The Lost Guide to Life and Love Page 8

  ‘Allen. Matilda Allen.’

  Chapter Nine

  ‘A helicopter? Up to Newcastle? With Clayton Silver? For lunch?’ Becca was seriously impressed. ‘And he asked for your phone number? Oh Tilly, that is just so amazing.’

  ‘Not really,’ I said, trying to be cool about it. ‘The helicopter was quite fun,’ I admitted grudgingly, but I didn’t mention the kiss. ‘No, the best bit was that we sat and talked and had a proper conversation about what it was like when he was a kid. He had a rotten childhood and he has just done so well.’

  After Clayton had kissed me, I had wandered back along the path to the cottage, slightly stunned. I hadn’t noticed the ruins, the birds, the sheep, I no longer thought of all the men who had worked here a century or more ago, I was too busy replaying the previous four hours in my head. You go out for a walk in the middle of nowhere and the next thing you know you’re whisked to one of the country’s most exclusive hotels by one of the country’s most eligible bachelors. In a helicopter. I laughed to myself because it was so ridiculous, I could hardly believe it. But there, in the pocket of my fleece, was the goodie-bag with the hotel’s crest on. It really had happened.

  But who were those men he had met? And why wouldn’t he tell me about them? I thought of Jake’s suspicions and was glad that I was in no danger of getting involved with Clayton.

  Back at the house, I tried to bring myself back down to earth. I made a pot of coffee, but while I was waiting for it to brew, I went over the conversation in the hotel so much that by the time I came back to the present, the coffee had gone cold and I had to make some more. Finally, I got myself sorted, drank the coffee, had one more check through the cheese-maker piece and set off down to the pub to email it. The battered blue four-by-four was in the car park and I could see the tall figure in the shabby Barbour was at the back of the bar talking to Dexter. There was something familiar…and I guessed it was probably Matt Alderson, whom I’d seen striding across the fellside. With that, Becca came through with a mug of coffee. ‘Here you are, Matt,’ she said, and then asked, ‘Where’s Matt?’

  For Matt Alderson seemed to have melted away from the bar, leaving Dexter busily wiping down work surfaces with a determined air and Becca with a baffled expression.

  ‘Would you like this coffee?’ Becca had asked me. ‘Shame to waste it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I’d said, which was when, in return, I had told her about my helicopter trip with Clayton Silver.

  ‘Oh wow!’ she said, enthusiastic, amazed and begging for all the details; I was more than happy to oblige. ‘And he asked for your phone number? Now that really is a good sign,’ she said.

  I shrugged. Did I really care? He so clearly thought he’d impressed me with his helicopter and posh hotel and fancy wine. All very nice, but only stuff, really, just stuff.

  On the other hand, I remembered the way he’d talked about his dad and Travis, his sort of stepdad, and his pride at getting his GCSEs. Now that had been a surprise. Maybe there was more to Clayton Silver than a tight T-shirt and decent ball control.

  Finally Dexter came through with some spicy soup for customers and said, a little grumpily, ‘The computer’s free now, if you want it.’

  ‘Better had, I suppose.’

  I disappeared into the little corner and dutifully emailed my article over, plus notes and details for photographers. Then I emailed my mum because I thought she’d probably made a better fist of things than Clayton’s mum had. I couldn’t tell her that in so many words. And certainly not in an email, but it was sort of important to make contact, get in touch, so I just said that all was well but I still hadn’t had time to track down our family roots. And, of course, I had to tell Polly about my amazing lunch date…As I was writing to her, an email pinged in from Jake. Short and to the point, he asked, ‘Everything OK?’ Which I guess was him thinking he’d done enough to discharge any duty of care he might feel he owed me.

  ‘Brilliant!’ I typed back. ‘Clayton Silver flew me up to Newcastle for lunch.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ came the reply.

  ‘No, really.’

  ‘If really, then tell me more,’ typed Jake.

  So I told him the story—much more briefly and downbeat than I had told it to Becca. But I did mention the meeting with the strange men. I was curious.

  ‘Any idea who they were?’ he typed back immediately.

