Free A Village Feud by Rebecca Shaw Page B

addressed to Jimbo. Full name and address but no stamp. Hand-delivered, then. Harriet turned it over and studied it both back and front. There was something odd about it, curious and disturbing, and she hadn’t even read the contents. Well, she was a partner in both marriage and business so she’d open the envelope.
    It was, well, yes it was, but it couldn’t be … was it what they called a poison pen letter? Quite definitely it was. The letter wasn’t signed but that was neither here nor there because it was the content of it that was horrifying:
Jimbo Charter-Plackett ,
The rubbish you serve in your Store, dressed up as gourmet, organic, or home-produced, is nothing more than an absolute sham. Animal fodder tarted up to look like first-class food. You should be prosecuted for offering it for sale. You do not deserve success and I shall make certain you don’t achieve it. I shall make sure you are bankrupt before the end of the year. Be warned!
    When she’d finished reading it Harriet flung the letter down on the kitchen table, then picked it up and decided to act. It must have been delivered at the same time as the flyer and she guessed who’d delivered that.
    She leapt across the Green and straight to Jenny and Andy’s door. She’d sort this matter out! Oh, yes. As of now. But there was no one answering. She hammered again and again and still no response. It was damned annoying. What next? Jimbo!
    She charged round the Green having realized too late that her shoes were covered with mud by taking the short cut, and straight into the Store shouting, ‘Where’s Jimbo?’ But she was through and in the back before anyone could answer her.
    ‘Jimbo? Jimbo?’ He wasn’t in his office nor in Greta Jones’s mail order office. The kitchens! All was busy in there. They’d begun making the first batch of Christmas puddings and the air was redolent with spices, dried fruit soaked in brandy and joyful busyness which should have cheered her. But not today. Waving the letter in her hand, Harriet said ‘Where is Jimbo?’
    ‘In the storeroom, Harriet, getting us more dried fruit out.’
    He was there, standing on a ladder and reaching well above his head for a box of Californian raisins. ‘Jimbo! There’s something you must see.’ Harriet waved the letter at him. He glanced down, wobbled a bit, dropped the box as he tried to steady himself – it missed Harriet by a hair’s breadth – then the ladder began rocking, and down came Jimbo with an almighty thud, landing awkwardly on the stone floor of the storeroom. The ladder followed him in slow motion and Harriet had to jump out of the way. Jimbo had fallen with his right leg twisted beneath him and was suddenly hit by searing pain.
    For a moment Jimbo didn’t move or say a word then he let out an epithet which would have done credit to a ship’s captain about to take his ship onto the rocks in a Force Eight gale. He writhed with the pain and didn’t know how to control himself and behave like a man. All he wanted to do was lash out against the agony of it all.
    Harriet looked at his face and saw the grey sweating skin of a man in terrible pain.
    Jimbo snarled at her. ‘Don’t touch me. I think I’ve broken my right ankle. It’s a damn lot more than a sprain. It’s hellish painful. Get an ambulance right now. Don’t touch me! Whatever you do, don’t touch me!’
    ‘Oh, Jimbo! I could drive you. I will. It’s all my fault.’
    ‘No, It isn’t. There’s no way I can get up and you can’t lift me, and I can’t get to the car. Argh! Just get an ambulance. Argh!’ Jimbo shuddered.
    So Harriet rang for an ambulance, got Jimbo a glass of water, dispersed the crowd now standing at the storeroom door asking anxiously about Jimbo, dashed about telling everyone what had happened and what were they all going to do, and generally behaved like a woman who’d taken leave of her senses.
    Sweat was now running down Jimbo’s face, and Harriet rushing about did