Megan obviously thought her dog skills were improving, because this morning she’d entrusted her with Bertie, who had not – Rachel looked back to check that he was still moving and not sniffing his way into the hedge again – played up too badly, probably because Gem was on hand to nudge him into line, and even Rachel had realised that none of the dogs had the effrontery to resist Gem’s gentle commands.
Even better, through a complicated system of mime, she’d got the deli to bring her a takeaway coffee outside, so she could recaffeinate herself for the way back. It was a tiny taste of London, that double espresso hit, and it only made her feel half-homesick.
Rachel took a deep breath of the fresh air and closed her eyes against the sunshine, letting the dogs lead her uphill.
‘Things might work out, eh, Gem?’ she said out loud, with only a shred of self-consciousness.
When she’d turned into the orchard behind Four Oaks, and returned the dogs to their runs, Rachel found a welcoming committee at the kitchen table.
Megan was chatting away to a possible new rehomer on the cordless phone and making notes on her clipboard, while Freda sat drawing circles around the obituaries in the local paper.
George Fenwick was also there again, drinking tea and polishing off a fruit cake donated by one of the WI, while a couple of shy teenagers hovered by the dog basket where Zoe Graham’s Toffee was busy demolishing three cardboard rolls.
Rachel felt a small ripple of anticipation, seeing George leaning up against the Aga, his sleeves rolled up despite the cold air outside. George brought the outside in with him; he looked as if he’d recently been manhandling a cow or mending a horse, or some other manly countryside vet business. Rachel was a bit hazy on the details.
‘Ah,’ he said, when she walked in. ‘Longhampton’s most stylish dog walker.’
‘Don’t you have a business to go to?’ Rachel enquired, hanging the leads back up. It was quite flattering really, that he could be so taken in by one Marc Jacob skirt, reduced.
‘I do,’ he agreed. ‘I just called in to check on a couple of your inmates, and to see how your clearance sale was going.’
‘Not so bad, so far,’ said Rachel. She scrutinised his craggy face for signs of sarcasm, and found an infuriating mixture of amusement and something she couldn’t put her finger on. ‘Lulu’s gone to Dr Harper as I’m sure Megan’s told you . . .’
‘And Chester’s had a couple of visitors,’ added Megan, hanging up the phone. ‘Nice couple from Hartley and a woman from Rosehill. Phone’s been red hot all morning, hasn’t it, Freda? We haven’t stopped since you went out!’
‘It’s those posters, Rachel. I saw your poster in the library, love,’ said Freda. ‘Very touching. Had the gardening club in floods.’
‘Good,’ said George. ‘Get the blue-rinse brigade matched up with those shopping-trolley-sized terriers, and sent straight over to me for vaccinations, please.’
‘George!’
‘He’s a businessman, Freda,’ said Rachel, shaking her head. ‘Don’t let that James Herriot routine fool you.’
‘And you’ll be pleased to hear that Bertie’s going to have a home check too,’ added Megan. ‘Who wants to do it?’
‘Anyone we know?’ Freda looked nosy.
‘The couple who came along with Dr Bill, actually.’ Megan was scribbling down the details. ‘It was the wife who rang – she seemed really excited. Natalie. There,’ she added, handing her the note, ‘they live on that new estate down by the canal. Can you do it tonight?’
‘No, I can’t.’ Freda sighed. ‘Oh, shame, it’s my bowls night, I wouldn’t have minded a look around one of those houses. Lovely, they are. Executive.’
‘You can do it, can’t you, Rachel?’
‘What?’
‘You just look round the house, check they’ve got fences, secure gates, that sort of thing.’ Megan made it sound a doddle. ‘I’ve got a checklist you can use. And just think about how happy you’re making Bertie! He’s been pining for a new home since he arrived.’
‘Well, yes, I’m pleased Bertie’s on his way out of here!’ said Rachel. ‘He really seemed to take to the wife – it was like he knew her from somewhere. It was like they clicked.’
Freda wagged a finger. ‘See? We told you you’d get the knack!’
