Autumn Leaves at Mill Grange by Jenny Kane (the little red hen ebook .txt) 📗

*

‘I was about to check to see if your car was missing. I’ve looked all over the house for you. I keep forgetting about this room.’ Thea leant against the open door that led into the old television room. Recently converted into a downstairs bedroom for wheelchair users, it had a hint of fresh paint about it, the new carpet and fresh linen making it unique among its Victorian colleagues. ‘Are you alright?’

Tina carried on with her preparation for their visitors in five days’ time. ‘Not really.’

‘What happened?’

‘The letters were from his mother.’

‘But he’d hidden them?’

‘Yes.’ Flopping onto the bed she’d just smoothed flat, Tina groaned as she explained what had happened. ‘And now Sam’s stormed off to God knows where. One minute it sounded like he was proposing and now I don’t know if he’s left me or not.’

Tears welled in her friend’s eyes as Thea said, ‘Hold on a second; go back to the bit on the garden bench before the letters got discussed. Did you just say he more or less proposed?’

Tina sniffed. ‘But that’s not going to happen properly now is it?’

‘Where is Sam?’

‘Walking on Exmoor probably.’ She looked around the room. ‘He’s not going to be in here, is he?’

An air of defeat hung around Tina as she got up and uncreased the linen. ‘I have no idea what to do.’

‘Once he’s calmed down, he’ll come round.’

‘But he’s so private. How can I spend the rest of my life with someone who has so much history that he can’t tell me about, and another load he won’t tell me about?’

‘Perhaps that’s the problem.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Sam has spent so much of his life coping with not being allowed to share, now that he has someone to share with, he doesn’t know how. He might even be afraid to, in case the floodgates open so wide that he can’t shut them again.’

‘Maybe.’ Tina gave the room an appraising look. ‘But if not, I won’t be able to stay. No way can I work here if we split up. It’d kill me.’ She grabbed both plaits and pulled down on them. ‘Thank goodness I kept my post at the Exmoor Heritage Trust on part time.’

‘It won’t come to that, I’m sure it won’t.’

Tina tried not to burst into tears again. ‘I’d better go and research chickens.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Sam wants more, so I need to make sure we can mix groups of chickens together, or if adding new poultry would lead to all-out war. Beaks at ten paces and all that.’

‘So he does. I’ll come to the office with you. I need to write another to-do list.’

Tina gave a brave smile. ‘I wonder what names we’ll give the next batch of hens: Mavis, Mabel? Although I’m not sure our human Mabel would like that.’

‘Mabel!’ Thea checked her watch. ‘Before all this blew up, we were talking about asking her to join the team. Come on, you go and check your chicken information and I’ll write up this list of archaeological equipment we need to buy or hire. Then we’ll take Mabel for lunch at Sybil’s Tea Rooms. Literally butter her up as we ask about her being our catering guru.’

‘Only if I can have a cheese scone,’ Tina agreed, ‘and we don’t tell Mabel about the letter situation.’

‘Or that we were thinking of naming a chicken after her.’

*

Thea ran a finger over the intricate iron work of the gate to the walled garden. She’d always been fascinated by how its upper half looked like a work of art, while the bottom half was as standard a wooden gate as you’d find in any ordinary garden. Pushing it open, she could see Sam weeding a patch of ground between the chicken coop and the long Victorian greenhouse. More a skeleton of what had once been, rather than an operational structure, its glassless beauty struck Thea every time she saw it.

Deciding to avoid talking about the letters unless Sam brought the subject up, Thea metaphorically put her manager’s hat on, and dived straight in with the business of the day. ‘Tina has checked. You can add more chickens to the same coop, providing there is sufficient space. If you take the precaution of letting them get used to each other first, by placing a stretch of chicken wire down the middle for a while, then the transition will be easier.’

‘So they can see each other and adjust to the new company, but not intermingle?’ Sam kept weeding, his eyes averted from Thea as he spoke. ‘Makes sense. Tina was happy to research that for me then.’

‘I think happy may be pushing it. Professional enough perhaps.’

‘I assume she told you all about it.’

‘Some, not all. She respects a person’s privacy does Tina. She always has.’

‘I believed that too, until today.’

Thea bit the inside of her cheek, not wanting to take sides between her friends, while privately admitting she was on Tina’s. ‘Think about it, Sam. Think about Tina. You know she hasn’t got an ill-intentioned bone in her body.’

He grunted, before pointing at the greenhouse’s heavily cobwebbed structure. ‘Looks like something from Miss Havisham’s drawing room, doesn’t it?’

‘It could be stunning.’

‘I’m glad we didn’t pull it down; it’s bad enough losing the mill, without that being destroyed too.’

Thea gave an involuntary shudder. The memory of desperate fear and helplessness that swept through her every time she remembered how she and Tina had been trapped inside, while the mill burnt around them, made her skin cold. She wished her mind wouldn’t automatically ask her, ‘What if Sam and Shaun hadn’t been able to rescue them?’ every time the former woollen mill, which gave the manor house its name, was mentioned. Although the sensation of nausea and panic that made her wipe sweat from her palms wasn’t as bad as it had been, it still had the power to take her breath away.

Noticing her distress, Sam made haste to apologise. ‘I wasn’t thinking, sorry.’

‘Nothing to be