Miranda presided over the activity with irresistible enthusiasm and was forever locked in earnest debate with the self-appointed foreman. Eddie was a shrunken fellow in his fifties with a piratical patch covering a glass eye that was presumably the legacy of some long ago breach of health and safety legislation. He didn’t disguise his appreciation of Miranda’s tight tops and even tighter jeans and took voluble pride in making sure that her every wish was the builders’ command. His younger colleague, the hunky Wayne, didn’t say much. Daniel suspected that talking, and probably thinking, took up effort better devoted to ogling.
They were counting the days to the start of work on the bothy. On the rare occasions when either of them found time and energy for writing, they shared a laptop, but the plan was for each of them to have a dedicated office. The secret of homeworking, Miranda explained, was to separate business activity from space devoted to domestic life. She’d once written an article about it.
Early on the morning after his visit to Grange, Daniel was pouring cornflakes into his bowl when he became aware of water dripping on to the breakfast bar. He glanced upwards and saw a patch of damp by the light fitting. Above was the new bathroom. Miranda was taking a shower and the seal had failed. One problem swifly followed another. Within hours, they suffered a power cut and a van delivered the wrong kitchen blinds. Miranda was in her element. She had a flair for domestic crises, Daniel discovered, making frantic phone calls to beg for help and threatening legal action against unreliable suppliers. His own coping strategy when all else failed was to seek refuge in a book. He’d acquired a paperback RSPB guide and could now almost tell the difference between a coot and a moorhen. He’d also started battling through Walden by Henry David Thoreau, a parting gift from Gwynfor Ellis. Not the lightest read, Gwynfor admitted, but highly appropriate. Thoreau too had tried to live the dream.
‘Any good?’ Miranda asked. She was on her way upstairs, carrying mugs of steaming tea for Eddie and Wayne. They both took so much sugar that it was a wonder either of them had any teeth left.
‘I’m picking up tips,’ he said. ‘Thoreau opted out of corporate America a century and a half ago and made his home in a log cabin in the backwoods of Massachusetts.’
‘A role model, then?’
‘Not exactly. He only stuck it for a couple of years.’
‘And after that?’
‘Back to the city. The simple life wasn’t quite as simple as he hoped.’
‘What happened?’
‘He tried to cook a fish for supper and ended up burning down three hundred acres of woodland. Some people called him the Sage of Walden. To the locals, he was the fool who set fire to the forest.’
He wanted to learn more about the murder, but the tradesmen came from Kendal or further afield and none seemed to know anything of the Gilpins or the history of the cottage. Even in this day and age, Brackdale kept itself to itself. People in the village spoke of Carlisle as though it were as distant as Cairo. Few tourists seemed aware of the valley’s existence, although one morning Daniel had to slam on his brakes as he turned out of Tarn Fold. A huge coach full of Japanese Beatrix Potter fans was executing a perilous about-turn between sharp-edged stone walls. The driver had not realised how badly he had lost his way until the lane leading to the quarry workings narrowed to such an extent that he found further progress impossible. There was only one way in to Brackdale, only one way out.
Daniel followed the coach all the way to the village. From the back window, two beaming teenagers waved at him. One wore a Peter Rabbit T-shirt. His girlfriend’s bosom was emblazoned with a picture of Jeremy Fisher. On either side of the lane, grey-fleeced sheep gazed down at the vehicles with yawning indifference. Daniel couldn’t identify with the Herdwicks’ utter lack of curiosity, but perhaps it helped to explain their gift for survival. And he’d also been told that when they were hungry, they ate their own wool to stay alive.
Touching his brake, he stole a glance across the valley, knowing that the scene was much as it had been a hundred years before. Two hundred, three hundred, more. Brackdale might once have witnessed a murder, but at least it had escaped the plague of foot and mouth that a few years earlier had left hundreds of burnt and blackened corpses on smoke-shrouded Lakeland hillsides.
He found a space to park by the church and bought a few provisions in Tasker’s, where an elderly man and the proprietor were sharing a moan about the labyrinthine complexities of the latest traffic scheme in Kendal. Shopping done, he headed to the baker’s on the other side of the square. Godfrey’s was fast becoming a favourite haunt. The smell of bread freshly baked on the premises was as enticing as the scones that accompanied an unexpectedly adventurous selection of coffees. He was becoming addicted to a blend from Helsinki that made it easy to understand why the Finns are supposed to consume more caffeine than anyone else in the world.
‘Hello again.’
He recognised the musky perfume at the same moment as he placed the voice, then looked up from the menu to find Dale Moffat smiling at him. She was kitted out in the regulation Godfrey white blouse and black skirt. On her curvy frame the uniform had an unexpected allure.
‘I didn’t know you worked here.’
‘I only started last week and it’s just part-time. A month’s probation to see whether I can satisfy Mr Godfrey.’
She gave him a cheeky wink and he laughed as he ordered. ‘I bet you will.’
‘So you’re settling in?’
‘Fine. I guess it takes years to feel that you’re part of a place.’
‘Decades, more like. I’m not even sure I feel I belong, and I was born a stone’s throw away. Trust me, Brackdale’s stuck in a time-warp. I live on my own, same as Leigh, but I have a boy and there aren’t too many single mums around here. Trouble is, I make waves, people think I’m dangerous to know. Most of the good folk of Brack don’t approve of me, never did, even when I was a skinny teenager. My skirt was always a bit shorter than all the other girls’.’ A candid grin. ‘Some things don’t change, eh? At least I give them something to talk about.’
She bustled off and he indulged in a little people-watching. He always chose the table in the front window if it were free, so that he could see the villagers come and go. This was so different from Miranda’s favourite cafe bar in Islington, where everyone in the streets outside was constantly rushing somewhere, too busy to take in the world around them. The pub door opened and Joe Dowling came out to water hanging baskets crammed with purple, white, and yellow pansies. He was wearing a bright blue sports shirt, tight trousers and mocassins of a sort that had been in vogue a couple of years ago. A fair-haired woman with a heavy shopping bag stopped to speak to him, but he gave a lascivious grin and said something that seemed to embarrass her. Cheeks flaming, she turned on her heel and scurried away across the square.
‘That’s Tom Allardyce’s wife.’ Dale was back with the coffee and scones. ‘She and her cousin are chalk and cheese. Joe’s as bad as her husband, in his way. And he’s got the dirtiest mind of any man I’ve ever met. Which is saying something.’ She sighed. ‘Poor woman, no wonder she looks like she has the cares of the world on her shoulders. She’d be better off getting out of here. She’s not bad-looking, she’d never be short of someone to share her bed when she was in the mood. I once made the mistake of telling her so to her face, but she looked at me as if I was mad. Or a trollop. Or both. Some women, they need a man in their lives, however mean he is to them.’