Once Tom had signed a contract that was more of an agreement between the two of them, Dora said,

“I said that I owed you an explanation. Will you please follow me, and I’ll tell you why I’m here.”

She offered him her hand. After a moment’s hesitation, Tom took it.

Dora led him into a room at the front of the cottage and waited until he was inside the darkened space before switching on the lights. There, on the wall in front of him, were her
platinum discs, all six of them, plus a couple of music awards.

“I used to be a pop artist named Hazel Donaldson,” said Dora proudly.

“Sorry, Dora, modern music is not my thing.”

Dora had been prepared for that sort of reaction. She’d heard some music coming from his part of the property. It was most certainly not of 21st-century origin. The lack of a heavy bass line had told her that after less than a minute of listening to it.

“Perhaps you can remember this from just before last Christmas?”

She showed him the headlines following her last gig and a video of her encore.

“I seem to remember something about it, but you look nothing like her?”

“That was the plan. My long copper-coloured hair was my sort of trademark. I cut it all off and dyed it as you see now. I also wore green contacts whenever I was being interviewed or on stage. Take those away, and you see the real me. I was close to burning out, and I needed to get off the treadmill and give it all up before it killed me. I’ve been here ever since.”

She carried on.
“Fame has its downsides. I could not go out in public without fans wanting my autograph or more. One even grabbed me and tried to kiss me right in the middle of the supermarket, just to get hits on social media. When I called the store manager, he called the police on me. The ‘fan’ was his ‘brother’. Then, I called my lawyer, who asked the police to secure the store’s CCTV records. The resulting lawsuit and court case went my way, but it all took a toll on me mentally, as a lot of social media trolls accused me of engineering it just for headlines. If you add all that up with the pressures that were put on me by the record label, I was rapidly burning out, and I had to do something about it, so I gave it all up for the sake of my mental health.”

“Don’t you get lonely? You are here all on your own.”

“A bit, but I’ve been keeping busy with this place and writing new songs, but having some company would be nice. The problem has been finding someone who is not on social media.”

Tom chuckled.
“An outcast like me then?”

“Yes, like you,” she smiled.
“I don’t want my location plastered all over social media. Before the day would be out, there’d be a dozen drones in the sky overhead and people at the gates with long lenses hoping for an expose. I’m done with that world, but they won’t accept that easily. I’ve been the source of news and income for far too many of them for the past four years.

She let out a sigh.
“I’m done with all that for good.”

Tom looked at Dora.
“Do you mean that? A bit of fame often goes to a person’s head, and they become an attention seeker. That was one of the things I was accused of. The problem was that I never had a real presence on Twitter. It was all fake and done for the clicks by people who wanted me to suffer and even die.”

“I read about that, and no, I don’t want the attention. I’ve had enough of that. Mentally, I was in a bad place at the end of my last tour. I chilled out for a while up in Scotland before coming here. Everyone around here knows me as Dora Sinclair, and that’s how I want to keep it.”

“How do you stop people from… from digging into your past?”

“I can’t, but my Dora name became my legal name two years before my last tour. As far as today is concerned, my Hazel Donaldson identity has been offline for more than seven months. My Hazel bank accounts have not been touched since before last Christmas. That’s how I want to keep it. I made sure that there was just a small balance in them before I told the world that I was done. Someone might hack them, but they won’t get very much. The key thing is the inactivity on the accounts. It was all designed to keep the fame seekers at bay for good. I had time to separate my new life from the old. Unless they hack my personal lawyer’s office, then I’m pretty good to go. No one from my old life knew he existed, including my former manager.”

Tom looked at the room and Dora. He could see a person happy with her life.

“Why do you keep this room? Surely it would be better to have all this stuff locked away somewhere? All it would take would be a burglar to find this lot, and your cover would be blown wide open.”

She shook her head.
“That is a good point and one that I’m willing to risk. Mostly, I leave it here as a reminder of what life was like before. All my costumes from the last tour are in those cupboards. Every so often, I’ll put one on and try to imagine myself back in front of an audience. I just don’t have any desire to perform in public again. The spark, the will was just not there any longer, and that is just fine by me.”