‘No, Freda,’ George corrected her. ‘Rachel’s just a ruthless businesswoman too, she wants her runs cleared so Megan can get some fee-paying boarders in. Did she tell you about the new scheme she’s running? Adopt one dog, get one free? Like Tesco, but with the smaller dogs. Your Ted’s thinking about getting a couple of replacements for Pippin.’
Freda’s face registered shock, then crossness, and then she swatted George’s arm. ‘You’re having me on! He wouldn’t do that. Not without telling me. Ooh, you’re an awful man.’
George winked at Rachel, who stifled a smile, then furrowed her brow in disapproval. ‘Says the man doing two-for-one testicle removals.’
It was hard not to respond to George’s pantomime grumpiness. She wondered why she was the only one who bothered pitching it back to him – he seemed to like it.
‘But you should think about a dog, Freda,’ said Megan persuasively. ‘It’d be good for you, honestly. You and Ted. Help him to think about retiring.’
‘It’d take a very special little dog to replace Pippin,’ said Freda. ‘Did I tell you, Rachel, how he used to—’
Rachel’s mobile rang in her pocket and she flinched when she heard who was calling: her mother.
Val and Oliver had called daily but now he seemed to have given up, presumably to fix his marriage, but Val hadn’t. Rachel knew what she’d want to talk about as well: the current progress on the probate, and the whereabouts of silver brush sets and Acker Bilk albums, neither of which she’d quite got around to locating.
‘Would you excuse me?’ she said, grabbing the solicitor’s file, still largely untouched, off the breadbin. ‘I’ll just take this call.’
Conversation started up as soon as she reached the stairs, with George’s hearty laugh booming over the top, but she ignored the voice in her head wondering if they were laughing about her.
‘Mum, how are you?’ she said. Rachel knew she should have phoned earlier but there was a limit to how much red-hot news of new teeth and bowel movements she could stand.
‘I’m fine, Rachel.’ Val sounded slightly off. ‘How’s it going? Have you made any headway with the sorting out?’
‘Not really, I’ve been busy with the kennels.’ Rachel crossed the landing, and turned towards Dot’s bedroom at the front of the house. ‘Listen, I’m going to get those brushes now, all right? But I’m not supposed to dish anything out until probate’s cleared and I’ve paid the first bit of inheritance tax. It could take six months, you know.’
She threw the file on the bed, and began searching for the letter Dot had left for her. Val would be bound to ask about that. She’d forgotten all about it, assuming it would be specific bequests to the dogs. Instructions to leave Gem in charge of dog matchmaking or something. Files and accounts tumbled out until it appeared, and Rachel clamped the phone under her ear while she slit it open with a finger.
It was only one side of Dot’s neat handwriting, and didn’t seem to contain any bequest details at all.
Oh great, thought Rachel, but her mother was speaking again.
‘I wasn’t just ringing about that, Rachel! But are you managing? Do you want me to come and help you sort things out?’
‘No, I’m fine, Mum. These brushes, where do you think they’d be? Did she use them? Or will they be in a drawer?’
Rachel had only put her head around Dot’s door so far; it felt rather odd, poking around someone else’s most personal space when their toothpaste was still fresh. The dressing table was as Dot had left it, with her gold-cased lipsticks and tissues scattered about, and a dry-cleaning bag hung on the back of the door. Two tweed skirts, and a jacket.
The room smelled of old ladies, thought Rac
hel, looking around. Stylish old ladies, not the crumpled husks of women Val shunted from day centre to table-top sale. Dot’s room smelled of woollen clothes and old-fashioned perfume and powder compacts.
She twisted up the nearest lipstick, expecting to see a sugar pink colour: it was a deep carmine red.
‘They’d be on her dressing table,’ Val added. ‘They were my grandmother’s, family heirlooms. Our grandmother’s, I should say.’
‘They’re not here,’ said Rachel. ‘There’s just knick-knacks and some photos.’ She picked up the largest, in a silver frame, and studied it with interest. Everything downstairs showed Dot in her old age, surrounded by animals, looking somewhat weatherbeaten. This, though, was a young Dot at a formal function, looking positively sultry in a satin shift dress, leaning up against a handsome man in a sharp suit.
