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  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said, as he stepped aside to let me edge past, pulling the dog tightly on its lead. ‘I’ll see you next weekend. Thank you.’

  I carried on for another fifty metres or so before side-stepping into the woods, my natural curiosity taking over common sense. In my green mac, I was well camouflaged. I skirted across JJ’s deserted building site and headed back down towards the shore. As I suspected, the doors to the boathouse were open, and the dog stood guard outside. I wondered exactly what in JJ’s boathouse required Max’s attention. He clearly had his own key. I hurried away before the dog caught a whiff of my scent amongst the lingering continental tobacco fumes.

  Chapter Sixteen

  A dismal few days followed of appalling weather, squally summer showers which, according to Pearl who was now into all these things, ruined the church fete and Mrs Hathaway’s garden party, whoever Mrs Hathaway was.

  ‘Let’s just hope it holds off for the yacht club do next Thursday evening,’ she said. The yacht club ‘do’ was a big fundraising event. Fortunately, tickets had sold out long before I arrived in Kerridge and Pearl had been unable to secure any extras. I assured her I was more than happy to stay at home.

  Nick was absent from the quiz for the second week in a row, and again I wondered why I felt so disappointed. A horrible longing had crept into my heart, and other places in my body I didn’t want to think about it. It was totally ridiculous, knowing how furious our last encounter had left me. Perhaps I should seek out a new man here in Kerridge, but then the ugly head of Max van der Plaast reared into my imagination and I hurriedly dismissed that idea. No relationship ever came without complications.

  Fortunately, Marie appeared to have run out of penguin stories. The talk of the day was all about Norah Morland, Mary Robshaw’s former nanny and Rivermede’s housekeeper-from-hell. Poor Norah had apparently been knocked down that afternoon by the cesspit evacuation lorry as it had rumbled through the village. A handful of Kerridge’s more isolated properties were not connected to the main sewage system.

  ‘Goodness me,’ Chrissie exclaimed. ‘Is the poor woman all right?’

  ‘According to Bill Megson, who was in the graveyard at the time, she was crossing the road at Blind Man’s Corner and just walked right out in front of it,’ Marie explained. ‘The driver was in a right state.’

  ‘And Mrs Morland?’ I enquired.

  ‘Dunno, love,’ Marie said, shaking her head. ‘Sad old dear, she is. Must be in her 90s. Lives all by herself in a bungalow in Clay Kiln Lane. She’ll probably enjoy a few nights in hospital.’

  We were reliably informed by a member of the team on the next table that Mrs Morland had suffered bruising, but apart from that appeared relatively unscathed. It sounded like she’d had a very lucky escape. Blind Man’s Corner was the village’s accident blackspot.

  ‘She was putting flowers on Mary Robshaw’s grave just beforehand,’ another player chipped in. ‘You know how dedicated she was to Mary. She was probably still upset, walking off in a world of her own. She’s as deaf as post, so she wouldn’t have heard the lorry coming. You can never see anything on that bend.’

  ‘You don’t need to hear that damn thing coming, you can normally smell it,’ Craig remarked.

  There was a general consensus that Norah Morland had been devastated by Mary Robshaw’s death and had never been quite the same since. I also learned that Mary Robshaw appeared to have been Kerridge’s answer to Mother Theresa. There wasn’t a voluntary body or local charity she hadn’t been associated with. No wonder my mother was so keen to ingratiate herself into village life. Mary Robshaw was going to be a very hard act to follow.

  I wondered if Pearl had heard about Norah Morland’s accident. She had. The Kerridge grapevine – Judy Stevenson from Honeypot Cottage – had been straight up to Rivermede to tell Jack almost before the ambulance doors were closed.

  ‘We sent a bouquet,’ Pearl said, when I broached the subject with her the following morning. ‘Jack says we should go and see her when she’s home from hospital. She’s bound to have heard about the wedding.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s expecting an invitation,’ I suggested.

  ‘That would hardly be appropriate,’ Pearl replied with a shake of her head. ‘And where would we put her on the seating plan?’

  The draft seating plan took up the entire conservatory floor. Cardboard cut-out name tags moved from table to table on an hourly basis in a scene that bore more than a passing resemblance to strategic battle-planning in Churchill’s war rooms.

