The Inheritance: Racy, pacy and very funny!
The Inheritance: Racy, pacy and very funny!
Tilly Bagshawe
Welcome to Tilly Bagshawe’s Swell Valley, where the scandal is in a class of its own.Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s gilded cage is torn away when her estranged father dies. As the beloved family estate slips through Tati’s fingers, the portraits of her ancestors look down disapprovingly.The new Lord of the Manor is just as ruthless as Tati. The old-world status of Furlings is everything the wealthy, self-made Brett Cranley has ever wanted. Luckily his wife Angela is the perfect homemaker, happy to fall into line with whatever Brett desires. Along with her two children, Furlings soon becomes Angela’s lifeline, a place she can finally belong. And one she’s not going to give up easily.Losing everything has made Tati realise that her rightful inheritance is all that she now lives for… and she will do anything to get it back.But the fate of Furlings lies in the hands of the villagers.Let the Fittlescombe fireworks begin!
The Inheritance
Tilly Bagshawe
Copyright (#ulink_96d14dad-f1ef-58cd-9f1b-0916bd1d66a4)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Harper 2014
Copyright © Tilly Bagshawe 2014
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
Tilly Bagshawe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007472512
Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007481385
Version: 2018-02-16
Dedication (#ulink_610e14f0-b70f-5959-887c-c2003c4b61f5)
For Sarah and Kris Glynn
Contents
Cover (#u90619e1a-60ed-594d-9e69-c811fec5f167)
Title Page (#uaae8bf69-b6cd-5964-9d4e-a6651dac5ca3)
Copyright (#u07db7f43-60b6-54b3-aace-96f3835aa2ed)
Dedication (#uda032fe6-cb8c-5258-910f-e58a0b955d0c)
Map (#ud3b2cb5e-5e7f-5593-8821-91738a9692c1)
Prologue (#u9b21c6da-a359-52b6-a737-94f22d281f7a)
Part One: The Usurpers (#u20bab604-e47e-50ab-8783-156f7688b16f)
Chapter One (#ua4d15f99-3d2a-5cbe-ab0f-547b07327489)
Chapter Two (#u5d3fb26d-f172-5e65-8291-6ecfcbdc655e)
Chapter Three (#u44381e0a-efc3-5a49-abe8-d925c881daf8)
Chapter Four (#u6ec9ae93-3124-5d02-b985-9be85ba534ff)
Chapter Five (#u97d245bb-c707-5fd8-b635-6c0cbe632481)
Chapter Six (#ucf8282cd-9440-5459-8453-062fc19eb5b3)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Two: The Reckoning (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Tilly Bagshawe (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading – The Show (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_8ffd33a9-ebd6-5a16-9382-21efa523af39)
Dawn broke late over the Swell Valley. The May sun rose sleepily into a cloudless sky, streaking it first red, then pink, then a gorgeous, deep, burnished orange, like melted rose gold. Bathed in this magical light, Furlings House shimmered above the village of Fittlescombe, tranquil and magnificent. The family seat of the Flint-Hamiltons for over three hundred years, Furlings was frequently referred to as the most beautiful estate in Sussex, if not the whole of England. Certainly it lived up to that accolade this morning, a study in Georgian splendour, with nothing to puncture the peace of its rolling parkland and idyllic views except the occasional whinny of a pony in the top fields, or plaintive bleat of a lost lamb somewhere on the Downs.
‘You fucker!’
A loudly slamming door sent a slumbering heron soaring into the air above the river.
‘You lying, shallow lowlife! Go to hell!’
Each word was screamed at deafening volume. It was a woman’s voice, delivered in a cut-glass accent, and it was followed seconds later by the woman herself, crunching over the gravel. She was striking for two reasons. The first was that she was young, blonde and stunningly beautiful. And the second was that she was stark naked (unless one counted the pair of Wellington boots she’d slipped on as she exited the kitchen; or the heavy, cast-iron frying pan she was brandishing menacingly above her head, like a Zulu warrior with a machete).
‘For God’s sake, Tatiana, calm down. You’ll wake up half the village.’
Her intended victim, a much older man with dishevelled salt-and-pepper hair, was half running, half limping towards his car. Barefoot, he’d only managed to partially dress himself before the Amazon had beaten him out of doors. In an unbuttoned evening shirt, with his suit trousers slipping repeatedly towards his knees, he cut a pathetic, cowering figure. Only the keenest of political observers would have recognized him as Sir Malcom Turnbull, Secretary of State for Trade & Industry, married father of three and tireless champion of family values.
‘You think I give a flying fuck about the village?’ the girl hissed at him like a snake. ‘I’m Tatiana Flint-Hamilton. I own this village. Besides, why shouldn’t people know what a lying, cheating scumbag you really are?’
Sir Malcom had only just managed to scramble into his Porsche when Tatiana caught up with him. Lifting the frying pan high above her head, she brought it down with a deafening thwack on the car’s roof, leaving a dent the size of a small meteor strike and missing the minister’s skull by inches.
‘Jesus Christ.’ Shaking, Sir Malcom rammed the key in the ignition and turned it, but the bloody thing was jammed. ‘Have you lost your mind?’ he stammered. ‘You knew I had a wife.’
‘Yes. And you told me you were going to leave her! At least twenty times.’
‘My dear girl, I will. But it’s not that simple. Henrietta’s terribly fragile at the moment. And Nick’s got his GCSEs this summer …’
‘Spare me.’ Tatiana Flint-Hamilton lifted the pan again, like a shot-putter about to let rip.
‘No! Please. Perhaps after the next election …’ Sir Malcom spluttered.
‘The next election?’ Tatiana laughed out loud. ‘That’s years away. What about the money?’
‘Money?’
‘The money I need to fight for my inheritance. The money you promised me, along with using your influence in the High Court. That was all bullshit too, wasn’t it? You treacherous snake!’
Wham! The pan struck again.
Wham! And again.
At last the Porsche’s engine roared into life and the panicked minister sped away. Thank God it was still early and Furlings was so remote. Just imagine if I’d taken her to the London flat. The paparazzi would have seen us for sure. Sir Malcom Turnbull shuddered at what might have been.
Tatiana Flint-Hamilton was an incredibly beautiful, sexy girl, but the tabloids were right when they referred to her as a ‘wild child’.
Forget ‘tigress’. The young lady was a velociraptor.
The minister wasn’t a religious man but as he drove away he prayed fervently that he never saw Tatiana Flint-Hamilton again.
Tatiana stood and watched as the battered Porsche disappeared into the distance.
Like my future. Like my house. All of it’s disappearing, she thought morosely. But she quickly pulled herself together.
What a bloody cliché to drive a red sports car in your fifties, anyway?
Tosser.
A cool dawn breeze made her shiver. Tatiana looked down at her own nakedness, and the frying pan hanging limply from her hand, and laughed. All of a sudden a pair of knickers, or even a dressing gown, had a certain appeal. Come to think of it, so did a bacon sandwich. The combination of sex and rage had made her ravenous.
Striding back into the kitchen, she pulled a Barbour jacket off a peg by the door and wrapped it round her. Opening the fridge to look for bacon, she discovered there wasn’t any, so poured herself an ice-cold vodka instead and wandered through to the drawing room, taking the bottle with her.
She tried not to think about how much she was going to miss this place.
I mustn’t give up. Not yet.
In a few hours, the entire population of Swell Valley would be milling around in Furlings’ lower fields for Fittlescombe’s annual May Day fete. I can’t face them, thought Tati, slumping down onto her father’s old sofa and knocking back four fingers of Stoli before refilling her mug. I truly can’t. They’ve all come to gloat.
Glancing up, she saw her grandmother’s portrait staring down at her disapprovingly from above the fireplace.
‘What?’ Tatiana challenged the canvas angrily, throwing open her jacket to reveal a perfect pair of round breasts, smooth, flat belly and glossy dark triangle of pubic hair. ‘Didn’t you always tell me to use my gifts. Well these are my gifts!’
She was drunk and angry, with herself more than anything. What on earth had possessed her to trust a slimy toad like Sir Malcom Turnbull? Everyone knew politicians were worse than drug dealers. Tears welled up in her eyes, but she didn’t allow them to fall.
‘I’m doing my best, Granny, OK?’ she slurred. ‘I am doing my fucking best.’
PART ONE (#ulink_e28c1051-f870-5049-9d93-46852b8584b6)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_52a716b7-f3fc-504d-8c90-fe4b1e5442c3)
‘Well I think it’s crap.’
Gabe Baxter, a blue eyed, broad-shouldered farmer and local Fittlescombe heart-throb, leaned forward over the table and took a long, cool sip of his Merrydown cider.
‘Tatiana Flint-Hamilton hasn’t bothered to show up for a village fete in five years. But now she wants local support to get her precious house back, suddenly she’s swanning in like Lady Muck offering to judge the cakes. It’s so contrived. She doesn’t give a shit about the community.’
‘That’s a bit harsh.’ Will Nutley, another local lad and a friend of Gabe’s from the village cricket team, stretched out his long legs contentedly. Will was drinking Abbey Dry, a local competitor to Merrydown. Gabe described it as ‘cat’s piss’, but this hadn’t deterred Will from ordering himself a third pint. ‘I think it takes guts to come back, under the circumstances.’
‘The circumstances,’ as the entire valley knew, were that the late Rory Flint-Hamilton, long-time lord of the manor at Fittlescombe and owner of Furlings, had sensationally disinherited his only child, his daughter Tatiana. Until now, Tatiana Flint-Hamilton had been most famous for her model looks and her taste for scandal, both of which had made her a favourite with the tabloids. With her long, caramel-coloured hair, slender figure and angular, almost cartoon-like face – huge green eyes, high cheekbones, wide, impossibly sensual mouth – at twenty-four Tati Flint-Hamilton exuded not only sex appeal but class. Breeding. Like a racehorse, or a rare, perfectly cut diamond. Unfortunately she also had a penchant for powerful, high-profile, and often married men, not to mention a well-documented drug habit. What set Tati apart from other society ‘It girls’ was her intelligence, her wit (she could always be relied upon for a suitably pithy and amusing quote) and her refreshing lack of remorse about any of her wild antics. On the scale of Great British Don’t-Give-A-Shitness, she was right up there with Simon Cowell.
The media loved her for it. But her own father had spent his last years in a misery of embarrassment and despair over Tatiana’s behaviour and, in the end, the idea of handing over his beloved Furlings to his tearaway daughter had proved too much. Rory had changed his will, apparently without breathing a word to anyone. Rumour had it that Tatiana had turned up at the lawyers’ offices in high spirits, fully expecting to take possession of her inheritance. Only to be told by her godfather Edmund Ruck, senior partner at Jameson and Ruck, that a house that had been in Flint-Hamilton hands for over three hundred years had in fact been left to distant cousins, and she was out on her pretty little, diamond-studded ear.
‘Guts?’ Gabe spluttered. ‘Come off it.’
‘I’m serious,’ said Will. ‘It must be bloody humiliating, wandering around the village trying to act normally, when everyone knows her old man cut her off.’
Gabe grunted noncommittally.
‘Imagine how you’d feel if your dad had disinherited you?’ Will went on. ‘If he’d left Wraggsbottom Farm to some random Aussie family.’
Brett Cranley, Rory Flint-Hamilton’s appointed heir, was an Australian property magnate. Famous in his native Australia, he was evidently extremely wealthy in his own right. Somehow that made the whole inheriting Furlings thing worse, at least in Will Nutley’s eyes.
‘The Cranleys aren’t random,’ said Gabe. ‘They’re relatives.’
‘Barely,’ said Will. ‘I heard Rory never even met them before he carked it. They’re total strangers.’
‘Yeah, well, whatever,’ said Gabe. ‘It wouldn’t have happened to me because I’m not a vacuous socialite with no sense of responsibility who’d let the whole estate go to hell in a handbasket before you could say “pass the cocaine”.’
Gabe and Will were sitting in the beer tent at the annual Fittlescombe village fete on what had blossomed into a blisteringly hot May morning. Always held on May Day and in Furlings’ sprawling lower meadow, this year’s fete had been given an added frisson of excitement thanks to the gossip surrounding Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s disinheritance. The latest word was that Tatiana had decided to take Furlings’ new owners to court over it. Apparently she had some scheme brewing to have her father’s will declared invalid. Although nobody seemed clear quite how such a challenge might succeed. Rory Flint-Hamilton was old but quite sane when he died. And by all accounts the Cranleys were as surprised by the contents of his will as his daughter was, so they could hardly be said to have coerced him.
In any event, the case had split the village, and the entire Swell Valley, down the middle. There were some who approved of Rory’s decision to leave his ancient family estate in safer hands than those of his feckless, scandal-prone daughter. But many others felt aggrieved on Tatiana’s behalf. After all, it wasn’t as if all her Flint-Hamilton forefathers had been saints and angels, especially in their youth. Tati should be given a chance to grow up and prove herself. The fact that Rory’s appointed heirs, the Cranleys, were not only card-carrying nouves but, worse, Australian, only served to fan the flames of local ire.
Of course, no one had actually met Furlings’ new owners yet. The Cranleys were due to arrive next week. But that hadn’t stopped the rumour mill from going into overdrive. Mrs Worsley, Rory Flint-Hamilton’s old housekeeper, was the only person with first-hand information, having apparently Skyped with Brett Cranley and his wife on numerous occasions. On the basis of these conversations, the housekeeper pronounced her new employers ‘charming’ and ‘terribly down to earth’. Of course Fiona Worsley had more reason than most to support Rory’s Australian heirs over his daughter. Mrs Worsley had been there through the very worst excesses of Tati’s teenage years and had seen first hand just how spoiled, destructive and Machiavellian she could be. She was fond of Tatiana deep down, but the thought of working for her, not to mention sitting back and watching helplessly while she and her rich, druggie London friends turned Furlings into some sort of party-house, was more than the old woman could have borne.
On Mrs Worsley’s advice, Brett Cranley had already won over a few cynics by giving permission from Sydney for the village fete to go ahead as usual, and for the meadow to be used.
‘You see what I mean?’ Furlings’ housekeeper had purred. ‘He’s as nice as pie and generous with it.’
What Furlings’ new owner hadn’t anticipated was that his absence had left a window for his cousin Tatiana to swoop in unannounced and effectively take over proceedings. She’d even demanded that Mrs Worsley put her up in her old room at Furlings for the week of the fete.
‘I presume I’m welcome as a guest, at least? In my own bloody home,’ she fumed.
Once installed, Tati had begun the Herculean task of trying to win over the locals. Her challenge to her father’s will was based on the premise that Furlings had never really been Rory’s to leave. That there was an effective entailment, inferred from generations of local practice. It was a shaky case, to say the least, but it was all she had. In order for it to stand a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding in court, she would need extensive local support. Hence, in Gabe Baxter’s view, her cynical ‘sudden interest’ in the village.
‘You have to admit, she’s done a good job running the fete committee,’ said Will Nutley, draining the dregs of his cider and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. ‘This must be the best turnout we’ve had in a decade. Loads of celebs have shown up because of her.’
‘So?’
‘So it’s all money for the village, isn’t it? I saw Kate Moss earlier at the craft stall. And Seb Harwich said Hugh Grant was milling around somewhere.’
‘Probably complaining,’ said Gabe, downing the rest of his Merrydown in a single gulp. ‘He’s such a miserable git.’
Will grinned. ‘Sure you’re not just jealous because he’s getting all the female attention?’
Gabe gave his trademark, arrogant laugh. ‘Jealous? Please. Anyway, he’s not getting Laura’s attention,’ he added proudly. ‘That’s the only female I’m interested in.’
At the top of the meadow, Laura Baxter, Gabe’s pretty young wife, mopped her brow with a handkerchief. Christ it was hot today! The weather at least seemed to be on Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s side. At this rate the fete would raise a fortune, and Tati would get all the credit.
‘I’ll ’ave five tickets for a pound, please.’ Mr Preedy, the proprietor of Fittlecombe Village Stores, gazed appreciatively at Laura’s breasts, straining for escape from her pale pink linen shirt-dress.
In the grip of some temporary fever, Laura had agreed weeks ago to man the tombola, without doubt the most boring job at the entire fete. She passed a handful of tickets to the little bald shopkeeper and watched as he carefully unfolded and examined each one.
‘Look at that! I’ve got a winner!’ Practically hopping with excitement, Mr Preedy handed his last ticket back to Laura. ‘Five hundred and ten. Winners end in a zero, right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, what’ve I won, then? Don’t keep me in suspense.’
Laura looked along the table. She found the appropriate ticket taped to a peeling packet of Yardley bath salts.
‘Erm … these?’ She handed them over apologetically.
Unperturbed, Mr Preedy beamed as if he’d just won a luxury cruise. It was so sweet, Laura quite forgave him his earlier breast-ogle.
‘Smashing! I never win anything, me. You must be my lucky charm. I’ll give ’em to the wife,’ he said, clutching the salts to his chest. ‘Earn meself some brownie points. You can’t put a price on that now, can you?’
‘Indeed you can’t.’
Laura smiled as he disappeared into the crowd. She loved the way that such small things seemed to give people here pleasure. Especially on days like today. The Fittlescombe fete really was a throwback to another, gentler, happier world. And what a wonderful turnout this year, thanks to the combination of the glorious bank holiday weather and the undoubted star power of Miss Flint-Hamilton, returned from her jet-setting life in London to ‘recommit’ to the village.
Not that Laura, of all people, had a right to judge Tati for that. This time two years ago, Laura had been living in London herself, working all hours as a television writer, completely immersed in city life as she climbed the greasy pole. But she too had returned to the Swell Valley, the place where she’d been happiest as a child, at a low point in her life. And now here she was, utterly immersed in the rhythms of the countryside, married to Gabe – a farmer’s wife, no less – and happier than ever. It was incredible how quickly, and totally, life could change.
Of course, she and Gabe had their moments. He could be a terrible flirt sometimes, but Laura wasn’t really worried by it. She knew he loved her, and was faithful. It was annoying though, especially after he’d had one too many drinks at The Fox. Then there was his ambition, which for some reason always surprised her. He’d already started talking about trying to buy some of Furlings’ farmland from the new owners.
‘Rory Flint-Hamilton swore blind he’d never sell a single blade of grass. But he mismanaged that estate something terrible. Maybe the new bloke’ll be more amenable? Just think what we could do if we owned all that land along the valley.’
‘Go bankrupt?’ offered Laura.
The unfortunately named Wraggsbottom Farm had been in Gabe’s family for almost as long as Furlings had been in the Flint-Hamiltons’ hands, and was just as beautiful in its own way. It was, however, altogether a more modest enterprise. Like all the working farming families they knew, Gabe and Laura struggled financially, a fact that Gabe conveniently forgot during his fantasies of empire-building.
‘We’re barely breaking even as it is,’ she reminded him. ‘You’re talking about doubling the size of the farm.’
‘I know,’ Gabe grinned. ‘We’d be a real estate. If I can only convince this Aussie to let me buy those fields …’
‘With what money?’ Laura asked, exasperated.
‘Mortgage.’
The nonchalant shrug with which Gabe offered this solution sent chills down her spine.
‘I don’t want to be lady of the manor, darling.’ She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. ‘I just want a lovely, quiet life here. With you. Preferably not in a debtors’ prison.’
They’d dropped the subject before it turned into a proper row. But it was only a matter of time before it reared its ugly head again. Laura adored Gabe, but it did sometimes get tiring, always having to be the boring grown-up in the family.
Down the hill from the tombola, Tatiana Flint-Hamilton was chatting up villagers waiting in line at the coconut shy. She’d swept down from the house earlier, making sure that everyone knew she’d been staying at Furlings – staking her claim – and looking more beautiful than ever in a demure, pale buttermilk shift dress, with her long blonde hair tied up with a whimsical blue ribbon. It was a far cry from the raunchy, barely-there outfits with sky-high stilettos she was known for in her tabloid days. But, of course, a lot had changed since then.
She wants people to like her so badly, thought Laura, pityingly. This time two years ago, she had it all. And now look at her, a guest at her own house.
Unlike Gabe, Laura Baxter felt sorry for Tati. She didn’t blame her for fighting her father’s will. If I grew up in a house like Furlings, I’d fight like hell to keep it too, she thought, glancing over her shoulder at the Queen Anne mansion perched serenely at the top of the hill.
The house looked more gorgeous than ever today, dazzling in the May sunshine with its sash windows dripping in wisteria and its lawns criss-crossed by box hedges and winding gravel paths, dotted with elaborate topiary. How awful to think of it being lived in by strangers! And how hard for Tati to have to stay there now as a guest, even before her hated cousins had arrived. Secretly Laura was rather rooting for Tati to turf the interlopers out, although that was highly unlikely. The bylaw that Tatiana was hoping to invoke was properly ancient. As for convincing the naysayers in the village that she was suitable lady of the manor material? With her history, that was going to be a tall order. It would certainly take a lot more than a Julie Andrews dress and a hair ribbon.
‘It’s impossible,’ Tatiana complained good-naturedly to the woman standing next to her at the coconut shy. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t this hard when I was a girl. Are you sure it’s not rigged?’
‘Pretty sure,’ the woman laughed.
‘I reckon they’ve glued them onto the stands.’
‘Nonsense.’
A wildly attractive Latin-looking man whom Tati dimly recognized appeared at her elbow. ‘You just need the right technique.’
In chinos and a blue linen shirt that matched his eyes and perfectly offset his olive skin, the man was easily the best-looking specimen Tati had seen since her return to Fittlescombe. With the Cranleys due to arrive in a week, she would soon be kicked out of Furlings and have to find herself more modest accommodation in the village while she put together her legal case against her disinheritance. The prospect of months spent living in some dismal local hovel had been filling Tati’s heart with gloom for weeks now. As had the idea of begging for a job as a lowly teacher at the village primary school.
