"Oh G.o.d, Josh Ritchie."
"You mean Josh Ritchie as in lead singer of Magic Boy? Wow."
"The very same." She sighed. "Would you like me to tell you all about him? Believe me, I can. From his wonderful mother, his distant father, his teachers who didn"t understand him, his girlfriends who apparently all thought he was the best thing ever in bed, how much he paid for his new house, every single detail of the alterations he"s making. By the time we got to his sh.e.l.lfish allergy I had lost the will to live. He was still talking when I called a taxi. I wonder if he"s noticed yet that I"ve gone."
I was a bit disappointed, having harboured a small pa.s.sion for Josh Ritchie myself for some years. Is it better to dream about someone and not know them at all? Or to know them and have to face up to the horrible truth? I think I"d need a lot of wine to work that one out. I poured myself a gla.s.s.
Anyway..." Matty rummaged for a moment in her huge satchel-like bag and triumphantly pulled out a booklet. "Look at this!"
It was a college prospectus. Excitedly, Matt flipped through the pages and pushed it towards me.
"Photography course?" I asked, astonished, and started to read the details out loud. " "Professional industry-recognised photographic degree course. Working creatively you will explore a range of photographic genres." Hey, Matt, is this really what you want to do? Now?"
"Yes. Absolutely," said Matt. "I"ve always known it"s what I want to do and there"s no point in putting it off any longer."
"But you"ve got a great career having your picture taken, not being on the other side."
"Yes, but for how long?" said Matt. "I don"t want to do it forever, so I have to have my exit plan sooner or later, and now seems a good time. I can"t spend too many more evenings being bored to death by the likes of Josh Ritchie."
"Yes, but-"
"And I can still do some modelling work. I don"t suppose they make students work forty hours a week, do they? I can fit it round cla.s.ses. And learn from the people I"m working with at the same time. Paid work experience. How good is that?" she said triumphantly.
Suddenly her phone rang. She scrabbled in her bag, flicked her phone open, looked dismissively at the number and then suddenly went pale. Then pink. She half turned away from me to answer it.
"Well, yes. Fine. No, not tomorrow. All day. No, any time. When you can. Yes. But what? Well, why can"t you say? Oh, OK. You know where I am, don"t you? Right. See you then."
She snapped her phone shut and looked at me, her face alight. "That was Dexter," she said. "He"s coming down to London tomorrow. To see me. He has an idea."
"What sort of idea?"
"Don"t know. He won"t say. I"ve got to wait until tomorrow."
And my wonderful, confident, successful, no-nonsense cousin looked as excited as a two-year-old.
Matilda was surprised at how often she looked out for him. When she was walking up and down to the farm, which she seemed to be doing more often as her daughter-in-law coped-or didn"t cope-with the latest baby, she was always glancing at the track that wound down from the main road, hoping to see the little pony pulling the cart and the photographer with the reins in his hand.
She hadn"t realised how much she had enjoyed the glimpses he brought her of another world beyond the dale. She thought of the way he concentrated when he set up the huge camera, and of how kindly he had explained things to the boy. The boy would be up and away soon. The mines were dying. His brother might find a place for him on the farm, but he was filling his own nest with chicks that would need to be fed.
She picked up the packet of ribbons, pushed aside the tissue paper, let the ribbons run through her fingers and remembered the way William Peart had looked at her as he had asked her to marry him.
If she said no to him on his next visit, she knew he would keep to his word and never come up the dale again. Suddenly she found that thought too hard to bear. She went to the door and looked across the fellside to where the road turned down by the chapel, scanning the horizon, looking, hoping to see him coming to hear her answer.
Chapter Twenty-Five.
There was something I had to do. It had been weighing on my conscience all the time I"d been in hospital and while I was at my mother"s. Creeping into my thoughts every now and then with great big black thud. Yes, the necklace. I had to get rid of the d.a.m.n thing. My first instinct had been right. I couldn"t keep it. I couldn"t return it to him again, either. Not again. So now what?
