Stealing the Show

by Christina Jones

Genres: Small Town & Rural; Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

'Fun, charming and romantic, this feel-good read is a real treat' Closer - praise for Christina Jones Nell Bradley?s family all work flat-out to keep Bradleys? Mammoth Fun Fair in business. They?re expecting her to take the traditional showman?s route and make a suitable match with Ross Percival, who, with his state-of-the-art hydraulic touring rides, will bring traditional Bradleys into the twenty-first century. But Nell doesn?t love Ross, and still harbours dreams of an old-fashioned steam funfair, so when she discovers a dilapidated antique roundabout with carved horses for sale, she buys it and arranges to have it renovated without her family?s knowledge. But what she hadn?t realised is that the horses come with their own very sexy restorer?

Release date: July 20, 2015

Publisher: Accent Press

Print pages: 400

Sample

Chapter One

She was never going to cook bacon and eggs for seven starving men in the early hours of the morning ever again. Young, muscular, and exceedingly grateful they may have been – but it played havoc with her sleep.

Aching with exhaustion, Nell punched her pillows and snuggled down further beneath the duvet. There were plus points, of course: no matter how dishevelled and dirty or cold and crotchety she was, the plate-scraping appreciation helped to make it worthwhile. The fact that two of the plate-scrapers were her brothers dimmed the delight a little, of course, but then life was all swings and roundabouts.

‘Nell! It’s half-six!’ Danny’s voice bellowed into her brain from somewhere beneath her window. ‘You up?’

Rotten dream, she thought drowsily. Danny’s voice – he probably wanted feeding. Everyone always seemed to want feeding. She curled her toes into the warmest part of the bed and started to drift …

‘Nell! Are you awake?’

‘Yes … no …’ she mumbled, fumbling for the bedside alarm. ‘I’ve only just gone to sleep.’ She peered at the clock. ‘Oh, hell.’

Showering, cleaning her teeth, dragging on jeans and sweater, and making a mug of tongue-stripping black coffee, took a little over ten minutes. Most of this routine Nell managed to complete with her eyes still shut. Prising one open, she went through the process of packing every remaining movable object into the cupboards, securing the doors, and dismantling the gas and water-pipes in record time. Danny would scream at her to hurry again at any moment, she knew he would. She could happily disembowel her brother on mornings like this.

Pausing in the doorway she risked Danny’s wrath, retraced her steps, and struggled into her long, black coat. The April sun was deceptively warm through the leaded windows of her bedroom, but she knew from experience that the cold Cotswold wind would whistle through the thickest layers.

‘Nell!’ Danny pounded on her door. ‘Get a bloody move on!’

Muttering curses which should have shrivelled her elder brother to a warty toad, she managed to open both her eyes. ‘Have a heart, Danny. We’ve got ages yet.’

Danny’s enraged shout indicated that they hadn’t. ‘We should have been out twenty minutes ago. Shift your butt and get down here!’

He ought to have been a Butlins Redcoat, Nell thought, peering into the mirror to check her early-morning face, in the good old days of campers being awakened by a blistering cheerful Tannoy and plinkety-plonk muzak. Or a GMTV presenter. Or even a prime minister. Danny seemed to thrive on three hours’ sleep. She would have loved the chance of six.

Her early-morning face peered back at her with some trepidation. Red-gold hair escaping in silky strands from a haphazard scrunchie displayed Nell’s freckles at their absolute worst. No matter that she was tall and slender, with sleepy, slanting eyes and the high cheek-bones inherited from her nomadic ancestors, those damned freckles ruined everything. Who could possibly look sophisticated covered in smudges and splodges? To Nell, the tiny golden speckles were each a yard wide and glowed like beacons.

‘You’ve been kissed by the sun, my love,’ Adele, her

mother, used to say as she watched Nell scrub her face with lemon juice. ‘They’re nature’s blessings.’

