Page 30 of New Beginnings At Pencarrow Bay

Peggy’s breath caught in her throat at the word ‘enemies’.

She’d never been asked the question before.

Who? Who? She couldn’t think straight. ‘I didn’t think I had.

I’ve never had any trouble of any kind ever .

My employment record is squeaky clean, always has been.

You can ring HR at the hospital and check.

There’s no “brick wall”– that’s a ridiculous suggestion.

They’ll have my records– I worked for them for fifteen years and I’ve only just left.

’ She sighed, crossing her arms over her chest because she was suddenly trembling and cold.

Thinking hard, her mind buzzing in chaos, she went on, ‘Plus I have a letter from Christine at home that she sent when I retired… saying how much I’d contributed and how much I’d be missed.

I can dig that out. I’ve even got a photo of a banner the children made for me at my leaving party…

’ The memory made her want to cry. Those beautiful, brave, damaged children had loved her.

And this bastard, whoever he or she was, was trying to ruin everything.

‘Maybe I could speak to Christine, then. Even if she’s left Great Ormond Street. Or, yes, try HR. Clear this up once and for all?’ Sienna suggested.

Peggy sighed. ‘Unfortunately she died last Christmas, from a stroke.’ Christine was older than Peggy, but not by much.

It had shocked and saddened her– she’d been an exemplary, dedicated teacher and a good friend.

‘But there were other teachers I worked with. Some will still be at the hospital. I can put you in touch with them.’ She thought of D’Andre and Louisa.

Both would vouch for her, she was one hundred per cent certain.

But, as she took a shaky breath, she realized proving her track record wasn’t the problem– Peggy knew she was entirely innocent, after all.

The real concern was that someone, for reasons she couldn’t even begin to fathom, had decided unfairly to target her.

Sienna stared at her. ‘Sit, please,’ she said, then gazed off into the distance, Peggy worrying she was about to go into one of her trances and bring on the piskies again. Then she reiterated, ‘This is peculiar, no?’

A young male employee suddenly burst into the office. On seeing Sienna and Peggy, he apologized and backed out again with equal speed.

‘Could it be an online nutter? Someone who just wants to disrupt things for you, while pretending to be a supporter?’ Peggy, breathless, was clutching at straws as she slumped into the rickety canvas chair.

She was technically on Facebook, but not Instagram, and she hardly ever posted, just checked in with the boys’ pages– and those of Jamie in Caracas, who was an avid poster of extraordinary images from the places he visited– to keep track of their lives.

‘Anything’s possible on social media, obviously. It’s the Wild West. But–’ She broke off, twirling a strand of hair around her fingers, her dark eyes never leaving Peggy’s face. ‘I’ve never come across this situation before,’ she added, looking as baffled as Peggy felt.

Peggy was holding back her tears. This is not fair.

Sienna sat up in her chair, thought for a moment. ‘Look, I’ve always gone by my instinct. And you don’t seem the bullying kind, Peggy. But I’m just wondering… if this is out there and I employ you, it could cause a whole heap of problems for me if it were to gain any traction.’

Not just for you , Peggy thought sardonically. The possibility that it was already ‘out there’ sent her body into new spasms of anxiety. ‘You think they’ve sent it to other people?’

‘It’s possible. Or they might wait till the school opens, for instance. Cause havoc then.’

Neither woman spoke for a moment.

Peggy had had enough. Trying hard to stem the tears until she was safely out of the farm shop, she said stiffly, ‘You have to do what you think best.’

Sienna nodded absently, as if she wasn’t really listening to Peggy.

When she did speak, she sounded so fierce it almost shocked Peggy out of her funk.

‘Trolling is totally fucking unacceptable,’ she hissed.

‘This is beyond cowardly. I won’t be held to ransom.

If this bastard has something genuine to say, then sign the bloody thing, don’t be a creepy “well-wisher”.

’ She bent her gaze on Peggy. ‘Send me that letter.’

She thanked Sienna, very grateful for– and a little surprised by– the strange woman’s outburst. Maybe she hadn’t closed the door on employing her.

Although I wouldn’t employ me if I got that email , Peggy thought, as she hurried across the farm shop as fast as her shaking legs could carry her– there was no sign of Paul that morning– not stopping until she was home.

She needed to tell Ted what had happened.

But he would be busy and she didn’t want to have the conversation when other people might overhear.

Instead, she dashed upstairs to the office at the end of the corridor, where both of them kept their files and paperwork, a desktop Ted used for his business.

Her documents were in a clear plastic box with dividers and it took only a minute to find the letter.

Unfolding it with fumbling fingers, she reread it.

Glowing, she thought, relieved she’d remembered it correctly: Christine, dear woman, had not spared the compliments.

