Slightly Foxed by Jane Lovering Read Free Book Online

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    than a balding carpet, an enormous Aga which made curious
    bubbling sounds, and a bench table and chairs which seemed
    to have been appropriated from a local picnic spot.
    "Would you like some tea?"
    "No thanks. To tell you the truth, Mrs. Logan, I could have
    handed you the book and gone, you really didn't have to give
    me dinner." To tell even more of the truth, I would rather
    have stayed in Charlton Hawsell and tried to catch another
    glimpse of the Stallion Man.
    "No, I wouldn't hear of it! You've come all this way, the
    least I can do is feed you. I'll run you back to your hotel later.
    Have you booked in anywhere yet?"
    "No. Didn't have time."
    "Well. The Star should have a room. I'll give them a ring in
    a bit, if you like."
    The door opened and two men came in, identical except
    for years. Both square, sandy and freckled, both similarly
    booted and both smelling like pickled manure. They stumped
    across the kitchen without acknowledging either Isabelle or
    me and vanished through the opposite door, muttering darkly
    53

    Slightly Foxed
    by Jane Lovering
    about "the AI man". It was like living through an episode of
    League of Gentlemen .
    "My husband and son," Isabelle explained.
    I refrained from saying, "Who's the other man?" because I
    was afraid she wouldn't see the joke. "Here. Before I forget."
    I held Theo out. "It must be awful to find you've inherited
    something and then found it's been sold by mistake."
    "Inherited?" she said. Simultaneously the door opened
    again, and the man I'd seen that afternoon walked into the
    kitchen. He muttered, "Little buggers jumped out," and
    walked through, taking the same path as the other two men.
    I stared after him, mouth open.
    "Ah," said Isabelle Logan, the woman with the corridor
    house. "Um."
    "That's—" I started, still staring at the far door. "It is, isn't
    it? He's considerably less dead than he should be."
    "Oh dear." She dropped her head into her hands. "Oh God.
    Come into the study." Isabelle opened another door and led
    me into a tiny book-lined room. "I don't want him to overhear
    us. He gets very sensitive about things." Sensitive? Looking
    like that and sensitive? Bloody hell. She poured two glasses of
    whisky and handed me one. "That man—Theo Wood. His
    name is really Leo. He's my brother. Are you sure you want to
    hear this?"
    It was a little like being told that Johnny Depp was moving
    in next door and was notorious for running out of sugar. My
    dream man was no longer a dream but a real, striding-about-
    in-my-vicinity human being. "Yes please." I took a mouthful
    of alcohol against it being a story I wasn't going to like.
    54

    Slightly Foxed
    by Jane Lovering
    "It was Leo's thirty-fifth. He'd had a rough year, what with
    his wife..." She tailed off.
    Of course there'd have to be a bloody wife in there
    somewhere.
    "...and he's just so frustrating . Always scribble scribble at
    those damn poems, never letting anyone see or read them.
    Always like it, even as a child. He's got books full of them at
    home you know. So, I sort of crept into his attic and chose a
    selection, and got them privately published at a little place in
    Exeter. Of course, knowing how shy Leo is, I thought if I
    made up this dead poet and pretended that he'd written the
    poems only his family would know who he really was, you
    see."
    Leo Forrester. Theo Wood. Dear God, did this woman have
    no imagination?
    "I gave one copy to our parents, and one to our uncle who
    lived over in Topsham, then one copy to Leo for his birthday.
    Well, he—"
    I had a brief, scary flash into the mind of a shy, poetic
    type forced to face the realities of his words becoming public
    property. "He wasn't very happy?"
    "Er. No. He didn't mind too much about the copies I'd
    given away, but he made me give him the other hundred. I
    was going to give them to the bookshop in Charlton, but Leo
    didn't want—anyway. Our uncle died six months ago. I just
    didn't think, got a house-clearance firm in to get