She’d travelled from the Cotswolds and was meant to be meeting someone and couldn’t help feeling a mite nervous at the prospect. What would everyone at Purley Hall say? Doris had told Robyn, of course, and the sweet girl had said it was absolutely fine and had told Doris not to worry but she couldn’t help worrying all the same.She tutted to herself as she remembered the events that had led to her current predicament. She’d just taken a walk into the village to pick up her copy of Crochet Today and to treat herself to a bag of mint toffees when a booming voice sounded from the door of the little shop.‘Don’t just stand in the doorway like that! I can’t get through!’Doris would have recognised that voice anywhere and turned to see the bulky figure of Mrs Soames filling the shop doorway and startling the locals.Mrs Soames in her village! It had been something of a shock at first but she’d soon been informed that Mrs Soames’s daughter lived in the village and that she was visiting because, in Mrs Soames’s words, she’d “gone and lost her job.”‘Silly girl!’ Mrs Soames had declared, shaking her head so that her chins had wobbled most alarmingly.
