The Water Tower - Books 1-3

Chapter 3-5

And he hadn’t; at least not really. They’d known each other; they’d shared a smile and a laugh when they’d seen each other. They’d talked and had lunch together once or twice. They’d spoken a little more than usual in the weeks before he’d left for University, but that was all.

When Sally started working in the Pharmacy, it wasn’t as if anyone could really avoid her, as much as that pained the social shiners who would rather have turned their noses up than paid her for their prescriptions.

anyone But, whatever else they’d said about her – and probably still did if he knew the place well enough – she’d always been a force of nature; enduring and endearing. She was just… fun. When he was a teenager, never quite sure of where to call home, shunted back and forth between places that he’d longed to call his own, Sally Lloyd had been his staple diet of diversion and effervescence. Never afraid to let her hair down, Sally would throw back her ponytail and eat every man she laid eyes on for breakfast. That was how her reputation had been solidified. Her private life was a frequent topic of conversation at the various coffee mornings, book clubs and other communal circles that permeated Little Bassington.

funThatHe was just about to step into the Pharmacy when he heard her voice.

“Adam?”

He spun round and saw her making a dash across the street. She looked older than when he’d last seen her, but her face was still fresh and bountiful. She was wearing jeans and a loose-fitting top that seemed to sway in the light breeze.

“Sal!”

“I thought it was you! Spotted you walking through the Square. I’ve just got back.”

“I was coming to see you, I need some stuff from—” He gestured towards the Pharmacy behind him, but his words trailed off. He looked at her as she came to a halt beside him and, unexpectedly, without a moment’s consideration, the two of them embraced.

“It’s been so long,” she said. “What have you been doing?”

sodoing“I’m sorry, I wanted to come back sooner, but – life, you know.”

She nodded; a quiet acknowledgment that reassured him she wouldn’t probe any further. “I was sorry about Iris. I – I went to the funeral,” she offered hopefully. “I thought you’d be there.” When he didn’t reply, instead choosing to look down at his feet instead, she took a step back, her hands still resting on his shoulders where they’d remained after their embrace. “Look at you. You’re all grown up and – serious! And you’ve put on a bit of weight. Not so pale and skinny anymore, are you? Hilda told me you were a high-flying journalist these days. Hey, are you going to interview Wills and Kate? I think you should.”

AndAdam smiled, despite himself. “I’m not that kind of journalist. In fact, I’m not really a journalist at all, I’m—” He paused, not entirely sure what to say next.

I’m what? What am I?

I’m what? What am I?“Listen, I need to go in here,” he motioned in the direction of the Pharmacy again. “Are you on this afternoon?”

“Nope,” she grinned. “Day off. Had an appointment. I’ve just come back from the hospital.”

He blinked at her, at first only half-registering what she’d told him. “Wha – the hospital? Are you okay?”

hospital“I am now,” she grinned salaciously. “UTI.”

“What?”

“Urinary tract infection.” She lowered her voice slightly, almost to a whisper, as a couple passed by, and then told him conspiratorially, “It means I’ve been having too much s*x, Adam.”

“Yeah, too much information, Sal!” he laughed, throwing his hands up in what he knew would be a futile gesture. She shrugged as he shook his head ruefully, the ghost of a smile still tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You haven’t changed then?”

information“What can I say?” she answered, “I’m what they call an emancipated woman.”

“Yeah, you’re an emancipated woman in hospital when you get a urinary tract infection,” he volleyed.

in hospitalShe widened her eyes in mock recoil, a parody of the discomfort she’d felt just days before. “f**k me Adam, I was in so much pain – like you wouldn’t believe! I was having a drink with the girls in this new place that’s just opened in town – we need to go there, by the way, so you can tell me how you’re going to get this big interview with Wills and Kate – anyway, there I was, just having a drink, minding my own, and suddenly it felt like I had knives in my stomach. f*****g hell,” she laughed. “Anyway, I suppose it serves me right. I should learn to just go home at the end of the night like a good little hoe.”

so much painknives“Maybe you should stop having s*x,” he teased, arching an eyebrow.

“Ha, yeah right. Anyway, listen, I need to go home because I’ve got someone coming round – not like that!” she howled, as Adam’s face contorted into a knowing expression. “A plumber, you f*****g moron! My boiler’s gone to s**t. I keep having to have a cold shower every morning – and don’t you dare make any jokes about that either. Anyway, he’s coming round in about ten minutes, so I need to go. What are you doing later?”

