Country Pursuits Read online

  ‘Stick your tip right up your derrière!’ she screeched. ‘How dare you call me a rude bitch!’ She kicked the door shut and the driver roared off, yelling obscenities as he went.

  Calypso Standington-Fulthrope watched him speed off, and then, sensing the stunned audience behind her, turned to face the sea of gaping faces. As soon as she spotted Clementine her face crumpled and she suddenly looked only twelve years old.

  ‘Oh, Granny Clem,’ she sobbed, and rushed through the crowd into her grandmother’s arms.

  ‘You silly child, what are we going to do with you?’ asked Clementine that afternoon, stroking Calypso’s long hair as her granddaughter cuddled up to her. The family, including Caro and Sebastian, were sitting in the huge living room at Fairoaks.

  They had just finished the Sunday lunch that had been sloppily prepared by Clementine’s housekeeper, Brenda Briggs. As Camilla nearly broke her tooth on a rock-hard roast potato, she had wondered for the umpteenth time why her grandmother didn’t get rid of Brenda and get in someone who could actually cook and clean properly. But Clementine wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Brenda’s a treasure, I get all the gossip from her, which is invaluable when one runs the village committee.’

  Despite claiming she was too distraught to eat, Calypso had wolfed down a large helping of lunch, cramming in seconds of the shop-bought sticky toffee pudding. In-between mouthfuls, she had told her family about her screaming row with her old boss: ‘Honestly, he was such a lech, and expected me to work all the hours God sent. And I’m convinced he was involved in some fraud stuff.’

  Camilla raised her eyebrows. She knew her sister’s overactive imagination, plus the fact she was extremely difficult to get on with sometimes. Suspecting Calypso wasn’t entirely the innocent party in all this, she bit her lip.

  Clementine, on the other hand, was being far more sympathetic. Putting aside her initial shell-shock at having her granddaughter, dressed like a Parisian hooker, fling herself on her in front of the entire village, she was now taking everything in her stride – fussing over Calypso, instructing Camilla to call their parents in Barbados to tell them the news, and calling for Brenda to unpack Calypso’s suitcase.

  ‘I’m staying with Bills, actually,’ said Calypso, sitting up to face her grandmother. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Granny Clem? It’s just that I’d really like to be in my old room, and I left lots of stuff there from last time . . .’

  Which is now packed away, nice and neatly, in the attic, thought Camilla irritably.

  Clementine cast her eye over Camilla, and then back to Calypso. ‘I suppose not. I do worry about you moping about, though. Maybe you should try and find some work with your sister to keep yourself busy.’

  Calypso threw a horrified look at Camilla, who looked equally shocked. ‘No, it’s fine, I’ll find lots of stuff to do. Besides, I do feel so exhausted. I think I should rest for a while . . .’ She shot a sheepish look at Camilla, and snuggled back up to her grandmother.

  Sebastian, sitting next to Caro with one hand proprietorially on her knee, was rather enjoying all the drama. He did love a scandal, especially when it involved one’s own family (just as long as his little secret didn’t get out). He also couldn’t believe what a complete fox Calypso had grown into. Last time he’d seen her she’d been a bratty teenager with braces on her teeth. Now she looked like a funkier version of the Caro he’d first met: all long legs, a slender waist you could fit your hands round, and flashing eyes. He wondered momentarily how difficult it would be to get another S-F sister into bed. He could get hard just thinking about it . . .

  Sebastian hastily crossed his legs and covered up the growing bulge in his chinos with one of Clementine’s embroidered cushions.

  Chapter 7

  ONE WEEK LATER, chaos had descended on the previous tranquillity of No. 5 The Green. It seemed wherever Calypso went, she left a trail of sluttiness behind her: half-drunk cups of coffee with fag butts floating in them (despite Camilla’s pleas for her to smoke outside the back door); tossed-aside magazines; food; and items of clothing – mostly impossibly skimpy underwear. When Camilla tentatively poked her head around the door to Calypso’s bedroom, it looked like a cross between Courtney Love’s boudoir and an Ann Summers shop: there were leopard-print clothes, lacy G-strings and pots of make-up spilled everywhere. Incongruously, there was also a half-deflated blow-up dildo lying forlornly in a pile of scuffed stilettos. Camilla had recoiled in horror, and not returned since.

