Jennie was late, having dropped Jamie at scouts, but I knew the rules now and made firmly for the back row, away from Molly, where I saved my friend a place. As it happened, that put me beside Angus Jardine, he of the silver hair and silken tongue. Angus was a pond-leaper, but protocol required him to turn to me with a look of concern and clear his throat.

‘How are you, my dear? I say, I saw the report of the inquest in the local paper today. Hadn’t realized his death had been caused by one of those wretched easyJet planes. Terrible thing to have happened. Terrible.’

‘Oh, no, not really,’ I assured him placidly, shimmying out of my coat. ‘Could have been a lot worse.’

‘Really?’ He looked astonished. Paused to consider. To frown. ‘In what way, exactly?’

‘Well, he was having an affair. Phil, I mean. If he’d lived, it would have been a great deal messier, sharing the children, that kind of thing. I was just thinking that as I came up the path.’

His rheumy old eyes boggled in shock. ‘Euh,’ he muttered uneasily. ‘Good Lord.’

‘Yes, very good Lord, Angus.’ I raised my eyes and pointed to Him upstairs. ‘I was just thinking that too!’

Angus didn’t know what to say. He looked like he’d swallowed his dentures.

‘And sorry to have shocked you,’ I said more gently, putting my hand on his arm, ‘but the thing is, I’m not sure I can play the grieving widow any more when, frankly, I don’t feel remotely sad. Not now.’

Angus gave me a level stare for quite a long moment. Eventually he nodded. ‘Quite right. Good for you, old girl. Why be hypocritical?’

‘Why indeed.’

I held his gaze and then we both faced front in silence, digesting this. I knew I was a bit over the top at the moment, a bit out of control, but I couldn’t help it.

‘Has Peggy asked you about the book club?’ I asked at length, changing the subject.

‘Peggy? No.’

‘Oh, well, a few of us girls are starting one. Thought you might like to join.’

He smoothed back his flowing, Heseltinian locks delightedly. ‘I say …’ he purred, mouth twitching. ‘How sweet of you to think of me. D’you know, I don’t know …’

‘Oh, come on, Angus, you’ll love it.’ I nudged him. ‘Nattering away about Robert Harris’s latest thriller with a glass of Muscadet on a Tuesday? Got to be better than Panorama, surely?’

‘Yes. And Sylvia plays bridge on a Tuesday …’ You could see the wheels of his mind turning.

‘There you go, then. No reheated cauliflower cheese with an enormous baked potato on a tray.’

‘No.’ His eyes widened. ‘Quite. Well, I might.’ He looked enormously chipper suddenly. ‘Tell Peggy I might well.’

‘Might well what?’ said Jennie as she slipped in breathlessly beside me, just as, coincidentally, did Sylvia, only she had to sit on the pew in front, as there was no more room. She glared at her husband for not saving her a place.

‘I was just telling Angus about the book club,’ I breezed.

‘What book club?’ asked Sylvia, quick as a flash.

‘Oh, er … I’ll tell you about it later, my love,’ said Angus, as, fortuitously, Saintly Sue tapped her lectern to get us to our feet. We all rose obediently.

‘Is he coming?’ Jennie asked me softly, alarmed.

‘Think so,’ I told her.

‘We’ll have to ask Sylvia, now,’ she said nervously.

‘No we don’t,’ I said brazenly. ‘That’s not what Peggy had in mind at all. We don’t want Sylvia.’

‘Keep your voice down,’ Jennie muttered as Sylvia’s head half turned at her name.

‘And anyway, she’s got bridge on a Tuesday.’

I raised my chin. Opened my mouth to fairly shout the Gloria to the heavens, feeling empowered and euphoric. In fact my voice rang out so loud and clear above the others that Sue glanced at me in delight.

Luke, true to form, was late. This time I took more interest as he bounced boyishly down the aisle, blond hair flopping, music under his arm, eyes twinkling behind his specs. Hm. He’ll do, I thought.

