partitioned strip along the side of the main window was full of handwritten notices.
PUPPIES. Border Collie/Lab cross. Good working strain. Parents can be seen. £40… RESPECTABLE CLEANER NEEDED TWO DAYS A WEEK… MOUNTAIN BIKE, NEARLY NEW. EIGHTEEN GEARS.
That kind of stuff. Even the personal columns of the Hereford Times were loaded now with ads like: Live Adult-fantasy Chat… Venus’s 24-hour Wankline . But village noticeboards never changed – unless ‘respectable cleaner’ was some little-known rural euphemism for bondage-supervisor.
This window was Jane’s last hope, anyway. She’d checked out the prayer board in the church. She’d even, for the first time ever, been through the parish register to see if, by chance, somebody had endorsed their marriage vows in the hand that had also scrawled VICERAGE.
She’d photocopied the poison-pen note before giving it back to Lol. OK, maybe it wasn’t that poisonous. It was just that they all had to go on living here, and Lol and Mum had been through all kinds of crap already, and it just really pissed Jane off that there was some mean-spirited git in this village who begrudged them a hint of happiness.
And Mum was the vicar and therefore too nice to deal with it, and Lol was too timid, and so…
Mobile hairdresser. Women and men catered for.
She pulled the photocopy from her jeans, held it up to the window. Close.
Jim Prosser, who ran the shop, waved to her from inside. Jane put away the paper, waved back. Jim knew everybody in Ledwardine, must have seen a fair few handwritten shopping lists and weekly orders, for delivery. And he knew all about Mum and Lol.
Maybe not. And the lettering wasn’t that close.
She walked off down Church Street. Sharp Saturday sun slanting on Ledwardine, the black and white cottages and shops all tarted up for the early tourists looking for pseudo-antiques and maybe a weekend cottage to display them in.
Predatory Londoners on the spree. Jane had read in one of the Sunday property supplements that, now you couldn’t find a garden shed in the Cotswolds for much under half a million, the Welsh Border was no longer considered too remote for commuters. So Ledwardine, this classic calendar village still enclosed by ancient orchards, was well in the cross-hairs. Even its one-time council estate no longer looked like a council estate, with its new hardwood windows, rendered brickwork, conservatories bulging out like transparent blisters.
Hereford’s estate agents were doing faster business than Venus’s Wankline.
Lol had somehow squeezed in, though Jane guessed that his mortgage on Lucy’s house was crippling. And knew that when she got round to needing a place of her own there’d be like no chance here. And she liked Ledwardine, didn’t want it to become Beverly Hills with a botox population and Jim Prosser forced to stock disgusting pâté de foie gras to stay in business.
But unless you had a farm or something to inherit, you were stuffed. At least when the Church kicked her out of the vicarage Mum could move in with Lol. If that was acceptable to Mr Vicerage.
Who might be here right now on the square, watching.
Jane wandered around, keeping an eye open for Eirion’s car. After Mum had put her off going to Lol’s, she’d called Eirion at home in Abergavenny, and he’d said, yeah, OK, he could probably try and cobble together a few quid for the petrol; he’d come over. Less enthusiastic than he might have been. Was something cooling off? It was true that there were times when she felt she needed some space, maybe go out with someone else, just to, you know, compare. But the thought of Eirion with another girl… she couldn’t handle that.
She stopped in front of the two-up, two-down terraced cottage, separated from the pavement by a ridge of new cobbles. Lucy’s house. A little black Nissan was parked outside behind Lol’s clapped-out Astra. The man from Q ? She thought of going round the back and letting herself in
PUPPIES. Border Collie/Lab cross. Good working strain. Parents can be seen. £40… RESPECTABLE CLEANER NEEDED TWO DAYS A WEEK… MOUNTAIN BIKE, NEARLY NEW. EIGHTEEN GEARS.
That kind of stuff. Even the personal columns of the Hereford Times were loaded now with ads like: Live Adult-fantasy Chat… Venus’s 24-hour Wankline . But village noticeboards never changed – unless ‘respectable cleaner’ was some little-known rural euphemism for bondage-supervisor.
This window was Jane’s last hope, anyway. She’d checked out the prayer board in the church. She’d even, for the first time ever, been through the parish register to see if, by chance, somebody had endorsed their marriage vows in the hand that had also scrawled VICERAGE.
She’d photocopied the poison-pen note before giving it back to Lol. OK, maybe it wasn’t that poisonous. It was just that they all had to go on living here, and Lol and Mum had been through all kinds of crap already, and it just really pissed Jane off that there was some mean-spirited git in this village who begrudged them a hint of happiness.
And Mum was the vicar and therefore too nice to deal with it, and Lol was too timid, and so…
Mobile hairdresser. Women and men catered for.
She pulled the photocopy from her jeans, held it up to the window. Close.
Jim Prosser, who ran the shop, waved to her from inside. Jane put away the paper, waved back. Jim knew everybody in Ledwardine, must have seen a fair few handwritten shopping lists and weekly orders, for delivery. And he knew all about Mum and Lol.
Maybe not. And the lettering wasn’t that close.
She walked off down Church Street. Sharp Saturday sun slanting on Ledwardine, the black and white cottages and shops all tarted up for the early tourists looking for pseudo-antiques and maybe a weekend cottage to display them in.
Predatory Londoners on the spree. Jane had read in one of the Sunday property supplements that, now you couldn’t find a garden shed in the Cotswolds for much under half a million, the Welsh Border was no longer considered too remote for commuters. So Ledwardine, this classic calendar village still enclosed by ancient orchards, was well in the cross-hairs. Even its one-time council estate no longer looked like a council estate, with its new hardwood windows, rendered brickwork, conservatories bulging out like transparent blisters.
Hereford’s estate agents were doing faster business than Venus’s Wankline.
Lol had somehow squeezed in, though Jane guessed that his mortgage on Lucy’s house was crippling. And knew that when she got round to needing a place of her own there’d be like no chance here. And she liked Ledwardine, didn’t want it to become Beverly Hills with a botox population and Jim Prosser forced to stock disgusting pâté de foie gras to stay in business.
But unless you had a farm or something to inherit, you were stuffed. At least when the Church kicked her out of the vicarage Mum could move in with Lol. If that was acceptable to Mr Vicerage.
Who might be here right now on the square, watching.
Jane wandered around, keeping an eye open for Eirion’s car. After Mum had put her off going to Lol’s, she’d called Eirion at home in Abergavenny, and he’d said, yeah, OK, he could probably try and cobble together a few quid for the petrol; he’d come over. Less enthusiastic than he might have been. Was something cooling off? It was true that there were times when she felt she needed some space, maybe go out with someone else, just to, you know, compare. But the thought of Eirion with another girl… she couldn’t handle that.
She stopped in front of the two-up, two-down terraced cottage, separated from the pavement by a ridge of new cobbles. Lucy’s house. A little black Nissan was parked outside behind Lol’s clapped-out Astra. The man from Q ? She thought of going round the back and letting herself in
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