  Now Camilla made her way downstairs, picking up two discarded coffee cups, an empty wine glass, and a half-eaten crème brûlée as she went. She found her sister in the living room, sprawled across the sofa, remote control on her chest, watching The Jeremy Kyle Show. She was wearing Camilla’s favourite Boden pyjamas with what looked suspiciously like make-up stains down the front.

  ‘Calypso, it’s great you feel so at home, but do you think you could try and be a little bit tidier?’ sighed Camilla from the doorway. ‘I’ve got to go to work in half an hour, and so far I’ve spent all morning tidying up your mess.’

  ‘I thought Mrs Briggs cleaned for you,’ said Calypso dismissively, not taking her eyes off the screen.

  ‘Yah, well, that’s only two days a week, and even then, I can’t really tell if she does anything.’ Camilla hovered in the doorway, looking at her sister. ‘Calypso, what are you going to do with yourself? You’ve barely moved off the sofa since you came here, and you still haven’t phoned Mummy and Daddy. They’re frantic to hear from you.’

  ‘I KNOW!’ snapped Calypso fiercely. ‘I just can’t handle all the stress at the moment. Oh God, my life is shit. I’m bored out of my brains here.’

  Nothing a new job wouldn’t fix, thought Camilla in frustration. One of their father’s friends had already offered Calypso a position in his art gallery on the King’s Road in London. She had flatly refused: ‘I am sick of bloody artists and their stuffy bloody owners. I need something new in my life.’

  Exactly what that was Camilla had no idea, unless it involved lying on a sofa and turning lovely flowered wallpaper yellow with nicotine. The only person Calypso did want to talk to was her new boyfriend, Sam, who she spent hours on the phone to every day. Camilla had picked up the phone to him a few times. He sounded rather a gruff chap, but when she had tried to ask her sister about him, Calypso had grunted non-committally and cut her off.

  ‘My life is just shit!’ repeated Calypso, rolling over into the back of the sofa. Camilla’s heart softened, and she put the cups, the glass and the crème brûlée on the floor, and sat down next to her sister’s back.

  ‘Come on, Muffin,’ she said, using Calypso’s childhood nickname. ‘It can’t be all that bad.’

  ‘It is!’ wailed Calypso from the depths of the sofa. ‘I’ve got no life, no job, and I’m missing all my friends.’

  An idea popped into Camilla’s head. ‘Hey, why don’t I put on a dinner party, and you can be the guest of honour? It can be your official welcome home party.’

  Calypso turned around, slightly placated. She loved being the centre of attention. ‘Can I bring Sam?’

  ‘Of course!’ replied Camilla. ‘How about next Friday?’

  ‘Not like I’m doing anything else,’ said Calypso moodily.

  ‘I’ll make lemon meringue pie,’ cajoled Camilla.

  For the first time since she’d been back in Churchminster Calypso smiled, making her beautiful features light up.

  ‘OK, you’ve won me over.’

  Camilla smiled back, relieved beyond measure. ‘Thank golly for that! Now come and give me a hug.’

  As well as cleaning for Clementine, Brenda Briggs worked part-time at Churchminster’s village shop. She hadn’t taken a day off sick in twenty-six years, and was chatty and hawk-eyed, with an exceptional nose for gossip. Brenda lived with her husband Ted in one of the cottages opposite the rectory, and knew about every affair, bankruptcy and scandal going on in the village.

  This morning Brenda was positively besi
de herself. Ted had just phoned to tell her the most exciting bit of news she had ever heard, and Brenda was itching to share it with someone. Luckily, she didn’t have to wait long.

  The door tinkled and one of her bingo friends walked in.

  ‘Ooh, Sandra, am I pleased to see you!’ said Brenda. She stopped marking up the Jammy Dodgers and leaned conspiratorially over the counter.

  ‘You’ll never guess what I heard.’

  Sandra was over there like a shot. ‘Go on then, duckie, fill me in!’

  ‘Well,’ said Brenda dramatically, savouring the moment. ‘I think we might have a new owner for Byron Heights.’

