Megan shook her head slightly while looking down at the pint glass she filled.
“For whatever good it’ll do now. But I suppose he would be interested, being family and all.”
“I think that’s it, in a nutshell. Pure curiosity.”
Megan carefully set the second pint down in front of Adrian.
“And we all know what curiosity did to the cat, now don’t we?”
Rather than listen to her elucidate, Adrian handed over the money.
“Keep the change,” he said.
When Adrian brought the drinks over and took a seat, Lenny did a quick round of introductions. Adrian sat on the same side of the table as Pippa. He noticed Freya hugging a cloth carrier bag to her chest and barely looking at any of them as Lenny talked. Adrian realised then just how deft Lenny was at small talk, telling Freya how he had become the owner, about their progress on the renovations and his plans for the future of the place.
“You’ll be pleased to hear that my team is set to start first thing Monday if that’s okay by you?” said Pippa, and then to Freya. “Leonard has hired my company to do the landscaping.”
“That’s great news. Not sure I said on the phone, but I won’t be around. I need to get back to London,” said Lenny. “But Adrian here will be staying on all next week. He can give you access to the house if you need anything.”
“Thanks. Good to know.”
“I’ve got another contractor coming to join me,” added Adrian. “We’re doing some structural work. And then it’s plastering and sorting out the flooring. But Lenny has some firm ideas on that.”
“Used to be lovely,” said Freya, surprising everyone.
“Sorry?” said Adrian.
“Freya’s right. The house used to have lovely varnished floorboards,” said Pippa. “Until Mrs Darlington insisted on covering everything up with that dreadful linoleum.”
“Cheap. The woman was cheap,” said Freya, and Adrian couldn’t quite stifle a chuckle.
Having heard Freya speak, Lenny asked her a few gentle questions about what she did for a living. They found out she worked from home for an examination board helping to set the curriculum for national school examinations, as well as providing online tuition for students. She answered other questions guardedly, with few words. They discovered she lived alone, or at least with her two rescue cats. From the little she spoke, Adrian guessed Megan had been right, that she rarely left her home or mixed socially.
“Can I ask? When did you first meet Luke?” asked Lenny.
“When would that have been, Freya? Back in the seventies? I’m the oldest, and I’d have been around fourteen, so you’d all have been, what, twelve?”
“Twelve, yes. We were the same age, Luke, Howard and me,” blurted Freya, turning to Lenny. “But Luke was an old twelve, if you know what I mean?”
“True,” said Pippa. “A bundle of energy and fun around us, but serious otherwise. He was only usually here for three or four weeks over the school summer holidays, but we all took to him immediately.”
“Have you met the brother and sister?” asked Freya.
“Only Matthew,” said Lenny.
“They took after their mother,” said Pippa, with a slight roll of her eyes. “Accompanying her on long walks in the countryside. Reading aloud to each other in the back garden. Church service on Sunday mornings followed by lunch in the gardens here. Then home for a simple tea in the afternoon. Like a family out of a Victorian novel.”
“Doesn’t sound so bad,” said Adrian.
“Mrs Darlington had her rules. They only read sanctioned books—which often resulted in them defaulting to Bible passages. And nobody was allowed to speak during their walks, except to smile and say hello to any fellow ramblers they met along the way. They had a television in the house nobody was allowed to watch. She forbade them from making friends here, because she said this was a temporary home and local children would most likely be unsuitable—”
“And yet Luke found you,” said Adrian.
“We found each other,” said Freya, which seemed an odd thing to say.
“Luke was a bit of a rebel,” said Pippa, giggling at the memory. “Just like inStar Wars, he used to say. The three of us—Freya, Howie and me—were sitting together on the village green the day he appeared. He wandered over to say hello while the rest of his family were finishing their lunch. Just plonked himself down, he did, cross-legged without waiting for an invitation. But he was one of those people you just gravitated towards. I remember seeing his mother get up and march over to get him, and that’s when I saw the annoyance in his eyes. Before she was within earshot, he’d arranged for us to meet up the next day, same place, same time. Said he would find an excuse to get away from them. And he did.”
“Did their father ever come with them?”
