Guilty Pleasures (11 page)

‘I'm amazed you managed to eat any of it after dear Josie's cakes. What a good job we only have fruit salad for dessert,' he said wistfully.

‘I have been trying to keep an eye on his diet,' Aidan said. ‘But he has spoken highly of her confections.'

‘What a good job she made me take away the rest of the Victoria sponge she baked for me.'

So it was a nice easy time.

As we hugged goodbye, Griff whispered, ‘And you really are not unhappy at this development with Robin, sweet one?'

‘Absolutely not. He's always been a friend, and I'm sure we'll keep it that way.'

‘It doesn't always happen when people embark on new relationships, I fear. Maybe I should cancel this London trip and come and keep an eye on you.'

‘Don't even say the words. It's a long time since you had a nice break, and you both deserve it.'

But when I got back home it was very quiet, and Tim and I had to have a long conversation involving tissues before I settled down to tackle a really tricky bit of gilding on a Crown Derby vase.

One thing I really did not expect the following morning, horribly early, when I'd no more than thought about getting up and having a shower, was a phone call from Robin. All he said was he could do with some advice, and maybe we could meet for lunch at the Halfway House – a pub that just happened to be halfway between Bredeham and Bossingham.

‘I'm sorry. I've absolutely got to finish an urgent job today, so . . . Look,' I relented, ‘if you could make it over to Bredeham, I've got plenty of food here. Would that do?'

‘It'll have to, I suppose.' That didn't sound like Robin at all.

‘About one?' I suggested, equally offhand. But worried.

But it would never do to agonize over his love life when I was trying to be stoical about my lack of one, so, after a hasty shower and a piece of toast, I went to my workroom, where a particularly delicate piece of Chelsea waited for me. It was actually a good job he'd phoned so early – it was still shy of seven thirty. It meant I could get a really good run at the piece. In fact, I was so engrossed that I didn't hear the doorbell ring. When the noise finally penetrated my skull, I almost dropped my paintbrush.

Surely Robin had said lunchtime? And this was before breakfast for most people.

But it wasn't Robin I peered at through the peephole in the door. It was an old guy I'd never seen before. Not this close, at least.

ELEVEN

‘
G
riff always puts a drop of whisky in,' X said, peering doubtfully at the mug of tea I'd made him.

I obliged.

‘I never thought I'd get to meet you,' I said, passing the biscuits too. ‘And at this time of day – you're usually such an early bird.'

‘So long as you pass me message on to Griff,' he said, which didn't seem to be a reply to anything. He scoffed half the biscuits. With luck he'd finish the lot. I certainly wouldn't fancy eating anything he'd touched.

‘I can get him on the phone for you if you like.' I picked up the handset and held it out to him.

I might have been offering a dead hedgehog.

‘Word of mouth, that's how I deal. Got this little item for him. Tell him it's the usual terms.'

‘Cash and say nothing to anyone,' I said. ‘And a cheese sandwich?'

His eyes lit up. ‘Don't usually get one of them.'

‘And a drop of cider?'

‘Now you're talking.'

I not only talked, I opened the kitchen door and propped it wide. X might be more forthcoming than I'd ever expected but his preparations for the visit hadn't included much in the way of personal hygiene.

‘I could make you some ham sarnies to take with you too if you liked.'

‘No mustard.'

‘Right.'

‘Titus said you were OK. Said you'd got spunk. True you're a divvy?'

My turn to hold back. That was one thing I didn't like spoken of, though I suppose most folk in our line of business must know. Then I smiled. ‘Try me out.'

‘Only meant to show Griff. Hang on.' He turned away from the table and dug in an inside pocket of his foul coat. Whatever he came up with was easily hidden under his hand as he laid it on the table.

This was the table Griff kneaded bread on, for goodness' sake. We'd need one of those surface sprays that kills ninety-nine per cent of all known germs.

‘Don't do guessing games,' I said. ‘I have to see whatever it is.'

‘Not what I heard. Heard you could pick something out at fifty paces.'