After a sigh, she said,
“I could say never again, but who can accurately predict the future? One day, I might get the urge, but at the moment, that is a long way off. Let me promise you this. If I do get a serious urge to perform again, you will be the first to know. I have to trust someone, and it might as well be you.”

She smiled at Tom.
“When you called me the other day, I was in the middle of planting herbs in a bed near the back door. When the phone rang, I almost didn’t answer it. Before I gave up the business, I’d be on it like a tiger pouncing just in case there was some news about my career. Now, I don’t care. That’s how much my mental health has improved, and I’m not going back to that life.”

Tom felt some goosebumps starting to form on his arms.
“Shall we get out of here?” he suggested.

Dora didn’t argue. She closed and locked the door behind them. To Tom, it was an act of removing the old her from view.

Back in the kitchen, Tom sat down and looked out of the kitchen door. After a bit of silence, he asked,

“If you don’t mind me asking, what are you going to do for income? If you aren’t recording and performing, then I guess that you aren’t earning a lot of money?”

“That’s a good point. I knew that in time, thanks to some wise words from an old session keyboard player very early in my career. He told me that I’d have to quit the business or it would quit for me. Thanks to that advice, I never flashed the cash, and I invested everything I could. If I am careful, I can live to an old age and never have to work again. I’ll write some songs, and hopefully, some artists will record them, but my old work does give me a regular income, even if I have to do a bit of work to get it. Some of that revenue comes from a ‘Hazel Tribute Act’. God, that makes me feel old, but I went to see them last month in Milton Keynes, and they are pretty good, which scared me witless at first. After their third song, I relaxed and began to see what I had done in a different light. All that means is that you don’t worry about being paid or the costs of the changes you might like to make. There is money in the bank for at least three to four years of capital expenditure on this place, as well as running costs.”

“You seem to have your head screwed on?”

“My business manager was one of the good guys. He insisted that I understand my finances almost from day 1. His reputation was that he didn’t screw his clients out of their earnings. For that, I’m thankful.”

“Yet, he does not know where you are or if you are even alive?”

Dora laughed.
“He knows that I’m alive. Every few weeks, I send him an email telling him how bad his current crop of talent is. That way, he knows that it is me, but one day, I will invite him here, but not yet.”

Dora decided to change the subject.

“When can you move in?”

“I have to give a month’s notice to my landlord, or I won’t get any of my deposit back. As for my job? I’m employed on a zero-hours contract, so I can leave at any time.”

Dora thought for a moment before saying,

“How much deposit are you in hock to him for?”

“Five hundred quid. Why?”

“Then leave the place as soon as you can get out of your job. I’ll cover the deposit.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“It is purely selfish. I don’t know how to drive the tractor that cuts the grass, and if I leave it another month, it will be taller than me!”

Tom laughed.
“That is a very good reason indeed.”

He felt that they had connected at least at one level. It was clear to him that she had more common sense than someone her age should have. That impressed him no end.

“Ok, I’ll move down ASAP.”

Tom drove back north with part of him wondering if this new job was just a dream. It wasn’t.

[May the next year]

Dora’s small estate was coming along nicely thanks to Tom. He’d planted more than sixty fruit trees in the previous autumn, and all but three had not survived the winter or the deer. The badgers were doing well, and there was now a TV camera monitoring the main entrance to the nearest set. Tom had seen a couple of the new cubs poking their heads out of the set until one of the adults had noticed and made them go back inside. They were still small enough to be easily carried off by one of the two vixens that had taken up residence at either end of the woodland. They kept the rat population under control very nicely. Neither of them wanted to disturb their resident mammals. It was part of their grand re-wilding program for a large part of Dora’s domain.

Dora was, as usual, busy in her studio. Since his arrival, Tom had appreciated just how good a musician she was. She was not only a great singer and composer, but apparently, she could play almost any instrument she touched competently after only a little practice. She’d shown him recordings of a couple of her concerts. His words after watching them had made her cry.

“They just didn’t appreciate what sort of talent you have.”

The tears were of joy. For the first time since about the age of thirteen, she had someone who at least tried to understand her and why she'd given up touring and recording when she did.

Tom had gone out to collect a tonne of compost for the soft fruit cage and vegetable beds that he'd constructed in the Autumn. They’d planted only some thornless blackberries at that time because Dora could not agree on what else to plant. In the absence of any direction, Tom had built some elevated platforms for strawberries.

