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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2017

Copyright © Jane Wenham-Jones 2018

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Jane Wenham-Jones asserts the moral right

to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008278670

Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008278663

Version: 2018-08-10

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Family Gatherings and How to Survive Them – Jane’s Top Tips

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

For Karen with love – I wish you were here to read it.

Chapter 1

To a Wonderful Mother on Mother’s Day.

Mum, I want to tell you

On this your special Day

How much I do appreciate

You in every way

I may not always show it

I may forget to phone

But today I just want you to know …

Ahh. They may fleece you, your kids. They may fill your spare bedroom – the one you need to turn into an office – with their junk and unstrung guitars. And empty a fridge in one sitting and spill cider on the new rug. But when push comes to Mothering Sunday shove they come up trumps. A small sentimental lump rose in my throat as I turned over the card from my darling youngest son:

… I need another loan!

Ho ho ho! Ben had scrawled, next to a large smiley.

Ha, Ha, Ha! You and me both, sonny.

I put the card on the kitchen dresser, with the one from Tilly and the florist’s greeting from Oliver, who’d sent an extravagant arrangement of creamy roses the previous day (no doubt arranged by his girlfriend, Sam, but gorgeous of him nonetheless) and surveyed the line-up.

My three lovely children – still costing me a bloody fortune but caring enough to remember what day it was. Even if they couldn’t be here. I allowed myself a small pang of self pity.

‘You time,’ Caroline, my best friend and one-time sister-in-law, had said at our last drink, before I’d got the train from London back to Northstone. ‘Time to get your life back.’ She had wagged a perfect ruby nail in my direction. ‘Kids gone, new house, new town, all sorts of fresh opportunities.’ By the back door was the final remaining black sack stuffed with detritus from Ben’s bedroom.

I missed him crashing and banging his way around the kitchen, leaving trails of sweatshirts and unwashed cups. And not simply because my boss had dropped a bombshell at Thursday’s meeting and put me in charge of the company Facebook page and I didn’t have a clue where to start.

Feeling a twinge of anxiety rising – Instagram had been mentioned too – I looked at the clock, grasped keys, handbag and Ben’s unwanted junk and went outside to peer into the bins. Not having yet got the hang of what was collected when, I’d left both wheelies on the pavement. The blue one was full of beer cans and last week’s newspapers. The black one was empty.

I dumped the sack inside it and began to pull the bin back up the drive of Ivy Cottage. A misnomer if ever there was one, since the only ivy in the entire place was wrapped around an old sycamore tree at the bottom of the garden of this decidedly non-cottagey, rather lumpen-looking semi, with an incongruous extension on the back. The estate agent had called it quirky.

‘Quaint,’ he’d added, waving his arm at the way the front door opened straight onto the square sitting room – a feature which still slightly took me by surprise if I came home post-rosé – and the steep stairs that ran up one side. The kitchen beyond needed updating. The whole place cried out for paint. But it had a garden and a pond and a walk-in larder. And after too many years of living in a house still half-owned by my ex-husband, it was all mine.

‘Living the dream,’ Caroline had called it. Away from the rat race in a gorgeous little town I’d always hankered after. ‘The next chapter,’ she’d declared, topping up our glasses with celebratory fizz and ticking off the excitements. The home to do up exactly as I wanted, the cool new friends waiting to be made, the space I’d now have in which to take stock and plan the rest of my life.

It was only because I was tired, I told myself now. Wrung out by moving and work and scrubbing and hauling furniture about – more drawn to a long lie-down than adventure. That’s why I found myself looking around at my unnaturally tidy sitting room, unsullied by a single lager tin or take-away container, thinking wistfully of that other perpetually messy, noisy abode where there was always a starving teenager sprawling, a manic cat killing something and washing piling up.

All the things I used to complain about, really, I mused wryly, as I went back for the other bin, making a mental note to write in my diary it was bottles next time, and then jumping when a piercing voice cut through my thoughts.

‘Hey! OY!’

I looked around for a wayward dog, very possibly chewing on a small child, only to find that strident tone was directed at me.

‘Tess! How you doing in there?’ My opposite neighbour was standing by her gates, dressed in a quilted jacket and wellington boots with flowers on. ‘SURVIVING?’ she yelled.

I’d met the striking-looking Jinni before – she’d hollered at me when I first moved in – and I had her down as an interesting mixture of bohemian creative and woman of formidable capability. She was renovating the big old rectory over the road, and I’d seen her both floating around in a kaftan, apparently reciting poetry to herself, and up on the roof with a hammer.

‘All straight, then?’ she demanded, crossing the street and surveying me. ‘I hate bloody Sundays, don’t you?’ she continued, clearly not caring whether I was ‘straight’ or not. ‘Can’t get on with anything till the bloody plumbers turn back up tomorrow. If they do …’

‘How’s it going?’ I nodded towards the beautiful grey-stone house with its mullioned windows and creeper.

‘Want to see?’ Jinni jerked her head towards her front door. ‘Fancy a drink?’

