“Aw come on! He’ll never go for that! You’re a reporter for crissakes, remember?”
“Yes, but Frank, this guy is growing a conscience. I’m telling you, he’s going to spill the beans and it’s going to be big. But you’ve got to give me time. And I’m going to need some goodwill from you; you know what I’m saying?”
“Huh. How much is this ‘goodwill’ gonna cost me? You ain’t given me nuthin’ yet. You could be blowin’ smoke out your ass for all I know.”
Charming.
She lowered her voice theatrically.
“I’m talking DC, Frank. High up. I can’t say more.”
Which was true.
Frank was silent. That was unusual. He must be thinking. He was one of those men who couldn’t think and do any other activity at the same time – except maybe scratch his...
“How much you want, Helene?”
“This is going to be big, Frank. I’m talking ‘Spycatcher’ big. I’m talking... White House.”
She heard him take a breath and imagined him sitting in his office – a small, hairy Jabba the Hut.
“How come you didn’t mention any of this before? You’d better not be yanking my chain, cos if you are...”
“Frank! Come on! How long have you known me? I won a Pulitzer for pete’s sake! Look, if you don’t want it, that’s fine: I’ll take it to Hawkins.”
“Oh don’t get your panties in a bunch: you know you can’t work for that jerk. Not since...”
She didn’t want to be reminded.
“Yes, whatever. But I’m serious, Frank. Make the right choice and you won’t regret it: this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
“Aw shit, you’re making me nervous.”
That was both of them then.
“If it was anyone else but you, Helene, I’d tell them to go screw themselves.”
Such a delightful chap, charm school notwithstanding.
“Okay, I’ll take it to Mac,” he said at last, “but you gotta give me a bit more. Who is this guy? You gotta name names.”
“You think I’m going to feed you that?! What am I, some cub reporter still wet behind the ears?”
“Okay, okay. Pedal off the metal, Ms High-and-mighty. I’ll talk to Mac. I’ll see if I can get you five now and another five when you turn in the piece. I’ll need at least twenty thousand words. And photos. Good stuff.”
“Frank, please don’t insult me. I want sixty up front and another forty when you get the story. Sterling. Plus I want serial rights, syndication, expenses and the usual per diem. Non-negotiable.”
“Oh, come on! Nobody gets a deal like that – not even Syd Harris.”
“True, but that’s because he’s dead. Once in a lifetime, Frankie.”
“You’re busting my balls, Helene!”
“Yes, well, you’ll grow another pair eventually. S’long, Frank.”
“Wait, wait! Look, I gotta okay it with Mac. Just gimme an hour, okay?”
“You’ve got 30 minutes, Frank, or I’ll take it to Hawkins.”
“You’re a bitch, Helene.”
“You can sweet talk me all you like, Frank. Thirty minutes.”
She snapped the phone shut, her heart hammering a deranged Ginger Baker solo. One hundred thousand pounds plus serial and syndication. This was going to make a nice bit of padding for her frail pension pot.
Of course, she had bugger-all to go on, having just made the whole thing up.
Chapter 2
The cottage was cool and shady, even in the heat of summer. It was really two fisherman’s cottages knocked into one. The limewash rendering was smooth on one half and attractively textured on the other, where it had been combed over granite. Wisteria grew around the deep windows, unusual in this part of the world where the salt-laden south westerlies regularly decimated the softer varieties of plants that occasionally recklessly mistook themselves to grow in the mild climate.
Before she had turned her key in the door, her phone beeped. A text. From Frank. Just three words: ‘You got it’.
Helene stood staring at the text for a second longer than necessary, then closed the phone slowly.
When she pushed open the heavy front door, divided stable-wise into two sections, a depressingly small pile of post lay on the doormat.
The inevitable statements because all her utilities and credit cards were on standing order, a flyer for a new Chinese restaurant in Penzance and a handbill about an afternoon tea party at the local church hall, now long since passed. The oldest mail had been stacked neatly onto the kitchen table.
