Carole reflected on the dusty second-hand offerings she’d seen on the forecourt at Shefford’s. They seemed symptomatic of the run-down nature of the business. ‘So, presumably,’ she said, ‘you’d never try to sell a car that’d got damage to the bodywork?’
‘No, most of those go to the auctions. That’s the place for the wedding rings.’
‘Sorry? “Wedding rings”?’
‘You call a car a “wedding ring”, because you’ll never get rid of it.’
‘Ah.’ Carole was rather enjoying her induction into car dealers’ patois. She was also enjoying Adrian’s company, though she suspected she wouldn’t have it for long. He’d just moved to Fethering, she was one of the first people he’d met. And she was useful to him as a source of local knowledge. Someone as sociable as he was would soon make other friends. Only a matter of time, she reckoned, before Adrian Greenford was the life and soul of the village party, holding court in the Crown and Anchor. Carole had never had any illusions about how interesting she was as a person.
But, at least for the moment, she had his full attention as he continued his narrative. ‘Anyway, this guy I’m talking about, he comes in – just off the door, you know – there’s a car on the forecourt he’s really interested in. When you’ve done the job as long as I have, you recognize genuine interest when you see it. Do you want to know what make of car it was, Carole?’
‘Not really.’
‘Didn’t think you would. No worries, doesn’t change the story. Anyway, in the front window it’s got the placard with the price on it. Ten thousand. And that was a fair price. I’ve always done fair prices. Bit of profit for me, obviously – car’s got to wash its face or it’s not worth the candle – but otherwise fair price. You try to squeeze too much out of the punters, word soon gets round and you lose your repeat trade. So, yeah, ten thousand is a good price. And I can tell this guy likes it. He checks everything out, he takes it for a test drive … he’s hooked. So, I get the paperwork ready to close the deal … but no, he says he’s going home to think about it overnight. And I’m fine with that, because I know he wants it. And a lot of buyers go through that kind of routine. It’s a big expense, buying a car, they don’t want to rush into it. Don’t want to give the impression they’re easily persuaded either. No one wants to look like a fool, like they’ve been done, do they?’
Carole focused on him sharply. Surely he couldn’t know about her error with the car insurance, could he? But she was being paranoid. There was nothing sly about the way Adrian continued his narrative.
‘So, next day he comes in early, just after I’ve opened … which is good news for me. Means he’s made up his mind and can’t wait to get the deal sorted. But no, he says, “I do like the car very much and I want to buy it, and I think ten thousand’s a reasonable price. But I was talking to my wife about it last night, and she thinks we should only pay nine thousand.”
‘So I says to him, quick as a flash, “Well, I’d love to sell it to you at that price, but I talked to my wife last night and she said we shouldn’t accept anything under ten thousand!”’
He roared with laughter, which petered out when he noticed Carole wasn’t joining in.
‘So did your wife say that?’
‘No, of course not. I made it up.’
‘Oh.’ Carole sounded mystified. She knew she had never been very good at recognizing jokes. ‘Did he pay the ten thousand then?’
‘Yes,’ said Adrian, a little deflated by the failure of his anecdote. It had been a sure-fire laugh-generator on many other occasions. But clearly not on occasions when his audience was Carole Seddon.
‘Anyway,’ he said, recognizing the moment had come to move the conversation on, ‘you’ve been so helpful to me since we met, recommending local services and so on … I wondered if I could pick your brains again …?’
‘Of course. You’re welcome to anything you can find there.’
‘Well, it’s a matter of garages. I drive a BMW 3 Series Convertible …’ He looked at her and grinned. ‘That probably doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?’
‘I have heard of BMW,’ she ventured cautiously.
‘And I was looking for someone round here where I could get it serviced. I mean, obviously I can find the listing for BMW agents, but my car has a … slightly unusual service history … and I’ve found you generally get a better job done – and often a cheaper one – at some local garage. Is there anywhere in Fethering?’
So, of course, Carole gave him the details of Shefford’s.
Returning to High Tor, she felt quite pleased with herself. She felt she’d made a new friend. While recognizing that it wasn’t difficult to strike up a friendship with someone as outgoing as Adrian Greenford, it was still a source of satisfaction.
The fact that he was a man played no part in that satisfaction. Carole Seddon had long before written herself off as a romantic prospect. Indeed, sometimes she found it incongruous to think that she had stayed married to David for so long. Since, following divorce and retirement, she had moved permanently to Fethering, there had been – except for one brief, unlikely involvement with Ted Crisp, landlord of the Crown and Anchor – no special men in her life. And she found that a pleasingly uncomplicated state of affairs.
Unworthy though the thought was, Carole also drew satisfaction from the fact that Adrian was a friend she’d made without the involvement of Jude. With Carole, jealousy of her more laid-back neighbour was never far below the surface.
FIVE
As she walked across the gravel driveway to Troubadours, Jude wasn’t convinced she was doing the right thing. She never felt quite at ease in the Shorelands Estate. She wasn’t sure whether it qualified as a ‘gated community’ or not. There were gates at the main entrance, but she had never seen them closed. That in itself seemed to say something about the place. Yes, we do have the exclusivity of a gated community, but we’re quite laid-back about it. Except, in Jude’s experience of the residents, they weren’t very laid-back at all.
What they were, all of them, was rich. The Shorelands Estate, built along the coast to the west of Fethering in the 1950s, was highly sought-after. The residents were people of the professional classes – solicitors, doctors, dentists, a few retired diplomats and naval officers. The houses, all huge, were built in a variety of architectural styles – or it might be more accurate to say ‘based’ on a variety of architectural styles. Black-beamed early Tudor, fancy-bricked Elizabethan, geometrical Georgian, villa-style Victorian were all represented. Thatched roofs were juxtaposed by Mediterranean terracotta tiles. Italian pergolas vied with Spanish wrought iron.
Jude always found the ambience claustrophobic. The residents thought they had inherited the earth and all that was beautiful in it. They were not people who ever doubted their own entitlement.
She had heard that certainty in the voice of the woman who had summoned her to the Shorelands Estate earlier in the day. Natalie Kendrick was the name announced on the phone. She had heard Jude’s services praised by ‘people round the village’ (though she didn’t name any names) and she would like her to ‘take a look at my son’ to see if she could ‘do something for him’. The request was made in the manner of someone ordering curtain fabric, and Jude had been initially tempted to refuse it. But her instinct for helping people in trouble – not to mention her natural curiosity – found her magnetically drawn to the Shorelands Estate.
Troubadours occupied one of the favoured plots whose garden gave access on to the beach. Its architectural style was 1930s seaside villa, white-painted with curved walls and metal-framed windows, reminiscent of an ocean-going liner. On the gravel drive stood a Land Rover Discovery and another red car that Jude recognized as a Triumph Tr6. (This familiarity did not reflect any knowledge of cars, just the fact that she’d had a brief affair with a man who’d owned one. His pride and joy. She had very rarely been allowed to drive it – usually when he’d had too much to drink – but she had enjoyed its power. The man in question had turned out to be the kind who was much more interested in cars than he was in women. The Triumph was flashy, unsubtle and unreliable. Which, given its owner, had been – she realized later – entirely appropriate.)