  ‘Do we mix and match bride and groom, or keep relatives separate?’ Pearl mused, switching Aunt Phoebe next to Anita and then back to Uncle Laurie. Most of Jack’s guests appeared to be friends. Apparently, there were very few Robshaw relatives left.

  Against my advice – sometimes you just had to make a stand – Pearl went ahead and booked her owls. On Thursday morning, I had my first dress fitting. The wedding was becoming frighteningly real. I combined a second visit to Vera’s with a long interview with Stella over lunch in the Sou’wester Café on Portdeane quayside. She’d suggested the change of the scenery. Chloe could manage at The Ship without her, and she’d heard a new café bar had opened up on the waterfront.

  ‘Always good to check out the opposition,’ she said.

  I doubted the Sou’wester would offer much opposition to The Ship. It was far more café than bar, offering a meagre selection of unappetising sandwiches and burgers. I gave up on the idea of lunch and settled for a coffee. Once Stella had established her business was not under threat, she soon relaxed.

  ‘Did it take a long time to get established after you moved to Kerridge?’ I asked.

  She shook her head. ‘We landed on our feet when we came here. You’ve no idea what it is like to be ostracised in a community where you’d put your heart and soul into creating a successful business, bringing up your family. I thought people on the island, our neighbours, business associates, were my friends, but I was a social pariah when Owen and I split. Chloe and I had little choice but to leave the island. We knew we wanted to buy a place of our own, and when I saw The Ship being advertised for sale, I knew it would be perfect. It had always done a bit of food; just pub favourites, really. We came in and tarted the place up a bit, made it look more authentic, gave it a bit of olde worlde ambiance.’

  ‘And designed a new pub sign?’

  Stella laughed. ‘Oh, you noticed?’

  I smiled. ‘It’s impossible to miss. Very clever. The locals accepted you and Chloe readily enough?’

  ‘Oh yes. Well, they accepted I was the landlady and my friend,’ she made mock speech marks with her hands, ‘was the cook. Hasn’t always been easy, you know. Prejudice is still rife, even today. Try joining the yacht club. Talk about archaic. It’s run by a dinosaur.’

  ‘You mean the Commodore?’

  ‘Yes, Punch Stevenson and his cronies.’ Stella nodded. ‘Eventually they let us in. I wasn’t sure what they were worried about. I made a real effort not to win any of the competitions for the first two years.’

  ‘So, you still sail?’

  ‘Not as much as I’d like to.’

  Portdeane’s quaint cobbled quayside put Kerridge Hard to shame. After Stella headed home, I spent some time exploring the town’s upmarket home décor shops and clothing boutiques, buying a couple of quite striking brightly coloured cotton tops in a moment of sheer frivolity. I was normally a very prudent shopper.

  ‘Eye-catching, aren’t they?’ the sales assistant remarked, neatly folding my purchases between layers of tissue paper and handing me a sturdy cardboard bag. ‘Made by a local designer, Vera van der Plaast.’

  I nearly dropped on the spot. ‘Vera van der Plaast?’ I echoed.

  ‘Have you heard of her?’

  ‘I’ve heard of Max van der Plaast,’ I replied, not wishing to divulge that Vera was currently running up my mother’s wedding trousseau. ‘Are they related?’

  ‘Vera is his ex,’ the shop assist
ant informed me, ‘or at least one of his ex’s. The marriage only lasted a couple of years. She had a lucky escape, by all accounts. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of him, that’s for sure. Vera still has the scars to prove it.’

  I thanked her for my purchases, and the advice, and continued my wander through Portdeane. Away from the waterfront, there was a spacious play park and community hall, together with a modern library. I always felt at home in libraries, and as this particular one was currently hosting the local history exhibition Stella had previously mentioned, I decided to take a look inside.

  To my surprise, Judy Stevenson was one of the two volunteers manning the display. It took her a few minutes to recognise me, but when she did, she greeted me effusively.

  ‘Yes, it’s Becca, isn’t it? Our new neighbour.’ She turned to the elderly gent who was her co-host. ‘Becca is currently living next door to us in Kerridge,’ she said. ‘Her mother is going to marry Jack Robshaw.’

