One Reckless Night. Sara Craven
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of people she didn’t know in clothes from bygone years, and for a moment Zanna had been bewildered as to why this stranger should have bothered.
Then she’d seen that the last few photographs were all marked ‘Church House, Emplesham’ on the back. The first one was dated—‘1950, Susan two days old’—and showed a woman in a neat dress and apron, presumably Nanny Moss, smiling in the wisteria-hung doorway of a long white house, with a tiny baby held protectively in her arms.
Others showed a small blonde girl playing among tall hollyhocks and delphiniums in a garden, or riding a tricycle, until finally a taller Sue had proudly showed off a new school hat and blazer.
Zanna had thought, Mummy, and her eyes had filled with tears. But she’d been grateful that she at last had something tangible to hold on to.
From that moment on the album went everywhere with her and became her most cherished possession, almost a talisman. But at the same time the way the bequest had been made had warned her, young though she was, that her father might not regard it in quite the same light, and that this was a gift to be kept secret, not shared with him.
She didn’t want him to be unhappy again, and the only times she had ever pressed him for information about her mother he had become so angry and upset that she’d been almost frightened. His unresolved pain and grief for his late wife was his one weakness. The only sign of vulnerability he’d ever shown.
All these years she’d kept the secret, she thought ruefully, and the album occupied an inside pocket in her bag even now. Her sole and private link with the past.
Zanna took it out and flicked through it while she ate her meal.
It was probably a wild-goose chase, but there might be someone in the village who’d remember the little girl at Church House, who could help wipe out the apparent vacuum that Sue Westcott had left in her wake.
At any rate, she would have to go and see.
After all, she argued, what do I have to lose?
Almost within minutes of taking the appropriate motorway exit she found herself in a maze of country lanes. The day was warm for late spring, and Zanna opened the sun roof and slung her jacket into the back of the car.
It wasn’t a fast journey. Every bend in the road seemed to reveal some new hazard—a tractor idling along, a group of riders on horseback, a pair of motorists who’d stopped to exchange the time of day, thereby blocking the lane completely.
Even the throb of the motorway traffic was extinguished by birdsong and the bleating of sheep. Zanna had the crazy sensation that she’d stepped backwards into some time-warp, where life moved at a different, slower pace.
Usually she would have been impatient, pushing herself and others, looking for a way round the obstacles in her path. But today she felt herself slowing in unison. She was aware that the tension was seeping out of her, that the sun and the warm breeze with its scent of hedgerows were bestowing a kind of benison.
Someone had once said that to travel hopefully was better than to arrive. For the first time she could understand that, and agree.
The Emplesham village sign was emblazoned on a huge circle of stone half-buried in long grass and hawthorn at the side of the road.
As Zanna passed it she began to realise that all was not well with her car. The engine note was not right. It seemed to have developed a kind of stutter, she thought with dismay. And then, without further warning, it died on her altogether.
Using the slight downward slope, Zanna steered the car onto the verge and applied the hand brake. She said under her breath, ‘I don’t believe this.’ It was as if the damned thing had become suddenly bewitched as it crossed the village line. Although that, of course, was nonsense.
She could see roofs and the church tower only a couple of hundred yards away. There’d be help there, or at least a telephone, she decided. She locked the car and began to walk down the lane, only to see ahead of her, as she rounded the first corner, a small garage and workshop.
Thank goodness for that, at least, she thought as she picked her way between the limited selection of secondhand cars on the fore court and entered the workshop.
She could hear music playing—one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, she recognized with slight in-credulity—but could see no one. She moved forward uncertainly and nearly stumbled over a pair of long denim-clad legs protruding from under a car. And not just any car, she realised. It was a classic Jaguar—by no means new, but immaculately maintained.
A portable cassette player near the legs was presumably the source of the music.
Zanna raised her voice above it. ‘Could you help me, please?’
There was no response, so she bent down and switched off the cassette.
She said, on a crisper note, ‘Excuse me.’
There was a brief pause, then the owner of the legs disentangled himself from beneath the car and sat up, looking at her.
He was tall and lean, his mane of black curling hair shaggy and unkempt. From a tanned face dark eyes surveyed her expressionlessly. His T-shirt and jeans were filthy with oil. He looked, Zanna thought with faint contempt, like some kind of gipsy.
Still, any port in a storm, she consoled herself, with a faint sigh. And if someone was actually allowing him to work on a car like that, he couldn’t be totally incompetent.
He said, ‘Consider yourself excused.’ His voice was low-pitched, with a faint drawl and a barely detectable undercurrent of amusement.
Zanna stiffened slightly, needled by his continuing and lingering scrutiny. He would, she thought, know her again. She looked back at him coldly, registering in her turn a beak of a nose that had clearly been broken at some time, a cool, thin-lipped mouth and a chin with a determined tilt. An image not as easily dismissed as she’d first assumed.
She said briefly, ‘My car has broken down.’
He shrugged. Through a rip in his shirt his shoulder looked very brown. ‘It happens,’ he returned laconically. ‘My commiserations.’ And he moved as if to slide back under the Jaguar.
‘Just a moment,’ Zanna said with a snap, and he paused enquiringly. She took a breath. ‘I’m not looking for sympathy. I’d actually like you to fix it—if it’s not too much trouble,’ she added witheringly.
‘Now that’s the problem.’ His face was solemn, but under their heavy lids she could swear his eyes were dancing. ‘I am rather busy already. As you can see.’
‘Yes, but I have an emergency,’ Zanna said impatiently. ‘And this is a garage.’
‘Ten out of ten for observation.’
‘And you operate a call-out service,’ she went on. ‘It says so on the board outside.’
He wiped his hands on a piece of rag. ‘I’ll say this for you—you’re persistent,’ he remarked flatly. He slowly uncoiled himself and stood up. It seemed to take for ever. Zanna had always considered herself a reasonable height, but he towered head and shoulders above her.
Oddly intimidated, she found herself taking an involuntary step backwards. Her heel slipped in a patch of oil and she stumbled.
‘Careful.’ His hand shot out and gripped her arm to steady her.
‘I’m all right,’ she snapped, shrugging herself free and receiving a frankly sardonic look in return.
‘Well, you could have fooled me,’ he drawled. ‘Are you always this nervous?’
No, of course she wasn’t, and her overreaction to what had only been, after all, a fleeting contact vexed her.
She shrugged. ‘I’m just—anxious about my car.’
He sighed. ‘What seems to be the problem with it?’ he asked, without enthusiasm.
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