Little Woodford Read online

  Swiftly, she rearranged the chairs there into a circle and placed some low tables in the middle. Then she wiped them down before she had a good look at the carpet. Did it need the hoover running over it? The light wasn’t terrific so she went over to the dormer and pulled the blind up fully. As she did a movement in the big house next door caught her eye; there was a blonde – youngish... mid-thirties? – at one of the upstairs windows. Duh – she remembered the news about the new people moving in.

  Belinda’s eyes met those of the woman next-door. She smiled and waved and got a broad grin back. She wondered what the new neighbours were going to be like – rather nice if first impressions were anything to go by.

  *

  Bex Millar was wondering about the wisdom of moving in next to a pub as she stared out of the window and across the wall. The estate agent had assured her that it was really well run and the previous owners of her house had had no complaints on that score. But they would say that, wouldn’t they? She reckoned the walled garden, the shrubbery and the trees would act as a bit of a barrier against any noise and besides, however noisy it might be it was going to be a darn sight more tranquil here than where they’d lived in London. There they’d been on a route to a major hospital and under the approach to Heathrow. Planes flying over every waking moment and blues and twos twenty-four-seven. She didn’t think a few rowdy locals were going to impinge on her family’s sleep – not given what they could already sleep through. She noticed that there was a woman looking out of the dormer in the roof opposite. The landlady? She smiled and waved and looked really friendly so Bex couldn’t stop herself from smiling back. She felt quite bizarrely happy that this total stranger seemed to be welcoming her. Maybe moving here was exactly what the doctor ordered.

  ‘Mum, Mum, can Alfie and I go and play in the garden?’

  Bex turned away from the window to look at her eldest son, eight-year-old Lewis. ‘Have you explored the whole house?’ she asked him as he ran across the floor towards her followed by his little brother Alfie who stumbled along on his chubby legs. She brushed Lewis’s floppy blonde fringe off his earnest face then stroked his cheek.

  ‘Everywhere, Mummy.’

  ‘Evware,’ lisped four-year-old Alfie in solemn agreement. He gazed at his brother – his hero-worship plain in his grey eyes.

  ‘OK, go outside but you are must stay at the back of the house and if you hear the furniture van arrive you must both come in and tell me.’ The last thing Bex wanted was for the boys to get under the feet of the removal men. ‘Understand?’

  Both boys nodded before racing down the main stairs to the ground floor. It might have been two small boys running through the house but Bex reckoned they made as much racket as a herd of stampeding horses. Silence fell a moment after the sound of the front door slamming behind them which reverberated throughout the house.

  In the ensuing quiet Bex wondered about her stepdaughter Megan. The move was going to affect her the most and not only because she was fifteen and hormonal and painfully shy. She’d also had a lot of shit happen in her life – they all had – and although the move was to help them make a fresh start, a change of school at this time of year and in the year before she did her GCSEs was a gamble. It was no wonder, given all the circumstances, she wasn’t always calm; a fact not helped by the fact that her birth mother had been a Spaniard.

  Bex often thought about Megan’s mother because, other than her nationality and the fact that she’d abandoned Megan when she had only been three, she knew next to nothing about her. Apparently Imelda, Megan’s mother, had upped and returned to Spain one morning and had ignored all pleas and exhortations from Megan’s father, Richard, to come home again. For a few weeks Richard had managed to rely on the goodwill of family, friends and neighbours for emergency childcare but, when none of his texts and emails to his wife had been returned and his phone calls went unanswered, he’d had to hire a nanny – Bex. Obviously, as the hired help, it wasn’t up to her to question the family’s circumstances and, when she’d wound up falling in love with her boss and then marrying him, all he was willing to say on the subject of his first wife was that she had been ‘a bit temperamental’. Bex suspected that the hurt Imelda had inflicted had been a terrible wound and she wasn’t going to pick at the scab – it wasn’t hers to pick. On the positive side, Megan had no memories of Imelda, although the fact she’d been deserted by her mother had to have on-going repercussions. To be ‘not wanted’ by a parent had to be a terrible concept for any child to grasp and Bex had spent the previous twelve years doing her level best to prove to Megan that she was wanted – very much. But then... then the accident had happened.

