Chapter 11

Boxing Day morning

It was the seven o’clock alarm on a clear crisp frosty morning that the Hammonds woke up to, about an hour before dawn. Paul Hammond had to admit that he had slightly overdone it with the special bottle of malt whisky that Helen had given him for Christmas. They had seen it in the specialist shop on holiday and he had enjoyed the snifter offered, but had persuaded Helen that it was far too expensive to buy; she must’ve gone back later to buy it. It was smooth, comfortably relaxed by age, sweetened as if with honey and vanilla yet still tangy as a rocky island shore and smokey with peat and sharp hard water percolating through highland mountains. Yes, too smooth to check his twice double refills, that only the winds of the local downs will blow away.

He chuckled with good humour though, as Helen rolled over on her side and went back to sleep. They had been awake and up at four the previous morning, Christmas Day, as the kids were so excited, even overcoming their weariness from the long journey down from Scotland two days ago. But today everyone except Hammond slept late.

He kissed Helen on the forehead and, somewhat unnecessarily, told her to go back to sleep, that he would make the family breakfast as soon as he returned from his chores. He dressed warmly and, as he did so, worked out in his head the various tasks of the day.

He walked up the lane to the farm shop, which was a steady climb uphill all the way. There was an unknown car and a rough-looking van parked in front of the building. He didn’t think it suspicious. As the alarms weren’t set off, they weren’t intruders, probably guests of the Medcalfs, the old van probably belonging to one of Sophie’s student friends. He noted the numbers of the van and car on his clipboard, just in case. He let himself into the building and switched the light switch. The fluorescent tubes flickered before coming on, warming up slowly. He knew what that felt like early in the morning! He checked the computer which controlled the poly tunnels. It was necessarily left on all the time. It monitored the temperatures of each of the tunnels, controlled the timing and intensity of the lighting. It also adjusted the flow of water to the hydroponic tanks, feeding in the required nutrients for each different plant type. He checked the staff log-ins for the past week and saw that the light skeleton crews that came all used the codes for pricking out and putting on seedlings, with just a few hours on picking and packing salad crops for the twice weekly collections at this time of year.

He unlocked the door to the corridor leading to the poly tunnels and entered the first one. Compared to the cold and frost outside, this tunnel felt almost tropical, like a rain forest. The lights were all on, supplementing the daylight both in intensity and lengthening the day, fooling the plants into thinking it was spring then summer.

He always smiled when he came in here, thinking how much hard labour-intensive work this market garden growing used to be once upon a time. The investments that the Medcalfs had made in the equipment and set up was really paying off. The plants looked perfect, as he walked up the line. The main staff would be in the next day, the first day back after packing up the week before Christmas, picking salads ready for packing, chilling and available for collection late afternoon. Then they’d be shipped off to the supermarket distribution centres and on the shelves across several counties, first thing the following morning.

He checked the second tunnel, which was also satisfactory, at the far end of which were seedlings, some of which were ready to plant out. He decided he would open up the empty tunnel 3 on Wednesday and get a team started on pricking the young plants out into their final trays, so they would be producing salad leaves in commercially viable quantities in a matter of weeks. The fruit plantlets were also looking good and he planned opening tunnel 4 the following week or the week after at the latest, growing the tomatoes and early strawberries to start with.

He hoped to have another word with Daniel in the coming week to see if they could make a start on building the next two tunnels. The site was planned, when originally built, to take that extra capacity, once the business proved viable. It had, long ago. However, Penny’s fatal illness from cancer, and Daniel’s subsequent sinking into depression, had put those expansion plans on hold. Speaking to him on the afternoon the Hammonds had returned from their trip to Scotland, Daniel had seemed significantly more buoyant than at any time in the last two years. Hammond resolved to approach him as soon as the festive holidays were over, before speaking to the builders he preferred to carry out the work. With any luck they could start the building in March and have the ecosystem up and ready to start producing crops in the early summer.

