LITMIR.BIZ

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why, Rachel found herself wanting to make contact with him. Wanted him to talk to her.

      ‘I’ve been reading through some of the contents of that tin you found,’ she said, ‘you know, the one in the attic? Hetty, Mrs Lewis, that is, once lived in a big house in Upper Tadshell. It was called Delamere House. That’s not far from here is it?’

      Gabe glanced up.

      ‘And she had two relatives. Well, very distant relatives. And two aunts, one called Hester and –’

      ‘What?’ Gabe looked at her, patently not having heard a word. ‘Sorry, just checking on how Hereford got on.’

      ‘Hereford?’ asked Rachel blankly.

      ‘United. They were away on Saturday. Won, though, three nil.’

      ‘Oh football.’ Football had never featured in Rachel’s world. Before now.

      Gabe misunderstood her tone, thinking she was being dismissive. ‘Yes, football,’ he said, amused. Some of us lesser mortals like to watch it.’

      Rachel had the feeling she was being teased.

      ‘Aren’t you interested? In Mrs Lewis I mean. I thought you might be, seeing as you were the one who found the tin.’ Having read the next few pages of Hetty’s journal on her long train journey to London, Rachel was bursting to discuss it with someone. Jyoti was again being peculiarly distant and Tim was in the middle of another break-up with boyfriend Justin. That only left Gabe.

      ‘Sorry. Just had to check up on how the boys were doing.’ Gabe folded the newspaper away, leaned back against the front door and looked at Rachel from underneath long, dark lashes. ‘I’m all yours now.’

      ‘Erm, I, erm –.’ There was suddenly something about him that made her lose all interest in Hetty. Her throat constricted and Rachel couldn’t have spoken had her life depended on it.

      A silence built between them, unusual in that it was awkward.

      ‘Could look at this all day and still see something different,’ Gabe said. Then, finally taking pity on her, he looked away. He smiled and nodded at the prospect before them. ‘This view, I mean.’

      ‘I know, I still think it’s gorgeous. It’s why I bought the cottage,’ Rachel said in a rush, feeling heat flush her cheeks. For a minute, she wasn’t sure just what Gabe was referring to.

      He laughed. ‘Would you have changed your mind if you’d known how much work there was to do?’

      She gave him a quick sideways glance. ‘You know, I’m not sure I would.’

      ‘So, you’re settling in? No regrets, then?’

      Rachel thought about what she had left. Rows of once-proud houses converted into flats, their front gardens concreted over, on which to shove cars, no sense of community, alarms sounding out in the night, the scream of sirens wailing past. The shallow men she’d always seemed to attract. ‘Not one,’ she said firmly and meant it. And then pulled a face. ‘Although it’s a shock having to go and get your papers from the shop. There’s something so nice about having them put through the letter box on a Sunday morning.’

      ‘I know, Dad’s always moaning on about it. Lucky we’ve still got a shop, though, the one in Stoke Bliss closed down. Reckon ours will at some point, when Rita retires.’

      ‘Stoke Bliss,’ murmured Rachel. Upper Tadshell, Nether Tedbury, Stoke St Mary.’ She rolled the words around her tongue, enjoying the sounds. She loved the place names in the area. ‘Why doesn’t she do a delivery service?’

      Gabe shrugged. ‘Says it’s too scattered a population to do it. Would cost her too much. You can see her point, though. It’d take ages. Mind, I reckon it’s because she can’t get any paper boys. No one’ll work for her.’ He pulled a face. ‘Not the easiest woman in the world.’

      Rachel laughed. Having come across Rita, who ran the shop and post office, she knew exactly what Gabe meant. She lifted her hair from her neck in an effort to cool down, her face still felt hot. ‘In London, I used to pick up the early editions on a Saturday night on the way home from a night out. Then they’d be there, ready to read on Sunday morning. With good coffee and a pastry making crumbs in the bed.’ Still holding her hair aloft she nodded her head from side to side to ease out the kinks from a morning at the drawing board.

      As an unconscious gesture, it gave off a wholly and peculiarly erotic charge.

      Gabe couldn’t look away. Didn’t want to. A picture was forming in his head. Rachel: her long, dark hair tousled, wearing a silk robe – no, better still, a silk negligée, Sunday papers scattered as they abandoned them. He shut his mind off and concentrated on the view, watching as a tractor on the Garths’ farm ploughed an immaculate furrow. Did she have a clue about what she was doing to him? To distract himself he asked: ‘So what’s this about Hetty, then?’

      ‘You were listening!’ Rachel, delighted that she had an audience, gave Gabe a beatific smile. She began to tell him all about Hetty’s traumatic experience at Christmas. ‘So, I can only assume Richard showed Hetty some kind of Victorian –’. She stopped, embarrassed.

      ‘Porn?’ Gabe questioned and guffawed. ‘Now that’d be worth looking at. Don’t suppose there’s any in that tin of yours?’

      ‘No laughing matter,’ Rachel said, trying not to sound like her mother, ‘it must have come as a hell of a shock to poor Hetty. She wouldn’t have known anything.’

      ‘What, nothing at all?’ Gabe was scandalised.

      ‘Nothing. I remember my grandmother telling me she knew absolutely nothing until the wedding night. And that was only fifty or so years ago.’ Rachel felt the treacherous heat rise in her face again. She wasn’t sure it was quite the thing to talk about sex with Gabe.

      ‘Jeez,’ Gabe said. ‘Makes you wonder how folks managed. It’s hard enough the first time when you know what you’re supposed to do!’

      Rachel studied him. Despite what he’d said, she imagined Gabe having no problems in that department. He seemed very at home in his skin. ‘Erm, yes. Edward must have been an unusual man to have that conversation with her. I just can’t picture a repressed Edwardian telling a young girl the facts of life like that.’

      Gabe scratched his head with the pencil that seemed to be permanently stored behind his ear. ‘Don’t know how repressed they were. You say this Edward was some sort of scientist?’

      Rachel nodded. ‘He went off to university, apparently.’

      ‘Well, maybe he took a scientific approach. Just told her the bare facts, like. Probably the best way. Better than being all coy.’

      Rachel nodded. ‘Possibly.’

      ‘Kind thing to do, though. Think I like Edward. So, do you reckon she’d been hauled in to marry him, then?’

      ‘Well, Hetty certainly had that impression. It sounded as if they needed her money to keep the house going. It had fallen on hard times.’ Rachel paused. ‘She sounds torn, though, between the two brothers. As you say, Edward is kind, but Richard sounds far more fun.’ She turned to Gabe. ‘Do you know anything about the old house?’

      Gabe shifted, as if uncomfortable on the step. ‘What, this Delamere House?’ Gabe shoved the pencil back behind his ear and shrugged. ‘Don’t know, I’ve never heard of it. Likely it’s been pulled down. Especially if you said it was in a pretty poor state.’

      ‘It was, at least Hetty gives that impression. What a shame. I was hoping I could go and see it.’

      Gabe couldn’t bear the disappointment evident in her expression, so he added, ‘Tell you what, I’ll ask Mum. She’s lived round here all her life and she’s interested in old houses. She might know something.’

      ‘Oh, thanks Gabe, that would be wonderful. And thanks for all you’re doing, by the way.

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