  ‘No. He went into another room to talk to them so couldn’t hear anything. Looked perfectly anonymous men in suits.’

  ‘Be careful, Tilly,’ Jake wrote back. ‘Footballers live in a different world. Clayton Silver moves in some very dodgy circles. You don’t want to get close to him.’

  ‘You’re right. I don’t,’ I replied, but just to wind him up and to show him that yes, I did have a life of my own, thank you, I added, ‘But who knows?’ though I did really. Clayton Silver wasn’t my type and I certainly wasn’t his. I’d read the gossip columns and the celebrity mags. I’d seen the pictures. I guessed I knew what footballers were like. And so I got on with arranging my next interview.

  When I’d done that, I did have a sort of thought about Googling Clayton Silver, to find out more about him, but one of the family history mob was making noises about how he’d booked the computer to start at least ten minutes ago…Anyway, what would be the point? Inspired by the sampler about ‘Wine is a mocker‘, I was drinking an elderflower and ginger cordial and watching Becca knit.

  ‘I don’t understand how you can just pick it up and knit a few stitches, put it down and then pick it up and know exactly where you are,’ I said, remembering my few hopeless attempts at knitting as a child.

  ‘Practice,’she said. ‘My mother’s the same, knits every spare minute. Not that she has many. So did my grandmother. And my grandfather. Couldn’t stand to be idle. Once upon a time, everyone in the dale used to knit—men and women and children. That was a hundred years or so ago, of course, but it still carried on.’

  Whenever I could, I would clear any tables, to give her a bit more knitting time. I’d only been coming here a few days, yet already I felt part of the pub, part of the family. How could my life change so much in just a matter of days? I stacked up the plates left behind by a family with two very messy children and, as I was coming back with a cloth to wipe the table, the door opened and a small Asian guy came in. He went up to the bar and said politely, ‘I come to buy scarf please.’

  Dexter looked baffled, both by the man and by his request. ‘Scarf ?’ he said, rather helplessly.

  ‘Scarf made by Becca,’ said the man firmly.

  Becca leapt in. ‘Right, well, I only have one here with me now. I have more at home, or you can buy them at shops in Hawes, Alston, Allendale, Richmond, Durham—’

  ‘Must have one now please. Mr Santini asked specially.’

  ‘Alessandro?’ Becca’s face lit up. ‘He wants one of my scarves?’ Then her face fell a fraction. ‘He’s not coming to get it himself ?’

  ‘No. He must be back in London, to play football.’

  ‘Never mind, next best thing,’ said Becca happily, and found the scarf she had shown Alessandro two days earlier. It was still carefully wrapped in tissue paper. Becca rummaged down below the bar and into her hessian bag, from which she produced a card. ‘High Dales Designs. A twist on tradition by Becca Guy.’ It had her email address on. She quickly added her phone number too.

  ‘Nothing to lose, is there?’ she grinned as she saw me watching.

  ‘Anything can happen.’

  She handed over the parcel and the man took it carefully and then produced a bundle of notes.

  ‘No, no!’ said Becca, before peeling off two and pushing the rest back. ‘Forty pounds is plenty, really.’

  ‘You’re missing a trick there, girl,’ said one of the cyclists in the bar who’d been watching with some amusement. ‘If he wants to give you hundreds, just you take it.’

  ‘No. Forty pounds is the price and that’s it.’

  Alessandro’s m
essenger shrugged, pushed the rest of the notes back in his pocket, thanked Becca again, made a small bow and left.

  Becca and I stood either side of the bar and grinned at each other. All in all it had been a pretty good day.

  The next day I had to tend to my life. I snaked back down the dale to a small town. After the track up High Hartstone Edge, the road that had seemed so perilously narrow when Jake and I drove up a few days ago now seemed like the M1. When I got to the small town it took me a moment to realise what was odd about it: there was no supermarket; in fact not a single chain store or national name at all. Every shop was independent and individual. Wonderful. I joined the queue at the baker’s, relishing that bread smell as I dithered between a crusty cottage loaf and an enticing small square loaf full of seeds and nuts. In the end I chose them both. ‘Best way. Spoil yourself,’ smiled the assistant as she deftly wrapped the loaves in sheets of tissue paper and popped them in a paper carrier bag with string handles. The bread was still warm and it took all my willpower not to start nibbling away at it as I walked along to the proper old-fashioned grocer’s where they had a wonderful coffee grinder and the smell filled the air.

