A Woman’s Fortune. Josephine Cox

woman, wearing an overall and with her hair tied up with a scarf, erupted out of the house.

      ‘You can keep your flipping job, you old bastard!’ she yelled back through the open door. ‘Don’t you threaten me with the police. Years I’ve slaved for you, and poor thanks I’ve had for it. I’ve seen pigs keep themselves cleaner. You can stew in your own muck. I deserve better and I only took what should have been mine. I’ve had enough!’

      She picked up an ornament from a side table beside the door and hurled it back down the hall. Evie and Jeanie heard the tinkle of shattering china and unconsciously they clutched each other as the harridan, oblivious, stomped past them, down the steps and through the gate, leaving it open in her wake.

      Evie’s heart was pounding as she turned to see her mother was white with shock.

      ‘Oh, Mum, whatever can have happened? I think we ought to go. I don’t like it here at all.’

      ‘Me neither, Evie. Come on …’

      As they began to retrace their steps a calm and educated voice called behind them, ‘Please don’t mind Mrs Summers. She can be a bit ill-tempered, though, truth be told, she was a very good cleaner. Pity she wasn’t a more honest one.’

      Jeanie quickly tried to gather herself as she turned back to see who had spoken.

      He was a tall, very lean and good-looking man in his fifties, his greying dark hair in need of a cut. He was wearing a moth-eaten old cricket pullover, and a kerchief – such as a pirate might wear in an adventure story, thought Evie – knotted round the frayed neck of his collarless shirt. Jeanie looked him up and down in astonishment and thought without a doubt that he was the most untidy – and the handsomest – man she’d ever seen.

      ‘Mr Bailey?’ she asked, suddenly feeling strangely breathless.

      ‘I am Frederick Bailey,’ the tall man replied with astonishing dignity considering what his ex-cleaner had just called him in front of strangers.

      ‘Er … I’m Ginette Carter, and this is my daughter, Evelyn.’

      ‘How do you do,’ said Mr Bailey. ‘How can I help you?’

      Oh dear, he doesn’t seem to have heard of us. Living at Pendle’s is all an awful mistake. Or maybe this is the wrong person and we should be at the other Bailey’s house? As this thought flashed through Evie’s mind she saw her mother’s puzzled face reflecting the very same thing.

      ‘I … I’m wondering if you might be our new landlord,’ Jeanie persevered. ‘Pendle’s? In Church Sandleton?’

      ‘Yes, I suppose I must be, if that’s where you’re living,’ Mr Bailey replied vaguely. ‘Come in, please …’

      He stood back to let Jeanie and Evie pass through the smart front door and into the hall where shards of pink and white porcelain lay strewn across the floor.

      ‘Pity about the shepherdess,’ he said. ‘I’d got a buyer lined up for her, too. Still, there we are …’

      Evie caught Jeanie’s eye behind the man’s back and shrugged nervously. This man wasn’t like anyone she had ever met, and though the coarse, shouting woman had gone she still didn’t feel at all comfortable here.

      Jeanie, too, felt out of place in this strange house, with this odd man, but as she looked around the elegant little hallway Mr Bailey turned to her and smiled, and it was a smile she understood.