More mailers. Nothing personal. She missed letters, proper handwritten letters, full of news and the personality of the writer. Emails had obvious advantages, but still...
Helene stared around her tiredly. Familiar yet unfamiliar. It always took her a while to get used to being home again.
Home. A word that resonated with so many suppressed feelings. Home ought to be the answer to the question people of a certain age – her age – too often asked: Is this all it is?
In her teens, home had been somewhere she longed to leave: the neat ex-authority terrace with the tidy garden and suffocating cul-de-sac. In her twenties it was a pit-stop of unwashed clothes and half eaten meals, dozens of messages and dates scrawled on notes and stuffed in a diary; half-remembered names sketched on paper napkins, useful contacts, full of possibility. In her thirties, home had been a smart, salary-sapping future nest, with a husband and dinner parties, long days at work, air travel, foreign hotels, smart, clever people, political discussions in a dozen accents, half a dozen languages. But somehow the nest had never been feathered and the husband had disappeared along with the detritus of a faintly happy marriage. And so, in her late forties, she had landed at last in this remote corner, a place that was not England and not quite foreign either. Her neighbours were kind: welcoming but not effusive, thoughtful but not intrusive, and at last Helene felt she could breathe again. And yet when she looked in the mirror, the face looking back was barely her, barely recognisable. The beauty of youth had long since faded, the spirit squashed, the soul dented and bruised.
Helene kicked her bag into a corner, unzipped her city boots and tossed them into a basket of discarded footwear, swapping them for a pair of salt-encrusted trainers.
Stuffing her door key in her back pocket she headed back out.
The breeze was sharp and cool, whipping her hair into her eyes with sudden flurries as she left the protection of her miniature front garden. She stretched, her aching back appreciating the gesture. Then she walked briskly up the steep lane that led to the church; a slim, dark figure against the bright, summer flowers.
Many of these Cornish churches were built on rising ground, the churchyard’s oval, an echo of a much older, pre-Christian site of prayer. The spirit of thousands of years’ worship hung blanket-like, a cocoon of peace, of sanctuary. It was soothing.
Helene followed a familiar route through the graveyard, softly crushing the long grass full of daisies, buttercups and cow parsley. The steep hedges were engulfed with a tide of sea thrift growing through the piled granite. She imagined maidens of an earlier time weaving flowers in their hair as they danced through the...
“Oh, for crissakes!”
She snapped out loud. Even her daydreams had become tired stereotypes. What the hell had happened to her? How had the glittering It-girl of Fleet Street become this burnt-out, prosaic, provincial shell? It wasn’t even the usual story of booze and drugs. One of the reasons that Helene had been so successful was that she’d stayed clean, kept sharp, not been distracted by the crude rewards of eighties’ decadence. It was time that had caught her, that was all.
From a distance she was what you’d call ‘a fine looking woman’. Certainly men and women of a similar age admired her wiry body, thick, spiky hair, carefully dyed, and casually certain wardrobe. Even younger women recognised that she still had power, and instinctively steered their menfolk away from her. The men, regretfully steered, silent
ly agreed that they’d still do her, given the chance. Which they wouldn’t be given: not by Helene and not by their watchful women.
At the end of the churchyard, an unmade road fell away below her, leading down to the coast path. Instead of turning left and heading towards the inviting stretch of sandy tourist beach, she turned right and picked her way across a stony trail, heading for the tiny cove of Trenow, where she was less likely to have to speak to anyone. It was harder here to walk in London silence and keep your eyes on the path or fixed to a spot directly above someone’s head. Down here people still said ‘Good morning’ and ‘Good evening’ with a smile, expecting, demanding a friendly response. It was one of the things she liked about the place, unwilling to despise it as her younger self might once have done.
She needed to think, and the deep peace that the horizon gave her was renewing.