The real kicker in Rory’s will, the part that no one in the village even knew about yet, were the conditions the old man had placed on Tatiana’s trust fund. Not content with robbing her of Furlings, he’d effectively taken steps to cut her off from all family money unless she, as he put it, ‘got her life in order.’
With this in mind, the old man had stipulated that if Tati agreed to take a teaching job at St Hilda’s Primary School in the village, he would authorize the trust to release a ‘modest’ monthly stipend. Even then, the money would only ever be released to her in the form of regular income payments. At no point would Tatiana receive a large lump sum of money.
For Tati, this had been the final twist of the knife. She recalled the scene in her godfather’s London office as if it were yesterday.
‘You’re telling me I’m penniless?’ She’d glared at Edmund Ruck accusingly.
‘Hardly,’ London’s most eminent solicitor responded evenly. ‘You have the equivalent of a modest trust fund for the time being. As long as your life remains stable, the monthly payments will go up considerably every year. Any capital remaining at the end of your life will pass to your children.’
‘It’s a fucking pittance!’ spat Tatiana.
‘It’s more than most people earn in a lifetime, Tati.’
‘I don’t care what “most people” earn. I am not “most people”.’ Tati’s arrogance hid her fear and profound shock. ‘And I won’t get any money coming in at all till I’m thirty-five. Thirty-fucking-five! I might as well be dead.’
Edmund Ruck suppressed a wry smile. He’d known Tatiana all her life and was fond of her, but he understood why Rory had declined to trust her with the family fortune, still less with the magical historic seat at Furlings. Even so, leaving the estate to a distant cousin he’d never met had been a surprising move on the old man’s part. The will had raised Edmund Ruck’s eyebrows, so he could hardly expect it not to raise his goddaughter’s.
‘Some money can be released to you earlier,’ he explained, ‘as long as you comply with the conditions set out in your father’s letter of wishes.’
Tati let out a short, derisive laugh. ‘As long as I go back to Fittlescombe and become a schoolteacher, you mean? Don’t be ridiculous, Edmund.’
‘Why is that ridiculous?’
Tati looked at him witheringly, but Edmund pressed on.
‘You trained as a teacher, didn’t you?’
It was true that Tatiana had studied, abortively, for a teaching degree at Oxford Brookes, before dropping out. She’d always been incredibly bright, especially at maths, but had never worked hard at school, or cared about her grades. The world of yachts and private jets and wealthy lovers, of winters in Kitzbühel and St Barth’s and summers in St Tropez and Sardinia, had exerted an irresistible pull. Besides, why bother with university when one was never going to need to get a job?
‘Did my father seriously think, even for a moment, that I was going to agree to become a village school ma’am? That I would be content to live in some poxy cottage, while Furlings – my house, my bloody birthright – was occupied by some jumped-up bloody Australian and his family, the Cranfords?’
‘Cranleys,’ her godfather corrected, patiently.
‘Whatever.’
Tatiana had been full of fight that awful day in Edmund Ruck’s offices. And yet she had returned to Fittlescombe, just as her father had demanded. And she would take the job at the school, because she needed that money. But anyone who interpreted those things as her acceptance of Rory’s will would be making a grave mistake. Tatiana was here for one reason and one reason only: to fight for her real inheritance.
The Adonis standing next to her at the coconut shy might at least provide a welcome distraction while she did what had to be done.
‘You hold the ball like this.’ He slipped one arm confidently around Tati’s waist, placing the ball in her hand. ‘And throw overarm, aiming downwards. Like so.’
‘I see,’ said Tati, inhaling the delicious, lemony scent of his aftershave as she released the ball into the air. She looked on as it sailed skywards in a perfect arc before dipping to strike the coconut clean onto the ground.
‘That’s amazing,’ she said delightedly, spinning around to face her instructor. ‘Thank you. I’m Tatiana, by the way.’
The handsome man smiled and shook her hand.
‘I know who you are, Miss Flint-Hamilton. Santiago de la Cruz. A pleasure to meet you.’
De la Cruz. The cricketer. Of course! Santiago played for Sussex. Tati had heard he’d moved to the valley last year. After a week holed up at Furlings with nothing but Mrs Worsley’s scowling face for company, or trapped in deathly dull fete committee meetings with the church flowers brigade, it felt wonderful to be flirted with again. Tati tried to remember the last time she’d had enjoyable sex or even been on a date with an attractive man – she didn’t count this morning’s disastrous encounter with the semi-fossilized Minister for Trade and Industry – and drew a complete blank. It must have been before that awful day in Edmund Ruck’s office. Before the world stopped spinning and her life fell apart. She smiled at Santiago coquettishly, tossing back her long ponytail of honey-blonde hair. ‘Santiago,’ she purred. ‘What a glorious name.’
‘And this is my fiancée, Penny.’
A middle-aged woman wearing a hideous gypsy skirt and a T-shirt covered in paint splatters had appeared at Santiago’s side. Tati’s smile wilted. From the look of pride on Santiago’s face, you’d think he’d just introduced her to Gisele Bündchen. Talk about love being blind, thought Tati. Still, ever mindful of her charm offensive, she shook Penny’s hand warmly.
‘Lovely to meet you.’
‘We’ve met before,’ Penny Harwich reminded her, although it was said without reproach. ‘I’m Penny Harwich. Emma’s mother.’
Oh yes. Emma Harwich. The model. Tati vaguely remembered the family, although not particularly the ragamuffin of a mother.
‘Of course. How silly of me.’ Her smile didn’t waver. ‘Your fiancé just won me a coconut.’
‘Did you, darling? How sweet.’ Slipping her arms around Santiago’s neck and standing up on tiptoes, Penny Harwich kissed him blissfully. Tatiana felt the envy as a physical pain, like a cricket ball lodged in her chest. Not because she fancied Santiago. Although of course she did. But because she didn’t have anyone herself. She was alone, now more than ever. Other people’s happiness felt like a personal affront.
‘Is that the time?’ She glanced at her Patek Philippe watch, an eighteenth birthday present from her father. ‘You must excuse me. I think I’m wanted at the duck racing.’
Turning away, Tati walked towards the pond, nodding and smiling at villagers as she went till her jaw and neck both ached. There was old Frank Bannister, the church organist, and the Reverend Slaughter who’d been the vicar of St Hilda’s Church in Fittlescombe for as long as Tati could remember. There were new faces too, scores of them, whole families that Tati didn’t recognize. It was so long since she’d spent any time here, she thought, a trifle guiltily. Although really her father ought to bear some responsibility for that. In the last five years of his life, Rory had been so disapproving, so resolutely unwelcoming.
He practically drove me away. And now he wants to punish me for it from beyond the grave.
‘Tatiana!’ Harry Hotham, Tati’s old headmaster at St Hilda’s Primary School and a lifelong friend of her father’s, waved from the gate that linked Furlings’ lower meadow to the village green. It was less than two years since Tati had last seen Harry, at the same Hunt Ball where she’d infamously run off with Laura Tiverton’s boyfriend, but he’d aged two decades in that short time. Stooped and frail, leaning on a walking stick, his remaining wisps of hair now totally white and blowing in the breeze like tufts of dandelion seeds, he tottered towards her.
‘How marvellous to see you. And how divine you look, my dear. Yellow is definitely your colour. I’d heard you were back in the village. Do tell me you’re staying?’
Harry’s enthusiasm, like his smile, was utterly genuine. Tati was touched.
‘That rather depends,’ she said, kissing him warmly on both cheeks. ‘You heard about Daddy’s will?’
‘Yes.’ Harry nodded gravely. ‘Bad business, that.’
‘Well I’m not giving up,’ said Tati, jutting her chin forward defiantly. Harry Hotham remembered the look well from Tatiana’s days as his pupil, a tearaway even then but charming with it, at least in Harry’s eyes. ‘I’m contesting it.’
Harry frowned. ‘Yes. I heard that too. Are you sure that’s wise, Tatiana?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Only that, knowing your father as I did, I imagine he took very thorough legal advice. I’d hate to see you ripped off by some ghastly lawyer.’
Tati waved a hand dismissively. ‘Every lawyer has a different opinion. And I’m already being ripped off. I don’t see that it can get much worse.’
‘That’s because you’re young, my dear,’ said Harry, patting her hand affectionately. ‘It can. Believe me.’
‘Well, it’s early days yet but I need funds to pursue my case,’ Tati went on, ignoring Harry Hotham’s warnings. ‘A war chest, if you will. I wanted to talk to you about that actually.’
‘My dear Tatiana, I’d happily give you my last farthing, but I’m afraid you are looking at a very poor man,’ Harry said matter-of-factly. ‘There’s no money in teaching, you see. Not a bean.’
‘Oh, no!’ Tati laughed, embarrassed. ‘I wasn’t asking you for money. It’s a bit of an odd request, but I … I was hoping for a job.’
‘A job?’
‘Yes. Did Daddy not say anything to you before he died?’
‘Say something?’ Harry looked confused.
‘It would just be for a few months, while I sort out my legal situation,’ said Tati. She explained about her trust fund, and the codicil in Rory’s will that would release money to her but only on the condition that she move back to Fittlescombe and work as a teacher at St Hilda’s.
‘Dad always had a ridiculous fantasy about me settling down and teaching one day. Ever since I did that awful course at Oxford Brookes.’ Misinterpreting Harry Hotham’s pained face, she added, ‘Look, I know it’s madness. But you’d be doing me a huge favour. When I get my inheritance restored to me, I promise to fund a new school building and anything else you want.’
‘It’s not that my dear,’ said Harry. ‘The job would be yours if it were mine to give. But I’m afraid I retired.’
‘What?’ Tati frowned. ‘When?’
‘At Christmas. I had a fall and I … well, I realized I wasn’t up to snuff any more. Physically, I mean. I recovered and all that. But I still need this blasted thing.’ He shook his walking stick reproachfully. ‘Running a school is a younger man’s game.’
‘Oh, Harry. I’m so sorry,’ said Tati, truthfully. ‘I can’t imagine St Hilda’s without you.’
‘Yes, well, things move on. And the new chap’s terribly good,’ said Harry, graciously. ‘Bingley, his name is. He’s a widower and rather a dish, so I’m told. All the yummy mummies are after him. He could probably use one of these himself,’ he waved his walking stick laughingly, ‘to beat them all off with!’
Tati forced a smile, but this was not good news. Working at St Hilda’s would always have been tough, a desperate measure for desperate times. But at least with Harry Hotham she’d have known where she stood. They’d have worked out some arrangement to satisfy her trustees – a few hours volunteering in the library or helping the girls play netball – and no one would have been any the wiser.
But this new fellow, Bingley, was an unknown entity. No doubt he’d already heard all kinds of bad things about her from village gossip, if not from the Daily Mail’s society pages.
‘Cheer up,’ said Harry Hotham, taking her arm. ‘You look like you’ve lost a shilling and found sixpence.’
‘Do I, Harry?’ Tati laughed. Somehow being around Harry Hotham reminded her of all the good things about her father and the past. Harry was part of her history, of Furlings, of all the things she was fighting for. ‘I’m off to judge the duck races. Would you like to come with me?’
‘Dearest Tatiana,’ enthused the old man. ‘I’m sure I can think of nothing I would like more.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_894bc87f-69d8-5064-99c7-eea82f9a5535)
‘Wow.’
Angela Cranley gasped as she drove her Range Rover over the crest of the hill.
‘Wow.’
‘Stop saying “wow”, Mum. You sound like a dork.’
Logan Cranley, Angela’s ten-year-old daughter, rolled her eyes in the back seat. After the long flight from Sydney, Logan was tired and grumpy. She hadn’t wanted to leave her old school, or her friends, and couldn’t understand what had possessed her parents to uproot themselves overnight and move to the other side of the world, just because some old guy had died and left them a house. Even at ten, Logan understood that her family were extremely wealthy. Her father, Brett, was a real-estate developer and one of the richest men in Sydney. The Cranleys already had a bunch of houses, including a grand apartment in London. What was so special about this one?
Secretly though, she too was impressed by the stunning scenery that surrounded them as they got nearer to their new home. Narrow ancient lanes flanked by high hedgerows guided them through the rolling chalk hills of the Downs; they passed a Tudor pub, The Coach and Horses, that looked exactly like Logan’s dolls’ house back home in her playroom in Australia, all white wattle walls and criss-crossing black beams, with mullioned windows. There were meadows full of buttercups, picture-postcard villages made up of clusters of flint cottages, medieval churches and the occasional grand Georgian manor house. Queen Anne’s lace, grown wild and as tall as the top of the car, reached over from the grass verges and brushed the windscreen as they passed, like delicate white-gloved fingers waving an ecstatic welcome. And everywhere the late spring sunshine, light, bright and clear, bathed the countryside in a glorious, magical glow.
In the front passenger seat, Logan’s older brother gazed vacantly out at the patchwork of hills and fields. At just turned twenty, Jason Cranley was painfully withdrawn. Tall and thin, with a pale, freckly complexion and sad, amber eyes, it was hard to believe that he was genetically related either to Logan, or to their father, Brett. Both Jason’s little sister and his father were dark-haired, olive-skinned and bewitching, like gypsies, or members of some exotic tribe of Portuguese pirates. Jason took more closely after his mother. Angela was blonde and fair-skinned, the sort of colouring that could easily have gone to red and that had zero tolerance for sun. Jason glanced across at her now, smiling, enchanted by this new world unfolding before her.
She’s so brave, he thought. So optimistic. After everything that’s happened, she still believes in fresh starts.
How he wished that he did, too.
‘This is it. Fittlescombe. We’re here!’
Angela Cranley squeezed her son’s leg excitedly as they passed the sign for the village. The Range Rover had descended a steep escarpment, then forked sharp right at the valley floor. The village was completely hidden from the main road above, folded into the downs like a baby joey enveloped in its mother’s pouch. It made it feel like a secret place, a hidden jewel only to be discovered by the chosen few. Despite herself, Angela felt her excitement building and her hopes start to blossom like the first buds of spring. This, surely, was a place where people were happy. Where the miseries and betrayals of the past could be left behind.
The most recent betrayal, in the form of Brett’s mistress Tricia Hong, a pushy young news reporter for SBS who had done everything in her power to destroy Angela’s marriage, was now a satisfying ten thousand miles away. Brett had been unfaithful before, of course – countless times. But Tricia had been a threat of a different order: intelligent, ruthlessly ambitious and utterly without scruple. Perhaps it was no surprise that she and Brett had been drawn to one another. They were so very alike. Still, in the end, even Brett had been taken aback by the beautiful young Asian’s tenacity. He, too, had begun to feel under siege. Rory Flint-Hamilton’s surprise bequest could not have come at a more opportune time. Nor could it have brought them to a more idyllic spot.
‘Oh my God, look at the post office! Isn’t that the cutest, with the roses round the door? And the school. Look, Logan. St Hilda’s. That’s where you’ll be going. What do you think?’
Logan made a noncommittal, grunting noise. She refused to get excited about her new school, however idyllic it might look. She still hoped there was a chance her father would change his mind and that they could all go home to Sydney and reality and forget this whole thing. Her mum kept telling her that she and Rachel and Angelica would stay friends, that they could Skype. But it wasn’t the same. She was going to miss Wellesley Park Elementary’s summer fair. She was going to miss everything. Rachel and Angelica would become best friends and wear the best friend necklaces, the ones with two pieces of a heart that fit together perfectly. She, Logan, would be forgotten. Erased. She’d probably start speaking with an English accent, God forbid.
‘Stop.’
Jason’s voice rang out, startling his mother. He hadn’t said a word since they pulled out of Heathrow. Having watched him go through a series of depressions, Angela wasn’t surprised by his silence. She had learned to sit with her son’s sadness, to stop trying to snap him out of it. But she still found it hard.
‘That was it. Furlings. There’s a sign at the bottom of the drive.’
Angela reversed. Sure enough, there it was. Damp and faded, and partially covered by overhanging trees, a simple wooden sign: ‘Furlings – Private Property’.
The driveway had seen better days. The four-wheel drive bounced and juddered over potholes, rattling its occupants like cubes of ice in a cocktail shaker. But after about a hundred yards of winding their way up the hill that overlooked the village, the private track widened into a grand, gravelled forecourt with a stone fountain at its centre. The house stood back from the gravel and was set slightly above it, atop a flight of six wide stone steps. A grand, square central section was flanked by two, lower symmetrical wings, all in the same red brick typical of Queen Anne architecture. Elegant sash windows peeked out shyly beneath thick fringes of wisteria, and the formal gardens at the front of the house gave way to stunning, oak-dotted parkland below, the green hills rolling all the way down to the village green.
It was quite the most exquisite house Angela Cranley had ever seen, combining elegance with an undeniable grandeur. It was also, to Angela’s way of thinking, enormous. If this was a small stately home, she struggled to imagine what a large one might look like.
‘It’s a palace!’ Logan squealed delightedly, forgetting all her heartfelt objections in the joy of the moment as she tumbled out of the car and ran towards the steps. ‘Oh, Mum, isn’t it gorgeous?’
Angela also got out of the car, stretching her aching legs. ‘It is, darling. It is gorgeous.’ She craned her neck and stepped back, trying to get a sense of the scale of it. ‘What do you think, Jase?’
‘Yeah. It’s very nice.’
Jason pulled the two heavy trunks out of the boot, wishing that Furlings’ beauty could affect him the way it ought to. Wishing that anything could. The cases thudded onto the ground with a crunch. Most of the family’s furniture and effects were arriving by separate plane in the coming days, but they’d brought a few ‘essentials’ with them. Jason’s father was supposed to come down to see the new house in a week. Brett had business in London, and preferred to stay in town than to deal with the hassle of moving in. ‘Your mother can do that. Women love all that nesting crap.’
‘It’s a lot of work, Dad,’ Jason had protested. Unusually for him. Jason Cranley was afraid to provoke his father. Everybody was afraid to provoke Brett Cranley.
‘Rubbish,’ said Brett. ‘There’ll be a housekeeper there to help her. Mrs Worsley. Old man Flint-Hamilton asked me to keep her on. And you can pitch in, can’t you? God knows you’ve got nothing else to do.’
Ever since Jason had dropped out of college, his father had been berating him for laziness, for failing to get a job and a life. Brett Cranley did not believe in depression. ‘We’ve all got our shit to go through,’ he told the family therapist at the one and only session Angela had convinced him to attend. ‘Wallowing in it doesn’t help. The problem with Jason is that he doesn’t realize how damn good he’s got it.’
Logan had already raced up the steps and run inside, darting in and out of the house like an over-excited puppy. Behind her, a smiling, soberly dressed woman in her mid-sixties appeared in the front doorway, plainly amused by the little girl’s high spirits.
Angela climbed the steps, her hand extended. ‘Mrs Worsley?’
‘Mrs Cranley. Welcome. You must be shattered after such a long journey.’
The older woman’s hand was cold and her grip firm, her Scottish accent clipped and efficient. She had grey hair, swept up into a neatly pinned bun, and wore no make-up, but her bright eyes and warm smile stopped her from appearing severe.
‘I suspect I’ll be tired later,’ Angela smiled back. ‘To be honest I think we’re all a bit too excited now. Excited and overwhelmed. What a house!’
‘Indeed.’ Mrs Worsley beamed with pride, as if she’d built Furlings herself, brick by brick. ‘Everyone in the village is so excited about your arrival,’ she lied. ‘It’ll be wonderful to have a family here again. Mr Flint-Hamilton was on his own for such a terribly long time.’
Jason had begun dragging the heavy cases up the steps but Mrs Worsley hurried forward, assuring him that Mr Jennings, the gardener, would ‘see to all that’.
‘He’s not really called Jennings, is he?’ The faintest of smiles traced Jason’s lips.
That boy looks ill, thought Mrs Worsley. As pale and pasty as rolled-out dough. With any luck the country air will sort him out.
‘He is,’ she said aloud. ‘And he’d be mightily upset to see you manhandling your own luggage, Mr Cranley.’
‘Jason,’ said Jason, embarrassed.
‘Jason.’
Mrs Worsley smiled. First impressions weren’t everything, of course, but she liked this family. The rambunctious little girl; the shy, polite son; the beautiful, perhaps slightly sad-looking mother. She felt certain that dear Mr Flint-Hamilton would have liked them too.
Fiona Worsley had worked at Furlings for over thirty years. She had known Tatiana’s mother, Vicky, and loved her dearly, grieving with Mr Flint-Hamilton when she died, and helping him to raise his infant daughter. A few years after Tati’s mother’s death, Mrs Worsley’s own husband, Mick, had also died, suddenly from a heart attack aged only forty-one. Rory Flint-Hamilton had returned the favour, supporting his housekeeper through her loss. The bond forged between them through mutual grief was a strong one. Never romantic. But as unique and powerful as any marriage.
Without children of her own, Mrs Worsley had focused all her love and attention on the young Tatiana, although she was a strict mother-figure and not especially demonstrative. In an odd, unspoken way, she, Rory and Tatiana had become a family unit of sorts up at Furlings, although none of them would ever have described the relationship in those terms. It had broken Mrs Worsley’s heart, watching Tatiana throw her life away on parties and unsuitable men as soon as she got into her teens, both for Tati’s sake but also for her father’s. Rory Flint-Hamilton had been a lovely man and, in her own way, Fiona Worsley had loved him. She’d particularly hated watching dear Mr Flint-Hamilton agonize over his will and Furlings’ future during the last, painful months of his life, and she laid the blame for his suffering squarely at Tatiana’s door. As such, she was firmly in the pro-Cranley camp when it came to the dispute over Rory’s will.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love Tatiana, or that she resented her, as many people in the village assumed. But at this point, after so many years of bad behaviour and broken promises, the housekeeper shared her former employer’s view that tough love was Tatiana’s only chance of salvation. And then there was the estate to think about. Furlings was as much a part of Mrs Worsley’s life as it was of Tatiana’s. At least now the estate would be preserved. Not only that, but it would become a family home again, cherished and brought back to life as a great house should be. She couldn’t understand why so many people in Swell Valley seemed unwilling to give this young Australian family a chance.
