The Year of Taking Chances (3 page)

It had seemed a good idea to Saffron at the time: a quiet getaway, all on her own.
She could escape from Max, escape from work, her parents, London .
.
.
everything, basically.
She would leave it all behind and enjoy a few days of rural bliss in a Suffolk village, while she worked out what on earth she was going to do.

Baker’s Cottage had looked delightful online, the perfect place to enjoy some peace and solitude.
With its thatched roof and double frontage painted the colour of vanilla ice-cream, it was
like something from a children’s storybook – a warm, welcoming place, she imagined, with home-baked muffins cooling on a tray and the softest, most blissfully enveloping beds.
The photo
on the website had obviously been taken in the summer and showed a front garden full of colour: tall lupins and delphiniums, bright cornflowers and scarlet poppies, and – yes – sprays
of white roses climbing around the door.
She could practically smell their fragrance as she spontaneously clicked her mouse and made the booking.

Several hours later an email pinged in from the owner, one Mr Sykes:

After living in London for seventeen years, the thought of leaving a door key anywhere other than safely in a handbag close to your body felt completely alien.
How charming, she thought.
How
heart-warmingly trusting!

Ha.
More fool her.
She should have known such slapdash arrangements could only mean trouble.

It was dark when she arrived and she had to drive around Larkmead several times before eventually spotting the sign reading ‘Pear Tree Lane’, half-covered in shrubbery.
There was no
proper street lighting, so she crawled along the road, headlights blazing, peering blindly at the shadowy houses on either side.
Then, once she’d finally found the cottage itself, she lifted
the mat to find a complete absence of keys.
Off to a great start.

Two fruitless phone messages later, she was grateful for the helpful neighbour who produced a spare key.
But, once inside, it took only seconds before the cold water of disappointment poured all
over her.
In reality the cottage was a lot less delightful than she’d anticipated: damp, cold and clammy, as if no living human had set foot inside for weeks on end.
Her nose wrinkled at the
mildewy smell as she poked her head first into the small (‘cosy’) beige living room with its old stone hearth, then the even smaller (‘compact’) galley kitchen with a couple
of desiccated pot plants by the sink and a dripping tap.
Upstairs were two chilly bedrooms with moth-eaten velvet curtains, and a very turquoise bathroom.

It was a far cry from the boutique hotels she occasionally stayed in for work purposes, she thought regretfully.
No sign of a monsoon shower or luxury bedding under
this
roof.
Still,
she’d made her bed, now she had to lie on it, as her mum would say.
With or without the expensive Egyptian-cotton sheets.

Once she’d dumped her case upstairs and unpacked her provisions in the fridge, she located the folder Bernie had mentioned and worked out how to turn the heating on.
The boiler obediently
rumbled into life, the radiators began valiantly belting out heat and she found her spirits lifting a little as she made herself a cup of tea and sank into the squidgy cord sofa.
Maybe this would
be okay after all.
She had warmth, she had solitude, her phone was off and her out-of-office email reply was on.
She didn’t have to do a single thing now for three whole days except relax, go
for long walks in the countryside, read books and sleep.
Oh yes.
And maybe make a few big decisions about what, exactly, she was going to do about Max, and the terrible discovery she’d made
on Christmas Eve.
But not now.
That could wait.

Saffron’s temporary peace and tranquillity didn’t last long.
Not even the night.
She was just settling down in front of the telly that evening with an enormous box
of chocolates when the lights went out.
The TV screen turned blank.
From the kitchen she heard the fridge making a depressed-sounding groan, as if to say
Here we go again, fellas
, as the
place was plunged into unearthly darkness.

‘Bollocks,’ she muttered, patting around for her phone and switching it on, so as to give her some kind of light, however feeble.
It was spooky just how thickly, blackly dark it was,
out here in the sticks.

Six new emails buzzed in as her phone came to life, then a succession of beeps, indicating new voicemails, too.
Ignoring them all, she pulled up Mr Sykes’s phone number and rang him
again, without holding out much hope of a reply.

‘Bernie here, leave me a message and I’ll get back to you,’ she heard eventually and groaned.
Was there any point leaving another message?
When – if ever – would he
‘get back’ to her?
It was New Year’s Eve after all, and he was running a pub.
From his hands-off approach so far regarding the cottage, she could easily be waiting until January.
Bloody hell.
She was just going to have to track him down in person and get this sorted properly.

Saffron was pretty sure she’d seen The Partridge as she drove into the village earlier: a white-painted timber-framed building with large, lit windows looming on a corner of the main
street.
It wasn’t far.
And it was either that or falter around blindly, trying to find the fuse-box herself in almost total darkness.
She had visions of her limp body flung back by a jagged
bolt of electricity and lying dead in Baker’s Cottage as the New Year rang in.
If Bernie Sykes was as slack at checking over his property as he was at answering his phone, she could be
mouldering here for weeks.

It was raining as she began walking along the road, a spiteful, needly sort of shower, horribly cold.
She pulled up her collar and walked faster.
Luckily she was used to solving problems.
Working in PR with all sorts of divas and egomaniacs, you had to think quickly and get results, however dramatic a hissy fit you were faced with.
She’d track down Bernie and drag him out to
the cottage, in a head-lock if need be, so he could sort everything out.
In half an hour this would already feel like a distant memory and she’d be back on the sofa, lights blazing through
the cottage once more.
With a bit of luck, her only dilemma then would be whether to have a hazelnut praline or a dark-chocolate truffle first.

