At that the younger ones threw themselves at David, who took them inside for drinks and snacks before tea.
‘What is it?’ Kat prompted Shelley.
Shelley was still watching the men’s retreating backs. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied quietly, ‘but I have such a horrible feeling about this that I wish I knew how to bring them back.’
By the time dusk started to settle over the fields there was still no sign of the men, and as Giles had left his walkie-talkie on the table, and neither Jack nor Nate had taken theirs, Shelley had no way to get hold of them. She rang Giles’s wife, Cathy, but Cathy hadn’t heard from them either, and she was just as worried, which wasn’t like the usually sanguine Cathy at all.
In the end, unable to stand doing nothing, Shelley told Kat to stay with David and the children while she went down to the basement and took a key from a box on the topmost shelf of a wall cupboard. She used it to unlock the cabinet where Jack kept his shotgun. She’d never fired it in her life (nor had he, since learning how to handle it), but mindful of the premonition she’d had as the men had left, she needed something to bolster her courage if she was going out to look for them. Obviously she wouldn’t shoot anyone, that wasn’t her intention at all, but venturing out alone in the dark with nothing to help make a point, if necessary, didn’t feel like a good way to go.
Twenty minutes later Shelley was in the Land Rover, driving gingerly through the narrow country lanes at the furthest perimeter of their land and keeping her eyes peeled for any signs of Jack and the others. The car’s windows were open to let in some air, along with any number of insects to buzz around her face like the irritating pests they were.
The shotgun was on the passenger seat beside her.
She was close now to where their fields joined with Giles’s, but there was no sign of anyone. The night was black; hedgerows and trees rolled in from the wings and disappeared again as the headlights passed by. A fox darted across the road in front of her and was gone almost before she hit the brakes.
Quite suddenly, the road flooded with light. A car came speeding towards her, headlights blazing; blinding her. She swerved frantically into a ditch, but needn’t have worried – the other driver skidded into a hard left turn and disappeared through an open gate (that should have been closed), bumping and revving into one of their top fields. It was followed by another car, and another … She counted six in all, each with its headlamps blazing and music blaring.
Quickly backing up onto the road she killed her lights and edged forward in a low gear, her heart thudding and ears straining as she pulled in close to the hedge. The music had stopped, but she could see torch beams moving about wildly in the night air and then she heard the sound of voices, shouting, threatening. With an unsteady hand she reached for the gun, got out of the Land Rover and moved silently into the field.
The cars had been abandoned, some doors left open and interior lights still on. Ahead of them was an encampment of a dozen or more tents, all shapes and sizes. The voices were louder now, but she still couldn’t see anyone, so she crept closer, keeping to the shadows and praying that no one would spot her. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if they did; all sorts of scenarios were flitting into her head and none were good.
As she peered round the edge of a tent towards the commotion, her stomach gave a lurch of fear. A truly ugly scene was under way with Jack, Giles and Nate at the centre of it, yelling, waving fists and threatening violence if the travellers didn’t move off now.
Except they weren’t travellers, she realized, they were a bunch of drunk, arrogant youths who’d apparently set up camp in the field and were now showing off in front of their girlfriends, watching from the shadows, by refusing to budge.
Recognizing the ghastly Bleasdale twins from Dean Manor, Shelley moved closer still, and as one of the obnoxious oiks began yelling threats that could (or should in her opinion) get his head blown off, she raised the gun, pointed it straight at him and yelled, ‘Get away from my husband or I’ll shoot.’
To her dismay no one heard; so directing the gun skywards she pulled the trigger and almost came off her feet as the explosion tore through the night.
Everyone froze.
She took another step forward, aiming the gun at any yob who moved. She could hear voices muttering, ‘What the fuck?’ ‘Madwoman’ ‘Get out of here.’ Jack was gaping at her in astonishment, then ran swiftly to wrest the weapon from her trembling grasp before any real harm was done.
An even uglier scene immediately flared up, with Shelley joining in the yelling and no one seeming ready to give way, until a couple of Terry Yarwood’s farmhands turned up with a trailer packed full of farm waste. As they dumped it over the tents Jack’s party roared with laughter, while the Bleasdales and their fellow yobs began gagging and spluttering obscenities that could still be heard as they pressed the protesting girls back into the cars and disappeared into the night.
‘What the hell were you thinking, bringing the gun?’ Jack laughed, as he and Nate followed Shelley to the Land Rover.
‘I was expecting travellers,’ she reminded him. ‘And you’ve been out here for so long.’
‘We were waiting for them to show up,’ he explained. ‘We’d already guessed it was kids so we decided to have ourselves some sport.’
Rolling her eyes as if to say men! she returned to the driver’s seat, while he stowed the shotgun in the boot and Nate climbed into the back.
‘What are you going to do with all those tents?’ she asked as Jack got in beside her.
He was grinning widely. ‘That’s a very good question,’ he told her, ‘and I do believe I have the answer.’
He said no more, but the following morning around seven o’clock he took off in the farm’s forklift to meet up with Giles and Terry Yarwood in theirs. By eight they had shifted the stinking mass of an abandoned campsite over to Dean Manor’s gates, where they dumped the lot before returning to the farmhouse for one of Shelley’s scrumptious full English breakfasts.
It was just after ten when Sir Humphrey Bleasdale rang. ‘I want that filth moved off my land,’ he roared down the line at Jack.
‘Speak to your sons, they’re the owners,’ Jack told him.
Shelley could almost hear Sir Humphrey gnashing his teeth like some pantomime villain. ‘You don’t know who you’re dealing with, Raynor,’ he growled, ‘but mark my words, you’re going to find out.’
In his usual insouciant way, Jack wished the old puffball a good day and put the phone down. It wasn’t the first time Humphty Dumphty, as the kids called him, had threatened Jack, or Giles, or any of the other farmers who didn’t pay obeisance to his superior status, and Shelley knew without doubt that it wouldn’t be the last.
CHAPTER FIVE
VIVIENNE
Present Day
Kesterly didn’t look any different from the way it always had as Gil drove them along the seafront in his silver Mercedes saloon. Vivienne hadn’t expected it to, but familiar as it was, it felt different. Everything did. She guessed a time would come when she’d be able to put the strangeness, the chaos and darkness of her feelings into words, or some order of understanding, but for now all she could latch onto that didn’t send her into panic was a bewildering sense of surrealism that made everything seem like an endless dream – or as though someone else had slipped into her skin to take over her life.
Her mother was beside Gil in the front of the car. Vivi sat behind with Mark, her head resting on the seat back as she gazed out at the calm blue sky and crazily glittering sea. The tourists were out in good numbers, to be expected on a sunny day in early summer, and in a vague, disconnected way she felt glad for them. At least their lives didn’t appear to be in any sort of crisis.
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