The Telephone Box Library

  The Telephone Box Library

  Rachael Lucas

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  About the Author

  Also by Rachael Lucas

  Chapter 1

  If you were going to find yourself stranded in a village, Lucy tried to console herself, Little Maudley had to be one of the nicest ones there was.

  The houses – glowing, honey-coloured terraces – curved down the narrow hill towards the main street, interspersed with the occasional chocolate-box white thatched cottage. A signpost, hung with an overflowing basket of geraniums, indicated the local shop and post office was somewhere beyond the village green, which sloped gently down towards the churchyard. A huge, solid church of blonde stone stood majestic in the midsummer sunlight, set against a cerulean blue sky where tiny clouds scudded past in a slight breeze.

  A faded red telephone box stood at the edge of the green, its once cherry-red livery faded to a dull, washed-out pink. One of the panes of glass had a spider’s web of cracks, and several others were missing altogether. Lucy peered inside and grimaced – it smelled utterly disgusting. Even the weeds that had grown through the broken glass looked as if they were trying to escape.

  It was the only neglected-looking thing she could see in the village. Flowers poured in a rainbow of tasteful colour from window boxes, and lavender hedges edged neatly trimmed lawns. The doors were almost all a uniform shade of pale greyish-green, as if they’d been painted to order. Wisteria climbed over the windows, the last few blossoms still hanging on to their tendrils of twisted wood. Each house had a neat sign outside declaring its name: Bell Cottage, Lavender House, The Old Mill . . . it was so perfect that it was almost ridiculous. Where was all the mess and the stacked-up rubbish bins? Even in the pretty Brighton street where she lived, not every house was immaculate – some of them stuffed full of students, some flats. This place was like stepping into an episode of Midsomer Murders. In fact, come to think of it, there wasn’t a single person to be seen. Maybe they’d all been done in already, and she was the last woman standing.

  Hamish barked sharply from across the road.

  ‘Coming.’ Lucy stood up. Hamish panted in a slightly over-dramatic fashion (both windows were open, and the car was sitting in the shade) and she opened the door, letting him jump out. He pootled around, sniffing his way along the road, and then cocked his leg on a neatly trimmed fuchsia bush. Lucy scanned for approaching gardeners, and seeing none, let out a breath of relief. He had a terrible habit of peeing wherever he felt like it – he’d done it in her brother’s girlfriend’s handbag not long ago. She hadn’t seen the funny side. Lucy and Tom, on the other hand, had been doubled over with laughter. The new girlfriend became an ex quite quickly after that.

  Lucy opened the Corsa and slid back into the driver’s seat, feeling deflated. Hamish jumped back in too before settling down to sleep. She’d driven over the brow of the hill and into the village, and for a second she’d felt her spirits soar. It was exactly what she’d imagined.

  As she sat and waited, she sighed. It had all started so well.

  * * *

  An hour earlier, she’d pulled the car up to a halt on Church Lane. The journey up from Brighton had been easier than expected – the traffic was on her side, the sun shining as she sped up the motorway with her sunglasses on, singing along to Taylor Swift with Hamish sitting on the back seat, occasionally barking. She’d parked the little car between two whopping great black 4x4s, feeling quite smug that all her Brighton parking experience meant she could reverse in on a sixpence. After a wander up and down, taking in the sights of the village while Hamish left his mark on virtually every lamp-post he could find, she’d popped him back into the car. And then she’d taken one final look at her phone, scrolling through her emails until she found the one she needed. It never hurt to have it there as backup – not that she needed it, because everything was organized, of course . . .

  A magpie hopped onto the fence beside her and cocked his head, looking at her thoughtfully. Lucy saluted him for luck, and he flew off with a chattering call.

  She hesitated for a moment, took a deep breath and headed for the white-painted wooden gate of Wisteria Cottage. Pausing, she felt the roughness of the flaking paint on her palm and then moved forward, peering through the window into the gloom. It definitely looked a bit less – well, a lot less – well cared for than the others. Where all the other cottages in the village seemed to be spick and span, this one looked like it could do with a visit from Marie Kondo and a serious declutter. On the window-ledge there were stacks of old plastic plant pots, and two rolls of string. A grey cat looked out at her and blinked sleepily. Several huge, blowsy pink geraniums pressed up against the glass as if soaking up the sunshine. And – she stood on tiptoe for a better angle – she could just about make out what looked like a stack of old boxes filled with newspapers next to the kitchen sink. It was definitely a bit – well, chaotic would be a reasonable description.

  ‘Are you going to stand there all day?’

  Lucy jumped.

  A tiny, bird-like woman, with steely grey hair pulled back in an untidy bun, stood in the doorway. She wore a men’s checked shirt over a pair of green polyester trousers, and a thick woollen cardigan that hung from her shoulders like a blanket. She was glaring at Lucy through rheumy, narrowed eyes.

  ‘No, I – I’m here about the cottage. I’m Lucy Evans. I’m looking for a woman called Margaret?’ She held out her phone.

  The woman recoiled slightly. ‘Why are you thrusting that thing at me?’

