in a few days and she had already called Kyle the builder to fix the pointing. She had felt so proud when she had explained what pointing was, though Kyle hadn’t seemed that impressed. Beth gathered up armfuls of cleaning products and headed towards the cottage with a spring in her step. Leo huffed and harrumphed behind her. She nearly dropped the whole lot when Ernie jumped out of the willow tree.
‘Hello,’ he said, his voice brittle. She hoped he hadn’t been there all night.
‘Good morning, Ernie. We’re going to give the cottage a spruce up. Well, the living room at least.’ Ernie grinned and, without asking, he followed Beth and Leo inside. Beth ignored the feeling of Great Expectations as she bobbed under a large cobweb in the hallway and went through to the musty-smelling living room. There was a wide windowsill that, like the rest of the room, had a layer of dust on it. After a lot of shoving and grunting on Beth’s part she finally managed to open the window. She put on the mask that Jack had given her and handed the other to Leo, which he put on and briefly found entertaining before quickly returning to being bored.
Beth wiped down the windowsill and laid out the cleaning products.
‘Let’s start at the top and work our way down,’ she said, her voice bright.
Leo pointed at the bulb hanging from the light fitting. ‘I can’t reach up there. Can I go and explore somewhere?’
‘No, Leo, I need you to help. You can sweep the floor.’
‘What?’ Leo looked alarmed but reluctantly took the brush from his mother and despite it being taller than him he started to slowly push it around the floor.
The next couple of hours were a slow torture as Beth dusted, brushed and scrubbed to the background white noise that was Leo’s whining. Ernie had given up and gone to sit under the willow tree. Beth flung another bucket of black grime-saturated water over the big plant in the back garden and filled the bucket up again from the outside tap. She straightened her back and watched a couple of cabbage white butterflies dance around the out-of-control purple buddleia before disappearing. It was a lovely sunny day and it did seem to make the countryside come alive, even the horses in the field looked a bit more frisky today. She would have liked to have been sat outside in the garden – even in its overgrown state, it was more welcoming than the inside of the cottage – but she had work to do, so lounging in the garden would have to wait. She picked up her half-full bucket and went back inside. She stopped in the living-room doorway and surveyed the room. It looked a little better than it had done. It certainly smelled better. The floor had sturdy-looking floorboards that now looked a dark oak colour and Beth could already start to visualize what they would look like offset against white walls and with a cosy rug placed on top of them. Leo was sitting on the window ledge looking thoroughly bored.
‘One more mop over and we’ll get some lunch. Okay?’
They decided to try out the delights of the pub for a change and see if they had a less heart-disease-inducing menu than the tearoom. As it turned out, it wasn’t too bad; not a gastro pub but good honest home-cooked food, and there were two salads on the menu. It was the right weather for salad, with the gentle breeze and persistent sunshine, and what better way to eat it than in the pub garden. There was a lonely swing there that Leo made a run for and he only got off it when his food arrived.
Petra, the landlady, came out with a third plate and a knife and fork and set it down next to Beth.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ asked Petra. As Beth was about to protest, Ernie joined her on the bench seat and started to tuck into his pie and mash dinner.
‘No, it’s fine,’ said Beth, with a smile.
While they were eating, a small boy with a mop of black hair came outside and stood hugging a football. As Petra ferried past another round of meals he asked her something.
‘No, Denis, you can ask him yourself.’
The boy sidled over towards the table where Beth, Leo and Ernie were eating and stood a few feet away, hugging his football tighter still. Leo looked up and the boy smiled.
‘I’m Denis, you wanna play football on the green?’
‘Yeah,’ said Leo, shovelling the last piece of chicken into his mouth and clattering his cutlery down onto his plate and the remaining salad. ‘Can I go, Mum, pleeeeeeease?’ said Leo, as he stood up.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Beth, craning her neck to see if she could see enough of the green from where she was sitting.
‘He’ll be fine,’ came Petra’s gentle voice behind her. ‘Denis is my son. Everyone knows him and he plays there all the time. People round here keep a look out for each other.’ Beth didn’t like to say that it was the people round here that bothered her the most.
Beth wasn’t sure but Leo was already pushing back his chair and his face was a contortion of pleading expressions.
‘Okay, just for a few minutes.’ But Leo was gone before she had finished the sentence. Ernie finished his food, laid his knife and fork dead centre on his clean plate, and left without a word.
Beth sat alone and looked around her. Everyone else was chatting, lots of groups of people and couples. She had no idea who was local and who was a tourist. She wasn’t sure what category she was in. She didn’t feel like she belonged here but she had nowhere else to go.
Petra’s voice broke into her thoughts. ‘I’ll watch the boys if you want to get on. I’ve seen you working at the cottage.’
‘Cleaning mainly but it’s okay. I’ll get Leo to give me a hand.’
Petra raised an eyebrow. ‘A boy that cleans?’
Beth laughed. ‘Well, no, not exactly.’
‘Then let him play. Look, he’s having fun with Denis.’ Beth watched as the boys raced after the ball and wherever they kicked it they seemed to be celebrating a goal. It was good to see Leo smiling and Beth realized she hadn’t seen him do that much since they’d been in Dumbleford.
‘Okay, if you’re sure.’ Beth headed back to the cottage for round two of cleaning the living room, her first step at conquering the cottage and, if she felt very brave, she might blitz the bathroom too.
Beth switched her phone to music and with some of her favourite teenage tunes belting out she got to work. She found it was a lot easier to clean when you were singing and also doing the odd dance move with the duster. She was giving a particularly energetic rendition of ‘Is This The Way To Amarillo’, including overenthusiastic waving of thumbs over her shoulder, when she thought she saw something out of the window. She didn’t hear anything because it wasn’t possible over her screeching.
Beth turned the music down and crept to the window: she couldn’t see anyone but she suddenly felt self-conscious and smoothed down her hair. She went to the front door, just to check, and there on the doorstep was a black kettle barbecue. Beth looked around but there was nobody about, not even Ernie. The barbecue was a little battered and whilst she was pondering what it was doing there she lifted up the big dome-shaped lid. On the very clean grill inside was a sticky note, which read:
‘I was chucking stuff out and thought of you – Jack’
Blunt as ever, she thought. She picked up the note and saw that under the grill was a bag of charcoal and she smiled. The barbecue
