said Adam, looking pleased with himself, ‘Miss Store’s neighbour has just moved out, and there is a cottage for rent by the church, which I am pretty sure you will love.’
She stared at him. ‘Adam, that’s—wow!’
‘I told you,’ he said. ‘I know everything in this stupid small town. I’m like a fixer.’ She laughed. ‘And I want my oldest friend to be happy now she’s back. Shall we go?’
‘Is it called something like Ye Olde Cottage?’
‘It’s called Easter Cottage,’ Adam said, smiling. ‘And it’s on Lord’s Lane.’
‘Of course it is,’ said Tess. ‘You are wonderful.’
‘Let’s go,’ he said, and they turned away from the water meadows.
‘Aw,’ Tess said. She stopped and hugged him, her voice muffled against his jacket. ‘Oh, Ad. I missed you, man. I’m sorry. I’m sorry it’s been so long.’
‘S’OK,’ he said, squeezing her tight. ‘I missed you too, T. But you’re back now. Back where you belong. And it’s brilliant.’
Several weeks later, Tess sat on the sofa in the sitting room of Easter Cottage kicking her shoes against the worn flowered silk of the sofa. Her feet beat a steady, echoing rhythm against the fabric in the silence of the room as she gazed out of the window, lost in thought. It was late afternoon. From the direction of the high street, sounds of small-town life drifted up to her—each one, it seemed, redolent of the world she was now in, each one serving to emphasize once again the world she had left behind. The sound of friends meeting in the lane. The ring of the shop bell in the Langford gift shop. A dog barking. Evening was fast approaching, another evening alone in this still-strange new cottage. She was living in a cottage, for God’s sake. She shivered. Tess was uneasy. Unhappy, even.
She remembered, as she had done several times, the conversation she’d had with her mother the night before she’d moved back to Langford.
‘I’m sure you’ll enjoy being back there,’ Emily Tennant had told her daughter. ‘Just mind you don’t turn into an old lady.’
‘An old lady?’ Tess had said, amused. Three years ago, the week after Stephanie’s wedding, her father Frank had sold his GP practice and her parents had retired to the coast. Tess had thought they were mad, moving away from home. Still did, especially now she was on the eve of going back there. ‘I still don’t understand why you moved. I mean, the new house is great, but—Langford’s Langford! It’s beautiful.’
‘Of course it is,’ her mother said soothingly. ‘But we wanted a bungalow. Somewhere easy to manage. We wanted to have some fresh air, be by the sea. Take the dogs for walks in peace, and put in double glazing and a satellite dish if we want it.’ She sighed. ‘I was just sick of feeling like a tourist in my own home. Langford’s full of second-home owners and day trippers and tea shops. Sit at the table where Jane Austen sat, and all of that. Trust me, I know,’ she had added, mysteriously. ‘It’s wonderful, Tess dear, but—don’t get sucked into all that heritagey stuff. You’re still young.’
‘Oh, Mum, calm down!’ Tess had told her, slightly indignant. Was it not she who had danced on a bar in Vauxhall the previous week, and done three tequila shots in a row before snogging the barman? ‘I’m thirty. I’m in the prime of my life. I’m not an old lady.’
That afternoon, in the sweet little shop next to the Tourist Centre at the far end of the high street, Tess had bought a tea towel with a map of Langford on it. It was really nice, and she needed some more tea towels; Easter Cottage was lovely but it had virtually nothing in it. But it had cost her six pounds, and she was starting to see her mother’s point. She was pretty broke, and she was lucky to have got this job.
Summer term at the College would be beginning soon; Easter was early that year. It seemed impossible that three months ago she’d been living with Meena in Balham, in the depths of despair, dumped by Will and sacked by work (well, rather smoothly told her job was being ‘folded into’ her boss’s). Added to which, the week before Christmas, a boy who looked about ten had mugged her and taken her purse, just outside Stockwell tube. That had been the final straw.
Well over a month had passed now since she’d found Easter Cottage and she was still without a flatmate. Tess was starting to realize how foolhardy she’d been. People didn’t turn up somewhere like Langford looking for a place to rent. They were either retired, or young married couples, or weekend-home owners. Not like Tess, that’s for sure.
There was Adam. But Adam still lived in the cottage he’d grown up in. He couldn’t afford to rent somewhere else. There was Suggs, Adam’s best mate, but Suggs smelt of stew, and only had one pair of socks, and besides, he lived with Adam. She didn’t really know anyone else. Perhaps she would, soon. Apart from anything else, it was such a lovely cottage. She could be so happy here, she knew it.
Tess sighed, and looked around the sitting room and the tiny galley kitchen. She had tried to make it a cheering sight. Her mugs, gaily hanging on their little white hooks; the old fireplace, which she’d filled with a jug of daffodils; and the framed poster of the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome hung above the sofa, which was festooned with bright, pretty cushions. It was a cold spring, and she was enjoying the cool nights, enjoying nesting in her small, sweet new home. Usually, she liked it when night came and she could draw the curtains and settle down on the sofa.
But tonight, the fog of gloom that she’d been trying to shake off all day seemed to settle firmly over her head. Tess shook herself. It was the countdown to starting her new job; she just had to tell herself that after Fair View Community College it’d be a walk in the park, teaching middle-aged people about Augustus and gladiators and the Senate. So why was she so nervous? There was an alarm bell sounding somewhere, a note of disquiet, and so she did what she always did in these situations, which was to enumerate her worries out loud to something, an inanimate object. In her flat in Balham, this had been the photo of Kanye West on the kitchen wall (Meena was obsessed with him and knew all the words to ‘Gold Digger’).
Now she looked around for something similar. But Mrs Dawlish, Miss Store’s old friend from whom Tess had rented Easter Cottage, was clearly not a fan of Late Registration. Marcus Aurelius was not suitable—the horse would get in the way. There was an old map of—shire on the wall, printed on oldeworlde textured parchment-style paper, and next to it a print of Jane Austen, the well-known watercolour by her sister Cassandra. It was a pretty shocking print, JA’s colouring resembling that of someone afflicted by a rough bout of seasickness and jaundice combined, but it was considerably better than nothing. Tess nodded.
‘Right,’ she said aloud. ‘Let’s go through it, one by one. OK?’
There was a silence. She felt stupid, her voice echoing loudly in the small room. ‘OK,’ she made Jane Austen say, though she didn’t really think it was the kind of thing Jane Austen would actually say, and she made a mental note to look up the word ‘OK’ to see whether there was any record of its usage in early nineteenth-century Hampshire.
‘I’m worried about my new job,’ she said in a small voice, crossing her legs underneath her on the sofa. When she said it out loud, it sounded—what? Silly? Or even more terrifying than she’d thought?
‘And
