Hidden Treasures. Fern Britton

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      1

      The sound of a tractor bumping over the cattle grid of the farm across the lane rudely awoke Helen. Yesterday it was the cockerel at the village farm. She wasn’t used to hearing such rural sounds. Not yet, anyway.

      Lying in bed with her eyes still shut, savouring the warmth of her duvet and the soft cashmere blanket on top (a house-warming present from Gray, her ex), Helen felt more comfortable than she had in years. Nothing to get up for, nobody to deal with and the whole day to herself. She felt her body start to get lighter and was ready to drift off again when the phone rang.

      ‘Who the f … ?’ she scrabbled for the receiver. ‘Hello.’

      ‘Mum, it’s me.’ It was Chloe, her daughter. ‘So how’s the new cottage and Cornish life? Got all the yokel men beating a path to your door yet?’

      ‘Darling, I’ve only just woken up. What time is it?’

      ‘Nine forty-five.’

      ‘Well, that’s virtually the middle of the night as far as I’m concerned.’

      ‘Sorry, Mum, it’s just that I’ve been thinking about you so much. Are you OK?’

      ‘Yes, fine.’ Helen sat up and plumped the pillows behind her. ‘But I’m desperate for you to come and have a look at the cottage. It’s so pretty.’

      ‘I can’t wait.’

      ‘Well, come and see me. How about this weekend?’ pressed Helen.

      ‘Maybe. Sorry, Mum, got to go, a customer’s just walked in. Speak later. Love you.’

      The lovely Chloe, thought Helen. Wasting her first-class Cambridge degree in Classics by working in a charity shop in Bristol. Her social conscience and a passion to save the world from environmental collapse meant that she recycled everything – even earbuds, if she could. Perhaps she did? Chloe was only twenty-two but seemed so old for her years. A single-minded single woman. By the time Helen was Chloe’s age she’d been married a year and had just become a mother to Sean. Chloe came along three years later.

      And now they were all grown-up. Sean was something big in advertising and, despite the economic mess, he could apparently afford a Porsche Boxster. Should she worry about her children a bit more, she wondered.

      ‘No,’ she said out loud. ‘They can worry about me for a change.’

      Helen climbed out of bed, and was thrilled once again by the cream deep-pile carpet that her feet sank into. As her mother used to say, ‘It’s never your extravagances you regret, only your economies.’

      Had it been an extravagance to give up her metronome life in West London? She’d amazed herself with the speed and ease of her leap from Chiswick Woman to Cornish Country Woman. One minute she was ironing Gray’s shirts and playing the apparently contented wife, the next her marriage had finished. It was almost like a film. They met, they married, they had a family, they had problems, he apologised, she endured, they became friends, they separated. Credits roll, The End. Go home. But home was no longer the London house where she’d raised a family, but a wonky-walled cottage called Gull’s Cry in the village of Pendruggan.

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