Carole and Jude finished their food at the same time and both sat back, taking long swallows of Chilean Chardonnay.
‘Jude, do you know Bonita Green?’ asked Carole.
‘A bit.’
‘Does that mean that she’s been to you for healing?’ She could never quite keep a note of scepticism out of the word. To Carole’s regimented mind her neighbour’s practice of alternative therapies would always come under the heading of ‘New Age mumbo-jumbo’.
‘No,’ Jude replied with a grin. ‘That’s not the only way I meet people, you know.’
‘Of course not. Well, I met her this morning.’
‘For the first time?’
‘For the first time when we exchanged names, yes.’
Jude couldn’t resist another grin. She never failed to be amused by her neighbour’s social subterfuges.
‘So what do you know about her?’ Carole went on.
‘Just that she’s run the Cornelian Gallery for many years. I think she’d trained at the Slade a long time ago and worked full-time as an artist. At some point she got married and had a son, maybe there was another child, I’m not sure. And the husband . . . I can’t remember . . . she either got divorced or was widowed and I think it was round then she started the gallery.’
‘I met the son this morning. Do you know him?’
‘I’ve met him casually.’
That was the way Jude met most people. Complete strangers found themselves suddenly in conversations with her. She was very easy to talk to, a good listener, so genuinely interested in other people that she very rarely needed to volunteer much information about herself. Carole Seddon felt a familiar pang of envy. She couldn’t think of any occasions in her own life when she’d done anything casually.
‘What do you know about him?’
‘About Giles? Not a lot. Had some high-flying City job, got made redundant a few months back. And I think his marriage broke up round the same time. Local gossip has it that he’s moved back in with his mother on a temporary basis.’
Again Carole felt peeved that she didn’t seem to hear the same quality of local gossip as her neighbour did. But she supposed that to access it she’d have to change the habits of a lifetime and start talking to people she hadn’t been introduced to. The kind of people to whom she gave no more than a ‘Fethering nod’ on her morning walks with Gulliver.
‘Where does Bonita live then?’
‘In the flat over the shop.’
Carole pictured the High Street frontage of the Cornelian Gallery in her mind’s eye. ‘Can’t be much room in there for two of them.’
‘No, I gather it isn’t an ideal arrangement.’
Carole was alert to the implication. ‘You mean they don’t get on?’
‘I wouldn’t say that, but I can’t think it’s an ideal situation for any mother in her sixties suddenly to have a son in his thirties around all the time.’ Her neighbour waited patiently, sensing that Jude had more to tell. ‘Also I gather Giles has plans to work with Bonita in the business.’
Carole pointed to the invitation on the table. ‘Hence this?’
‘I’d say so, yes. Denzil Willoughby is rather different in style from the artists Bonita usually exhibits.’
A nod from Carole, as she looked at the twisted images on the invitation and mentally compared them to the innocuous watercolours she had seen on display in the Cornelian Gallery. ‘Well, you seem to know quite a lot about them,’ she said, an edge of sniffiness in her tone.
Jude smiled. ‘I could tell you some more.’
‘Oh?’ Carole didn’t want to sound too eager.
‘There’s another reason why Giles Green wants to be down here. His new girlfriend lives near Chichester.’
‘Do you know her too?’
‘I’ve met her. Girl called Chervil. I know her sister Fennel better.’
‘Chervil? Fennel? What happened? Did their parents have an accident with a spice rack?’
Jude giggled. ‘I don’t know. There’s certainly something hippyish about them. The parents, Ned and Sheena Whittaker, demonstrate that other-worldliness which only the very rich can afford. They have this big estate near Halnaker. Butterwyke House. And they’re always experimenting with the latest ecological fad. Solar panels, wind turbines, organic gardening, they’ve done the lot. But, as I say, they can afford it, so good luck to them.’
‘Is it inherited money?’ Carole was always intrigued by the very basic question of what people lived on.
‘No. The Whittakers made their pile in the nineteen-nineties’ dot-com boom, and were lucky enough – or possibly shrewd enough, though I think it was luck – to get out before the whole thing went belly up. The result is they’ve got shedloads of money.’
‘And did you meet them through your healing?’
‘Yes. Ned put Fennel in touch with me.’
‘Ah. Right.’ Carole didn’t expect any more details. Jude was always very punctilious about client confidentiality. And while she continued to see Fennel Whittaker, a beautiful and talented artist with a crippling medical condition, she would never divulge the secrets of the sessions the two of them had shared in the front room of Woodside Cottage.
‘So Giles Green has a thing going with this Chervil?’ asked Carole.
‘Yes. She used to work in the City too, but she’s moved back down to Butterwyke House to help her parents in their latest business venture.’
‘Which is?’
‘“Glamping”.’
‘What on earth is “glamping” when it’s at home?’
‘The word’s a contraction of “glamorous” and “camping”.’
‘There’s nothing glamorous about camping,’ said Carole with a shudder. She remembered all too well the damp misery of holidays under canvas on the Isle of Wight with her parents. And equally watery experiences in France with David and Stephen, when they made yet another attempt to do things that they imagined normal families did. The awful smell of musty damp canvas came unbidden to the nose of her memory.
‘Well, there’s quite a vogue for it now, Carole. Wealthy City folk getting what they imagine to be a taste of country life. Totally authentic experience . . . yurts with wood-fired stoves . . . not to mention gourmet chefs and sometimes even a butler thrown in.’
That prompted a ‘Huh’ from Carole. Though she didn’t vocalise it, another of her mother’s regular sayings had come into her mind. ‘More money than sense’. Amazing how many things that could be applied to in the cushioned world of West Sussex.
‘Would you like to see it?’ asked Jude.
‘See what?’
‘The glamping site at Butterwyke House.’
‘Why?’
Jude shrugged. ‘Interest. I’m going up there on Saturday. You’re welcome to come if you want to.’
‘Why are you going there?’
‘Amongst the services offered to the happy glampers are a variety of alternative therapies. Sheena asked if I’d be interested in providing some of them. She’s suggested the idea to Chervil. So I’m going up there to have a look round, see if it’ll be suitable for me.’
‘Do you need the money?’ asked Carole characteristically.
Another shrug. ‘One can always use a bit more money.’
This prompted another recurrent question in Carole’s mind. What did Jude live on? Her lifestyle wasn’t particularly lavish, and she never seemed to be hard up. But was there really that much profit to be had in the healing business? These were things that should have been asked when her neighbour first moved into Woodside Cottage. They now knew each other far too well for such basic enquiries to be made. Whenever she introduced someone new to Jude, Carole was always tempted to prime them beforehand to ask the relevant questions. But somehow it never happened.