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  So, anyway. Less pasta for her, more for everyone else. She hoped Lilian appreciated it, as she led the old lady to the table.

  ‘Actually I’ve been seeing yet another man. All on his own! In his house!’ said Rosie in mock-shocked tones. ‘I am going to get a name for myself as the village tart, Great-aunt! You will have to call the vicar in to give me a stern talking-to.’

  Lilian snorted. ‘That man makes you look like Julie Andrews. Liberal vicars.’

  ‘Why, what’s he done?’

  ‘What hasn’t he done? Oh, it’s all right, do this, disbelieve that, divorce that, marry your farmyard animal of choice.’

  Rosie let her chunter on, as she put down the tea things then served up the bolognese.

  ‘Foreign food now, is it?’ said Lilian.

  Rosie was so astonished that someone would think pasta was foreign food that at first she couldn’t figure out what her aunt meant.

  ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Do you not really like foreign food then?’

  Lilian sniffed. ‘I have never,’ she announced, in a tone that suggested she was about to discuss her Nobel prize, ‘bought garlic in my life!’

  ‘Well done,’ said Rosie. ‘Doesn’t it grow out in your garden? Wild garlic is just amazing.’

  ‘Oh yes, there’s some. I usually throw it away.’

  ‘You do not?’

  Lilian looked defiant.

  ‘OK,’ said Rosie, feeling pleased, ‘you are going to stop eating all the sweetshop stock, and I am going to introduce you to all sorts of good things.’

  ‘I won’t eat them,’ said Lilian.

  ‘No, I can see that,’ said Rosie.

  Lilian had already scarfed up half of her spag bol. Rosie, watching her, realised for the first time how difficult life must be when you couldn’t even lift a pan of boiling water. How hard it made things. How, even when Lilian was being rude to her, it was better; a million times better than having no one to talk to at all.

  ‘So it’s not so bad I’m here, is it?’ she ventured.

  ‘Well, as long as you’re happy,’ sniffed Lilian, letting Rosie inwardly roll her eyes and remind herself that Lilian pretending she was here for her own good was all part of her getting better.

  Suddenly, out of the blue, the telephone rang. It was an old-fashioned ringer, and made a noise like a fire alarm going off. Rosie jumped six feet.

  ‘Christ,’ she said when she came down.

  ‘Must be one of your admirers,’ said Lilian. ‘Darling, I know Angie didn’t raise you in a barn. Where are the napkins?’

  She leaned over and picked up the telephone.

  ‘Lipton 453? Oh, hello, Angela darling. We were just talking about you.’

  Rosie picked up some napkins from Lilian’s very tidy linen cupboard. Staying in Lilian’s house had made her resolve to be more organised at home. There wasn’t loads of space in the cottage but everything had its place, and it obviously made Lilian’s restricted life a lot easier when things were tidy and to hand. It remained a complete mystery to Rosie how her aunt managed it; all she seemed to do was eat and sleep. Rosie eavesdropped shamelessly on the conversation with her mother.

  ‘Yes, well, she seems to be doing all right,’ said Lilian. ‘She is slacking it up a little around the village, I will say. But young girls don’t mind getting a reputation these days, do they? Positively welcome it.’

  Rosie harrumphed loudly. Lilian affected not to have heard.

  ‘So, all in all she’s getting some colour back in her cheeks … It’s obviously doing her good to get away.’

  Rosie stopped short. What on earth did Lilian mean? As soon as she could, she wrested the phone away from her aunt.

  ‘Mu-um?’ she said.

  ‘What?’ said Angie, sounding a bit distracted. In the background at least one fight was going on and two children were screeching their heads off.

  ‘Did you tell Lilian I needed to get away from London?’

  ‘Well, darling, I had to get her to accept some help, and—’

  ‘But did you think I needed to get away from London?’

  There was, suddenly, a tiny fraction of a pause. Rosie felt wobbly.

  ‘But … but why? I mean, everything in London is great!’

  ‘No, no,’ said her mother. ‘It was just that Lilian needed someone. And you were between jobs. That was all it was. Definitely. That’s all.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Definitely,’ said her mum.

  ‘I mean, you like Gerard, don’t you?’

  Gerard and her mother had met many times over the years. He had been cute and cuddly and flirtatious and delightful with her, just like he was with everyone. Everyone liked Gerard, of course they did. Although Angie had seemed immune.