During the trip to the compost suppliers, he’d done some shopping for their evening meal at a monster supermarket in Banbury. While waiting for a self-service till to become free, he could not help overhearing a conversation about music. The older man was going on about how people knew how to play their instruments and berated the synthetic nature of modern stuff. The younger man said, ‘That’s because we don’t need to know how to play anything. It is all on the computer. Then the old man said, ‘You should listen to Tubular Bells. One man played all the real instruments on the album. That’s musicianship.

Tom remembered his father playing him that piece of music and some of the other works by the artist as a child. It gave him an idea. He was worried about Dora. She needed to get away from her home more.

They had shared the cooking since almost his first day at the cottage. That night, it was his turn to cook, so he returned to the store and bought a nice bottle of wine and a few other items. He had a plan to get Dora out of her rut.

“That was a nice meal,” said Dora as she cleared her plate.
“I know you well enough to know that there had to be a reason for the steak and the wine, especially as it is not the weekend.”

Tom sighed as he took a sip of the excellent wine.

“I overheard a conversation while I was waiting at the checkout, and it got me thinking. Back before either of us was born, there was an album that topped the charts for months and months. While there is nothing unusual about that, this album was almost 100% instrumental with only a little spoken voice. I’ve heard you play a huge range of instruments since I came here. The artist who put out this album played every instrument on it. Bear in mind that back then, they only had 4 or 16-track analogue tape decks in the recording studio.”

“What are you saying?”

“What I’m saying, Dora, is that you should think about recording an album of the best of your songs and that you play every instrument, no computer generation or whatever you call it. You can mix it yourself and then put out a YouTube video of you playing the songs, but with short video sequences of you playing all the instruments as well as singing. You could title it something like ‘All my own work’ or something equally cringy.”

“Why? Why now?”

Tom took another sip of wine before answering.
“Because, my friend, you are stuck in a rut. Since I’ve been here, how many times have you ever been beyond the end of the lane? About once every two or three weeks is my guess.”

Dora looked down at her half-full glass and said nothing.

Tom waited for almost a minute before pulling out his phone.

“Listen to this.”

He began playing the album that he’d been talking about. Dora closed her eyes and began to listen. It didn’t take long before she was nodding to the rhythm.

He stopped playing after what would have been the first side of a vinyl record.

“If you end up with your full voice as the last instrument, it will close out the work nicely.”

Dora smiled at Tom.
“Yes, I know that I’m a musical Luddite, but if you want to do something different and possibly memorable, this is worth considering.”

Dora emptied her glass of wine and then stood up. To Tom’s surprise, she came and sat on his lap, and after kissing him for the first time, she had a good cry. It was as if something that had been buttoned up inside her for a very long time had just been released.

Tom just held her tight until she had let it all out.

“Thank you,” spluttered Dora when she’d cried herself out.

“What for? I did nothing?”

“For being here and not thinking only about how much money you can make from me. The music world is very much dog-eat-dog, and no one cares a fuck about anyone other than those that they can make money from.”

Tom just held her. Dora’s words told him that she had been holding this all inside her for over a year. She had been unable to grieve over her decision to quit the rat race until now.

“That piece was beautiful. So different from anything that I can remember hearing before.”

“I think that it has a lot of classical music influences. Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, a lot of rock bands worked with string sections or even a full Orchestra to enhance the sound of their music. One Rock Band even wrote a concerto for Orchestra and Guitar.”

“How do you know all this?”

Tom chuckled.
“Working here and hearing you working got me interested in music for really the first time in my life. I’ve been watching a lot of the shows on channels like Sky Arts. One band went from producing pop songs and appearing on ‘Top of the Pops’, including one of the first videos to go with a song, to making an album that was just one piece of music in a few years. That album has sold over 50 million copies worldwide and was on the US Billboard Top 100 for 14 years.[1]. Just think about that and compare that to the charts today? There is no comparison. There is one track on the album that is mostly a voice. No lyrics but pure emotion. It goes on for several minutes and is beautiful, so full of emotion. The TV program on how it was recorded said that it was done in a couple of takes.”

“Thank you for introducing me to that. I need to think about what you said. I do need to broaden my musical horizon.”

