‘Table for one?’ The bartender broke into his thoughts.
‘Er, yeah, thanks.’ He was still browsing his messages, but he wondered if he’d seen the bartender’s left eyebrow give a little quirk. No matter. He’d dined alone plenty of times. He had the Kindle app on his phone and was more than happy at a table by himself.
‘Well, when you’re ready, there’s a table by the window in the bar – unless you want to sit in the restaurant.’
‘The bar is fine,’ Noah replied. He was checking through his other messages and was only half paying attention. Realising though that he was being rude, he exited his message app and put his phone down on the bar. Smiling apologetically, he looked at the bartender again properly for the first time since she’d served him his pint, noticing the rather jaunty duck-egg-blue ribbon that kept the ends of her braided long red hair out of the way. She was wearing a striped matelot jersey and form-fitting dark blue cropped jeans, and she looked to be about his age, give or take. The name badge pinned on her chest read ‘Bella’.
Noah took a long pull of his pint. It was cool and delicious with a sweet yet tart flavour that spoke of four generations of apple-growing excellence and expertise. He never drank cider when he was in the city, far preferring a German lager or a decent glass of red. But it seemed only fitting to raise a glass of cider in his grandfather’s memory. The old boy considered himself a bit of a cider afficionado, and while he had always grumbled about the way the brew had changed over the years, far preferring a decent pint of the roughest scrumpy he could find, Noah felt that a pint of Carter’s Gold was a fitting substitute. As he took another sip from the glass, he finally felt himself starting to relax.
There was a lull inside the pub, since so many people were taking advantage of the fine weather and sitting outside. Bella was clearly at a bit of a loose end and hovered close by, watching the door for any customers coming in from the garden. ‘You look like you needed that,’ she observed as he put his glass down on the bar.
‘Long drive.’
‘Ah, I didn’t think you were a local. Down for the holidays?’
Noah knew that she was just being friendly, but he wasn’t in the mood for a long discussion as to why he was in Lower Brambleton. He was never one to spill his guts to strangers and that old cliché about hairdressers and bartenders being like priests in the confessional was one he’d never subscribed to.
‘Sort of,’ he said evasively. ‘Only here for the weekend and then back to work on Monday.’
‘Oh, holiday home, is it?’ He was sure he wasn’t imagining the slight edge to her voice as she said that. In his business he knew enough to know that dyed-in-the-wool locals in places like this were not overly fond of people who came into villages, especially in the West Country, and spent their all too readily disposable income on a rural bolthole for weekends and a couple of weeks during the summer. He sold enough of them to people who tired of London to feel somewhat guilty by association.
‘Not a holiday home,’ he conceded, not wanting to rock the boat so early on in his stay. That was likely to happen when he put his grandfather’s house on the market anyway because in all likelihood it would end up as a second home or an Airbnb.
Unfortunately, being an Airbnb-er was Bella’s second guess. Noah was too hungry, and he’d had too long a day to get into it with her, though. He merely muttered something noncommittal and decided to head to his table.
A short time later, having ordered locally reared beef in the form of a generous rump steak with all the trimmings, Noah sat back and waited for his food. He had tried to read a book on his Kindle app but found he didn’t have the head for it this evening. He didn’t want to spend his time staring at his phone. A couple more people had come in while he’d been sitting there waiting for his food, and he saw Bella smiling at them. He observed her serving them for a moment or two and found that his eyes were being drawn back to her, even as the waitress arrived with his meal. He wondered what her deal was. He couldn’t place her accent. Not local – she lacked the rounded vowels of a Somerset native, but not giving away any other region, either. He had the tendency to people watch when he dined alone, and because inside the pub was so quiet, Bella was his main focus. She had the expertise of someone who had been doing her job for a while and her warm smile and easy banter with the patrons suggested that they also knew her well. Her voice had a melodious quality that he found himself tuning into even as he tucked into his steak and chips and he couldn’t help listening in to the conversations that she was having as people approached the bar to order drinks.
