Read on for an extract of Rumours
PROLOGUE
Chloë dearest,
How very strange to write in life that which will be read on death!
I hope sincerely that there will not have been too many tears – and that my funeral wishes were carried out to a ‘t’ (especially the jazz and champagne).
Over the last few years I was haunted regularly by images of my nearest and not so dearest swooping down and picking at the bones of my just dead self; fighting over the fleshiest morsels and leaving nothing but offal for the rest and best of you. I decided therefore – quite some time ago, I might add – to cut myself up into sizeable portions and divide my spoils amongst those deep and constant in my affections.
For you, C, my dearest indeed, I leave anything of velvet in my cupboard. I leave you The Brooch which I know you have coveted since you were tiny. It goes to you because I want you to have a little part of me – and it is my eternal hope that you will carry something of me deep within, as much as on your lapel.
And for you, dear C, I leave this map. There are four more and you will find them all. Wales first, then Ireland, Scotland and finally England. Trust me.
There is also a sum of money which will see you on your way and pay for train tickets and postcards. It will enable you to give up that lousy job and hopefully give you the independence to rid yourself of that awful boyfriend – you are much too good for the former and far too precious for the latter.
I am sending you on a voyage, dearest one, in the hope that, once you are quite travelled out, you might find a small patch that you can at last call Home.
I have great hopes for you.
Keep me in mind, my duck.
Jocelyn.
ONE
‘Heavens,’ Chloë Cadwallader declares for the third time. Concentrating very hard on the red wine stain on the carpet, she twiddles with a lively lock of auburn hair which springs back over her right eye just as soon as she tucks it behind her ear.
‘Heavens,’ she says, heaving out the ‘h’, ‘I can’t do that.’
Fingering The Brooch, she looks solemnly from letter to map and back again. Jocelyn’s handwriting and the map of the United Kingdom are at once familiar and yet somehow foreign and suddenly illegible. Chloë is aware that she knows the shapes but their meaning is now strangely elusive and forgotten.
‘I cannot do it.’
An envelope marked ‘Wales’ lies unopened and alluring on her knees. She takes it to her nose and inhales with eyes closed tight, hoping that she might detect Jocelyn’s trademark Mitsuko scent. Though the faintest whisper would suffice, the envelope, alas, smells of nothing.
‘Can I?’
Chloë crosses her living-room and flicks on the light, for the ready-to-break storm outside has plunged the December lunch-time into premature darkness. Venturing cautiously over to the window, she pins the brooch to her jumper. Though the shadowy reflection offered by the pane blurs her own features, it captures the glint of the brooch. Chloë knows its intricate course of serpentines and twists off by heart. A tear smudges her sight but she squeezes her finger into the corner of her eye and pushes the tear to the back of her mind.
‘Heavens,’ she mutters, ‘what on earth am I meant to do?’
The United Kingdom looms from the page; beautiful and conspiring. Wales first. Ireland next. Then Scotland. Finally, England. Clockwise and magnetic. What to do? What to do. What are you going to do? What would you do?
After quite some time, in which Chloë continued to consult heaven and earth to no avail (Jocelyn must be up there somewhere!), she kissed the brooch quickly and glanced at the envelope marked ‘Wales’; still unopened. Taking it to her nose once more but again in vain, she decided to give it to Mr and Mrs Andrews for safe keeping until she felt braver, until she knew what to do with it. And with her job (lousy), and with her boyfriend (awful). Chloë knew that Jocelyn would have approved for it was she who had introduced her to Gainsborough’s charming couple. Locked as they were within the fabric of a rather good framed facsimile, they had been good friends to Chloë for many years and now, with Jocelyn gone, they were her confidantes and advisers too. Immeasurably important for a timid girl, currently a little lonely and low, whose friends are few and whose family are far and distant anyway. Slotting the envelope in the gap which had appeared over the years between frame and print, Chloë was amused that it rested between the Andrews’s feet, with Mr A’s gun and dog protecting it further. She gazed at Mrs Andrews’s pale blue frock and regarded two concert tickets nestling by the corn stooks in the bottom right corner.
‘What would you do,’ she implored of the couple, ‘if you were me? What should I do?’
‘Sink me, girl!’ Mr Andrews chastised melodiously. ‘You have to ask?’
‘Of course I have to ask,’ Chloë said somewhat incredulously.
‘Go,’ laughed Mrs Andrews, ‘away!’
‘Away?’ Chloë gasped. ‘Do you really think so?’
‘To – The – Concert,’ spelt Mrs Andrews kindly and to Chloë’s relief.
‘I do so love Beethoven,’ Chloë reasoned, ‘but Brett can’t make it. Working late. Or something.’
‘Even better!’ exclaimed Mr Andrews. ‘He’d only fidget.’
‘Awful!’ Mrs Andrews declared, with deference to Jocelyn.
‘Rid yourself,’ agreed Mr Andrews likewise. ‘After all, if