Free Rumours by Freya North Page B

work?’
    â€˜Not bad. How’s Dad?’
    â€˜Very good.’
    â€˜This is delicious.’
    â€˜You can come again!’
    â€˜Thanks, Mum.’
    â€˜You saw Lydia recently?’
    â€˜Yes – and Caroline overheard some village gossip about Longbridge going up for sale.’
    â€˜Longbridge?’ Audrey laughed. ‘How absurd.’
    â€˜I thought it would tickle you.’ Xander laughed with her. ‘But you know what Nora’s like – if there’s no real gossip, she’ll invent some.’
    â€˜I’m visiting Lydia later this week – I’ll ask her. Mind you, a rumour without a leg to stand on still gets around somehow.’
    â€˜I can imagine her response,’ said Xander. It was not unknown for Lydia to hiss the word ‘
peasants
’.
    â€˜I thought I’d take a stew. I don’t like the thought of Mrs Biggins lifting heavy pots – despite the size of her we have to remember she’s nearly as ancient as Lydia and not nearly as strong as her mass would suggest.’
    â€˜You’ll say it’s leftovers.’
    â€˜Yes – and Lydia will laugh and be very rude to me but she’ll eat it all up and never let me know if she liked it.’ She looked at her son thoughtfully. ‘Will you take some soup home with you?’
    â€˜It’s delicious – but I’m out most evenings this week.’
    She looked at him again. ‘Oh, yes?’
    â€˜Clients.’
    â€˜Clients – oh, yes?’
    â€˜No one you know,’ he said and they laughed at his pat answer.
    â€˜One day you’ll surprise me,’ Audrey said. ‘One day you’ll come over and say, Mum! Meet Amanda!’
    â€˜Who the hell is Amanda?’
    â€˜Amanda is simply generic, Xander. You know what I mean.’
    â€˜Mother – will you please just leave it?’ He was serious. Why was everyone so concerned with marrying him off? ‘I should have married Verity Fortescue when she proposed to me when I was seven years old.’
    â€˜I had a letter from her last week. Which reminds me – did I post my reply?’ Audrey tailed off to rummage through a pile of paper on the dresser and found the postcard she’d written Verity. ‘Blast.’
    â€˜I’ll post it – and yes, I’ll put a stamp on it for you!’ Xander said wearily, but in jest. He noted the postcard depicted an illustration from an old Enid Blyton book. He skimmed over his mother’s blowsy handwriting, not dissimilar from Verity’s.
    â€˜When did I last see Verity?’ Xander said quietly.
    â€˜She didn’t come at Christmas.’
    â€˜She doesn’t “do” Christmas any more,’ Xander said.
    He and Audrey shared a wistful moment, quietly recalling those long halcyon days of his childhood when he and Verity were together from sun up to sun down. Playing and laughing and climbing and swimming and imagining a time when they’d be grown-ups and Longbridge would be theirs and they’d paint everywhere purple and green and pink and blue and there’d be lollipop trees in the garden and the hens would lay chocolate eggs and there’d be cows in the meadows who’d give them strawberry milkshakes.
    Xander dreamt of Verity that night. They were in the clock tower above the stable courtyard at Longbridge only it wasn’t Longbridge, not that it mattered. In the dream, he was young again – he could see himself with his ridiculous pudding-bowl haircut and his knock knees and some dreadful knitted sleeveless pullover his gran had made for him. He could taste the musty air that squeezed through the gaps in the tower as skeins dancing with dust. The silken waft of Verity’s strawberry-blonde hair as refined as his tank top was coarse. Their laughter peeling out like the long-gone bell in the tower. The day speeding away and yet time, up there, standing still. But it was