roses, red and white. She took a key from her shoulder-bag and let herself in.
The cottage was a good two hundred years old; it was small and set well back from the lane, a situation that gave it plenty of privacy without making it in any way isolated. It had a long narrow garden in front and an even longer strip at the back. The cottage belonged to Oswald Slater, the owner of Mayfield Farm, and stood upon his land. It had been allowed to lie empty for many years and had fallen into sad disrepair, but after the spectacular rise in property values in recent times Slater had considered the dwelling worth restoring and modernizing, and it was now a comfortable little residence with a new lease of life ahead of it. It suited Janet very well, standing as it did only a couple of hundred yards from the school.
She hung her bag on a hook just inside the front door. The tiny hall led into the single living-room which was simply and pleasantly furnished with pieces she had brought from Ivydene, pieces she remembered from her childhood in Ellenborough; they gave her an agreeable sense of continuity and tranquillity.
She switched on the radio which began to play light music, but she gave it no more than a fraction of her attention as she set about preparing her lunch.
She shook out a clean cloth and put it on the table in the centre of the room. She took out a jug of goat’s milk, butter and cheese from the fridge, reached down a beaker from the open dresser and brought a tin of crispbread from the pantry. At the sink she carefully washed a fine Cos lettuce she had grown in the garden and made it into a salad with cucumber and tomatoes she had bought on her Saturday trip into Cannonbridge. All her movements were quick, neat and methodical.
Before she sat down to eat she crossed to a small desk that stood against one wall and took out some opened letters. She began her lunch, looking over the letters again as she ate, frowning as she glanced through them. One letter was untidily written in Lisa’s small backward-sloping hand. ‘I’ve been expecting to hear from you,’ Lisa wrote. ‘To say when you’re coming to stay.’ To spend a couple of weeks acting as confidante and general dogsbody, Janet thought without enthusiasm; she’d had more than enough of that in her life.
Her father had died when she was ten years old and her mother, never the most independent and strong-minded of women, had immediately cast Janet in the role of man of the family. Her childhood seemed to end overnight. Her mother took to discussing every problem with her – and there was an endless succession of problems; Janet was called on to offer advice, weigh up situations, make decisions.
She sighed and glanced up from the letter and her gaze fell on a picture over the mantelpiece, a landscape, one of half a dozen watercolours on the cottage walls, executed by her father with considerable skill. He had owned and run an artists’ supply shop in Ellenborough and had cherished artistic ambitions of his own.
Janet resembled him in appearance, unlike Lisa who took after their mother. Janet was tall and had an exceptionally fine figure, slim and supple. Her head was set with particular grace on a long slender neck; her skin was a delicate olive and her large eyes a clear light hazel. Her naturally curly hair, thick and dark, was cut short and covered her head in close tendrils.
She stood up and took an apple from the bowl on the sideboard, and began to pace about the room as she ate it. She was strongly tempted to let Lisa get on as best she could with the life she had so defiantly chosen for herself. But then again, a young girl in her first pregnancy, no mother to turn to . . . She paused by the table and took a long drink of the delicious goat’s milk, creamy and icy cold. It was difficult to break the habit of shouldering responsibility, she had acquired the habit so young and had practised it so long.
After her father’s death her mother had put the shop up for sale, together with the house where they had been living; the house stood on the outskirts of Ellenborough. ‘What would you think of our buying a larger house and taking in lodgers?’ she asked Janet. Mrs Marshall rather inclined to the idea of businessmen, preferably transients, with whom it would be possible to preserve some distance. ‘I’m not a bad cook,’ she added on an increasingly hopeful note, ‘and I know you’d help me all you could. Do you think we could manage?’ After a semi-sleepless night Janet had decided they could manage and a search was immediately put in hand for suitable premises near the business area of Ellenborough.
For the next twelve years Mrs Marshall – with Janet’s unflagging assistance – did succeed in making a living for the three of them.
Janet worked hard at school – as well as at home – and did well. Her serious manner and responsible attitudes suggested teaching as a career and when she was eighteen she began her training. There was a good college in Ellenborough and she was able to attend as a day student. She would much have preferred to live in but there was no question of that, she couldn’t leave her mother to battle on without her. All during her training she carried the double load of her studies and her duties at home. Fortunately she was strong and healthy but by the time she had finished her training her mother’s health, never very robust, was beginning to fail.
‘I’ve had enough of hard work,’ she told Janet. ‘And enough of Ellenborough. I’d like to sell up, go and live in some quiet, peaceful place and take things easy.’ Janet was delighted at the thought that they might at last be about to bid goodbye to the long procession of business-men, and she rather liked the idea of teaching in a country school.
She found her first post at Stanbourne and as soon as she was appointed set about finding somewhere for the three of them to live. ‘I know I can leave it entirely to you,’ her mother said with long-justified confidence. ‘I’m sure you’ll find a house that will suit us all very well.’
In a short time Janet found Ivydene, a convenient bus-ride from Stanbourne and close enough to Cannonbridge for Lisa – at that time eleven years old – to be able to go in to school there every morning.
The Ellenborough house sold for considerably more than it took to buy Ivydene and Mrs Marshall invested the balance on the advice of her bank manager. And as Janet now had a salary coming in they were able to manage comfortably without lodgers and Mrs Marshall could at last put her feet up and take it easy.
A pity she wasn’t spared longer to enjoy her leisure, Janet thought with a sigh; her mother had had a mere half-dozen years before a stroke took her off.
She picked up another letter and glanced through it, pursing her lips in thought. It was from Alison Collett, a friend of hers from the day they’d first met at the age of five in the playground of the Infants’ school at Ellenborough. They’d sat side by side in the classroom, had gone on to the same secondary school, trained at the same college.
Alison had married a couple of years after qualifying and was no longer teaching. She lived now at Chalford Bay, an old-fashioned seaside resort some eighty miles from Cannonbridge. Her husband was a planning officer with the local authority and they had two small children.
‘When are you coming to stay?’ Alison asked in her letter. ‘Any time before September will suit us. Just pick up a phone and tell us what train to meet.’ Janet sat for some moments considering the idea, a good deal more tempting than a stay at Ivydene with the demanding and capricious Lisa.
She got slowly to her feet, still pondering; she began to clear the table and wash up the lunch things. The radio emitted the time pips and she switched over to hear the news; she rarely bought a paper. As she listened she dried the crockery and put it back on the dresser, then she carefully and neatly wiped over the painted surfaces of the kitchen. When it was all finished to her satisfaction she unlatched a door at the other side of the room and went up the narrow winding staircase to the bedroom.
She opened the wardrobe and looked through the garments hanging from the rail, she pulled out the drawers of a chest