A very handsome man.
Rachel frowned with surprise. Was that actually Dot? This woman was quite a stunner. Her exotic dark looks were perfect for the dramatic sixties style; she was striking, like Eleanor Bron or Alma Cogan, and wasn’t afraid to play up her bold features with false lashes and jet-black hair piled high on her head.
And the man was pretty sexy too: full lips, thick hair, a sort of Mick Jagger-ish twinkle in his eye. He was glancing sideways at Dot with a proud expression on his face – with good reason, Rachel thought. He looked as if Dot had just cracked a particularly witty joke.
‘Who would this man be on Dot’s dressing table, Mum?’ she asked. ‘I thought Dot never had a serious boyfriend.’
‘Where did you get that idea?’ said Val, evasively.
‘From you?’ The frame was heavy too, hallmarked solid silver. It must have been someone special to have warranted the frame, as well as the prominent place.
‘Well . . . I’m sure I never said that.’
Rachel’s skin tingled as she looked into Dot’s hooded eyes, so like her own, and the penny dropped. Dot was the woman in the spare room chalk drawing. She hadn’t recognised her, because the only photo she remembered of a younger Dot was the one at Amelia’s christening, in which Dot looked like the lost Supreme in a tangerine trouser suit that her mother still clearly took as a personal affront.
There was a gap in her mother’s photograph albums – Dot appeared as an ankle-socked child with Val, then as a lanky teenager off to university, and then pretty much nothing until she hovered in the background in a few weddings and funerals, white-haired and clearly uncomfortable.
This was the Dorothy who was missing – a Dorothy who hadn’t always lived in tweeds. A Dot who’d been quite clearly adored by someone hot enough to give Oliver a run for his money.
‘Oh my God, Mum,’ said Rachel. ‘Why did you never tell me about this?’
‘Because it’s not something we liked to discuss,’ said Val. ‘I’m not sure I want to talk about it now, actually.’
Which was possibly the worst thing she could have said.
‘You have to,’ said Rachel.
10
Val’s shifty tone immediately alerted Rachel that there might have been more to her mother’s frequent phone calls than a simple interest in Rachel’s house-clearing skills.
Was she worried that some family secret was about to come to light, she wondered with delicious curiosity. Because it obviously was.
‘Come on, Mum,’ she said. ‘This is news to me. I thought the whole point was that Dot lived the life of a nun, but with dogs instead of singing children and a guitar.’
‘I didn’t say she didn’t ever have a boyfriend . . . I said she was too picky to settle down with one.’
‘Well, she doesn’t look as if she did too badly with this bloke,’ said Rachel, examining the photograph more closely. ‘Who is it? It must be, what . . . mid-sixties? In what looks like a hotel bar?’
There was a pause on the other end of the line. ‘It would probably be Felix, I expect,’ said Val. ‘Tall, curly hair? Bit of a dandy?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. Looks like an expensive suit.’
‘Mmm. Felix Henderson was his name.’ Another pause. ‘He and Dot were . . . Well, I can’t pretend I know what went on there. They seemed quite serious about each other, but it all fizzled out for some reason. I didn’t like to ask, in the end. Dot thought I was very old-fashioned about relationships, but then I was married at twenty-one years of age.’
Rachel’s brain was busy putting two and two together, very rapidly, given her own experience of complicated relationships. Was this what Dot had meant, when she said men liked to be complicated? Was this Felix already married? Was he someone Dot had worked with? She wasn’t even sure she knew what Dot had done for a living. Val was very vague about anything that went on in London.
‘But they were quite serious, though?’
‘Well, they courted for a good few years, went on holiday together, that sort of thing. He never managed to get a ring on her finger, though, poor Felix. She was daft to let him go, if you ask me.’
‘Maybe she didn’t want a ring on her finger,’ retorted Rachel, automatically. Dot’s fingers in the photograph were noticeably covered with plenty of other expensive jewellery. ‘Maybe she preferred being single.’
‘Preferred suiting herself, more like.’ Val sounded vexed. ‘But that was Dot. Wouldn’t be told anything.’