  Bex decided to see how Megan was faring. She went across the landing to the precipitous, narrow stairs that led up into the attic.

  ‘Only me,’ she called at the bottom before she climbed the steep flight.

  Megan was sitting on the floor of the bare room tapping the screen of her phone with her thumbs, her glorious black hair tumbled over her face.

  ‘Hello,’ she said to Bex without looking up.

  ‘I wanted to see how you are getting on,’ said Bex, brightly. ‘Have you worked out where you want your stuff to go?’

  Megan shrugged.

  ‘You OK?’ said Bex.

  ‘Kind of.’ She looked at her stepmother with her dark brown eyes. Had she been crying – again?

  ‘It’ll be better here, promise. New school, new start, new friends...’

  Megan shrugged.

  Bex hunkered down on the floor beside her stepdaughter. ‘The thing is, no one here knows what happened back in London. We’ll probably have to tell them about Daddy but all they need know is that he died in a traffic accident. Everything else is no one’s business but ours.’

  ‘I suppose.’ Megan sounded far from convinced.

  ‘Now then, why don’t you go down to the garden too and keep an eye on the boys while I finish making sure everything is ready for when our van gets here. There’s a football in the boot of the car. Have a kick around with them.’

  Megan trailed out of the room and down the stairs, watched by Bex whose heart broke again that her stepdaughter had had to endure so much sadness and awfulness over the previous months, and on top of what her mother had done to her. Bex sighed and hoped against hope that this move would push it all away and allow the family to move on. It was going to be hard without Richard but they’d manage somehow. They’d have to. And they were going to have to do this by themselves, what with her parents living in Cumbria and rarely making the trip south and her in-laws living in Cyprus and rarely making the trip back. Phone calls and emails meant they kept in touch but ‘keeping in touch’ wasn’t the same as having them around and that wasn’t going to happen much – not now. Her dad was losing his sight and her mum would only drive short distances so a journey down the M6 was right out of the question, and Richard’s parents had been badly hit by the fall in the exchange rate and, while their pensions kept them afloat, it didn’t really allow for the expense of flights from the Med.

  She’d thought about moving to be nearer her relatives, of course she had, but had decided it wasn’t really fair on the kids. Where her parents lived in the Lake District there was breath-taking scenery but precious little for them to do – not for children brought up with easy access to shops, cinemas and all sorts of urban amenities. Yes, the boys would have probably adjusted in time but Megan? And as for taking them out to Cyprus... Well, quite apart from the issue of their schooling Bex really didn’t think it was fair to uproot them completely from all that was familiar.

  Come the summer, thought Bex, she’d take the kids to visit their grandparents but until then they’d have to go it alone.

  3

  Joan, having finished the church flowers, declined Heather’s offer of a bite of lunch because she was due at Mags’s salon for her fortnightly shampoo and set. As she trudged from the church to the town centre she wondered about the wisdom of having agreed to do th
e flower arranging, knowing she would be having her hair done later. Too late to worry about that now, but no two ways about it, she thought, she was knackered. That bug she’d had over the winter had knocked her for six and no mistake. Still, on the positive side, she’d get to sit down for the next hour or so and, anyway, having her hair done always made her feel more chipper. Wearily she pushed open the door to Cutz and Curlz and was assaulted by a gust of warm steamy air and the scent of a dozen different hairdressing products. She crossed the small lobby to the reception desk. The receptionist’s hair was a startling shade of blue. She could have sworn the last time she’d been in it had been pink... or had it been green?

  ‘Hi, Joan.’ said the girl, barely looking up.

  ‘Afternoon, Janine.’