  ‘I didn’t know Robshaw was getting married again.’ The old man looked quite surprised.

  ‘They met on a cruise, isn’t that right, Becca?’ Judy said. She turned back to her companion. ‘It’s all happened very quickly.’

  ‘I thought Robshaw was stuck in a wheelchair these days?’

  ‘Oh, he is,’ Judy assured him. She gave me a wink. ‘But he’s still a bit of an old charmer.’

  I explained I was interested in learning more about the history of Kerridge and, in particular, Rivermede.

  ‘You’re in the right place,’ Judy said. ‘I’ll leave you in Maurice’s capable good hands. I’ve got to dash. Punch and I have to get ready for the fundraiser tonight. Are you coming, Becca?’

  I resisted the urge to respond that I was washing my hair. ‘I’ve got some work to catch up on,’ I insisted, just in case Judy could put her hands on a spare ticket. ‘And a Skype interview with a client, which I can’t miss.’

  Maurice was quite the raconteur, and provided an entertaining and informative commentary for the visual tour of the River Deane’s illustrious past. Smugglers had apparently been the first people to see the benefits of using the river to ply their trade.

  ‘In the lee of the Isle of Wight, the estuary was ideally placed,’ Maurice told me. ‘The banks were covered in woodland back then; Kerridge was a very secluded spot. The Ship, you know the pub, I take it? That was a notorious smugglers’ haunt.’

  ‘Yes. Strange name,’ I remarked.

  Maurice laughed. ‘Back in those days it was just The Ship, but there were many a fool who came unstuck there,’ he said. ‘You needed to know the tides if you wanted to land your bounty on the old quayside. Get your timings wrong and you’d be stuck on the mudflats. We’ve a fair share of wrecks in the past and vessels that have been abandoned. High tide, you’d never know they were there, but when the water recedes, you can see the perils of the river.’

  After the smugglers had come the boat-builders. As early as 1700, there had been a boatyard on Kerridge Hard, although Rivermede was a much later addition to the landscape. The house had originally been built as the summer home of a wealthy early Victorian industrialist.

  ‘Enrico D’Alba was of Italian extraction, made his money in metals in the East End of London and had Rivermede built as his summer residence,’ Maurice told me. ‘He liked to sail, and Rivermede had his own landing stage. You can still see the remains at low tide.’

  Maurice showed me a picture of Rivermede when it was first built. Victorian ladies in long white frocks took tea on the lawn, while gentlemen in sailing attire strolled along a wooden jetty.

  ‘The D’Alba family sold the property to Ray Dimmock in the 1950s,’ Maurice said. ‘The first Dimmocks’ boatyard was started in the 1920s by Ray’s father, Henry, originally renting the land from the D’Albas. He joined forces with another old boat-building family, the Yarrows. Yarrow and Sons were originally based down at Helme, where the Chapman boy has his place now. Have you been down that far?’ I nodded.

  Maurice pointed to a picture of a flourishing boatyard which seemed impossible to imagine in the same spot as Aidan Chapman’s solitary workshop. ‘Yarrows were there long before Henry Dimmock came along,’ Maurice explained. ‘They were the original Kerridge boatbuilders, but then Henry Dimmock and Joseph Yarrow had a big falling out. It was quite a story, I believe, and something to do with a young lady. But then, they always are, aren’t they?’ Maurice smiled.

  He moved on along the display. ‘During the war years, Henry Dimmock built landing craft for the military, and then after the war, when sailing became an affordable, popular pastime, business boomed again. The boatyard patented its own unique yacht designs. You can still see Dimmocks’ boats all over the world.’

  Besides several pictures of the boatsheds and the workforce, there were also photographs of the annual river regatta, which took place each summer.

  Maurice pointed to one particular picture. ‘This is Jack Robshaw’s first wife,’ he said, ‘Mary Dimmock, the year she was crowned Regatta Queen.’

  These were the days of the non-PC beauty pageant. Mary Dimmock proudly wore her winner’s sash over her swimsuit, sitting on the bow of a small sailing dinghy, long shapely legs hanging over the side. There were other pictures of the various regatta queens over the decades – a tradition which appeared to have continued right up until the 1990s.

