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The guest bedrooms are up here, and a room that he and Nicole have chosen for a nursery. He’d love to be a dad; he can’t wait.
In the corner of one of the bedrooms he places the sheep beneath an almost invisible panel cut into the ceiling, which gives entry to the attic. Their roof space is a little mean, but useful for some storage. The sheep should fit up there. He decides he wants to protect it while it’s being stored because it’ll get dusty otherwise, so he fetches the box.
He pushes a button on the wall that controls the ceiling ladder. The hatch is supposed to open smoothly, and the ladder extend down. It doesn’t work. Tom punches at the buttons and curses. He’s had enough of things not functioning in this house. He needs this to work, now.
He hits the buttons, knowing how stupid that is, hearing Nicole’s voice in his ear telling him not to get worked up, but he’s rewarded by the sight of the hatch opening smoothly. He can see the ladder, folded up in the space. It’s supposed to comedown automatically. Or is it? Does he have to do something else? He presses the buttons again, not sure which one controls what. The hatch closes then opens again but the ladder doesn’t budge.
Tom looks at the sheep. ‘Shit,’ he says. The sheep’s poker-face is pleasing to him. Nicole is going to love it so much.
He jumps up to see if he can grab the end of the ladder and give it a tug to get it down but can’t reach. He jumps again and this time he gets hold of it. He manages to pull it, but the ladder doesn’t budge. Tom sighs. He punches at the buttons again and hears the mechanism start. Hallelujah, he says. He goes closer to see if it’s working and looks up expectantly. For a few inches, the ladder moves slowly out of the hatch, then all at once, it drops quickly and one of its feet hits Tom’s forehead.
He staggers and holds his hand to his head. That hurt. He looks at his fingers to check for blood but there is none. He blinks, waiting to feel pain, but it’s no worse than a small ache. It’s nothing.
He looks at the sheep again. ‘Are you going to climb up there first, or am I?’
51
THURSDAY
Jen
Jen and Hal sit in the Incident Room, catching up. Jen feels pumped from her discovery about Olly Palmer. Hal, just back from the Glass Barn where he told Patrick to leave and not to return, is giving off the same energy. ‘He wasn’t happy at all,’ Hal says.
‘It’s for the best,’ Jen says. ‘Horrible to think of her alone there with him.’
Hal shifts his attention to Jen’s news. ‘So, Olly Palmer is related to Kitty Ellis, the original housekeeper at the Manor House.’ He knows this already, but repeating information to make it sink into his head is a tic he has.
‘Olly Palmer is Kitty’s nephew,’ Jen confirms.
‘Remind me how Anna Creed met Sasha and Olly.’
‘According to her journal, Anna first went to Sasha’s yoga class because Auntie Kitty, who was obviously Anna’shousekeeper at the time, encouraged her to; she told Anna it would help her get over her bereavement.’
‘She set up the meeting between Anna and Sasha, then,’ Hal says.
‘She did.’
‘Thinking out loud, here. This is how it could have gone: once Nick Creed dies, Kitty identifies Anna Creed as a mark. She knows she’s a soft touch anyway and now Anna’s grief-stricken, lonely, and the owner of a large Manor House and presumably some money, too. She doesn’t have a support network. She’s isolated. Kitty says to Sasha, I’ll persuade this woman I work for to come to your class. You should make friends with her. And she does that with a view to, what? Getting Sasha to become close to Anna so she can get some money out of her? Was that a plan they had right from the start?’
‘They could have,’ Jen says. ‘And then it goes better than expected. The relationship develops, Sasha introduces Olly into the equation, and they discover it’s easy to persuade poor, lonely Anna to like them both. She’s such a patsy that she even invites them to move in. They’re very happy about that. They’ve probably got more than they dreamed of. Then, over a number of years, they push things farther and farther and eventually complete the coup by turning on Kitty and getting her to leave, then coercing Anna into taking on her role and moving out of her own home and into the Coach House, which Kitty has vacated.’
‘It’s extraordinary if it’s true. But I want to think about that first step for a moment, the first move they made. Why wouldn’t Kitty develop a friendship with Anna herself, if it’s moneythey want? Why involve Sasha when Kitty’s already much better positioned to do it? She’s living in the Coach House, has been working for Anna for a while and presumably knows her well.’
‘Maybe she didn’t have the skills. Perhaps Anna and she didn’t get on very well. From what Anna writes in the journal, the relationship doesn’t sound warm.’
‘How did Kitty have the confidence that Sasha could do it?’ Hal asks.
Jen thinks about this. It would have been a very long shot for Kitty. Though she wouldn’t have had anything to lose by trying. Perhaps they’re missing something. Or— ‘What if Sasha had done it before?’ she says. ‘What if there was a successful track record and Kitty knew about it?’
‘A previous con?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s good thinking,’ he says, and Jen feels a glow of pleasure. It’s not normal for her. She takes praise the way she takes criticism, usually, with pragmatism. But it’s different, coming from Hal.
‘I’ll get someone to dig deeper into Sasha,’ she says. ‘What do we need? Prior living arrangements? Relationships?’
‘All of the above. And not just her. Olly, too. He’s in as deep as she is. If it’s not her that did this before, it might have been him.’