Sadly, no one had stolen it from the hospital cupboard. It would have made life so much easier if they had. Instead, it was still carefully wrapped in an NHS paper towel in the pocket of Clayton"s leather jacket. The jacket had been in the back of the hire car from the north to London, dumped in the hall cupboard at Mum"s flat, and had now come back to mine. And the necklace was still there.
Perhaps I hoped that if I ignored it, it would go away, or get pinched, or be lost or slide down the back of a seat and be gone forever, not my problem any more.
But it hadn"t and it was.
Do you know how difficult it is to get rid of a designer necklace? Dreadfully. And embarra.s.sing. I didn"t even want the money. That would make it so much worse. I"d give it to charity, if only I could get rid of it.
At first the jeweller I went to clearly thought I was a thief. He asked me for a receipt. He asked me how much it had cost. When I said 25,000, he just laughed.
"Well, it was a charity auction," I said.
"And someone just gave it to you?" he said, doubt dripping from his voice.
"Well, yes, actually, he did," I replied firmly.
"You see, miss, this is a Theodore Bukala design. Unique. Very desirable. Very expensive. Very traceable."
"Yes. So?"
"So for a piece like this we would need to be absolutely certain of its provenance."
"You mean you think I stole it?"
"Of course not!" He put on a convincing air of being shocked. "We just have to cover ourselves."
"Look, I just want to get rid of it. But it would be good to get a decent sum for a charity while I was at it."
"My my, he really isn"t a friend any more, is he?"
"No. He is most certainly not."
"Well, you could always give it direct to a charity. But it"s such a distinctive piece they would want to make the most of the publicity over it-about where it came from and why. Could you cope with that?"
"No, probably not," I said reluctantly, suddenly very tired.
"Have you got ID on you?"
"Yes, driving licence, bank card. I"ve even got my pa.s.sport." He copied all the details.
"We have a client who would like this, so I am in a position to help you out."
Eventually he wrote me a cheque for 5,000. He would probably sell the necklace for at least 15,000, but I"d gone past caring. I took the cheque and left the shop and tried to forget the memory of Clayton slipping it over my head and kissing my throat as he did so.
As soon as the cheque had cleared, I would divide the money and send half of it off to one of Mum"s pet projects in the rainforests and the other half to the Ted Blake cancer charity. They might as well benefit twice over. That seemed fair.
So that was the necklace gone. But there was still the leather jacket lurking at the back of the wardrobe. Clayton Silver had so many designer clothes I don"t suppose he"d even noticed it was missing. I"d drop it in the charity shop next time I was pa.s.sing. On the other hand, unlike the necklace, he hadn"t actually given me the jacket, had he? Better do the decent thing, I suppose. I found the biggest Jiffy bag I could, stuffed the jacket in and posted it back to Clayton.
That was me done with him for good. All links severed.
Chapter Twenty-Six.
I was just heading home from the post office-trust me to want to send a jacket back at the busiest time of the year-when my phone rang.
"Tilly! Are you busy? Can you join us? We"re having a celebration!"
"Who"s us?" I asked Matt, confused.
"Dexter and me."
"What are you celebrating?" My mind raced through a whole load of different possibilities.
"A joint project. Come over and we"ll tell you all about it. We"re in Harry"s Bar, at the back."
At first I didn"t recognise Dexter. I had forgotten about his new haircut and that he was quite so good looking. He"d also swapped his trademark baggy jumper for a stylish jacket. Very worn, a bit shabby, but still swish. I spotted him and Matty before they noticed me. They were sitting side by side in one of the booths, their heads bent over a notebook. Despite the ten-year age difference, they looked at ease together, well matched and not just because they were the same height with those long legs. It was something about their body language, their expressions as they looked up and spotted me.
Dexter"s grin was just as cheerful as always. That hadn"t changed. They both stood up to greet me and it suddenly dawned on me that they were now a couple. I wondered if it had yet dawned on them.