A low, smooth boulder offered her an acceptable perch. She sat carefully, hugging her knees to her thin chest, burying her face in bony kneecaps, only her eyes peering out. Thinking, thinking. Choosing. Deciding.
When she finally stood up she was cold and stiff and age had definitely caught up with her. There was just the faintest nudge of arthritic pain in her left hip.
Her stomach rumbled uncomfortably, reminding her that unless she wanted to dine on dry pasta and soy sauce, she’d better put some effort into hunter-gathering at the local supermarket.
She yomped back to the cottage and retrieved her car keys from the hook inside the larder.
The garage door was stiff but operable. It was one of the reasons that she’d bought this cottage. Careful foresight had ensured that she invested in a cottage with space to garage a car, and not the one with a better view.
The car was a small but newish Renault. It started first time and Helene made a mental note to thank the loyal Mr Jenkin who mowed her minute lawn and turned over the engine once a week.
She wondered what he was doing now. Not Mr Jenkin but the nameless man. The train man.
She put the car into gear and reversed carefully between the granite gate posts.
A tap on the windscreen made her jump.
“You’re back then?”
The white haired woman smiled and waved a dog lead at her. The dog on the other end looked deeply unimpressed at being yanked by the throat.
Helene wound down the window.
“Hello, Mrs Jenkin. How nice to see you.”
“And you, dear. Staying long, are you?”
“I really couldn’t say.”
“Oh, I don’t know! Always coming and going – you career girls! You don’t want to leave it too late, you know.”
Helene smiled thinly. She was quite aware of the ‘it’ the older woman was referring to and she was of an age when being called a ‘girl’, even by an octogenarian, was an irritant.
“Do thank your husband for me, Mrs Jenkin. He’s been most attentive to my poor, neglected garden – and to my car.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t let him hear you say your garden is neglected, dear,” said Mrs Jenkin. “He fair dotes on those roses of yours – to the detriment of our own, I might add. Bless him.”
Helene wondered if Mr Jenkin felt blessed. It seemed unlikely.
“Well, do thank him for me. You’re both so kind, looking after the place while I’m away. I’m so lucky to have such good neighbours.”
It was said with such an air of sweetness and sincerity that Helene almost believed herself.
Mrs Jenkin smiled again, the very picture of a lovely old biddy, instead of the steely old battleaxe she really was.
Despite herself, Helene rather admired her. Nothing got past Mrs J.
Helene threaded the car through the tangle of narrow lanes and enjoyed the sensation of being behind the wheel of a car and the illusion it gave of being in control of one’s destiny.
Out on the main road she accelerated briskly and the little car seemed keen to shake some village dust from its tyres.
The supermarket car park was depressingly full. Helene had forgotten that it was changeover day and that tens of thousands of visitors were, like her, stocking up for their self-catering apartments.
The deli had been picked clean and the fruit and vegetable selection was similarly barren. Helene chose the best from the runt of the litter left-overs. Milk, butter and cheese were thankfully in plentiful supply. It wouldn’t do her bone density any harm to up the calcium intake.
At the check-out she spied a rack of OS maps and helped herself to a selection of 1:25,000 Explorer maps from Land’s End to Padstow.
“Planning on doing some walking, are you?” said the cashier.
“Mmm,” said Helene, “possibly.”
“Got a dog, have you?”
“No, no dog.”
“By yourself, are you?”
“Apparently,” said Helene, ending the conversation.
Back home she stowed the shopping briskly and spread out the map that covered the Newquay area.
Was there any cove, bay or village that sounded like ‘Tianamen’?
After searching for some time she came across the name Trevarrian. It was a small bay located midway between Watergate and Mawgan Porth. And it had a pub. A good place to start. Keen-eyed locals, chatty staff, used to tourists: perfect.
She squinted at the map. Damn. There was also Tregurrian, just a mile up the coastal path. She imagined a centuries’ old antipathy between two feuding hamlets that would be utterly incomprehensible to any 21st century visitors.
