Then there was the family with five children. Cozy Cottage was far too small to accommodate them. Which meant that the children would spill noisily out into the back garden, before taking over the front garden and very soon playing in the streets like pre-war East Enders. The peace of High Tor would be shattered forever.
The less said about the couple who arrived on a motorbike, the better. The front garden of Cozy Cottage becoming an open-air repair shop, with oily engine parts scattered all over the scuffed lawn … it didn’t bear thinking of.
Nor was Carole much keener on the pair who came in a Rolls-Royce. Her upbringing had taught her that one of the worst sins in the middle-class lexicon was ‘showing off’.
No, in fact she reckoned she’d got off quite lightly with Adrian Greenford.
‘Would you like to come in?’ he asked, standing at the gate of Wharfedale.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Come and meet Gwyneth.’
‘Oh.’ It was the last thing she wanted to do. Having just decided that her association with Adrian was going to be a Starbucks-specific one, she didn’t want to go back on that so soon. Besides, her right knee was causing her pain and she couldn’t wait to rest it in her sitting-room armchair at High Tor.
‘I would love you to meet her, and this seems the perfect opportunity … that is, if I’m not keeping you from some other commitment …?’
Her first instinct was very quickly to invent another commitment. That was one of Carole Seddon’s great skills. She had lost count of the number of other commitments she had invented to hide the emptiness of her life.
But she stopped herself. Her second instinct was born of ingrained politeness. To refuse Adrian’s offer at that moment would be an act of appalling bad manners. ‘No, I’d be delighted to meet Gwyneth,’ she lied.
NINE
Adrian’s apology for the state of the house seemed unnecessary, even by Carole’s exacting standards. True, there were some unopened cardboard boxes in the hall, but otherwise the interior had been furnished and decorated to a very high spec. Of course, in characteristic Fethering style, Carole had known who the old couple who lived there previously were, but she hadn’t known them. One had died and the other gone into a care home, so she expected that the place had been left in something of a state. In fact, she remembered Adrian describing it as ‘a bit of a tip’. He and Gwyneth – or, more likely, given her lack of mobility, he – had been busy since they took over ownership. A residual smell of fresh paint confirmed Carole’s supposition.
All of the rails and other invalid aids that Adrian had mentioned on their previous meeting at Starbucks were in place. The garden path was levelled asphalt and there was an incline up to the front door. No handrails on the outside but plenty inside, suggesting that, though Gwyneth Greenford could drag her way round the house, all of her outside excursions were in the wheelchair.
As they entered, Adrian called out, ‘Gwyn, I’ve brought someone to meet you,’ and ushered Carole into the front sitting room.
The woman sitting in the armchair, with a folded wheelchair beside it, was younger than Carole had expected. She’d had the image of Adrian’s crippled wife as being his age, if not older, but Gwyneth Greenford was a good twenty years younger. She was dressed in smart-casual clothes, well-cut dark blue trousers and a silvery silk jumper. Her make-up was expertly done. Whatever her disability might be, there was no visible manifestation of it.
‘Oh, hello, Carole,’ said Gwyneth.
This instant recognition was a bit of a shock, but when she thought about it, perhaps it wasn’t so odd. Adrian had said he’d told his wife about her, and Gwyneth would have had plenty of opportunities to see her walking back and forth along the High Street. The shops on the parade were only yards away from Wharfedale. Instinctively, Carole looked towards the windows. Net curtains, so to see anything outside in detail Gwyneth would have had to peer around the edges. But she wouldn’t have been the first person in Fethering to have done that.
‘Hello. A pleasure to meet you,’ said Carole, in a manner that would have made her parents proud.
‘I’d offer to make you coffee, but …’ Gwyneth spread her hands wide to sum up her helplessness.
‘I’ve just had coffee, thank you. At Starbucks. That’s where I met Adrian.’
‘Oh.’ Gwyneth looked at her husband.
Rather awkwardly, he said, ‘Happy coincidence.’ Then, swiftly, ‘But can I get you anything, my love? A drink or …?’
‘No, thank you. Ooh, there is something you could do for me, Adrian …’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s a parcel in the kitchen that I want to catch the post.’
‘Oh, I’m sure there’s no rush for that, my love.’
Carole checked her watch. Not yet noon. ‘No. You’ve missed the morning collection at the Post Office. And the afternoon one doesn’t go till five thirty.’
‘I would like it to catch the post,’ said Gwyneth definitively. ‘If you don’t do it now, Adrian, we’ll forget.’
Some invisible marital semaphore must have been exchanged, because he instantly said, ‘Very well, my love.’
When he got to the sitting-room door, his wife said, ‘Close that. Then Carole and I can get to know everything about each other.’
Carole bridled at the thought. The idea of anyone getting to know everything about her was an appalling one. And, when she came to think of it, a Northern one too. Still, over the years she had managed to frustrate many people’s attempts to get near her real self. She didn’t think the wheelchair-bound Gwyneth Greenford would prove too much of a challenge.
‘So, Carole,’ came the opening salvo, ‘Adrian tells me you’re retired. What did you do during your working life?’
This was easy stuff. A quick résumé of her career at the Home Office (omitting the fact that she was edged out of employment a little earlier than she would have wished). All facts, nothing that came near to being personal.
‘And are you married?’
Potentially trickier, but straight, unembroidered answers had worked in the past. ‘Divorced,’ she said and, to avoid being asked for details, went straight on, ‘I have one son, who’s married with two daughters.’
It seemed to have worked. No enquiries about the divorce. All Gwyneth said was, ‘Adrian and I don’t have children.’
Carole did not say anything. ‘I’m sorry’ was always a risky response. In the past, Carole had been as bored by the rationalizations of couples telling her why they had chosen not to have children as she had by the desolation of those who’d been unable to have them.
She decided to move on to the offensive. ‘And you, Gwyneth? Did you use to work?’ Fortunately, she stopped herself from adding something on the lines of ‘before you got ill’. She didn’t want to prompt a litany of ailments.
‘I worked in a secretarial capacity for a car dealership in Leeds.’
‘Oh? And is that how you came to meet Adrian?’
‘Yes.’
A commendably short answer. Maybe Gwyneth was as unwilling to divulge anything personal as she was. That would be very satisfactory, thought Carole, though she still felt a minor pang of unfulfilled nosiness.
Her hostess then went off in another direction, maybe demonstrating some nosiness of her own. ‘Your neighbour,’ she said, ‘the one in the house two away from us …’
‘Woodside Cottage?’
‘Yes.’