She’d met him there that same day, fallen in love with the cottage, and immediately made Mrs Blackman an offer.
Andy had been right; it was perfect for her. On the edge of Kelton Bridge, midway between Burnley and Rochdale, and nestling in the shadow of the Pennines, she was less than an hour’s drive north of Manchester. The location couldn’t have been better.
All thanks to Andy.
He’d invited her to dinner twice, and twice Jill had declined. Perhaps she should have accepted, if only out of gratitude. Her excuses had involved pressure of work, but the truth was, she didn’t want a relationship.
‘Good grief, Jill,’ Prue, her young and bossy sister had scoffed. ‘The bloke’s offered to feed you. How can that translate as wanting his socks washed for the rest of his days?’
Prue was probably right, but all the same …
Jill slipped her arm through Andy’s.
‘Come and show me the conservatory. I walk past here most days, but the walls around the grounds are so high that I haven’t been able to get a decent look at it. I’ve been tempted to bring a stepladder with me …’
‘You’re just plain nosy’
‘Merely interested in people,’ she corrected him.
They wove their way around a small crowd and stepped through double doors into the conservatory.
‘Oh, wow! It’s massive. And no UPVC in sight. Are these real?’ A finger on one of the tall, exotic ferns told her that they were indeed real. ‘My entire cottage would fit in here/ she added.
‘Not quite,’ Andy replied with amusement, ‘but it’s a nice size.’
Jill spluttered with laughter. ‘Oh, yes, I can picture your sales brochure - a nice-sized conservatory at the rear.’ She nudged him and said in a whisper, ‘The lights are a bit tacky though.’
Small white fairy lights had been hung from the ceiling for the party and a few of the ferns were adorned with lights.
‘Behave yourself,’ he grinned.
Andy!’ a voice boomed out.
They both turned, Jill hoping her disparaging whisper hadn’t been heard, to see a couple who were strangers to her.
Ah, Tony, Liz, lovely to see you,’ Andy greeted them.
‘Have you met Jill? No? Jill, this is Tony Hutchinson, headmaster of the local primary school, and his wife, the lovely Liz.’
Jill shook hands and went through the pleased-to-meet you routine. Tony was in his mid-fifties, Jill supposed, a tall, handsome man with grey hair, and the lovely Liz looked a good ten years younger. She was also American.
‘I’ve been over here for twenty years,’ she explained, ‘but I can’t seem to shake off this accent.’
From the way she swayed on her feet, she’d also found the wine to be acceptable.
She was short and slim, one of those women with an inbuilt sense of style, and was wearing an exquisite pale mauve linen trouser suit. Jill guessed she only bought the best quality clothes. Her wardrobe would be full of cashmere and, unlike Jill, she wouldn’t have spent a frantic hour searching for a pair of black trousers that were relatively cat-hair free.
‘I’m surprised Kelton still has a school,’ Jill said, ‘when so many village schools are closing.’
‘Fortunately, it’s thriving,’ Tony told her. ‘Pupil numbers have increased each year for the last five years.’
‘Thanks mainly to the two new estates,’ Andy put in lightly, ‘which, if I recall, Tony, you were against.’
“I wasn’t against the estates, I was against the location,’
he replied, chuckling. Turning to Jill, he said, ‘How are you finding Kelton Bridge?’
“I love it. I’ve been very busy, work-wise, which is why I haven’t met many people, so it’s lovely to be here tonight.’
‘The pleasure’s all ours,’ he murmured. ‘Everyone’s queuing up to meet our local celebrity.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Tony started a psychology course many years ago,’ Liz explained. ‘It was one of the Open University things. He’s been fascinated ever since. Not fascinated enough to finish the course, you understand.’
Jill was startled by the animosity she sensed between husband and wife.
‘But I’m not a celebrity,’ she pointed out, confused.
‘Your face was in our local paper for days on end,’ Tony told her, ‘when that serial killer was caught.’
The coincidence sent a shiver the length of Jill’s spine.
No one had mentioned the case to her for months and now that photograph had been brought to mind twice on the same day.
‘But as you’ll be aware,’ she said, knowing her voice sounded tight, ‘it wasn’t the killer.’
“I never know the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist,’ Liz said, clearly trying to lighten the atmosphere.
‘A psychologist deals with normal mental states,’ Tony told her, ‘and a psychiatrist deals with abnormal. A psychiatrist will have more medical training. Isn’t that right, Jill?’