Half-heartedly she prepared some food. Some people loved to cook but she had always found cooking for one to be a disturbing and ultimately pointless task. She couldn’t imagine how people found pleasure in exploring recipes, hunting down rare and peculiar ingredients, then spending hours cutting, chopping, mincing, filleting, or macerating raw ingredients until they resembled soup. Rebelliously, she layered a piece of salmon steak in rock salt and shoved it unceremoniously under the grill until it was pleasantly wilted and undefiant.
There had still been some Cornish Earlys in the supermarket and these she boiled, smothering them with butter, black pepper and more salt. Half a dozen broccoli florets were her sole concession to healthy eating.
After she had washed up, leaving the dishes draining, she wandered around the cottage, reacquainting herself with its nooks and crannies. She stroked the lovely cedar dining table that had been a wedding present from her parents and had survived one divorce and several moves. A studded sea chest on the bedroom landing was a memento of a long forgotten ancestor. It added a jauntily battered air to the otherwise modern fittings. And it seemed appropriate in a cottage where the rhythm of waves rolling onto the beach carried up the lane.
Her bed was luxurious, dominating the room and slightly at odds with the smallness of the deep-set windows. It was the largest bed she had been able to get into the cottage. It had caused the delivery men some furious head scratching and a few tense moments, until someone suggested they hoist it up through the coffin hatch: an opening at the top of the cottage that Mr Jenkin had told her about. It was where, in a previous century, they removed a body when the occupant died, instead of trying to carry it down the narrow stairs... abracadaver... or, more likely, dropping it down the stairs. She wasn’t sure if she believed him, but the Cornish were an oxymoron of practicality and romanticism. On the other hand, the church was just up the road, so it really was a case of hatch, match and dispatch – with equal rapidity.
She’d left the bed made up. It bothered her to leave it uncovered; it had seemed too naked as well as sterile and unwelcoming. A made up bed promised occupation or at least regular visits: a statement of unwarranted intent. But now the sheets had the slight mustiness of disuse. She tore them off, feeling satisfaction in replacing them with fresh linen from her seaman’s chest. The small room was soon suffused with the smell of lavender from the sea chest, a pomander having been an amusingly anachronistic but useful gift from her aunt.
As she wafted the duvet over
the bed the house breathed softly, settling around her like snow. She longed to fall into the bed and cocoon herself forever, listening to the wind in the eaves and the seagulls’ cries echoing down the chimney stack. They could find her shrivelled body and, leaving her wrapped in her duvet, post her out through the coffin hole.
Instead she continued to prowl around the cottage, taking stock of her possessions until the midsummer sky had turned a purple-blue and stars began to appear in the east.
It was confounding how one never really got used to living alone, she mused. The cottage rested easily on its aged beams and granite walls. Although she had never shared this place, this sanctuary, with anyone, she still found herself straining for the sound of footsteps, of occupation, or life. Maybe she should get a cat. In a few years she could be the mad old biddy with a cottage that smelt of cat wee and used teabags. Yes, it would be good to come home to a living creature, to have that small, furry body winding itself around her ankles in greeting. Of course it would have to be a latchkey cat.
She padded barefoot through the galley kitchen, wrapped in an oversized Arran sweater, hugging a mug of hot chocolate. The door was bolted, the downstairs windows closed. She didn’t bother to pull the curtains, not in high summer. It was far more pleasant to come down in the morning to find the curtains open and light streaming in.
Tired at last, she climbed the stairs to bed, making a nest of the duvet and a defensive wall of the pillows.
She stretched out, relaxing her body bone by bone and allowed her breathing to deepen. Breath by slow breath she drifted into sleep.
The ringing phone was sudden and demanding.
Swearing, her eyes already used to the dark, Helene flung herself upright and reached for her phone. But it wasn’t her mobile that had awoken her, it was the landline. Furious, but alarmed at the same time, she rushed headlong downstairs and tackled the phone like a full-back.
“Yes? Who’s this?”
A man’s voice spoke.