‘I’ll have a coffee,’ he said, sitting down at the table.
‘Grandpa, you have to say please or Jenny won’t let you have one,’ a lion growled as it crawled into the room. ‘'S rude not to.’
‘Oh, I’m sure Grandpa just forgot.’ I flicked on the coffee machine.
‘Because old people forget things,’ the lion rumbled, stalking round the table. ‘It’s cos more cells in their brains are getting dead every day.’
‘Um, I don’t think that’s quite how it is.’ I handed Fisher his coffee, pouring another one for myself, half wishing I could add a splosh of something to ease my nerves.
‘I heard your neighbour has moved on.’ He shook his head, smiling. ‘Things go from bad to worse out there in the woods for you. One disaster after another.’
I gave the lion now clinging to my ankle a pat on the head. ‘I’d hardly call Mack not being around a disaster.’ A horrible thought crashed into my head. ‘Have you bought his house?’
‘Why?’ Fisher sat up then, nearly spilling his coffee. ‘Is it back on the market?’
It was my turn to be surprised. ‘Was it ever off the market?’What?Had Mack changed his mind and decided not to sell? What did that mean?
Fisher sat back in his chair. ‘So, what about you? Still determined to hang onto that money-pit? I hope you’ve had it rewired. A primary cause of domestic fires, dodgy wiring. We wouldn’t want a tragedy, now, would we?’
Before I managed to work out whether I’d been threatened, a loud roar erupted from the top of the stairs followed by what sounded like several elbows, knees and heads crashing down to the bottom.
By the time order had been restored, Fisher had scooped up his briefcase and gone. The unpleasant disturbance in the atmosphere, however, lingered. I went to rejoin Hamish, Jonno and the lion, now nursing their bruises in front of a DVD.
‘Can I have Gummy?’ Jonno asked, face peeping out of a blanket.
‘Where is he?’ I asked, scanning the living room.
‘We shooted him out of the cannon.’
I trotted upstairs, poking my head in on Maddie to remind her it was homework time, before bracing myself to enter the pit of mess the triplets called their bedroom. Searching through the dressing-up clothes and piles of stuffed animals, I eventually spotted a pair of bunny ears under the bunk bed. As I got onto my hands and knees to reach it, my eyes landed on a thin green plastic folder. Thinking it looked more like something belonging in Will’s filing cabinet than a little boy’s bedroom, I pulled it out and flicked it open.
Gummy forgotten, I sat back against the bed and started to read.
41
When Ellen arrived home a few minutes later I briefly filled her in on the day’s events and cycled home as fast as my shaking legs could pedal me.
Unable to even think about eating, I studied the folder again. I was desperate to knock on Mack’s door and show this to him. If he wasn’t selling the house, this affected him too.
Should I call? Send a text?
I needed to know what to do, but there was no way I could talk to my other friends about it.
After work next morning, bleary-eyed, head pounding, I washed down some painkillers with a swig of scalding tea and spent the day on my laptop, researching Fisher’s company and recent land acquisitions, then searching images of him at local events and press releases, trying to spot him with the phoney inspector.
By three-thirty, the headache had been replaced with information so red-hot I needed oven gloves to scratch my forehead. I was still deciding what to do when Will arrived home.
‘Jenny! I’ve brought some leaflets and things you’ll find useful. And Ellen said you might be interested in work experience? Don’t worry about dinner – there’s pizza in the freezer.’
Over the next hour Will patiently answered my questions, talked to me about different options for becoming a teaching assistant and, most important of all, poured encouragement and optimism all over my decision. Will was a crazily busy man. On top of running a school and being a husband and father of five children, he’d found the time to dig out all this information for me.
And I’d spent the day searching for incriminating evidence against his father-in-law.
I had to tell him, before my guts twisted up to the point of no return.
‘I found a folder in the boys’ room yesterday. Fisher had left his briefcase on the stairs, and Hamish admitted taking the folder to see if it was a treasure map. He wasn’t completely wrong. It actually contains plans to build a giant leisure complex in the forest.’
Will leant back on the sofa. ‘Yeah, he had this idea a few years ago to convert the campsite by Hatherstone Hall – by Scarlett’s – into an upmarket eco-holiday village thing. Ellen’s sister, Erica, was going to run it. But he needed some Hall land, and they weren’t interested in selling.’
