about it.’
‘And knowledgeable.’
‘But I’d be hopeless at the business side.’
‘Not if you had the right partner. There’s someone whom I believe would be very good. He is going to Paris, and with no particular plans that I know of.’
‘Who?’
I nodded towards King. ‘With your flair and Gideon King the third’s business acumen, you’ll go far I should think. Do you get on with him?’
‘I’ve never had much to do with him. He is Philippa’s secretary don’t forget.’
‘Not any more.’ I waved to Gideon. ‘Go into the maze, Caroline. No one will see you. I’ll tell him to follow, and you can talk it over.’
Since my niece Harriet had let slip that her mother would be asking to stay with me to establish residency for marriage at Leeds Register Office, I had expected to hear from Mary Jane. A brief letter had followed, asking could she stay in my spare room, and that she would visit me soon.
For once, her timing was impeccable. She knocked on the door the day after Everett Runcie’s funeral, bringing the children with her.
Never previously having contact with my birth family, I did not know of Mary Jane’s existence until the spring of this year. It was then that she sought me out to ask for help, when her husband disappeared. Meeting my new family had come as something of a shock.
She and I sat in the back garden. Harriet and Austin played in the wood, looking for the best trees to climb.
‘Don’t fall and break anything!’ Mary Jane called to them. ‘I’m not spending hours sitting in that dispensary.’
‘They’ll be fine.’
We had made a picnic and brought it outside, taking advantage of the fine day.
‘Catherine, you know you said I could stay here for residency until my banns have been called.’
‘Yes.’
She glanced towards the house. ‘This is a really nice spot, and such a lovely house.’
A chill ran through me. She had relinquished her tied house. She and her children had been camping out with her mother, or I should say ‘our mother’. Mary Jane did not like the tongue-wagging that resulted when she and the children moved into the farm with her fiancé. And since the farm was being sold and furniture auctioned off, it was not the most comfortable place to be.
‘The children have had such a lot of disruption,’ she said.
Their voices floated from the wood. Harriet was shouting, ‘Coming, ready or not!’
‘Well you know your spare room that you said I could stay in?’
‘Yes,’ I said cautiously.
‘The thing is, Catherine, I know it’s a bit soon but the people selling us the newsagent’s shop and house in Helmsley want to bring the sale forward. It will suit us down to the ground. Of course it means early mornings for the papers and so on, but Roland is used to that. And Harriet is quite keen on the idea of serving on in the shop.’
‘She’s a bit young isn’t she?’
‘Oh only at weekends and after school. But the thing is, we don’t want to delay. We want a totally fresh start and to turn up in Helmsley as man and wife, all official.’
‘Yes I can see the sense of that.’
‘Otherwise, I wouldn’t have thought of re-marrying so very soon. I would have let a year go by, out of decency.
‘But you’d already set the date for November.’
‘And now we’re bringing it forward to October.’
‘October?’ I heard the panic in my voice. Was she planning to move in today?
‘Roland is so particular about keeping to the rules. You’d be surprised. So if we could just move in here, quite soon. You won’t notice us. Roland has various bits of business to attend to before we can leave Great Applewick, but we’re thinking of a date early in October, then I’ll be a clear six months widowed and it won’t seem so appalling.’
I was glad we were sitting side by side and she could not see my face. Her arithmetic was a little at fault. It would not be six months since her husband’s death, it would be five. It amazed me that she could put the past behind her so quickly. What kind of idiot am I, that I stick in this muddy might-have-been world of never quite acknowledging that Gerald is not coming back?
I have turned down Marcus Charles, and am probably destined to live alone forever. But it could be worse. I could have married Marcus.
‘Do you all want to move in here?’
‘Oh no, just me and Roland. The kids can