Page 16 of Beyond Her Manner

“What was the run-in you had with her?” Bridget asked.

Gillian sighed, realising she couldn’t avoid explaining. “Her damn helicopter spooked Dudley; he threw me off.”

“Oh! Were you both okay?”

“Yes, thankfully. I thought I’d give the pilot a piece of my mind about where they could and couldn’t park their infernal machine, and it turned outshewas the pilot!”

“You told her she couldn’t park on her own lawn?” Bridget snickered, barely containing her amusement. “Oh, Gillian, how embarrassing.”

“Yes, indeed,” Gillian sniped, “and thank you very much for your support.”

Bridget covered her mouth with her hand. “Sorry, Gillian. It must have been awful. Being thrown off by Dudley, I mean.”

“Yes, well, let’s have no more talk about it. How was I to know she was the pilot? She accused me of being misogynistic, you know!”

“Mmm,” Bridget hummed, still trying to contain her grin. “Oh, you’ve had your hair done.”

“Yes. I thought it was about time I got out a bit more,” Gillian confirmed, patting at her waves and grateful for the change in subject. Thinking of that woman made her blood boil.

“Nothing to do with the new lady of the manor to compete with?”

Gillian rolled her eyes. “Absolutely not.” The very idea was ridiculous. As if she had any reason to compete — especially withher.

“You know who she is, don’t you?”

“I don’t carewhoshe is,” Gillian replied, walking over to the window. Picking up her binoculars from a small table, she pointed them at the manor.

“She’s Viola Berkley. You know, the classical singer,” Bridget said, knocking into the coffee table as she manoeuvred onto the small sofa. “She’s very nice and more beautiful in real life. It’s funny how television distorts people.” Bridget’s attention turned to a laptop waking up on the table.

“I can’t say I noticed.” That was a lie; it was about the only thing she had noticed when she spoke to the woman. Her flowing auburn tresses had caught in the wind, each strand shining like copper in the sun as they momentarily obscured her lightly freckled face and deep brown eyes. When the woman tucked them behind her ear, the sun highlighted the delicate contours of her face.

“You knew exactly who she was,” Bridget said, turning the laptop around. “You’ve got her Wiki page open!”

Pulled from her thoughts, Gillian replied, “I suspected, that’s all. Is it just her, or are we to be overrun by screaming children?”

“How far did you read on the Wiki page?”

“Not far. It would take all week to read her accomplishments.”

“If you’d made it to the personal life section you would know she’s not married and is a lesbian. I certainly didn’t see any children.”

Gillian dropped the binoculars, and they crashed onto the floor.

“Oh, darn it,” she said as she picked them up and examined them. “They’ve broken. Good job I have a spare pair.”

A rumbling noise sounded outside. Gillian rushed to a tall bureau on the other side of the room and pulled open a drawer. Extracting a new pair of binoculars, she hurried back to the window and directed them at the manor again.

Gillian clutched her stomach. “She’s having a skip delivered!”Why on earth did the woman need one of those? Nothing in there is skip-worthy.“What was it like when you went in there? Was it as I left it?”

“Yes, it was bare from what I saw. She’d only brought the essentials like a coffee machine.”

Lowering her binoculars, Gillian turned to Bridget and glared. “A good teapot is an essential, not a coffee machine. These yuppies have no taste.”

“I hardly think you can call her a yuppy; she’s not much younger than us, for a start.”

“How old is she?”

Bridget’s eyes scanned the laptop. “Forty-four, according to Wiki; only eleven years younger than you.”