Nature was more than welcome to them, Nell thought. With her endless legs and long eyelashes, she had total sympathy with giraffes.

Danny, stocky, weatherbeaten, and seven years her senior, grinned with all the smug superiority of a lark over an owl as Nell opened the door. ‘About bloody time. Me and Claudia are ready to pull out. Sam’s coupled up, and the Mackenzies were set ages ago.’

Nell staggered down the steps of her living wagon and shivered. She had been doing this all her life and still loathed the early starts. ‘You back the car up then, and I’ll do the hard work.’

‘Do you want one of the lads to help you? Hold your eyelids open?’

With further anti-sibling invective, Nell slithered across the damp grass and stepped over the living wagon’s drawbar as Danny slid into the driving seat of her Volvo estate and began to reverse.

He twisted round behind the steering wheel, looking as irritatingly wide awake and golden as a breakfast cereal advert. ‘Stop yawning and grab the coupling. And you have secured everything inside this time?’

‘Yes, of course I have. Most of it last night. After I’d fed everyone, washed up, checked the water tanks and the gas.’ Nell took a deep breath and heaved the ball-and-socket coupling into place, then snapped the electric wires from her trailer into the Volvo’s connections. Once – only once – had she left the Crown Derby and Edinburgh Crystal still on the shelves, but Danny never let her forget it. ‘And before I went over the loads, paid the lads, and made sure that Sam had put the takings in the night safe. Somewhere in there I also managed to get about five minutes’ sleep.’ She straightened up and glared at Danny. ‘OK. That’s fine – now stop being so unbearably cheerful and go and nag someone else.’

Nell stretched, pushed her hair more firmly into its anchorage, and rubbed her eyes. By midday she’d be human, and by ten o’clock tonight she’d be the life and soul. By ten o’clock tonight she’d be in – oh, yes – Broadridge Green. Fifteen miles south down the A34 and into the leafy greenery of Oxfordshire. Bradleys’ Mammoth Fun Fair was moving on.

This start to the working day was as commonplace to her as the mad commuter scramble for city-bound trains. Packing up, travelling, arriving, unloading, building up, spreading magic, packing up again … And people thought it was exciting and glamorous. Nell knew. They’d told her so. But then they only saw the glittery lights and the gaiety; they weren’t there on cold, wet mornings when the lorries refused to start, or the trailers were bogged down, and your hands were frozen and your feet saturated. Or at night when the crowds had gone home to snug beds and there were still three hours of pulling down, dismantling, and packing away before you could grab a cup of tea. She sighed happily. It was her life – and she absolutely loved it.

The bark of a Seddon-Atkinson’s diesel engine blasted into the early-morning silence and Nell side-stepped the load-towing lorry. Danny, still functioning on fast forward, leaned down from the driving seat. ‘Go and ginger the lads up, Nell. They’re probably still asleep – and we need to move. Now.’ He revved the engine impatiently, making the towering two-tier trailer stacked with dodgem cars tremble.

Nell, who didn’t blame their workforce for clinging to oblivion for as long as possible, headed across the slippery field towards what she and her brothers irreverently referred to as the Beast Wagon.

‘Danny’s on the warpath,’ she yelled up into the battered, dark-green truck. ‘We’re pulling out now – and if you don’t shift this instant, I’m not cooking when we pull in at Broadridge.’

Muffled curses, a colourful oath, and one declaration of immediate suicide later, five unshaven and rather unkempt figures stumbled into the morning. The Bradleys’ regular core of gaff lads were fiercely loyal, extremely hard-working, and, as far as the authorities were aware, didn’t exist. Like most casual fairground workers they were there because it was preferable to their past. Some were ex-prisoners, some perennial drifters, some running away from debts and tangled love lives. As long as they were generally honest, worked well, and didn’t cause any trouble, no one pried too deeply. Casual staff members were recruited on a daily basis from wherever the fair stopped, but the regulars laboured long hours for cash-in-hand wages, three meals a day, and a bed and basics in the Beast Wagon. They all seemed happy with the arrangement.

