big piece of paper where she’d jotted down key information, namely that she had a very keen buyer for the property and could they call her as a matter of urgency. She positioned it so it was unmissable and placed her business card next to it for good measure. In the utility room she got what she needed out of the cupboard and slipped out the back door. Blythe sat down on the ancient garden furniture and waited.
She liked this time of the evening. The sun was slipping away but it was still warm. The village was quiet, except for the birds having an argument in the trees about who was roosting where. It was a lovely garden. Big patches of it were left for wildflowers. They looked so pretty, but Murray had explained that wasn’t why he liked them. Murray was a birdwatcher and the wildflowers encouraged insects and that was like a bird buffet. She’d once seen a woodpecker in his garden and also late one spring evening she’d seen a hedgehog. But it wasn’t birds or hedgehogs she was waiting to see tonight.
There was a rustle in the bushes and out strolled a lythe ginger-striped cat. ‘Good evening, Turpin,’ she said.
Turpin ignored her and instead headed straight for the food bowl. Each night Blythe was moving the bowl nearer and nearer to her and he hadn’t seemed to notice. The cat was semi-feral and Murray’s garden was his home. Murray had taken care of him but when he had been away on birdwatching trips he’d enlisted Blythe to call in and feed Turpin. Since Murray had died she’d just carried on.
She missed Murray. She wondered what he would say if she were able to talk him through her current predicament. He was all for practical solutions, which was fine, but given she was working her way through funeral directors in the Manchester area and having no luck, she wasn’t sure even Murray would have the ideal solution to this one. She’d discovered Manchester was a very big city and she had no idea whereabouts Murray had been buried or even if Manchester was correct, as that had just been what someone in the pub had said. And now nobody was even sure who in the pub had said it, but it had somehow become fact. This was what happened in a little village. Someone said something and it got embellished and before you knew it the molehill was Ben Nevis.
The sound of Turpin munching his dinner brought her back to the garden. Murray had got as far as stroking Turpin but because, until recently, Blythe’s visits had been sporadic, Turpin was still getting to know her. A couple of times he’d had his dinner and then settled down on the chair next to her for a snooze and that had felt like progress.
While Turpin was fully occupied with wolfing down his food Blythe leaned nearer and nearer, her fingertips almost touching his back. Her phone sprang into life, making them both jump. Turpin ran halfway up the garden, turned to scowl at her and then gave her a flick of his tail, which Blythe took to be the feline equivalent of giving her the finger.
She checked her phone. It was Sam Ashton calling. She answered it. ‘Hi, Sam, what can I do for you?’
‘I wasn’t expecting you to answer. I thought it would go to voicemail,’ he said. Blythe wished she’d let that happen because each time she spoke to him she felt bad about the situation. If she didn’t track down who had inherited Murray’s cottage soon, she was going to have to tell Sam that the deal was off.
‘I’m at the house now, actually.’ She wasn’t sure why she told him that.
‘Is there a problem?’
‘No, just checking a couple of things.’
