Free Wicked! by Jilly Cooper

assembly?’
    Janna decided to call it a day and go home.
    ‘Thank you,’ she said to Rowan as she took Hengist Brett-Taylor’s bottle of champagne out of the fridge, ‘you’ve been a great support.’
    Rowan, who knew she hadn’t, had the grace to blush.
    In reception, Wally was mending windows.
    ‘You did triffic,’ he told her. ‘Don’t listen to the others. Mike Pitts downloaded all his assemblies off the internet. The kids loved you. Just promise to wear that radio mike.’
    ‘It bulks out my skirt at the back,’ grumbled Janna.
    ‘Better be wired up than washed up, when you’re doing so good,’ said Wally.
    Maybe, but every poster she’d put up in reception had been ripped down. As she went towards the car park, she discovered someone spraying a large penis in dark browns, purples and pinks on a newly painted wall.
    The artist was poised to bolt when Janna called out:
    ‘I don’t know how many penises you’ve seen in your short life, Graffi Williams, but normally the glans is longer. Those testicles, in my experience, are too big, although the wrinkling of the scrotal sac is masterly.’
    As Graffi’s jaw and his spray can crashed to the ground, Janna went on:
    ‘I’ve got a spare wall in my lounge at my new cottage. I’ve been wondering how to decorate it. Would you have a moment to pop over at the weekend and give me some ideas for a mural? I’ll pay you, but I’d rather you didn’t do cocks. There are enough of them crowing in the farm across the fields. Bring Paris, if you like. I’ll clear it with the children’s home.’

7
    After the dark, frenzied intensity of her day, Janna was astonished by the tranquil beauty of the evening. Beyond the hedgerows, slate-blue with sloes and festooned with scarlet skeins of bryony, newly harvested fields rose in platinum-blond sweeps to woods so lush and glossy from endless rain that they appeared to have spent the summer in some expensive greenhouse.
    Janna was trying to decide if the orange-gold sheen on the trees was the first fires of autumn or gilding by the setting sun when she plunged like a train into one of Larkshire’s dark tunnels: hawthorn, hazel, blackthorn and elder, rising thickly from high banks and impenetrably intertwined overhead by traveller’s joy. Down and down she went, until she emerged blinking into the village of Wilmington, passing the duck pond and the village green bordered with pale gold cottages, swerving to avoid a mallard and his wife ambling down the High Street in the direction of the Dog and Duck.
    Jubilee Cottage was the last house on the right. As she parked her new pea-green Polo in the street, because the garage was still filled with unpacked boxes, Janna thought she had never been so tired. She’d survived, but the prospect of tomorrow terrified her. Getting out, she caught sight of her neighbour deadheading roses in the mothy dusk, who called out:
    ‘How did you get on? I’ve been reading about you in the Gazette . Come and have a drink, if you’re not too tired. I’d have asked you earlier, but I’ve been away. My name’s Lily Hamilton.’
    Lily must be well into her seventies, thought Janna, but she was still very beautiful, with gentian-blue eyes, luxuriant grey hair drawn into a bun and a poker-straight back.
    ‘What a lovely garden,’ sighed Janna, admiring white geraniums, phlox and roses luminous in the dusk. ‘Mine’s a tip.’
    ‘You’ve been far too busy. I always think one tackles gardens the second year. I’m afraid it’s like the Harrods’ depository,’ she went on, leading Janna into a drawing room crammed with furniture, suggesting departure from a much larger house. Pictures covered every inch of wall. Over the fireplace hung a very explicit nude, with far more rings and studs piercing her voluptuous body than Pearl Smith. Dominating the room was a lovely pale pink and green silk striped sofa, whose arms had been ripped to shreds. The culprit, a vast fluffy black and white cat