I looked at my watch. ‘I’d love one,’ I said, thinking that a spot of lunchtime alcohol was exactly what I could do with. ‘But I’ve got to drive to Margate. To see my mother,’ I added, as Jinni raised her brows.

‘I’m an orphan now,’ – she gave a loud and not entirely appropriate-sounding laugh – ‘so I don’t have to do all that Mother’s Day crap.’

I rather wished I didn’t have to either, but Alice had spoken. My sister does not believe in ‘me’ time – especially if it’s mine.

Jinni pointed down the road. ‘Seen all the kids scuttling to the church to get their free flowers? Never go any other time. Little buggers …’

‘Do you have children?’ I asked.

Jinni nodded. ‘Dan’s in Australia, working for a surf school, and Emma’s teaching up in Nottingham.’

She did not look at all sad about this. In fact she was smiling widely. ‘Haven’t seen either of them since Christmas,’ she said cheerfully. ‘But Dan’s back in the summer and Emma will roll up at some point. What are yours doing?’

I tried to sound as pleased as she did. ‘They’re all in London. Oliver is a trainee surveyor, Tilly’s finished drama school and is working in a diner while she tries to get auditions and Ben’s at uni doing computer science with music.’

‘Off your hands, then,’ Jinny said.

‘Yes.’

I thought about telling Jinni that, as odd as it sounded, it was the first time in my 47 years I’d ever lived alone. That since Friday when Ben had abandoned his sensible plan of saving money by living with his mum while studying in the capital, for the much better one of taking up a box room near the Holloway Road and disposing of his student loan in a variety of bars – I was not finding it very easy.

I’d been lucky to have him here at all. How could a small market town, known for its pottery and teashops, with four pubs, a tiny theatre and a KFC – deemed such a potential den of iniquity, it had by all accounts had the locals up in arms – compare with life in the city?

But I didn’t know Jinni well enough to start bleating. Instead I forced my face into bright smile. ‘And what about you? What do you do – or did you do? I can see this must be a full-time job …’

‘Bloody nightmare,’ said Jinni merrily. ‘I was an actress too, if your Tilly needs warning onto a better path. Did you ever see Maddison and Cutler?’

‘Er, I may have seen the odd episode, I remember it being on …’

Jinni laughed. ‘It’s my only claim to fame – unless you count playing a prostitute in Casualty. I was Maddy!’

I stared at her dark eyes, defined cheekbones and red lipstick and had a sudden flash of recognition. Remembered Rob watching appreciatively as the hot young TV detective – always dressed in tight black leather and invariably waving a gun about – strutted her stuff.

‘Oh my God,’ I said. ‘My ex-husband fancied you rotten!’

Jinni laughed again. ‘It made me a fortune, well, enough to eventually buy this place, anyway. And I married well.’ She laughed again. ‘And divorced even better. He was the producer’, she added. ‘Egocentric bastard …’

She talked on, telling me her plans to open a boutique B&B, dropping in details of her past, her hands waving about expressively, her glossy dark hair tossed back over a shoulder, kohled eyes fixed on mine. She had an energy and passion about her that made me feel dull and mousy.

She’d just finished a diatribe about how men were all largely useless but she did miss it if she didn’t have one to go to bed with occasionally and had moved onto the sort of bathrooms she was planning.

‘They are going to be really sleek and classy,’ she was saying, ‘with rain showers and power baths, but I want to give each bedroom a totally different style with a mix of contemporary and vintage.’ She stopped and gave another of her strange honks of laughter. ‘In other words, I’ll be round the junk shops and … Oh Lord, here we go!’

A small thin woman in her sixties with cropped grey hair and sharp, pretty features was coming along the pavement in jeans, dark donkey jacket and a red patterned scarf. Her dark eyes looked us both up and down.

‘Hello, Jinni,’ she said coolly, before holding her hand out to me. ‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ she added, her voice low, but with an edge.

‘How remiss of you!’ Jinni’s tone was dry. ‘Not harangued Tess with one of your many petitions yet? Not even the one about me?’ Jinni turned back to me, unsmiling. ‘Ingrid is against what I am doing here. She thinks if I am allowed to open a B&B it will bring ruin and devastation on the town and all who live here …’

Ingrid released her grip on my fingers and gave a chilly smile. ‘I am concerned,’ she said in her cultured tones, ‘about extra traffic and congestion in this narrow road.’ She held out a flyer. ‘We are already seeing a greater influx of Londoners using this as a weekend base and contributing nothing to the local economy Monday to Friday. And now, with the high-speed rail link bringing in new residents who can comfortably commute from here,’ she paused and raised her eyebrows at me, ‘the housing stock is shrinking and local people are being priced out of the market.’ She gave an extraordinarily sweet smile that was framed in steel.

‘Tess is my newest neighbour,’ Jinni told her. ‘Ingrid is Northstone’s foremost agitator, she said to me. ‘No issue too small! The local council adore her.’

‘I prefer the term “campaigner”’ said Ingrid, with another sugary-tight beam. ‘It’s nothing personal,’ she finished. Jinni made a small snorting noise.

