Page 7 of The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge
Stef watched her drift away, her narrow shoulders hunched, and felt bad. Brushing this off, she turned to Nancy. ‘Mum is right,’ she said. ‘I am a journalist and I am writing a book, but it’s not sensationalist, it’s a serious exploration.’ She mentioned the article she had written about women in science. ‘The conference I reported on was concerned with what is still happening, but I want to take the longer view in my book.’
‘A great many things have changed for the better,’ Nancy remarked. A bitter tone had crept into her voice. ‘These women you met at your conference…’ She stopped and, though Stef waited, didn’t go on. Instead, she fiddled with her scarf and glanced over at Aaron, who had fitted the rolled-up screen into its case and was putting the laptop away.
‘These women…’ Stef prompted, but Nancy merely smiled and shook her head.
‘It was very difficult back in the forties and fifties. There’s much more equality now than in the past.’ Her tone was mild, but the working of her fingers on the scarf suggested she was mastering strong emotion. Stef felt that sensation again, a prickling of the hairs at the back of her neck.
‘I’d love to hear more about your experiences,’ she said, trying to keep her tone casual. ‘Would you be available sometime for a chat? I’m staying with my mother for a few days.’
Nancy was briefly silent, then said, ‘Possibly. Aaron and Livy are here until tomorrow.’ The woman’s reluctance was obvious. Stef wondered how to pin her down, but feared she had lost her.
‘I think it’s time we went,’ Nancy said with a tight smile. ‘We’ve a table booked for dinner. Livy?’ Aaron was ready now. The child skipped across and put her hand in Nancy’s. ‘So nice to meet you. Stephanie, isn’t it?’
‘Stef, yes. So I’ll come to find you on Monday, perhaps,’ she persisted. ‘We could have a coffee in the café here? Around eleven, if you’re free.’
‘Oh, I suppose that should be all right,’ the woman said. Stef felt Aaron’s gaze on her and it wasn’t friendly. She followed the three of them at a distance through to the shop, where they said goodbye to Josh, who was serving customers at the till, then watched them walk out to the car park. Nancy lived in a cottage somewhere on the reserve, Stef remembered her mother saying.
‘Over here, darling.’ The shop was nearly empty, but hermother was waving a greetings card from her place in the short queue at the counter. ‘I’ll just pay for this. It’s for Auntie Sandra’s birthday.’
Stef nodded, then turned back to stare after Nancy, Aaron and Livy. They had reached Aaron’s sleek black saloon car. She saw its lights flash at the press of his key. Aaron stowed the technical equipment in the boot, then they climbed into the car and he drove away with a rattle of gravel.
Stef sighed with sudden despondence. She was still processing the awkwardness of running into the man she’d been so offhand to. If his grandmother knew about it, it would likely ruin her chances to talk to her. It was annoying, too, that Stef’s mother had made the book project sound so intrusive and sensationalist. That had obviously set Nancy on edge before Stef had had a chance to explain the facts.
Just then she heard her name mentioned and glanced up to see that her mother was now at the till and chatting away to Josh. Was she telling yet another stranger about her?
Stef barely heard her mother’s chatter on the drive home. She was thinking about Nancy. There was something she’d said, bitter hints about her past, that piqued her professional instincts. And she remembered that prickle of excitement she’d felt. There was a story there, she thought. Maybe it wouldn’t be much of one, but maybe it would. Nancy Foster had secrets, Stef sensed, and she badly wanted to discover what they were.
Five
Later that evening, Nancy Foster walked alone by the Broad in the fading light. She loved these calm summer twilights when the sweet-scented air was full of birdsong, the chirp of crickets and the soft lapping of water in the reeds. She paused at a viewpoint by the duckboards and rested one hand on the wooden rail as she stared out across the Broad. In the distance, the last rays of the dying sun shimmered on the rippling water. High above, a lone gull sailed across a sky that was streaked with wisps of amber cloud.
Nancy sighed. It was so peaceful here once the visitors had gone and there was no rumble of distant traffic or murmur of human voices. Despite her age, her hearing was still sharp, something she was deeply grateful for, but quietness soothed her. Especially at times like tonight, when the old anxiety surfaced.
She’d enjoyed their supper at a gastropub near Blakeney on the coast. Aaron was always interesting, talking about hisbusy life. It was funny to think that she’d once loved living in the heart of a city, as her grandson did now.