“Um,” he floundered. “I hadn’t thought. I need to get something to eat, and then I need to see Hilda. I haven’t even been to the house yet. After that, I’m at a bit of a loose end.”

“Right. Meet me by the War Memorial later. I want to show you something.”

“Really? What?”

“You’ll find out later! Just meet me there. Say six?”

He held his hands up in surrender. “Okay, six.”

She grinned and started off, a flurry of motion, her ponytail swinging behind her as she went. “Good. Don’t be late,” she called. “Oh, and Adam,” she turned back as he made to step into the Pharmacy again. He met her grin; insatiable Sally Lloyd with her round face that was still brimming with a lust for life. “Welcome home!”

It took him a moment to process what she’d said. He moved aside to let a pensioner sweep past him, her trolley navigating the bumps and crevices of the paving flags. Sally was round the corner, and long out of sight, before he finally shook himself out of the cradle of contemplation and opened the Pharmacy door.

* * *

Everything about Orchard House was exactly as he remembered it. The front garden, the back door that opened onto the kitchen, the sitting room with all its furnishings still in place; nothing had changed. It was as if the house had been cocooned perfectly in time, in place and in memory.

The rooms still rang of Iris. It was ridiculous, of course, to suggest that there could be so much as a hint of her perfume in the air, over a month after her last morning here. But as he crossed the threshold, some small parcel of Adam’s heart couldn’t help but believe that even the aroma of the house – the house that was now his – had managed to hold on to a trace memory of its former occupant. The woman who he’d spent innumerable summers, Whitsun holidays, autumn breaks, and long weekends with. The woman who’d raised him, guided him, and instilled a sense of belonging in him. He needed to believe that, despite her absence – somehow – some part of her was still there with him.

The site on which Orchard House stood had, in the faintest and faded yesteryear, actually been an apple orchard; Iris had shown him the fragments of newspaper cuttings housed in the local history section of Little Bassington Library which attested to the fact.

beenIt had come as a surprise to him when the solicitors had called. Hilda had been the executor of Iris’s will. A small collection of art deco pieces that she’d always admired, which had adorned the dressing table in one of the upstairs bedrooms, had been left to her. Those small incidentals aside, the estate in its entirety (minus inheritance tax, legal fees and outstanding debts) had been given wholesale to Adam. The irony was that he’d been here before, after the accident which had claimed his parents. The fortuitous capital he’d amassed by virtue of unwanted circumstances – before he’d even reached his 30th birthday, no less – hadn’t passed him by. How could it have? His father’s commercial success, then his mother’s savings, and now Iris’s estate. Independently, none of them had accumulated wealth beyond measure, but they’d each been more than comfortable in their own right. Collectively, their deaths meant that he was now financially secure and would remain that way for a long time to come.

He stepped into the kitchen, its handsome wood panelling and polished ceiling beams betraying not a hint of dust. The table in the centre of the room bore fresh flowers, with a note propped up against the vase. Oh Aitch, he thought. We don’t deserve you. He picked up the envelope, acknowledging Hilda’s perfectly-formed, delicate handwriting on the front and dropped his travel bag (which now contained the toiletries he’d stocked up on at the Pharmacy) to the floor.

Oh Aitch,We don’t deserve youHe wandered from the kitchen to the sitting room, the envelope still clutched tightly in his grasp. The key he’d used to let himself in had been exactly where Hilda had told him he’d find it – tucked beneath the third flowerpot, next to the small rhododendron bush. He knew the wake had been held here. Despite the busy stream of people that must have come and gone from the house that day, everything had been immaculately restored, as if the whole afternoon had never happened. The house looked untouched; Hilda had pushed the spare chairs back into their usual resting places, and clouds of lemon-scented air freshener punctuated the room.

Adam threw himself onto the sofa and released a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. Everything was doused with memories; the old Welsh dresser, the hand-painted vases, the decorative plates on the wall, the cut-glass mirror, even the dumb waiter standing in the corner by the telephone table, his outstretched “arm” holding the wooden plate on which Iris had so often rested her keys. The sitting room suite was comfortably familiar too, its wooden armrests and red velvet cushions evoking memories of times gone by. All Iris’s tastes and wants echoed through every corner of a house that was now his. His and his alone.