He reset the building alarms and locked up the building, his checks completed to his satisfaction. The early orange fingers of dawn were already appearing in the east as he walked up towards the Grange. That was another thing he needed to speak about with Daniel, the renovation of the older part of the house, that had intended being the Hammonds’ quarters until the roof leaks worsened three years ago, when the Hammonds were preparing to move in. That refurbishment work had also stopped, of course, while Penny was confined to her sick bed. The Hammonds’ move to the pair of terraced cottages was only supposed to be temporary and Helen had, while they were away, expressed her concern to Paul that their current accommodation had taken on a state of permanency.

He wasn’t overly concerned this morning with the field animals, now that the snow had mostly gone. The goats and sheep had plenty of feed on the hills to forage for themselves, and the pig nuts in the dispensers were topped up on Christmas Eve. They would keep for another day, when he’d get the Land-Rover out and do the rounds up and down the Downs. Although Christmas Day and Boxing Day were public holidays, where there were livestock involved, they still had to be cared for as if it was a normal day.

He headed for the stables though, to check up on the horses. When he had looked in on them last night, he had noticed that the lights were on inside the house, so he was aware that the Medcalfs were back home as expected on Christmas Day, either during the late afternoon or early evening.

On his way home from the stables this morning, he thought, he might well walk past their kitchen and see if they were up and about and had the coffee on yet. He grinned to himself at the delightful thought and even started to whistle a little tunelessly as he walked. Then he remembered that he hadn’t noticed the car parked in the farm shop car park last night on his way home, it must’ve arrived late last night or more likely recently this morning; he wished he’d checked the heat of the bonnet or taken note sooner that there appeared to be no dew on either vehicle.

One of the pair of stable doors was wide open. He could see that from a distance, although the door restricted his view of what was happening inside until he was in the doorway. The doors were never actually locked, having never before needed to be, but they were usually kept shut during the winter, to keep the horses warm and dry inside. He assumed that Ginny wanted to saddle up Storm for an early morning ride, and it was a lot easier to walk that spirited horse out of the stable if the door was already propped open. Both the Medcalf girls were excellent riders and they had encouraged Morris and Mandy Hammond to ride the placid Daisy almost as soon as the kids could walk.

Nice girls, Hammond thought. They may be the daughters of the Boss, but that didn’t make any difference, there was no end to how warm and friendly they always were towards him and his family. It was such a shame that they lost their mother so young and so suddenly.

But it wasn’t Ginny or Sophie, or even Daniel who was with the horses, but a fat girl and a young man, neither of whom Hammond had never seen before. They were trying to guide Storm out of his box, without having first put a bridle on him. He was aware that that was a really stupid thing to do with such a spirited animal.

“Oiy, you two, what’re doin’ in here? -”

But before he could say anything else or receive a reply, everything suddenly went black and he could feel himself falling...

Sir Philip and Lady Barbara drove down to Lindon early in the morning of Boxing Day in her classic 1978 2-seater Mercedes 230C coupe sports car, that Sir Philip had kept locked up in one of the depots for many years, until recently. Restored and resprayed canary yellow, it looked immaculate inside and out, sitting in his huge garage, next to his similar vintage Jaguar XJ12, also restored, though painted a shiny cherry red.

“Phil, I can’t believe it’s the same car, it’s absolutely beautiful.”

“Totally restored. You thought I had dumped them when we changed over to company lease cars all those years ago, didn’t you?”

“I did, or at least I assumed that’s what had happened to them.”

Lady Barbara sat in the driving seat of the car, it smelt comfortingly of new leather.

“You’ve recovered the seats, the smell of the leather in here is, well it’s as if the car’s brand spanking new!”

“The driver’s seat is actually new, the old one was completely worn out, remember the car was five or six years old when we bought it second hand. It had already had a long hard life and high mileage before you had it.”

“That was why it was so cheap in the first place, and the best we could afford, before the company really took off. You’d just got paid for designing that big roundabout on the ... where was it? A30?”

“That’s the one. We nearly went bust a couple of months before that and I had to sell our only shared car. Remember we had to drive around in my old van for weeks?”

“Months, Phil, it was months.”

“Maybe, it was a long time ago and you tend to gloss over the difficulties and remember the good times. We were happy in those days, though, weren’t we?”

“Of course we were. You know I never married you for your money or your title, Phil -”

“I know! I never had any money at the time we met!”

