There was no doubt that as houses went, Eversleigh was deliciously perfect, which was why it had made such an ideal location for
Lady Jane Investigates
. It was nestled smack bang in the middle of the village, next to the church, hidden by ancient trees and a crumbling, moss-covered stone wall. A pair of wrought-iron gates hung on two stout pillars, leading into a semicircular gravelled area in front of the porticoed entrance, though no one parked here – a drive led off round the side of the house to the garages and stable block. The house itself was symmetrical: each eave, each chimney pot, each mullion
was perfectly reflected. The windows were leaded with squares rather than diamonds, which lent an air of elegance rather than chocolate-box tweeness. Everything was ancient and aged, smothered in moss and verdigris and lichen. The only hint of the twenty-first century was a small blue box tucked under one of the eaves that housed the necessary burglar alarm.
The huge oak front door led into a wood-panelled entrance hall that was large enough to hold a cocktail party, yet felt welcoming rather than cavernous. There was a stone fireplace big enough for a man to stand in, and a sweeping staircase that rose then split into two, leading back on itself to either side of the house. The flagstone floor was scattered with faded and worn Oriental rugs; a round mahogany table in the middle held a Chinese vase. There were three doors: one to the drawing room on the left, one to the dining room on the right and one to a corridor that ran the width of the back of the house leading to the library, the small sitting room and the kitchen.
Richenda wandered through each room in turn, reflecting with interest that the house was so gracious, so quietly authoritative, that there was no real need to decorate as such. Its features set the tone, so it was merely a question of choosing paints and fabrics that enhanced the atmosphere, rather than trying to impose one’s own style. And Richenda couldn’t deny that Madeleine had an excellent eye in what she had chosen.
The drawing room was painted soft ochre, with three large cream Knole sofas grouped around the fireplace. Conveniendy placed occasional tables were home to
pieces of silver and glass. Several landscapes adorned the walls. Richenda decided that this room, perfect though it was, was a little too formal for her liking. It was a room for polite conversation, not relaxing.
The dining room was more dramatic, its walls a peacock bluey-green of startling depth, set off by the golden Cotswold stone fireplace and mullioned windows. The curtains were a rusty red silk with a wide velvet self-stripe; a huge Persian rug under the table picked up the blues and the reds, while an enormous ormolu mirror over the fireplace reflected the entire room. The overall effect was dramatic, but not overpowering; a room that showed itself to best effect by candlelight.
Her favourite room of all was the small sitting room. Fifteen foot square and south-facing, with doors that opened out on to the garden, its walls were painted powder blue, and it contained two high-backed sofas smothered in cushions, a coffee table, a pretty little writing desk and a dainty piano. There was a bookcase crammed with paperbacks; everything you should ever read, from Daphne du Maurier to Wilbur Smith via George Orwell and Virginia Woolf. It was incredibly feminine; perfect for reading or writing letters, or kicking off your shoes and curling up with a magazine.
There were logs laid in the fire ready, and Richenda bent down to pick up a spill. It might only be early October, but there was a tiny chill in the air. Carefully, she lit the spill and thrust the flame into the centre of the kindling. She knew all about lighting fires. Once upon a time, it had been one of her many menial tasks. As the flames took hold, she smiled in satisfaction. The press
might never know it, but her story was as close to Cinderella as it was possible to get.
Richenda’s mother had had her as an act of rebellion. As the youngest daughter of elderly parents, living in a modest house on a quiet estate on the outskirts of Woking, Sally Collins had seen giving birth as a romantic gesture, a ticket out of her stifling existence, totally missing the point that a baby was a living, breathing ball and chain with twenty-four-hour needs. By the time that penny had dropped, the baby’s father had done a bunk and the eighteen-year-old Sally was left stranded in a freezing caravan struggling on a mishmash of benefits. The bitter words of recrimination that she’d hurled at her bewildered parents, who would in fact have done anything to help her, precluded her from going back home. Besides, better a freezing caravan and the freedom to light up a joint if she fancied it than the claustrophobic, wallpapered walls of suburbia.