  ‘The details are here, look.’ Lucy held it out, tentatively.

  The woman took the glasses which were on a string around her neck and put them on, peering down at the screen.

  ‘Can’t see a thing. That’s far too small for me to read.’

  ‘It says,’ said Lucy, aiming for a tone that sounded authoritative but not patronizing, ‘Beautiful cottage in Cotswold village available. Reduced rent in exchange for keeping an eye on elderly neighbour. Duties to include shopping, light tidying and daily company. Contact Margaret Nicolson for further details.’

  The woman looked at her, and for a second Lucy saw a glimpse of determination in her eyes. She must have been quite formidable in her younger days.

  ‘Margaret Nicolson? There’s nobody of that name here. I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place. Terribly sorry, but you’ve had a wasted journey.’

  The door closed.

  Lucy stood on the doorstep for a moment, blinking. The woman hadn’t looked the least bit sorry.

  After a second, the door opened again and Lucy stepped forward, smiling in what she hoped was a warm and encouraging manner. Oh, thank goodness.

  ‘Are you still here?’

  The woman bent down and put a glass milk bottle on the step, straightened up, glared at Lucy, and then closed the door again.

  Well. That hadn’t exactly gone to plan. She opened her phone and dialled the number in the
advert, pulling a face at the sight of the words in the email. She hadn’t thought anything of the sentence, ‘If you have any trouble, please give me a call and I’ll smooth things over.’ Looking at it now as she waited for Margaret Nicolson to pick up, she realized that she should have read between the lines. This woman was clearly expecting trouble. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, wasn’t that the old saying? Her mum liked that one. You don’t get anything for nothing was more like it. A gorgeous cottage for a tiny rent, in a village like this? Of course it was too good to be true.

  Half an hour later, Lucy was sitting in the car, wondering what on earth to do next. Margaret still wasn’t answering the phone. Hamish had woken up and was scratching at the gap in the car window; he whined querulously and then yapped in frustration. In the silence it seemed incredibly loud, and having been rejected, Lucy felt like she’d very much prefer to stay unnoticed. This was not on the list of things she’d expected to happen. When she’d told everyone at work that she was taking a sabbatical to go and do some research in the countryside, it had sounded romantic and free-spirited; now she was stranded, with no idea what to do. Not to mention a car full of bags and boxes, an extremely unimpressed West Highland terrier, and nowhere to live.

  ‘You wait there,’ she said to Hamish, getting out of the car again. She sat down on a bench beside the faded telephone box and began tapping out an email. Hamish stuck his nose through the gap in the window and snuffled hopefully. ‘I’ll take you out in a second. Hang on.’

  The phone rang while she was still typing.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Gosh, that was quick. It didn’t even ring. Lucy. I’m so sorry. Margaret Nicolson here. Have you arrived? Is everything under control?’

  Lucy bit her lip. ‘Not – exactly.’

  There was a groan from the other end of the line. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake. Honestly.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Lucy, automatically. Why on earth was she apologizing when she was the one stranded?

  ‘Not at all. It’s me who should be apologizing. I’ll be with you shortly. If you want to pop up to the village shop you can get a cup of coffee, and I’ll meet you there in about half an hour?’

  ‘It’s fine – I have to walk the dog in any case. Shall I meet you by the cottage?’

  She squared her shoulders. She hadn’t come all this way and given up a perfectly good (all right, extremely stressful and ridiculously high-pressure) teaching job to be knocked down at the first hurdle. Whatever was going on with the cottage would just have to be sorted out. She took a deep breath. She’d spent her entire working life dealing with obstreperous teenagers. She wasn’t going to let this minor hiccup get in the way. She gave a decided sort of nod, as if to reassure herself. It would be fine, somehow. It had to be.

  Checking the time, she took another wander around the village with Hamish. He sniffed lamp-posts while she read the signs on them: village cinema night, 1950s theme night, PTA summer party. There seemed to be an awful lot on for such a tiny place. A gang of children ran past, laughing and playing music from a Bluetooth speaker. Hamish barked at them crossly, and she tugged his lead and pulled him in the opposite direction.

  There was a huge house at the edge of the village, set back from the road with high laurel hedging. She peeked through the gates to see a sweep of pebbled driveway and a beautiful Queen Anne building with two neat bay trees flanking the heavy wooden front door. A solid-looking woman wearing a striped Breton top, her streaky blonde hair cut in a neat bob, was standing on a ladder, watering the hanging baskets. Sensing Lucy’s presence, she turned and waved.

  ‘Hello there! Lovely afternoon!’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Lucy. ‘Beautiful.’ She felt her cheeks going pink. She’d been staring. It was just all so posh, and so tidy – everything looked like a set for a Richard Curtis film. She half-expected a young Hugh Grant to rush onto the scene, hair tousled, apologizing with a sheepish grin.

  ‘Are you lost?’ The woman’s face appeared through a gap in the hedge. She raised her eyebrows slightly, a pleasant smile on her face.

  ‘No,’ Lucy shook her head. ‘Just having a little stroll.’