He listened to the silence. He couldn’t remember Orchard House ever being this quiet before. There would always be a clatter from the kitchen, the sound of friendly voices, of someone calling Iris, music drifting from the radio, or a quiz show blasting from the television. Now, there was nothing. Just an emptiness where the past had once been. The sitting room was somewhere he’d always been at ease, but it was as the place had been stripped of its heart. He wondered vaguely if he’d ever known his world to be this empty before. If life was a chain, then Iris was one of the last links binding him to his past – and that link had now been severed. To lose something, anything, was hard enough. But to be adrift, with no anchor…

anythingIt felt almost impossible.

He remembered what Iris had told him once. “There"s a knack to living life, Adam. You have to wring the best from every day. Even when it"s raining, when the roof has caved in and it feels like there’s nothing left, you have to pick something from out of the rubble and just run with it. That’s the only way.”

“There"s a knack to living life, Adam. You have to wring the best from every day. Even when it"s raining, when the roof has caved in and it feels like there’s nothing left, you have to pick something from out of the rubble and just run with it. That’s the only way.”So perhaps that was what he needed to do.

There were other things he’d have to consider sooner or later, of course; he’d need to decide what he wanted to do for work. He’d thought about taking a year out – not that he had any plans to stay in Little Bassington for that long. He had more than enough money to see him through but, even then, he’d have to give himself some sort of direction eventually.

Dimly aware that he was still holding the envelope Hilda had left for him, he reached down to the polished coffee table with its glass top where a pile of letters and flyers sat waiting. He placed the envelope down and rifled through the assorted mail. They were mostly circulars, or official-looking correspondence with the address typed in demanding black letters threatening legal action for unpaid bills from senders who hadn’t yet realised that Iris was dead. His eyes fell upon one of the flyers; a folded sheet of A4 paper that had clearly been hand delivered. It boasted a picture of the fields that lay beyond Market Square beneath a hastily composed message:

Community Meeting – Save Our Fields!

Community Meeting – Save Our Fields!

Join us for a public meeting in the Village Hall to discuss plans tabled by Archangel Developments to concrete over our beloved fields.

Join us for a public meeting in the Village Hall to discuss plans tabled by Archangel Developments to concrete over our beloved fields.

A representative from the developers will be present.

A representative from the developers will be present.

Cllr Robert Grainger will address the meeting.

Cllr Robert Grainger will address the meeting.

Everyone is welcome.

Everyone is welcome.We need to make our voices heard, so please do your best to come along and be part of the fight to stop this unwanted, unnecessary building project going ahead!

We need to make our voices heard, so please do your best to come along and be part of the fight to stop this unwanted, unnecessary building project going ahead!

16th June at the Village Hall

16th June at the Village Hall7.30pm

7.30pmAdam glanced at his phone, which he’d stationed on the coffee table in front of him. 16th June… The flyer had obviously been delivered days, perhaps weeks earlier, but the meeting was tonight. He half-wondered if this was what Sally wanted to show him later; if her “surprise” was something to do with this “Archangel Developments” company and whatever they were planning to build on the fields behind the Tower.

16th JunetonightPutting the flyer down, he reached the bottom of the post pile, which he discovered was in fact resting on top of a thick, red, leather-bound book. Lifting it up, he flipped the familiar cover open, an expression of wonder washing over his face. A small piece of paper fell from the inside onto his lap.

Found this while I was looking for the spare key upstairs!

Found this while I was looking for the spare key upstairs!H x

H xThe book, once perfectly preserved, was now showing signs of wear. The front cover had become slightly detached from the binding but, despite the outward indicators betraying its age, its pages were unblemished, bar some small creases and folds that showed it to have been well-read.

It was the first book Iris had ever bought for him. Hilda had been there too, he was sure. He’d been six years old when they’d purchased the collection of Aesop’s Fables. He’d poured over the pages of the leather-bound story book for weeks after, his eagle eyes drinking in every word, as the tales transported him realms away from his unsteady, unpredictable life. He remembered Iris reading to him, the day they’d brought it home. Now, so many years after the event, he could hear the voice of his aunt ringing in his subconscious; a recollection that triggered tears he’d so far kept contained.

He returned the book to the table and reached for Hilda’s envelope. It felt light, almost empty. He tore open the back and removed a small newspaper cutting, which he held delicately before him. His eyes scanned the words that he’d agreed to; words that were printed in an unpretentious square box published in a recent edition of the Bassington Post.

Bassington PostHe sat there for some time, re-reading Iris Challinor’s obituary, in the house of his childhood, in the slipstream of his memories, with the scent of lemon and long-gone perfume drifting mournfully through the room.