Sally looked like a Russian doll, with her sweet round face, her black eyes, pink cheeks and rosebud lips, her long hennaed hair parted in the middle. Sartorially she was hovering in limbo somewhere between a hippy and a punk: a lost soul when it came to style, in fringed skirts, fishnet tights and Doctor Martens, with tight crushed velvet tops and masses of silver jewellery – rings and bangles and earrings. But although she might look sweet and doll-like, she was actually selfish, lazy and not very bright, lurching from one disaster to the next, ill-equipped to think on her feet and always eager to take the easy way out, preferably at someone else’s expense.
Living with her was an emotional rollercoaster. Sometimes she would hug her daughter fiercely, tell her it was just the two of them against the rest of the world, that she was all that mattered, and the little girl would go to sleep snuggled up against her mother’s warmth. Until the next man came along. Then Sally would be besotted, and would make it clear that Richenda was no more than a nuisance. Richenda would stand her ground stoically, knowing from experience that Sally’s relationships rarely lasted more than three months, and it soon would be the two of them again. But in the meantime she would be expelled from her mother’s bed, left to shiver in some makeshift pile of blankets in the corner of whatever squat or bedsit or rented room her latest lover occupied.
Of course, in those days she wasn’t known as Richenda. Sally had named her Rowan at birth, but by the time she was three she was cruelly known as Missy, short for Mistake, a tag that had been bestowed on her by one of Sally’s many other mistakes, and it had stuck.
For ten long years the two of them struggled to survive. Occasionally, Sally would relent when things got really tough and would go back to her parents. Richenda loved these sojourns, for it meant proper food, a warm bed, regular bedtimes, the chance to watch telly. But it would only be a matter of days before a row broke out and Sally would have one of her tantrums, and their few belongings would be swept up into a holdall and off they would go again, to throw themselves on the mercy of one or other of Sally’s friends. Richenda dreamed that her grandparents would one day have the strength to stand up to Sally and demand to keep her, but they never did. She
would look back at them waving rather disconsolately and helplessly through the kitchen window, and as she grew older she came to despise them for their ineffectuality.
By the time Richenda was twelve, they were living in a damp flat in a house overlooking the railway line in North London. Sally supplemented her benefits by knitting jumpers that she sold at Camden Market – brightly coloured jumpers with cannabis leaves or Dennis the Menace or peace signs emblazoned on the front. She could knit without a pattern, weaving the colours in to create pictures with an expert eye, and the jumpers were very popular. It was Richenda’s job to scour jumble sales and charity shops for old knitwear that could be unravelled and reused. She loved pulling the threads and watching the garments disappear before her very eyes, before winding the wool up carefully into neat balls which she stacked in colour-coordinated rows in orange boxes. One day Sally promised to knit her a jumper of her own, with the
Jungle Book
characters on it. Together they drew out a design, of Baloo with Mowgli, and Richenda watched in excitement as the figures emerged hanging from the needles. She couldn’t wait for the day it was finished. Somehow this jumper represented the fact that their life was settling down, that Sally had got over her resentment of her daughter, that they were almost normal.
But before the jumper was finished, Sally met Mick…
Mick also had a stall at Camden Market, where he was selling bongs and pipes and all manner of smoking paraphernalia, and doing a roaring trade. The first day Sally met him she came home with a silly grin on her face. The
second day she didn’t come home until the next morning. Sally had repeatedly told Richenda she was old enough to stay in the flat on her own, and often left her alone in the evenings when she went to the pub, but all night was a different matter. Richenda had been worried sick, imagining that she had got drunk and fallen under a tube train. Sally had laughed, high on lack of sleep and too much sex and Mick’s Lebanese red, and told her not to worry – they were moving to Mick’s place. With a heavy heart, Richenda packed up her things, a strong sense of foreboding telling her that this move was not in her interests.