Relieved that this morning there were no dishevelled teenage girls sliding coyly from the depths of the Beast Wagon, Nell stopped in mid-yawn and tried to be business-like. It was difficult when her body still yearned to be beneath the duvet. ‘I knew that’d fetch you. See you at the other end.’

‘With sausage sandwiches?’ Terry, the youngest and most recent addition to the gaff lads, who looked like a fallen angel and managed to seduce a new girl every night, asked hopefully. ‘And brown sauce?’

‘OK.’ Nell nodded. She’d promise them anything to keep Danny off her back in the early hours – and sausage sandwiches seemed a small price to pay. ‘And brown sauce. Now scarper.’

They did. Within minutes the eight-legged Foden trucks containing the dodgem tracks, the bulk of the paratrooper, the painted rails, and carrying the generators, chugged choking fumes into the wine-sharp air. The articulated Scammell wagon-and-drag that housed the waltzer immediately joined in, vibrating with throaty roars. Nell watched with a critical eye as the cavalcade pulled off the field, cheered away by the usual knot of fairground devotees and small boys, before picking her way back round the remaining loads.

Each of the lorries and trucks were liveried in bright blue, with ‘Bradleys’ Fun Fair On Tour’ splashed across them in huge spiky scarlet letters and underlined with a sprinkling of Day-Glo yellow stars. Her brothers had chosen the primary colour scheme on the retirement of their parents, and Nell, who had objected strongly at the time, still detested it. Out-voted, she’d agreed that it was eye-catching, vivid, up-to-the-minute, but –

It was a big but. Nell, who hankered after the maroon paintwork and romantic gold lettering of the fairgrounds of the past, had dared to say so. Her brothers had been outraged. Old-fashioned, out-of-the-ark, arty-farty to the point of bankruptcy, had been-some of their milder comments. Nell had acquiesced with bad grace to Danny and Sam’s self-professed superior business acumen, and vowed that one day she’d have an entire procession of wagons, painted in the traditional regalia, with ‘Petronella Bradley’ picked out in gold leaf.

‘Dream on, Nell,’ Danny had mocked. ‘Those days are long gone. We’ve got to look to the future and expand. We’re way behind the times even with the paratrooper, dodgems, and waltzer. We need up-to-the-minute rides that’ll bring the punters in in droves. No one wants the old stuff any more.’

But she did, Nell thought, as she checked that every piece of litter had been collected and stacked in sacks for the refuse men to pick up. She always had, she admitted, as she made sure that there were no permanently-rutted wheel tracks or discarded cables to give coronaries to the high-ups on the parish council, and she probably always would. It was a dream that refused to go away.

She straightened up as the Mackenzies, an entire family who ran a juvenile ride, swings, and various side stalls and who had travelled with the Bradleys for generations, chugged past her. Nell waved. The older couple were always referred to as Mr and Mrs Mac, and she doubted if even their sons and daughters-in-law and abundant grandchildren were aware of their Christian names.

Satisfied that the ground was exactly as it had been when the fair arrived a week earlier, and would cause no eager cub journalist on the local rag to write headlines about the fairground’s desecration of the rural idyll, she headed back towards the remaining vehicles in the gateway.

‘Has he gone?’ Claudia, Danny’s wife, called from the driving seat of her Shogun. ‘He’s not just parking up the road and coming back to supervise the rest of us with a bullwhip?’

‘Not a chance,’ Nell said. ‘The way he was champing at the bit, he’s probably carved up everything on the A34 and is pulling on to the playing fields at Broadridge Green as we speak. Why? Have you got an exciting escapade planned? Are we going to run away and join the circus?’

‘Sadly, no.’ Claudia flipped down the vanity mirror. ‘Just got to see to the priorities. Danny’s such an old woman on pull-out mornings. He never understands that it’s vital for me to do the full slap before I face the world.’

