Page 11 of Escape to the Country

Chapter 5

Eleanor glanced up from her phone and realised with a jolt that the taxi was nearly in Cranley village.

She had spent the majority of the long journey refreshing her emails and recruitment websites, all to no avail. There were no job offers. Nothing but lots of text messages from her friends on the magazine, asking if she was going to the new Tom Hanks film premiere in Leicester Square that evening. They all loved sneaking in on the back of her press pass to the best of the parties. She had reluctantly replied that she had been made redundant. Now the messages were full of sympathy for her situation.

Eleanor sighed and automatically reached up to touch the sore spot on her neck. The eczema patch was worse than ever. Sometimes she scratched it without even realising she was doing so.

She forced her hand down away from her neck and looked out of the window instead. Everywhere was bright green with the fresh growth of spring. As June had nearly arrived, there was finally some real warmth in the sun and the days were getting longer. Summer was just around the corner. She recognised the hill they were driving up and quickly looked out of the other window towards the view that she adored. There was always a glimpse of Cranley as you headed over the last rolling hill towards the village. Seeing it through the trees, Eleanor couldn’t help but feel a little proud of her pretty home.

There it was, nestled in a green valley amongst the hills. A tiny English hamlet. In the centre was the ancient church of St Barnabus, its wobbly spire high above anything else in the village. Along the main street was the infants’ school, a couple of shops and The Rose and Crown pub. In the surrounding avenues were rows of cottages of sand-coloured stone, all tiny with chimneys. Most of the houses were built in the same bricks that matched the main property of the estate, Willow Tree Hall, which could just be seen peeping through the trees, surrounded by lush green fields and, out of view, the river. It was all very pretty and completely rural. Lovely, in a Jane Austen adaptation for a television series kind of way. Not so great if you craved catching a convenient Tube into Covent Garden before covering a movie premiere in Leicester Square.

A few minutes later, Eleanor got out of the taxi, pleased to be able to stretch her legs at last after the long journey.

It had been very generous of Lucas to pay for a taxi from London all the way to her home village of Cranley. Maybe it was too generous, she wondered. Perhaps he really had been desperate to get her out of his pristine flat after all this time. But at least it meant she had been able to pack up all her many clothes and possessions and bring them all with her. It would have been a total nightmare on the train and buses, trying to travel with everything.

Her last conversation that morning with Lucas had been to decide that their relationship should be left as ‘open-ended’ until she returned to London. Eleanor had no idea what that actually meant in reality but was relieved just to leave all her troubles behind her for a while until she had the strength to face them.

As the taxi driver dumped her suitcases and bags on the pavement, she checked her phone once more, but there were no new messages apart from the ones from her friends Annie and Megan, who were delighted that she was coming back to Cranley, even temporarily. She couldn’t wait to see them both.

Once alone, she turned to stare up at the tiny detached cottage in front of her. The Forge. She was home. Truly home.

It was the familiarity that touched her deep inside and she was surprised to feel the tears welling up. All she wanted, all she needed right at that moment, was a hug from her mum. Then surely everything would be all right in her world again.

She hadn’t been back since Christmas but almost six months on, nothing had changed except the passing of the seasons. Nothing ever changed at The Forge. The gate still needed fixing. The front door still needed a coat of fresh paint. With a pang, she reminded herself that she should make the effort to do a few more things around the house now that she had the time. Her mum had always struggled with keeping the place tidy on her own and it seemed in more need of repair than ever before.

She lifted and pushed the rotten wooden gate open and dragged the heavy suitcases over the bumpy paving stones towards the faded blue front door. Her arms were aching from the effort and she was grateful again for not having carried them all the way from London. The bags were even heavier, bulging full of make-up and beauty lotions.

She drew out her key and slid it into the lock with the slight wiggle that it had always required in order to work. Using her shoulder to push the stuck door wide open, she called out, ‘Hi, Mum! I’m home!’

She was immediately enveloped in the familiar aroma of home baking and, she grimaced, animals. As if on cue, a tabby cat rushed out of the kitchen at the end of the hallway, closely followed by a black and white spaniel she had never seen before. They were headed straight for her. Eleanor braced herself for impact.

‘Don’t let the dog out!’ shouted her mum from the kitchen.

The cat rushed out of the front door, leaping over her suitcases as it went. Eleanor just managed to close the door before the dog could get out too.

‘Not so fast,’ she told him, leaning against the door. He barked at her in protest and then drooled down her leg.

‘Ewww,’ she said, trying to wipe off the white foam on her designer black jeans.

In addition to the spaniel, a Great Dane sauntered out of the kitchen to stroll up and sit on her feet. ‘Geroff,’ she muttered, pushing the huge beast off her squished toes. Somewhere above the barking and panting there was the sound of some kind of exotic bird.

Ah yes, she thought with a sigh.The animals.

Most wives whose husbands leave them for a woman twenty years their junior either hide themselves in a vat of wine or lose fifty pounds and gain a toy boy. Sadly her mum, June McCartney, had done neither. Instead, June had taken refuge in the animal kingdom and made the ex-marital home a sanctuary for all creatures great and small.

For the last twenty or so years, if you lived near Cranley and found a stray animal, this had always been the place to come. Her grandfather had been a farrier, using the very place where they lived to shoe his horses. Eleanor had always presumed that her mum had inherited his love of animals, as well as The Forge itself.

In addition to the strays, cats and dogs of all sizes would arrive for a short holiday, thanks to her mother’s pet-sitting service. This was presumably where the spaniel and Great Dane came in.

‘Mum, where are you?’ she shouted.

‘In the kitchen, love,’ came the reply.

Eleanor picked her way over the piles of knocked-over books, newspapers, scratched floorboards, dogs and all-round chaos of the tiny hallway. She walked past the small front room and went through to the large kitchen. At one time, it had been the workshop and was therefore a large, airy room with wooden beams and generous windows.

June was sitting at the wooden table in the middle of the room, her foot in plaster and propped up on a stool. Her face was pale and she was obviously in pain.

‘Oh, Mum!’ said Eleanor, rushing over to give her a hug.