“True, you had neither when we started going out. I was impressed by your energy and determination to do better. You were only just expanding from road repairing to actual design and building roads. We struggled to start with, but I was happy with us just being together.”

“Me too, honey. I am so sorry I was stupid forgetting that for a while, although nothing really happened, you know, we were simply a bunch of businessmen out for the night...”

“She was a hooker, Phil.”

“Escort, Babs, and from a reputable agency that I’d used before. They were just ‘eye candy’ for the benefit of those Malaysians who came over to check some of the bridges we’d refurbed, and they made it clear that they wanted some female company dressed in mock uniforms for the night, one just happened to be in a policewoman’s outfit. She was with the group, Babs, she wasn’t ‘with me’ at all.”

“So the tabloid ‘Sir Phil Cops A Feel’ was simply opportunist journalism, then?” She managed to smile as she said it, she hadn’t been able to before now.

“Yes, there were eight of us, me, Barney, you know Benjamin Barnyard from the design office?”

“Of course, his wife Josephine is half-Indian and usually wears that lovely Victorian emerald brooch that once belonged to a maharajah.”

“Has she? Anyway, there were the two of us, the three Malaysians and three girls from the agency that my PA Patience organised at short notice. Where that bloody paparazzi photographer came from, I don’t know! And that girl dressed as the policewoman, with her inflated breasts virtually hanging out, grabbed my hand to her chest and pouted for the camera.”

“It was an outstanding photo, it won some sort of award, didn’t it? And I kept on seeing the blasted thing for months, often when I least expected it.”

“I know what it looked like, Babs, but it was a lot more innocent than it looked. Other than that instant, honestly, I never actually touched her. It was more her pulling my hand to touch her while I was dazzled by the flashing as that photographer must have run off the best part of half a roll of film.”

“It’s all digital now, honey,” Lady Barbara shook her head and grinned at Phil’s lack of techno know how.

“If it hadn’t been for that press photographer, there would have been no fuss at all. They were there purely to liven up the evening for the Malaysians. Barney and me would have left them to it in that club later in the night, not worrying what they got up to.”

“Hush! Neither of us can build anything on ‘what if’ regrets. We will have to do exactly what you did with the cars here, take something we always loved and restore it, rebuilding from the floor upwards and make it clean and new again, while it is still essentially the same thing we loved in the first place and have always loved.”

“I don’t deserve you, Babs.”

He pulled her to him and they kissed.

“I won’t apologise any more then,” he said, “I’ll just be grateful that we have found each other again.”

“That’s best, Phil. So where have these cars been all this time, while I was thinking you had sold them for scrap?”

“They have been stored in one depot or another. I had to move them a couple of times. I had almost forgotten them but I’d always had it in mind one day to get them restored as some special anniversary celebration, but just never got around to it. When you left me I was more than a little lost for a while. You weren’t speaking to me and I was left with a huge hole in my life.”

“Oh, honey, I felt empty too. I thought I had lost you to your mid-life crisis, that in turn made me assume I must’ve lost my bloom and you were busy sampling the delights of being a free agent again.”

“You’ve never lost your bloom, Babs, you have always been the most beautiful woman in my life, along with Nattie. I can’t explain what -”

“Then don’t Phil. Let us just forget about your little pieces of fluff -”

“Piece, singular. And, even with the last three years being what they have been, I haven’t resorted to being one of those desperate middle-aged types finding solace in immature girls, or even mature ones for that matter.”

“I accept that, honey, and I fully accepted that the glamorous starlet you escorted to the company ball last year was your cousin’s kid Mickey.”

“Yeah, my PA was surprised that I invited her instead of relying on her to book an agency girl. I enjoyed the fact that she must’ve thought I had some kind of relationship with the girl. I don’t often get one over on my PA so I enjoyed escorting Mickey, and she loved calling me her Uncle Phil all night. She had a small part in the last Star Wars movie. Sweet kid.”

“She is, I spoke to her before and after the Ball and she said she had fun, and that you were great company and funny, made sure she had a great time. Now, let’s just change the subject, shall we?”

He nodded.

“Good, so tell me, Phil, what happened with the cars?”

