‘I wouldn’t put it past her, would you?’
‘Bugger that girl,’ groaned Cat. ‘I am damned if she’s going to pull the wool over my eyes again.’
‘Do you think it’s a secret Russian mafia plot to steal all our valuables?’ said Noel anxiously. ‘Perhaps I should take the bat to bed with us. Just to be on the safe side.’
Cat looked at him.
‘Don’t be daft,’she said.‘Sergei’s harmless enough.I think if he is a villain he’s probably a pretty inept one, or he’d have managed to break into the house properly. Come on, let’s go to bed.’
They turned out the lights and headed upstairs, Noel pausing to put the bat back.
‘I can’t believe you thought that a plastic cricket bat would work,’ said Cat, giggling as she climbed into bed. Suddenly she could see the funny side, and the vision of her husband defending their home by swinging a kid’s toy bat above his head made her feel a sudden burst of affection for him. She cuddled up close to him. ‘What were you going to do, hit the burglar over the head saying “Biff, kapow!” like some kind of cartoon superhero?’
‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead to be honest,’ admitted Noel. ‘I just grabbed the first thing to hand.’
‘Well, Superman, do you fancy grabbing what’s to hand right now?’ Cat said suggestively.
Noel grinned.
‘Okay, Lois. If you insist,’ he said.
Marianne was out walking early on Saturday morning. Now she’d finally come to terms with the fact that she was staying in Hope Christmas, she’d taken to exploring the hillside paths around the village at the weekends. The countryside was stunning, and she was constantly discovering new and unexpected valleys as she followed the sheep paths that crisscrossed the countryside. Often she saw no one apart from the sheep and the odd solitary buzzard flying high in the sky. Even on glowering grey days, of which there’d been many of late, Marianne found it exhilarating to walk here. But on a bright sunshiny day like today, there was nothing like a brisk walk to dispel her wintry gloom and brush away the cobwebs. And she found that it stopped her sitting inside and brooding about Luke, who had been spotted in and around Hopesay Manor recently, according to Pippa. There were rumours afloat that his eco town idea was causing some kind of controversy now, and that he wasn’t seeing eye to eye with his grandfather about the project. Marianne knew very little about his plans, but Pippa had snorted when she’d told her where the proposed site was, a lowlying valley a couple of miles from Hope Christmas.
‘He’s got to be bonkers to build out there,’ Pippa had said. ‘It’s known as the Lake District round here. It floods nearly every year. Even if we have a drought year, the ground’s always soggy in winter. I wouldn’t buy a house there if you paid me.’
Seeing Luke’s plans through Pippa’s eyes was doing Marianne good. She had been so seduced by his good looks and easy charm, she’d failed to see a certain ruthlessness in Luke. People in Hope Christmas certainly didn’t seem to be all that excited by his eco town or even to like Luke very much. Marianne was beginning to think that just maybe she’d had a lucky escape. And ever more so on days like today, when she climbed over a stile at the top of the steep hill she’d climbed and looked down the valley towards Hope Christmas.
The hillside was scattered with sheep baaing gently in the bracken, and a fresh wind whipped at her hair and made her catch her breath. It felt gloriously wonderful to be alive, to be alone here on the hillside, the only person revelling in the beauty of her surroundings, watching a red kite circling up ahead and listening to the chattering of the rooks in the trees behind her. She had a sudden absurd impulse to run down the hillside, like Laura in Little House on the Prairie. It felt like a long time since she’d been so content.
Deciding, in the end, that she was more likely to catch her foot in a pothole and break her neck, Marianne instead made her way down the hill in a sedate manner. Recent rain had made the ground muddy, so she’d probably been wise not to run. She’d just rounded a bend in the path when a black and white collie came bounding up towards her, panting and barking. It came up to her and submitted to her petting. A minute later a little boy came running up. ‘Benjy!’ he called, ‘I’ve got your stick.’ He was followed by Gabriel.
‘Oh, hi,’ said Marianne, feeling suddenly shy.
‘Hi yourself,’ said Gabriel. ‘You know Stephen, and this is our dog, Benjy. We’re out checking on the pregnant sheep. It’ll be lambing time before I know it, and I need to start thinking about getting them inside.’
‘Don’t they lamb on the hillside?’ asked Marianne.
‘They can do,’ said Gabriel, ‘I just prefer to get mine indoors.’
‘How big’s your flock?’ said Marianne.
‘Not that big,’ said Gabriel. ‘I’ve recently taken over my parents’ farm. Since the foot and mouth outbreak they’d really downsized and had half the flock they used to. Pippa, Dan and I are planning to expand the business and produce our own beef and lamb and sell that along with the vegetables we grow locally. Dan farms the cattle and I farm the sheep.’
‘It sounds lovely,’ said Marianne. ‘I’m such a townie, I know nothing about farming.’
‘Well, maybe I should show you,’ offered Gabriel.
‘Maybe you should,’ said Marianne, smiling.
‘Da-ad, come on,’ said Stephen, ‘I want to go looking for monsters.’
‘Oh, and that’s the other thing we’re doing,’ said Gabriel. ‘Going on a monster hunt is about the only way I can get Stephen out sometimes. Pippa’s brilliant, but I can’t always rely on her as a babysitter.’
‘It must be tough,’ said Marianne with sympathy.
Gabriel gave her that familiar sad look.
‘We manage,’ he said.
‘Da-ad.’ Stephen was clearly getting impatient.
‘Right, I’d better…’
‘Yes, of course.’ Marianne waved them goodbye and set off down the hill, a small smile playing on her lips. Of all the reasons to stay in Hope Christmas, getting to know Gabriel North better was probably as good as any…
‘Mum. Let me take your coat,’ Noel greeted his mother with a perfunctory kiss. As usual, a feeling of dread came over him when she walked through his front door. Would the kids behave themselves? Would Magda do something shocking? (On her previous visit at Christmas his mother had gone on and on about the horror of meeting Magda in the bathroom exposing her bare midriff.) Would he show her yet again how much he’d failed her in the son department?
Mum hadn’t always been so bitter. She’d always had a sharp tongue, true, and Noel and his brother, Joe, had been left in no doubt that their sister, Kay, was the favourite, but when his dad died things had started to go badly wrong. It hadn’t been Noel’s fault that Dad being ill had coincided with Cat’s first pregnancy. He’d done his best to balance the two sets of demands, but it had been incredibly hard being in London and his parents being in Stevenage, and Noel was conscious at times he hadn’t been the