‘Well, nice to meet you,’ I said uncertainly. ‘I must get going. Jinni, I’ll um–’

‘Come over soon,’ Jinni finished for me shortly. ‘And shout if you need anything.’ She turned abruptly and strode back over the road towards her house.

As I moved back towards my car, Ingrid fell into step beside me. ‘Do you have a view on this … development?’ she asked, enunciating the final word as if it could do with a dose of antibiotics.

‘Well, the plans sound lovely,’ I said, trying to sound friendly and reasonable. ‘And Jinni seems very nice to me.’

I shivered. It had got cold while I was standing there. Ingrid looked at me with a pitying expression and then gave an odd little laugh. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Things aren’t always what they seem.’

Chapter 2

It seemed like a stroke. That’s what her best friend Mo said when she phoned to say my mother had been taken to A&E. The patient, discharging herself in a matter of hours, insisted it was a fuss over nothing much.

‘Gerald’s taking me away for a few days,’ she’d announced, moments after I’d cancelled work to rush to her bedside. ‘We’re going to see Sonia in Dorset. Well he is. I’m going to the pottery if it’s still there. Not been to Poole for donkey’s years.’

‘Shouldn’t you be resting?’ I enquired, knowing I’d have more luck suggesting a little light pole-dancing or a ride on a camel.

‘What for? They can’t find a thing wrong with me. It was likely migraines with what do you call it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes you do – migraines where you can’t speak.’

‘I really don’t know anything about them.’

My mother had sounded impatient. ‘I wish you wouldn’t be deliberately obtuse.’ While I was spluttering she swept on. ‘I’ve just looked it up and already it’s gone. So annoying. That word to do with light – they take pictures of it.’

I felt a frisson of unease. ‘Mum, what are you talking about?’

‘Migraines! It’s not that I mind Sonia, you know I don’t, but I don’t want to sit there all afternoon, when there’s the harbour to see.’

‘Well you don’t have to, do you?’ I said, struggling to keep up with my mother’s conversational switchback technique. Was she usually as scattered as this? ‘Sonia won’t mind if you go for a walk. She can catch up with her dad.’

‘We’re not staying there. Gerald’s got us a hotel.’

‘That’s nice. Can I speak to him?’

‘He’s gone home to pack.’

I listened while she talked on, covering a myriad subjects ranging from the problems of deciding what to take when March was cold one minute and sunny the next, Mo’s dog’s possible gallstones and the squirrel in her garden who’d eaten all the bulbs.

She did sound okay – her voice was strong enough and she appeared to be wandering about the house as she told me about the nice staff at the hospital, who were forced to work such long hours with little thanks from this government, and how the doctor had been impressed with her blood pressure.

Keeping her to the point was no easy task, but then again, as I wrote to my sister, that was nothing new.

Mother’s made of stern stuff, I typed, as much to reassure myself as Alice. And it was true. She was rarely ill, still gardened and her gleamingly clean house put mine to shame. She travelled, went to galleries and the theatre, was a sterling member of Margate Operatics and had more friends than I did. Seventy-four was no age these days. Even if she has had a TIA and is keeping it quiet, I concluded, knowing that Alice would immediately Google the full implications of a Transient Ischaemic Attack and be an expert on it by the next time she wrote. It will take more than a few microscopic clots to finish her off.

I pushed away the memory of Tilly saying that when she’d last phoned, Granny sounded even more bonkers than usual and the way my mother had suddenly sounded vague and distracted and appeared to temporarily struggle to recall Ben’s name. Was she feeling unwell more often than she was letting on?

I’d been phoning daily, I told my sister instead, as I tried to still the anxious fluttering in my stomach as I imagined my seemingly indestructible parent suddenly helpless and frail. Her dear old friend Mo was there a lot; Gerald as often as he was allowed to be.

Alice was having none of it. No amount of explaining that our mother herself had actively discouraged me from going down this weekend, saying the traffic would be bad with all those other mothers being towed out to lunch, that I had a long list of household tasks to complete and a presentation to finish before Tuesday, would sway my elder sister. You need to see for yourself, she instructed. While actually numbering my duties: 1) get a proper list from Mother of all symptoms. NB What exactly was said by medics? (suggest you take notes). 2) double-check with Mo for accuracy. Have noticed Mother can be woolly of late. 3) Speak to Gerald (do not be fobbed off by Mother. I do not have a number for him. Make sure you obtain. 4) I think it would be best to phone her GP on Monday and you’ll need to be fully armed with the facts …

I growled and sighed. Years of experience have taught me that when a diktat arrives from the US, it is quicker in the long run to follow it. Alice may be three thousand miles away in Boston. But her sheer will can still fill a room.

Thus on an afternoon when I would rather be perusing my sample pots and deciding which shade of foodie yellow – I am hovering between autumn honey, golden sugar and lemon delight – to use on the dining-room walls, drinking wine with Jinni or even wielding the Shake n’ Vac in Ben’s bedroom – Tilly has complained it smells of hamsters – I am crawling around the M25, with a potted azalea and the gnawing suspicion that by the time I actually have the opportunity to start this brave new life of mine, I’ll be on a mobility scooter.