‘Come and see my bedroom!’ Logan was shrieking, circling her mother like a deranged shark as Angela finally made it across the threshold of her new home. ‘I’ve picked it out already, it’s right at the top and it’s amazing! There’s room for bunk beds. Can I have bunk beds? I really really really want bunk beds, and yellow wallpaper.’
‘I don’t know about the yellow wallpaper,’ said Angela. All of a sudden she did feel tired, and achy and sore and in desperate need of a shower and change of clothes. ‘Let’s see what Dad says.’
Furlings wouldn’t be home until Brett got here and gave it his seal of approval. It was hard to imagine how he couldn’t love it – how anyone couldn’t. But Angela intended to spend the next week making the house as perfect and homely and welcoming as was humanly possible.
If Brett’s happy, we’ll all be happy.
We’ll settle down here. Put down roots.
Angela Cranley closed her eyes and willed it to be so.
Brett Cranley closed his eyes and willed himself to come. Normally he had no trouble in that department, but the stress of opening up new offices in London combined with family pressures and physical exhaustion had taken their toll. Either that, or the girl just wasn’t hot enough.
‘Oh, that’s good! That’s so good.’
The secretary moaned, arching her back and giving her new boss a better view of the eagle tattoo across the top of her buttocks. Brett was not an admirer of tattoos, on men or women. He found himself becoming irritated – why had the stupid girl gone and done such a thing? – which was not helping him to orgasm. He closed his eyes again. Focus, for fuck’s sake.
Reaching around, he grabbed hold of the girl’s breasts which were large and heavy, like two water balloons. Her nipples were small and erect, twin pink diamonds between his thumb and forefinger. Better. She was pretty, sexy in a slightly chubby, accessible sort of way, with short hair – a pixie cut, he believed it was called. Tricia had had glorious long hair, black as tar and silken. Thinking about it now, Brett felt his erection strengthen and his excitement start to build at last.
‘Oh Brett! Brett!’
Thrusting harder and faster, he wanted to say her name but realized he’d forgotten it. Michelle, was it? Or Mary? Something with an ‘M’. He’d only hired her a week ago as the receptionist for Cranley Estates’ new London office. He couldn’t be expected to remember everything.
Reaching behind her, the girl cupped a hand underneath his balls and began to stroke them. That was it. ‘Oh … Jesus.’ He came, finally, collapsing on top of her, sweat pouring from his brow.
‘That was nice.’ The girl smiled cheerfully, wriggling out from under him.
‘Wasn’t it?’ Brett sighed, rolling onto his back. The carpet felt rough and scratchy underneath him, but he was too tired to move. Bending over him, the girl expertly removed his condom, carried it over to the waste bin in the corner of the office and dropped it inside. Then, still stark naked, she grabbed a few sheets of printer paper, balled them up and dropped them on top, concealing the evidence.
Brett grinned. She’s thorough. I like that in a secretary. A self-starter, too.
He wondered how things were going down in Sussex. Whether Ange and the children had reached the house yet. He must call them in a minute, once what’s-her-name had gone.
He glanced at the clock on the wall: 4.30 p.m. The secretary was already almost fully dressed, doing up the top buttons on her silk blouse and straightening her hair as if she’d just got back from the gym. Clearly she had no expectation of post-coital affection from him: another huge plus. Tricia had been painfully demanding in this regard. In every regard, come to think of it. Brett missed his mistress’s lithe, gymnast’s body, but nothing more. Tricia had broken the sacred code of the other woman and made a nuisance of herself with Angela, calling the house, showing up at events where she knew his wife would be present. She’d become a threat to his marriage, to his family. Brett Cranley couldn’t tolerate that. His own parents had divorced when he was young, and Brett saw himself decidedly as a family man. Sure he played around. Who didn’t? But he loved his wife and it would be a cold day in hell before he left her for another woman.
But this girl – Michelle. It’s definitely Michelle – she seemed to have a much clearer idea of the boundaries. She also seemed nice, sunny natured, a good sort of chick to have around. Perhaps he could overlook the tattoo and the hair?
Brett Cranley had not grown up poor. His father had run a successful dry-cleaning business and his mother, Lucille, was a hairdresser. What Brett had done was grown up quickly. Both his parents were dead by the time he turned fourteen, his father from a car accident on Christmas Eve, hit head-on by a drunk driver, and his mother from breast cancer. It was Lucille’s death that had affected him the most. An only child, Brett had always adored his mother. And while the loss of his father was shocking and sudden, Lucille Cranley’s protracted illness, her pain and fear, her desperate, dashed hopes of remission, had profoundly changed Brett’s psyche. The teenage boy lost his faith, not only in God and modern medicine, but in other people altogether.
There was no point in loving people, because the people you loved would eventually be taken away from you.
There was no point relying on people, because they would let you down.
There was only one life: this life. And in this life, you were on your own.
These were the lessons Brett Cranley learned from his parents’ deaths.
In some ways they changed him for the better. Having always been a rather lazy pupil, with no fixed goals or plans for his future, Brett suddenly threw himself into his studies. Living with his aunt Jackie and her two children, who were jealous of his good looks, intelligence and modest inheritance, and made sure he knew he was tolerated rather than loved within the family, Brett spent hour after after locked in his room, cramming for exams. When he won a place at a prestigious boarding school on a mathematics scholarship, his aunt didn’t want him to go.
‘It’s six hundred miles away, Brett. You won’t know a soul. Won’t you be lonely?’
‘No.’
‘Your mum wanted you to live here, with us. She thought that’d be best for you.’
‘She was wrong.’
Aunt Jackie looked pained. ‘It was what she wanted. I promised her …’
‘It doesn’t matter what she wanted,’ Brett said angrily. ‘She’s dead.’
‘Brett!’
‘I’m alive and I know what’s best for me. I’m going to St Edmund’s.’
In the end Brett had had to apply to the executors of his father’s will to release funds for his education and had petitioned the family courts to be allowed to go away to school. He never returned to his aunt’s house, or to Burnside, the Adelaide suburb where he’d spent his childhood. It was the first of many battles that he would win in his determined pursuit of wealth and worldly success, the only ‘security’ that meant a damn in Brett’s book. By his sixteenth birthday he was fully legally independent, the top performing scholar at the top school in Sydney, and the youngest-ever applicant to be awarded a place at ANU, the Australian National University in Canberra, for applied mathematics.
ANU was to change Brett Cranley’s life. Not because he graduated with first-class honors and went on to Melbourne Business School to begin an MBA he would eventually be too successful to have time to finish. But because it was at ANU that he met the two women who transformed him from a boy into a man.
The first was a professor’s wife by the name of Madeleine Jensen. Maddie spotted the dark, angry-looking boy on campus in his first week in Canberra.
‘Who is that?’ she asked her husband. Professor Jamie Jensen was the head of the math faculty at ANU, a quiet, scholarly man considerably more interested in Fermat’s Last Theorem than he was in his wife’s sexual needs. Or any other needs, for that matter.
‘That’s Brett Cranley. The prodigy, or so they say. Ridiculous to send a child of that age away to college in my view, but there we are.’
‘I wouldn’t call him a child,’ said Maddie, catching Brett’s eye and the wild hunger beneath his brooding exterior. ‘He’s very good looking.’
‘If you say so, my dear,’ Professor Jensen muttered absently.
Maddie did say so. Not just to her husband, but to Brett himself when she approached him after lectures a few days later. ‘Are you a virgin?’ she asked him bluntly.
Brett replied in the affirmative. Since his mother’s death he’d undergone a self-imposed ban on all interaction with the opposite sex. Not that he had no libido. Quite the opposite. But the strength of the physical longing welling up inside him was at war with the terrible fear of loss and abandonment that had become as much a part of him as his own flesh and bones. Brett adored women – both sexually and for the warmth and intimacy they offered, warmth and intimacy that he desperately longed for – but he was afraid of them.
‘Do you want to be?’
Whether it was Madeleine’s directness, her utter lack of guile, or the fact that she was almost old enough to be his mother; or whether it was her beauty, or her own deep sexual need speaking to his, Brett didn’t know. What he did know was that he wanted to go to bed with her. Very, very badly.
‘No.’
‘Good.’ Maddie smiled. ‘Follow me.’
Sex opened up a new and glorious world for Brett Cranley. Before long it rivalled ambition as the key driver in his personality. His relationships with women were wildly conflicted: needy, passionate and adoring on the one hand; angry, frightened and controlling on the other; each one a reflection of his feelings for his mother, frozen in suspended animation at fourteen. He and Maddie Jensen remained lovers for over a year, but there were many, many others, too many to count, let alone remember, a sea of faces and bodies and, before long, a trail of broken hearts left in his wake. Brett needed sex like a plant craving sunlight. Both the physical rush and the emotional validation fuelled his confidence and ambition like a shot of adrenaline in the arm.
He’d been sure of himself before ANU, before Maddie Jensen.
Now he felt invincible.
It was in his last year, his last few months at ANU, that Brett Cranley met the second woman who was to change his life forever.
Angela Flynn was not a student at the university. A shy, sweet, quietly funny eighteen-year-old girl, with no life experience and no particular ambition, she worked in the Belwood Bakery close to the mathematics faculty building. Brett used to see her when he bought his lunchtime sandwich and was immediately drawn to something about her. It was a combination of innocence, kindness and fragility. Angela was so pale she looked almost like a ghost, with her white-blonde hair and amber eyes, oddly translucent beneath her spun gold lashes. She was the sort of girl who looked as if she might faint if exposed to too much sun, or cold. And yet her disposition belied her appearance. As Brett got to know her, he discovered she was a relentless optimist, as hopeful and trusting of the world as he was cynical and dismissive. He also discovered that she was a virgin. For some reason that he couldn’t define, even to himself, this was important.
His attraction to Angela was different to that with all the other women he had gone to bed with, something that would remain the case throughout their long marriage. He wanted to own her, to protect her, to carry her around with him in a glass case, like a guardian angel. His angel. His Angela. He was sure that his mother would have loved her.
As it turned out, marrying Angela Flynn was not the easy feat he’d assumed it would be. She had a father, and three older brothers, all of them Irish Catholic, deeply protective and not remotely inclined to let their teenage sister ‘throw herself away’ on a kid not much older than she was and well known to be a player on campus. Nevertheless, Brett persisted, proposing to Angela before he went away to business school and agreeing to a chaste, three-year engagement at the Flynn family’s insistence. Even after he founded Cranley Estates at only twenty years old, backed by MacQuarie Bank, then dropped out of business school and became a multimillionaire almost overnight, Angela’s family held firm. They finally married on Angela’s twenty-first birthday, not a day before, in a tiny local church in Canberra.
The bride wore white.
It was the happiest day of Brett Cranley’s life.
‘You’d better get dressed,’ Michelle said, matter-of-factly.
She was back in PA mode now, as if the sex had never happened, scrolling through the rest of the day’s agenda on her Samsung phone while Brett lay sprawled out naked on the carpet with his arms and legs outstretched, like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian man.
‘The guy from Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s gonna be here in ten minutes.’
‘Oh, God. Really?’
‘Really. And I don’t think those are the assets he’s interested in, do you?’ She looked down at her boss’s wilting dick and grinned broadly.
‘I certainly hope not.’ Brett grinned back, feeling happier by the minute that he’d hired this girl. If they didn’t give him an ‘Investor in People’ award next year, there’d be no justice in the world. ‘Be an angel and hand me my clothes, would you? And call down and order a pot of tea for … what’s his name, the GSAM bloke?’
‘Kingham. Anthony Kingham. Will do.’
Brett had forgotten completely about the Goldman meeting. He must be tireder than he thought. He’d have liked to cancel, but it was too late now.
Never mind. The call to Angela and the kids would have to wait.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_fd7aae14-3d8c-5631-b631-733c3824ab23)
Max Bingley walked down Fittlescombe High Street with a spring in his step.
‘Good morning, Mrs Preedy!’
The village shopkeeper’s wife smiled and waved. She was wearing an old-fashioned apron with deep front pockets and had a wicker basket, filled incongruously with leeks, under one arm. She reminded Max of Mrs Honeyman, the village gossip from Camberwick Green, a 1960s children’s programme made with puppets that he and his younger brothers used to watch as kids. There was something wonderfully innocent and timeless about Fittlescombe that regularly took Max back to earlier, happier times. The Preedys’ shop was at the heart of it all, along with the excellent village pub, The Fox.
‘Enjoying the break, Mr Bingley?’
Mrs Preedy had unloaded her leeks into a crate of fresh vegetables outside the front door of the shop and was now polishing apples with the front of her apron.
‘I am indeed. Hard not to with such lovely weather.’
It was indeed a perfect day, blue-skied and warm for May, with the faintest hint of breeze carrying the scent of honeysuckle and early flowering jasmine on the air. Half-term had run late this year, and school wasn’t due to start again for another week, so the unexpected sunshine was an added boon. Max Bingley was thoroughly enjoying his new job as headmaster of St Hilda’s Primary School, and didn’t mind the idea of going back. But nothing could quite beat a week’s walking and fishing in the glorious Downs countryside. Not for the first time, Max said a silent prayer of thanks that he’d had the good sense to take the St Hilda’s job when it was offered to him.
When Harry Hotham, St Hilda’s headmaster of over twenty-five years, unexpectedly announced his retirement last year, and the governors approached Max about the position, he found himself on the receiving end of a relentless campaign by his daughters to accept the job. Max had been depressed since his wife, their mother, had died two years earlier.
‘You need a fresh start, Dad,’ said Rosie, now in her fourth year of medical school at Cambridge. ‘The Swell Valley is supposed to be ridiculously beautiful.’
‘You need a challenge, too,’ chipped in her sister May, already Dr Bingley and now studying for a second PhD in Medieval History in London. ‘Mum would hate to see you wasting away like this. You’re still young.’
‘I’m not young, darling,’ Max smiled, ‘but thank you for saying so.’
‘Well you’re not old,’ said Rosie. ‘More to the point, you’re a wonderful teacher. You have so much more to give professionally. And Fittlescombe’s a lovely village. I went there once for a wedding.’
‘I’m sure it is …’
‘We should at least go and take a look.’
All Max’s objections – he’d never taught in a state school, the pay was awful, he was a rotten administrator – were swatted aside by his daughters like so many pesky, insignificant flies.
‘You should have made head years ago, but you never pushed for it. And where better to make a difference than in a state school? Why should the wealthy kids get all the good teachers? Anyway, St Hilda’s is a charter school so there won’t be that much admin. The governors run it, and they obviously like you and your methods. You’ll have free rein.’
Little by little, Max had been worn down. Then he’d come to Fittlescombe, and walked into the cottage that May and Rosie had already found for him online. Half the size of his present house, Willow Cottage was utterly charming with its flagstone floors, open fires and enchanting sloping garden leading down to the river.
‘Private fishing rights, dad,’ May said with a wink. ‘And you wouldn’t need a mortgage.’
So Max took the job of headmaster at St Hilda’s, more because he lacked the energy to fight than for any positive reason. Now, nearly five months later, things were very different. He was very different. Revived and energized professionally in a way he wouldn’t have believed possible a year ago, he’d already had a profound impact at the school. Not everybody loved his old-fashioned methods – desks in rows, teacher at the front, blackboards and chalk and weekly tests on everything from spelling to times tables to French verbs. But the OFSTED report in March had given the school a glowing review, and if the current Year Six performed as well in their SATs as they had in the Easter mock exams, St Hilda’s had every chance of topping the West Sussex league tables. Quite an achievement for a four-room village primary school with a tiny budget and over thirty children to a class.
But it wasn’t only the school that had transformed Max Bingley. Day by day, week by week, the village of Fittlescombe had worked its magic on him, drawing him in and making him one of their own. The community was friendly, but it went far beyond that. It was the place itself, the solid stone walls of Willow Cottage, the church with its yew hedges and ancient tombs, the houses and shops squeezed together along the high street, like the last line of resistance against all that was ugly and vulgar and painful in this modern world. And then, of course, there were the Downs, surrounding Fittlescombe like protective giants, as vivid green as wet seaweed and as softly undulating as feather pillows. Max walked, and fished, and drank in the beauty of his new home like a humming bird gorging on nectar. And although his daughters despaired over the state of his cottage, and his utter lack of interest in painting a wall or hanging a picture, or even curtains, the truth was that the move to Fittlescombe had brought Max Bingley back to life.
At the end of the High Street he turned left, along the lane that led to the bottom of Furlings’ drive. Everybody in the village knew that a family of rich Australians had moved into the big house, the first non Flint-Hamiltons to live there in three centuries. Max Bingley had been surprised but delighted to learn that the new owners intended to send their daughter to the village school. Typically families with that sort of money sent their little darlings off to prestigious prep schools, like the one where Max had spent most of his career. Then again, Australians were supposed to be more down to earth and egalitarian by nature, weren’t they? Perhaps the Cranleys were champagne socialists? Either way, Max wasn’t above buttering up St Hilda’s new, mega-rich parents in the hope of a future donation to the school. He’d only been there a term and a half himself, but he already had a wish list for St Hilda’s as long as both his arms. More teaching assistants would be a start. And a central heating system that stood at least a fighting chance of seeing them through the next winter.
Straightening his tweed jacket, he headed purposefully up the long, bumpy drive.
‘Jason? Have you seen those cushions? They were in the big box. The one from the General Trading Company. Jason!’
Angela Cranley ran an exhausted hand through her hair. Brett was coming home tonight, for the first time. Home. It was funny how quickly Angela had come to think of Furlings in those terms. But nothing, nothing, was ready. The twin Knole sofas she’d ordered from Peter Jones had been the wrong colour and had had to go back. Her and Brett’s bed, shipped over from Sydney at Brett’s insistence because it was the most comfortable bed in the world, had been damaged in transit and now sat in the master suite with a huge crack in its antique mahogany headboard. The food order from Ocado had arrived, but the bloody people in Lewes had made a bunch of substitutions, including swapping out the seabass Angela had planned for Brett’s welcome-home supper with cod. Brett hated cod. And now the cushions – four large, down-stuffed squares of hand-embroidered Belgian lace, designed to cover the dreaded headboard crack – appeared to have gone missing in action.
To top it all off, Mrs Worsley had been called away to a family emergency, something to do with her sister and a boiler (Angela had only been half listening), and was not due back until tea time, only a few hours before Brett walked through the door. Which left Jason, who’d been in a world of his own these past few days, as Angela’s sole helper. (Unless you counted Logan who, last time Angela had seen her, had been painting her toenails in rainbow stripes with a packet of felt tip pens on the kitchen floor.) Now Jason, too, was gone.
Perhaps my son and four Belgian lace cushions are together somewhere, knocking back sour apple martinis and enjoying themselves while I lose my mind? Angela thought hysterically. She’d been pacing the library like a madwoman for the last five minutes, as if a two-by-three-foot crate from the General Trading Company were going to magically materialize before her eyes, simply because she remembered leaving it there yesterday.
The ringing doorbell did nothing to calm her jarred nerves.
‘Coming!’
Running into the hall, she collided with Jason, still in his pyjamas and looking as if he hadn’t slept a wink. Insomnia was one of the worst parts of depression, but Angela was too frazzled to offer much sympathy this morning.
‘Where have you been?’ she wailed. ‘I need you.’
‘In bed. Sorry.’
‘Have you seen the new cushions? They were in that big box …’
‘They’re in your dressing room. Mrs Worsley carried them up last night, remember?’
Clearly, Angela didn’t remember. She hadn’t felt this stressed since the day that horrendous Tricia woman showed up at the house in Sydney and announced, cool as a cucumber, that she and Brett were ‘madly in love’. The doorbell rang again.
‘Yes, yes! I’m coming. Give me a chance, for God’s sake.’
She pulled open the door, unaware of quite how deeply she was frowning, or how far her voice had carried.
‘I’m s-so sorry,’ the man on the doorstep stammered. ‘I do apologize. I’ve come at a bad time.’
The man was older, maybe a decade older than Brett, with a fan of wrinkles around each eye, but he wasn’t unattractive. Tall, and still only partially grey, with a slightly military bearing and a kind, intelligent face, he looked quintessentially English in his tweed jacket and bottle-green corduroy trousers. Angela could see at once that she’d embarrassed him by being so unwelcoming.
‘Not at all. God, please. I’m sorry. What must you think of me? I’m not normally so rude. Or so scruffy.’ She looked down at her crumpled jeans, stained at the knees with wood polish, and at the chipped nail enamel on her bare feet, and blushed what she knew to be a perfectly hideous tomato-red. ‘How can I help?’
She’s not at all what I expected, thought Max Bingley. He’d imagined diamonds and perfectly coiffed hair and a fleet of servants answering the door, not a harassed housewife with bags under her eyes dressed like a charwoman. Perhaps the Cranleys were not as well off as local gossip suggested?
‘Max Bingley.’ He proffered his hand. ‘I’m the new headmaster at St Hilda’s, the primary school in the village. I understand your daughter will be joining us next term?’