  Byron Heights was a turn-of-the-century Gothic mansion that stood on the outskirts of Churchminster. With its turrets and forbidding iron gates, it looked like something out of The Addams Family, and stuck out like a sore thumb among the golden stone houses of the Cotswold countryside. Byron Heights had been empty for eighteen months, since the previous owners, a couple who had made their fortune selling dried dog biscuits, had moved to Monaco. There had been several viewings since, but it had seemed no one wanted to pay the £4.5 million price tag or take on such an imposing house. Until now.

  ‘Well, y’know my Ted’s in the building trade. He’s been given some work on the house! Apparently it has just been bought – for the full asking price. And you’ll never guess who the new owner is!’

  ‘Des Lynam?’ asked Sandra hopefully. She’d always had a thing for him.

  ‘Nope. But it is someone famous.’

  ‘Ooh! Joan Collins!’

  ‘It’s a man. And he’s in the music industry.’

  ‘Oh Lord! Michael Jackson!’

  Brenda tutted, as if she was disappointed by Sandra’s apparent lack of telepathic powers. ‘No, dear. He’s British, from round these parts originally, had a No. 1 hit with ‘Hot Dang!’ Ring any bells?’

  Sandra clutched her hand to her mouth, eyes like saucers. ‘Not Devon Cornwall!!’

  ‘The one and only!’ announced Brenda. ‘Coming to live here. In Churchminster. Any day now!’

  ‘Oh, swoon!’ said Sandra, and giggled like a schoolgirl.

  Anyone under the age of forty-five would probably never have heard of the preposterously named Devon Cornwall. Born plain old Neville Boyle in the quiet, unassuming village of Chipping Sodden twenty miles south of Churchminster, he had itched to get out of there from the time he could pick up a toy instrument. With dreams of becoming a professional musician, he’d moved to London as soon as he’d left school. Unlike so many before and after him, Neville had struck lucky within a few months with his own particular brand of pop rock. He had got a deal with Parlophone records, and Devon Cornwall, music legend, had been born. In the seventies and early eighties, Devon had been more famous than Elvis and Victoria Beckham put together. Every record he released had gone straight to No. 1, including ‘This Heart’s for the Takin’ Not the Breakin’’ and ‘Lusty Leggy Lady’. Four times married, Devon had developed a fond taste for cocaine in the mid-eighties, and his music career all but dried up. Last thing anyone heard, he had been living off his fortune in New Mexico post-rehab, doing the occasional ‘at home’ shoot for glossy magazines extolling the virtues of spirituality and clean living. Now, at the age of fifty-five, Devon Cornwall had decided to come home. His arrival would barely make a splash in the fickle tabloids which had once chased him so obsessively, but to middle-aged ladies like Brenda and Sandra, who had pinned posters of him to their teenage bedroom walls, and saved up their paper-round money to go and see him in concert, he was still a god.

  ‘Hot dang! Give me your sweet tang!’ trilled Brenda, shaking her hips.

  ‘Give me your stuff, your sexy steamy stuff. Ooh, hot dang!’ responded Sandra. They both collapsed in fits of giggles, thirty years momentarily slipping from them.

  Exactly four days later, Devon Cornwall did move in. His entrance was remarkably low-key; just one blacked-out Mercedes driven by his long-time PA, Nigel. Nigel was to live at Byron Heights as well, and run Devon’s day-to-day life. Not that it needed much running these days, but Nigel had been with Devon for so long, he was part of the furniture. Speaking of which, Devon’s belongings had been shipped over from Mexico, and the removal men had already installed them in Byron Heights. The huge, hand-carved wooden furniture fitted the sweeping contours of the house perfectly.

  ‘Here we go, Devon,’ said Nigel, pulling up outside the colossal arched front door. It was a beautiful, sunny spring day and the red-brick building was silhouetted invitingly against the pale blue sky. ‘Home sweet home.’

  Devon Cornwall looked up at the house. He had had a tough couple of years. His last wife Lina had run off with the pool boy a year earlier, not before cleaning out Devon’s current bank account. He was glad to be shot of her – she had had a temper like Mount Vesuvius erupting – but he was missing the three million that she had taken as well. According to the Mexican police, her whereabouts were still unknown. He’d also been involved in a bitter legal wrangle with some no-mark hippies from Denmark who claimed that he’d stolen the third line of ‘Lusty Leggy Lady’ from them in the 1970s. Devon had won the case, but it had exhausted him, and when he had narrowly avoided a kidnapping attempt by guerrillas to ransom him off to the Mexican government, he had decided enough was enough.