Then I hear Alice’s voice reminding me it’s the least I can do on Mother’s Day when I haven’t seen our mother since before I moved – even if she was away with Gerald on an art appreciation cruise and then spending every spare minute rehearsing H.M.S. Pinafore – when she, Alice, is sitting on the other side of the world, worrying.

‘Get on a bloody plane, then!’ I say out loud, looking at the line of traffic snaking ahead and braking sharply as the van in front abruptly stops.

‘Arse!’ I shout, as I inch forward again, shot through with guilt and resentment.

My mother’s not overly thrilled, either.

‘He’s a very clever man,’ she says, as I step across the threshold of her neat chalet bungalow. ‘But I do wish he wouldn’t go around in that dress.’

She has been to an exhibition by Grayson Perry at the Turner Contemporary, where she has admired the pots and ‘those wooden ones’ but still isn’t convinced the artist needs the frock and wig.

‘It’s the children I think about,’ she says. ‘They’ll get teased at school.’

‘I don’t think so, Mum.’ I say, handing her the plant and throwing my coat over the bannister. ‘As far as I know, he’s only got one daughter and she’s grown up now.’

‘Hmmm,’ my mother looks as though she doubts this. ‘Sonia hasn’t got any better either.’ My mother has always believed in the non sequitur to keep conversation zipping along. While I am still making the mental leap from the famous artist to Gerald’s rather dour daughter, she has moved on to her geranium cuttings having died in the frost.

‘You don’t expect it in March,’ she says. ‘Though Mo will say that May thing about casting the clout.’

‘How is Mo?’ I enquire, trying to analyse what is even odder about my mother than usual.

‘Still likes her tea.’

It is then that it hits me. My mother hasn’t moved. Usually by now I’d have been offered three different sorts of hot beverage and very probably a sandwich. But I’ve been in the house a good five minutes and she is still in the hallway in front of me.

‘Shall we go and make some?’ I suggest.

‘Some what?’

Everything in the kitchen looks as always. The surfaces shine, the sink is scrubbed, the storage jars arranged in formation. The floor is speck-free, the tea towels folded with regimental precision and the mugs lined up along the shelf have their handles pointing in the same direction.

But as I watch my mother, watching me filling the teapot, the low-level dread that started when I hit the Thanet Way, deepens further. ‘Are you okay, Mum?’ I ask, disturbed by her stillness.

She looks back at me, her face troubled, the skin on her cheeks seeming to sag. I see how old she looks and how tired.

‘Not really,’ she says.

I carry the tray to the sitting room and wait while she settles herself in her usual chair. The book on the table is the same crime thriller she told me she was reading weeks ago. A bookmark pokes out of it, barely a quarter of the way through.

The air in here feels slightly stale and the irises on the pine cupboard are curled and faded. My mother flings open windows in deepest February, will sense a dead petal at ten paces.

‘What’s happened?’ I ask. ‘You’re not well, are you?’

She shakes her head slowly. I am clutched by fear.

‘It wasn’t a migraine, was it? When they took you to hospital?’

She sits up straighter. ‘Oh yes, they think it was,’ she says, sounding stronger. ‘A migraine with auras,’ she adds firmly. She smiles at me now. ‘I thought it was a stroke too …’

She lifts up her tea and takes a small sip. ‘I didn’t want to say it on the phone’.

My heart is thumping as she tells me.

She’d been in the garden, trying to pull out the dandelions from among her sprouting forget-me-nots, when she’d started to feel a bit sick. So she’d come indoors to get some water and then her vision had started to go hazy and she was seeing wavy lines. Recognising this as classic migraine, after having them for years, and feeling her head start to ache, she’d called Mo to put her off coming round for supper. But when she tried to speak to Mo, her words came out backwards.

Mo called an ambulance and came straight round. They both now thought my mother was having a stroke, and the paramedics clearly agreed as she was whisked off to A&E – ‘such nice young people, couldn’t have been kinder’ – where she had various tests and a CT scan, which showed that in fact she hadn’t had a stroke, and they concluded, according to my mother, that it probably was just a migraine after all.

By now she could talk normally again and they told her migraines could affect speech and that if she hadn’t tried to make the phone call she might never have known. The relief made my mother feel better immediately and she went home, took painkillers and had a better night’s sleep than she usually did, feeling fine by the next day, although the hospital wanted her to have a second, different, sort of scan, just to make sure, so she had gone for that when she got back from Poole, and seen a neurologist.

‘And?’ I prompt as she is silent again. ‘What did he say?’

The room is getting darker and my mother rises from her chair and walks slowly across the carpet and turns on the standard lamp she’s had all my life. Then she sits down again and I see the distress in her eyes. ‘I had wondered,’ she says. ‘But it was still a terrible shock.’

‘What?’ I ask softly, my mind racing through the possibilities. A stroke the first scan had missed? Cancer? A brain tumour? ‘Tell me.’

‘Oh Tess,’ my mother says, with tears in her eyes. ‘I’ve got some sort of dementia.’

