Barking Mad

Chapter 2

9

In a quiet period at work the next day, I asked Hannah if I might take Poppy for a walk and was surprised when she told me she had been thinking the same. The café was so quiet, she suggested we close up for an hour and do just that. She needed to pick up some supplies from the shop which she could do on the way back. We automatically walked down to the river. It was a bright cold day in late March, and the last of the daffodils were still out, making a bright splash of colour against the grass dotted with crocuses and buttercups.

‘I love daffodils,’ Hannah said. ‘They really signal the beginning of spring. There’s no going back to winter once the daffodils come out.’

Her enthusiasm was evident in the small pots of daffodils she kept on the tables in the café, and its bright yellow paintwork and awning. I had resolved to say nothing more about my neighbour and our suspicions concerning his wife, but this time it was Hannah who raised the subject again. It seemed that whenever she lost interest in the drowned woman, I couldn’t stop speculating about what had happened, and every time I decided to walk away from the subject, my friend’s interest revived. The discussion started innocuously enough.

‘What do you think of Barry?’ she asked me.

‘He seems very nice,’ I hedged. ‘He’s not exactly my cup of tea, but he’s nice.’

‘Nice how?’ she pressed me.

‘I think he’s kind, and civil, you know, and considerate, and Poppy likes him.’

She laughed. ‘That’s no surprise. Poppy likes everyone.’

It crossed my mind that my dog didn’t like Richard’s son.

‘Why are you asking about Barry, anyway?’ I asked her. ‘Do you like him?’

She launched into a rambling account of her impression of him when they had been at school. ‘I was just so surprised to see him again, close up like that, in the pub the other night. I mean, I’ve seen him driving around in his police car, and even walking around the village from time to time, but he looks so different in his uniform. I hardly recognised him in the pub.’

‘Do you fancy him?’ I asked.

She turned to look at me almost accusingly. ‘Why not? What’s wrong with him?’

‘Nothing, there’s nothing wrong with him, he’s just –’ I struggled to find the right words. ‘He doesn’t strike me as the sharpest tool in the tool box, that’s all.’

‘You don’t know him.’

‘And you do?’

‘Admittedly he wasn’t exactly top of the class at school, but that doesn’t mean he’s stupid or anything.’

This risked becoming awkward. Diplomacy would be my best course. After all, I didn’t want Hannah to hold a grudge against me if she ever did end up in a relationship with Barry. At the same time, I was reluctant to encourage her to rush into a romance with someone I thought couldn’t possibly turn out to be a good match for her. I decided to approach the issue from the opposite end.

‘Hannah,’ I ventured, ‘you are one of the cleverest people I’ve ever met.’

‘What are you talking about? I’m not clever.’

‘You run your own business.’

‘With money my ex gave me.’

‘Yes, but you manage the place on your own. That takes brains.’

‘Yet you think I’m too stupid to work out what you’re getting at? If you think Barry’s not intelligent enough for me, why not just come out and say it? But I hardly think you’re in a position to judge. You’ve met him, what? Once?’

All I could do was apologise if she felt offended, and reassure her that I had no doubt she knew what she was doing.

‘Thank you, but I don’t need your permission to go out with someone,’ she answered frostily.

‘You are pissed off with me. I knew it!’ I cried out, and for some reason my exclamation made her laugh.

‘Now,’ she went on, ‘never mind my love life, or lack of it. What about your next-door neighbour?’

So I told her about my visit the previous day. She listened, her eyes wide with interest.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked, when I had finished relating what had taken place.

‘It didn’t seem that important,’ I replied a little sheepishly. ‘I mean, we just talked about dogs, and about Poppy, and about how it takes time to settle in somewhere new. It was all very harmless. I don’t think his son liked me,’ I added.

Hesitantly I told her about my enquiry concerning Richard’s wife. Hannah’s eyes widened even further and we stood perfectly still, staring at one another until Poppy tugged on her lead and whimpered.

‘You actually asked him where she was?’ Hannah whispered.

I shook my head. ‘Not in so many words, no. I wasn’t that blatant about it. It was more like –’ I paused, trying to recall exactly what I had said to Richard in front of his son. ‘Richard said he wanted to live near London and I said I thought he must have wanted to be near his wife, something like that, as if I thought she had stayed behind in London when he moved away.’

Hannah nodded. ‘And? Tell me exactly, word for word what he said.’