‘Maybe you should get up earlier?’

‘That’s rich, coming from you.’ Claudia paused in applying black mascara to already black lashes. ‘There. What do you reckon?’

‘Very glam, if a bit OTT for the crack of dawn in Oxfordshire.’ Nell and Claudia were far closer than sisters-in-law. Their deep friendship and shared laid-back attitude exasperated the workaholic Danny. ‘Still, I’m sure Danny’ll appreciate it when you’re building up the dodgems.’

Claudia slicked on glossy red lipstick, snapped the mirror back into position, and started the Shogun. ‘That’s the trouble, Nell, as you know. Danny doesn’t appreciate it at all. See ya.’

Nell watched as Claudia negotiated the gate with the Shogun and the long, elaborately-chromed living wagon and gave a sigh. She had a sneaky feeling that her brother’s marriage was well into injury time. It was impossible to say anything to Danny, of course, and Claudia would never actually admit it. Nell opened the door of the Volvo. Divorce, or even separation, was very much frowned upon in showmen’s families. Their moral code was still deep-rooted in the previous century. You were expected to marry into the business – and stay married.

The Volvo purred into life. Nell wondered what her parents would make of it. Thank goodness their retirement meant they weren’t on hand to witness the gradual disintegration. Parental guidance and approval was still much sought after amongst travellers. Patriarchal power reigned supreme. Although in the Bradleys’ case it was Adele who called the shots. Not, Nell admitted, that either of the Bradleys had ever been strict parents, but they certainly stuck to the rules – and expected the same behaviour from their offspring.

Adele Bradley made no secret of the fact that she was desperate to become a grandmother. And as neither Nell nor Sam were showing any signs of making a serious commitment, Adele had pinned all her loudly-voiced hopes on Danny and Claudia. Nell winced as the Volvo and living wagon jolted across the field and hoped that the rift would be patched up before her mother got wind of it on the travellers’ grapevine. It would not be well received.

‘Nell!’

She slammed on the brakes and squinted into the driving mirror. Sam was hurrying along the side of her living wagon. He was five years younger than Danny, and the Bradley tawny hair was their only common feature. Taller and leaner, Sam worked harder than any of them, treated everyone as a friend, and as a result was universally liked. Nell put it down to his being born during the second summer of love. Much of the love and peace mentality had rubbed off on Sam.

‘Aren’t the taillights working on the trailer?’ Nell slid the window down. ‘Or have I left Grandma Bradley’s prized Minton sitting by the rubbish sacks?’

Sam brushed his hair from his eyes and waved his phone under her nose. ‘You’ve got your mobile switched off. It’s Ross.’

Ross Percival. Every girl’s dream. Nell’s nightmare.

‘Oh, sod it! I really don’t want to talk to him at the moment. Tell him I’ve already gone. Tell him I’ll call him from Broadridge Green. Tell him I was abducted by aliens last night –’

‘I said you were still here. Sorry.’

Nell took the phone from her brother. ‘When the hell will you learn to lie through your teeth like the rest of us? Hello, Ross. You’re early … What? Oh, right. Yes. OK. Look we’re just pulling out and I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later. Bye.’ She handed the phone back to Sam. ‘Thanks a bunch. He’s going to come over to Broadridge Green this evening.’

‘That’s not so bad, is it? I mean, everyone expects you to be announcing your engagement before long anyway. Mum and Dad said –’

‘Sam, shut up.’

He grinned. ‘Right. But you’ll have to sort it out, Nell. Especially if Ross is going to become part of our set-up.’

‘Over my dead body.’ Nell glared at her brother and stamped on the Volvo’s accelerator. ‘Or at least only after a lot of persuasion and with the aid of a general anaesthetic. If we let Ross into the business we might as well forget Bradleys altogether. We’ll be sucked into the Percival empire and everything that it stands for.’