  ‘This is a very bad line,’ said her mother. ‘Darling, Meridian needs me. I have to go now.’

  True enough, a loud scream, all the way from Australia, was making its presence felt.

  Rosie found she was a bit shaky, and handed the phone back to Lilian without complaint.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Bye.’

  Sitting in the living room, trying to tune the ancient television, Rosie wondered what had her mother had meant. Surely it was just a sop to Lilian, to let the proud old bird stand on her own two feet, think she was taking care of her rather than vice versa. That must be it. It must be. On the other hand, Rosie vowed, she was going to get Gerard to come and visit sooner rather than later. Then they could be back together, and still in love, and she wouldn’t have to worry about a thing. Not that she was worried. Definitely not.

  Distracted, she hardly noticed the rap on the door. It came again, louder. Rosie got up, wondering if it was Hetty round to give her grief about something or other, but to her surprise it was Jake, looking a little pink from the sun.

  ‘There you are,’ he said.

  ‘Well, where else would I be?’ said Rosie.

  Jake smiled. ‘Of course. I’ve just finished work. So, come on. Saddle up.’

  ‘I am not getting on that bicycle again,’ said Rosie. ‘No way.’

  ‘You need milk for the morning, don’t you? Old lady’s bones and all that.’

  ‘I do not have … Oh yes.’ Rosie saw what he meant. ‘Anyway, no. I’ll get it from the Spar. I do not want to run across Mrs Isitt again, thank you.’

  ‘Oh, she’s not so bad,’ said Jake. Then he reflected. ‘OK. She is very, very bad. But she’s had a hard life.’

  ‘Sitting in her big house drinking milk,’ said Rosie. ‘Yes. I see it.’

  ‘No, more than that …’ Jake’s voice tailed off. ‘Anyway, don’t worry about that. You have to come with me now. We have stuff to do.’

  Rosie protested faintly. ‘But I’m …’ She turned her head towards the sitting room. From indoors came the mournful wavering tones of a soap opera theme. Outside, the sun was gently cresting pink over the hills, with the faintest touches of indigo just beginning to lick the very edges of the sky.

  Jake looked at her with his eyebrows raised. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I’ll get my coat,’ said Rosie, resignedly.

  Jake went easy on her to begin with – he was completely amazed to find out she’d never had a ‘backie’ before – and rode up and down the streets a few times to get her used to it. Rosie sat on the saddle, the wind in her hair, the warm summer air hitting her skin, the sensation of travelling quickly exciting and new. She found herself starting to giggle, then laugh out loud as Jake went faster and faster (waving, she found herself noticing, in a friendly fashion to the vicar as he went past), then taking the slope down to the Isitts’ farm, gathering even more pace. But this time she had a clear sense that someone was in control, that Lilian’s old bike could cope with how fast they were going. Rosie tilted her head back and let out a happy yelp, amazed at herself – she certainly wouldn’t have done this at home – war-whooping down the rutted track.

  Jake dismounted safely at the bottom, grinning widely.

  ‘Are
you always that noisy?’ he said. Then he looked suddenly embarrassed, as if he’d asked something cheeky. Which of course he had. Rosie was saved from answering by the line of garden instruments up against the wall.

  ‘What are those for?’

  ‘For us,’ said Jake. ‘You hammered Peter’s vegetable garden. We have to put it back together. Or rather you do, but I figured if I left it to you you’d try sowing packets of crisps and chocolate cake and things.’

  ‘Ooh, a crisp tree,’ said Rosie. ‘That’s a wonderful idea.’

  Jake didn’t say anything, but handed her a hoe and gave her instructions on what to do with it. Together, in the fading sun of the day, they worked over the patch, raking it and setting it into tidy rows, whereupon Jake let her pop the seed in – for cabbages, potatoes and purple sprouting broccoli – at regular intervals. Rosie found to her surprise she rather enjoyed the neat work, setting up the strings and sticks to guide the growing patterns, then labelling each row. After an hour, the entire patch looked much better than it had before.

  As the two of them stepped back to admire their handiwork, the last rays of the setting sun alighted on a heavy-set woman who was carrying out a tray from the house as if she held a grudge against it.

  Mrs Isitt looked at the new vegetable patch, sniffed, then, without a word, set down the tray and turned back indoors. Jake inspected it. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that’s her way of saying thanks.’