Again I shook my head because I couldn’t really recall him saying anything.

‘He must have said something,’ she protested.

‘Then Poppy started barking and that defused the situation and we talked about dogs and Ashton Mead and stuff like that and then I left. ’

Hannah looked cross but there was nothing more to say. Watching my little dog scurrying busily around, I tried to forget about Richard and Ralph and the body in the river. Poppy sniffed eagerly at a small clump of primroses growing wild on the grassy slope before lifting one leg and peeing on the little flowers. Her action seemed like a metaphor for my life in Ashton Mead, a picturesque village that threatened to be overwhelmed by a dark cloud that hung over it. But the primroses would continue to flourish, undisturbed by my dog watering them. The problems threatening to disrupt my life would not be so easily solved.

On our way back to the tea shop, Hannah stopped off at the grocery store and sent me on ahead to open up. As luck would have it, a minibus load of holidaymakers arrived as soon as I turned the sign around. We were almost out of milk, and had run out of cream completely, so my heart sank when all nine of the customers ordered cream teas. I hesitated to take the order, wondering whether to come clean or hang on and hope Hannah would be back in time with the supplies. I decided to try and spin it out and repeated the order, speaking as slowly as I could.

‘So that’s eight full cream teas?’

‘Nine,’ a strident woman who appeared to be in charge corrected me.

I made a show of counting the members of the group, who were spread out around three tables. The woman tutted, muttering crossly, that she knew how many people were in her party.

‘Right you are, that’s nine of you,’ I agreed. ‘And is it cream teas all round?’

The order was confirmed. I glanced through the window but there was no sign of Hannah. If she had stopped to chat to Maud, she might be a while yet. By now I was bitterly regretting having kept quiet about the situation. Reluctant to turn customers away, I had landed myself in an impossible position, and was going to have to tell nine women that I had taken their order knowing it couldn’t be fulfilled. Somehow I had to delay serving the tea. Forcing a smile, I asked each of the women in turn whether she wanted cream or butter with her scones, and then I moved on to the jam, offering a choice of strawberry or raspberry, although I knew we only ever served strawberry jam.

At last I could drag the process out no longer, and retired to the kitchen in a state of near panic. If Hannah wasn’t back soon, I would have to return to the café and admit to the waiting customers that we couldn’t even provide them with enough milk for all their tea, let alone cream for their scones. I could hardly tell them I had spilt the cream and the milk. Desperately I laid out the scones with butter and jam – all strawberry – and filled the teapots. There was nothing more to do but wait and hope that Hannah would come bursting into the kitchen to rescue me. I opened the back door and looked outside in the vain hope that we might have left a carton of milk in the yard. As I glanced around, Poppy dodged past me and darted across the kitchen into the café. I raced after her but was too slow to catch her. This was a complete disaster.

I ran into the café, apologising to everyone, and assuring them that the dog was gentle and would never harm anyone. No one took any notice of me. All nine women were too busy making a fuss over Poppy who was gazing round at them, wagging her tail and growling with pleasure as they jostled each other in their eagerness to pet her.

‘Isn’t she adorable?’ one of them cried out.

‘Look at her little ears.’

‘Such beautiful eyes.’

‘She’s so soft.’

Eventually I dragged Poppy back out to the yard where she stared quizzically at me, as if to say, ‘Well, you needed someone to distract the customers from their long wait, didn’t you?’

The teapots were no longer hot by the time Hannah walked in, laden with shopping bags, and I was on the verge of despair. Hurriedly I explained the situation and Hannah set about making fresh tea while I filled the milk jugs and pots of cream. We succeeded in averting a crisis, although I had to apologise for having no raspberry jam.

‘What made you offer a choice of jams?’ Hannah asked me when the customers had gone.

I explained that I had tried to stall by offering alternatives, and Hannah laughed.

‘Next time I’ll just tell the truth,’ I vowed.

‘Oh no, you won’t,’ she replied. ‘That was an order for nine cream teas this afternoon, and it’s not even teatime yet. If this carries on, we’ll be running short of cream again. I knew I could rely on you to hold the fort.’ She beamed at me.

‘Well, next time, I’ll go to the shop and leave you here to cope,’ I told her.

‘No way,’ she replied. ‘I might need you here if we have to keep customers waiting again. You’re a natural.’

I wondered if she would be quite so pleased with me if she knew that it was Poppy, and not me, who had kept our customers entertained while they were waiting for their tea.