"So what"s this exciting project then?" I asked as Dexter poured me a gla.s.s of wine.
"Look!" said Matty, her eyes bright with enthusiasm as she pushed a small sc.r.a.p of newspaper towards me. "Dexter brought me this!"
I looked. It was a small, smudgy advert showing a large dilapidated building with another one, only slightly smaller and slightly less dilapidated, next to it. "Hartstone chapel and schoolroom."
"It"s a property advert," I said. "It"s the chapel opposite the pub."
"That"s right," said Dexter. "After leaving it empty all this time, the local authority has finally decided to sell it."
"So?"
"So I thought I might try and buy it. And it struck me that Matty might want to be in on the deal. That"s why I"ve come down to see her, to talk about it."
Now I was baffled. "You want to buy the chapel?" I asked. "You and Matty?"
Matt nodded, grinning.
"You want to open the chapel again at Hartstone?"
"Yes!"
"Oh."
I wondered for a moment if I really knew my newfound cousin at all. She was going to reopen a chapel? I mean, I knew they took such things seriously up there on top of the world, but it"s not the sort of thing a model usually does with her earnings.
"Not as a chapel, you idiot!" Matty was laughing. "As a gallery. A photographic gallery. All those photos Dexter"s been collecting. All those he"s going to take to go with them. They"re just piling up in the back of the pub. It"s a wonderful project, but absolutely hopeless unless we have somewhere to display the end result. The chapel would be perfect! It"s vast and has an upstairs gallery and lovely fancy stonework and huge windows. It would be a wonderful gallery and part of the history of the dale. Ideal!
"Then there"s s.p.a.ce for a gallery just for Dexter"s work. And in the schoolroom next door we could have another gallery with changing exhibitions, so there would always be something new for people to see, and a place for local photographers to exhibit their stuff. And where the education authority built those dormitories and bathrooms and things, we could have a cafe. What do you think?"
She was so excited, so enthusiastic, her hair in a wild halo around her head, her eyes shining. She looked stunning.
"Well, yes. Fantastic!" I said. "But are you sure? I mean, can you just do something like that?"
"It"s all right," said Dexter, as he looked sideways at Matty"s laughing face. "I"ve had unofficial talks with the authorities and we should have no problem. Quite the opposite; in fact we might even get a few grants."
"Right. And who"s going to run it? I mean, what about your work and your degree and stuff ?"
Matt rested her chin on her hands, in the process sending waves of her hair rippling over her shoulders. A couple of other customers nudged each other, knowingly. Even in a place as sophisticated as this, Matty looked extraordinary. "What better project could there be?" she asked.
"Dexter will be up there to see to all the building stuff. But I"m up and down all the time as it is. I guess I"ll just be up and down there even more, won"t I?" She smiled at Dexter. "There"ll be long holidays, weekends. The course is only three years, after all. Then I"ll be a proper photographer, just like Dexter. The perfect partnership."
The pair of them bubbled with their ideas and their enthusiasm and I was soon as drawn into their plan as they were.
We drank a triumphant toast to the success of the Hartstone Chapel Gallery. And another toast. And another. Thoughts turned to food.
"Sushi, that"s what I fancy," said Dexter, surprisingly. "Something I can"t get at Hartstone." When we agreed he strode out to find a cab and it struck me that, like Matty, he was just as at home in the streets of London as he was on the high fells of Hartstone.
So the three of us spilled into Matty"s favourite sushi bar and kept coming up with more ideas for the chapel that they hadn"t even bought yet.
"Keep the blue ceiling!"
"One gallery has got to be edgy. Stir it up a bit."
"Themes-weddings, parties, work!"
"Cafe. Must do proper food."
"Cards, posters, books!"
And so it went on. Each suggestion Matt scribbled on the ever-growing list on her notebook.
As I chased the last little bit of nigiri round my bowl I smiled to myself. "What would Granny Allen say?"