‘Yes, have some cake with your tea!’ Madge cuts me a slice of Victoria sponge the size of a building brick. ‘This used to be a tearoom, you know, but it’s had to close because of the drop in visitor numbers. This is the best place to watch over the village, so the owners still let us use the outside space, but we have to bring our own tea and cake these days!’
I take a forkful of the cake and shove it in my mouth as a way of buying time. I look up at the abandoned building and its hollow, sad soul stares back at me. I can visualise it in its heyday, picture tables and chairs inside, and that bunting when it was bright coloured and new. It makes me think of The Nostalgia Café and what my future holds now… What am I going to do with my life now that dream is over?
The ladies have never seen anyone chew cake so slowly before, because I’m trying to figure out how to approach this. I don’t want to pique any extra interest, but it also feels like they deserve some honesty. ‘I don’t actually know who the owner is. I don’t even have permission to be there, but Reece has taken pity on me and not kicked me out yet…’
The ladies all sit back, disappointment on their faces. ‘And he hasn’t told you anything about the owner?’
‘Only that he’s been hired to convert it from a pub into a house. I don’t know anything more than you do.’
‘It’ll be knocked down and turned into some ghastly modern mansion,’ Wilma says grimly. ‘Mark my words. That’s what these rich city-types do – they buy up our heritage and destroy it. Losing the pub was bad enough, but to turn it into a private house that gives no benefit to the village and brings no tourists…’
‘Maybe the owner will turn out to be a hot celebrity who will have legions of fans wanting to visit. You see it all the time,’ Madge says knowingly. ‘These big, fancy celebs trying to escape the limelight and hide away in tiny villages where no one would think to look for them.’
‘And you couldn’t get much more hidden than the Kingfisher Arms if you didn’t want to be found, could you?’ Lettie guffaws and knocks her arm against mine, causing the shopping basket to clang against the table leg as I choke on the forkful of cake I’d just put into my mouth.
‘Beyoncé and Jay-Z are buying a house in the Cotswolds,’ Wilma says. ‘Why shouldn’t a big celeb want to move to a place like this?’
She’s quite possibly theleastlikely person I’d have expected to know who Beyoncé and Jay-Z are, much less their real estate plans.
‘Ooh, it might be that handsome Jake Gyllenhaal,’ Madge says excitedly. ‘I wouldn’t mind him as a neighbour. I could sculpt a statue of him. Naked. Accurate for posterity, of course. We could display it on the roundabout on the way into the village.’
I laugh harder than I meant to. If their new neighbourisJake Gyllenhaal, I think he might swiftly reconsider his relocation choices.
They regale me with tales of the pub while I finish my cake, and tell me about much-loved quiz nights that used to be the talk of the village before the pub was closed down, and as they get caught up in stories of quiz teams past, I take it as an opportunity to flee. I thank them for the tea and cake and manage to escape with a promise to visit again soon.
Lettie finishes her tea and walks with me back across the green to her shop. She lets me do the rest of my shopping in peace, and when my basket is full, she surreptitiously examines every item as she runs it through the checkout, and I have no doubt that everything I’ve bought will be meticulously reported back to the others, including the fact that I can’t eat four pastries by myself.
I pay for everything, wondering if the police are monitoring my bank account and tracking my card, and leave with another impassioned reminder that I must tell the ladies immediately if I hear any juicy gossip.
The walk back up to the Kingfisher Arms feels longer than the walk down, partly because I’m carrying heavy bags and partly because my head’s spinning with everything I’ve learned. A village without a tearoom. Private property. A mysterious owner who’s bought the pub and won’t show his face. A community desperate for information about what’s happening to the heart of their village.
And Reece, who apparently won’t tell anyone what he’s really doing or who he’s working for.
By the time I reach the campervan, I’m starting to wonder if I’ve stumbled into more than I bargained for here. Why didn’t Reece mention it was private property? Why did he let me think it was perfectly fine to camp there? And what exactly is my buoyant new neighbour hiding?
9
There’s only one way to find out.
Back at the campervan, I unpack my shopping and it feels good to put things in cupboards and find places for everything to fit. A moment of normality that makes me feel like I’m settling in. It’s easy to forget this isn’t my campervan and however long I’m intending to hide out here, it won’t be forever. I will have to return this, sooner or later. The thought leaves a little jolt of sadness in its wake. As long as the shower never cuts out again, I could get used to this.
I stick my head out the door and look up towards the pub. Reece is definitely in because I can hear a lot of banging, and because I don’t think anyone with a leg injury like his should be doing a job that requiresthatmuch banging, I decide now is as good a time as any to force him into a pastry-related break.
Usually they’d be homemade from one of my grandma’s recipes, and although it seems possible to bake something in the van given that there’s a tiny oven, a hob, and a mini fridge, I didn’t buy any baking ingredients, and the box containing my baking equipment is still buried under the mountain of binbags.
I pick up the box of baked goods from the village shop, including two flaky croissants and something called a Yorkshire curd tart that Lettie casually mentioned Reece buys every time he goes in, and climb the old stone steps up to the pub’s back door.
I knock, and after a moment, there’s a crash, followed by some of the most inventive swearing I’ve ever heard.
‘Reece?’ I call out. ‘You alright in there?’
‘Fine!’ His voice is slightly muffled and definitely strained. ‘Just a minute!’
There’s another crash, and what sounds like something heavy hitting an upstairs floor, followed by a string of swearwords that are definitely not inanydictionary.
When Reece finally opens the door, he looks like he’s been in a wrestling match with a cement mixer and lost. He’s covered from head to toe in plaster dust. What I can see of his hair under the hard hat is white with the stuff, and he lifts a pair of protective goggles away from his eyes, leaving a mask of normal skin between layers of dust. ‘What on earth happened to you?’
‘Oh, this?’ He gestures at himself, sending up a cloud of dust. ‘Just a minor ceiling-related incident. Nothing to worry about.’