Chapter 3

‘My uncle had Alzheimer’s.’ Jinni opened a cupboard with one hand and reached into the tall fridge with the other. ‘It’s an absolute bastard.’

I sat at the enormous table in her vast stone kitchen, looking in awe at the battered range, deep butler’s sink and numerous drawers, as she deftly uncorked a bottle and put a generous white wine in front of me. I swallowed.

‘It’s not necessarily that – the damage is frontal-temporal only but I’ve been Googling and it doesn’t sound good. I don’t know how quickly …’ I stopped. ‘We’re waiting for an appointment with the consultant.’

Jinni looked back at me. ‘And she’s okay at home on her own?’

‘Her friend Mo is going in and out. And her partner, Gerald. Not that we’re allowed to call him that!’

I didn’t add that Mo had said she thought the days of my mother being left alone were numbered. I was still getting my head around it. Mo, sworn to silence until my mother had told me herself, had been on the phone for over an hour.

She’d been worried about my mother’s forgetfulness, peculiar statements and occasional lack of coherent speech for some time. But Gerald had appeared unbothered (‘typical man! They don’t notice anything unless it’s in a mini skirt’) and my mother had dismissed her concerns, while insisting I was due to visit any day, so Mo had hoped I’d turn up soon and pick up on it myself.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I’d said guiltily.

‘Nothing to be sorry for, Pet,’ Mo interrupted me. ‘Wouldn’t have made a ha’pence worth of difference.’

It seemed nothing would. I was hanging onto the word ‘slow’ I’d found on the internet. A slow, degenerative neurological condition. Perhaps it would take a long time and my mother would stay at this stage, where she lost her train of thought and stood staring. Maybe all the other horrors I couldn’t bear to imagine, listed under symptoms and outlook, happened to other people’s mothers and not mine.

I hadn’t told the kids yet. I told myself it was best to wait till we’d had the full prognosis, but really I couldn’t bear to say the words out loud.

I wouldn’t have told Jinni if she hadn’t looked at me so directly and said I seemed upset.

‘She looks normal,’ I said. ‘She sounds the same, but there’s this …’ I stopped, struggling to put my finger on it. ‘Lack of interest …’

I’d shown her photos of the house, suggested dates for her to come and stay. Usually she’d have been on her diary like a tramp on a kipper.

Now she nodded with distance in her eyes.

‘She’s afraid too,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what will happen. Alice is already talking about carers but Mum says she just wants to keep everything normal for as long as she can …’

I’d read about people with mothers who’d simply gone a bit doo-lally and couldn’t be trusted with a gas supply, but who were happy enough in their own little world. I’d tried to picture my mother like this and failed.

Then I’d found horror stories of aggression and incontinence and smashed furniture, and switched off the computer, unable to bear the tales of rage and tears and family breakdown.

‘But I don’t know how long that will be …’ I said.

Jinni shook the plaster dust from her hair. ‘Come and see a fireplace.’

I followed her obediently up a wide staircase to a bare back bedroom overlooking her tangled garden. A large chunk of ceiling was missing.

‘Look!’ She waved an arm at a pretty iron grate surrounded by flowered tiles. ‘Victorian! Been boarded up.’ She kicked at the sheet of painted hardboard she’d hacked away from the chimney breast. ‘Philistines!’

She threw open one of the cupboards either side of the chimney breast. ‘It’s the third one I’ve uncovered. Don’t you just love all this storage?’

‘It’s going to be gorgeous,’ I said, looking around at the long windows and cornice work, grateful to be distracted.

‘Yeah,’ Jinni pulled a face. ‘If I don’t drop dead of exhaustion first. I’m knocking through here to make an en suite.’ She slapped a palm against the wall. ‘If you ever want a stress-buster, grab the sledge hammer.’

Back downstairs, my fingers curled around the leaflet in my pocket. The reason I’d plucked up the courage to bang on Jinni’s door.

‘Did you get one of these?’ I held out the flyer for a Wine and Wisdom evening for the local theatre group. Individuals welcome! ‘Do you fancy going?’

Jinni stiffened. ‘Eurgh. Those am-dram types get on my wick – all emoting and “getting in the zone” as if they’re Dench or Olivier – and if I see Ingrid once more this week, I might swing for her.’

She took a large mouthful of wine. ‘She’s the bane of my bloody life. Still objecting to my change-of-use application on all sorts of insane grounds and she’s been up and down the street trying to get everyone else to protest as well.’

‘She put a note through my door about it,’ I told Jinni uncomfortably. ‘Said she was worried about extra vehicles and you chopping down trees.’

Jinni scowled. ‘Don’t listen to that environmental crap,’ she said. ‘It’s sour grapes. Her creepy son tried to buy it before I managed to. I outbid him. That’s the real reason the old witch is so bitter and twisted.’

‘Oh!’ I waited while Jinni took another swig from her glass. ‘What was he going to do with it?’

‘Turn it into flats probably. Or demolish it – one of his mates owns the place behind me so I expect the plan was to flatten the lot and build a whole new cul-de-sac. Even more cars, even more of the dreaded DFLs tempted here. Not that they need much tempting now we’ve got the fast train. And a whacking great profit for him. Wanker.’