‘You’re Logan’s headmaster? Oh, crap.’ The words were out of her mouth before she knew she’d said them. Angela’s colour deepened. ‘I can’t believe I just said that out loud! I am soooo sorry.’
Max laughed. Her discomfiture clearly amused him.
‘That’s quite all right, Mrs Cranley. I promise I won’t be sending you to my office. Or your daughter. Not yet, anyway. What did you say her name was?’
‘Logan,’ said Angela, smoothing down her dishevelled hair.
Max resisted the urge to say ‘like the berry?’ and merely smiled politely.
‘We have a son too. Jason. But he’s twenty so I doubt you’re going to want him in your classroom, ha ha ha ha!’
What’s wrong with me? thought Angela. Why am I babbling away like a lunatic?
‘No. Quite so.’ Max shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. This was the moment when he’d expected her to invite him inside for a cup of tea, or at least to ask a few polite questions about the school. Instead she just stood in the doorway looking flustered. I shouldn’t have come. I should have waited to meet her at school like everybody else. ‘Well, I won’t keep you. I just wanted to say welcome and I look forward to meeting … Logan.’
He turned the word over in his mouth as if it were some strange fruit he’d never tasted before. There weren’t too many Logans to the pound in Fittlescombe. Or in England, come to that.
‘Right, well. I look forward to seeing you both at school,’ Max finished awkwardly. ‘Goodbye!’
He smiled and gave a cheery wave, but it had clearly been an embarrassing encounter for both of them.
Angela walked back into the hall, closing the front door behind her. ‘I just made a total dick of myself in front of the village headmaster,’ she told Jason.
‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ said Jason, not looking up from the box of books he was unpacking.
‘I did. I said “crap”.’
Jason smiled. ‘I reckon he’ll recover, Mum. Crap’s not that bad. It’s not even a real swear word.’
‘It fucking well is,’ said Angela. They both giggled.
‘You need to chill out, you know,’ said Jason. ‘It’s only Dad coming home. It’s not the pope.’
‘I know,’ Angela sighed. ‘But I promised him the house would be ready and it’s a bloody disaster.’
Jason hugged his mother. He hated to hear the fear in her voice. But the truth was, Angela was afraid of Brett. They all were. Not physically afraid. But afraid of his disapproval, his censure, his disappointment. Brett Cranley was a bully.
So what if you promised him? Jason wanted to scream. What about all the promises he made to you, and didn’t keep? Anyone would think you were the one who’d been unfaithful, not him. But he knew it would do no good.
‘The house is not a disaster. It’s beautiful. Dad’s gonna love it, you’ll see. Now go and have a bath and get changed.’
‘A bath? I can’t. The cushions …’
‘I’ll do the damn cushions. And I’ll unpack the rest of these boxes too,’ said Jason. ‘Please, go and take a chill pill before you hurt yourself. You’re no use to anyone in this state.’
Once she’d gone, reluctantly and only after leaving a barrage of instructions about what needed to be done in the next hour, Jason returned to unpacking. The few books the family had had shipped from Australia looked ridiculous in Furlings’ enormous library. Rory Flint-Hamilton had bequeathed his vast collection of Victorian first editions to Sussex University, so the endless shelves in the grand mahogany-panelled room were bare. Like the mouth of an old man who’s lost all his teeth, thought Jason. He couldn’t imagine how they were ever going to fill them.
Perhaps he could persuade his parents to turn it into a music room? The acoustics would be perfect for a Steinway grand piano. Jason’s father had never encouraged his music, partly because he considered it to be a useless attribute in a man, and partly because, as he told Jason brutally, ‘You’re not good enough, mate.’
In this latter observation, however, Brett was correct. Jason was a good, solid pianist, but he lacked the talent and flair to make it professionally, at concert-level. The idea that a person might want to play the piano for pleasure, without making any money from it, was anathema to Brett Cranley.
‘Why don’t you do something useful? Something you can make a living at?’ Brett would ask his son. Jason had long ago given up trying to reason with his dad. It would be like an eagle trying to communicate with a gorilla. Utterly futile.
The doorbell rang again. People were seriously social in this village. Jason hesitated – he was still in his pyjamas – but he knew if he didn’t get it, Angela would heave herself out of the bath like something out of The Kraken Wakes and run dripping down the stairs. She’d probably open the door stark naked, she was in such a bloody state about Dad and the house.
Skidding back into the hallway, sliding along in his socks like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, he opened the door.
‘Oh my goodness. Hello.’
The most beautiful woman Jason Cranley had ever seen stood before him, looking him up and down, curling her upper lip with a combination of amusement and disdain.
‘Do you know who I am?’
No, thought Jason. But suddenly, I want to. The girl was tall and slim, with a cascade of honey-blonde waves falling onto her shoulders and down her back. She was wearing tight jeans tucked into riding boots, a dark green cashmere sweater that clung unashamedly to her large, pert breasts, and aviator sunglasses that hid her eyes but could not conceal the chiselled beauty of her features. Her cheekbones looked as if they could cut through glass.
‘I’m Tatiana Flint-Hamilton,’ the goddess announced, without waiting for an answer. Just as well, as all Jason seemed able to do was to open and close his mouth like a guppy. ‘I’m here for my painting.’
Pushing past him, Tati strode into the hall. She’d both longingly anticipated and dreaded coming here today to face Furlings’ new owners. Or rather, to face the imposters who had, temporarily, appropriated her birthright. Tati would never, ever view the Cranleys as anything other than squatters, no matter how many pieces of paper they or their lawyers waved in front of her. This was her home. She had no intention of giving it up without a fight, and indeed had already engaged a solicitor to contest Rory’s will on her behalf.
She clung tight to her indignation now, as a tumult of emotions threatened to overwhelm her. Nostalgia. Grief. Regret. Ignoring Jason completely, she stormed off down the corridor, pushing open doors into rooms that were either bare or filled with strange, jarring, modern furniture. Other people’s furniture. Tati found herself fighting back tears. She’d stayed here herself only a few weeks ago for the fete, and it had still felt like home. She’d inhaled the smell of stone and wood, faintly infused with smoke from last winter’s fires, and run her fingers lovingly along the heavy, damask curtains in the drawing room. She used to like to hide behind those curtains as a child, eating Carlsbad plums she’d stolen from the pantry, much to Mrs Worsley’s fury. But now the curtains were gone and the house smelled of lavender and some Godawful room spray from The White Company. Like a bloody hotel!
Tatiana turned on Jason, who’d been following her around silently like a confused puppy since she arrived.
‘Where’s Mrs Worsley?’
She said it accusingly, as if Jason had kidnapped the housekeeper, or murdered her in her bed and concealed the body.
‘She took the day off.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. She never takes days off. To do what?’
‘Erm, I think her sister …’ He left the sentence hanging, both intimidated and enthralled by Tatiana’s beauty and her astonishing confidence. She hadn’t asked if she could come in, or even inquired as to his name. She’d simply swept past him, like a queen reclaiming her castle.
‘Is there anything I can help with? I’m Jason by the way.’
Tatiana deigned to remove her Ray-Bans. ‘Jason. How do you do? I would say it’s nice to meet you but, under the circumstances,’ she smiled thinly, ‘I won’t bother. When will Mrs Worsley be back?’
‘I’m back now.’
The disapproving Scottish voice that Tatiana knew as well as her own rang out behind her, filling the room that until a few months ago had been Rory Flint-Hamilton’s study.
‘What do you want, Tatiana?’
Tatiana looked at the housekeeper with narrowed eyes. She was certain the old witch must have known about the changes to her father’s will. She’d probably encouraged him. God knows she’d had enough opportunity to sow the seeds of doubt in Rory’s mind. Tati could hear her now:
‘It would be tragic to think of Furlings going to wrack and ruin.’
‘Poor Tatiana’s her own worst enemy. The last thing she needs is more cash in her hand.’
She probably thought Daddy would leave her something as a token of his appreciation. The sanctimonious, money-grubbing, scheming old shrew.
Underneath Tatiana’s anger there was love there, and a grudging respect for the woman who had practically raised her. But, as on Mrs Worsley’s side, the hurt feelings ran deep, with both women feeling let down and betrayed by the other.
Tatiana had insisted on staying at Furlings in the run-up to the fete, but Mrs Worsley clearly hadn’t wanted her there. Perhaps unsure of her status since Rory’s death, she had given in and allowed it anyway, despite her better judgement. But now, with the Cranleys safely installed, she obviously felt emboldened.
‘You know you shouldn’t be here,’ she chided.
‘I’ve come for Granny’s painting,’ Tatiana responded stiffly.
‘I see. Well, you know where to find it.’
‘Obviously.’
While the two women glared at one another, arms folded, the doorbell rang yet again.
What now? thought Jason, irritated to have to go back to the front door rather than stay and watch the standoff.
‘Can I help you?’
It was a man at the door this time, blond and stocky and with a disarmingly genuine smile.
‘Gabriel Baxter. We’re neighbours.’ Gabe offered Jason his hand. ‘Is your father at home?’
Just at that moment, Angela came downstairs. Fresh from the bath, with her still damp hair tied up in a bun, she looked younger than her forty-two years in a plain white Gap T-shirt and a pair of cut-off jeans. She wore no make-up and seemed fragile and tiny in her bare feet.
‘My husband’s still in London.’ She smiled at Gabe. Having made such a poor impression on Max Bingley, she was determined to be friendly to any other villagers who showed up on the doorstep. ‘We’re expecting him this evening. I’m Angela. Would you like a cup of tea?’
Tatiana, her painting tucked under one arm, marched back into the hallway. She was about to storm straight out but stopped in her tracks when she saw Gabe.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked rudely, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. Tatiana knew Gabe was one of the leading voices against her in the village. She also knew that when her father had been alive, Gabe had tried relentlessly to convince Rory to sell off parcels of Furlings’ land. She didn’t trust him an inch.
‘Just being neighbourly,’ lied Gabe. ‘How about you?’
I live here, Tati wanted to shout. It’s my fucking house. But she managed to restrain herself.
‘I’m collecting a painting. My grandmother’s portrait. One of the few pieces of my inheritance that wasn’t stolen from me,’ she added caustically. Belatedly catching sight of Angela, she introduced herself, extending the hand not holding the painting with regal disdain.
‘Tatiana Flint-Hamilton.’
‘Oh!’ Angela smiled warmly. ‘Hello. I didn’t know you were coming. I’m Angela. I’m so sorry about the mess. You should have called.’
‘Should I indeed?’ Tati’s voice quivered with resentment and hostility.
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Angela blushed. ‘I just meant …’
‘Don’t apologize,’ Gabe Baxter interjected. ‘It’s your house.’
Tati shot him a look that would have turned a lesser man to stone.
‘Besides, you’re quite right. Tatiana should have called.’
‘Don’t you have a ewe that needs lambing, Gabriel?’ sniped Tati. ‘Or an episode of The Archers to listen to? Gabriel’s terribly rustic,’ she added patronizingly to Angela and Jason. ‘A real local character. If you ask him nicely, I expect he’ll come round and do a spot of Morris dancing for you, won’t you, Gabriel? It’s really quite adorable.’
Gabe’s features hardened. He looked at his watch.
‘My goodness, is that the time? You’d best get home to your rented cottage, Tatiana. It’s almost coke-o’clock.’
Blushing scarlet, Tatiana pushed past him and stormed out, throwing the painting into the back seat of her Mini Cooper and driving off. Gabe Baxter followed swiftly after, promising to come back and call on Brett at the weekend.
Once the door closed behind him, Angela and Jason exchanged shocked glances.
‘Is everybody in Fittlescombe so … dramatic?’ Angela asked Mrs Worsley.
Or so attractive? thought Jason. Watching Gabe and Tatiana going at it was like watching a pair of peacocks fanning out their tails for battle. Terrifying but beautiful.
‘No ma’am,’ said Mrs Worsley with feeling. ‘I can assure you that most of your neighbours are quite normal, sane and friendly people. Miss Flint-Hamilton – Tatiana – I’m afraid she can bring out the worst in folk. Especially around here.’
Angela bit her lower lip anxiously. She’d already heard whispers in the village about Tatiana’s legal challenge to the will. Brett had assured her that the legacy was watertight, and Furlings was theirs. But having seen Tatiana in the flesh, Angela got the strong sense that Rory Flint-Hamilton’s daughter was a force to be reckoned with. Perhaps Brett had underestimated her?
‘You don’t think she plans to cause trouble, do you?’
She looked at Mrs Worsley nervously.
‘Unfortunately Mrs Cranley, Tatiana’s done nothing but cause trouble since the day she was born. And since she turned fifteen …’ She rolled her eyes heavenwards. ‘Her father was always too soft on her, bless his soul. Try not to worry, though,’ she added, noticing Angela’s tense expression. ‘She’s full of hot air about the will.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘Oh, yes. She would need the support of the whole village to be able to launch a challenge, and she certainly hasn’t got that. Even if she did, Mr Flint-Hamilton was a clever man, and a thorough one. These so-called loopholes are all in Tatiana’s head.’
‘I do hope so,’ said Angela.
The thought of packing everything up and returning to Sydney, Tricia and their old life now was more than she could bear.
Twenty minutes later, pushing open the stiff door of Greystones Farm, Tatiana collapsed on the ugly, brown sofa feeling exhausted and depressed.
It had been a pretty devastating two days.
Unable to afford a decent London lawyer, she’d retained a local, Chichester man, Raymond Baines of Baines, Bailey & Wilson. Their meeting yesterday had been less than Tati had hoped for.
‘To be perfectly honest with you, Miss Flint-Hamilton, I don’t believe you have a case.’
Short and bald, with thick, owlish glasses and a distinctly passive, mild-mannered, absolute-opposite-of-a-go-getter-lawyer demeanour, Ray Baines looked at his would-be client steadily.
‘But I already have half the village behind me,’ Tati protested. ‘The tide of local opinion is definitely turning. Nobody wants some upstart Australian installed at Furlings. I made good headway running the fete committee, and by the time it comes to court I’m sure I can—’
‘It won’t matter,’ Raymond Baines cut her off, not unkindly. ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you.’
‘Are you saying you are unable to act for me, Mr Baines?’ Masking her disappointment with anger, Tatiana bristled with aggression.
‘No, Miss Flint-Hamilton. I am able to act for you. And technically speaking you are correct. We could mount a challenge based on the premise that Furlings was subject to an ‘effective’ entailment which your father had no legal authority to break. However I am advising you that it is my legal opinion that such a challenge will fail. With or without local support.’
‘Yes, but you don’t know that. You only think it.’
‘I think it very strongly.’
Tatiana knew she was clutching at straws. But drowning as she was in a sea of shattered hopes, she had no choice but to clutch on regardless.
‘What are your fees, Mr Baines?’
Raymond Baines told her. The number was modest, a tiny fraction of what Tati’s godfather’s firm would have charged for the same service. But it would still represent a dent in Tati’s meagre savings that she could ill afford.
‘Savings’ was perhaps the wrong word for the few thousand pounds remaining in Tatiana’s bank account. Having split from Piers, her latest wealthy lover, and moved out of his Belgravia flat, Tatiana had taken the jewellery he’d given her, along with any other gifts from former paramours she suspected might be of value, and auctioned the lot at Christie’s. The resulting windfall had been enough to pay off her debts, rent Greystones for six months, and leave a modest sum to fund a legal battle with the Cranleys.
Unfortunately, she would need a lot more than a modest sum. At a minimum, she would need full access to the pittance of a trust fund her father had deigned to leave her. That would mean crawling cap-in-hand to St Hilda’s new headmaster, Harry Hotham’s replacement, to beg for a job. So far Tati’s pride had prevented her from availing herself of this much-needed source of funds. It was bad enough having to leave London and return to Fittlescombe, but that was a necessity. Ending it with Piers meant she’d lost the roof over her head, and rents in any part of London where she might actually want to live were astronomical. Still, if the court case dragged on as long as Raymond Baines seemed to think it might, the fact was she was going to need a job of some kind. And as the school job was the only one that unlocked her trusts, this was the obvious path to take.
The prospect terrified her. Tatiana Flint-Hamilton had never worked a day in her life. As for teaching, she wished she shared her godfather’s faith in her abilities. Or her father’s, for that matter. The simple truth was that she no more knew how to control a class full of children than she knew how to mill flour or discover a cure for cancer.
She’d hoped that going back to Furlings today and seeing the new owners installed there might revive her fighting spirit and boost her courage. Remind her that the fight was worth it. In fact, all it had done was make her desperately sad. The fact that the Cranley family seemed so nice and friendly, and so ensconced already, only made Tati feel worse. Mrs Worsley was already firmly on their side, defending their right to be there like the wretched dragon that she was. It didn’t seem to bother her in the least that Furlings might end up in the hands of a boy named Jason with a sister who, if local gossip was correct, appeared to have been named after a berry. Granny Flint-Hamilton would be rolling in her grave! As for Gabe Baxter, he was little more than a jumped-up farmhand himself. It was hardly any wonder that he was pro-the Cranleys, already hanging around Furlings like a bad smell. People like Gabe ran on envy the same way a car runs on petrol.
Shit-stirring little Bolshevik. I wonder what he’s after, exactly?
Getting up from the sofa, Tati wandered into the kitchen and put the kettle on, more for something to do than anything else. It was a long time since she’d felt so profoundly alone. Greystones, the farmhouse she’d rented, was simply furnished, almost to the point of sparseness, and Tati had brought nothing with her from London, beyond some bed sheets and a preposterously expensive couture wardrobe, wholly unsuitable for country life. Her shoe collection alone, more than fifty pairs of Jonathan Kelsey, Manolo Blahnik and Emma Hope stilettos in a rainbow of gleaming, candy colours, would have been enough for a deposit on a house like this one, if only she’d spent her money a little more wisely. Then again, she’d assumed she would always be rich. And why wouldn’t she? How was she supposed to know that her vengeful bloody father had been plotting to disinherit her all along, in some sort of macabre, sick joke from beyond the grave?
Having never put roots down anywhere other than Furlings, it had never occurred to Tati to acquire furniture or clocks or books or favourite cushions, the things that would have helped to turn a house like this into a home. She hated the poo-brown sofas, and the incongruously modern, sixties-style Ikea plastic chairs around the dining-room table. As for her landlady’s rugs, they were so vile – swirly affairs in orange and lime green and other colours that had no place in a beautiful, Grade II-listed Sussex hall house – that Tati had rolled them all up on the day she’d arrived and stacked them en masse in the back of the garage. The original flagstones and wide-beamed oak floors beneath were infinitely preferable. But without a single rug of her own to warm the place up a bit, the overall effect was one of bareness. Stark and barren, like a tree stripped of its leaves after a storm.
The kettle switched itself off with a click, the steam from its spout fogging up the kitchen window. Tatiana wiped the glass clean with her sleeve and looked out into the garden. It was a stunning day, blue-skied and clear, like the summers of her childhood. Greystones Farm was really little more than a cottage on the outskirts of Fittlescombe, but its garden was enormous, its various sections – rose garden, orchard, vegetable patch and lawn – tumbling into one another willy-nilly, as each exploded and overflowed with colour and scent and fruit and life. There must have been a planting plan once, a design. Tatiana could see where the crumbling walls and overgrown beech hedges had once delineated and organized more than an acre of space. But now, untended, other than a weekly lawn-mowing by old Mr Dryer from the village, the garden was a joyously jumbled eruption of blossoms and greenery. Gazing out at it, watching a rabbit skip about in the white carpet of fallen apple blossom, even Tatiana’s spirits lifted a little. Making herself a cup of Earl Grey and two slices of toast and honey, she pushed open the back door and wandered outside.
Could I be happy here? She wondered, savouring the deliciously sweet, buttery toast as she strolled through a towering row of hollyhocks. Tati hadn’t lived in the countryside, or spent more than a week at a stretch here, since her childhood. And those weeks had always been spent at Furlings, riding her beloved horse, Flint.
There were times when Tati thought she missed Flint even more than she missed her father. The grey stallion was a former racehorse, and had been a wildly extravagant tenth birthday present from Rory Flint-Hamilton to his daughter. Mrs Worsley had disapproved from the start, but Tatiana would never forget that magical day. Rory leading her, blindfold, around to the stable yard and telling her to open her eyes as Flint pranced majestically out of his horsebox.
‘For you, my darling. What do you think?’
‘Oh, Daddy!’ Tati had gasped, fighting back tears of joy. ‘He’s beautiful. He’s so beautiful! Is he really mine?’
‘All yours, my angel. You deserve him.’
Memories of that day still brought Tati to tears. Perhaps because it represented a time before it all went wrong? A time when her father adored her unconditionally. A time before she’d disappointed him. Before she grew up.
Six years later, Flint had also been the cause of one of their worst-ever rows, a terrible turning point in their relationship. Blind drunk after breaking into Furlings’ wine cellar and stealing Rory’s Pierre Ferrand 1972 Vintage Cognac, Tati had ridden Flint bareback up to the main A27 road. Terrified by a passing lorry, the stallion had bolted into a nearby field, badly injuring his right foreleg.
‘How could you be so irresponsible!’ Rory had chastised her the next day. The vet was still not sure whether or not Flint would be permanently lame.
Tati, severely hungover and secretly riddled with guilt, had lashed out defiantly, refusing to apologize. ‘He’s my horse. I can do what I want with him.’
‘He could have been killed, Tatiana. You both could have been killed.’
‘So? It’s my life. I can do what I want with that as well,’ Tati snarled at her father before throwing up violently all over the tack-room floor.
Looking back now she couldn’t for the life of her remember what she had been so angry about. She only remembered that she was angry, and out of control, and that somewhere deep down, even back then, she knew it.
