Page 27 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
His car was a dark Mercedes estate with an interior that smelled of leather combined with the faintest hint of an expensive and subtle aftershave. I half expected the boot lid to go tight-lipped at the sight of my inferior luggage, but no, it popped up and stayed open. He slid my case in as if it weighed nothing and then we were off into the gathering dusk.
At least it gave me an opportunity to see where the alleyway led to and how to get through the small streets to the main road. The car climbed and took a turn or two, then came out on the moors above the village and continued on until all the other houses had petered out.
‘If you carry right on along this road it takes you over Blackdog Moor to a crossroads with a motel, just above Upvale village, which is in the next valley. But if you turn down any of the small side roads off it, you could be missing for a week.’
‘Maybe I’ll stick to the main road for a while, then, till I get my bearings,’ I said, shivering, because now the light was almost gone and a fine, driving rain was moving in, we seemed to be surrounded by darkness and blasted heath.
Had I really been left somewhere out there, at the mercy of the elements and passing predators?
Then we were turning off the road sharply right by a large sign that said ‘Oldstone’ and, rather bafflingly underneath, ‘Pondlife’.
The drive was more of a rutted farm track and led over a small bridge made of stone slabs to a stretch of gravel in front of a long, low stone building that looked as if it had been squatting there, glowering defensively at the nearby hills, for averylong time.
‘Here we are,’ Nile said unnecessarily, switching off the engine. ‘Welcome to Oldstone, the Giddings family’s ancestral pile.’
I was to be glad I’d taken all those precautions when, against all the odds, the discovery was made – and even before I’d read the newspaper reports, I’d guessed who by.
Predictably, Mum became hysterical and asked me if I’d known the baby was still alive when I’d left it … not that I’d thought of it as a baby at the time, since I was so filled with shock and revulsion.
‘Of course I didn’t, or I’d have put it somewhere I’d be certain it would be found quickly,’ I assured her.
‘Some doctor you’ll make!’ she scoffed, which I thought was pretty rich, considering she’d originally trained as a nurse, even though once she’d snared my father she’d given up work.
But I was still determined that medicine would be my career, even though I now intended to have as little to do with obstetrics and gynaecology as possible …
13
Pondlife
‘It looks ancient – or what I can see of it does,’ I commented, for although the rain had stopped, a heavy wet mist obscured the full extent of the house and anything beyond it. It didn’t look like my idea of a moorland farm, but at least the situation didn’t seem as bleak and exposed as that of Top Withens, which was reputed to be the inspiration for Wuthering Heights.
There was a battered carving on the lintel, illuminated by a large glass and metal lantern that hung over it from a wrought-iron bracket. I was sure I could pick out a Pan-like creature and also a bunch of grapes, though they can’t grow many of those up on the Yorkshire moors, can they?
The huge front door below it was open on to an inner hall, despite the dark and the autumnal chill. A large, elderly golden Labrador trudged out, stared at us, and then plodded dejectedly back in again with his tail down.
‘Doesn’t he like visitors?’ I asked.
‘Yes, but whenever a car pulls up he still hopes it’s my father, even though he died a few years ago, just after the family moved up here permanently,’ Nile explained. ‘He’s disappointed, but he’ll come round when we go in.’
‘Poor old thing,’ I said, and then added, awkwardly, ‘and I’m sorry you lost your father. I know how that feels, because mine died when I was still a teenager.’
‘It was … devastatingly sudden,’ Nile said, his profile in the lightcast from the lantern looking severe and shuttered – and, it has to be said, still very handsome.
The car’s engine ticked quietly as it cooled and he added, with a brisk return to his usual manner (or his usual manner tome), ‘Well, there’s no point in sitting out here half the night, when you can get a better look at the exterior of the house tomorrow in daylight.’
‘It’s certainly much bigger than I expected,’ I said.
‘The central hall is the original part of it and very old, but the rest of it’s been added on over the years, so there’s plenty of room for everyone to be sociable or not, as the fancy takes them.’
‘Everyone?’ I repeated. ‘How many people live here?’
I hoped it wasn’t some kind of weird hippie commune! Though, thinking about it, I decided Nile wasn’t really hippie commune material.
He shrugged. ‘All the family. Sheila’s letting rooms are in the Victorian part and we live in the rest. My brother, Teddy, and his wife and their baby have a sort of apartment in the eighteenth-century wing, but it’s not completely closed off. It’s all a bit of a hotchpotch.’
‘It sounds it.’
I got out of the car and followed Nile round to the boot to retrieve my luggage, shivering in the cold dankness.