Jennie shot me a horrified look. One or two people in the pew in front turned to grin.

‘What?’

‘You just said, “He’ll do”!’ she hissed.

‘Did I? Oh, well. Nothing like a bit of clarity, eh?’

More titters at this. Meanwhile Luke bounded up the steps to his organ, raised his sensitive hands and struck a chord which we all dutifully followed, launching into the Gloria again.

Afterwards, as we gathered up our hymn sheets and shuffled out, I made purposefully for our new organist as he descended from his instrument at the far end of the church. Jennie was on my heels, though, a restraining hand on my arm.

‘Steady,’ she muttered.

‘What? I’m just going to see if he wants to join.’

‘I know, I can tell, but some people might not understand the eager gleam in the young widow’s eyes. Might misconstrue it for callousness.’

I frowned as I hastened on. ‘Phil was having an affair, Jennie. For four years. I hate him for that. I hate him for lying to me, deceiving me and betraying me. I didn’t have a life, not a proper one; he saw to that. I just want to get on with what’s left of my life now. See what else is out there.’ I shook her off and strode towards the door, our organist ahead of us.

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ Jennie was saying, scurrying after me. ‘It’s just that social conventions being what they are, people will expect a tad of grief nonetheless and –’

‘Well, they shouldn’t,’ I told her firmly. ‘Not under the circumstances.’ I beamed as I bore down on Blondie.

‘Hell-o there! It’s Luke, isn’t it? I’m Poppy Shilling.’

He turned, a sheaf of music under his arm; smiled, surprised. Then, as the penny dropped, so did his countenance. He regarded me gravely.

‘Oh, Mrs Shilling. Oh, yes, I heard. I’m so terribly sorry. Please accept my sincere condolences.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ I said, waving my hand airily. ‘That’s all over and done with now, dead and buried even – hah! Now look, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but a few of us gals,’ I waggled my eyebrows jauntily, ‘are forming a bit of a book club. Didn’t know if you’d like to join?’

He gazed, startled. Was he all there, I wondered?

‘It’s on a Tuesday night,’ I went on more slowly, kindly even, in case he couldn’t keep up, ‘at Angie’s place. That’s Angie, the very attractive divorcee, who’s not here tonight although she’s usually in the choir. And her house is the pretty manor house you pass just as you go out of the village. We’ll have drinks and nibbles at seven and nothing too serious book-wise. In fact we might not even have books at all!’ I turned to grin at Jennie, who was looking strangely horrified. Odd, my friend Jennie: one minute she wanted me to snap out of it, the next, to snap right back in.

‘What Poppy means,’ she purred, shoving me out of the way and walking beside Luke as he went to get his bike from the church porch, ‘is that we won’t be tackling Dostoyevsky immediately, if you know what I mean.’

‘Oh, right. Jolly interesting, I expect, but a bit heavy, I agree.’

Was it my imagination, or was he shooting me interested glances over his shoulder as he bent to apply bicycle clips to his trousers? I could overlook those, I thought as I posed coquettishly on the church step, one arm stretched high above my head on the door jamb, the other on my hip.

‘Who’s jolly interesting?’ Oh Lord, Saintly Sue was looming from the shadows, breasting her music, cheeks very flushed. The Only Virgin In The Village, Peggy called her; desperate to be plucked.

‘Dostoyevsky,’ Luke told her, straightening up. ‘Jennie and, um, Poppy here, are starting a book club.’

She almost bounced on the spot, cashmere embonpoint jiggling. ‘Oh golly, how exciting! Can I join?’

‘No,’ I said quickly. Jennie shot me an aghast look.

‘Of course you can!’ she gushed.

I blinked. ‘Can she? I thought we didn’t want any more women? Bearing in mind …’ I covertly inclined my head Luke’s way.