Standing in the garden at Greystones Farm, she wondered whether that episode with Flint had been the turning point. The horse had recovered and been sold, and Tatiana pretended not to care. But losing Flint had marked the end of an era.
And now I’ve lost Furlings, too.
It was Furlings that had brought her back to Fittlescombe. The house itself had always been the draw. It was the house that kept calling to her, through all the later dramas and distractions of her adult life.
Now, banished from Furlings, and with her former London party life gone up in ashes and smoke behind her, she found she was noticing Fittlescombe village and its glorious surroundings almost for the first time. This garden, for example: humble and gone to seed, a far cry from the formal grandeur of Furlings, was equally idyllic in its own way. So were the rolling chalk giants behind it, and the lane leading down from Greystone’s front gate to Fittlescombe High Street with its shops and church and green and wisteria-covered pubs. It was all beautiful. A wonderland, really. Tati couldn’t imagine what had prevented her from seeing it before.
But as time passed and she meandered through Greystones’ garden, Tati’s heart began to harden. Wonderland indeed. Get a grip. You’re not some tourist on a sodding walking holiday, she told herself sternly. You’re here to get Furlings back. If she lost sight of that purpose, that goal, there would be nothing left at all. No point to her life. No identity. No future. No hold on the past.
She shivered. It was cold, and getting dark. How long had she been out here, walking and thinking? Too long, clearly.
Inside the house she turned on the central heating and all the lights, forgetting the expense for once in her dire need for some cheer. What else did she want? Noise. Something mindless. She turned on the television and flipped channels, settling for Kelly Osbourne on Fashion Police poking fun at celebrities’ outfits. It didn’t get any shallower or more distracting than that. Finally, she opened the larder cupboard and pulled out a packet of Pringles and a bottle of cheap red wine, liberally filling glass after glass as she ate and watched, watched and ate, pushing all deeper considerations out of her head.
By the time she thought she heard the doorbell ring, Tati was in a warm, alcohol-induced glow. The process of deciding definitively that the bell had – indeed – rung, standing up, brushing the Pringles crumbs off her jeans and weaving her way unsteadily to the door took another few minutes, by which time the caller had gone. Leaning on the porch step in the darkness, however, was a tightly bubble-wrapped package.
Pulling it inside, Tati closed the door and ran to the kitchen for scissors. With drunken abandon she sliced away at the plastic wrapping, finally wrenching the contents free with her hands. It was a set of miniatures, tiny, intricately painted portraits of Tati’s grandmother Peg and her three siblings. Of course! She’d completely forgotten that her father had left her these too. Perhaps because, unlike the large Sutherland portrait of Peg, they weren’t particularly valuable. Not that Tati had any intention of selling any of them.
Tati turned each of the miniatures over in her hands. Granny, Uncle John and the two older sisters, Maud and Helen, whom she never knew. For a moment she thought it might be Mrs Worsley who had sent them in a moment of forgiveness. But the note was from Angela Cranley, who realized she’d forgotten them and had them sent over. Even Tati had to admit that that was kind and thoughtful. She tried not to resent it as she propped each of the tiny pictures up along the kitchen countertop. Picking up the large painting, she set it beside them, studying it closely for the first time.
There was her grandmother Peg, a young girl of twenty-one in the portrait but with the same sharp, knowing eyes she’d had as an old woman, and that Tati remembered so vividly from her own early childhood, in the years when her mother had still been alive. Peggy was Tati’s mother’s mother, but the two women hadn’t been remotely physically alike. Tatiana’s own mother, Vicky, was all softness and curves, a round, gentle loving woman, as welcoming as a feather bed or a favourite cushion. Peggy, by contrast, was intelligent and cynical, a tall, slender person of angular proportions and gimlet stares, rarely seen without a strong French cigarette in one hand and a tumbler of whisky in the other. Much more like me, thought Tati.
Sinking down into one of the ugly plastic dining chairs, Tati gazed at the painting for a long, long time. Her grandmother would have been horrified to see a family of Australians installed at Furlings, of that Tati felt sure. She was less sure as to whom Granny Peggy would have blamed for the situation: Rory, for changing his will? Or her, Tati, for driving him to it?
It doesn’t matter anyway. She’s dead. They’re all dead except for me. Peggy and her siblings. Mum and Dad. I’m the last. I’m the living. It’s what I think that matters.
She didn’t realize until hours later, when she got up to go to bed, that her face was wet with tears.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_f2e3b9fc-e836-5918-a7b5-692d7d0d0f58)
Angela Cranley tied the silk belt of her kimono robe loosely around her waist and smiled down at her husband.
‘Come back to bed,’ growled Brett, reaching for her hand and pulling her towards him.
‘I can’t. You know I can’t,’ giggled Angela. ‘It’s Logan’s first day at school this morning.’
As always after they’d made love there was a glow about her. Brett loved his wife the most like this, with her tousled hair and flushed cheeks and that smile that said more about her love for him than words ever could. Thank God he’d left Sydney and that bitch Tricia! He didn’t know what he would do if he ever lost Ange.
It was three days since Brett had first arrived in Fittlescombe and walked through the front door of the house that was to be his home for the foreseeable future. All Angela’s anxieties about Furlings not being ready had been for nothing. Brett had instantly seen past the teething problems of the move and fallen almost as deeply in love with the house as he was with his wife and children. (Well, one of them, anyway. Jason still seemed miserable and distracted, but then that was becoming a permanent state of affairs with him.) Brett had seen numerous images of Furlings online, of course, so he’d already known the house was a beauty. But this was one of those rare cases where reality had trounced anticipation. Brett Cranley had grown used to having lovely things, to buying whatever he wanted and designing his life to order. Despite this, ever since he’d learned of Rory Flint-Hamilton’s will and seen those first pictures, Furlings had seduced him. It was a bit like having an arranged marriage and then discovering your bride was a supermodel.
He noticed that Angela had been nervous at dinner that first night, but he put it down to the house call she’d received earlier in the day from old man Flint-Hamilton’s daughter. Apparently Tatiana was threatening to challenge the will.
‘She seemed awfully determined about it,’ Angela said, refilling Brett’s wine glass and re-folding his napkin like an over-attentive Geisha. ‘She’s clearly heartbroken about losing the house.’
‘I don’t give a shit,’ Brett said brutally. ‘She had no right turning up here unannounced and worrying you like that.’
Angela didn’t say that her only real worry had been how Brett would take the news. Her husband doled out law suits the way that other people sent out Christmas cards. She couldn’t face beginning their new life in this idyllic village under a cloud of conflict and rancour.
‘She lost the house because of her own shitty behaviour. Rory’s letter of wishes made that very clear. She’s no one to blame but herself. As for challenging the will,’ he drained his wineglass, throwing the burgundy liquid down his throat angrily, like a man trying to put out a fire, ‘she hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell. Forget her.’
In her relief that Brett was happy, and that they were going to stay here, Angela had forgotten Tati. She’d sleep-walked through the last two days in a blind stupor of contentment, helping Mrs Worsley sew name tapes into Logan’s uniform and ordering expensive lingerie online to surprise Brett, who was always trying to get her into negligees and stockings, usually with no success.
‘Jason can take Logan to school,’ Brett said now, refusing to release Angela. Slipping one hand beneath her kimono he cupped her left breast, simultaneously kissing her ear and neck as he dragged her back beneath the covers.
‘He can’t,’ Angela protested half-heartedly, her lips finding her husband’s as she kissed him back. ‘Not on the first day. She’ll be nervous.’
‘Logan?’ laughed Brett. ‘Nervous? Please. She’ll be eating those poor teachers alive. That kid’s got more confidence than Muhammad Ali on steroids.’
It was true. Logan took after her father in that regard, as in every other.
‘I have to take her, darling.’ Angela smiled. ‘Jase can pick her up this afternoon. The school’s only down the lane, I’ll be back by nine.’
‘Just make sure you are,’ said Brett, his voice thick with desire as he reluctantly released her. ‘I don’t like being kept waiting.’
‘I don’t like being kept waiting.’
Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s cut-glass voice ricocheted off the walls of St Hilda’s school office like a shower of diamond-tipped bullets. It was three o’clock in the afternoon on the first day back after half-term. With only half an hour until the bell went, the school office was calm and quiet for the first time all day. Or rather it was until Tati walked in.
‘How long is he going to be?’
‘Mr Bingley’s exceptionally busy this afternoon,’ said the school secretary tersely. It had been a long and trying day. The last thing she needed was attitude from Fittlescombe’s self-appointed Lady Muck.
‘Yes, well so am I,’ lied Tati.
She realized she was being obnoxious and that her rudeness wasn’t helping matters. But her nerves were out of control. It had taken all of her reserves of courage to steel herself to come here today in the first place, to swallow her pride and ask for the job that her father had arranged for her before he died.
But Rory had been dealing with Harry Hotham. Harry had known Tati all her life. He’d taught her as a child and flirted with her gently but incorrigibly as she blossomed into womanhood. Harry would have adored the tight-fitting Gucci skirt suit and vertiginous Jimmy Choo heels she’d chosen for today’s interview. But suddenly Tati felt nervous that the new man, Bingley, might not be so appreciative. With her long hair cascading down her back like a river of honey and her wide, pale pink lips glistening with Mac gloss like two delicious strips of candy, her look did not scream ‘village schoolmistress’.
Not that it mattered what she wore if the new headmaster couldn’t even be bothered to see her.
‘This is ridiculous.’ Snatching up her Chanel quilted handbag, Tati headed for the door. If she hurried she’d miss the first of the parents arriving to collect their little darlings and be spared the embarrassment of being seen loitering around a primary school as if dressed for a Vogue cover shoot. ‘Tell Mr Bingley I’ll call to reschedule.’
But just as she pushed open the double doors, Max Bingley emerged from his office. ‘Miss Flint-Hamilton? Do come in. I’ve only got a few minutes but I can see you now if it’s quick.’
Tati hesitated, wildly unsure of herself and feeling particularly foolish in her teetery heels. Max Bingley was younger than Harry Hotham but he had far more gravitas, and none of Harry’s playful twinkle in his eye. With his military bearing and craggy but handsome face, he radiated authority like a star radiates heat. In one sentence he had successfully asserted his dominance over Tati and taken complete control of the situation, a state of affairs that Tati was neither used to, nor enjoyed.
‘I … erm … all right,’ she stammered, following him back into his room and sitting meekly in the chair that he indicated.
‘How can I help?’ Max asked. His tone was friendly but brisk.
‘I … well. It’s about the job,’ Tati began uncertainly.
Max raised an eyebrow. ‘What job?’
‘Well, my father … you see, he and Harry Hotham …’ Tati blushed. What on earth was she doing here? The last thing she wanted to do was get into the ins-and-outs of her father’s will with this complete stranger, some second-rate schoolteacher from who knows where. She took a deep breath.
‘Harry Hotham was a friend of my family,’ she blurted. ‘My father and he were keen that I should teach at the school. But then I learned Harry had retired.’
Max Bingley frowned. ‘I see. Are you a qualified teacher?’ He looked Tati up and down with what she took to be a combination of curiosity and distaste.
‘Well, no. Not exactly. I’m a …’ Tati searched for a word to describe herself. ‘Socialite’ made her sound vacuous. ‘Heiress’, sadly, was no longer accurate. She cleared her throat. ‘I did train as a teacher.’
‘But you never qualified?’
‘No.’
‘Have you ever worked in a school?’
‘Not until now.’
Tati smiled and flicked her hair alluringly.
Max Bingley’s frown deepened. ‘So let me get this straight. You have no experience or qualifications. But my predecessor offered you a teaching position here?’
‘Yes,’ Tati said defiantly. ‘With respect, Mr Bingley, I hardly think that teaching a few five-year-olds is beyond me. We’re talking about the village primary school, not a fellowship at Oxford!’
She laughed, earning herself a withering glare from across the desk. The interview wasn’t going at all the way she’d hoped.
‘Look, it wasn’t a formal offer or anything,’ she backtracked hastily. ‘I don’t have a letter. Harry didn’t operate like that.’
‘Didn’t he indeed?’ muttered Max Bingley.
‘My father was keen I should use my training,’ Tati ploughed on. ‘Now due to … family circumstances, I find myself back in Fittlescombe for a while. So I thought, you know, why not?’
She leaned back languorously in her chair and re-crossed her legs, giving St Hilda’s new headmaster a front-row view of her perfectly toned upper thighs. He wasn’t so easily manipulated, but realizing the game she was trying to play, for a split second it was Max Bingley’s turn to feel flustered and unsure of himself. But he quickly regained his composure.
‘I’m afraid I can think of a number of reasons why not, Miss Flint-Hamilton, the main one being that the children of this village, of this school, deserve a decent education. I can’t parachute in a completely inexperienced teacher on the back of some vague offer that may or may not have been made to you by my predecessor! The very idea’s ridiculous.’
Tati got to her feet, stung. ‘There’s no “may or may not” about it,’ she said hotly. ‘Harry Hotham promised me a job. Do you think I’d be here otherwise?’
She looked so terribly upset that for a moment Max Bingley relented. He had two daughters of about the same age as Tatiana and flattered himself that he understood young women. Behind the cocky façade, Max realized, this girl was terrified. Terrified and embarrassed in equal measure.
‘Sit down,’ he said kindly. ‘I’m not doubting your word. I’m merely saying that it wouldn’t be right for me to give you a job as a teacher here, even if I had a position available. Which, as it happens, I don’t. Without experience, you wouldn’t succeed at it, Miss Flint-Hamilton. The children would suffer and so would you.’
Tati sat down, deflated. She was hardly in a position to argue with any of the above. On the other hand, if she were going to stay and fight for Furlings, she needed the money from her trust fund. And if she were going to eat, never mind buy any furniture for Greystones, she needed a salary. She needed this job.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, picking up her handbag. ‘I’ve clearly wasted both of our time.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Max. ‘If you’re seriously interested in teaching and would like to gain some experience, I might consider taking you on as a classroom assistant.’
Tati brightened. Classroom assistant. Would the trustees go for that?
‘You’d have to do a three-month trial first, so I could assess your suitability for the job.’
‘A trial?’ Tati frowned.
‘Yes. Unpaid, although we’d cover your basic expenses.’
‘Unpaid?’ There was no disguising her outrage now. ‘Thank you, Mr Bingley, but if I’d wanted to volunteer my time I’d have gone directly to Oxfam. No doubt I’ll see you around the village.’ And with that she stormed out, slamming Max Bingley’s office door shut, the smell of burning olive branches lingering in the air behind her.
The bell must have rung while she and Max were talking. Outside the playground was thronged with overexcited children and weary mothers, rolling their eyes at one another as lunchboxes, backpacks and discarded items of uniform were thrust into their outstretched arms.
Blinded with rage, at herself as much as anyone, and desperate to get out of there, Tati stumbled in her high-heeled shoes and careered into one of the fathers. Dropping her Chanel bag onto the asphalt she looked on in horror as its contents spilled everywhere.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ she hissed through gritted teeth.
A stunningly pretty ten-year-old girl, resplendent in what looked like a brand-new St Hilda’s summer uniform of red and white gingham dress, white ankle socks and straw boater with a red ribbon, gasped.
‘She said the “f” word!’ Did you hear her, Jase? She said the “f” word!’
Belatedly, Tati caught the Australian accent. Looking up she saw that the ‘father’ she had bumped into was not a father at all but Jason Cranley, the mute, freckled guy she’d met up at Furlings a few days ago. The little girl must be the daughter, Logan.
‘She’s got cigarettes in her bag!’ Logan squealed accusingly, picking up a half-empty packet of Marlboro reds and shaking them in Tati’s direction. ‘Don’t you know smoking is the most dumbest thing you can ever do? You can die! And you can get wrinkles.’
For some reason this last rejoinder made Tati laugh.
‘Wrinkles? My goodness. That sounds very serious.’
‘It is.’ Logan’s huge, dark eyes widened beneath her long lashes. She really was an extraordinarily pretty child, although it struck Tati that she looked nothing like either her mother or brother. ‘I’ll throw them in the bin for you if you like.’
Jason, who’d watched silently until now, finally found his voice. ‘You can’t throw other people’s property in the bin, Logan.’ Taking the cigarettes from his little sister, he handed them back to Tatiana.
‘No. But you can steal it from under their noses, apparently,’ Tati shot back waspishly, ‘by conning a dying man into leaving you his home.’
Jason blushed. ‘I’m n-n-not the enemy, you know,’ he stammered. ‘None of this will business has anything to do with me.’
‘No, well. I suppose not,’ Tati conceded grudgingly, appraising him more closely than she had done at Furlings a few days ago. He wasn’t bad-looking. But he was very much a boy rather than a man. There was a fragility about Jason Cranley, one might even say an innocence, that made one want to protect and mother him. Perhaps it was the freckles? Tati couldn’t imagine him having sex, although it was clear from the way he blushed and avoided eye contact that he was attracted to her.
‘I’d like it if we could be friends,’ he mumbled.
Tati considered this. She had no problem with Jason Cranley. Only with his greedy, conniving, inheritance-pilfering father. Besides, it might turn out to be useful to have a Cranley family member on her side. She may lack experience as a teacher, but when it came to pulling a young man’s heart strings, or fanning his sexual obsession, Tatiana Flint-Hamilton was very much an old hand. Jason could be her ‘man on the inside’ at Furlings. If she were going to win this legal battle over the will, she would need all the help – and inside information – she could get.
‘Me too,’ she smiled. ‘I had a shitty day, that’s all. Of course we can be friends.’
Reaching out, she touched his arm in a conciliatory gesture and was gratified when Jason blushed as if he were on fire.
‘What was so shitty?’ Jason asked. In her sexy, expensive clothes, exuding glamour like a movie star or a royal princess, it was hard to imagine Tatiana’s days being anything other than gilded and wonderful.
‘Oh nothing.’ She waved a hand dismissively in the direction of the school buildings. ‘The new headmaster doesn’t think I’m capable of ascending to the dizzy heights of village schoolteacher. He wants me to audition to be some PGCE nark’s assistant. An “unpaid trial”, that’s what he offered me. Can you believe the nerve?’
Jason Cranley couldn’t. From his limited first impressions, Tatiana Flint-Hamilton seemed capable of absolutely anything. He certainly wouldn’t have the balls to cross her.
‘Anyway,’ Tati smiled, pulling a cigarette out of her packet ‘I’ll definitely be needing one of these to calm my nerves.’
‘No!’ Logan, who’d been watching this exchange between her brother and the very beautiful lady with interest, shook her finger up at Tati disapprovingly. ‘Wrinkles, remember?’
Tati shook her finger back and lit up. ‘Wrinkles Schminkles.’
To Jason Cranley’s delight, and the other parents’ slack-jawed astonishment, she winked at him as she sashayed out of the playground.
Back at Furlings, Brett Cranley was in the kitchen. Sitting at the table with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his arms folded, he was listening intently to his new neighbour, Gabriel Baxter.
‘They can’t be developed,’ Gabe was saying. ‘The whole valley’s an area of outstanding natural beauty. The only thing they’re good for is farming. And your yields – the estate’s yields – over the last ten years have been dismal.’
‘So why do you want them so badly?’ asked Brett. He liked the young farmer sitting opposite him. In jeans and an open-necked shirt, his naturally pale skin tanned the colour of just-cooked-toast from long summer days spent out in his fields, and with his blond hair flopping over his eyes messily like a handful of straw, Gabriel Baxter came across as honest, ambitious and direct. But Brett Cranley took nothing at face value when it came to business.
‘Because I’d do a better job at farming them,’ said Gabe bluntly. ‘Farming’s my business. It wasn’t Rory’s and it isn’t yours. Plus, they abut my land directly, so I could almost double my holdings and benefit from all those economies of scale.’
‘Why do you want to double your holdings?’ Brett asked.
Gabe looked puzzled. ‘Why not? Wouldn’t you?’
Brett smiled broadly. He liked this boy more and more.
‘I’ll think about it.’
Gabe was itching to close the deal. He’d wanted those fields for years, for all the reasons he’d told Brett, and because they were just so bloody pretty. He wouldn’t be happy till he’d nailed a new ‘Wraggsbottom Farm’ sign onto the gate at the bottom of the lower meadow. For the first time since he’d inherited the farm from his father, he could sense they were within reach. But this was his first meeting with Brett Cranley and he knew he mustn’t push too hard.
‘Thank you.’ Standing up he shook Brett’s hand. Just then the kitchen door opened and Logan came skipping through the door, with Jason trailing in her wake, carrying her schoolbag, blazer and straw hat like a put-upon courtier.
‘Have you met my kids?’ asked Brett, his eyes lighting up at the sight of his daughter, who looked exactly like him.
Gabe smiled at Jason. ‘I met your son.’
‘Oh yeah?’ said Brett, uninterested. ‘Well this is my baby girl.’ He pushed her forward proudly, as if she were a prize vegetable he’d just grown.
‘Hello,’ said Gabe.
Logan stared up at him, her dark eyes like saucers beneath her long, camel-like lashes. She didn’t think she’d ever seen such a handsome man in her life. He looked like a prince, or a knight, or a—
‘Say hello to Mr Baxter, Logie,’ Brett prompted. ‘She’s not normally shy,’ he added to Gabe. ‘I think she likes you.’
‘Daddy,’ Logan hissed, blushing vermilion.
‘Oh, come on, pumpkin,’ Brett ruffled her dark hair. ‘I’m only teasing you.’
Gabe said his goodbyes and left. Once he’d gone, Logan swiftly changed the subject. ‘Guess what?’ she asked Brett, making herself an orange squash that was practically neat syrup.
‘What?’
