Mandy looked surprised, as though she’d never considered that human beings rang the church bells. “I’ve no idea. Perhaps they come in from Ashburn. Most of the cottages were owned by a local estate and when they were sold off the tenants couldn’t afford to buy at the prices they were asking. Most of them moved to the estate in Ashburn.”
“And the cottages?”
“Bought as second homes or by people like us.”
“So there’s nobody apart from Miss Downey?”
Mandy laughed... a tinkling, irritating sound. “You’ll have to meet her; she knows a lot about local history and all that. If you ever want to know what’s gone on in Manton Worthy in the past, she’s the person to ask.”
I smiled but didn’t answer. That afternoon I went for a walk through the village. It nestled in rolling, patchwork fields; chocolate-box pretty with its thatched cob cottages and ancient stone church next-door to the pub — everyone’s ideal English village. Perhaps I had been wrong to be afraid. Perhaps everything would be okay... as long as I avoided Carter.
Over the next weeks I became bolder. I walked through the village — well away from Carter’s land — and I even took Mandy up on her invitation to call round anytime for a coffee. Perhaps I needed to see someone other than Paul. Or perhaps I just felt I needed to know what was going on in the outside world.
One afternoon I found myself sitting in Mandy’s front room overlooking the main village street. She had done it up nicely, I’ll give her that. There was an old-fashioned inglenook fireplace and she’d taken up the carpet to reveal the original stone floor which she had promptly covered up again with a large abstract rug in shades of grey. There was a whiff of minimalism in the air, which surprised me as Mandy hadn’t seemed the type for that sort of thing. She talked at length about interior design... and I listened. She had gone for a fusion of old rustic and modern, she said. I nodded and let her rabbit on. But I had more important things to worry about.
She mentioned the murder just as I had bitten into a Danish pastry. I felt myself choking and grabbed at the mug of coffee. By the time Mandy had fetched me a glass of water from her new beech kitchen with its slate-tiled floor, I had composed myself, although my heart was still pounding against my ribs. Who could have thought that the mere mention of it would bring back all the old terrors? But Mandy can’t have noticed anything was wrong because she kept on talking, telling me how the girl had been found up by the woods, on the site of the old gallows. She’d been strangled, Mandy told me, enjoying every detail of the story. Strangled with a bell rope from the church. The police knew who’d done it, of course, but they could never prove anything. The boy had had learning difficulties and his mother had given him an alibi.
I asked her where she’d heard all this and she tapped the side of her nose. “A woman I work with used to live here. She told me.”
“Did she mention Mr. Carter who has the farm next-door to us?” I regretted the question as soon as I’d asked it. But Carter was on my mind. In fact, if Paul knew how scared I was of Carter, he’d have done something about it, so I kept quiet. Trouble was the last thing I wanted in Manton Worthy.
Mandy looked puzzled. “No, I don’t think she did. I can ask her about him if you like.” She leaned forward, eager to please. She reminded me of a dog we had once owned, a stupid animal who was all enthusiasm and no sense. It had been put down and we’d buried it in the back garden.
“No. It’s okay. It’s not important.” I hoped she couldn’t sense the fear in my voice.
We got through three cups of coffee before I looked at my watch and realised how late it was getting. Paul would start to worry if I wasn’t home soon. Perhaps it was the age gap between us that made him treat me like a child sometimes. Mandy tried to persuade me to stay — she was probably lonely there in that cottage, that cage of rustic minimalist chic, with her husband away so much — but I had to get away. She was beginning to get on my nerves.
Now that I knew the village was full of incomers like myself I felt more comfortable walking back. But as I hurried back down the main street towards the Old Rectory I heard a voice behind me.
“Karen? It is Karen, isn’t it?”
I stood there frozen to the spot for a few seconds before I took a deep, calming breath and turned round. I tried to smile but I felt my mouth forming into an expression more of pain than pleasure.
The woman was small, bent with age. Her hair was snowy white and her flesh looked like thin parchment stretched over the bones. But her sharp eyes hinted at an agile brain behind that mask of age. I heard myself saying, “Sorry, you’ve made a mistake. My name’s Petra.”
But the woman’s bright grey eyes were focussed on mine like searchlights. She hesitated, a knowing smile playing on her lips. “I’m so sorry, my dear, you just reminded me of one of my old pupils. I’m Edith Downey. I live in Beech Cottage... just over there.” She waved a gnarled finger in the vague direction of a row of thatched, pastel-painted cottages straight off a picture postcard. I shuffled my feet, anxious to get away. “So you’ve moved here recently?”
“Yes.” She looked at me expectantly. She wanted more. “We’ve moved into the Old Rectory... me and my husband... Paul. We’ve come from London.” I tried to smile but I don’t think I quite managed it.
Miss Downey took a step closer. Her eyes were still on mine, as though she were reading my thoughts. “It’s all new people now... apart from the Carters and myself. I taught at the village school... when there was a village school.”
“Really.” I tried to sound interested but I felt the adrenalin pumping around my body as I prepared for flight.
“Have you been to the church yet?”
I shook my head.
“It’s worth seeing. It has a medieval screen with some fine angel carvings. Some of the people who used to live here still come for Sunday service... most of them live in Ashburn now but they still feel they have ties here.”
There was a hint of recrimination in her voice; a subtle criticism, as though she was hinting that I was personally responsible for driving up the village house prices and evicting people from their homes. But I said nothing. I wanted the encounter to be over. I wanted to get back to Paul.
I remember running back to the Old Rectory as though the hounds of hell were after me. I sank three large gin and tonics before I began the supper. Paul was busy in his office so I don’t think he noticed.
It was awhile before I summoned up the courage to walk through the village again. I made excuses to myself: I had to use my new Range Rover because I wanted to do some shopping in Exeter or visit a supermarket ten miles away... I didn’t dare risk the one at Ashburn. I was making any excuse not to walk past Miss Downey’s cottage. But how could I avoid the woman forever?
Somehow I had to persuade Paul that moving to Manton Worthy had been a mistake. But as I wondered how to go about it, I carried on day after day, driving through the village in the Range Rover wearing my dark glasses. The days passed, and before I knew it the lanes were filled with farm vehicles and the fields hummed day and night with the noise of combine harvesters. When Paul complained, as I knew he would, I took my chance and said that farms were noisy places and we might be better off somewhere else. But he was determined to stay put. Once Paul had made a decision, he would never admit he was wrong.
Soon after that a leaflet came through the door. It was an invitation to the church’s harvest festival, followed by a hot-pot supper in the church hall. Naturally I threw it straight in the bin and I had the shock of my life when Paul found it there and said he wanted to go. He said he’d decided it was about time we became part of the community. My mouth went dry and my hands began to shake. This was the last thing I wanted.