Lottie Phillips - The Little Cottage in the Country

Taking Freddie’s hand again, she led them carefully through to the kitchen. She caught sight of the cream Aga and the quarry-tile floor, now thick with dust, the shelves covered in cobwebs, feeling hope for the first time that day. Maybe they would be OK after all. It just needed a good spring-clean and the help of a handyman. She would make it cosy…

An almighty crash came from outside and she let go of Freddie and Antonia, told them to stay put and ran to the open front door. Her car had rolled forward into an old chicken hut. She hadn’t put the sodding handbrake on, she thought, all because that stupid man had put her off.

She felt a tug at her sleeve and looked down. Freddie gazed up at her, looked outside, and smiled. ‘Mummy’s a plonk-ah.’

She pulled them towards her and nodded, sniffling. ‘Yep, Mummy’s a plonk-ah.’

Anna realised then that she was still holding the card the Horatio person had given her. She read the address. It wasn’t so much an address. Well, not the kind that required a postcode. It read: Ridley Manor.

The Chicken Hut

Half an hour later, Anna was still staring helplessly at her car.

‘Mummy, the car is hurt,’ Antonia chimed in for the billionth time.

‘Yes, it is,’ she said, pushing down the lump in her throat. ‘Right, Mummy’s going to back the car out of the chicken house.’ She wondered momentarily if those words had ever been uttered before, and then bent down to the twins. ‘Listen, you two, Mummy has made a big mistake. I’m going to make a call to Diane and see if we can have a sleepover at hers tonight.’

‘Whoo,’ Freddie said, beaming. ‘Love sleepovers at Auntie Dee-Dee’s.’

Diane, Anna’s best friend, lived in an even grottier flat than her own in Hammersmith, but she did have three bedrooms. Anna grabbed her mobile from her back pocket and started to make the call. It beeped twice at her and she swore under her breath.

‘How can there be no signal? We’re on the top of a bloody mountain.’

‘Mummy.’

Anna glanced at Antonia. ‘Sorry.’

‘OK, um, you two…’ She turned and looked around the front room. ‘You two can watch CBeebies. OK? Mummy needs to sort a few things out.’ She was grateful she had downloaded various programmes last week onto her phone.

Anna instructed them to sit at the base of the stairs and to keep their coats on until she had managed to warm the house up. She flicked the light switch by the front door but nothing happened. Her face crumpled and she willed herself to be strong, trying to ignore the nostalgic yearning she suddenly felt for London.

The sound of laughter outside snapped her back to reality and, with the twins grinning happily at the sound of Postman Pat prancing around the screen, she headed outside.

Horatio stood by the chicken shed, a plastic bag in his hand, shining a torch at her car, wedged thickly in the chicken hut.

‘Hi,’ Anna said. ‘Something funny?’ She arched a brow.

His grin disappeared, but even in the dim light she could see his shoulders gently shaking. ‘I got Mary, my um… Anyway, I got her to cook you some…’ He stopped talking, offering her the bag. When she didn’t immediately take it, he ploughed on. ‘To put some food together for you. Should still be hot.’

Anna was torn between unadulterated happiness at the thought of food (she could at least ensure her children wouldn’t starve tonight and wished there was a bottle of wine in there too), and her pride.

She went with the latter. ‘We’ll head out to a shop in a minute or two. I just need to do a couple of things…’ Anna attempted her best haughty look, aiming for something reminiscent of Keira Knightley in Pride and Prejudice .

‘Like remove your car from the chicken hut?’ he suggested. She scowled. ‘Well, you have to admit it’s quite funny that I’ve only been gone for an hour and, in that time, you’ve managed to demolish a chicken hut and, by the looks of it, the front end of your car has seen better days.’

‘Please go away, Mr…’ She stopped, tried to remember which of his names had been his surname. ‘We’ll be leaving in the morning, so I thank you for your, um, help today but we won’t be needing your services any more.’ She realised now she had taken the Austen-scripting too far and was grateful it was now almost entirely dark and he couldn’t see her blush. It was funny, the whole situation was hilarious, and if she had been back in London, in the warmth, with fed, happy children, she would have laughed uproariously. Only she wasn’t. Right now, she wanted the ground to swallow her whole, because what kind of woman managed to send a car through the back end of a chicken hut.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘take the food. Stop being so proud. At least, make sure your children have something to eat tonight. Nothing’s open around here now. The nearest Waitrose is forty minutes away in Cirencester and it’ll be shut now.’ He pushed the food in her direction again. ‘I’ll see if I can get your car out of here.’

‘I’m sure I can do it.’

‘I’m sure you can, but why don’t you go and get the children fed?’

As if on cue, she heard their voices inside. ‘Mummy! Mummy!’

She remembered the lights. Oh crumbs, they were sitting in the dark. ‘The lights, they don’t work.’

‘Are you sure?’ Horatio asked.

Clenching her fists, she thought she was pretty sure she could send something else through the chicken hut, in the form of a grown man. ‘No, I’m not sure, as we didn’t have electricity in London. I’m a dab hand with candles, though.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Of course I’m sure, I tried the light switch.’

‘OK, come on then,’ he said, pointedly ignoring her comment and shining the torch towards the house as he walked up the path. ‘Mind how you step.’

‘Hello, you two,’ he said to the twins standing at the front door.

‘Mummy, I hate the dark,’ Antonia said.

‘Me too,’ Freddie said. ‘I hate, hate the dark.’

‘Since when have you hated the dark, Freddie?’ Anna said, thinking back to the number of times she had asked Freddie not to turn all the lights out in the flat, despite his protests that ninjas worked best at night.

‘Now. Cos you brung us to here.’

Anna went to correct his grammar but, aware of Horatio standing feet from them, fumbling around at the back of the room, she told Freddie he should view it as an adventure, and he jumped up, ninja-like, on cue. Seconds later, the front room was flooded with light.

‘There you are,’ Horatio said, standing from a kneeling position by the cupboard. ‘Electricity was off.’

‘Oh.’ Anna avoided his eye. ‘Thanks.’

He smiled. ‘Have you got plates? If not, Mary put some plastic picnic plates and so on in there.’

‘Thank you,’ she said again, imagining Mary’s perfectly manicured hands daintily holding a glass of sherry as she asked him to pop round to ‘the poor’ with yesterday’s leftovers.

‘You serve up and I’ll get the car out.’ He nodded, breaking the awkward tension that had descended on the room.

She knew she should say more but she was tired and…

And… Antonia had just head-butted her brother for apparently no reason at all.

‘OK, you two, stop. I know you’re exhausted. Come and sit in the other room. I’ll get the heating on.’ She had spotted the boiler earlier and offered a silent prayer to the Plumbing Gods that it was working. The children followed her through to the kitchen and she pressed the ON button. The boiler clinked and clanked loudly and Freddie laughed happily.

‘Farty-farty noise,’ he said, and Antonia, forgetting the latest battle, started giggling.

The old pipes creaked into action and Anna sighed with relief. She set the children up at the dusty farmhouse table and opened Horatio’s offering. Three Tupperware containers held a delicious-smelling beef stew and smooth potato mash, and there was a Nigella-Lawson-Standard (a place Anna hoped to occupy one day) apple crumble for afters. She beamed when she saw the bottle of wine.