She didn’t add that it also meant kissing goodbye to her dream of re-creating a traditional fair.

‘Spare me the feminist dirges,’ Sam groaned. ‘And the preservation of the atavistic traveller spiel as well. It’s far too early in the morning. Anyway, you’ll probably have to marry him – after all, he’s the only eligible showman around who’s taller than you are.’

‘I might take up starvation diets, recreational drugs, and chain-smoking and become a supermodel,’ Nell said haughtily. ‘Tall and slim is still desirable, you know.’

‘Tall and slim maybe – gangly, ginger, and covered in freckles is hardly likely to have Naomi and Co. quaking in their shoes.’ Sam blew her a brotherly kiss. ‘Nah, I reckon Ross Percival is your last resort. Have a safe journey.’

‘You too, you hippie pig.’

With a series of rude gestures, Nell steered the Volvo and trailer out through the gap in the Cotswold stone wall and indicated left for Broadridge Green and whatever it might hold. She slotted a Brubeck CD into the player and drummed her accompaniment on the steering wheel. Petronella Bradley was on the road again.

Chapter Two

‘Turn your pedals! Press your steering wheels!’ Nell clapped her hand over the microphone, then raising her voice above an early Oasis hit, tried again. ‘Press your pedals! Turn your steering wheels! All ready for the next ride!’

With a screech of metal on metal and a Grand Prix roar, the dodgem cars spurted into noisy, colourful life. Within seconds three of them were jammed nose-first into the side of the track, rumbling angrily like impotent bees against a shut window. Nell leaned closer to the microphone. ‘Terry! Sort them out!’

Terry, who was riding on the back of a car on the far side of the track, explaining the steering to a very pretty girl in a very short skirt, looked up, grinned, and darted between the hurtling dodgems.

Nell leaned back on her seat in the pay-box. Twilight was seeping over Broadridge Green, and the fair, as always on the first night, was packed. The steady thud of the generators made a background bass for the screams and yells of the customers and the splintered rendition of half-a-dozen different pop songs. The hundreds of multi-coloured lights had transformed the harshness of the primary paintwork into a kaleidoscopic rainbow. She smiled. It never failed to please her, this ability to bring transient magic into people’s lives.

‘Sorted.’ Terry leapt from the back of a passing car and balanced beside the pay-box with ease. He was a quick learner. ‘Here’s the dosh.’

Nell took the coins, flicked them expertly into piles, then held out her hand. ‘And the fiver.’

‘What?’ Terry blinked his long eyelashes across dark blue eyes. ‘Never had a fiver.’

‘The couple over there, the ones pootling cautiously round the outside, gave you a fiver. I saw them. Hand it over.’

‘Oh – that fiver.’ Terry fished the crumpled note out of his jeans. ‘You don’t miss a trick, do you?’

‘Can’t afford to.’ Nell frowned above the noise of several multiple pile-ups. ‘And don’t try cheating me or you’ll be on your bike. I know exactly how much money we ride with. Every time. I’ve been doing this all my life.’ She grinned at him. He was very good-looking. ‘If you want to palm the punters and can get away with it, then that’s down to you – but don’t expect me to come to your rescue if they suss what you’re doing and punch you on the nose.’

‘OK.’ Terry winked and leapt between the fast-moving cars. ‘Oh – an’ the sausage sandwiches were great.’

Four fully-packed rides later, Sam swung himself up into the pay-box. ‘Go and grab a cuppa. I’ve got Mick and Alfie covering the paratrooper so I’ll take over for a bit.’

Nell stood up and stretched in the cramped space. Things on the fair had changed quite a lot in the two years since Adele and Peter Bradley’s retirement, but no one had yet designed pay-boxes that allowed comfort for several people at the same time.

Sam slid into the seat behind the state-of-the-art sound system which Nell had installed as soon as she’d inherited the dodgems. Adele and Peter had played a repetitive stack of Elvis 45s on a turntable. ‘Oh, and if you were thinking of making yourself alluring for Ross –’

‘Which I wasn’t.’

