Chapter one

Oh! let us never, never doubt

What nobody is sure about! – Hilaire Belloc

Chapter One

Virginia woke suddenly from her dream. Someone had said something, clearly, in a deep, man’s voice, she knew it was part of the dream. But this sense of certain voices as external, and real, had been something she’d experienced since her childhood and she could never quite believe these voices were not the voice of God or some angel or other more dangerous spirit, even if the word or words they uttered were mundane.

Phoebe the beautiful, kind Swiss Shepherd was lying heavily across the bottom of the bed, still fast asleep and cutting off the blood supply to Virginia’s legs, so they too were fast asleep. Perhaps the voice had been warning her to get up and stamp about to cure the pins and needles. Suddenly the need to do so became urgent, so she heaved her legs from under Phoebe and flung her feet on the floor standing wobbly and stamping up and down on the ancient Turkey carpet, to get the blood flowing again. The turkey carpet was originally from Virginia’s childhood home. It had come from a sale in Bradford and had been wearing thin in parts when Virginia was a child. Now it had a fine coating of dog hair all over it. Virginia had not been in the mood for housework, lately.

Today was October the 31st, Virginia had been holding this day aloft in her imagination, since June. In the days of midsummer heat and the garden at its best, the days of the Kiftsgate rose on the Wellingtonia tree in full bloom sending its scent across the village, and the last of the sweet rocket, glowing ethereally in the fading evening light of 11 pm, wafting its heady perfume to the moths, in competition with the honeysuckle, Virginia had envisaged this day. Perhaps she’d been corny and stereotypical in her imaginings. The sort of woman her opponents would think typical of her age and background and educational limitations. But she had seen this day as a large horse-chestnut leaf, glowing yellow with a few raindrops on it, she’d seen it as blue sky between the fat fingers of the palmate leaf. She’d imagined it accompanied by crumpets made on the long, brass, extending toasting fork, over the open fire in the drawing room. She’d imagined those sooty crumpets washed down with a glass of Bateman’s ‘Victory’, the finest real ale in England, despite its being brewed in Lincolnshire rather than Yorkshire. The season might not be properly underway at the local butchers, but she’d also imagined it as a deep game pie, with game chips and redcurrant jelly, taken with the best of her homemade elderberry wine, poured from a crystal decanter. It should have been Brexit day, but for the third time that year it wasn’t. And Virginia was bloody mad.