Now, she flattened it on the corner of the desk and held it down while she photographed it and sent it to Sienna on WhatsApp.

Next, she scrolled through her many photos until she found the banner.

For a moment she stared at it, tears in her eyes, then forwarded that to Sienna too.

And all the while she was racking her brains.

Who on earth? It was so, so damaging. Were there really people in her life capable of such nastiness?

At a loss as to what to do next, the adrenaline of earlier leaving her cold and drained, she wandered downstairs and curled up on the sofa, pulling the soft sea-green throw that lay on the back over her body.

Who hates me this much? she asked herself miserably.

Fleetingly, she thought of Max. But this was not his style.

He’d have signed it with a flourish and be damned.

Then she felt bad for even thinking of him.

He didn’t hate her: she’d just bruised his ego by leaving.

She closed her eyes, ran through the people she’d worked with at the hospital school.

But her co-workers were a lovely bunch– it had been a great team.

Was there anyone working on the house renovations I upset?

She didn’t know anyone else in the village closely enough to have fallen out with them yet.

No one sprang to mind. Absolutely no one.

R. Jones , R. Jones… She could dig up only one Jones from her past, despite it being a common name.

June Jones was her grandmother’s daily– she’d been dead for decades.

Anyway, as Sienna said, it was no doubt an assumed name.

She texted Ted with a trembling hand. Pls ring xxx

He called a minute later and she told him what had happened.

‘You’re kidding me. Oh, Pegs, that’s appalling. Come down. I can’t leave the stall, I’m on my own and it’s manic.’

‘Okay,’ Peggy agreed weakly, although she wasn’t sure she could make it to Henri, she felt so discombobulated, so poleaxed. But, pulling herself together, she rinsed her tear-stained face and walked slowly down the hill to the coffee van. It was such a relief to feel Ted’s arms around her.

‘What the hell?’ Ted said, when she finally let him go and showed him a copy of the email Sienna had forwarded. ‘Who in God’s name would do something so spiteful?’

She told him about the flimsy theory that had been one of her first thoughts– that it couldn’t be to do with Peggy herself.

Rather, someone had it in for Sienna– her Instagram did look painfully woke and smug– and was trying to undermine her forest-school project, Peggy as collateral damage.

But she knew, even as she spoke, it didn’t stand up to scrutiny– of course it was to do with Peggy: she was just desperate to distance herself from those damning words.

‘How did they find out so much about you?’ Ted asked, clearly unconvinced, too.

‘It wouldn’t be hard to search my details.

’ She took a slow breath. ‘The other remote possibility… I wondered on my way over here if it might conceivably be one of my pupils. I sometimes taught teenagers at the hospital. They’d be almost adults now.

And I know some of them were very tech savvy.

Could I unwittingly have upset one of them?

Their grades didn’t match their expectations or something? ’

‘Can you think of anyone in particular?’ Ted asked, as he prepared another latte.

‘One boy… Tyler. He was obsessed with gaming and very angry.’ She pulled a face. ‘Not with me, per se, but with life and the shit cards he’d been dealt in the family department. Although I can’t imagine why on earth he would suddenly target me, all this time later.’

‘And gaming isn’t the same as hacking, of course.’

‘I know. It’s a ridiculous suggestion, anyway. Tyler would never do something like this. I’m just clutching at straws.’

Ted didn’t immediately reply as he considered what she’d said. He banged the metal milk jug down, to settle the foam, with unnecessary ferocity. ‘So what can we do about it? Someone’s deliberately blackening your name.’

‘God knows. I haven’t the first idea how to trace an email. Whoever it is has probably covered their tracks by now, anyway. That’s what they do, isn’t it?’ She heard her voice rising in panic again.

The stall was hotting up, a queue forming. Ted hugged her again, then indicated the customers. ‘Got to get this, sweetheart. Why don’t you go home and I’ll pop up later? Try not to worry.’

‘Please don’t tell anybody ,’ she begged Ted, as she left the van.

She felt exposed, vulnerable, imagining the village gossip machine gearing up for a bit of juicy finger-pointing.

This is how poor Teresa from the post office must have felt…

how Lindy feels , she thought wryly, as she plodded up the hill, sensing a real shaft of sympathy for both women.

In London, this wouldn’t have been so bad , she mused, knowing her friends would never have believed such libel.

But here, in what Lindy termed a ‘proper community’, it seemed that the approval of the village was paramount.

And she was the new arrival. She hadn’t built up enough close friendships yet to have many automatically rooting for her– not that she wanted even her friends to know about this.

It just felt so embarrassing. Suppose Quentin or Gen or Lindy– especially Lindy, when Peggy was tutoring her granddaughter– even vaguely questions whether I’m guilty?

She couldn’t bear that. It frightened her, the thought she might be going around wondering who knew, who believed the email, who was on her side.