  ‘I’ll tell her you’re here. Wanna give me your coat?’

  Joan shrugged her mac off and handed it over.

  ‘Take a seat,’ said Janine as she bunged the mac on a hanger and shoved it on the rail. Joan resisted the temptation to remove it, put it on the hanger properly, with the top button done up, and the creases shaken out.

  Janine gestured laconically to the tiny sofa and then slouched off to the door that led to the staff restroom. She returned seconds later, followed by Mags.

  ‘Hello, Joan,’ said Mags proffering a gown for Joan to slip on. ‘The usual? Or can I tempt you to a few highlights, or a nice asymmetric cut, or maybe a bit of colour?’ She nodded in Janine’s direction, as she tucked a towel around Joan’s neck. ‘All the rage.’

  ‘No, ta. Just my usual shampoo and set, thanks.’

  ‘Come on through then and we’ll get you started.’

  Joan sat on the seat, tipped her head back towards the basin and shut her eyes while Mags got the water the right temperature and then started work with her deft fingers and the shampoo.

  ‘Amy had some news earlier.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ said Joan.

  ‘A family has moved into The Beeches. Just arrived, she said.’

  ‘I know, I heard first thing this morning from the postman.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mags sounded rather put out. ‘Anyway, Amy says it’s a young family. Three kids.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ Joan wasn’t really interested. She was luxuriating in having her scalp massaged.

  ‘Amy’s hoping she can get her old cleaning job back.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ She felt totally relaxed and didn’t want to spoil the feeling with chit-chat.

  ‘It’ll be nice having more kids around in the town. Nothing personal, Joan, but there’s precious few young families here these days, not with house prices the way they are. Amy said she’d heard the primary school is worried about numbers.’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘On the other hand, those new houses they’re building round the back of the station might help though I doubt many of the young families around here’ll be able to find enough to buy one. Apparently there’s some built for the housing association and a whole bunch that’s supposed to be affordable but I heard even the smallest of the other ones start at half a mill. Half a mill?’ Mags voice rose to a shrill crescendo. ‘I ask you.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  Mags began to rinse out the first application of shampoo. ‘Water all right?’

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘Amy said one of the kids moving in looked a bit of a basket case; looked like she was scared to death of her own shadow. I mean, what’s to be scared of in a place like this? ’Tisn’t like she’s moving to some place with guns and drugs like you hear about on the news. You take what you hear about the big cities...’

  But Joan had stopped listening and was drifting into a doze as Mags’s magic fingers washed and rinsed and conditioned her hair and she yakked on about the state of the country, the young of today and what she thought the police should do about it all.

  *

  As Mags installed Joan under a drier, the removal van arrived at The Beeches. Bex made the guys mugs of tea all round and then went to the foot of the stairs. She could hear the boys playing with some game or other on their iPads in one of the bedrooms but she had no idea where Megan had got to – probably back upstairs in her room; she seemed to love it up there at the top of the house.

  ‘Megan? Megan, can you come down for a minute, please?’ she bellowed up the stairwell.

  Big houses were all very well, she thought, but there were a lot of stairs. If she had to run up and down to get hold of Megan every time she needed her she was going to get incredibly fit.

  A few seconds ticked by before Megan appeared on the upstairs landing. She leaned over the banister.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Can you take the boys out for a little bit, while the men get the furniture in? I really don’t want them to get underfoot and I’m going to be busy directing where things are to go.’

  Megan’s sigh was audible down in the hall. ‘If I must.’

  ‘It’s a lovely day, you could take them for a walk.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Into town.’

  ‘And do what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe there’s a play park somewhere. See if you can find one.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  Megan disappeared from view and Bex heard her telling the boys to get their coats. They clattered down the stairs just as two burly removal men appeared, hauling the sofa.

  Megan grabbed both the boys’ arms and tugged them out of the way as the men struggled to wrestle it through the sitting room door. Bex thrust a ten-pound note in Megan’s hand. ‘Buy an ice cream or something while you’re out. I’d like the boys out of the way while the men get the worst of the job done – the heavy stuff.’

