for business. What with the sun coming out, and the disgraced Eddie Wellesley on his way home from prison to his new house in Brockhurst, it seemed the entire Swell Valley had made a collective decision to go forth and gossip. Everybody knew that the Preedys’ store was the epicentre of Swell Valley gossip. And so here they came, buying their papers and magazines and Bounty bars and home-made coffee and walnut cakes while they were about it. ‘That’ll be seven pounds and eight pence in total, please, Mr Bingley.’
Max handed over a twenty. At the back of the store there was an almighty crash as a shelf-ful of baked-bean cans clattered onto the floor.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Gabe Baxter’s voice rose above the din. ‘Hugh! How many times have I told you to look where you’re going?’
Max and Angela walked over to where a frazzled Gabe had started picking up the mess. Next to him a dirty-faced toddler babbled happily in his stroller, while his four-year-old brother clutched a die-cast Thomas the Tank Engine toy and surveyed the chaos he had created in a nonchalant manner.
‘I did look where I was going,’ said the four-year-old. ‘I was going over there.’ He pointed to the sweetie aisle. ‘The cans were in the way.’
‘Yes, but you can’t just knock them over, Hugh.’ Gabe sounded exasperated.
The little boy sighed and said sweetly, ‘For fuck’s sake.’
Angela giggled. ‘Hello Gabe.’
He looked up at her ruefully. ‘Tell your husband he’s not allowed to exclude children from St Hilda’s just because they’ve got bloody awful language.’
‘If I did that we’d have no kids left,’ Max grinned. ‘They’ve all got mouths like French truck drivers.’
‘I blame the mothers,’ said Gabe.
‘Where is Laura?’ asked Angela, deftly removing a glass bottle of Coca-Cola from Hugh’s greasy little hands and placing it out of reach.
‘Working.’ Gabe put the last of the tins back and stood up. ‘Unfortunately we need the money, but I’m going out of my mind with these two.’ He looked at his sons with a mixture of affection and despair. Changing the subject, he asked Angela, ‘Has he arrived yet, then?’
‘Fast Eddie, you mean?’
‘Who else?’
Max Bingley looked disapproving. ‘Honestly, listen to yourselves. Like a couple of gossiping fishwives.’
‘Not yet,’ Angela told Gabe, ignoring her other half. ‘Apparently there are scores of reporters lying in wait for him. They’re practically lining the High Street at Brockhurst. It’s like the royal wedding.’
The shop door burst open and Penny de la Cruz walked in, looking like she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. Her hair swirled behind her in one giant, windswept tangle, her gypsy skirt was more mud splatters than fabric and her various layers of mismatched cardigans hung off her slim frame at a dizzying array of angles. She was also out of breath, and had clearly been running, quite some distance and for quite some time.
‘Are you all right?’ Angela Cranley looked concerned. ‘Has something happened?’
‘No. Not really,’ Penny panted. ‘I’ve just made a fool of myself, that’s all. Not for the first time.’
Slowly, she recounted her earlier excruciating encounter with Annabel Wellesley.
‘I should have gone straight home I suppose,’ she said, pulling a chilled bottle of fresh-pressed apple juice out of Mrs Preedy’s fridge and swigging from it thirstily. ‘But I couldn’t face Santiago’s smugness. He warned me not to go over there. He thinks Lady Wellesley’s a bit of a harridan.’
‘She sounds worse than that,’ said Gabe, furiously. Being mean to Penny was like kicking a puppy. Totally unacceptable. ‘She sounds like a complete bitch.’
‘Colm-peat bitch,’ Hugh repeated emphatically.
‘Sorry,’ Gabe shrugged. ‘I’m starting to think he was fathered by a parrot.’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Penny. ‘I surprised her. And she must be so stressed out, with those vultures circling at the end of her drive. You can’t blame her for being distrustful of outsiders.’
‘No, you can’t,’ agreed Max. ‘Although it sounds like she was awfully rude to you.’
‘Someone should send her to the new vicar to confess her sins,’ said Gabe.
Dragging his boys up to the counter he began unloading his basket: another TV dinner for tonight, four cans of lager and a packet of chicken nuggets for the kids. Laura was many things: loving mother, sex goddess and, recently, since going back to work in television, breadwinner. But Nigella Lawson she wasn’t.
‘Call-me-Bill’s door is always open,’ he added with a grin.
The new vicar of St Hilda’s, the Reverend Clempson, had already become the butt of numerous jokes down at The Fox, even before the Great Ramblers’ Showdown. In his mid-twenties, with a boyish face and an unfortunately earnest manner, Reverend Clempson had been transferred to the Swell Valley from a trendy North London parish. His invitation to the largely elderly, dyed-in-the-wool-conservative population of Fittlescombe to ‘Call me Bill’ had gone down like the proverbial turd in a swimming pool. Used to the equally elderly, equally conservative Reverend Slaughter, many in the congregation were still getting over the shock of a new vicar who voted Labour, openly supported gay marriage, and wore T-shirts around the vicarage emblazoned with slogans, reportedly including the unforgivable: ‘I roll with God’ next to a picture of a suspicious-looking leaf. Call-me-Bill’s arrival, and subsequent set-to at Wraggsbottom Farm, had been the talk of the valley, until the Wellesleys came along and trumped him.
‘Why don’t you come back to Furlings for tea?’ Angela offered Penny. ‘No offence but you do look a bit of a fright. Something hot and sweet would do you good.’
‘Thanks,’ said Penny. ‘I’d love to.’ She turned to say goodbye to Gabe but he was already wrestling his children out of the door, his shopping jutting out precariously from underneath Luca’s stroller.
Max, Angela and Penny followed him towards the exit. Mrs Preedy called after them: ‘Mrs de la Cruz? That’ll be one pound sixty for the apple juice. I expect you forgot to pay in all the excitement.’
‘I’m so sorry!’ Penny blushed again, scrambling in her purse for the change.
‘All the excitement, indeed,’ muttered Max Bingley. ‘A libidinous old tax dodger just moves in down the road. Does anybody really care?’
Sadly, he already knew the answer to that.
‘This is a bloody joke. D’you think he’s done a bunk and ’opped on a plane to the Seychelles with one of his mistresses?’
Harry Trent rubbed his hands together to keep out the cold. A veteran from the Sun, Harry had been shivering at the bottom of Riverside Hall drive since eight o’clock this morning. His back ached, he was starving, and if Fast Eddie didn’t put in an appearance soon, he was going to miss the start of the Arsenal game.
‘I doubt it.’ Sasha McNally from Sky News was equally fed up with the long wait. ‘He wants to get back into politics, apparently, so I’m sure he’ll be on his best behaviour. They probably got a flat tyre or something. Shit!’ She grabbed her microphone. ‘Here he comes!’
A black BMW with darkened windows approached the gates at a stately pace.
‘Wasn’t he picked up in a Bentley?’ Harry asked.
‘Told you. Flat tyre,’ said Sasha. ‘If he had to change motors, that explains the delay.’
The gates swung inwards. As the car drove forward, the press pack surged behind it, like a swarm of bees around its queen, shouting questions