Mick’s place was known as ‘The Farm’. Not that anyone did anything remotely agricultural on it, unless you counted the spiky green leaves of the cannabis plants in the greenhouse. The farmhouse was built in unforgiving flint, and sat in an exposed position on the Berkshire Downs, ill-protected from the winter winds. It was a sort of idealistic post-punk commune full of middle-class twits in dreadlocks and combat trousers, trying to deny their origins and live their dream while picking up the dole, and in the meantime composing anarchic songs and trying to get gigs. The main room stank of cider, dope, garlic and stale sweat. Though Richenda could never understand why it smelled of sweat, for the house was freezing: there was a woodburning stove that was constantly going out, as no one could be bothered to chop wood, and icy-cold flagstone floors and a howling gale that whipped through the windows. Now, more than anything, Richenda remembered the cold, and the unforgiving itchy lumps that came up on her fingers as a result.
The Farm also housed Mick’s harem, a collection of
adoring females who came and went, ebbing and flowing in tune with some mysterious tide, bringing with them a stream of runny-nosed, unkempt offspring whom they proceeded to ignore as they sat round in stoned admiration, hanging off his every word. Richenda couldn’t understand what they saw in him, with his matted dreadlocks and dozens of earrings in each ear. To her, his eyes were cold and dead. But he wove some sort of magic over these women, and her own mother was the latest to be under his spell. For two whole years Sally was queen bee, and shared his bed.
Richenda, being the oldest, was put in charge of the children. She wasn’t sure how many of them were actually Mick’s, but she found she quite liked looking after them. It gave her something to do. She commandeered the attic, a long, low room that ran the entire length of the house, and tried to turn it into a nursery for the children. None of them seemed to have any toys, so she went to the village jumble sale. There was a large box of toys left over at the end that nobody wanted. Richenda had looked round to make sure nobody was looking, then picked up the box and walked out. At least the kids had something to play with now.
She was surprised none of them were allowed to go to school, as that would have ensured they were out from under their mothers’ feet five days a week, but the effort of getting them up and dressed, packing them a lunch-box, taking them to school and then picking them up was, apparently, too great. Much easier to leave them in Richenda’s care.
She longed to go to school herself, but her mother had
told her she didn’t need to go – she was being educated at home. Richenda realized the irony, that most kids would jump for joy at being let off, but she longed for a crisp navy uniform with a white blouse and tights and proper shoes. Not hand-me-down jumpers that had shrunk in the wash, and tie-dyed skirts and ugly old boots. Under this drab uniform no one seemed to notice that she was turning into a woman. She never had the fun of experimenting with clothes and make-up and hairdos, because there was little point.
When she was fourteen, she was given another duty: delivering parcels. Time and again, she’d clamber on to the bus in the village, change for Reading in the next village, then walk two or sometimes three miles to the address she’d been given – usually a seedy block of flats or a dilapidated terrace. The recipient would tell her to wait on the doorstep while they went to inspect the merchandise. Then she would make her return journey, often getting back in the dark, shivering with cold under her army surplus duffel coat. Looking back on it now it was obvious what was in the packages. She supposed she knew then, but it was easier to obey if she feigned ignorance to herself. What would have happened if she’d been caught?
As life is wont to do, one day it took a turn. Richenda had gone to the village post office to collect the family allowance – with seven children plus herself currently in the house it added up to a considerable amount, and there were plans for a party. For the grownups, of course. No plans for anything that might make the children’s life any more comfortable, like proper new shoes or a radiator
for the attic room. For a moment she wondered what would happen if she took the money and went into Reading, to blow it on bicycles and dolls and puzzles and a huge, enormous bag full of sweets. She didn’t, of course. She didn’t even dare buy a family-size bar of Dairy Milk to share out between them all. Mick would know exactly how much money she was supposed to bring back. For someone who declared himself anti-capitalist, he was very keen on money – as long as he didn’t have to do anything for it.
On the noticeboard in the post office, there was an advert for auditions in the village hall, for a forthcoming production of
Oliver!
ALL WELCOME, it read. Richenda gazed at the poster for a full five minutes, turning the prospect over in her mind. The woman who ran the post office came up beside her.