  On the tray sat two foaming mugs of beer, and two plates with gigantic slices of buttered fruitcake alongside a large pale-yellow hunk of cheese. Jake and Rosie sat down side by side on the edge of the grass.

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to like this,’ said Rosie, picking up the tankard. ‘I’m not really a beer drinker. More rosé.’

  ‘More rosé,’ mimicked Jake. ‘Well, I am sorry, your majesty. I’ll have yours.’

  But when Rosie tried the beer – dark, not too fizzy, not too cold – and found it bitter and slightly peculiar at first, by the third sip she was a convert.

  ‘This is gorgeous,’ she said.

  ‘And about the same proof as a bottle of wine,’ said Jake. ‘Go easy on it, old Mr Isitt has been felling the men of the village with that stuff for years.’

  Rosie stuck her tongue out at him, took another long draught, giggled and sank her teeth into the melting, tangy fruitcake.

  ‘Oh God,’ she sighed. ‘I am going to get as fat as Mrs Isitt if I hang around here. This is amazing.’

  Jake smiled. ‘Maybe it’s just being outdoors.’

  ‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘It’s because it isn’t a kebab or KFC.’

  ‘What’s KFC?’ said Jake.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Rosie.

  ‘No, I mean it. I’ve heard of it, but I don’t really know what it is.’

  ‘Well, you know a chicken, right?’ started Rosie. Then, halfway through her beer, the thought of explaining seemed too stupid for words, and she started to laugh.

  ‘Right,’ said Jake, laughing because she was so helpless.

  ‘And you know frying, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘OK,’ said Rosie, breathless with laughter. ‘Well, it’s just the Kentucky bit you’re having trouble with. Ahahahaha!’

  Jake shook his head and munched on his cheese. ‘You’re mad, you are.’

  ‘Who eats cheese with fruitcake?’ wondered Rosie, then took another bite of cake, quickly followed by another bite of cheese and a slug of the beer.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh, wow.’

  Jake took a long look at her.

  ‘I think I’d better get you home,’ he said, neatly gathering up the cups and plates. ‘Before you start blundering around and muck up that bloody veg patch again.’

  Up the hill, Rosie found pushing the bike hilarious for some reason, and when Jake dropped her off at the house she found herself inadvertently leaning on him.

  ‘Whoops!’ she said. Then she leaned in. ‘But I have … I have a boyfriend, you know. He’s not got as many muscles as you though.’

  Jake moved away as if he’d been scalded.

  ‘I didn’t know you had a lad,’ he said, scowling slightly. Then he looked at her. ‘Why did you move here without your lad?’

  ‘Uhm, it’s only …’ Rosie suddenly sobered up as she realised that what she had taken for daft flirting might have meant something more.

  ‘Uhm, I’m not … I’m not here for very long.’

  ‘Oh no?’ said Jake, temporarily brightening. ‘Well, maybe we can still have some fun then.’

  ‘Oh … Oh.’

  Rosie was mortified. She hadn’t expected her silliness to mean anything.

  Rosie was used, in London, to a world of high-achieving, glamorous women. She never felt in step with them, never felt she could keep up. She was never the one picked up in bars, chatted up on the tube. There was always somebody younger, more gorgeous, more exotic, wherever she turned. Maybe, she wondered deep down, maybe here, where people stayed for a long time, where a lot of young people left the village as soon as they were college age, maybe here she was the exotic.

  Jake was looking at her with a definite spark of interest in his eye. And there was no doubt, she thought regretfully, no doubt at all that he was absolutely gorgeous, blue-eyed and straw-haired and firm of muscles. If she took him to London he’d be snapped up by some long-limbed blonde-haired Chelsea clothes horse in about ten seconds flat. She was so used to there being no men around, or at least none she particularly liked or who liked her. She’d been single for two years before she met Gerard. She was out of practice. She smiled anxiously.

  To her complete and utter horror, Jake took his hands off his thick blond mop of hair, reached out one thickly muscled arm and touched her face, gently drawing her towards him.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she spluttered, although a part of her was curious; was smelling his fresh hay scent and feeling the rough calluses of work-hardened hands on her skin. But she wasn’t crazy, even with the soft golden light of the evening and the faint, sexy scent of the beer on his breath.