She poured some more into her glass and pushed the bottle towards me. ‘I wouldn’t mind if she was honest about it. But it’s so damn hypocritical. I’m making this place beautiful again, bringing out all the original features. I’ve been advised to take out one tree because it’s diseased and it might bloody fall on me. I’ve got huge plans for the garden. It’s going to be stunning. And if I had his money, yes, I’d keep the whole place just for me but I’m going to have to do B&B to afford the upkeep.’

She stopped and took a deep breath. ‘Sorry to rant on.’

‘He’s a builder, is he?’

‘David?’ she said, with a comical sneer. ‘He’s an architect. Got some flash practice in town. But fingers in all the local pies. Ingrid’s always storming the council offices talking about all the new commuters ruining the area and there not being enough affordable housing, while her precious boy is the first one to mop up any bargains and make a fast buck. They both make me sick.’

I looked at her, startled by the real venom in her voice. I made myself smile. ‘So that’s a no, then?’

Jinni grinned back.

‘Sorry hun – you’ll have to be brave and go on your own.’

‘Bravery’s not my strong point.’

The Wine and Wisdom Evening was in a function room at the back of a pub called the Six Pears. I walked the half mile there, looking in the old-fashioned shop fronts, as I crossed the cobbled market square onto the High Street, still finding it hard to believe this was now home.

The town had changed and spread over the years since I’d first come here to visit my friend Fran. There were rows of houses where once there were fields, more traffic and speed bumps and the lovely old ironmongers had closed down now. But Northstone always kept its charm. Even in the years when Fran was in Italy, we’d got into the habit of stopping off on the way back from the coast for coffees or ice-creams, to poke about among the antiques or simply find a loo, and I’d often imagined living here.

The fantasy had grown legs the moment I’d read about the new high-speed link to the city. House prices were rising sharply and already the bookshop had become an emporium of scented candles and high-end bath oils and our favourite pub, with the bar billiards table, a raw-food restaurant. When we got a buyer for Finchley, I moved fast. I loved the idea of a small community and a proper local, quiet streets and the river nearby. With London now under an hour away, it seemed meant to be. I’d thought about Ben getting to uni and me getting to the office, and having somewhere to park and a garden. But somehow I’d overlooked the day-to-day reality of making new friends and who I’d talk to …

The wind was cold and I could feel the make-up running from my streaming eyes as I reached the door, suddenly wishing I’d stayed at home with some biscuits and the box set of Downton Abbey.

But, I reminded myself as I shoved my body across the threshold, I needed a social life.

Visions of painting the place red with Fran had faded fast – the last time I’d dropped in, it was all baby yoga, organic dishcloths and making sure her four children got their ten-a-day. Apart from Jinni, the only person I’d spoken to at any length since I got here was the chap in the corner shop and that was only a thrilling exchange about my newspaper delivery and why he was fresh out of washing-up liquid.

A woman with grey-blonde hair and some rather nice silver jewellery was sat at a table next to a cash box.

‘Wicked Wits?’ she enquired, consulting a list.

‘Sorry?’

She repeated it, mouthing the words carefully as if I were in need of learning support. ‘Are you on a TEAM?’

‘No, I’m on my own …’

She rustled the paper. ‘The Wits said they were waiting for one more.’ She beamed. ‘But if you’re a one-off I’ll give you to Brigitte …’

Brigitte, a dramatically made-up lady with highly defined eyebrows, was, as she immediately introduced herself, chair of the Northstone Players –for which the evening was raising much-needed funds – and currently rehearsing Madame Francine for their forthcoming production of A Frenchman in Disguise.

‘Do you know the play?’

I shook my head.

‘Ever done any acting?’ I shook my head again. She patted my arm. ‘We’re always looking for help with the scenery …’

She led me across a room filled with round tables adorned with paper, pens and bowls of peanuts, through small groups of people holding glasses, to the far corner. A broad-shouldered, grey-haired man in his late fifties sat with a younger, bearded chap and a blonde girl of about twenty.

‘One for you, Malcolm,’ Brigitte said. ‘This is Tess – she’s new to Northstone and could be your secret weapon.’

‘I don’t know about that …’ I squeaked, embarrassed.

Malcolm looked me up and down. ‘Neither do I,’ he said gruffly.

Malcolm was the editor of the local paper, the Northstone & District News, as well as other regional publications; the young girl, Emily, was one of his junior reporters and the man, Adrian, another of the town’s thesps, who, he told me, had written a play he was hoping they would perform for their autumn production.

‘We’ll call ourselves the Odds and Sods, shall we?’ said Malcolm.

When we’d got to the third round and I still hadn’t known the answer to anything except who’d played Deirdre in Coronation Street, I could feel myself sinking in my chair.

My only consolation came from the fact that Emily didn’t seem to know much either and Adrian had only contributed the names of three Olympic gold medallists and the symbols from the periodic table for lead, tin and pewter.

Malcolm, on the other hand, was grunting out answers like a one-man Wikipedia and was only seen to be flummoxed when a question came up about boy bands. ‘You must know that,’ he instructed Emily, who didn’t.

