night like this one. Laura had moved to the Swell Valley to be with him, despite a very rocky courtship, and they were now the parents of two small boys. The Baxters were often broke and always exhausted, but Laura wouldn’t have traded their life for anything.
‘Traitors.’
Santiago de la Cruz – cricket star, valley local and Gabe’s close friend – slipped out a few moments later, nursing a glass of Laphroaig. Santiago was also gorgeous, although in a very different way from Gabe. Tall, dark and quintessentially Latin, he was always perfectly groomed, a thoroughbred racehorse to Gabe’s mud-splattered mustang.
‘How could you leave me in there?’ He rubbed the side of his head ruefully. ‘I think my ears have started to melt.’
He was followed by his wife, Penny. Widely agreed to be both the kindest woman in Fittlescombe and the worst dressed, Penny de la Cruz was almost invisible tonight beneath about six layers of sweaters, her wild, Pre-Raphaelite hair spilling out at the top like a fountain. Penny, bravely, had been on the side of the ramblers in the great ‘right-to-roam’ debacle. Santiago felt strongly that they should all be shot.
‘Honestly.’ Penny looked at Gabe, Laura and Santiago disapprovingly. ‘The three of you look like naughty schoolchildren, smoking behind the bike sheds. Come back inside before you catch hypothermia.’
‘Has she stopped?’ Gabe asked.
‘She’s stopped.’
‘Do you promise?’
‘Yes,’ said Penny. ‘And … I have gossip.’
That was all it took. Two minutes later the four of them were seated round a corner table, ignoring the next act while Penny spilled the beans.
‘Riverside Hall at Brockhurst has finally sold,’ she whispered importantly.
‘That’s it?’ said Santiago. ‘That’s the gossip?’
‘Nooooo.’ Penny shushed him. ‘The gossip is the new owners.’
She smiled cryptically.
‘Well, go on then,’ said Laura. ‘Who is it?’
‘Guess.’
‘We can’t guess. How are we supposed to guess?’
‘Simon Cowell,’ said Gabe.
Santiago gave him a look. ‘Simon Cowell? Why would Simon Cowell move to Brockhurst?’
Gabe shrugged. ‘Why not? You did. All right then. Madonna.’
‘Now you’re just being ridiculous.’
‘What? She loves the English countryside,’ said Gabe. ‘She wears flat caps and drinks pints, remember?’
‘That was in her Guy Ritchie stage. Now she dates Brazilian teenagers and photographs her armpit hair,’ Laura reminded him. ‘Do keep up, darling.’
Never let it be said that she was behind on her celebrity gossip.
‘I’ll put you out of your misery,’ said Penny. ‘It’s Sir Edward Wellesley.’
There was a stunned silence. Gabe broke it first.
‘Isn’t he in prison?’
‘He gets out next week.’
‘Blimey. That wasn’t long. I might avoid my own taxes next year if that’s all you get.’
‘You have to have income to pay taxes,’ Laura reminded him sweetly.
‘Good point.’ Gabe squeezed his wife’s thigh.
‘Are you sure about this?’ Santiago asked Penny. For some reason he found it hard to imagine England’s most notoriously flamboyant, disgraced politician settling down to the quiet life in the Swell Valley. Especially in Riverside Hall, a grand but isolated old building that had stood empty for well over a year.
‘Positive. Angela Cranley saw Lady Wellesley with the estate agent last week. They completed ten days ago, apparently.’
‘Isn’t she supposed to be a nightmare?’ Gabe asked. ‘The wife?’
‘God yes. She’s a horror, a terrible snob. Do you remember how “Let them eat cake” she was at his trial?’ said Santiago.
‘I’m sure she was under immense pressure,’ Penny said kindly. ‘We must all give them a chance.’
Laura sipped her gin and tonic and felt a rush of pure happiness. She loved Penny and Santiago. She loved this pub, and village life, and the tight, gossipy world of the valley, a world where a new arrival with a scandalous past was ‘big news’. But most of all she loved Gabe and their boys.
I’m so lucky, she thought, reaching for her husband’s hand under the table. Life really doesn’t get any better than this.
Sir Edward Wellesley looked around the room that had been his home for the last year. As odd as it sounded, he’d grown fond of it.
Pictures of his wife and son, Milo, hung on the walls, along with countless shots of his beloved border terrier, Wilf, and of Eddie himself, shaking hands with world leaders or speaking at the Tory Party conference. In the corner was a small desk where Eddie had spent many fruitful hours working on his memoirs.
It was a ‘room’ rather than a cell. Not like the awful hole he’d been shut up in for the first three months of his sentence at HMP Kennet. Some chippy pleb in the SFO had decided to make an example of the former Work and Pensions minister, packing Eddie off to the most overcrowded prison in Britain. It was a huge relief to be transferred to Farndale Open Prison, a rambling former stately home set deep in the Hampshire countryside. Compared to Kennet, it was the Ritz-Carlton. Eddie had gone from sharing a squalid cell with five men to sharing a comfortable room with one: a perfectly charming stockbroker named William Rees who’d been had up for insider trading. Will had been released a month ago. Since then Eddie had had the room to himself.
Not that Kennet was all bad. Eddie had made some good friends there too. The truth was, he made friends everywhere. Sir Edward Wellesley was an easy man to like.
In his early forties, with thick black hair greying slightly at the temples and a faint fan of laughter lines around his wickedly intelligent brown eyes, Eddie radiated charisma in a manner that had always drawn others in. Unashamedly posh, he somehow managed to carry off his Eton accent without making people want to punch him. Although not what one would call fit, exactly, at six foot four he carried his weight well, and projected a masculinity and youthful vigour not at all common in politicians. It was widely thought that Fast Eddie looked more like a handsome actor playing a minister than an actual minister. Women had always adored him and men admired him, perhaps because he never took anything too seriously, least of all himself.
‘Ready, Eddie?’
Bob Squires, one of the prison officers, stuck his head around Eddie’s door. A charming old boy in his sixties, Bob was a fanatical cricket buff. He and Eddie had bonded over their love of the game.
‘Not quite,’ said Eddie. ‘I’m still packing up, I’m afraid. Never do today what you can leave till the absolute last minute, that’s my motto.’ He grinned, placing a neatly folded Turnbull & Asser shirt into his suitcase. ‘Besides, chucking-out time’s in an hour, isn’t it?’
‘It is.’ Bob Squires held out an envelope awkwardly. ‘I only stopped in early ’cause me and some of the boys wanted to give you this.’
Eddie opened it. Inside was a photograph of all the Farndale warders and staff, raising their glasses to the camera. On the back someone had written: ‘Good Luck Eddie – We’ll Miss You! – From all at Farndale’. Everyone had signed it.
‘My goodness.’ Eddie felt quite choked. ‘That’s terribly kind of you. I shall hang it up in my new house the moment I find a hammer.’
‘I’m