  ‘Cheers.’ She stuffed the note in her jeans’ pocket. Then, ‘Come on, boys,’ she said as she led them out through the front door.

  The van filled the gravel drive and the three children had to squeeze past it. Alfie was mesmerised with the huge cavernous space filled with their possessions.

  ‘Horsey!’ he shouted, catching sight of the rocking horse. ‘Want Horsey.’

  ‘Horsey will be in your room when we get back,’ promised Megan. ‘Come on, we’ll go and explore the town.’

  Grasping Alfie’s hand firmly and ignoring his protests she led the two boys down the drive and out onto the main street.

  It was busy with shoppers and kids. Megan looked at the faces of the children she passed and wondered if any were in her new class. What would the kids be like? Would they be nice to her? She knew that the girl who’d joined her class late, at her old school, hadn’t had the best time to start with. She felt guilty about that now because she should have been nicer and it would serve her right if she had a bit of a struggle to fit in herself. She wished she’d behaved differently but it was too late to put things right now. It seemed to Megan that she spent a lot of time these days wishing ‘if only...’

  She and the boys continued walking through the town. Megan thought about stopping a passer-by and asking for directions or even if there was a play park in the town. The kids seemed happy to keep walking though and Alfie, who had apparently forgotten about Horsey, was skipping along by her side. They passed a sign to the station.

  ‘Let’s go and see if we can see some trains,’ suggested Megan. But when they got there, the display board made it fairly obvious that the trains to Little Woodford at this time of day were few and far between, or few and far between compared to the lines that ran close to their house in London, and the next one wasn’t due for another thirty minutes. On the other hand there was a building site on the far side of the tracks and Alfie spent a happy few minutes watching the diggers scooping up the soil and dumping it into the backs of tipper trucks.

  ‘Where’s my digger?’ asked Alfie. He’d been given a huge Tonka bulldozer the previous Christmas and he’d loved playing with it in their sandpit back at their old house.

  ‘Somewhere on that big lorry at home,’ answered Megan.

  ‘Can I have it when we get back?’
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br />   ‘I’ll try and find it for you. Now, talking about finding things, let’s see if we can find a play park.’

  The three trailed back to the high street and continued their walk through town. Just as Megan was thinking of abandoning her quest she came to a big pair of wrought iron gates, behind which were acres of grass, a swing park in the far corner and skateboard ramps opposite it. Bingo. She let go of the boys’ hands and they tore off across the grass like a pair of greyhounds out of the traps. Megan followed on and by the time she reached them they were balanced on a see-saw, their feet dangling inches above the ground, neither able to push off and give them the impetus to get going.

  ‘Push us, Megs,’ exhorted Lewis.

  Obligingly, Megan stood at the pivot and pushed down one side then the other. The two boys shrieked in delight as they bounced up and down. After a few minutes they got bored with the see-saw and charged off to the swings. Lewis was big enough to reach the ground and to propel himself higher and higher but Alfie dangled rather pathetically. Again Megan came to the rescue and soon Alfie was swooping up and down nearly as high as his brother. And then they had a go on the roundabout for quite a while until the slide caught their attention. Then it was back to the swings and Megan was called on to help, once again. When Alfie didn’t need her Megan sat on a bench with her phone and kept an eye on her half-brothers and another on Facebook and Snapchat. Across the park she was aware of older children – mostly around her age, she thought – on their BMX bikes and skateboards performing tricks and stunts on the ramps. It was all very pleasant and relaxing as the minutes ticked past and Megan, warmed by the sun, lost track of time. Suddenly she saw one of the kids grab his skateboard and head off across the grass. He tore off at such a rate he looked as if he was worried about being late for something.

  Late! Megan checked the time. Shit, they’d been out for ages – Bex would be getting worried.