‘Did Hamish tell you about the new ponies, Lizzie?’
Lizzie frowned. ‘No. What new ponies?’
‘Your grandmother called in a favour from a friend of hers who owns a stud. She wanted it to be a surprise for you. Hamish is looking after them in the far field. Well out of the way,’ Annie added with a suspiciously innocent look.
‘No wonder I haven’t seen them,’ Lizzie said with a smile. Her mind exploded with possibilities. Maybe Rottingdean could survive after all. The ponies were a last gift from her grandmother, and a lasting gift at that, if she could find some way to keep them.
‘Chin up, Miss Lizzie,’ the farmer said on his way out of the door.
Her chin was definitely up, Lizzie concluded. How could it not be with such an abundance of miracles?
The generosity of everyone in the village was the best tribute her grandmother could have, Lizzie thought as gifts kept arriving. The baker’s boy carried in a tray loaded with more bread and cake than an army could eat, and finally the florist called round with several buckets of flowers. ‘Left over from my big Christmas order,’ she explained. ‘They’ll only die if you don’t take them.’
‘Well, if you’re sure?’ They looked very fresh to Lizzie.
‘I’m sure,’ the smiling older woman insisted. ‘Your grandmother was a good friend to me.’
And that wasn’t the end of it, and one of the most appreciated deliveries was a cartload of logs from the rangers in the forest. ‘Shame to let them go to waste,’ the head ranger told Lizzie as he supervised the unloading. ‘A big place like this takes some heating, I imagine.’
‘Yes, it does,’ Lizzie confirmed, feeling for the first time that she had the same bond that her grandmother had shared with these good people. If they all pulled together, who knew what they could achieve?
‘Your grandmother was much loved,’ Annie confirmed. ‘She did so many little acts of kindness that people want to repay her now.’
This was borne out by a steady stream of tradespeople who continued on throughout that day, carrying an assortment of produce through to the kitchen.
‘It’s such a shame that the house might not even be here next year,’ Annie commented as they shut the front door on what surely had to be the last delivery.
‘Might not be here?’ Lizzie exclaimed. ‘What do you mean?’
‘If the estate has to be sold, there’s a rumour that a developer has his eye on it, for a shopping mall and a housing estate.’
‘This developer would knock Rottingdean down?’ Lizzie exclaimed in horror.
‘It seems your grandmother never got round to having the house put on the protected list of historic buildings,’ Annie explained. ‘Apparently, it just slipped through the net, and then she was ill—and, well, I should have said something.’
‘It’s no one’s fault, Annie,’ Lizzie soothed, sensing Annie was becoming agitated. ‘But there’s nothing to stop me doing something about it now. If some developer thinks he can get away with this, he’s going to rue the day. I’ll keep him tied up in court until—’Until what? Until she won the lottery she had never once played?
Lizzie sighed with frustration, knowing her words were nothing more than empty threats. She didn’t have enough money for the bus into town, let alone for lawyers’ fees. But she had to do something. She had to give these people who relied on the estate for their living something to look forward to.