By half-time we were sitting in third place. ‘And we haven’t done current affairs yet,’ said Malcolm, satisfied. ‘What do you do? And why did you move here?’

I was halfway through regaling him with the highlights of my enthralling career as an office space planner, when I saw Ingrid bearing down on us with a beer mug full of money and two books of raffle tickets.

‘Hello again!’ she said briskly to me before putting the tankard in front of Malcolm. ‘How’s that paper of yours? Going to be any decent news in it for a change?’

‘You’ll have to fork out and find out,’ he countered. ‘For a change.’

‘I always do,’ said Ingrid. ‘Though why it doesn’t have a bit more online, I don’t know.’

‘Because then nobody would buy it,’ he said. ‘As it is they all stand there reading it in the shop.’

‘You want to cut out all the smut, then, and put in something worth paying for.’

‘The smut is why the few do pay for it.’

Ingrid gave him a withering smile. I got the feeling this was a well-worn exchange. ‘Are you going to buy some tickets?’

‘No,’ Malcolm said. ‘I’ve already paid to do the quiz.’

‘This is to raise more funds. Lovely prizes.’

‘They won’t be.’

‘Go on. Another couple of pounds won’t hurt you.’

‘I like quizzes. I don’t like raffles.’

Ingrid thrust the books towards me. ‘A pound a strip’, she said, surmising correctly that I wouldn’t dare refuse her too.

‘Settling in?’ she asked, while I fumbled for coins. ‘Despite the neighbours?’

I felt Malcolm’s eyes on me. There was a small silence. ‘Jinni’s been very kind to me,’ I said eventually, keeping my voice even and smiling at Ingrid.

Ingrid looked cynical. ‘I’m sure she has,’ she said shortly.

‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ she added to Malcolm. ‘But it’s off the record.’

‘Then don’t tell me,’ said Malcolm. ‘Come back when you’ve got something I can actually publish.’

Ingrid grimaced. ‘It’s about the council. If I have my way, I’ll blow the lid off the whole lot of them.’

Malcolm’s tone was dry: ‘I’m surprised they can sleep.’

‘Annoying woman,’ he said, when she’d moved off.

‘Do you want a drink?’ I asked him, disconcerted. Emily and Adrian had disappeared.

‘Not allowed to. Doctor’s a miserable bugger who said I’d got to give it up. Orange juice only.’ He looked woebegone. I laughed.

‘Shall I get you one of those?’

Malcolm peered into his empty glass as if searching for an answer.

‘Why not.’

‘Ingrid seems to be quite a character,’ I said, when I got back.

Malcolm looked at his juice with ill-concealed disgust. ‘Ingrid disapproves of me and the paper.’ This seemed to please him. ‘Calls it a filthy little rag.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘That’s a bit strong.’

‘She objects to page five and our Busty Barmaids. Though actually last week it was a busty librarian. Very fetching she looked too, glasses, hair up in a bun, pile of books in her hands and a stunning cleavage. Ingrid thinks it is degrading and demeaning to women. They’re queuing up to be in it. And some of them are quite disappointed when I tell them they’re keeping their tops on.’

I looked at him as I sipped my wine. I could imagine he’d been very good-looking when younger and he was handsome now in a craggy, lived-in sort of way. His shrewd eyes were still a piercing blue and he had a sharpness and vigour about him when he talked that was appealing.

He was looking back, intently. ‘Do you disapprove too?’

I shrugged. ‘Seems a bit last-century. But if the women are choosing to–’

‘Sells newspapers.’

He lifted his glass. ‘Nothing much else does – it’s all about “digital content” these days and apps for your iPhone.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m the only regional newspaper that’s still got the nerve. The media has been taken over by the fervent young all wanting to make a difference. Give ‘em a story about a bishop and an actress and all they’re interested in is historical sex abuse in the church and whether the actress is getting the minimum wage.’

I laughed. He shot a look across to where Ingrid was handing out tickets at another table. ‘And it’s a treat for our Pete. Makes up for all the time photographing fetes and sports days.’

‘So how long have you been the editor, then?’

‘Too damn long. Before that I was a sports writer on the Sun.’

‘Ah.’

Whatever his background, his knowledge was staggering. By the time he’d sliced through the questions in current affairs we’d moved into the lead.

‘Haven’t we done well?’ said Emily.

‘You haven’t,’ growled Malcolm.

But she wasn’t listening. I saw her flush and look simultaneously delighted and self-conscious. Across the room a rather beautiful young man – all blonde surfer curls and bright eyes – in a very white t-shirt and denim jacket was making his way towards us. His smile was wide and friendly as he reached the table. ‘Did you win?’

‘Did you get me a story?’ asked Malcolm.

The young man shook his head. ‘Very dull – no in-fighting.’

‘Hmm. In my first newsroom we had a notice. If you don’t come back with a story, don’t come back.’

Malcolm waved a hand at me. ‘This is one of my reporters, Gabriel.’ He said it as if the name were a foreign word he was pronouncing carefully. ‘And this is Tess. Tess has just moved here from Finchley.’

