put his hand fondly against Mamie’s cool cheek, before pulling the blanket snugly over her as though she was sleeping.
Finally, he collected Angela’s small frame in his arms and carried her to the kitchen. Tenderly he lowered her onto her chair by the Aga.
‘I’ll make tea. The police and ambulance will be here soon.’
‘Mamie,’ keened Angela, her head in her hands. ‘I didn’t hear her fall, Robert. I should have heard her. Why didn’t I hear her?’
‘Darling, it’s an accident. Somehow she tripped on the stairs and fell. I don’t think she would have known anything about it.’ He smiled into Angela’s green eyes. ‘In a funny sort of way, isn’t this so typically her? Exactly the way she would have liked to have gone? After a great party where everyone loved her … and full of gin.’
Six months earlier
‘Penny?’ Simon Canter shouted from the bottom of the vicarage stairs, his shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, a sheen of sweat on his brow.
‘Penny.’ He shouted a little louder.
He had been emptying and clearing his office for the last three hours and it had not put him in the happiest of moods. ‘Penny!’
‘What?’ Her voice from upstairs was irritated. ‘I’m sorting the bloody books in Jenna’s room.’
‘Where are the bin liners?’
‘Under the sink, where they usually are.’
‘I’ve looked and they are not.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ she muttered to herself, then shouted, more loudly, ‘Have you looked in the box by the back door?’
‘No.’
‘Well, look!’
Penny was not quite as busy as she was pretending. In truth she had been lying on her daughter’s bed for most of the morning, surrounded by packing cases and constantly being distracted by long-forgotten possessions. She had been flicking through her own old copy of Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes. She had won it at her boarding school. Her headmistress’s inscription still gave her a tiny thrill of pride.
Awarded to Penelope Leighton
For continued improvement in English Literature.
Congratulations
Miss Elsie Bird
Penny had had a difficult childhood. Her father had died when she was young and later she had discovered the woman she had been told was her mother was not. It had destroyed her sense of self-worth and left her with a need for praise and approval wherever she could find it. Even now, reading Miss Bird’s dedication to her more than thirty years later, she felt the pleasure of having done well.
It wasn’t until she’d met Simon, in her early forties, that she’d found the wonder of loving and being loved in return. And she, a woman who worked in the febrile, emotionally incontinent, ego-driven world of television, had found all that in a vicar! Now Simon shouted again from downstairs, ‘They are not there!’
‘What aren’t where?’
‘The bin liners.’
Penny huffily put the book down and went to go downstairs and find the bloody bin bags herself when she spotted them. They were where she had put them, at the top of the stairs.
‘Oh, here they are,’ she called cheerfully, covering her guilt.
Simon was grumping up the stairs.
‘Sorry, darling,’ she said with a hint of accusation as she met him midway. ‘Someone must have left them upstairs.’
Simon looked tired. His normally clear, tanned face and chocolate eyes were dulled with worry. ‘We have less than a week.’
She stroked his balding head and kissed his brow. ‘I know. We’ll be ready. I promise.’
‘I’ve still got the garage to tackle. What am I going to do with all those tins of old paint?’
Penny placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘The new people might want them to touch up any scuffs.’ She wiped a string of cobweb from his eyebrow. ‘I think you need some elevenses. Everything will look better after a coffee and a digestive or two. Come on.’ Taking his hand, she pulled him towards the kitchen.
Outside early spring was dawning on the little patio that Simon had built last summer, with the help of the village gardener, known to all as Simple Tony. The flagstones were warming and a robin was busily building a nest in the early clematis that clambered around the kitchen window.
Penny carried the coffee tray outside and balanced it on top of the lichened birdbath. Pulling up two tatty wicker chairs, she took the edge of her cardigan and swept away the dried winter leaves and crumbly bird poo from the seats.
Setting the chairs side by side, she plonked herself down with a sigh as Simon followed her out with a packet of ginger nuts.
Penny pulled her shoulders back and tipped her face to the sun. ‘The sea smells good today.’ She inhaled noisily, filling her lungs.
Simon sat down and opened the biscuits. ‘Ginger nut?’
She exhaled, shaking her head. ‘I’d prefer a digestive.’
‘There aren’t any.’
She looked at Simon, weighing up whether it was worth the risk of contradicting him by getting up and getting the digestives from the larder where she had put them, or just saying nothing. She chose the latter.
‘Not to worry,’ she said, and took another lungful of air with closed eyes.
Simon fiddled with the ginger nut wrapper, running his thumb around to find the elusive tape to pull and, while he did so, looked around at his beloved garden, recalling all the hours that he and Penny had poured into it.
The cherry blossom tree marking Jenna’s baptism.
The Wendy house under it.
The drift of daffodils, just budding now, planted several autumns before.
Eventually he found the Cellophane string and pulled.
Six ginger nuts sprang out and hit the ground.
Penny opened one eye. ‘Bugger,’ she said.
He sighed. ‘Are we doing the right thing?’ He picked up a biscuit and shook the grit off before dipping it in his coffee.
Penny exhaled impatiently. ‘Yes!’
‘It’s Jenna I worry about most,’ Simon said, looking at the vegetable