 ‘Well, if you were, I just thought I ought to warn you that you’re only second on his agenda for this evening.’

‘Oh?’ Nell paused on the top step.

Sam switched on the microphone again. ‘Two more cars! Two more cars! Hurry along there!’ He turned back to Nell. ‘Apparently, Danny asked him to come over tonight. It’s definitely business – not pleasure.’

Nell groaned. Danny? What the hell for? It was bad enough to think that Ross Percival wanted to travel with them. She hoped that Danny wasn’t going to try and coerce her into marrying Ross, yet again, just because he was Clem Percival’s son and Danny wanted the kudos of being linked to one of the largest fairs in the London Section of the Showmen’s Guild. She’d heard it all before. It made her feel like something mass-produced.

Reading her thoughts, Sam laughed at her expression. ‘Are you sure you didn’t take Rampant Feminism A-level at that boarding school? Poor old Ross. I think you underestimate him. He doesn’t see you as part of the business, even if Danny does. I mean, he must have asked you to marry him three times and –’

‘Four,’ Nell said, jumping down the steps and treading carefully over the cables creeping from the generator. ‘And it might as well be four hundred. My answer will still be the same. Ross is OK. We’re good mates – but I don’t want to marry him – or anyone.’

The air was fragrant with fried onions and hot diesel. Nell was always surprised that no one ever complained about the smell. The noise, yes, frequently, but never the smell which for ten days each spring obliterated the scent of the blossoms and freshly mown grass of Broadridge Green.

It was a large village, one of the regular ports of call for the fair, and one which the Bradleys considered an easy venue. People spent well and there was never any trouble. Families were out in force in the early evening, teenagers hung on until the bitter end, and everyone enjoyed themselves and disappeared peaceably by eleven o’clock. But Nell was aware that Danny found these places increasingly dull. Danny, she knew, longed to be running huge, gaudy, white-knuckle rides on massive fairgrounds that stayed open until the last terrified customer had staggered away. Rides and fairs, she thought as she dodged a knot of children clutching candy-floss, exactly like those of the Percivals.

She sighed. Everyone expected her to marry Ross. That was the problem. She was blocking her brothers’ business expansion by her refusal to trip – in her case probably literally, given the length of her legs and her lack of familiarity with frocks that came past the knee – up the aisle.

‘Hey!’ Claudia called from the hoopla stall. ‘Why the thunder face? Are you going to castrate someone we know?’

‘Your husband if he’s going to do what I think he is.’

‘Oh, goody.’ Claudia opened her eyes wide. She’d added false eyelashes and another layer of scarlet lipstick. ‘Can I watch?’

‘Not a chance – but you can get the kettle on if you can find someone to take over in there.’

‘No sweat.’ Claudia dumped her armful of wooden hoops across the nearest small plinth which held a five-pound note, a plastic watch, and a poster of Madonna. Unfastening her money apron, she gesticulated towards the Mackenzie grandchildren who were doing no business now that the Broadridge Green babies had abandoned the swinging boats. ‘Here! Rio! Take over for a bit! Ta!’ And, swinging her legs in the briefest of denim miniskirts and thigh-high boots over the edge of the stall, she caught up with Nell.

For work, Nell stuck to jeans and sweaters with the addition of her long, black coat on cold nights and her face-painting stopped at mascara and the inevitable gallon of concealer to hide her freckles. She looked at Claudia in admiration as they instinctively ducked under the paratrooper to avoid the swooping airborne seats and dozens of dangling feet. ‘You should be on the cover of a magazine.’

‘Vogue? Harper’s?’

‘More top shelf.’

Laughing, they linked arms and headed for Danny and Claudia’s trailer. Claudia sighed. ‘It’s easy for you with those pussycat eyes and those cheekbones and that glorious colouring. You’re drop-dead gorgeous even when you’ve got your early-morning grouchy face on. I’m not. I have to hide behind the powder and paint to give me confidence.’

