Bed of Roses

‘That is Fanny Flynn, isn’t it?’ Jo says briskly. ‘Our new head teacher? Is that Fanny Flynn?’

‘Yes. Sorry. Being silly. Yes, this is Fanny.’

‘Only I thought it might all be terribly chaotic, since you’ve just arrived, and I wondered if you might like a bit of lunch…Plus I’ve got a small proposition to put to you. Hope you don’t mind.’

‘Ooh. Very intriguing!’ Immediately Fanny pictures herself tipping up at the famous Manor, still in her worn-out combats and dirty trainers, her shaggy mop of curly hair unwashed for over a week. She imagines sitting down to eat at an enormous mahogany dining table; Fanny Flynn (and Brute of course), Jo and Charlie Maxwell McDonald – and whichever glamorous, wicked celebrities they have staying up there today.

But then she looks around her at the peeling wallpaper. She notices the skirting board at her feet is sprouting mushrooms. ‘I’d love to, and I’d love to hear your proposition, whatever it may be, but really I can’t, not today,’ she says sadly. ‘There’s so much to do in here, and term starts tomorrow. I really ought to—’

‘Plus actually, while you’re on the line, I should remind you about the limbo evening on Friday night. You’ve heard about it, haven’t you?’

‘The limbo evening? No. I must admit—’

‘That’s what was worrying me, you see. I put a thing through your door but perhaps you haven’t had time—It’s in the village hall. Mrs Hooper – you’ll meet her, she lives at the post office – she’s brought in a man all the way from Exeter to teach us, and I’m terrified no one’s going to turn up.’

‘Oh, I’ll come,’ Fanny says cheerfully. ‘Why not? What time does it start?’

‘Six thirty. Very early. Everything starts terribly early in Fiddleford, God knows why.’

‘Keeps us out of the pub, I suppose.’

‘Hmm?’

‘Nothing.’

‘In any case, it should be a good opportunity for you to—’ But her children’s playful yells have by now reached a pitch which even their highly focused mother can no longer ignore. ‘Oh God, hang on a moment—’

Fanny peers at her crop of mushrooms and listens idly while Jo, with stirring management skills, brokers a moment’s silence from her two-and-a-half-year-old twins.

‘Sorry, Fanny.’ She comes back to the telephone. ‘Where was I?’

‘A good opportunity, I think.’

‘Exactly. It’s such a good opportunity for you to meet people. Tickets are only £3 and you have to bring your own drink, but don’t worry about that because we’ll be bringing plenty. And £1 goes towards repairing the disabled ramp in the churchyard. So it’s all in a good cause. What are you up to right now? Shall I come and fetch you in the car? You won’t want to run the gauntlet of that horrible wolf-pack at the gate, and lunch is more or less on the table. Why don’t I come down and pick you up?’

‘No, really, Jo. I can’t—’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s no trouble at all. I’ll be down in three minutes. And it’s vegetarian, by the way. It’s always vegetarian with the children. Obviously. So no need to worry about that!’

3 (#ulink_71061a17-67e2-5abb-9959-6861502ed537)

There are no wicked celebrities in Fiddleford Manor’s worn and welcoming old kitchen that day; only the two rumbustious children and the elegantly jean-clad Jo, looking just as she does in the magazines, Fanny thinks. Possibly slightly better. She is long, lean and fit, clear eyed and clear skinned, and her sunkissed, clean brown hair is cut into a perfectly understated short, shaggy bob. She makes Fanny feel short, and as though she ought to have taken that bath this morning.

‘No one else? Only us?’ Fanny asks, peering hopefully round the corner of the door. But Jo explains (and she is infuriatingly discreet about who’s staying) that Retreat guests usually pay extra to eat in a private dining room at Grey McShane’s Gatehouse Restaurant at the bottom of the drive. ‘Thank goodness!’ she laughs. ‘In the early days we never had any privacy at all!’

So while Fanny sits at the large oak table pushing saltfree kidney-bean salad from one side of her plate to the other and feeling dirty, there are only the twins to distract Jo from providing an uninterrupted run-down of who’s who in the village.

‘So,’ asks Jo with a malicious glint in her eye, ‘what do you make of your new landlord, Mr Guppy?’

