One Summer at Deer’s Leap. Elizabeth Elgin

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      ‘You don’t yell it. “I love you” has to be said softly …’

      ‘Yes, and secretly for preference.’

      ‘Then say it softly and secretly from your bedroom.’

      ‘Piers …’ I said in my this-is-your-last-warning voice. ‘I am busy!’

      ‘OK! Pax, darling. I’ll ring tonight! Get on with your scribbling.’

      I sat back, part of my make-believe world once more, reading from the screen, searching my mind for the lost paragraph.

      But it didn’t come. All I could think was that for once, in all the four years of our on and off affair, I’d challenged Piers and almost won!

      

      ‘Pop out and get me a few tomatoes, there’s a good girl. And tell your dad it’ll be on the table in five minutes!’

      Once I got back in my stride, and sorted the wayward paragraph, the words had come well; it was going to be a word-flow day, I’d known it. I’d just come to the end of a page when my stomach told me it was lunchtime and my mind told me it needed a break.

      I saw Dad at the end of the garden, so I waved and yelled, ‘Five minutes!’ then went into the tomato house, sniffing in the green growing smell, loving the moistness of it and the lush, tall plants heavy with red trusses. A few tomatoes, at our house, meant a bowlful and not half a pound in a plastic bag. I bit into one, marvelling that half the country didn’t know what a fresh tomato was.

      I felt very relaxed. Once I’d got into my stride again, nothing intruded on the make-believe world at my fingertips. I had forgiven Piers, I realized, for ringing when he shouldn’t have done and I had not thought once about the kissing gate through which a World War Two pilot had disappeared.

      Now my thoughts were free to roam again, my self-discipline on hold, and I wondered how I should go about finding the name of the family who lived at Deer’s Leap before the Air Force took it and they had to find somewhere else to live.

      They might have moved to Acton Carey or further afield. They may even, since losing their acres under a runway of concrete and seeing their trees felled and hedges ripped out, have given up farming in disgust.

      It was best I began the search in Acton Carey, but this would be risky, as Danny or Beth would be bound to hear of me doing it. I could not, I realized, visit locally without calling on them and if Lancashire villages were like Yorkshire villages, they would soon discover that a red-haired foreigner had been asking questions in the pub. Villagers close ranks at such times, and mention of anything remotely concerned with the ghost they wanted to sweep under the mat would be sidestepped at once! I would be taken for a journalist, no doubt, and that would be the end of that.

      Of course, I could drive past the spot as near to the same time as possible, and I told myself I was a fool for not knowing when it had been. Yet had I known something so weird and wonderful was going to happen, I’d have noted the time exactly and had my tape recorder at the ready! But just a glimpse of a furtive redhead in a bright red Mini on that lonely lane would be worthy of note. I knew how it was at Greenleas if a strange car – obviously lost – drove past.

      ‘I said dinner in five minutes! What are you doing, Cassie?’ Mum stood in the doorway, flush-cheeked. ‘Composing another chapter?’

      I said I was sorry, and pushed the remainder of the tomato into my mouth so I couldn’t talk. Composition was the furthest thing from my mind, so I was glad it’s bad manners to speak with your mouth full. That way, I couldn’t tell any lies.

      ‘Good job it’s only cold cut and salad,’ Mum grumbled, ‘or it would be spoiled by now.’

      Monday, being washday, it was always leftovers from Sunday dinner, because that was the way it had been for the twenty-five years of my parents’ marriage. It was one of the things I loved especially about Mum – the way nothing changed.

      A flood of affection touched me from head to toes and I put my arm round her and said, ‘The sky would fall, Mum, if it wasn’t – cold cut and salad, I mean!’

      She threw me an old-fashioned look, which turned into an answering smile, then said, ‘Did I hear you on the phone, this morning?’

      ‘Yes. Piers.’

      ‘And what did he have to say?’ She chose to ignore my brevity.

      ‘Not a lot. He didn’t get the chance. I tore him off a strip for ringing during working hours.’

      ‘Then you shouldn’t have! You’re never going to get a husband, Cassie, if you carry on like that. Men don’t like career women!’

      ‘Men are going to have to put up with it till I’ve done my third novel. One swallow doesn’t make a summer, Mum, nor two! Anyway, I sometimes think me and Piers aren’t cut out for one another.’

      ‘Oh?’ Mum’s jaw dropped visibly, which was understandable since to her way of thinking I was as good as off the shelf. ‘Then all I can say, miss, is that it won’t end at a third book. You’ll want to be famous, and before you know it you’ll have left it too late! I think Piers is very nice indeed, if you want my opinion.’

      ‘Mum!’ I stopped, put my hands on her shoulders and turned her to face me. ‘I like Piers – very much. And yes, I know you watched him grow up, more or less, and he’s considered a good catch around these parts.’

      ‘He went to university!’ Mum said huffily.

      ‘Yes, and he’s doing well. But he hasn’t asked me to marry him, yet.’

      ‘He hasn’t?’

      ‘No. And if he did, I wouldn’t know what to say. Maybe I ought to have gone to live with him in London like he wanted, but I didn’t fancy being an unpaid servant and a mistress to boot!’

      ‘A mistress, Cassie! Then I’m glad you told him no! Clever of you, that was. Men never run after a bus once they’ve caught it!’

      ‘I know. I didn’t come down with the last fall of snow!’ We were getting on dangerous ground, especially about the mistress bit. ‘But I want to be married, I promise you.’

      ‘Your dad would like a grandson, you know.’

      ‘I’m sure he would. I want children, too, and after book three I shall think very seriously about getting married.’

      ‘To Piers?’

      ‘Probably to the first man who asks me, Mum!’

      With that she seemed happy and we walked in silent contentment to the back door where Dad was washing his hands in the water butt.

      ‘Now then, our lass!’ He gave Mum a smack on her bottom and she went very red and told him to stop carrying on in the middle of the day.

      It stopped her thinking about her unmarried daughter, for all that, and the grandchildren she was desperate to have about the place. I gave her a conspiratorial wink, and peace reigned at Greenleas.

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