  It was market day, so I spent a happy hour wandering round the stalls, buying crisp local apples, greengages, knobbly carrots and huge creamy parsnips. ‘Try some,’ said the man selling chutneys, offering me a plate of crackers and a spoon to dip into the jars, and I finally settled on Hot Plum Relish and a jar of Malay vegetable pickle, both so good that they hardly needed meat or cheese. I bought homemade savoury wafers and some oat biscuits from a stall called ‘Aunty Annie’s’ and I heard someone actually say, ‘How do, Annie?’ And I was sure she was an aunty, too. We must do another market feature on The Foodie, I decided, it was such a brilliant way to shop.

  Standing back from the cobbled marketplace there was a small but very stylish department store; one window was filled almost entirely with scarves I instantly recognised as Becca’s. They were really very good—bright pinks and purples, scarlets and blues, full of style and fun—and she should be charging a lot more than forty quid for them. If she sold them in London, she could make a fortune.

  But the best thing of all was that I could get a phone signal here too. I sat squashed into a seat at a crowded café my shopping bags at my feet, and scrolled happily through my messages. There was a number I didn’t recognise. Probably a misdialled one. I clicked on it just to be sure.

  ‘Hello miss freshface. how r u? lunch was good. c u soon.’

  I clutched my phone, stared at it hard and scrolled quickly on to the next message. I didn’t want Clayton Silver in my life. Didn’t want him sending me texts. Then I scrolled back…and read Clayton’s message again. Not exactly a love letter, was it? Not quite up there with great romantic missives of our time. Part of me was irritated by this attention. My finger went straight to ‘Delete’ but then I stopped. Because another part of me was ridiculously pleased that Clayton had bothered to send a text. Maybe the lunch, our conversation, had meant something to him too.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, girl, you have nothing in common. Stop acting like an impressionable teenager.’ I gave myself a good talking-to, but I’m not sure how much notice I took of myself. I was still staring at the phone and chewing a delicious chunk of parkin when there was a knock on the window. I looked up. Jake was standing outside.

  ‘It’s all right, pet, he can sit here. I’m just going.’ An elderly lady with half a dozen bulging shopping bags manoeuvred her way out of her seat with some difficulty and Jake slid in next to me.

  ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘Well I saw that rust-heap of a van parked up the road so knew you’d be here somewhere. I just kept my eyes open. How are you?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Are you all right on your own in that house?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘And you’re managing with work?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake, Tilly. I’m trying to be nice here. At least meet me halfway.’

  The phone with the text message from Clayton burned in my hand. I didn’t want to get into this with Jake. But Jake was right; he was trying to be kind. And maybe we needed to talk. And here was as good a place as any. Surrounded by people, we couldn’t shout and yell.

  ‘Could we have another pot of tea and some more parkin, please?’ I asked the waitress.

  ‘I don’t want any parkin,’ said Jake crossly.

  ‘Yes, you do—it’s delicious, all gingery and treacly and chewy.’

  ‘Why are you always trying to push food onto me?’

  I put my cup back in the saucer. ‘Am I? Do I? I mean, did I?’

  ‘Yes. All the time.’

  I thought about it. ‘Maybe, ’ I said slowly, ‘because food has always been important in our family. Even when my mother found it difficult to talk about things, especially anything to do with my dad, she would cook, try new recipes. A new recipe was a sort of offering, a gift, a way of bridging a gap. And, of course, it’s one of the greatest gifts you can give. I mean, you’re actually sharing the very stuff of life, aren’t you? I mean…’

  ‘Tilly,’ said Jake wearily, ‘it was just an observation. I didn’t want a psychological treatise.’

  ‘Oh.’ Yet again, Jake had somehow put me in the wrong, made me feel silly. And I realised I didn’t have to put up with it any more. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you again,’ I said. ‘I thought you’d be far too busy researching with…Flick.’