‘No, no, I meant too many older women. Didn’t want it getting too, you know, pensioner-ish.’ She cast Sue a collaborative look. ‘But of course Sue can come, Lord yes. See you both next Tuesday, then.’ She had my arm in a vice-like grip. ‘Seven o’clock. Oh, and it’s going to be at Peggy’s house, not Angie’s – the one with the white picket fence. Toodle-oo!’ She frogmarched me off down the path at speed, leaving Luke gazing after us blankly; Sue, as if she’d been shot.

‘Have you been drinking?’ Jennie hissed.

‘No, why?’

‘Because you’re behaving as if you are completely and utterly pissed. You’re being outrageous, Poppy!’

‘Am I?’

‘Yes, and I end up looking like some ageist bigot just to get you off the hook!’

I stopped in the lane. Felt my forehead. I did feel a bit inebriated, actually. A bit light-headed. I was aware that my timorous desire not to rock the boat had been replaced in some fabulously epiphanic way by a desire to be true to myself whatever the consequences. The trouble was, my feelings had been suppressed for so long without the valve being even slightly loosened, that now the lid was off, the contents were not so much out, as all over the walls.

‘Sorry. Sorry, Jennie.’ I walked on, slower now. ‘But the thing is,’ I said carefully, feeling my way, ‘I feel the truth is so … well, crucial, suddenly. Of such vital importance, you know?’ I turned to face my friend earnestly. I felt faintly visionary about it; might even get a bit evangelical. ‘I mean, it’s so liberating, isn’t it?’ I urged. ‘Why don’t we all just say what we mean all the time? Always?’

‘Because polite society dictates that we don’t, that’s why,’ she said heatedly. ‘Just because you’re a widow, doesn’t mean the bridle can come off, you know. Doesn’t give you carte blanche to say whatever comes into your head. You still have to exercise restraint; can’t just trample on people’s feelings!’

I blinked, suitably rebuked. ‘No, I suppose not,’ I conceded. ‘Except … everyone tramples on mine?’

‘Phil trampled on yours,’ she reminded me. ‘Not everyone.’

‘Why are we going in here?’ I ducked as we made a sharp right turn and went into the pub under a low beam.

‘Because if you haven’t had a drink,’ she told me as she steered me into the snug of the Rose and Crown bar, ‘then perhaps you should. Two large gin and tonics, please, Hugo.’ This, to the barman, a local teenager in his gap year, as she parked me firmly on a bar stool. Still looking distinctly harassed she flourished a tenner at him. ‘And even if you don’t need one,’ she told me, collapsing in a heap on a stool beside me, ‘after that, I jolly well do.’




9

A few days later I received a surprisingly efficient missive from my solicitor in the form of an email, apologizing for our disorganized inaugural meeting and wondering if I had time to ‘pop in for a second attempt’. I did, as it happened, the following afternoon, and since he too was free, a meeting was arranged. As I sat in his supremely tidy waiting room, watched over by a pleasantly plump blonde matron with pussycat-bow chiffon blouse, navy skirt and red nails, I realized something of a sea change had occurred here since my last visit. When I was shown into his office it became all the more seismic as Sam Hetherington stood up to greet me, spotty tie firmly in place, suit jacket on, papers and files previously littering the floor now neatly aligned on shelves behind him, no half-empty mugs of tea, and no sign of the very dead spider plant wilting on his windowsill.

‘You’ve scrubbed up,’ I said in surprise as we shook hands across his desk.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Funny. I was thinking the same about you. Didn’t know one was allowed to voice it.’

I laughed. ‘I meant your room, actually.’

He looked taken aback. ‘Oh. Right. Sorry, it’s just Janice insists I wear a tie so I assumed you meant … However, you do look better,’ he concluded awkwardly as we both sat down.

I smiled. ‘Thanks. I’m feeling much better.’

I realized the last time I’d been in here I’d been sporting clothes that had seen better days and hair that hadn’t seen a brush for a while. It also occurred to me that his own dark wavy hair together with eyes the colour of good Madeira was my most favourite combination.