‘Jason’s got a girlfriend.’
Brett looked at his son, half amused and half amazed. ‘Have you? That was quick work. Who is it?’
‘It isn’t anyone. Stop being silly, Logie.’
‘She’s the most beautiful lady I’ve ever seen in my life,’ Logan gushed, between gulps of teeth-rotting orange squash, helping herself to a fistful of McVitie’s chocolate fingers from the jar. ‘She had very tight clothes on and long hair and big boobs. And she winked at Jason in the playground. Everyone saw her.’
‘Who knew the school run could be so exciting?’ said Brett. ‘I should have gone myself.’
He was playing it cool, but inside he was delighted. It had long bothered him that his son was so hopeless with the opposite sex. Brett viewed Jason’s shyness, like his on-and-off depression, as some sort of personal affront. It was almost as if the boy was deliberately asserting his complete ‘otherness’ to Brett and everything he stood for, throwing it in his father’s face: I don’t look like you, I don’t act like you, I don’t think like you. A gorgeous girlfriend – any girlfriend – would be a welcome development indeed.
‘So come on, Jase, spill the beans. Who is this mystery woman?’
‘There’s no mystery,’ muttered Jason, wishing the kitchen floor would open up and swallow him. How was it that his father always managed to take every good thing in his life, however small, and ruin it? ‘Logan’s talking about Tatiana Flint-Hamilton. I ran into her briefly at school, that’s all.’
Brett stiffened. ‘What was that scheming bitch doing at the school?’
‘She’s not a bitch,’ said Jason. ‘She’s actually quite nice once you get to know her.’
‘I’ve no intention of “getting to know her”. She’s already been round here, I gather, causing trouble and upsetting your mother. I won’t have that.’
Why? Because nobody’s allowed to upset Mum except you, you hypocrite? Jason thought darkly.
‘And I won’t have you dating her either,’ Brett ranted on.
‘For God’s sake, I am not dating her,’ said Jason, exasperated. ‘I barely know the girl.’
‘Logan said she winked at you.’
‘She did!’ Logan insisted through a mouthful of chocolate biscuit crumbs.
‘She was being friendly. Jesus.’
‘Winking isn’t friendly. It’s flirtatious. She’s up to something, and you’re too dumb to see it. You shouldn’t even be talking to her.’ Brett’s anger was building, like a steaming kettle about to sing. ‘Where’s your family loyalty?’
‘She is family, in case you’ve forgotten,’ Jason shot back. ‘We wouldn’t be standing here in her house if she weren’t.’
‘Furlings is not her house!’ Brett erupted.
Disturbed by all the shouting, Angela walked in. After spending the better part of the day in bed with Brett, she positively beamed with contentment. Until she saw the expression on her son’s face. Angela knew that look. Angry. Detached. Shut-down.
‘What on earth’s the matter?’
‘Ask him.’ Jason glowered at his father before storming out of the room.
‘Come back here!’ Brett roared. ‘Don’t you walk away from me, you little shit!’
‘Don’t say shit, Daddy,’ said Logan, utterly unperturbed. Knockdown drag-out fights between her father and brother were a daily occurrence. Stuffing more chocolate fingers into her pockets, she went up to her bedroom to think about Gabe Baxter in peace. She wondered if she could see his farm from here, and whether or not her binoculars had been unpacked yet.
Once she’d gone, Angela put a tentative hand on Brett’s arm. ‘What happened?’
Brett’s face was set like flint. ‘Apparently Jason and that Flint-Hamilton woman were all over each other outside the school gates this afternoon.’
Angela frowned. ‘That sounds highly unlikely. Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure she was there. Logan said she winked at Jason.’
‘Well, maybe she did. But I’m sure it was quite innocent.’ Angela could not imagine the poised, sophisticated, drop-dead gorgeous Tati in any sort of romantic entanglement with her cripplingly shy, depressive son. Much as she might like to. ‘Or maybe Logan made a mistake.’
‘She’s staying in the village, isn’t she? Tatiana?’
‘Yes. At Greystones Farm. Why?’
Brett picked up his car keys from the kitchen counter.
Angela looked alarmed. ‘You’re not going over there?’
‘Damn right I am.’
‘Oh darling please, don’t. What will you say?’
‘That I don’t want her sniffing around my son, upsetting my wife, or stalking my bloody daughter on her first day at school.’
Angela wrung her hands miserably. ‘You’re being ridiculous, Brett. If you go over there it’ll only stir up trouble, and you know it.’
But it was no use. Brett was already striding down the hall towards the front door. Angela stood and watched from the kitchen window as he jumped into the driver’s seat of his new Bentley Continental GT V8 and sped off down the drive like a maddened bull. He could fuel that car on testosterone alone, she thought sadly, as the gravel sprayed up into an angry arc behind him. Testosterone and rage.
Standing at the window she offered up a silent prayer.
Please, please, don’t let him start a war with Tatiana Flint-Hamilton.
Some sixth sense told her that Tatiana was every bit as angry and stubborn as Brett. Once begun, this was not a war that would be over by Christmas.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_433dad53-8fa8-5aec-8bcd-ee3d587fb9ce)
Tati lay back in a bath full of Badedas bubbles and inhaled deeply on her cigarette. Even now, a grown woman, half of the pleasure she derived from smoking in the bath was the knowledge of how vehemently both Mrs Worsley and her father would have disapproved of it.
‘Unladylike,’ Mrs Worsley would have called it. Rory would have said it was vulgar, or worse, ‘common’: the ultimate insult in Tati’s father’s book. What they had both failed to appreciate was the deep, profound sense of relaxation the combination of warm water and a shot of nicotine to the bloodstream had on the human body. Fuck yoga. This was the only way to de-stress. Better yet, it was guilt and hangover free, unlike red wine and Pringles …
Flicking ash into a horrid, fish-shaped soap dish on the ledge above the bath (her landlady’s taste really was abysmal; she must get around to putting more of her ghastly tat into boxes and out of sight), she reflected again on her interview with St Hilda’s new headmaster.
Max Bingley had rejected her. Worse, he had patronized her, humiliated her, treated her like a spoiled child who needed to be slapped down, taught a lesson. His voice in her head now made Tati’s stomach churn with shame:
‘I can’t parachute in a completely inexperienced teacher. The very idea’s ridiculous! I might consider taking you on as an assistant …’
How had her life come to this? How? This time last year she’d been sunning herself on a yacht in the Caribbean, enjoying a much-publicized dalliance with an Arab prince. By now the whole village would know that she’d come crawling to the sanctimonious Max Bingley today, begging for work, and been turned down. The humiliation was almost more than Tati could bear. She didn’t even have the luxury of not caring what the locals thought of her. She needed them and their good opinion now, more than ever.
As the bubbles and nicotine worked their combined magic, a small part of her – tiny – admitted the possibility that Max Bingley might, in fact, have been trying to help her this afternoon. That he’d thrown her a lifeline with the offer of a trial position when he really didn’t have to. That in reality it was she who had been rude and surly and entitled, not the other way around. But Tati squashed that part, snuffing it out ruthlessly. Letting it live would mean admitting weakness. That was something she could never do. Not even to herself. Not if she wanted to survive.
Be that as it may, and despite her wounded pride, she already knew that she would accept Bingley’s offer. The job might be unpaid, but without it her trustees would leave her penniless. Of course she could always find herself another rich boyfriend, as she had in the past. But in Tatiana’s experience, while men were more than happy to pay for clothes and trinkets and expensive suites in hotels, they were less likely to stump up for their paramours’ protracted legal battles. Especially when said battles had been consistently advised against by a veritable fleet of lawyers. When it came to fighting for Furlings, she was on her own.
Stubbing out her cigarette, she pulled herself up out of the bath and stood in front of the mirror. Clumps of bubbles stuck to her wet skin like cuckoo spit on a stem of sticky jack. Tendrils of wet hair escaped from the wide white linen hairband she always wore in the bath, coiling themselves into spring-like ringlets that kissed the top of her neck and shoulders. Naked and without make-up she looked younger than her 24 years, except for the green eyes that stared back at her, knowing and cynical beneath dark, wet lashes.
Tatiana was beautiful and she knew it. A small smile escaped her as she admired her reflection. But it soon turned to a shriek of terror. The figure of a man suddenly appeared behind her, looming ominously in the bathroom doorway.
‘Get out!’ Panic manifested itself as anger as Tati reached for the nearest heavy object – a solid pottery vase filled with plastic poppies that stood beneath the mirror – and hurled it at the intruder’s head. He ducked, narrowly missing being knocked out cold, then lunged forwards, grabbing Tati by the wrists.
‘Calm down. I’m not here to hurt you.’
Luckily for Tati her skin was still wet from the bath. With a quick twist of her arms she was able easily to escape his grip. Having no other weapons to hand, she lashed out wildly, kicking, scratching and biting, before finally aiming her left knee towards the man’s groin.
Unluckily, his reactions were as quick as her own. Turning to one side so that her knee collided with nothing more sensitive than his thigh bone, he advanced towards her, forcing her back against the bathroom wall. There he was easily able to pin her down, his weight and strength more than compensating for the lack of a firm grip as he pressed her against the plaster, waiting for her breathing to calm down and her struggling to cease.
‘Please stop screaming.’
‘Fuck off!’ Tati screeched. ‘There’s nothing here to steal, you arsehole!’
‘I’m not a burglar.’
‘I don’t care who you are. Get out of my fucking house!’
‘I’m Brett Cranley.’
It took a few seconds for this information to sink in.
Feeling Tati relax beneath him, Brett cautiously released her. ‘I’m sorry I frightened you. The front door was open. I called your name but there was no answer so I came in.’ Turning around he grabbed a towel, holding it out to Tatiana at arm’s length, waving it like a white flag.
‘Here. You’d better take this.’
Tati stood in front of him, quivering with rage. Brett felt his libido start to stir, like a roused lion. Stark naked, her perfect, high round breasts jutting out at him defiantly, Tatiana was quite simply magnificent, one of the most beautiful girls Brett had ever seen. And he’d seen quite a few. Slim but not skinny, her long legs tapered up perfectly into softly curving hips and waist, like the sides of a cello. A sleek, dark triangle of pubic hair, like the wet hide of a mink, nestled proudly beneath a perfectly flat stomach. Brett did like a woman with some hair down there. Back in the early nineties the explosion of bare, Brazilian-waxed pussies had been new and exciting. But these days it was so commonplace, he’d come to prefer the mystery of the more natural look. It showed confidence. Although not as much confidence as the way that Tatiana steadily met his gaze, acknowledging the hunger in it, taking the proffered towel slowly rather than jumping to grab it. Clearly she was not remotely embarrassed by her nakedness.
‘Get out of my house.’
Her voice was quiet now, and controlled, but there was no mistaking the anger in it.
‘Not yet. I need to talk to you,’ said Brett.
He knew he ought to leave but he was congenitally incapable of taking orders, especially from a woman. He fully expected Tati to lose it and start pushing him out the door, and/or calling the police. But to his surprise she merely said icily ‘Fine. Go downstairs and wait while I dress.’
Ten minutes later, perched uncomfortably on the ugly brown sofa in Tati’s sitting room, Brett began to wish he’d left when she’d asked him to. He’d made a complete balls-up of his first encounter with the Flint-Hamilton girl. Barging up the stairs uninvited had been a foolish thing to do. But he’d been so damn angry, and the open door had felt like an invitation. Now he was very much on the back foot, waiting around for Tatiana to grant him an audience like a nervous kid on a first date. Worse, he now very obviously owed her an apology, which was not the way he’d hoped to begin this evening’s tête-à-tête.
‘So, Mr Cranley. You want to talk.’
Tati came downstairs in a pair of chocolate brown corduroy trousers and an old, sludge-green sweater that looked bizarrely good on her. She was barefoot, her wet hair pulled back in a messy bun, and hadn’t bothered to put on make-up. It was a look that told Brett very clearly, ‘You are not important to me.’ A second jolt of desire surged through him, like the aftershock of a major earthquake.
‘Yes,’ he said gruffly. ‘I apologize for startling you earlier. It was stupid of me to barge in on you like that.’
‘Yes, it was. Not to mention illegal. But perhaps they don’t have breaking and entering in Australia? I daresay in a nation descended from convicts, one shouldn’t be surprised.’
Brett’s eyes narrowed. You arrogant little minx.
‘The door was open,’ he said coldly. ‘As for stupid, I guess you would know. Challenging your father’s will is downright moronic. You haven’t a prayer of getting Furlings back, you do realize that?’
‘Well, we’ll see, won’t we?’ Tati said brazenly. She knew she must not show weakness in front of this usurper. ‘You’ll find I’m not the only person in this village who wants you out, Mr Cranley.’
‘I don’t give a fuck what the village thinks. I won’t have you coming around my house upsetting my wife.’
‘It’s not your house,’ Tati hissed.
‘You can explain that to the police when I have you arrested for trespassing,’ said Brett.
‘You have me arrested?’ Tati laughed. ‘You just assaulted me, naked, in my own bathroom!’
‘Don’t be so melodramatic.’
He stood up and started wandering around the room, picking up random objects and examining them idly. In her shocked state up in the bathroom, Tati hadn’t got a good look at her enemy. Although clearly he’d got a very good look at her. Now, she examined Brett Cranley more closely. Her first thought was how much he looked like his daughter, or rather how much Logan looked like him. Man and girl both had the same dark eyes and blue-black hair, the same swarthy, pirate-like complexion. But whereas Logan was a slender, delicate little thing, Brett had the broad, stocky build of a cage fighter. Moving around Greystones’ drawing room now, he seemed too big for the space, like a bear stumbling around a tea room.
He’s not especially tall. But he has presence, thought Tati.
She’d witnessed the same effect before in countless other powerful, successful men, men who she’d delighted in seducing and bending to her will. Brett Cranley, she suspected, might prove a more difficult fish to catch. Not that she had the remotest interest in him romantically. All Tatiana wanted from her obnoxious third cousin was the deeds to her house. That and his handsome head on a platter.
Brett gave her a questioning look. ‘What are you doing here, Tatiana?’
She glared at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, why are you in this house? This village? You know damn well you’re never going to get Furlings back. Why don’t you go back to London, find some nice, rich schmuck to marry and live happily ever after? A girl like you could get a score of beautiful houses if she wanted to.’
‘I don’t want to,’ said Tati with feeling. ‘All I want is Furlings. Anyway, what do you mean “a girl like me”?’
Brett’s questions were the same ones she’d been asking herself less than half an hour ago. But she instantly bridled hearing them from him.
‘Oh, I think you know what I mean,’ Brett sneered. He had moved close to her now, too close. Tati could smell the faint, patchouli scent of his aftershave and feel the warmth of his breath on her neck. Before she knew what was happening, he had slipped one hand around the small of her back and begun gently stroking her bare skin beneath the tatty sweater, a gesture at once affectionate, erotic and breathtakingly presumptuous.
It was the latter that Tati reacted to, pushing him away violently.
Brett laughed. ‘Why so affronted? You’re a sexy girl and you know it.’
‘And you’re a revolting old lech, whether you know it or not. You don’t seriously think I’d be attracted to you?’
‘Oh that’s right, I forgot. You prefer boys now, don’t you? Like my son,’ Brett said archly, walking away. ‘Strange, that’s not what I read in the papers about you.’
‘I haven’t the remotest interest in you or your son,’ Tati insisted furiously. ‘All I want is my house back. And whether you like it or not, I’m going to get it.’
‘You’re out of your league,’ Brett said languidly. He was mocking her now, a cruel, amused smile playing on his thin lips as he pulled his car keys out of his pocket and tossed them from hand to hand. ‘Pretty girls like you should stick to what they’re good at.’
‘Oh really. And what’s that?’
‘Shopping and shagging. And looking decorative.’
‘That’s what your wife does, is it?’ said Tati, touching a nerve at last. ‘How proud you must be.’
Brett’s face darkened. ‘You stay away from my wife.’
‘I’ll be glad to. Just as long as you stay away from me. I’ll see you in court, Mr Cranley.’
Brett said nothing. He merely walked back to his car, laughing.
Once he’d gone, Tatiana stood frozen to the spot, too angry to breathe, let alone move.
Disgusting, arrogant, entitled, sexist pig!
I hate him.
I hate him more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my entire life.
It was a miracle that both the Cranley children had turned out so sweet. Clearly Angela Cranley must be quite a mother, far from the ‘decorative’ doll of her revolting husband’s imagination.
Conceited little shit.
Shopping and shagging indeed …
Tati had been determined to contest the will even before Brett Cranley showed up at her door. But now? Now she’d sell her own organs to get Furlings back if she had to. Brett Cranley was going to rue the day he underestimated Tatiana Flint-Hamilton.
Laura Baxter brushed her teeth and spat furiously into the basin.
‘I don’t know why you’re so angry,’ said Gabe. Lying on the bed in his boxer shorts in Wraggsbottom Farm’s beautiful, beamed master bedroom, he had a James Bond novel open in one hand and a packet of Maltesers in the other. It was a warm night and the lead-mullioned window beside the bed was open, revealing a glorious view of the valley, with the river Swell at its base and the Downs rolling away to the sea. Gabe had lived here since birth and loved his farm as if it were a person. Since marrying Laura he loved it even more, with all the promise it now held for the future. Their future.
‘I went to see a neighbour,’ he said, popping another Malteser into his mouth. ‘I wasn’t selling our first-born child to Pol Pot.’
‘We don’t have a first-born child,’ said Laura. ‘And we’re not likely to if you keep lying to me.’
She came back into the bedroom looking as furious as it was possible to look in a floral Laura Ashley nightdress covered in pale pink rosebuds.
‘I didn’t lie to you,’ said Gabe indignantly.
‘You went behind my back. It’s the same thing.’
‘It is not the same thing. Christ, what is wrong with trying to buy a few fields anyway?’
Throwing back the covers, Laura climbed into bed, punching the pillows as if she had a grudge against them. She hated it when Gabe was deliberately obtuse. Not to mention deceitful.
‘It is not “a few fields”. It’s hundreds of acres of land that we can’t afford. And that may not even be Brett Cranley’s to sell. You know as well as I do that his inheritance is disputed.’
‘All the more reason to buy now, while we’ve got the chance.’
Laura let out a stifled scream of frustration and turned out her bedside light. Pulling the covers around her like a shield, she pointedly turned her back on her husband.
Gabe was equally frustrated. Running the farm was his job. He didn’t tell Laura how to produce television programmes or write scripts. What gave her the right to meddle in his business decisions? On the other hand, he hated fighting with her. Putting down his book and sweets, he wrapped his arms around her stiff, angry body.
‘I love you,’ he whispered in her ear.
Laura didn’t move.
‘I know you want to know what they’re like,’ Gabe teased, slipping a warm rough hand under her nightdress and caressing her wonderful, full breasts. ‘The Cranleys.’
Despite herself, Laura moaned with pleasure. It was utterly infuriating, how good he was in bed.
‘I’ll tell you if you’re nice to me,’ Gabe whispered, his hands moving slowly down over her belly, his fingertips just skimming the soft fur between her legs. Unable to keep up her resistance any longer, Laura turned around and kissed him, luxuriating in the solid warmth of his body. God, he was beautiful.
‘Go on then, tell me,’ she said, releasing him at last. ‘What are they like?’
‘Ha!’ said Gabe. ‘So you do want to know. I knew it! You’re just a sad old village gossip, Mrs Baxter.’
‘What’s he like?’ asked Laura, ignoring him. ‘Brett Cranley.’
‘Actually, I liked him,’ said Gabe. ‘I mean, I can see how he could be seen as arrogant.’
Laura frowned. ‘In what way?’
‘He’s a big personality. Maybe even a bit of a bully. He obviously favours his daughter over his son, and the wife seems a bit afraid of him.’
Gabe told her about his brief encounter with Logan and Jason today, and about Angela’s nerves the first time they met.
‘He sounds vile,’ said Laura. ‘What on earth did you like about him?’
‘I don’t know, exactly,’ said Gabe, thinking. ‘He’s direct. Honest. I don’t think he’d cheat you in business.’
‘Well he certainly cheats in his private life,’ said Laura with feeling. ‘At least if the press coverage is anything to go by.’
‘Oh, yeah, but that’s different,’ said Gabe.
‘Why? Because it’s OK to cheat on women? Just as long as you’re honest with men, is that it?’
Laura felt her hackles rising again. She loved Gabe but sometimes he could be so … unreconstructed.
Gabe sighed. ‘Give it a rest, Germaine Greer. You asked, I answered. I liked him. Sorry if you and the rest of the village lynch mob have already decided he’s the Swell Valley’s answer to Vladimir Putin. But I do have the advantage of having actually met the guy.’
‘Well, bully for you. I hope the two of you will be very happy together,’ said Laura.
Turning away from her, Gabe turned off his own bedside light.
‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ he added defiantly. ‘I’m going to get him to sell those fields to me. So put that in your bra and burn it.’
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_2ec86a21-a724-5a0a-b95c-d0d0363bdaaf)
‘Have you seen that stack of marked Year Three homework anywhere? The robot sketches?’
Dylan Pritchard Jones ran a hand through his curly chestnut hair and scanned the mess that was his kitchen. Aside from the detritus of breakfast, almost every surface was covered with copies of Country Living, Elle Décor, Period Homes and every other conceivable variety of interiors magazine. Dylan’s wife, Maisie, was expecting their first child and had gone into a frenzy of what the pregnancy websites called ‘nesting’. Apparently this was a woman’s primitive urge to spend thousands of pounds on expensive Farrow & Ball paint and decorative antique rocking chairs. Dylan prayed it would soon pass. On an art teacher’s salary, it was not easy to make Maisie’s Homes & Gardens dreams come true.