‘Pleased to meet you.’ Gabriel stuck out a hand. Emily was still gazing at him with adoration.

‘And?’ prompted Malcolm.

Gabriel grinned. ‘And I do hope you are well?’

Malcolm rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t try to be clever – it doesn’t suit you.’

Gabriel looked unabashed. ‘I was going to make a bit of polite small talk first.’ He took his jacket off and sat down next to me. ‘I gather my editor thinks I should interview you.’

By end of the quiz, when I’d finally covered myself in glory in the food and drink round as the only one who knew what went into a velouté sauce – even Malcolm looked impressed – I’d learned Gabriel was new to Northstone too. His dream of being a top investigative journalist on the Sunday Times or Panorama was being delayed by the need to get some on-the-ground experience and he’d been told he was lucky to be working for Malcolm, who was old-school, one of a dying breed, who’d been properly trained and knew what was what.

So far it had involved a lot of council meetings – which was where he’d been tonight – and a great deal of turning up at charity events or the bedsides of mothers with the same birth plan as Kate Middleton. But now, finally, Malcolm had given him a feature to do.

‘It’s about the relationships between the locals and the DFLs’ he’d told me. ‘You don’t have to be named, but it would help me if you were …’

A woman on the outside of town had had her tyres slashed and was blaming it on the fact that she was Down from London, and her neighbours didn’t like her buying up run-down cottages to rent out.

‘Find out if it’s fact or paranoia!’ Malcolm had apparently barked and Gabriel was keen to impress him by doing just that. I didn’t see how I could help and said so, but as Gabriel reminded me, with his big smile, of my lovely Ben, and I’ve always been useless at saying no, I’d agreed to him coming round in the week to question me on my experiences of living in the town to date.

‘There is some bad feeling,’ he explained apologetically. ‘House prices have risen so fast that young people here could never buy anywhere here these days unless they had a fantastic job in London and even rentals …

He nodded at Emily, who gave him another adoring smile. ‘Emily still lives with her parents because she can’t afford anything else and I have a really tiny studio flat here. You can see how the locals could get fed up, with all the decent houses being snapped up by outsiders …’

As I hurried along the dark High Street, head bent against the sharp wind, clutching the bottle of cherry brandy that Malcolm had thrust at me as my share of the first prize, I thought about Ingrid and her campaign against Jinni’s project. But slashing tyres? Surely nobody would get that worked up. I shivered, hoping I’d left enough lights on to make the house feel safe.

As I came round the bend, a crowd of youngsters spilled out of the pub, laughing and jostling. ‘You are such a loser, Connor!’ one shouted with glee, pushing another boy along the pavement. The first boy, Connor presumably, responded by taking his friend’s head in an arm lock and attempting to trip him up. There was more laughter, shouts of encouragement from the group and general shoving before one of them stepped back suddenly, nearly knocking me over.

As I gasped and steadied myself against the wall, another figure appeared amongst them.

‘Oi!’ said a loud and familiar voice, ‘watch what you’re doing, can’t you!’

‘Sorry,’ mumbled the boy nearest to me, as I turned in surprise to the owner of the stentorian tones.

‘Where’ve you come from?’

‘The station,’ said my daughter. ‘Where do you think?’

‘Danni is being a total nightmare!’ Tilly spooned chocolate powder into hot milk and balanced a biscuit between her teeth. ‘I couldn’t stand her anymore.’ She stirred the contents of her mug vigorously, put the half-bitten digestive down and opened the fridge. ‘You haven’t got much in here, have you?’ She sighed at the largely empty shelves and picked up a packet of cheese. ‘Not that I can eat anyway! I’ve got to lose half a stone before the next audition comes up’

‘You’re fine,’ I said, as I always did, smiling at my beautiful, sturdy daughter, who was always going to lose half a stone but never quite did.

‘Do you know some catwalk models live on balls of tissue paper soaked in orange juice before a big show?’ Tilly got a knife out of the drawer and began slicing through cheddar.

‘Well, make sure you don’t,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you have to work this evening?’

‘I did lunchtime and I’m not on till six on Sunday so I thought I’d stay here tonight and tomorrow. That’s okay, isn’t it?’ She began to spread butter on crackers.

‘Of course, darling. This is your home too.’

Tilly nodded. ‘I’ve brought some washing …’

I smiled indulgently, just glad to have her there. ‘Get it, then.’

I walked through to the cramped little utility room at the end of the kitchen. ‘This economy cycle is quite quick. If you–’ I stopped as the doorbell rang. I raised my eyebrows at Tilly, feeling a frisson of alarm at someone calling so late.

Tilly shrugged, unconcerned. ‘I’ll go.’

I followed her through to the sitting room as she swung back the front door, letting in a gale of cold air.

Jinni’s eyes were wide and angry. ‘Did you see anything?’ she demanded, her gaze swinging from Tilly to me. We shook our heads stupidly as Jinni stepped inside and gestured back at the darkness behind her.

‘It’s all I bloody need, right now,’ she said furiously. ‘Some bastard’s just smashed my window.’

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