A short time later, having finished his steak and ordered another pint, he sat back in his chair, ready to work out what it was he needed to get straight before he headed back to London on Sunday night. There was no time to waste. He didn’t anticipate keeping much more stuff from the house, but the furniture was still there and a fair amount of clutter of little value. There was no point in holding onto the past when the person who was the anchor to it had gone. All the same, doing the final house clearance was a task he wasn’t exactly looking forward to.
And then, of course, there was the other problem. The bills for the cattery were mounting, and he needed to make a decision about what was going to happen to Monty in the future. Noah faced quite the dilemma about what to do with the cat. But that was a job for tomorrow.
As he was finishing up his cider, he tuned in to Bella’s conversation with another one of the locals. ‘I heard none of them have been near the place since Jack Hathaway died. I mean, if that was me and it was my grandad, I’d want to make sure that everything was shipshape as soon as possible. It seems disrespectful to leave things hanging around like that.’
Noah’s heart thumped hard in his chest.
‘Yeah, but I heard the eldest grandson is some high-powered estate agent in London. Probably won’t even bother coming to see the place before he puts it on the market. I bet he’s got loads of contacts who can sort it out for him, and he won’t even have to leave the city.’
‘I think it’s a real shame though.’ Bella’s voice was carrying clearly across the bar. ‘I mean it’s not only about the house. Mollie says they haven’t even been in touch about poor old Monty, apart from the odd email and paying the bills. Imagine leaving a cat in boarding for all that time and not even bothering to check in and see how he was.’
‘People like that don’t care,’ the other person, a rather rotund man in his late twenties, replied. ‘I mean it’s all just an inconvenience, isn’t it? All they want to do is sell up and get the money.’
‘It’s just not right,’ Bella insisted. ‘Jack loved that place, and he loved Monty, and poor Monty is pining away without him.’
Noah had heard enough. Popping a couple of pound coins on his table as a tip for the waitress, he headed to the bar.
‘Can I pay the bill, please?’ Even to his ears, his tone sounded terse.
Bella glanced at him with that same welcoming smile she’d given him as he’d arrived. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Was everything to your liking?’
‘The food was fine,’ Noah replied shortly. ‘I could have done without hearing the gossip, though.’ Not waiting for Bella to reply, he waved his card at the contactless terminal and strode out of the pub.
5
By the time Bella left the Star and Telescope that evening, her feet were sore, and she was looking forward to her bed. She didn’t mind working two jobs; she loved working at the cattery. She liked nothing better than helping the often terribly traumatised cats, nursing them back to health and then seeing them off to their forever homes afterwards. Mollie, bless her soul, couldn’t afford to pay much above minimum wage with the running costs of the cattery being so huge and being so reliant on donations from the public. Mollie had asked her more than once whether she thought she would ever move on from Purrfect Paws, but for the moment Bella was content to pour all of her love into the waifs and strays that were brought to the cattery and rescue centre. Painful experience had taught her that human relationships didn’t often carry the same rewards.
Bella thought back to the abrupt response of that attractive male customer that evening. What was it to him if she and some of the locals were having a chat? The pub was a hub for the villagers and it was inevitable that conversations would be had about their neighbours. She wondered what his deal was. He’d been quite cagey about his reasons for being in Lower Brambleton when all she’d been doing was trying to make conversation and put him at ease. Something she’d been talking about with one of the regular patrons, Will, had obviously hit a nerve with him. Mind you, she thought, he was only around for the weekend. What did it matter? She kept trying to tell herself that as she walked the short distance from the pub to the tiny cottage she shared with Marieke.
‘Hiya,’ she called as she let herself in through the red painted wooden front door of the cottage. Marieke was a night owl and often didn’t go to bed until the early hours of the morning, so her being up when Bella finished her shift at the Star and Telescope was no great surprise. Bella often wondered how Marieke managed to burn the candle at both ends, given that her job as a solicitor in Taunton often meant intense meetings and long office hours, but Marieke seemed to manage it.
