Page 6 of Where We Belong

Cam rolled up to the junction and stopped. There was no traffic behind them, so he took his time to look around and try to get their bearings. The lane appeared to have led them into the heart of a village, complete with chocolate box cottages. With their honey-coloured stone walls, lichen-stained tiled roofs and gardens brimming with rose bushes, lilac trees and hollyhocks, it looked more like the set of a Sunday evening television show than a real place. A pub stood a short distance from the row of cottages. Well, it more sprawled than sat, the original structure having been extended on both sides over the years. The Stourton Arms, proclaimed the long black sign with gold text over the front porch of the pub. A smaller sign to the right of the door promised local ales, good food and a warm welcome. When she’d given him the postcode, Hope had mention that Stourton-in-the-Vale was the village closest to the Juniper Meadows estate. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to work out that this had to be the village pub – or at least one of them. ‘Looks like we’re in the right place. We can’t be far from the estate, so we can pop in for a spot of dinner on the way home.’

‘We could have a little sampler now,’ Barnie said, voice hopeful. ‘For quality control purposes.’

‘And turn up at Juniper Meadows with you half-cut? What kind of an impression would that make?’

‘The right one?’ Barnie grinned, not in the least bit apologetic. As he stared at Cam, the grin turned into something sly. ‘What kind of an impression were you hoping to make? Or should I say, is there someone in particular you’re hoping to make an impression on?’

The gleam in his eyes made Cam want to squirm in his seat. ‘We’re going to offer our professional opinion to the Travers family, so please, try to remember that you are capable of behaving like a professional.’

Trying to ignore Barnie’s laughter, Cam focused on the task in hand. The main road through the village looked a lot wider than the country lane they’d approached from, much to his relief. Glancing left and then right, he searched in vain for a signpost that might give him a hint of which direction he should go. The sat nav had woken up and was indicating he should turn right, but he didn’t have much faith in the blasted thing. ‘Left or right?’ he asked Barnie.

‘The sat nav says right, so given how useless it’s been so far, I say left towards where we saw the spire. If we can find the church, there’s bound to be a signpost nearby, or at least someone to help with directions.’

Cam gave the sat nav screen one last look then tugged the connector out of the socket. ‘Left it is, then.’

There was no traffic so they were able to edge through the village at little more than a crawl, giving them both time to have a good nose around. To their left stood a row of shops. To Cam’s surprise, there was a family butcher, an independent greengrocer and a village store. Round where he lived, the only shop was a late-night convenience store that sold mostly booze and junk food. The Cotswold stone buildings all had what looked like their original wooden windows and there was no sign of the ubiquitous chain logos which had crept into most places. Beyond the village store was a café, the blackboard on the pavement outside advertising afternoon cream teas.

‘I could just nip in and ask for directions,’ Barnie said, fooling no one about what was really on his mind. Honestly, for a man who seemed to be ruled by his stomach, Barnie had no right to be in such decent shape.

‘Or we could ask this chap who’s just come out of the village store,’ Cam pointed out.

‘Spoilsport.’ Barnie lowered his window. ‘Hello! Excuse me? Can you help us with some directions?’

The man paused in the act of untying the lead of a small terrier from a little rail outside the shop and looked up with a smile. ‘Hello! Hello! Lovely morning for it, hey?’

Cam wasn’t sure what it was a lovely morning for, but he gave the man an encouraging smile as he leaned his head towards Barnie’s so they could both look up through the open window. ‘We’re trying to find Stourton Hall. Do you know where it is?’

The man threw his head back and roared with laughter as though Cam had made the funniest joke in a year. ‘Know where it is?’ he sputtered through tears of mirth. ‘Goodness, lad, I can tell you’re not from around here. Know where it is, indeed.’ He muttered the last almost to himself.

Cam cast a quick glance at Barnie, who gave him a nope-no-idea-what’s-going-on smile. ‘We have an appointment with Miss Travers and our sat nav sent us on something of a magical mystery tour,’ Cam said to the man, who continued to chuckle to himself. ‘We… er, we don’t want to be late.’

‘I should think not,’ the man said. ‘Wouldn’t do to keep Miss Hope waiting, no, not at all.’ The man turned away and untied his dog’s lead from the rail.

‘Stourton Hall?’ Barnie prompted and though his tone was polite, Cam knew him well enough to catch the impatient edge to it.

‘Why are folks always in such a rush, Paddy?’ The man tutted as he leaned down to straighten the dog’s collar. Perhaps he’d caught the edge in Barnie’s voice as well. Paddy – well, Cam assumed that was the dog’s name – gave a little bark as though in agreement. When he’d finally finished fussing with the dog’s lead and adjusted the newspaper under his arm (and Cam had ground his back teeth until his jaw ached), the man turned back to face them. Raising his hand, he pointed in the direction the car was facing.

‘You’ll need to turn around, so best thing to do is head up that way until you see the village green then do a circuit of it. When you get back to the road, just keep going straight, you can’t miss it. Come along, Paddy.’ With a click of his tongue, the man led the little dog away.

Barnie pressed a finger to the button to raise his window, waiting until it’d finished closing before he turned in his seat to look at Cam. ‘Ask him for help, you said. Better than the sat nav, you said.’

They looked at each other a moment before they burst out laughing. ‘Round the village green it is,’ Cam said as he put the car in gear and pulled away from the kerb. The circuit took them past more cottages with immaculate gardens and Cam felt a twinge of envy. He could barely keep a pot plant alive, and no one was putting pretty tubs of plants out the front of the utilitarian block of flats he lived in – not unless they wanted to provide a free urinal for the students on their way home from the city centre pubs. Stourton-in-the-Vale looked like an advert for one of those Best Kept Village competitions.

Barnie pressed his face to his window as they drove past the Stourton Arms for the second time. ‘We could’ve popped in there for a half and not lost any time.’

He sounded so forlorn, Cam couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Did I mention that Hope is the operations manager for their family gin distillery? Maybe they’ll have some samples.’

As he’d suspected, that cheered Barnie right up. ‘Why didn’t you say so before? An ice-cold G&T could be just what the doctor ordered.’ He turned to beam at Cam. ‘Lucky we’re both doctors, eh?’

Cam was saved from responding to the terrible gag by the sight of a huge sign on the side of the road declaring ‘Juniper Meadows Next Right’. Each corner of the sign was decorated with the same purple berry and twig logo as the one on the business card Hope had left with him.

Barnie looked from the sign to Cam and back again in a double-take worthy of a cartoon. ‘Juniper Meadows!’

Cam shot him a confused look before he focused on the road. ‘I told you that’s what the family called the estate, didn’t I?’ There was another white sign in the distance and Cam sped up a little, relieved they were almost there.

‘No, because if you had, I would’ve been even more keen to accompany you on this trip! Juniper Meadows is one of the best brands of artisan gin on the market. I can’t believe I didn’t make the connection immediately when you mentioned the family run a distillery.’ Barnie snorted. ‘Why am I even bothering when I’m speaking to man who stocks his drinks cabinet with supermarket own-brands?’

‘That brandy I got for a tenner was pretty smooth,’ Cam protested as he indicated then steered the car onto the wide gravel driveway.

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