“So there I was, at a loose end and needing something to keep me occupied, especially during the long weekends away from work, when I was all alone. Nattie was busy doing what teenagers want to do. Then the old cars came to mind. I thought of doing up your car at first, then mine. I had them collected by a specialist restorer and I helped him by working on simple tasks he set me to do at weekends.”

“How long did it take to restore them?”

“Yours took six months, mine a little longer at nine. Part of the time they were being worked on together. I helped with the grunt work, holding and lifting stuff, a lot of cleaning and rubbing down.”

“I think they’re beautiful. Can we drive down to Sussex in the Merc this morning?”

“They’re both filled up with fuel, all fully taxed and insured. No reason why we can’t take yours for a spin. It’ll have to be after breakfast mind.”

“Of course after breakfast. Then we’ll nip down to the cottage. Plenty of boot room for the few clothes I left behind there worth salvaging.”

“I wouldn’t mind popping in to see the Medcalfs while we’re there, have a chat with Daniel. After all it is the season of goodwill.”

“You never know, you might find some common ground between you over this motorway extension.”

“Can’t promise anything, Babs, but Daniel always was a reasonable chap. It can’t possibly do any harm for us to smoke a pipe of peace over it, can there?”

Jessica Lovage-Martin was fuming all the way down the motorway on her long car journey south. She stopped for coffee at a motorway service station north of London, and even closed her eyes for an hour or two in the car before setting out again. Soon, the sky started to show a lightening anticipation of dawn in the east.

Refreshed and warm, having left the engine ticking over and the heater on while she dozed, she was actually quite cheerful as she proceeded on her journey around the M25 and south-westerly on the A3. She decided on that route after toying with the idea of surprising her fiancé, but when she got nearer and turned towards Chichester, she thought better of it. She was going to turn at the next roundabout and head west down the A27 towards her Southampton flat, but the petrol gauge beeped, indicating 35 miles fuel left, so she pressed on in the direction towards Worthing, hoping to find a garage open early on Boxing Day.

That was until she heard the first sketchy news flash on the radio, which sent her heading in a new direction and racing towards her life-changing scoop of the year.

Giles woke up in bed alone. For a moment he lost his bearings. He often slept at the hospital in any one of several rooms for the purpose, but he knew he wasn’t staying at the hospital, this was the guest room at the Grange, Ginny’s house, where he’d stayed a dozen times. No sign of Ginny though, her side of the bed was cold. Soon as he collected his bearings he remembered that he had expected to wake alone, anyway. Ginny wanted to ride her horse Storm first thing this morning though she promised him she’d be back well before breakfast. Giles was happy with the arrangement, you couldn’t get him near a horse, let alone ride one. He was a doctor, albeit a rather junior one, he definitely wasn’t trained to handle large-animals! Besides, he had only had three or four hours’ sleep yesterday morning, after a long and busy Christmas Eve shift, and had needed to catch up on his beauty sleep. Now he was awake, and a guest in the Medcalf residence, he decided to get up and dressed.

The rest of the family, and he had to admit he had felt that he was more a part of this family in the last two days than ever before, were sitting around the old kitchen table enjoying their choice of tea or coffee. Daniel and his nice new fiancée Marina were sitting close together on either side of Ginny’s sister Sophie at the old kitchen table. Both of them had their arms around her like they were giving her some comfort. Sophie appeared to have been crying, she was still dabbing tissues on her eyes, but she looked up and smiled at Giles as he walked in, so he assumed it wasn’t anything as bad as it looked.

There was still no sign of Ginny, though, so Giles assumed she was still out riding or rubbing down the damn thing, or whatever you do with horses after a hard early morning ride before breakfast.

“Hi, sleepy head,” Sophie greeted him with a smile, “we all decided we’d let you both sleep in.”

“Oh, Ginny not back yet? She went out first thing to ride her horse.”

“No,” Daniel said, immediately rising out of his chair, “we’ve not seen her this morning. What time did she go out?”

“Early, still dark, I think. I was half asleep.”

“It’s late, I’ll go check the stables,” Daniel said, already moving towards the coats by the kitchen door.

Sophie and Marina immediately followed him to the door. Giles hunted out his outdoor shoes from the stack to one side of the doorway, before running after the others, although he had no chance of catching them before they reached the stables.