‘Last I saw them they were upstairs on the landing.’ Maisie chewed grimly on a piece of dry toast. ‘I passed them on my way to the loo at about five a.m.’
Pregnancy had not been kind to Dylan’s young wife. Relentless morning sickness had turned Maisie’s former peaches and cream complexion an unattractive shade of greenish-grey. At only a few months gone she was already thirty pounds heavier than usual, and her legs were covered with revolting varicose veins that reminded Dylan of mould running through a slab of Stilton cheese. Apparently there were men who found their pregnant wives uniquely attractive and desirable. Dylan Pritchard Jones could only imagine that their wives looked more like expectant supermodels – lithe amazons with compact little bumps beneath their lululemon tank tops – and less like the swollen, exhausted figure of his own other half. He tried to be a patient and understanding husband. But he couldn’t help but count down the days till it was over, and prayed that Maisie intended to get her figure back quickly afterwards. His suggestion last week that she think about hiring a trainer had been met with what he felt was excessive frostiness.
‘Thanks, you’re an angel.’ Kissing her on the head, Dylan raced upstairs, grabbed the work and ran out to his car, a piece of peanut butter toast still clamped between his teeth. St Hilda’s art teacher was perennially late. It was part of his charm, along with his broad, boyish smile, twinkly, bright blue eyes, and the mop of curls that made him look years younger than his actual age of thirty-three, and that women had always found hugely attractive. Dylan Pritchard Jones enjoyed being the ‘cool’ teacher at St Hilda’s, the one whose classes the children actually looked forward to, and with whom all the pretty mothers flirted at parents’ evening. Yes, Fittlescombe’s primary school was a small pool. But Dylan was the prettiest fish in it, if not the biggest. He loved his life.
In the staff room at St Hilda’s, tempers were fraying. The Year Six SAT exams were less than a month away now, but the government had seen fit to choose this moment to dump an enormous amount of additional paperwork on its already overloaded state teachers. This morning’s staff meeting had been called to agree a consensus on whether or not Max Bingley should hire an additional administration person. Cuts would have to be made to pay for such a hire, so it was vital that all the departments be represented. The art department, as usual, was late.
‘We really can’t put this off any longer.’ Ella Bates, one of the two Year Six class teachers, voiced what the entire room was thinking. ‘If Dylan can’t be bothered to turn up for the vote, he doesn’t deserve a say in it.’
‘It’s not a matter of what he deserves,’ Max Bingley said calmly. ‘We need consensus, Ella.’
In Max’s long experience, all staff rooms were political snake pits, even in a tiny, tight-knit school like this one. It had been the same story at Gresham Manor, the private boys prep school in Hampshire where Max had spent most of his career, as head of History and, latterly, deputy head of the school.
Max Bingley had loved his job at Gresham Manor. He would never have taken the St Hilda’s headship had his beloved wife not died two years ago, plunging him into a deep depression. Susie Bingley had had a heart attack aged fifty-two, completely unexpectedly. She’d collapsed at the breakfast table one morning in front of Max’s eyes, keeled over like a skittle. By the time the ambulance arrived at Chichester Hospital she was already dead. Max had kept working. At only fifty-three – with a mortgage to pay, not to mention two daughters still at university – he didn’t have much choice. But without Susie, life had lost all meaning, all joy. He moved through his days at Gresham like a zombie, barely able to find the energy to get dressed in the mornings. The Fittlescombe headship offered a new start and a distraction. Max had taken it under pressure from his girls, but it had been the right decision.
Right, but not easy, either personally or professionally. When Max first arrived at St Hilda’s he’d been forced to cut back a lot of dead wood. Inevitably his decisions to fire certain people had angered some of the remaining staff. As had his hiring choices. The staff room was already divided into ‘Camp Hotham’, the old guard hired by his predecessor and championed by Ella Bates, a heavy-set mathematician in her late fifties with a whiskery moustache, brusque manner and penchant for pop socks that drew an unfortunate amount of attention to her wrinkly knees; and ‘Camp Bingley’, made up of the new teachers and those amongst the old who, like Dylan Pritchard Jones, approved of Max’s old-school teaching style and relentless focus on results. Even Camp Bingley, however, had been resentful of Max’s hiring of Tatiana Flint-Hamilton as an assistant teacher. The fact that Tati was unpaid did little to assuage the anger.
‘We don’t have time to waste training charity cases,’ was how Ella Bates had put it. ‘She’s a drain on resources.’
With the notable exception of Dylan, the other teachers all agreed. So far Max Bingley had held his ground: ‘If we do our jobs and train her properly she could be a vital addition to resources at a fractional cost,’ he argued. But, in truth, he too had doubts about the wisdom of bringing Tatiana on board, doubts made worse by the new administrative pressures they were under.
‘Sorry I’m late.’ Dylan breezed in, looking anything but sorry. Mrs Bates and the headmaster both gave him angry looks, but the rest of the (mostly female) staff swiftly melted beneath the warm glow of the famous Pritchard Jones smile.
‘Traffic,’ he grinned. ‘It was bumper to bumper on Mill Lane this morning.’
This was a joke. There was no traffic in Fittlescombe. Tatiana laughed loudly, then clapped a hand over her mouth when she realized that no one else was following suit. ‘Sorry.’
She’d made the mistake of inviting a girlfriend from her party days, Rita Babbington, down to Greystones for the night last night. Inevitably the two of them had begun reminiscing – Tati’s days and nights had been so unutterably boring recently, just talking about excitements past felt like a thrill – and Rita had demanded cocktails. Multiple home-made margaritas later – Tati might never have had to pay for a drink in her life, but she certainly knew how to make a world-class cocktail and after four lines of some truly spectacular cocaine that Rita had brought down with her ‘in case of emergency’, Tatiana had collapsed into bed with her heart and mind racing. She’d woken this morning with a dry mouth and a head that felt as if she’d spent the night with her skull wedged in a vice, tightened hourly by malevolent elves. It was a testament to her friendship with Dylan Pritchard Jones that he still had the capacity to make her laugh.
Not for the first time, Dylan reflected on how beautiful St Hilda’s new teaching assistant was, and how out of place such a stunning young creature looked in their grotty staff room. Although he did notice the shadows under Tatiana’s feline green eyes this morning. Clearly she’d had a lot more fun last night than he had.
The headmaster’s voice cut through his reverie. ‘Right. Now that we’re all here, a vote. To hire an additional PA for a year will cost us thirty thousand pounds. That’s money we don’t have. It would have to be funded out of a combination of cuts to nonessential classes – that’s art, music and games – and salary cuts. I don’t have all the numbers worked out yet. I just need to know if, in theory, this is something you’re open to or not. So. A show of hands please for making this hire.’
Nine hands, including Mrs Bates’s, went reluctantly up. Dylan Pritchard Jones’s did not. Nor did Orla O’Reilly’s, the reception teacher, or Tatiana’s.
‘I can’t afford a pay-cut,’ said Orla. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘And I don’t see art as nonessential,’ said Dylan. ‘I’m not sorry,’ he added, winking at Tatiana.
‘What about you, Tatiana?’ Max Bingley asked.
‘What?’ Sarah Yeardye, the Year Two teacher, failed to conceal her outrage. ‘You can’t seriously propose giving her a vote? She doesn’t teach here. None of this affects her.’
A chorus of angry ‘hear-hears!’ rang out around the room.
‘I assumed I didn’t have a vote,’ Tati said meekly.
‘Well you do,’ said Max. He believed in consulting his staff and gaining consensus where he could. But he was headmaster here. He wasn’t going to be dictated to by Miss Yeardye and Mrs Bates. He also suspected, rightly, that a lot of the antipathy towards Tati from the other teachers was rooted in nothing more worthy than old-fashioned envy. Before Tati came along, Sarah Yeardye had been widely acknowledged as the most attractive teacher at St Hilda’s, the one that all the fathers fancied. Now she was as good as invisible.
‘Yes or no?’
Surveying the sea of hostile faces, Tati locked on to Dylan Pritchard Jones’s encouraging smile.
‘No,’ she said boldly.
Fuck them all. They’re never going to like me, even if I vote yes. And Dylan could use the support.
‘That’s still nine to four in favour,’ said Ella Bates stridently.
‘Nine to five. I also vote no,’ said Max Bingley. ‘It’s an unnecessary expense.’
‘It is not unnecessary!’ Mrs Bates snapped.
Things looked set to deteriorate into a full-on slanging match until Sarah Yeardye piped up: ‘Why can’t Tatiana take on the extra paperwork?’
Everyone fell silent.
‘She’s a free resource we already have just sitting here,’ said Sarah.
The entire room brightened up at this suggestion. Even Max had to admit it was quite a good idea. Before long the chorus of ‘yes, why nots?’ was quite deafening.
‘Tatiana,’ Max asked. ‘Would you be willing?’
‘Of course,’ Tati said through gritted teeth. Bloody Sarah. That bitch had been out to get her since day one. ‘I mean, I may need some guidance …’
‘I’m afraid none of us has time for handholding,’ Ella Bates barked unkindly. ‘If you can’t fill in some simple administrative forms, then you’ve no business being here in the first place.’
Ella Bates’s chin was so whiskery and wart-ridden, she reminded Tati of a Roald Dahl character. Mrs Twit, perhaps. The fact that there was apparently a Mr Bates somewhere, or had been once, astounded her.
‘I have time,’ said Dylan, helping himself to coffee from the machine in the corner. ‘If Tati’s prepared to help me save the art programme for our children, the least I can do is give her some guidance.’
‘Marvellous.’ Max Bingley rubbed his hands together with satisfaction just as the bell went. ‘That’s settled then. Let’s get to class.’
‘Thanks,’ Tati said to Dylan as they all filed out.
‘What for?’ said Dylan. ‘You just saved my neck. All our necks, although those old clucks are too blind to see it.’
‘They hate me,’ Tati sighed.
‘No they don’t.’ Dylan put a friendly arm around her shoulders. ‘They hate change, that’s all. They’re set in their ways. And maybe just a wee bit jealous. Don’t let them get you down.’
Dylan dashed off to his art class while Tati headed to the library. On the rare occasions she was actually allowed to help with teaching, she felt flashes of happiness and confidence. But most of her days were spent on menial chores such as today’s, when she was scheduled to spend the morning re-cataloguing the school’s library books. It was a boring, mindless job. But it gave her much-needed time to think about her legal battle and the all-important next steps.
Tatiana’s challenge to her father’s will was due in court in September, only three months hence. Raymond Baines, Tati’s lawyer, had asked her to put together a dossier of all emails, letters and conversations in which Rory had alluded to her inheritance of Furlings. She was also supposed to be getting him detailed research on the estate’s history, particularly anything that might smack of an historic entailment; and a list of villagers prepared to attest to the fact that they understood the local manor would always be owned by a Flint-Hamilton and who were actively supporting Tati’s claim. So far she had about thirty definites on the list, including Mr and Mrs Preedy at the Village Stores, Danny Jenner, the publican at The Fox, who’d always fancied her, Harry Hotham, St Hilda’s ex-headmaster, and Lady Mitchelham, a prominent local magistrate. Will Nutley, Fittlescombe’s cricketing hero, was a highly probable, and a smattering of other families had agreed to help Tati in her fight to oust the Cranleys. She was touched by their support – she’d worked hard for it – but the case was still a long shot at best. Collating the documents her solicitor needed was a painstaking, time-consuming and frequently frustrating job, which was already monopolizing all Tatiana’s evenings and weekends. Just how she was supposed to fit in a boat-load of St Hilda’s paperwork on top of all that, she had no idea. But she had to try, or the money would stop dead. And it might help her win round some of the staff to add to her list of supporters.
So far her trustees had been as good as their word and released a monthly income to her as soon as she accepted this poxy unpaid job at the school. Tatiana’s father had what he wanted – for now. She was back in the village, working with children, keeping out of trouble.
But not for long, she told herself, pulling stacks of the Oxford Reading Tree down from the shelves and dumping them on one of the library tables for sorting. After September I’ll have my life back. First Furlings. Then all of the rest. This whole period will seem like a bad dream.
An image of Brett Cranley’s arrogant, taunting face popped into her mind, strengthening her resolve. This would be her first and last term at St Hilda’s, putting up with the backstabbing and bitchiness of Ella and Sarah and the rest of them.
Thank God for Dylan Pritchard Jones. Without his kindness and good humour, Tati wasn’t sure she could survive even that.
‘What the hell is this?’
Brett Cranley waved the presentation document in his son’s face furiously, as if it were a weapon. Which, in some ways, it was.
‘I put you in charge of this. I gave you more responsibility, which you said you wanted. And this is the best you can come up with? Jesus Christ, Jason. It’s embarrassing.’
Jason stared out of the window of his father’s London office, wishing he were somewhere else.
Had he said he wanted more responsibility? He certainly couldn’t remember doing so. It seemed most unlike him. Jason viewed coming to work in the family business the way that most people needing root-canal surgery viewed a trip to the dentist. As something deeply and profoundly unpleasant that could not be put off forever.
Brett’s office had great views across the Thames to Tower Bridge. All Brett’s offices had had killer views. The one in Sydney, looking out across the harbour towards the iconic opera house, had been jaw-dropping. Jason assumed it was a power thing, this need for a big, swanky corner office and huge windows and a view that said, Look at me, world. I’ve made it.
Most of Cranley Estates staff worked in modest cubicles on the floor below, with the little natural light coming from windows overlooking the car park and council estate housing blocks to the rear of the building. As they had in Sydney. Brett might have changed things up geographically, but he was still the same bullying megalomaniac he’d always been.
‘I’m sorry you don’t like it.’ Jason spoke in a monotone.
‘It’s not a question of me not liking it,’ Brett goaded. ‘This isn’t a matter of taste. It’s crap. It’s full of typos. The artwork’s shit and what there is of it is out of focus. I’ve seen school kids put together more professional-looking work on Photoshop. This is for McAlpine, for fuck’s sake. They’re a huge potential client.’
‘I know. I’m sorry,’ Jason said again, staring at his shoes.
‘Look at me when you’re talking to me,’ Brett commanded. ‘You really don’t give a shit, do you?’
About the real-estate business? No, I don’t. About you being a dick? Yes, Dad, I give a shit about that. But what can I do?
To his intense distress, Jason found his eyes were filling with tears. He fought them back desperately, forcing himself to meet his father’s angry, disappointed gaze. How he wished he didn’t care! How he wished he had the strength to shrug off Brett’s relentless, soul-crushing criticism and become his own man, making his way in his own world. But that was like a penguin wishing it could fly.
‘I should have asked the art department for help,’ he stammered. ‘I can see that now.’
‘So why didn’t you?’
‘I didn’t want to bother them. They seemed to have a lot on their plates already.’
Brett put his head in his hands and groaned. ‘God give me strength.’ Picking up the phone, he summoned Michelle from reception into his office.
‘Sweetheart, would you see what you can do with this in the next hour?’ He handed her the offending document. ‘Jim Lewis and I are going in to McAlpine this afternoon at two. We sure as hell can’t offer them that load of old bollocks.’
‘Sure. I’ll see what I can do.’
Jason noticed the way Michelle’s hand brushed his father’s as she took the document, and the conspiratorial flash of eye contact that followed. It was an exchange he’d seen scores of times before.
They’re having an affair.
He felt the anger rise up within him. Mostly for his mother – how could Brett do this to her again? Here, in England, what was supposed to be their ‘fresh start’? But also because, in his quiet way, Jason had liked Michelle and hoped she might become a mate. With her short hair and her raucous laugh and her slightly wrong, too-sexy-for-the-office clothes, she seemed kind and irreverent and a laugh. A breath of fresh air in a corporate world that Jason found choking and stifling in the extreme. Now he would have no choice but to avoid her. Another door closing.
As soon as Michelle left the room, Brett turned on him again.
‘What’s wrong now? You look like you’ve swallowed a wasp. I’m the one who should be pissed off here, Jase, not you. You’ve let me down. Again.’
‘You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you?’
Jason was almost as astonished to hear the words come out of his mouth as Brett was.
‘I beg your pardon?’
Brett sounded dangerously angry, but it was too late to back down now.
‘M-M-Michelle,’ Jason stammered. ‘She’s your new mistress, isn’t she? I saw the chemistry between you just now. How could you? How could you do it to Mum?’
‘Now you listen here.’ Brett grasped his son by the shoulders. Although Jason didn’t think so, Brett loved him. He hated Jason’s depression because it was a problem he couldn’t fix, and he resented the boy’s sensitive, open nature because he was congenitally incapable of such emotions himself. But he did love him, and he valued his family more than anything. ‘I don’t know what you think you saw. But you’re wrong. I’m not “doing” anything to your mother. I don’t have a mistress, and if I did, it wouldn’t be one of my employees. Understand?’
Jason nodded, willing it to be true.
‘Go out and get yourself some lunch,’ Brett added gruffly. ‘Clear your head. I’ll see you after the meeting.’
‘OK.’
Brett watched his son leave, shoulders slumped, feet dragging, as defeated as any retreating infantryman. He sat back down at the desk, punching the polished teak in frustration. What the fuck was wrong with the boy? He just didn’t understand it. It was as if he didn’t want to be happy, didn’t want to succeed.
Whatever Jason’s weaknesses, he certainly wasn’t stupid. At least not emotionally. He’d picked up on the vibe between him and Michelle in an instant, like a bloodhound stumbling upon a scent.
I’ll have to be a lot more careful if I’m going to continue to have him work here.
Although it pained Brett to admit it, perhaps he’d been rash in forcing Jason to join the family business. At the time it had seemed an obvious solution to his listlessness. Ever since they arrived in England Jason had been moping around like a wet weekend, hanging around the house and the village, getting under Angie’s feet. It seemed clear to Brett that he needed something to do, some structure to his life. An eight-to-six job interning at Cranley Estates fitted the bill perfectly. Add in the commuting time – Brett spent at least three nights a week at his London flat, but Jason took the train back and forth from Fittlescombe daily – and he wouldn’t have time to dwell on whatever it was that was bothering him.
The theory still sounded solid. But the reality was that Jason loathed the rhythms of office life and found no excitement, no thrill in business, in the daily battle to beat one’s competitors and make money. All Brett had done was to inadvertently parachute a spy into his London life, a spy with the potential to cause serious damage to his family idyll down in Sussex.
Because it was an idyll. Angela was happy to a degree that Brett hadn’t seen in years. Logan seemed to have settled in at school. And Brett felt his own heart soar and spirits lift on a warm Friday evening, leaving grimy, gridlocked London behind, driving through lanes lined with cherry and apple blossoms as he weaved his way through the ancient Downs. Turning into the driveway at Furlings, walking into his beautiful home, to be greeted by his beautiful, smiling, loving wife … It all gave Brett a sense of security and deep contentment that he hadn’t felt since before his mother died.
London, the office, Michelle – not to mention all the other girls he brought back to the flat during the week: that was all part of a different life, a life that Brett had gone to great lengths to compartmentalize, both practically and emotionally.
The thought of Jason jeopardizing this perfect balance sent iced water through Brett’s veins. As did the prospect, remote though it was, of losing Furlings to Tatiana Flint-Hamilton.
Brett Cranley had grown used to scaring off would-be competitors or threats to his interests through a combination of bullying and flexing his economic muscle. If a rival real-estate developer showed an interest in a property Brett wanted, for example, he either simply outbid that developer, or intimidated him into backing down by making multiple threats to his business. And Brett Cranley’s threats were not idle. Renowned as one of the most maliciously, aggressively litigious players in the market, Brett had a legal war chest bigger than the GDP of many small African countries. By dragging out lawsuits, he was able effectively to filibuster smaller players out of the game.
Unfortunately, this strategy did not seem to be working with the tenacious Tatiana Flint-Hamilton. Despite her lack of funds, or even any serious legal case, she’d managed to rally significant support in the village. A County Court judge had already ruled there was enough there for the challenge to be heard in the High Court, and a date had been set for September.
Brett had already spent a fortune employing a team of legal experts to look into every possible loophole that Tatiana might conceivably exploit in court. Although he hadn’t paid her another visit in person since their first, ill-fated but memorable encounter, he’d had lawyers send an array of bullying letters in an attempt to get her to drop the case. Tatiana had responded to none of them, and had even had the nerve to hand the last, most aggressive missive to Logan at school. Sealed in a fresh envelope, with ‘Return to Sender’ written boldly on the front, she’d instructed the little girl to deliver it to her father.
‘What is it?’ Logan asked.
‘It’s a birthday card.’
‘But Daddy’s birthday’s not till August.’
‘It’ll be his first then, won’t it?’ Tati smiled sweetly. She was very fond of Logan, who was in her remedial reading group at school, and did her best to forget that the child was a Cranley.
Brett opened the envelope that evening at dinner. Inside was his latest lawyer’s letter and a two-word note from Tati.
‘Bugger Off.’
That was the night he’d decided to take Gabriel Baxter up on his offer and sell off two hundred acres of Furlings’ farmland. Once the deal was done, Brett had played Tati at her own game and sent copies of the new deeds with Gabe’s name on them to school, via Logan. His envelope also contained a two-word note.
‘Give Up.’
But of course Tati hadn’t.
Even more infuriating than his inability to bully her out of court were the erotic dreams Brett found himself having about her almost nightly. The whole of England knew about Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s wild sexual exploits in the years leading up to her father’s death. But as far as Brett could see, since she’d returned to Fittlescombe and hunkered down on his doorstep, like a fungus asserting its unwanted presence at the roots of a giant oak, Tatiana had lived the life of a nun. Once or twice Angela had reported seeing her looking chummy with the married art teacher at St Hilda’s, Dylan Pritchard Jones, a jumped-up popinjay of a man if ever Brett saw one.