  ‘I have a boyfriend! I just told you about him!’

  ‘Yes, in London,’ said Jake, in the same way you might say ‘in Mars’. ‘Come on, lass, you’re in the country now.’

  ‘I very much am not!’ said Rosie, scrambling backwards.

  ‘Oh well,’ he said. ‘Worth a shot.’ He winked at her.

  Rosie’s feelings changed from indignant to slightly peeved.

  ‘And that was it? That was your shot?’

  Jake shrugged. ‘Well, I’m not going to kiss a girl who don’t want kissing, am I?’

  ‘It wasn’t exactly romantic,’ complained Rosie. ‘You could show a bit of dedication.’

  Jake smiled at her. ‘Well, you know where to find me if you want to pedal over …’

  Just then, thankfully, in reach of a signal for once, her mobile rang.

  Apologetically she reached for it, but Jake was already wheeling the bike round the back of the cottage.

  ‘Hey,’ she said into the phone.

  ‘There you are!’ came Gerard’s familiar voice. She was ecstatic to hear from him. ‘It’s impossible to get hold of you, you know. Are you switching your phone off?’

  ‘Of course not!’ she said. ‘The signal up here is appalling, that’s all.’

  ‘Really?’ Gerard sounded dubious. A world without a consistent mobile signal – he was wedded to his iPhone – seemed very strange to him. ‘Hmm.’

  ‘So …’ said Rosie, hoping she didn’t sound guilty. Because she wasn’t. So why did her voice sound so guilty? It was very annoying. ‘How are you? I haven’t had the chance to speak to you properly in ages.’

  ‘Oh, you know, babes,’ said Gerard. ‘Desperately sad without you.’

  ‘Good,’ said Rosie.

  ‘In fact,’ said Gerard, ‘I was wondering if maybe you fancied a bit of …’

  ‘A long weekend?’ said Rosie excitedly.

  ‘Phone se
x?’ said Gerard at precisely the same moment.

  ‘Uhm, yes, well …’

  Jake came round the back of the house.

  ‘I’ll be off now then?’ he said, but the query was clear in his very loud voice.

  ‘Who’s that?’ said Gerard.

  ‘No one … just Jake.’

  ‘No one?’ said Jake. Rosie wanted to shush him, but couldn’t figure out a way to do that without a) being hideously rude and b) making Gerard suspicious.

  ‘Jake and I have been planting a vegetable garden,’ said Rosie in as dignified a manner as she could muster when she was half pissed, had just been propositioned, and had a horny boyfriend on the phone.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jake. ‘Shall we go get another pint?’

  Rosie cursed inwardly and tried to cover the speaker with her hand.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I’m taking this very important call.’

  ‘Who is that?’ Gerard was yelling.

  ‘I can wait,’ said Jake, smiling at her again.

  Finally, Rosie took the initiative by waving sternly to Jake, going inside the cottage and closing the door. But with Gerard, the mood was most definitely gone.

  Chapter Ten

  Younger children often disdain boiled sweets in favour of a more instant hit, and they are quite right to do so; the boiled sweet is the sweet of the older connoisseur, one who knows that it releases its pleasures slowly. Boiled sweets – particulary boiled butter sweets – are a sweet of contemplation; the relaxed pleasure of the cigar, as against a quick rush that doesn’t last and needs to be immediately replicated. So keep the originals, the gobstoppers, the pineapple chunks and the red hots for your slower, more fruitful years. They will repay you in kind.

  1943

  When there was no one, Lilian felt, to hold on to that autumn – the shop, all but closed; her father, sitting at the scrubbed kitchen table, staring into space; Ned’s letters – daft, most of them, full of silly little pictures of dogs and birds, piled up on the dresser with some stupid, useless medals – the house was a dismal place. And they had no body for burying, nor would they ever have, and no brothers home to mourn him. So Lilian had nothing to do but escape, hour after hour, the sympathetic, pitying faces of the villagers – or worse, the sobbing heartbreak of other families who had suffered their own losses. She had absolutely nothing to give Mrs Archer, who had lost her darling only son, with four little girls after that, who would launch herself at near-total strangers, talking about how her boy could never sleep at night without her there to tuck him in; that he must not have been sleeping right, he needed his mother, he couldn’t do without her, he wasn’t himself, which was why he got shot.