loud to her. She seemed to love the swinging rhythms of ‘Lochinvar’ and ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’. She also liked music, particularly when Etta sang to her.
Etta was touched too that Mrs Wilkinson preferred to have everything fed to her by hand and, even when she came in to dress the filly’s wounds, had stopped shrinking away.
After ten days, she managed to walk to the door, swaying like a toddler on its first outing, then fell over again as she tried to leap away in terror because Joey had dropped in with some carrots. Jase and Woody couldn’t keep away either. After the pub closed, Chris and Chrissie arrived with Friday’s special, bread and butter pudding, and were gratified when Mrs Wilkinson accepted a second and even a third helping.
Her right eye was still closed and Charlie Radcliffe confirmed she had lost the sight in it, but the other eye, dark blue, big and beautiful, no longer looked on the world with terror. She was still woefully thin, her pelvic bones protruding, but gradually a lovely thoroughbred filly was emerging.
Etta was alarmed that news of the rescue was spreading round the village. People visiting the sick were also motivated by an opportunity to see what sort of cock-up Valent Edwards was making of Badger’s Court. Miss Painswick, Pocock and Gwenny the cat, who would curl up in the wood shavings, all made frequent trips. Niall the vicar popped in bringing barley sugar and on the second Sunday after Christmas a sprinkling of parishioners were exhorted to pray for the continued recovery of Mrs Wilkinson.
‘Is she the woman who’s moved into the Old Rectory?’ boomed Old Mrs Malmesbury.
Rumours still swirled about Harvey-Holden’s fire and Denny Forrester, the head lad, who had allegedly topped himself.
‘Doesn’t add up,’ said Jase. ‘Denny was a dote, loved his horses, he’d never have burnt them to death.’
‘Poor darling, at least you were spared that fate,’ said Etta as she began reading Ivanhoe to Mrs Wilkinson.
Etta had, however, been touched to get a sweet note from Harvey-Holden, saying he was determined to rebuild his yard, that he had been moved to tears by her kind letter and very generous cheque and hoped she’d come and have a drink one day soon.
Perhaps Mrs Wilkinson could be the first new horse he trained, thought Etta.
Being Willowwood, there were vastly different estimates of the insurance money Harvey-Holden would be able to call on.
‘Lucky he didn’t use Shagger as a broker,’ observed Woody. Returning to Little Hollow one frosty morning, Etta met the postman delivering a postcard from Trixie: ‘Sorry I was bloody, most of the ski instructors gay.’
Joey, after a boozy and expensive Christmas with his four children, kept trying to inject a note of reality into the pantomime. Valent couldn’t swan around with Bonny Richards for ever, he had empires to run – he must roll up sometime and unless Mrs Wilkinson was ejected fairly soon, someone would be caught at Badger’s Court red-handed.
If Joey was edgy about Valent coming down, Etta was even more worried about the return of Martin and Romy from France and Carrie, Alan and Trixie even earlier from the Rockies. She’d be scooped up into their lives again and how would she escape to look after Mrs Wilkinson? Martin, with his obsession for getting Valent Edwards on side, would be furious, Romy hated animals, and what about Drummond’s asthma?
‘Perhaps she’ll give the little sod a serious attack,’ said Jase.
‘Don’t worry, Etta, if the worst comes to the worst, Wilkie can move in with Not for Crowe and Doggie,’ Woody said.
Everyone was having great fun inventing parents for Mrs Wilkinson.
‘Her sire could be Rugger Jonny,’ suggested Joey, ‘and her mother Near Miss.’
When the Macbeths returned from what seemed to have been an embattled holiday, Carrie promptly drove up to London, Alan sloped off on some date of his own, and Trixie, who was going back to school the next day, descended on Etta and commandeered her landline.
‘The reason I wouldn’t snog you,’ Etta could hear her shouting, ‘is because you’ve got a hairy back, a fat ass, narrow shoulders, a huge tummy and you’re a pompous geek.’
‘That’s a boy called Boffin Brooks who goes to Bagley Hall and who turned up in the Rockies,’ she told Etta, as she picked at the shepherd’s pie Etta had made for her lunch.
Afterwards Trixie pretended she was going back to Russet House to pack and mug up for her exams. She had, however, developed a crush