‘Rubbish.’ Nell had to yell as they passed the waltzer with its swirling, screaming, neon-bright cars. Danny ran the ride like a mobile disco with strobe lights and the latest music fads. It was always packed. ‘I’ve got gingery hair and freckles and legs that get in a tangle and I’m as tall as most men. I’ll swap you any day. And Danny thinks you’re the most beautiful woman in the world.’

‘Does he?’ Claudia shrugged, unlocking her door. ‘I wouldn’t know. He never tells me.’

Nell sank into the deeply-cushioned William Morris sofa while Claudia made tea. Danny updated their living wagon every other year. This latest one was American and opulent in the extreme, and was furnished in the traditional showman’s manner with rosewood display cabinets for the porcelain and crystal, silk rugs on the polished floor, and velvet swags and tails complementing the Nottingham lace at the windows.

Claudia handed Nell a china mug and curled up on the floor. ‘We’re slumming it. I get fed up with always having to use the best stuff and getting a thimbleful of tea in eggshell Wedgwood. So – what’s Danny done to upset you?’

Nell sipped her tea and watched the crowds through the double-glazed windows. The fair was silent from inside except, of course, for the repetitive muffled thud of the generators. They never quite escaped that. Curious faces, taking a short cut from Broadridge Green’s only pub, were attempting to peer in through the windows of the semicircle of living wagons. Quite often, especially in summer, when she trustingly – and much to Danny’s fury – always left the top half of her front door open, Nell returned to find a little crowd of people on the top step leaning in. They always seemed riveted and Nell invariably asked them, very politely, if they could return the favour and let her stare into their homes some time.

Once she’d interrupted an excited bunch of old ladies who seemed stunned to see cutlery on the table and had asked if Nell and the other gypsies actually slept in real beds as opposed to makeshift shelters beneath the stars.

Nell had started to explain about gypsies, Romanies, tinkers, and other travellers being a different breed altogether, and that showpeople were simply itinerant businessmen, but it had fallen on deaf ears. She’d invited the elderly ladies in to view the decor, the fitted kitchen, the bathroom. They’d sniffed and run fingers along the surfaces and looked disappointed.

‘Not what we expected,’ one had complained. ‘You haven’t got no crystal balls.’

‘Nor a toilet.’ Another had perked up a bit, spotting this omission and being convinced that the operation must surely take place squatting beneath a hedgerow.

Nell had told them that travellers always had their lavatories separate from their living quarters for reasons of hygiene. Either in a separate part of the living wagon or in a detached unit. Far more civilised, she’d added, than the house-dweller’s penchant for combined bathrooms, didn’t they agree? The old ladies had been most put out, and swarmed down the steps chuntering about folks who didn’t know their station.

Wondering again at the fascination her way of life held for people outside it, she turned her attention to her sister-in-law. ‘What? Sorry – I was just watching the punters. They always seem so surprised at how we live.’

‘Still expect whittled hedgehogs and old crones in black shawls,’ Claudia said happily. ‘They soon get bored when you tell them we’ve got satellite telly, central heating, a mobile phone, and do our shopping at Tesco. And stop changing the subject or tea-break’ll be over, and tell me about Danny.’

Nell didn’t particularly want to talk about Danny. At least, not at the moment. The rocky state of her brother’s marriage was something she’d deal with later. Just when it had all gone wrong she hadn’t noticed. It must have been a gradual decline. She was sure that he and Claudia had been in love when they married. Sadly, she was pretty sure that that love had died some time ago. She was also pretty sure that Danny’s sudden passion for acquiring new machines was to replace the lack of it in his marriage. ‘He’s invited Ross over. Tonight.’

Claudia opened her saucer eyes. ‘Is it going to be a “Do the honest thing by my sister, you swine, after all you’ve been bonking h