‘So how come I don’t remember this Felix?’ Rachel turned the photograph to the light. ‘He’s really handsome. They both are. They make a great couple – Dot looks like a model in this.’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t have met him – Dot broke it off when you were a toddler. I never got to know him, not really. She didn’t trouble Felix with our family functions, said he was too busy with his job.’ The short pause added, which even your father didn’t believe.
‘Which was?’ she prompted.
‘He was a businessman of some kind. Dot met him when she was working as a secretary in the City, I think.’
‘But you met him, though?’ Rachel was curious now. ‘What was he like?’
‘I just met him the once. Amelia’s christening was the only time our side of the family ever met him. In eight years, would you believe. Anyone would have thought he didn’t want to meet us.’
Not going to family functions was a hanging offence in Val’s book; Rachel had been hauled over the coals about it herself in recent years. Naturally, she hadn’t been able to explain that holiday opportunities with Oliver were like hen’s teeth and had to be grabbed with both hands, even if they did coincide with other people’s wedding anniversaries. Especially since weddings and wedding anniversaries weren’t Rachel’s family occasions of choice.
A gossip bell rang in a distant part of her memory, and she frowned, trying to dig out a half-heard grown-up conversation. ‘Did something . . . happen at Amelia’s christening, Mum?’
There was a pause. ‘Not that I’m aware of.’
Rachel rolled her eyes. That meant something had done. Val was a skilful brusher-under-the-carpet. If she didn’t want to talk about something, it might as well never have happened.
Rachel, on the other hand, had all the imagination Val and Amelia lacked, and a secret knowledge of the complications illicit relationships brought. Her mind whirred.
Felix was a good-looking guy. Had there been some sisterly jealousy? Her dad was a nice man, but he thought a good night out involved bowls and a lock-in at The Bull and Bishop. Felix, on the other hand, looked as if he was the good night out. Like Oliver. Suave and confident. A man who could have you in a cab in ten seconds on a rainy night, and into bed in sixty.
‘So how did they meet?’ she persisted, curious. ‘Come on, Mum – I can’t believe you’ve never told me about Dot’s gorgeous bloke. I thought she was a lonely old spinster!’
‘Well, if she’d sorted herself out and married Felix she needn’t have been! Not that I ever really knew any details.’ Val was sounding really shifty now. ‘Rachel, it’s never nice to speak ill of the dead. It wasn’t any of our business at the time and it’s
still not.’
‘Mum, I’m in her house! I’m going to find out anyway, once I start going through the eight million drawers!’
There was a reluctant sigh. ‘He did something financial,’ Val said. ‘He had a big house in Chelsea, I know that much, when she had some poky studio flat. Felix either came from money, or had made a lot of it, because he had some very fancy friends, and a nice sportscar that he gave Dot when he got bored. I remember your father was very jealous of Dot getting to drive around in it . . .’
Rachel moved slowly across the room, and picked up other smaller framed photographs, kept in a shrine-like cluster on the mahogany chest: Dot on a continental quayside in big shades and Capri pants, Dot and Felix at another black-tie party, Felix on his own, posing against a white Jaguar E-type, his tight shirt open and an uproarious smile lighting up his face, as if some passer-by had just mistaken him for Tom Jones – and he didn’t really mind.
No wonder Dad was jealous – he was schlepping us around in an Austin Allegro, she thought. Yelling at Amelia not to spill pop on the seats.
‘But they just split up? Didn’t she tell you why?’
She could almost hear her mother’s lips purse. ‘We didn’t talk about things like that.’
Rachel stopped in front of the window, which looked out over the small gravel drive, towards Longhampton, the spires and towers visible in the far distance, and the sheep-bobbled fields in between. So different from the London scene Dot had obviously been a glittering part of. The photos downstairs and the photos in this room could be of two totally different women, two totally different lives.
‘And you never asked?’ Rachel had never quite understood her mother’s fundamental lack of curiosity.
But scrupulously fair or not, Val wasn’t afraid to go on the counter-attack. ‘Do you and Amelia talk about private things? Has she ever asked you why you and that nice Paul split up? Because he was a nice chap, Rachel. We hoped that might . . .’