kitchen was warm, with one of the solid fuel ranges that Polly thought a country living cliché and quite impossible to cook on, and which Miranda claimed to love like a dear friend. The floor was red quarry tiles, starred and pocked with a history of dropped saucepans and tracked with the passage of generations. There was a built-in dresser running the length of one wall, its shelves crowded with mismatched china, and a scrubbed table in the centre. Polly lowered herself into a Windsor chair painted some shade of English Heritage blue to match the legs of the table.
‘Tea coming up,’ Miranda said happily. She brought the kettle back to the boil, poured and stirred, and then began to slice sponge cake.
‘Just a small bit for me,’ Polly murmured.
‘Oh, come on. I made it.’
Selwyn had bounded straight to the back door. He unlatched it and stood on the threshold, rocking gently on the balls of his feet and staring out into the cobbled back courtyard. Chickweed sprouted between the stones and clumps of nettles grew against the flint walls. There were two short wings projecting from the rear of the main house as well as from the front, giving it the profile of a broad but stumpy and irregular H. These two wings were smaller and more dilapidated than the forward-facing pair, having been used in the past partly as barns for the farming that no longer happened at Mead, and partly as garaging for long-vanished cars. The right-hand wing had been converted years before for holiday lettings, but now stood empty and waiting. The left-hand one was much more tumbledown. A section of the roof stood open to the rafters, the panes in some of the windows were broken and patched with cardboard, and a barn-sized door hung open and let in the weather.
It was this most sorry portion of the old house that Selwyn and Polly had recently bought from Miranda, using quite a large slice of the capital that remained from selling their own house and paying off accumulated debts. Despite her unworldly air, Miranda – or her financial advisors – had driven a hard bargain.
‘We should get some of our stuff unloaded,’ Selwyn said. ‘Set up camp. Polly?’
He vibrated with so much eagerness and seemingly innocent energy that the natural response would have been to go along with whatever he suggested. The two women knew him better, and gazed back at him.
‘We’ve only been here ten minutes,’ Polly observed.
‘Camp? What do you mean? You can’t be thinking of sleeping across there tonight?’ Miranda wailed. ‘Have a rest first.’
Selwyn rubbed his hands. They were big, broad, and scarred.
‘Rest? Rest from what? There’s a lot to do out there. We want to get started, Poll, don’t we?’
Polly looked from one to the other.
‘Tomorrow,’ she said.
The Jaguar purred between the gateposts, accelerated past the bend in the driveway and came to a halt beside the abandoned white van.
Amos nodded at it. ‘That’ll be Selwyn’s.’
He and Katherine sat in the quiet and looked across at the front of the house.
‘I always forget. It’s lovely,’ Katherine breathed.
‘It’s falling down.’
‘That, too.’
‘Come on. Let’s go inside and at least get ourselves a drink before the place collapses.’
Amos sprang out and immediately buried his head in the Jaguar’s limited boot space, then emerged with a box in his arms. The evening air was rich with the scent of lavender and agriculture. Miranda appeared once more in the doorway, framed by the pillars. Burdened with his case of champagne Amos could only boom a greeting at her, but Miranda and Katherine embraced.
‘You look well,’ Miranda murmured in Katherine’s ear, as if she had been expecting otherwise.
‘I am well. You know.’
‘We’ll talk. Amos, give me a kiss.’
He leaned over the box and kissed the cheek that she turned to him.
It was Amos who led the way inside. Katherine pulled down the ribbing of her heather-coloured cardigan and followed, carefully placing her feet on the uneven paving. Miranda came behind, light on her feet in her worn ballet flats.
The kitchen boiled with noisy greetings.
‘Bollinger? Amos, you’re still a flash fucker.’
‘Right, you’ll be sticking to tea, then,’ Amos grinned as he dropped a weighty arm on Selwyn’s shoulder. ‘Mirry, glasses for the rest of us. We’ll drink a toast to the new order.’
‘Ah, Katherine, come here. Your husband’s a prat, but you are gorgeous. And you smell divine.’
‘Do I? It’s Jo Malone. I thought it might be a bit young for me…’
‘Now, listen. I don’t want to hear the y word, not from any of us, now or for the rest of our years at Mead. Or the o word, either. Definitely not that one.’
‘Shouldn’t we wait for Colin?’
Everyone was talking at once. Miranda moved happily between them.
Colin was the sixth member of their group. ‘He’ll be here in a minute, I’m sure.’
‘Polly, my darling. How do you bear living with this man?’
‘How do I? You’re going to find out, aren’t you?’
‘Christ. Yes. What have we all let ourselves in for?’
‘I don’t seem to have any champagne glasses. Or not matching ones. Not much call for them lately.’
‘It doesn’t matter about matching. Any glasses will do. Just don’t give Amos the biggest one. Here, let’s use these.’
Selwyn applied strong thumbs and the first cork popped. Miranda swooped a glass and caught the plume of silver froth. The five of them stood in a smiling circle, between the dresser and the scrubbed table with its litter of mugs and cake crumbs.
‘A toast,’ Amos proposed. ‘Here’s to Mead, and to Miranda, and the future.’
‘Here’s to all of us,’ Miranda answered. ‘Long life and…’ she searched for the appropriate word, then it floated into her head, ‘harmony.’
‘Harmony. To all of us,’ they echoed.
The words came easily enough. They had known each other for the best part of forty years. For some of those decades the friendships had seemed consigned to the past, but now there was this late and intriguing regrowth.
Polly put down her empty champagne glass. ‘Where is Colin?’ she asked.
The third vehicle, a small German-made saloon, had reached Meddlett village. It passed the church and the general store-cum-post office on the corner, and skirted the village green. It had passed the pub too, where the lights were coming on as the daylight faded, but then the driver braked quite sharply. A car following behind hooted and accelerated past with another angry blast on the horn. The first car reversed a few yards, then made a dart into the pub car park.
The bar was yellow-lit. It had been slightly modernized, which meant that the horse brasses, patterned carpet and tankards had been removed and replaced by stripped wood. Various jovially phrased notices warned against hiking boots, work clothing and requests for credit. A list of darts fixtures was pinned to the wall next to a cratered dartboard. The window table was occupied by a young couple with a dog seated on the bench between them. They each had an arm wrapped around the dog, and over its smooth black head they were talking heatedly in low voices. An old man in corduroy trousers sat on a stool at the bar, and two younger men stood next to him with pints in their hands. Their conversation halted as their heads turned towards the door. Colin ducked to miss the low beams and made his way to the bar. The barman put down a cloth and rested his weight