  ‘Did you really go off in a helicopter with Clayton Silver yesterday?’

  ‘Ah. So that’s why you’ve searched me out. For information. For work. Not out of concern at all.’ Which was, in a funny way, a relief. I was getting used to the idea that the ties between me and Jake were now well and truly cut. ‘Actually, yes, I did. Some posh hotel near Newcastle.’

  ‘So who did he meet?’

  ‘Dunno. Just two men. I told you in my email. Why?’

  ‘Well, I knew he wasn’t at the shoot yesterday. But when Clayton Silver didn’t turn up yesterday, nobody seemed surprised or cared much. And when you think how much it costs to have a gun at a shoot—we’re talking thousands—it just seemed odd that no one minded.’

  I pushed the parkin towards him and poured him a cup of tea. ‘Do you think something’s going on? Something dodgy?’

  ‘Well, there are rumours, but nothing I can get to grips with. Maynard’s spending a fortune trying to turn himself into a respectable English gentleman—the country house in Surrey, the shooting lodge up here. The trouble is that no one quite knows where his fortune came from.’

  ‘Something crooked?’

  ‘Possibly. Undoubtedly. But it’s impossible to prove. He calls himself a property developer and certainly he made a lot in the boom years, but no one can get to the bottom of it. There are too many companies, not enough information. I have spent days trawling through records, reading annual reports, company accounts, trying to make sense of it all. It’s bloody difficult. In any case, half the stuff’s offshore or is just untraceable. A football club is a wonderful cover-up.’

  ‘Doesn’t that make money?’

  ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But then think about the stupid money footballers get paid. It can’t all come from Sky TV or selling replica shirts to little boys. There’s a lot of dodgy dealing going on somewhere and it’s hard to pin down. Interesting that many of the usual hangers-on—minor royalty and all those impoverished aristos—don’t want much to do with him, not even his grouse moors. He’s left with jumped-up City boys, soap stars and footballers.’

  I felt uneasy. ‘Would that have been Maynard’s helicopter I had a lift in?’

  ‘Oh yes. A couple of footballers have their own, but not Clayton Silver as far as I know. That would have been Maynard’s all right.’

  ‘Do you think the footballers are involved in this dodgy stuff ?’

  ‘Probably not in the really big league. But t
here again, there’s an awful lot of corruption that’s hard to prove. There were all those scandals in the Eighties and Nineties and they’ve just shown that Italian football is rotten to the core. So it’s hard to say. But if I were you, I would definitely steer clear of footballers, especially any that have any connection with Simeon Maynard.’

  I was quiet for a bit, thinking about what he’d said and wondering if the helicopter jaunt hadn’t been so much fun after all, when Jake took an absent-minded bite of parkin. ‘Mmm, you’re right, this is good.’

  ‘Told you.’

  We looked at each other and smiled.

  ‘It seems weird to be sitting in a café at the top of England with you,’ I said.

  ‘You could always move in to the B & B where I am.’

  ‘I don’t think that would work, would it?’ I had tasted a few days of freedom and realised how much easier it was making life on my own.

  ‘But you can’t really like being by yourself in that isolated dump,’ said Jake. ‘It’s not safe for a woman on her own.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be daft. It’s quite safe. And it’s not a dump. And anyway, I like it there.’ I could feel my confidence rising with every sentence. I didn’t mind arguing with Jake because I didn’t really care what he thought any more. I could say what I liked. It was a glorious feeling. Even more exhilarating than taking off in a helicopter.

  ‘Anyway, won’t you be going back to…Flick soon? She must be longing to know how you’re getting on.’

  ‘We’ve been in touch.’

  ‘I bet you have.’

  ‘Look, it’s work. Anyway, she’s in London. You and I came up here together and I feel responsible for you.’

  ‘Please don’t. I can take full responsibility for myself, thank you.’

  He shrugged. It was over. Really over.

  I wondered if this is the way a love affair ends. Not with a huge row and high drama, but over a cup of tea and a slice of cake in the middle of a market-day teashop, while elderly women around us rested their feet and checked their shopping lists and dithered between a cream slice or a scone.