  ‘That’s right, Nige, home sweet home,’ he said, stretching contentedly in the back seat. ‘Peace and quiet, fresh air and not much else. It’s a country bumpkin’s life for me.’

  Little did he know the dangers of crime-ridden Mexico would pale in comparison to daily life in Churchminster.

  Chapter 8

  ANOTHER PROPERTY WAS waiting for its new owners in the village. The Mill House had been converted into two luxury homes; while Sebastian and Caro had bought one side, the other had stayed empty. Then, the previous week, a ‘Sold’ sign had appeared in the front garden. Caro noticed the sale had been managed by Harbottle & Brunswick, a very exclusive estate agent in Cirencester. She wondered who the new owners would be. ‘Oh, please let it be a young mum who’s lots of fun,’ she prayed. Caro envisioned a nice couple with two adorable children; they would all get on fabulously well and have riotous dinner parties. She and the woman – whose name would be Sara – would have giggly glasses of wine together and babysit each other’s kids while the other one went for a facial. The husband – his name would be Hugh – would get on equally well with Sebastian and they’d spend weekends shooting together, before returning home to their families, flushed, triumphant and happy. Caro bit her lip; perhaps Sebastian would spend more time with her if there were interesting people next door.

  She looked at her watch. It was time for Milo’s morning walk. It was a crisp, beautiful day, so she wrapped him up warm, put him in the stroller and set off. As she crossed over the road, the birds were chirping and the sun was shining, making the green look plump and fresh. Caro’s heart lifted a little. It was lovely here. She decided to push Milo around the green and then go and buy herself a Galaxy bar from the shop. ‘I’ll burn it off on the walk,’ she thought to herself guiltily.

  As she drew level with her sister’s cottage, Caro thought she really should go in and see how Calypso was doing. But she decided, with another stab of guilt, that she really couldn’t face her youngest sister’s traumas. She had enough on her plate with Milo. It was ironic really: when she had lived in London she had loved catching up with Calypso on the phone – when she’d been able to get hold of her. And once their parents had moved abroad, all three sisters had become closer than ever. But over the months since she’d moved back home, Caro had gradually withdrawn. Camilla had tried to broach the subject with her a few times, sensing her older sister was not herself, but Caro had brushed her off. She felt like she was on autopilot, acting the role of perfect wife and mother that everyone expected of her. She didn’t know how to break that cycle.

  Caro hurried past No. 5 The Green, and she was thinking longingly of her chocolate bar when the door
of No. 3 creaked open and Dora and Eunice Merryweather came wobbling out. Their living room looked out directly on to the green and they had two armchairs positioned right in the window, which they seemed to sit in all day, just watching the world go by. Or stopping the world go by. They lay in wait for Caro on her morning walks, and the second she walked past, they’d be out in the front waving garish hand-knitted booties for Milo, and pinching his chubby cheeks. Caro didn’t mind really, they were harmless old dears.

  ‘Caroline, dear, how are you?’ exclaimed Dora. She and Eunice did indeed look like they had just stepped off the set of Miss Marple. They were wearing almost identical floral-patterned dresses, strings of pearls round their necks, and cardigans draped round their shoulders.

  ‘Dora, Eunice, how nice to see you!’ The two ladies clustered round the pram, cooing, and Milo stared up at them, nonplussed.

  ‘We’ve got a present for you, Master Milo! Haven’t we, Dora?’ said Eunice.

  Dora’s eyes twinkled. ‘Oh yes, indeed!’ From behind her back she produced something knitted in sludge green and orange. Caro’s heart sank; she’d already got a drawer at home bulging with bits and pieces they’d made for Milo, most of a similar ilk. She had once tried to put Milo in a maroon and cream romper suit complete with knitted bow tie, but Sebastian had thrown a fit and said no son of his was going to be pushed around looking like a Romanian gipsy.

  ‘Oh, you really shouldn’t have!’ said Caro truthfully. It was a knitted striped jacket with alternate green and orange buttons, and a bright blue ‘M’ embroidered on the front. Caro had never seen anything so horrific. She resolved to find the number of the nearest charity shop when she got home.

  ‘It’s lovely! Thank you so much,’ she exclaimed brightly.

  ‘It’s our pleasure, we do so love a little one to knit for,’ said Dora.