It was good of Aaron to make time to help her with the talk, and of course she loved any opportunity to see Livy. The child was tucked up in bed asleep now at the cottage and Nancy had left Aaron hunched over his laptop at the old mahogany desk in her sitting room – constructing a pitch for a film project, he’d murmured when she looked in to say where she was going. He hardly seemed to stop working, that boy, even when it was his turn to have his daughter. He was a good father, gentle and attuned to Livy’s needs. He lived on his nerves, though, which wasn’t good for anybody.
It had been a shame about the break-up, traumatic for Aaron, but he and Crystal, whom he’d met at university in London, had become parents too young and their paths had quickly diverged. How different it was when Nancy had been their age and women were expected to stay at home to raise children. Not always better, but relationships had been given more of a chance. Three years now, he’d been single – at least, she’d been unaware of anyone special. She worried about him greatly – making up for all the years when she hadn’t seen much of him because his mother, Nancy’s daughter, had left home very young and eventually moved to America. She felt that familiar pang when she thought of Andrea. She’d been such a delightful little girl, but had struggled as a teenager.
It wasn’t Aaron or Andrea who were troubling her tonight, though. It was the young woman she’d met after the talk, what was her name, Stephanie something. Lansdown, same as her mother. Nancy liked Cara, she was amusing; a bitscatterbrained, but amusing. She’d found Stephanie more serious, a little earnest, nothing wrong with that, but it was all too obvious that she was a journalist with a nose for a story. Wanting to interview Nancy for a book.
She tensed. Well, she certainly didn’t want her past, her secret pain, the injustice done to her, to become fodder for some sensationalist account. She simply wanted to be left alone to enjoy her last years. Aaron had seemed to agree. When Nancy had mentioned Stef, he’d frowned and said he’d met her once before briefly, though he didn’t say where or how. Nancy asked what he’d thought of her, but he’d merely shrugged. Livy had piped up then, said Stephanie had bumped into her. ‘Only because you were fooling about,’ Aaron had told her. Nancy didn’t think he’d needed to say it so sharply.
‘I’m serious, Gran, you don’t have to meet her if it’ll upset you. You know what journalists are like – they dig around in your life. It’s their job. I’d keep away from her if I were you.’
‘I’ll manage,’ Nancy had told him, a little snappish. ‘I’m used to looking after myself.’
A mournful quacking dragged her from her thoughts. She watched as a pair of ducks flew down to the Broad, carving a furrow in the water and sending up golden spray. After the ripples had ceased and peace had returned, she left the viewpoint and walked on. Before long, she entered an area of scrubby woodland and the wooden boards gave way to a loamy path. Darkness was gathering here under the willows and the holm oaks, and moths had started to flutter about. She hardly noticed where she was going until she walkedinto a spider’s silk thread spun across the path, flinched and stopped to brush it from her face.
She considered whether to meet this Stephanie on Monday. The request had caught her on the hop. It would be rude not to, she supposed, and anyway it would be sensible to find out what she’d turned up in her research so far – you never knew what was on the internet. She’d be firm, though, and explain that no, she didn’t want to be in this book. Having made this decision and because the midges were biting, she took an early turning back to the main path.
The light was still on in the sitting room and the door firmly shut, so she made herself some tea with a splash of whisky in it and climbed the stairs to bed. As she lay waiting for sleep to overtake her, she remembered something that Stef had said earlier, something she’d forgotten. It was about the talk, how Stef had found it inspiring and how she wished she’d had a teacher like Nancy at school. She’d looked particularly sincere as she’d said this, and Nancy warmed to her thinking of it. She herself had had an inspiring schoolteacher, but her love of the natural world had started way back before that. As she sank into the dreamy state between wakefulness and sleep, it all came back in a series of images, like an old film, that wonderful childhood memory.
She’d been seven or eight. A family outing to Richmond Park. The rough feel of a tartan picnic blanket against her legs. The sweet chill in her mouth of homemade ice cream served from a wide-necked vacuum flask. Deer grazing beneath the oak trees. A dog barking and the sight of the startled herd flowing away across the grass. So beautiful,she’d stood up to watch them, wondering at the lightness and grace of their movements. She was curious. How did they come to be like that?
If anyone ever asked, ‘What first inspired you to become a scientist?’, that had been the moment.
Six