‘Maybe I did. That's why I let you in.' Probably, I'd picked out the smell and registered it certainly wasn't latex and cosmetics. I must have been off my head otherwise. But I wasn't getting anything in the way of vibes.

‘Said you were pretty fly, Titus. OK, if I show you, means you got to buy it. And I won't take less than a tenner.'

My nod was meant to be offhand. Griff had dinned into me I mustn't worry that he never paid X anything like enough for the things he brought along to what were usually pre-breakfast meetings. If he gave the true value, Griff argued, then X would just go off and drink himself to death. Would ten pounds be dangerous? Was I meant to haggle? Was that part of X's game?

‘Depends what I make of it,' I said coolly. ‘Maybe just a fiver and an extra sarnie.'

It looked as if we had a deal. He removed his paw to reveal a poor battered piece of metal, which might have been the twin of the one everyone seemed to want. Bloody hell, it might well have been the twin. Forcing myself to be casual, I picked it up and looked at it, inside and out. ‘I'd need my eyeglass.'

‘As seen or no deal. And you got to divvy it for me.'

‘A very old silver snuffbox. Probably late seventeenth century,' I said blithely, remembering the 1697 start date for hallmarks and not divvying at all. All I was doing was quoting an imaginary text book somewhere in my head.

Maybe I was befuddled by his fumes.

‘Worth a tenner.' It was a statement, not a question.

‘Eight and extra sarnies.' Making sure it was nowhere near any surface he could have touched, I fished out the loaf, one of Griff's best efforts, then the proper fresh-sliced ham the village deli prided itself on. ‘No mustard, right, but a bit of Griff's chutney?' I waved the jar in the direction of his nose.

The poor bugger actually started to dribble.

Slicing as fast as I could, I made a mound of food. As he wolfed down the first round – cheese and chutney, this one – I said casually, ‘Get this down Bossingham way?'

Mistake. Huge mistake. His hand covered it again.

‘Griff never asks.'

I held up a hand. ‘Sorry. No names, no pack drill. Right?' His jaw remained tight. ‘And I'd better make it that tenner, hadn't I? More tea?'

His eyes went to the whisky.

I did the obvious. But it was the smallest splash.

The spare food wrapped in greaseproof paper, I dug for some cash in the old tea-caddy Griff kept specially – it was only tin, but in the shape of a bureau, with tiny gilded knobs and painted wood graining. Rust damage meant it was worth a big round zero, but it had belonged to Griff's grandmother and would never get thrown away. The fivers looked as battered as the poor caddy. But, eyes alight, he grabbed them, and the food parcel.

‘Here, have these,' I said, giving him the remains of the packet of biscuits.

For the first time he smiled. ‘Thought you were as tough as Griff. Now I can see you're a soft touch. I'll leave the back way, if it's all the same to you. Don't like front doors.' He paused. ‘And don't forget to wipe them photos like Griff always does.'

Wipe photos? I knew I'd have to clean the kitchen from top to bottom, but that seemed a bit extreme even to me. And then, as I locked him out, it dawned on me what he meant: he wanted the footage of his arrival and departure deleted from our CCTV system.

The little snuffbox, washed carefully but very thoroughly in warm soapy water and then dried with a soft duster, was not the twin, but at least a close relative of the one now in Morris's hands. It was in much better condition, presumably because it hadn't been thrown across a churchyard. On its embossed lid, raised little figures, quite crude, and not as well finished as you'd expect, apparently shot birds. And it left me with a huge problem – not one I could discuss with Robin or with Morris, either. I wasn't even sure how much I could tell Griff, because although he bought a lot of stuff from X, he'd always told me he'd never, ever risked asking questions, simply because knowledge could be dangerous. If you thought something was stolen, for instance, you couldn't keep it or sell it, could you?

Or if . . . No, I didn't want to go there just yet. Except I did wish he hadn't said I was a soft touch. I thought he'd referred to my loading him with food.