Fanny’s met Ian Guppy only once, back in March, when he showed her round the cottage. He is tiny – hardly taller than she is, with greased-back jet black hair and a gypsyweathered face. She pictures him, leaning his filthy trousers against the dilapidated Alms Cottage kitchen sink and leering at her. She agreed to pay rent well over the odds solely so she wouldn’t have to continue talking to him. ‘Horrible,’ she says bluntly. ‘What a creep.’

Jo nods. ‘And you should meet the wife. They bought those Old Alms Cottages off my father-in-law in the early seventies, and I don’t think they’ve done a thing to them since. But one of these days,’ she smiles, ‘if I have anything to do with it, we’re going to get them back.’

‘Really? Why?’

‘We need them, for the business. We need the office space.’

She and Jo are more or less the same age and yet Fanny – with her lack of twins, lack of thriving business, lack of representation in the tabloids, lack of outstandingly beautiful Queen Anne manor house, lack of direction, or of any serious acquisitive urges, lack of husband, lack of inches in the leg – feels a whole evolutionary species behind her. By the time the sugar-free herbal teas arrive Fanny’s spirit is buckling. Jo still hasn’t mentioned her proposition, and Fanny can’t help wondering what she could possibly do for Jo Maxwell McDonald that Jo Maxwell McDonald couldn’t do better for herself.

‘…I don’t know how she finds the time to organise it, what with the coffee ads, and all the boozing,’ Jo burbles on, ‘but the Fiddleford Dramatic Society is surprisingly good, thanks to her. They did The Importance of Being Earnest last summer. It was actually very funny. We had the soap star Julia Biggleton staying with us at the Retreat at the time. Remember her? We had her playing Lady Bracknell down in the village hall! You should have seen the press! She’s the one—’

‘Do you know, Jo,’ Fanny bursts out, suddenly desperate to keep her own end up, ‘that tomorrow, when I start work, I’m going to be the youngest primary school head teacher in the whole of the south-west of England.’

‘Hmm?’

And then Fanny blushes, and laughs. ‘Crikey. Did I really say that?’

‘Well, actually,’ says Jo, not missing a beat, ‘I’m glad you mention it, because it’s just the sort of thing I wanted to talk to you about. Basically, Fanny—Have you got a minute?’ She doesn’t wait to be assured. She tells Fanny about her background in PR. ‘Before I married Charlie,’ she says, ‘and became this dreadful sort of country bumpkin—’

‘You!’ interrupts Fanny with a burst of laughter. ‘A country bumpkin?’

Jo shrugs. She knows she isn’t really. ‘I used to work in a big PR company in London. Used to represent nightclubs, restaurants, personalities. All very glamorous, I suppose. In retrospect…Anyway, it’s pretty much how I – we – Charlie and I came to be doing this. I mean, it’s one of the reasons why we thought of turning this place into a celebrity retreat.’

‘I know,’ Fanny smiles. ‘I’ve read all about it. Like most people in Britain.’

‘Right.’ Jo nods. Smiles. ‘But now the Retreat more or less runs itself and I want to broaden the business out a bit. Take on new clients.’ She pauses for a small breath, leans a little closer. ‘And what I want to do now, Fanny, is to use my public-relations skills, absolutely free of charge, to help you and your school!’

‘Oh. That’s very kind,’ Fanny says vaguely. The idea doesn’t excite her much.

‘Not kind. Absolutely mutually beneficial. If I can show potential clients what I can do with a relatively high-profile, local issue like this one, well—’

‘It’s just that public relations isn’t an especially high priority – for me, anyway. I think what we need—’

‘Everything needs public relations, Fanny. Especially a school that’s just been named-and-shamed! Unless you can persuade people that the school’s turning itself around you’re going to get every bright parent pulling their children out, and you’ll be left with nothing but the dregs. I mean, you know. Not the dregs, but the—’

‘I know what you mean.’

‘Right. And you’ll be sunk. Finished. Not only that, the General’s convinced that what they really want is to close the place down. But it’s the heart of the village, Fanny. And, speaking selfishly for a minute, I’d like the twins to go there one day. I certainly don’t want it closing.’

‘Of course you don’t.’

‘See? And I mean here you are, this young whizz-kid head teacher—’

Fanny laughs out loud. ‘Hardly!’

‘—Has anyone told the press? Of course they haven’t. And yet it’s the sort of thing local media goes mad for.’

‘Oh!’ Fanny says quickly. ‘Oh, no. No, thanks.’