Bernie Sykes was a booming ruddy-cheeked giant of a man in his fifties, or thereabouts, with rumpled hair and an un-ironed shirt.
He was leaning over the bar pumps when Saffron
walked into the pub, addressing a couple of men with gusto; no mean feat when you were wearing a lopsided purple paper crown.

She stood at the bar, rain dripping from her hair, waiting for him to finish so that she could catch his attention.

‘And then I said to her, “Well, bloody hell, this is not some kind of
circus
, you know, dear, you can’t behave like
that
in here .
.
.
”’

Saffron could feel her nose turning pink as the heat from the pub warmed her face.
She coughed discreetly, hoping he would notice her before January began.

‘And she said – you’ll never guess what
she
said .
.
.
’

On second thoughts, this sounded like one of those shaggy-dog stories with no ending.
‘Mr Sykes?’
Saffron said.

Bernie and his two friends both turned and looked at her.
‘That’s me,’ said Bernie, his face suddenly falling.
‘Oh dear.
Not from the
Gazette
, are you?
Or the
council again?
I’ve said everything I intend to about the horse incident, and it’s all getting rather tiresome, to be honest.’

‘I’m Saffron Flint.
I’m renting Baker’s Cottage from you?’

Bernie’s face cleared and he thrust out a large pink hand.
‘So you are!
Greetings, Miss Flint.
I trust everything is to your satisfaction?’

‘Well, no, actually,’ she said.
‘I had to borrow a key from the lady next door – Gemma?
– before I could actually get into the property, and now the electrics have
gone.’

‘Oh, Bernie,’ said one of the men at the bar mock-sorrowfully.
One of his front teeth was missing, Saffron noticed, as he wagged a finger at the landlord.
‘Not good.’

‘Standards, Bern,’ said the other man, making a tsk-ing sound.
‘Standards are falling.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Bernie said.
‘That sounds an absolutely dreadful way to begin your visit.
Can I pour you a drink, by way of apology?
I’ve got some very good malt
whisky, which is just the ticket on a night like this.
Or I’ve a rather tasty Chilean red, if you’re more of a wine-drinker.’

‘No, thanks,’ Saffron replied.
‘I’d just like you to come and put the electricity on, please.
I’d do it myself, only I don’t have a clue where the fuse-box is
and it’s very dark.’

‘Of course, of course,’ Bernie said.
‘Absolument.’
He peered around the busy pub.
‘Tell you what, I’ll find my son.
He’ll sort the whole thing
out for you – very competent lad, much more use than his idiot father.
Where’s Harry gone?’

The man with the missing tooth scratched his beard.
‘Harry?
Off to Spencer’s tonight, isn’t he?’

‘Course he is.
Bother.’
Bernie frowned thoughtfully, then brightened.
‘Wait, that’s right next door to you, Miss Flint – perfect.
Go back and knock at The Granary
– the big farmhouse alongside the cottage – and ask for Harry, tell him his dad sent you and you need him to sort the electrics.
He won’t mind popping round for two minutes to
fix things.’

Saffron hesitated, feeling awkward at the prospect of bothering her neighbour again, let alone hauling out one of her guests on New Year’s Eve.
‘Unless you could maybe nip down and
have a look yourself?’
she suggested weakly.

He shook his head.
‘Sorry, love.
On my busiest night of the year?
I’m needed here.’

As if to prove his point, a group of rowdy women burst into the pub in fancy dress.
The cowgirl twirled a lasso around her head, nearly knocking off the wall a large photo of Bernie holding an
enormous fish.
The naughty nurse screeched in delight and slapped the cowgirl’s fringed bottom.
The fairy started running around the pub in her pink kitten-heels, flinging silver glitter over
everyone.

‘Here comes trouble,’ said missing-tooth man with a gappy smirk.

‘It’s the Village People,’ sniggered his mate, as the last woman, dressed as a Native American, complete with towering feathered headdress and war-paint, entered, announcing
‘HOW!’
to the room in a loud voice.

Bernie looked thrilled and dropped into a bow.
‘Ladies, good evening,’ he cried.
‘How splendid you all look tonight.
Can I tempt you with some rather delicious Lambrini?
A
cocktailette?’

The women thronged at the bar, all orange faces, cleavage and hairspray, demanding Bernie’s attention in shrill voices.
Saffron knew when she was beaten.
‘Okay,’ she muttered
and slipped back into the night.

It was only when she was ringing the doorbell of The Granary that she wished she’d had the foresight to ask Bernie to phone his son in advance, give him some kind of
warning that she was about to descend for the second time that evening.
She wished, too, that she’d thought to bring an umbrella with her to Suffolk, as she was now thoroughly drenched after
walking to and from the pub, her long hair plastered unbecomingly around her face and her feet soggy where water had seeped into her old boots.
Uggh.
This was not how she’d envisaged her
peaceful getaway turning out.

She heard footsteps coming towards the front door and then it was pulled open, golden light spilling out into the darkness.

Standing there was the woman she’d spoken to earlier, now dressed in the most gorgeous dark-blue party frock, with her hair piled on her head.
‘My God,’ she cried, her mouth
dropping open at the sight of the soaked, bedraggled creature on her doorstep.
‘Are you all right?
What’s happened?’