  ‘Does the sailing regatta still take place?’ I asked.

  Maurice shook his head. ‘It’s not the big event it used to be,’ he said. ‘There are a few races here in Portdeane, but nothing happens up at Kerridge any more. Back in the day, we’d have a starlight parade, all the little dinghies would light up and sail from Dimmocks up to The Ship and back. There would be fireworks, a party on the Hard. I suppose it’s all too much to organise now, health and safety and all that.’

  ‘Is this Jack?’ I asked, spotting another picture of Mary Dimmock on the arm of a dark-haired young man in a somewhat ill-fitting suit.

  Maurice squinted at the picture. ‘Oh no, that’s Kenny Dimmock, Ray Dimmock’s son, Mary’s brother.’

  ‘I didn’t know Mary had a brother?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Maurice said, moving me along to the next set of pictures. ‘See here, Dimmock & Sons in 1970.’ The workforce was lined up outside a boatshed. Maurice pointed out Ray Dimmock who stood at one end of the line, while his son Kenny was at the other. ‘This is me, here,’ Maurice said, a shaky finger picking out a figure in the middle of the back row. ‘I was at Dimmocks for thirty years; took on as an apprentice at fourteen and left when Jack Robshaw closed the place down. Lucky for me I got another job with Graystons, here in Portdeane.’

  ‘Is Jack Robshaw in this picture?’ I asked, studying the grim faces of the workforce.

  ‘He’ll be in there somewhere,’ Maurice said. ‘Yes, there he is just behind Kenny. He and Kenny were good friends. Jack was never a skilled craftsman like Kenny was, but he had the business skills. That’s why Ray Dimmock took him on. You’ve heard about the accident, I suppose?’

  ‘The accident where Jack lost his leg?’ I nodded.

  ‘Jack Robshaw lost his leg and Kenny Dimmock lost his life,’ Maurice replied.

  ‘Oh my goodness! I had no idea. How did it happen?’

  ‘There was some fault on the mobile crane,’ Maurice said, ‘one of the hoists we used to lift the vessels in and out of the water. Boat slipped out of the harness. Kenny and Jack were crushed.’ I immediately thought of Freddy. I had every right to be fearful for his safety. Boatyards were dangerous places.

  ‘How long ago was this?’ I asked.

  Maurice peered at the picture. ‘This picture was 1970. The accident would have been only a year or so afterwards. Old man Dimmock was very good at skimping on his maintenance schedules. That crane was always playing up. Had it been anyone else, he could have been in big trouble.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, if one of the other workers had been crushed, he could have faced charges
for criminal negligence. As it was, losing his own son was punishment enough and, of course, Robshaw was well rewarded for his silence, wasn’t he? He married the boss’s daughter and got the business.’

  The history lesson had proved quite illuminating. I had learned some interesting facts about Kerridge’s history, and more especially Dimmocks’ Boatyard and Jack Robshaw.

  Chapter Seventeen

  That evening I waved Pearl and Jack off to the yacht club fundraiser, and was just about to crack open a glass of wine and sit down with a microwave meal when a sharp knock on the door of the stable block made me jump.

  ‘Freddy?’ I opened the door a crack.

  ‘Hello, Becca, I heard you were looking for me.’

  Nick slipped in through the crack before I could stop him. He was wearing an army surplus jacket and a baseball cap, pulled down low over his face.

  ‘Nick, what are you doing here?’

  ‘And what were you doing snooping around my boat?’

  ‘You weren’t at the quiz, I was worried.’

  ‘I’m flattered, but I am more than capable of looking after myself.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief.’

  His eyes were travelling around the flat. ‘This is very nice,’ he remarked.

  A thought struck me. ‘How did you know I was in the stable block?’

  ‘I make it my business to find out things,’ he said.

  ‘Have you been spying on me?’

  ‘No more than you’ve been spying on me.’

  ‘You took a risk coming here,’ I said. ‘What if Pearl spots you?’

  ‘Pearl is out.’ Nick replied. ‘As is Jack, JJ, and his trophy wife. They’re all at the yacht club playing bingo and eating chicken in a basket. Seriously. And the Muzzlewhites are tucked up in their cottage.’