  ‘Wonderful day for it,’ said the woman, cheerfully.

  There was a crunch of gravel as she headed back across the driveway. Lucy got the distinct impression that she’d been sized up. Perhaps this woman was the local Neighbourhood Watch. She turned down a lane and Hamish shot off, his extending lead pulling out to full length as he chased after a black-and-white cat that had been sitting cleaning its paws on a low wall.

  ‘Don’t start that again,’ Lucy said, calling him back. He’d disappeared on a wild goose – or cat – chase on her last morning at work in Brighton. She’d eventually found him wedged in a hawthorn hedge, barking furiously, and had arrived fifteen minutes late, missing the surprise mini-celebration her colleagues had put on in the staffroom. Leaving her job for a six-month sabbatical had felt significant, even though it was being kept open for her; it was the first time in her life that she’d taken a real risk, made a rash decision. And now here she was – only things weren’t turning out exactly as she’d imagined.

  She took a left turn and found herself back on Main Street. Crossing the road, trying to look inconspicuous, she stood by the telephone box. She could see the woman, a small silhouette, moving about in her kitchen window. Her cottage really was beautiful – long and low, with upstairs windows peeking through the thatch like mournful eyes on a shaggy dog. There were pale pink roses round the door, and a low wall held back a border of candy-coloured mixed flowers. Tiny blue flowers spilled over the edges of the wall, the colour setting off the gold of the Cotswold stone perfectly. The gate opened onto a narrow flagstone path which meandered through spires of almost-grown foxgloves. Clematis climbed up the wall and twined through a trellis. It was – from the outside, at least – the English village dream.

  She popped Hamish back in the car and sat down in the driver’s seat, waiting. A couple of minutes later, a sleek black BMW pulled up opposite and a woman climbed out of the driver’s seat, unfolding herself gracefully, knees together, as if she’d been trained like one of the royals.

  ‘I am terribly sorry about this,’ she began, extending a hand. Lucy shook it, and then stepped back, curling her fingers into her palms. Margaret Nicolson had ash-blonde hair that curled to her collar in neatly blow-dried layers. She was wearing a blue-and-white striped blouse with the collar turned up, spotless pale beige trousers and neat, dark blue deck shoes. Lucy, who had got up and pulled on the jeans she’d worn the day before and a grey vest top (because the car had no air conditioning, and she couldn’t have the windows open on the motorway or the wind howled so loudly it drowned out Taylor Swift) under a slightly crumpled linen jacket, felt scruffy and unfinished by comparison.

  ‘I’m afraid my mother-in-law can be rather – well, very – difficult.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Lucy’s mouth said. Her head said Funnily enough, you didn’t mention that in the advert.

  ‘She’s . . . well, she’s getting on. She’s ninety-six. She’s really very independent-minded and is utterly convinced she can manage perfectly well without any help at all. I’ve managed to persuade her to have a cleaner come in three times a week, but we really want someone on hand who can pop in, get what she needs from the supermarket – I mean, the village shop is very good, of course, but you can’t get everything there – and that sort of thing. Probably only an hour a day, I should think.’

  That was what the advert had said. And in exchange, a tiny little cottage with bills included, for a rent which was half the going rate for a room in Brighton. And best of all, it was in a village that skirted Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, was close to Milton Keynes and Oxford and – most importantly for a history teacher with a fascination for the Home Front during World War Two – Bletchley Park. Lucy had planned to gather as much information as she could, and maybe even to apply for that master’s degree she’d been dreaming of for
years.

  ‘Come on.’ Margaret blipped her car locked. ‘I’ll take you in and we’ll get things sorted. Will your little dog be okay out here for a moment, or –’ she cast a doubtful eye towards the cottage – ‘do you want to bring him in?’

  ‘He’ll be fine.’

  * * *

  ‘Mother?’ Margaret knocked briefly at the door of the pretty little thatched cottage before turning the handle firmly and walking inside.

  Lucy, following behind, opened her mouth to say something but found that no words were coming out.

  ‘Hello-oo?’ Margaret called. Then she turned to Lucy. ‘I’m sorry. It’s a bit of a state, as you can see.’ She gestured to the piles of old wellington boots and squashed dog beds on the flagstone floor of the hall. ‘Ideally the cleaner would be sorting this too, but I think she’s having a bit of a battle over what’s needed and what’s—’

  ‘That’s because I’ve already told you, I don’t need any help.’ A cross voice was approaching from behind a glass door at the end of the hallway. ‘I don’t need you or Gordon coming round here, tidying up my things, winding me up before I’m ready to be finished off. You’re like damned vultures, the two of you.’

  The door opened. Standing there was the elderly woman, a jar of honey in one hand and a sticky-looking knife in the other. She avoided Lucy’s eye.

  ‘I believe you’ve met my mother-in-law. Bunty, this is Lucy.’ Margaret spoke through gritted teeth.

  ‘Yes, we’ve met,’ Bunty said, turning away and heading into the kitchen. With a glance at each other, Margaret and Lucy followed.