‘Close enough,’ she replied, eager for a change of subject.
‘But the job, it must be fascinating,’ Tony persisted.
‘It’s OK,’ she told him with a tight little smile. ‘Although not as glamorous as the TV dramas make out. As a forensic psychologist working with the police, I mainly advised on selection and training of officers, prepared behavioural information to support cases in court, and did a variety of counselling roles.’ She shrugged. ‘But that’s in the past.
I resigned as I wanted to concentrate on my writing.’
Liar, she scoffed.
‘Yes, we heard you were writing. What sort of stuff are you doing?’
‘At the moment, I’m writing a book to help sufferers of anxiety attacks,’ she said.
From the expression on his face, she gathered Mr Hutchinson wasn’t impressed.
‘Panic attacks, you mean?’ his wife put in. ‘My sister has those. She’s getting better, slowly, but it’s a terrible thing.
Her doctor has given her Valium and told her to do relaxation exercises.’
“I could have done that,’ Tony scoffed. ‘Don’t you think,’
he said, addressing Jill, ‘that people could help themselves if only they put their minds to it? Is there any need for books?’
“I don’t think we can help ourselves,’ Jill argued. ‘We can often help other people, but we get so wrapped up in our own worries and anxieties that we often can’t see the wood for the trees.’
“I suppose so,’ he said, grudgingly. ‘And do you enjoy it?
Writing, I mean?’
“I love it.’
That was true. All Jill wanted was to forget Valentine, as the serial killer had quickly been dubbed, forget her work with the police, and concentrate on her life. She wanted to get the work done on her cottage so it was warm and comfortable, then sit back and enjoy life with her cats. A simple life appealed to her.
‘It can’t be as interesting as criminal profiling, though,’
Tony persisted. ‘But is there anything in it? I mean, really.
Come on, Jill, you can be honest with us.’
‘Of course there’s something in it,’ she replied, wondering what sort of moron he thought she was. ‘We’re all unique. We all have our different ways of doing things.
Criminals leave tangible clues like fingerprints, footprints, saliva, blood and all the rest of it, but by the way they do things, they leave clues that are just as obvious.’
‘What do you think of this conservatory?’ Liz butted in.
‘Isn’t it grand? I am so jealous.’
Jill, grateful for the change of subject, warmed to her immediately.
“Me, too. It’s gorgeous. I couldn’t believe these ferns are real …’
Another man soon joined them. Jill didn’t know him but she’d seen him about the village. She was ashamed that she hadn’t made more effort to get to know these people.
‘Hi, Bob,’ Andy greeted him warmly.
‘Bob’s our local builder,’ Liz explained and to prove that she really had had too much wine, she burst into song, ‘Bob the Builder
The group laughed, as was expected, but Jill could see that Bob had tired of the joke long ago. Fortunately, he was too well mannered to say so.
The lovely Liz was struggling to keep her eyes off him.
With good reason, Jill allowed. It was difficult to give him an age, probably late thirties or early forties. He was fit and strong-looking, with the sort of tanned skin that comes from working outside rather than spending a fortnight beneath a foreign sun. His hair was strawberry-blond, a young Robert Redford, and he had huge work-roughened hands. All in all, a very attractive man.
‘So you haven’t met our local celebrity either, Bob?’ Tony remarked, and Jill groaned inwardly.
Bob looked blank.
‘Jill, here, was in the papers when that serial killer was caught. Or, at least, the police thought they’d caught the serial killer.’
“I remember that, of course,’ Bob said, frowning, ‘but I don’t recall the details.’
‘Jill was the psychologist who worked out the profile for the police,’ Tony explained.
‘Ah, right.’ Bob tried to look impressed and failed.
Jill had to smile. ‘Don’t worry, Bob, Tony’s having you on. I’m no celebrity. I am in need of a good builder, though. Andy will vouch for that.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’m at Lilac Cottage,’ she told him, ‘Mrs Blackman’s old place.’
‘Ah.’
A man of few words was Bob.
‘My roof needs checking over and making good as soon as possible,’ she explained, ‘and every door and window in the place needs replacing. In the future, I’m thinking of a loft conversion and a ground-floor extension.’
Bob wasn’t surprised. Anyone who drove past could see the state of her roof and windows.
‘Give me a ring then,’ he said. ‘I’m in the book.’