Provenance or not, I tucked it into the hidden safe; at least I could bet that no one else knew where it was. And that was about all I could bet on. Except that it might have come from Bossingham, which set more alarm bells ringing in my head. If Bugger Bridger hadn't recognized the first snuffbox, which had definitely been tucked into one of his boxes, did it mean someone had put it in there – in the old stables, adjoining the farm – in order to keep it away from prying eyes? Only for it to be accidentally donated and then sold? And if that one had, did it mean that X had stolen this one from a similar hiding place? My thought processes were never good – now they tangled and knotted and I couldn't unpick them.

So what could I do to free them up? Obvious answer: clean the kitchen. Maybe if I didn't think, answers would just appear in my head.

Since we hadn't actually got one of those germ-killer sprays, it was time for bleach. I scrubbed the kitchen table, twice, and wiped all the other surfaces X might have accidentally touched. All my clothes into the machine. Another shower, involving particular attention to my hair. What if Griff came home to find I'd got nits? And then it dawned on me that I'd pretty well used up what I meant to give Robin for lunch. Even though the shops were only a five minute walk away, by the time everyone had asked after Griff and after me, and talked about Mrs Walker's forthcoming wedding, it was clear the Chelsea figure would have to wait.

If Robin noticed that the bread wasn't home-made, he didn't say anything. In fact, I might just as well have fed him some of my father's Pot Noodles instead of all the good fresh produce I'd organized for our lunch. Perhaps he was miffed with me for having brought him all the way out here. Certainly, he was preoccupied with something. I let him be: Griff always said it was a pre-something or other . . . prerequ . . . ah, the
prerogative
of a friend to be silent when he didn't want to talk.

Eventually, as I put a mug of coffee in front of him – forget the usual elegant little antique china cans! – he took a deep breath. ‘Would you mind if we drank this in the garden? Only, I'm gasping for a fag.'

‘You? Smoke? I've never heard you so much as mention cigarettes, except to moan when visitors leave nub ends in your church yards.' But I got up and fished out the nasty Bakelite ashtray with a deep burned scar in the middle we kept for emergencies like this and led the way into the garden.

What was up? Had he and Freya had a falling out? I wasn't sure I could deal with broken hearts except to suggest a friendly no strings bonk, and I was certainly wasn't going to offer that sort of consolation to Robin.

I knew from my therapist that when someone had problems you weren't supposed to jump in feet first and ask what the trouble was. Robin's couldn't have been anything like mine, but I presumed that the rules still held, so I sat and sipped and waited. He'd sucked hard through two cigarettes and a huge sigh before he said, ‘Poor old St Jude's – living up to its name, I suppose.'

My education hadn't got that far, had it? But I knew about
Jude the Obscure
, because it was a novel that Griff and I had started reading together, until the scene where the children were hanged made me cry so much that Griff had closed the book and said he wouldn't open it again till I asked him to. And so far I hadn't.

‘In what way?' That sounded better than plain old
how
. Less ignorant, at least.

‘All that effort – and it seems to be a lost cause.'

St Jude. Patron saint of lost causes. Of course! I managed not to smile.

‘We've had three estimates for the work we simply can't manage without, and they're eye-watering.'

‘Which means?'

‘If we can't raise the money, we can go to the diocese and negotiate handing over the building to the Churches Preservation Society. This means we can retain an option to worship there about four times a year but have no financial responsibility.'

‘Sounds ideal.'

Wrong.

‘Their priority isn't worship! It's purely the conservation of the building. Their idea is that the building should be used by the community. That's fine in a city, or even a suburb, where you could make it a homeless centre or something – but out here, Lina? A
community
? A few hens and a lot of middle-class ponies trapped behind electric fencing and never apparently ridden! I want it to be a living church; anything else is like shoving a dear aunt into a retirement home and abandoning her to strangers.'

‘In that case, we have to raise the money to do the repairs, and you have to encourage more people on to the pews.'

‘Interesting use of pronouns, Lina.
We
and
you
,' he explained, when I looked puzzled.