Jamie brought out a cardboard box containing a selection of doughnuts iced with a variety of funny animal faces – frogs, cats, pandas. The penguins were my favourite.
‘These are brilliant!’ Ellen took an elephant. ‘My kids would love them.’
‘They’ve sold out both mornings Jamie’s made them for the café,’ Sarah said, her mouth stuffed with a ladybird. ‘He could make a proper business out of it if he could bear to give up saving the universe.’
‘Icouldbear to,’ Jamie mumbled. ‘It just takes time sorting all the paperwork.’
Sarah hadn’t been on any more dates, but she’d been chatting to one guy for the past month who had managed to keep her interest.
‘He’s funny. And he calls me on my BS. And he’s, I dunno, sweet isn’t the right word. Kind? Honourable? Anyway, I’m thinking I might be up for meeting with him. We’ll see how it goes.’
I glanced at Jamie. His eyes, fixed on the table, as always when Sarah was describing her romantic life, flickered up for a second and back down again. Was he banking on this new interest being as hopeless as previous dates?
We waited for Ashley to take a drowsy Frances home before I finished off the evening by bringing out the box.
‘Anybody got any ideas about how to get into this? Jamie? I thought you might know a trick or two.’
Jamie picked up the box and walked into the kitchen. By the time Sarah and I had got up to follow him, he had come back out.
‘Here.’ He put the box on the table.
‘Thanks.’ I slid it over to where I was sitting. Everyone looked at me expectantly.
‘You can open it now,’ Jamie said.
The problem was, I didn’t want to any more. Not here, with all of them looking.
I cracked open the top of the box until I could make out the hardback notebook on the top. The faded blue cover had wrinkles in the places where water had managed to seep in. There was writing in the centre, too smudged and worn to decipher.
‘Well?’ Lucille asked.
‘It’s a pile of notebooks. But they’re really damaged and if I take them out they’ll probably fall to pieces. The pages look stuck together.’
‘You could try tweezers,’ Jamie suggested.
‘Good idea. I’ll try when I get home, then.’
There was a general groan of disappointment.
‘Sorry, guys. You’ll have to wait for next month’s instalment.’
As soon as I arrived back at the cottage, after taking a moment to breathe a sigh of relief that I made it home intact, I carefully extricated the four notebooks from the box and placed them in the airing cupboard to dry out. Unable to resist, I did try opening the first one, but when the soggy page started to tear I hastily laid it back down again and left them to it.
‘Probably maths homework,’ I muttered on repeat as I thrashed about in bed that night. Because everyone locked up old homework in a metal tin and stored it in the attic. I didn’t think even my oddball grandmother would do that.
* * *
The next morning, Saturday, the air was sweet and mild, the sky a startling blue. Having been relieved of my café job by Sarah’s mum, now back from her cruise, I decided to take a walk to Frances’ farm. After a brisk two miles through the woods, I arrived pleasantly worn out, tangly-haired and warm-cheeked.
The modest white farmhouse stood at the end of a concrete drive surrounded by outbuildings, not a discarded plant pot or scruffy weed in sight. A willowy figure I assumed to be Frances’ farm manager was plodding up the edge of a field that rose steeply behind the house. I rapped the red front door’s brass knocker. Frances opened it the instant I took my hand away.
‘Jenny. Saw you out of the window and thought you must be heading this way.’ She was a little breathless, stooped over slightly, with deep purple shadows under her eyes, but her shirt was ironed and her hair neatly combed.
‘I couldn’t face another day sorting out the Hoard alone. Do you have time to share some lunch?’ I swung the rucksack containing sandwiches and a carton of soup off my back.
She looked down her nose at me. ‘Don’t pretend this visit is for your benefit. I’m old and ill, not yet senile.’
‘Which is why you’re great company. Please don’t make me go back to scrubbing mouldy window frames.’
