melted chocolate from the cake that sat upon it.
The cake seemed like a truly ridiculous offering now, Meredith thought. She should have listened to her mother. Not that she'd ever listened to her mother before. Which in itself was a thought that brought Jemima even more firmly into her mind, how she'd always said, "At least you have a mum," whenever Meredith complained about the good woman. And that made her miss Jemima with a stab to the heart, so she gathered her courage and her lopsided cake, and she made her way to the cottage door. Not the front door, which she'd never used, but the door at the back, the one that led out from a lean-to laundry room into an open space edged by the cottage, the barn, the shed, a little farm lane, and the east paddock.
There was no answer to her knock; there was no reply to her call of, "Jem? Hey? Hullo?
Birthday girl, where are you?" She was thinking of letting herself inside - no one locked doors in this part of the world - and leaving the cake along with a note when she heard someone call in return, "Hello? C'n I help you? I'm over here."
It was not Jemima. Meredith knew that at once from the voice, without having to turn from the door. But turn she did, and it was to see a young blonde coming round the side of the barn, shaking off a straw sunhat, which she then put on her head as she drew near. She was saying, "Sorry. I was having a go with the horses. It's the oddest thing. For some reason this hat seems to frighten them, so I take it off when I go near the paddock."
Perhaps, Meredith thought, she was someone they'd hired, Gordon and Jemima. With common rights, they were allowed to keep wild ponies, and they were also required to care for them if the animals weren't able to graze freely on the Forest for some reason. With Gordon's work and Jemima's work keeping them busy, it wasn't completely out of the question that they'd had to bring along someone in the event they were forced to keep ponies on the holding.
Except ...This woman didn't look like a stable-girl. True, she wore blue jeans, but they were of the designer sort one saw on celebrities, hugging her curves. She wore boots, but they were polished leather and very stylish, not boots for mucking out in. She wore a work shirt, but its sleeves were rolled to show tanned arms and its collar stood up to frame her face. She looked like someone's image of a countrywoman, not like an actual countrywoman at all.
"Hullo." Meredith felt awkward and ungainly. She and the other woman were of similar height, but that was the extent of their similarities. Meredith wasn't put together like this vision of life-in-Hampshire approaching her. In her body-shrouding caftan, she felt like a giraffe in draperies. "Sorry. I think I've blocked you in." She tilted her head in the direction of her car.
"No worries," the woman replied. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Not ... ?" Meredith hadn't thought that Jemima and Gordon might have moved house, but that seemed to be the case. She said, "Do Gordon and Jemima not live here any longer?"
"Gordon certainly does," the other replied. "But who's Jemima?"
In looking at everything that happened to John Dresser, one must begin with the canal.
Part of the nineteenth century's means of transporting goods from one area of the UK to another, the particular section of the Midlands Trans-Country Canal that concerns us bisects the city in such a way as to create a divide between socioeconomic areas. Three-quarters of a mile of its length runs along the north boundary of the Gallows. As is the case with most of the canals in Great Britain, a towpath gives walkers and cyclists access to the canal, and various types of housing back onto the waterway.
One might harbour romantic images invoked by the word canal or by canal life, but there is little romantic about the length of the Midlands Trans-Country Canal that flows just north of the Gallows. It's a greasy strip of water uninhabited by ducks, swans, or any other sort of aquatic life, and there are no reeds, willow trees, wildflowers, or grasses growing along the towpath.
What bobs at the canal's edges is usually rubbish, and its water carries a putrid odour suggestive of faulty sewer pipes.
The canal has long been