Without waiting for Tom to respond, Dora kissed him long and hard.

That night, they watched a recording that her old label had made of her in the studio. It was clear from the outset that she was the boss. She knew exactly what she wanted from the people running the desk. That was the feeling that he had got from her when she kissed him for the second time. It was as if the old Hazel had been re-awakened. Part of him wanted more, and part of him was terrified that she'd want to return to the Hazel of old and out there touring.

Finally, he admitted to himself that he’d grown fond of her and that it had to stop, as it would only end in heartache for him.

“You seem a bit down,” said a beaming Dora the next morning.

Tom sighed.
“Last night. At first, I thought that it was good that the old you had resurfaced. Then I got to thinking that you’d soon be wanting to get back on the old bandwagon, and someone like me would be elbowed aside as all your old cronies come back into the picture.”

Dora was shaking her head before Tom finished talking.

“Tom, I’m not going back to my old life. My mental and physical health is so much better now than it was then. Yes, it is tempting, but I am in a much better place than before. A lot of that is down to you.”

“Me? I’ve done nothing.”

Dora shook her head.
“Just being there and not judging me, and I know that I’ve said this before, you not wanting to make money from my talents is more than enough. You have done wonders for this place, but even a beginner like me can see that there is a lot more to do. I want to enjoy the place when we have broken the back of the work.”

Tom didn’t look too convinced.

“If you are wondering about the money side of things, I received my latest royalty payments covering the last year a few days ago. Even after tax, there are now more funds in the kitty than I have spent on employing you and on the grounds. If you are serious about getting a used JCB so that you can sort out the drainage and all those other jobs, then go for it.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I am, and I’ll even come with you… I did listen when you said that I need to get out a bit more.”

Tom shook his head.
“What’s the matter?” asked Dora.

“You… you are the matter. Can we keep this version of you here all the time now?”

She grinned.
“I’ll try.”

After a bit of searching on the internet, Tom found a used but serviceable JCB with a variety of accessories for sale near Stratford-upon-Avon.

“We could make an afternoon of it?” said Dora.

“Aren’t you going to be busy in the studio?”

“Not today. I’ve been hitting a bit of a brick wall and need something to take my mind off the melody that I have rattling around in my brain.”

“Can’t you use it? The melody, I mean, not your brain,” said Tom, trying to make light of it.

“I’d love to, but I’d have to pay royalties. Someone else wrote it and… I’m not going there, ok. He and I have a bit of history from when I was just starting in the business. He wrote it for us as a duo piece. I was dabbling on the piano the other day, and suddenly, I found myself playing it, and I can’t stop.”

Tom thought for a moment before saying,
“I take it that your relationship didn’t end well?”

Dora shook her head.
“It didn’t. Why?”

“Why not write a breakup song using his melody and your words? You don’t have to ever release it, but it might give you some closure.”

“You sound like you have had a bit of experience with bad breakups?”

“I did, and that’s the reason why I won’t plant roses. Her name was Rose. Yes, I could breed a black rose and name it after her, but then she’d win.”

“Was it that bad?”

“Bad enough. Finding that she’d been two-timing me with the competition was hard, but then to find that she’d stolen all my plans for the Hampton Court Show. I lost it big time and smashed up our exhibit a week before the show. She was gloating about how good his design was… The problem was that it was my design. I had the records to prove it, but money talks. I could have taken them to court, but I didn’t have the money to fund the legal fees. He won and got a ‘best in show’ for my design. She dumped him a month later, so we were both used by her.”

“What happened to this bitch?”

“Sadly for her, COVID happened. She was from N.E. Italy and was visiting her family there when she got there right at the start of the pandemic. She never recovered.”

“Good riddance then?”

Tom shook his head.
“No one deserves to die like that, no matter how bad they were. A bullet to the head, yes, but coughing your guts out for days on end…?”

He didn’t need to finish the sentence.

[one hour later]

When Dora said that she'd go with him to the dealer who was selling the JCB, he didn't think that it would take her an hour to get ready. When she appeared, he knew that she'd dressed up specially for him.

Dora was wearing a green shift dress that barely covered any leg at all; it was so short. With black tights and black ankle boots, she looked good, but the black pageboy wig, dark glasses and bright red lips made her, in his mind, irresistible.

