Her hair was that shade somewhere between blonde and brown. The summer sun had lightened it in places, giving its smooth, straight length a fashionably highlighted effect.
As it swung forwards to obscure her profile she pushed it back off her face with a surprisingly strong and supple hand. Her wrists looked too fragile to support such strength, but her long hours spent working on her tapestries had strengthened the muscles.
This particular commission on which she was working was for a young couple who had recently moved into a large house just outside Bath. He was predictably something in the City. She was pleasant enough, but slightly pretentious. They had two children, both as yet under five, but both boys were down to attend prestigious boarding-schools.
The tapestry, a modern one, was to be the focal point of a large, rectangular, galleried hallway and was to be hung so that it was the first thing that caught the visitor’s eye upon entering the house. Jessica had given a good deal of thought to its subject matter.
Arabella Moore had said vaguely that she was quite happy to leave everything to her; she had apparently seen some of her work in the shop in Bath, and had additionally read the very good report that had appeared in a prestigious glossy magazine, praising Jessica’s innovative skills.
‘Something amusing and witty,’ was the only specification Arabella had made, and Jessica only hoped that her client would be happy with her design. As yet she had not started work on the tapestry itself. The design was still very much at the drawing-board stage, awaiting completion then approval from Arabella.
As always when she was engrossed in a project, Jessica resented anything that took her away from it.
As she went to open her workroom door she heard an indignant yowl from outside and grimaced to herself, wondering what trophy Cluny her cat had brought back for her to admire. Cluny had been a stray, rescued one stormy November night, when she had found him crouched, wet and shivering, in her back garden. Now fully grown, he was sleek and black, and full of his own importance.
She opened the door and looked outside, giving a faint sigh of relief at the lack of any small, furry corpse. Cluny was a hunter, and nothing she could say to him seemed to make any difference, so she had had to learn to live with his uncivilised habit of bringing her back gifts of small, pathetic, lifeless bodies.
Everyone had a right to life, she believed that most passionately and intensely, and always had, but her belief had grown stronger and fiercer ever since she herself had come face to face with the realisation that her own life could end between the taking of one breath and the next, and despite the security of her cottage and the sheltered life-style she now lived, seeing only a few close friends, admitting no one new to her circle until she felt completely secure with them, there was still that haunting fear which had never really left her.
It had been a good summer, but now they were into October, and the blue sky beyond her window held the clear pureness that warned of dropping temperatures. She was wearing jeans and a thick woollen sweater, because, despite the fact that the rest of the cottage was centrally heated, she preferred to keep her workroom free of anything that might damage the valuable antique tapestries she sometimes worked on at home.
The cottage had a sharp, narrow flight of stairs which she preferred to keep polished in the old-fashioned way, a central runner kept in place with stair-rods—both the rods and the runner had been lucky finds at an antique fair. The runner, once cleaned, had proved to have a strength of colour which went well with the cottage’s oak stairs and floors.
Only one or two of her prospective clients had ever remarked that surely modern fitted carpets would be both warmer and cleaner, and these clients had always proved to be the difficult ones—the ones to whom her work was something that had newly become fashionable and who really had no true appreciation of its history and art.
Downstairs she had a small, comfortable sitting-room with windows overlooking her tiny front garden and beyond it the main road that ran through the village, and a good-sized kitchen-cum-dining-room-cum-sitting-room which she had furnished mainly with antiques picked up here and there from various sales.
Only the kitchen cupboards were modern, and that was because the lack of space forced her to make the maximum use of every corner. Solid oak and limed, they had been built by a local craftsman and added a pleasing lightness to the low-beamed ceilinged room.
A scrubbed farmhouse table divided the kitchen area of the room from the sitting area. She had retained the open fireplace, and alongside it against the wall was a comfortable sofa draped with a soft woollen blanket and covered with tapestry cushions.
The stone floor was warmed by a collection of rugs, but the thing that struck strangers most forcibly about Jessica’s home was the startling amount of vibrant colour. Those who had only met her outside her home assumed that, because she chose to wear camouflage colours of beige, olive and taupe, her home would echo these subtle but sometimes dull shades. Instead, it was full of vibrant rich reds, blues, greens and golds put so harmoniously together that the surprised visitor came away with the sensation of having been exposed to something exceptionally alive and warming.
No one was more aware of dichotomy between her habitat and her personal mode of dress than Jessica herself. Once, as a child, she had pleaded with her mother to be allowed to have a rich ruby velvet dress. She could see it in her mind’s eye now, feel the delicious warmth of the supple fabric, smell its rich scent. Her mother had been aghast, controlling her own distaste for the dress by gently pointing her in the direction of another one in muted olive Viyella. And she had learned then that little girls who were going to grow up to run a merchant bank did not dress in rich ruby velvet.
Now out of habit rather than anything else she still wore those same colours gently dictated by her mother. Not that clothes interested her anyway—not in the way that fabrics, colours and textures did. Clothes were simply the means one used to protect one’s body from heat and cold…and, in her case, to provide her with the protection of anonymity.
No one would look twice at a slender young woman, unremarkable of face and figure, dressed in dull, practical clothes. No one would pick her out as a target…a victim…
Her parents had never understood her decision to come and live and work in Avon. They had pleaded with her to change her mind, but she had remained steadfast, and she had had the report of her doctor to back her up. Peace and tranquillity, relief from pressure, a need to recuperate and gather up her mental strength—that was what he had advised.
That had been five years ago. Now her parents accepted, albeit reluctantly, that she lived a different life from theirs.
Her mother had never given up trying to coax her back to London. Every few months she had a fresh attempt—still hoping, perhaps, for that all-important grandson—but Jessica shied away from the commitment that marriage involved. She was free for the first time in her life, and that was the way she intended to stay. Marriage meant responsibilities, duties, putting others’ feelings first…She didn’t want that.
In her hall she picked up her parcel and let herself out into the small front garden. The sun was warm, but the air cool once she stepped into the shadows. She paused to admire the dwarf Michaelmas daisies she had planted much earlier in the year. Their rich massing of purple, mauve and lilac pleased her and she bent to touch their petals gently. Gardening was her second love, and she planted her garden in much the same way as she worked on her tapestries, but with the artist’s fine eye for colour and form.
The post office was the only shop in the village; the nearest garage was ten miles away in the small market town, and the post office was very much the focus of village life. Mrs Gillingham, who ran it, knew all the local gossip and passed it on to her customers with genial impartiality. Jessica interested her. It was unusual for so young and pretty a woman to live so very much alone. Martha Gillingham put her single state down to a broken romance in her past, romantically assuming that it was this relationship which had led to her arrival in the village and to her single state.
She was quite wrong.
Jessica had never been in love. Initially because there had never been time. At university she had worked desperately