They chatted about other things - the way Kelton Bridge had woken to eight inches of snow on New Year’s Day last year, how Tony, a keep fit fanatic, was determined to walk the Pennine Way next year …
‘Jill, there you are.’ Mary Lee-Smith appeared at Jill’s elbow. ‘You must come and meet our vicar and his wife.
They say they haven’t met you yet.’ She sounded appalled at the latter.
‘Not yet,’ Jill admitted as she was whisked away.
Reverend Trueman was a tall, imposing man. He looked quite stern and, for a moment, Jill remembered her late grandmother saying ‘And what shall I say when the vicar asks where you’ve been? I can’t lie to a vicar.’ Jill, eight years old at the time, hadn’t cared what her gran said. No way was she sitting in church for hours while her friends enjoyed themselves outside and that was that. She felt much the same about church twenty-six years later.
During the customary ‘lovely to meet you’ and ‘how are you settling in?’ conversation that followed, his wife, Alice, appeared warm, friendly and down-to-earth, so Jill gave Reverend Trueman the benefit of the doubt.
Alice was also stunningly attractive which was strange, Jill thought, given that (a) she wasn’t exactly a spring chicken and (b) she seemed to have made no effort whatsoever.
Her hair could have done with a good cut, she wore no make-up, and her simple grey dress would have suited a Quaker. Despite this, her finely boned face with those stunning cheekbones, her height, her slim figure and long, shapely legs gave her a style and elegance of her own so that she couldn’t fail to turn heads.
“I take it you’re not a churchgoer,’ Jonathan Trueman remarked.
‘I’m afraid not, no.’
‘Why afraid?’
‘Silly choice of words. Although I do feel I need to make excuses for myself.’ Blame my gran, she added silently.
‘But you’re right, I’m not. I love the buildings, and I love the whole idea of it all, but I’m not a fan of religion. It causes too many problems and creates too many fanatics for my liking.’
‘For a psychologist ‘
‘Jon,’ his wife scolded, ‘this isn’t the time or the place for one of your theology discussions.’ Alice gave Jill an apologetic smile. ‘Once he gets started, there’s no stopping him.’
‘Nonsense,’ he argued, slipping a fond arm around his wife’s slender waist. ‘We’ll save it for another time,’ he promised with a wink for Jill.
‘Here’s Michael.’ Alice waved to a young lad across the room. ‘Our son,’ she added for Jill’s benefit. ‘Michael, come and meet Jill Kennedy’
He came over to them, all smiles. ‘You haven’t run out of petrol lately?’
“I haven’t,’ Jill told him, laughing. ‘We’ve already met,’
she explained to his parents. ‘Michael helped me unlock my petrol cap at the filling station.’
‘His Saturday job,’ Jonathan put in. ‘He’s in his last year at school and then it’ll be off to university’
Clearly Reverend Trueman wanted the world to know about his clever son, not the friendly lad who sat in the kiosk at the filling station. An intellectual snob, Jill decided.
They were discussing the universities they’d each attended when Mary appeared at Jill’s elbow.
‘Sorry to intrude, but Ella Gardner’s dying to meet you, Jill. Ella’s our resident historian …’
Jill knew she’d never remember anyone’s name by morning, but she set off to be introduced to the resident historian.
‘Spend too long in a place like Kelton,’ Ella warned, ‘and you’ll be the one needing a psychologist. I swear all the misfits are born with an inbuilt route planner to get them here.’ She frowned. “I haven’t seen you at church.
I wouldn’t go myself as I’m a confirmed atheist, but it’s easier to go than put up with Jon’s lectures. Besides, he enjoys the challenge.’
“I managed to avoid his lecture,’ Jill told her.
‘Ah, yes, he lulls you into a false sense of security and then goes in for the kill,’ Ella warned her.
“I gather you’re our resident historian,’ Jill remarked.
‘Ha! I seem to have earned that dubious title since passing the age of sixty’ Ella grinned. ‘Before that, I was just another dull civil servant. Hmm. Exciting to have a resident psychologist though. Are you married?’
Ella, Jill suspected, excelled at the frank question.
‘Widowed.’
Jill was accustomed to the shock on Ella’s face. She’d seen it on dozens of faces before. She could understand it, too. Widows were grey-haired old ladies who knitted scratchy jumpers for their grandchildren while looking back on a lifetime’s memories. They weren’t smiling thirtyfour-year-olds.
‘What about you, Ella? Are you married?’
“Me? For my sins, yes. Tom doesn’t get out much.