“How do I look?”

Tom sighed.
“If I tell you that you look awful, you won’t like it. If I tell you that you are stinking hot, you won’t like it, so how about just simply beautiful.”

She gave Tom a peck on the cheeks. He saw the lip mark in the rear-view mirror and mentally sighed. She knew how to turn him on, but he didn’t mind. They had an adult-to-adult relationship, and they needed work to keep them going.

“We are going to a place that deals in building plant and machinery. I expect that you may get some wolf whistles.”

“Doh! That is the aim. They see this,” she said, pointing at her clothes.
“And not the person inside.”

“And they’ll mentally undress you every second.”

“Do you think that the men in my audiences didn’t do that very thing, given some of the outfits that I wore?”

“That skirt is so short that it leaves little to the imagination.”
“It is a nice change from the stuff I normally wear around the house.”

Then Tom had a thought.
“Was Hazel ever out and about in that dress?”

It took Dora a second to understand what he meant.

“No,” she replied, shaking her head.
“I wore it at one meeting with the record label just before my last gig, but as it was winter, I was wearing a coat. I doubt that there are any pictures of me in this dress. It is not a one-off, but something from a fast fashion chain. I think it cost me less than thirty quid.”

Tom smiled.
“Ok, I had to ask.”

Dora put her arm through his and snuggled closer.
“That’s why I like having you around. You are always thinking of me and not yourself.”

“There is a bit of self-preservation included. I like this gig. For once, I can express myself in the garden and beyond, whereas before, I was always following a brief laid down by the boss.”

“Shall we go?” said Dora, unhooking her arm from his.

[Three hours later]

“I think that we have a deal, Mr Chapple,” said Tom.

He’d looked over three almost identical machines and had chosen the one that was in far better condition than the others.

He and Mr Chapple, the manager of the dealership, shook hands and went inside his Portakabin office to sort out the paperwork.

As they were coming to a close, Mr Chapple said,
“Your companion looks a bit bored?”

Tom chuckled.
“It was her idea to come along with me.”

“Well, please tell her from my crew, she has brightened up our day. We don’t get many women visitors here, and she is sure a looker.”

“And my boss…”

Mr Chapple didn’t dig that particular hole any deeper so he said nothing more.

“I’ll see your delivery people tomorrow morning, then?”

“That’s what we agreed. They should be with you around ten.”

“Are you clear about not coming down the lane? There is nowhere for a low loader to turn around. Just give me a call when you are at the end of the lane, and I’ll meet you there.”

Back in the Volvo, Tom said,
“You made an impression.”

“It was a nice change to be looked at and undressed without people knowing who I am.”

Tom started the car. On the way back to the cottage, he said,

“Most artists of your age have multiple tattoos and piercings. You don’t. That could be a giveaway.”

Dora grinned and tucked her arm in his again.
“Do you want me to get a tattoo?”

Tom had to concentrate hard for a few moments. Then he said,
“I don’t, but it is your body, isn’t it?”

Dora laughed.
“I was only teasing. I hate the things, especially ones where you have a small inscription that only you know the meaning of. Proper body art can be beautiful, but there is a lot of time and pain to go through for it, only for it to fade after a few years. No thanks. I’ve seen most of your body… Those tight shorts don’t leave a lot to the imagination, and you don’t have any. I like it like that.”

That evening, Tom said to Dora,
“That conversation we had in the car coming back… It was as if we were a couple of married people or something like that.”

Dora grinned. She was still wearing the black wig, and with those red lips, Tom thought that she was ‘hot’ but made of ‘unobtanium’.

“Do you want to be a married couple?”

“Dora, you are the boss, and I’m not going to take advantage of you like that. I made that decision before accepting the job, and it still stands.”

Dora turned down her lower lip as a child would do.

“Don’t act like a spoiled child. You are not that. You are a talented and beautiful young woman, and… that’s all I’m going to say before I dig myself into a hole that I can’t get out of.”

“And with that, I’m going to go to bed, goodnight.”

[to be continued]

[1] Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. I was at the first-ever performance of that piece. 20th January 1972 at Brighton Dome. It cost £2.50 to get in. I still have the ticket stub.