Curious, Brett had asked Gabe Baxter in conversation what he thought of Dylan.
‘He’s all right,’ Gabe had shrugged, but he said it in a tone that made it plain he wasn’t a fan. ‘We used to be mates. We play cricket together.’
‘But …?’
‘He’s vain. I’m not surprised he and Tatiana are getting friendly. They’re like two peas in a pod.’
The thought of Tatiana’s perfect, youthful, curvaceous, sinfully sensual body being plundered by a vain village schoolteacher was not a pleasant one. But it was hardly worse than the idea of her going to bed alone every night, less than a mile from the spot where Brett himself was trying and failing to go to sleep, twitching with anger and frustration. It wasn’t simply that he couldn’t have her, although that certainly rankled. It was the idea of all that youth and beauty going to waste. In far too many ways, Tatiana Flint-Hamilton felt like a thorn in Brett Cranley’s side. He longed for September, for the court case to be over and done with, and for the girl to go crawling back to her old, dissolute lifestyle somewhere far, far away from Furlings and from him.
And yet …
Michelle knocked on his office door.
‘Is the coast clear?’ she asked conspiratorially. She held a mug of hot tea in each hand, one for her and one for Brett. Pushing the door closed behind her with her bottom, she handed Brett his tea, kissing him fleetingly on the lips as she did so. Brett put the mug down on his desk and slipped a hand under her sweater, more out of habit than desire.
‘We’re going to have to cool it,’ he said, caressing her wonderfully full, heavy right breast. ‘Jason’s suspicious.’
‘I see. And this is you cooling it, is it?’ Michelle smiled, closing her eyes and enjoying the sensation of Brett’s warm hands on her bare skin. She knew Brett Cranley was a shit. That their affair – if you could even call it that – was going nowhere. But he was so funny and charming and exciting and so interested in her. When Brett looked at her, she didn’t feel like Michelle Slattery, secretary from Colchester. She felt like somebody important, somebody who mattered. Like a muse. Josephine to Brett’s Napoleon, Cleopatra to Brett’s Caesar. It was that ego boost, more than anything, that she couldn’t quite bring herself to give up.
Reluctantly, Brett removed his hands. ‘I’m serious. Just for a while, while Jase is here. I wouldn’t want to upset the apple cart, if you know what I mean.’
Michelle knew exactly what he meant. If it upset her, she hid it well, changing the subject with her usual good-humoured briskness.
‘He’s a sweetheart, your son, but he did make a bit of a pig’s ear of that document.’
Brett rolled his eyes. ‘Can you fix it?’
‘Oh yes.’ Michelle said confidently. Brett loved her competence almost as much as he loved her warm, welcoming, womanly body. ‘I’ll whip it into shape. Drink your tea now. I’ll be cross if you let that get cold.’
By late June a heat wave had descended over the whole south of England. In London this meant office workers in rolled-up sleeves eating their lunches in the park, and restaurants shoving tables out onto pavements, doing their best to look as if they were in Rome. Fittlescombe, like the rest of the Swell Valley, opened its back doors and spent an inordinate amount of time lounging about in its collective gardens in deckchairs. Whittles, the off-licence in the village, sold out of Pimm’s. Red-faced children sucked greedily on Wall’s ice lollies. And everywhere a holiday mood prevailed.
At Furlings, Angela Cranley finally felt as if she were getting into her stride. She’d hired Karen, a girl from the village, as a cleaner to help out Mrs Worsley, as well as a boy to assist Jennings in the garden. The Flint-Hamiltons’ old gardener was highly resistant to the idea.
‘I know me way about,’ Jennings muttered stubbornly when Angela first suggested it. ‘I don’t need some bloody little Herbert getting under me feet.’ But in fact, he did need it. His arthritis was so bad at times that he could hardly hold a pair of secateurs, still less get on his hands and knees to weed the rose and lavender beds at the front of the house. Angela didn’t know exactly how old Mr Jennings was. (Nobody did, it seemed, not even the man himself.) But he was certainly over seventy. His face was as gnarled and weather-beaten as a pickled walnut and his chest made a terrible wheezing, rattling sound as he shuffled about, like a concertina punctured by a sword.
Happily, however, once eighteen-year-old Alfie finally arrived and began tidying potting sheds, mending tools and making Jennings cups of tea like a whirling dervish, the old man relented. Sitting out on the terrace at the back of the house, overlooking the lawn and rolling acres of parkland beyond, Angela watched happily as man and boy tended the flowerbeds, Alfie pruning and Jennings given directions, waving his spindly old arms about like a general on a battlefield.
Noticing that her own arms were turning pink and freckly, despite the lashings of factor fifty sun block she’d applied only an hour ago, Angela retreated indoors. It was half past two on a Friday afternoon, almost time to collect Logan from school. Logan, thank God, seemed to have settled in brilliantly both at school and in the village. Sweetly, she’d developed a thumpingly enormous crush on Gabe Baxter, the local farmer to whom Brett had just sold some fields. Angela suspected Brett had only done the deal to get back at Tatiana Flint-Hamilton, but that was by the bye. A few nights ago she’d been tidying Logan’s room when she’d found four sheets of A4 paper stuffed under the bed, covered in practice signatures, all of them either Logan Baxter, Mrs Logan Baxter or Mrs Gabriel Baxter.
‘Should we be worried?’ Angela asked Brett. ‘She’s only ten, for God’s sake. Surely we should have a few more years before this starts?’
But Brett had been enchanted, insisting that they keep the papers and frame them. ‘It’s adorable. We should give them to her as a birthday present on her twenty-first.’
Brett would be coming home tonight, along with Jason, whose low moods were starting to worry Angela again. She’d hoped that the job up in London might have opened up some new friendships for him. The village was lovely, and Jason seemed to appreciate it, but there weren’t many opportunities for him to socialize with people his own age. Other than the pub, but Jase had never been the sort of confident man’s man who can strike up easy conversation in a room full of strangers. Unlike his sister, Jason seemed lonelier than ever since their move.
Grabbing a sun hat and a wicker shopping basket (she needed to stop at the greengrocer’s for some white cherries on the way home), Angela set off for the village, pushing her worries about Jason out of her mind for the time being. It was such a glorious day, with the dappled sunlight pouring through the trees and the heady scents of honeysuckle and mown grass hanging thick in the warm air. Turning right out of Furlings’ drive towards the green, she heard the church bells of St Hilda’s toll three times, and watched the front doors of the cottages open one by one as the other village mothers began their various school-runs. They reminded her of the little wooden people that used to come out of her father’s weathervane back home in Australia. There was a woman with an umbrella who popped out if it was raining and a male peasant in breeches and shirtsleeves if it was fine.
Life here can’t have changed much since Elizabethan times, she thought happily. It was odd to feel a connection to the past generations of Fittlescombe dwellers – essentially to dead people – but Angela found that she did, and that the idea of being one in a long line of people who had lived here and loved the place gave her a profound sense of belonging.
Relations with her living neighbours were a little more problematic. Thanks to Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s negative PR campaign, a solid third of the village had taken against the Cranleys before they’d even arrived. Angela had done her best to reverse this, knocking on doors, mucking in at school events, making sure that everyone knew the door to Furlings was always open. But it wasn’t easy, not least because the antipathy wasn’t personal, but rooted in age-old traditions that Angela could barely understand, let alone change.
As Mrs Preedy at the shop put it, ‘It’s not about you, dear. I’m sure you’re lovely. It’s not about that Tatiana either. It’s about what’s right and proper and fair. Not having a Flint-Hamilton at Furlings would be like not having a river in the valley. Old Mr F-H should have consulted local feeling before he went out and changed things, all secretive like, behind people’s backs.’
Not having ever met Rory Flint-Hamilton, there was little Angela could say to this. Even those who approved of the inheritance kept their distance. As the new, rich, foreign owner of ‘The Big House’, Angela was treated with polite deference by the other mums at school, rather than being met as an equal. Without equality there was little chance of friendship. Gabe Baxter’s wife Laura had been kind, even though she obviously disapproved of Brett. As had Penny Harwich, another local engaged to Sussex cricketing hero Santiago de la Cruz. Penny had gone out of her way to include Angela in village WI meetings and girls’ nights out. But Angela still missed her girlfriends back home, and wondered if she would ever truly fit in in the Swell Valley, as much as she loved it here. Of course, if Tatiana won her court case in September, it wouldn’t matter. They’d all have to move again. Angela couldn’t imagine that Brett would agree to stay in Fittlescombe if they lost Furlings. With a shudder, she pushed the thought out of her mind.
She’d arrived at the school gates now. Hovering behind a group of mothers in Logan’s class, about to steel herself to go and join them, she stopped when she overheard a snippet of their conversation.
‘Apparently he’s a total sex addict,’ one of the mums was saying. ‘Worse than Tatiana Flint-Hamilton. He was known for it in Australia.’
‘Well I don’t know about that,’ said her friend. ‘But Oliver saw him in The American Bar at the Savoy on Tuesday night with a girl half his age on his lap, acting like he didn’t have a care in the world.’
‘Yes, well, he doesn’t does he?’ a third woman piped up. ‘He’s got his lovely house, his lovely wife, his lovely life in London. Cat that got the cream, I should say.’
‘Is Oliver sure it was him?’ the first mother asked.
They all laughed at that. ‘You can hardly mistake him. He’s so bloody good looking.’
‘Do you think so?’ The first mother wrinkled her nose. ‘I’ve only met him once but he gives me the creeps. Anyway, what was your husband doing at The Savoy on a Tuesday evening, that’s what I’d like to know? Oliver might have made the whole thing up to cover his own tracks!’
‘Yeah, right. Somehow I don’t think my Ollie has quite the pulling power of Brett Cranley.’
The mothers’ conversation moved on. Behind them, Angela Cranley stood rooted to the spot. She felt dizzy all of a sudden. The sounds of birdsong and chattering voices and the school bell ringing all merged into one muffled dirge that grew louder and louder until she found herself clutching her head. Spots swam before her eyes.
‘Are you all right?’
Someone was touching her arm. Angela turned to look at them but could see nothing but blackness. She felt herself falling, sinking. Then nothing.
‘Mrs Cranley. Mrs Cranley, can you hear me?’
Angela opened her eyes. Max Bingley, Logan’s headmaster, was standing over her. He had one hand on her forehead and the other on her wrist, apparently taking her pulse. When he saw her look up at him he smiled reassuringly.
‘Thank goodness. You had us all worried there for a moment. Mrs Graham, would you fetch Mrs Cranley a large glass of water?’
While the school secretary scuttled off, Angela took in her surroundings. She was in the headmaster’s study, stretched out on the sofa. Copies of the latest OFSTED report lay neatly stacked on the coffee table, and the walls were covered from floor to ceiling with bookshelves. Bingley had an eclectic collection, everything from teaching manuals and curriculum guidelines to Victorian novels and books on travel and adventure.
‘You’re a reader,’ Angela croaked.
‘I should hope so, in my job,’ Max Bingley said amiably. ‘I think you must have had a touch of sunstroke out in the playground. How do you feel?’
‘Embarrassed,’ said Angela. ‘I can’t believe I fainted.’
Painfully, the mothers’ conversation came back to her. It doesn’t mean anything, she told herself angrily. It’s just gossip. A man in Brett’s position gets that sort of crap all the time.
The secretary returned with the water and Max handed it to Angela, propping her up with cushions.
‘Nothing to be embarrassed about,’ he said kindly. ‘Its ridiculously hot out there. I suspect you got a bit dehydrated, that’s all.’
In fact, Max knew what had happened. After Angela passed out, one of the mothers admitted they’d been talking about Brett.
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Tilly Bagshawe
Welcome to Tilly Bagshawe’s Swell Valley, where the scandal is in a class of its own.Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s gilded cage is torn away when her estranged father dies. As the beloved family estate slips through Tati’s fingers, the portraits of her ancestors look down disapprovingly.The new Lord of the Manor is just as ruthless as Tati. The old-world status of Furlings is everything the wealthy, self-made Brett Cranley has ever wanted. Luckily his wife Angela is the perfect homemaker, happy to fall into line with whatever Brett desires. Along with her two children, Furlings soon becomes Angela’s lifeline, a place she can finally belong. And one she’s not going to give up easily.Losing everything has made Tati realise that her rightful inheritance is all that she now lives for… and she will do anything to get it back.But the fate of Furlings lies in the hands of the villagers.Let the Fittlescombe fireworks begin!
The Inheritance
Tilly Bagshawe
Copyright (#ulink_96d14dad-f1ef-58cd-9f1b-0916bd1d66a4)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Harper 2014
Copyright © Tilly Bagshawe 2014
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
Tilly Bagshawe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007472512
Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007481385
Version: 2018-02-16
Dedication (#ulink_610e14f0-b70f-5959-887c-c2003c4b61f5)
For Sarah and Kris Glynn
Contents
Cover (#u90619e1a-60ed-594d-9e69-c811fec5f167)
Title Page (#uaae8bf69-b6cd-5964-9d4e-a6651dac5ca3)
Copyright (#u07db7f43-60b6-54b3-aace-96f3835aa2ed)
Dedication (#uda032fe6-cb8c-5258-910f-e58a0b955d0c)
Map (#ud3b2cb5e-5e7f-5593-8821-91738a9692c1)
Prologue (#u9b21c6da-a359-52b6-a737-94f22d281f7a)
Part One: The Usurpers (#u20bab604-e47e-50ab-8783-156f7688b16f)
Chapter One (#ua4d15f99-3d2a-5cbe-ab0f-547b07327489)
Chapter Two (#u5d3fb26d-f172-5e65-8291-6ecfcbdc655e)
Chapter Three (#u44381e0a-efc3-5a49-abe8-d925c881daf8)
Chapter Four (#u6ec9ae93-3124-5d02-b985-9be85ba534ff)
Chapter Five (#u97d245bb-c707-5fd8-b635-6c0cbe632481)
Chapter Six (#ucf8282cd-9440-5459-8453-062fc19eb5b3)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Two: The Reckoning (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Tilly Bagshawe (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading – The Show (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_8ffd33a9-ebd6-5a16-9382-21efa523af39)
Dawn broke late over the Swell Valley. The May sun rose sleepily into a cloudless sky, streaking it first red, then pink, then a gorgeous, deep, burnished orange, like melted rose gold. Bathed in this magical light, Furlings House shimmered above the village of Fittlescombe, tranquil and magnificent. The family seat of the Flint-Hamiltons for over three hundred years, Furlings was frequently referred to as the most beautiful estate in Sussex, if not the whole of England. Certainly it lived up to that accolade this morning, a study in Georgian splendour, with nothing to puncture the peace of its rolling parkland and idyllic views except the occasional whinny of a pony in the top fields, or plaintive bleat of a lost lamb somewhere on the Downs.
‘You fucker!’
A loudly slamming door sent a slumbering heron soaring into the air above the river.
‘You lying, shallow lowlife! Go to hell!’
Each word was screamed at deafening volume. It was a woman’s voice, delivered in a cut-glass accent, and it was followed seconds later by the woman herself, crunching over the gravel. She was striking for two reasons. The first was that she was young, blonde and stunningly beautiful. And the second was that she was stark naked (unless one counted the pair of Wellington boots she’d slipped on as she exited the kitchen; or the heavy, cast-iron frying pan she was brandishing menacingly above her head, like a Zulu warrior with a machete).
‘For God’s sake, Tatiana, calm down. You’ll wake up half the village.’
Her intended victim, a much older man with dishevelled salt-and-pepper hair, was half running, half limping towards his car. Barefoot, he’d only managed to partially dress himself before the Amazon had beaten him out of doors. In an unbuttoned evening shirt, with his suit trousers slipping repeatedly towards his knees, he cut a pathetic, cowering figure. Only the keenest of political observers would have recognized him as Sir Malcom Turnbull, Secretary of State for Trade & Industry, married father of three and tireless champion of family values.
‘You think I give a flying fuck about the village?’ the girl hissed at him like a snake. ‘I’m Tatiana Flint-Hamilton. I own this village. Besides, why shouldn’t people know what a lying, cheating scumbag you really are?’
Sir Malcom had only just managed to scramble into his Porsche when Tatiana caught up with him. Lifting the frying pan high above her head, she brought it down with a deafening thwack on the car’s roof, leaving a dent the size of a small meteor strike and missing the minister’s skull by inches.
‘Jesus Christ.’ Shaking, Sir Malcom rammed the key in the ignition and turned it, but the bloody thing was jammed. ‘Have you lost your mind?’ he stammered. ‘You knew I had a wife.’
‘Yes. And you told me you were going to leave her! At least twenty times.’
‘My dear girl, I will. But it’s not that simple. Henrietta’s terribly fragile at the moment. And Nick’s got his GCSEs this summer …’
‘Spare me.’ Tatiana Flint-Hamilton lifted the pan again, like a shot-putter about to let rip.
‘No! Please. Perhaps after the next election …’ Sir Malcom spluttered.
‘The next election?’ Tatiana laughed out loud. ‘That’s years away. What about the money?’
‘Money?’
‘The money I need to fight for my inheritance. The money you promised me, along with using your influence in the High Court. That was all bullshit too, wasn’t it? You treacherous snake!’
Wham! The pan struck again.
Wham! And again.
At last the Porsche’s engine roared into life and the panicked minister sped away. Thank God it was still early and Furlings was so remote. Just imagine if I’d taken her to the London flat. The paparazzi would have seen us for sure. Sir Malcom Turnbull shuddered at what might have been.
Tatiana Flint-Hamilton was an incredibly beautiful, sexy girl, but the tabloids were right when they referred to her as a ‘wild child’.
Forget ‘tigress’. The young lady was a velociraptor.
The minister wasn’t a religious man but as he drove away he prayed fervently that he never saw Tatiana Flint-Hamilton again.
Tatiana stood and watched as the battered Porsche disappeared into the distance.
Like my future. Like my house. All of it’s disappearing, she thought morosely. But she quickly pulled herself together.
What a bloody cliché to drive a red sports car in your fifties, anyway?
Tosser.
A cool dawn breeze made her shiver. Tatiana looked down at her own nakedness, and the frying pan hanging limply from her hand, and laughed. All of a sudden a pair of knickers, or even a dressing gown, had a certain appeal. Come to think of it, so did a bacon sandwich. The combination of sex and rage had made her ravenous.
Striding back into the kitchen, she pulled a Barbour jacket off a peg by the door and wrapped it round her. Opening the fridge to look for bacon, she discovered there wasn’t any, so poured herself an ice-cold vodka instead and wandered through to the drawing room, taking the bottle with her.
She tried not to think about how much she was going to miss this place.
I mustn’t give up. Not yet.
In a few hours, the entire population of Swell Valley would be milling around in Furlings’ lower fields for Fittlescombe’s annual May Day fete. I can’t face them, thought Tati, slumping down onto her father’s old sofa and knocking back four fingers of Stoli before refilling her mug. I truly can’t. They’ve all come to gloat.
Glancing up, she saw her grandmother’s portrait staring down at her disapprovingly from above the fireplace.
‘What?’ Tatiana challenged the canvas angrily, throwing open her jacket to reveal a perfect pair of round breasts, smooth, flat belly and glossy dark triangle of pubic hair. ‘Didn’t you always tell me to use my gifts. Well these are my gifts!’
She was drunk and angry, with herself more than anything. What on earth had possessed her to trust a slimy toad like Sir Malcom Turnbull? Everyone knew politicians were worse than drug dealers. Tears welled up in her eyes, but she didn’t allow them to fall.
‘I’m doing my best, Granny, OK?’ she slurred. ‘I am doing my fucking best.’
PART ONE (#ulink_e28c1051-f870-5049-9d93-46852b8584b6)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_52a716b7-f3fc-504d-8c90-fe4b1e5442c3)
‘Well I think it’s crap.’
Gabe Baxter, a blue eyed, broad-shouldered farmer and local Fittlescombe heart-throb, leaned forward over the table and took a long, cool sip of his Merrydown cider.
‘Tatiana Flint-Hamilton hasn’t bothered to show up for a village fete in five years. But now she wants local support to get her precious house back, suddenly she’s swanning in like Lady Muck offering to judge the cakes. It’s so contrived. She doesn’t give a shit about the community.’
‘That’s a bit harsh.’ Will Nutley, another local lad and a friend of Gabe’s from the village cricket team, stretched out his long legs contentedly. Will was drinking Abbey Dry, a local competitor to Merrydown. Gabe described it as ‘cat’s piss’, but this hadn’t deterred Will from ordering himself a third pint. ‘I think it takes guts to come back, under the circumstances.’
‘The circumstances,’ as the entire valley knew, were that the late Rory Flint-Hamilton, long-time lord of the manor at Fittlescombe and owner of Furlings, had sensationally disinherited his only child, his daughter Tatiana. Until now, Tatiana Flint-Hamilton had been most famous for her model looks and her taste for scandal, both of which had made her a favourite with the tabloids. With her long, caramel-coloured hair, slender figure and angular, almost cartoon-like face – huge green eyes, high cheekbones, wide, impossibly sensual mouth – at twenty-four Tati Flint-Hamilton exuded not only sex appeal but class. Breeding. Like a racehorse, or a rare, perfectly cut diamond. Unfortunately she also had a penchant for powerful, high-profile, and often married men, not to mention a well-documented drug habit. What set Tati apart from other society ‘It girls’ was her intelligence, her wit (she could always be relied upon for a suitably pithy and amusing quote) and her refreshing lack of remorse about any of her wild antics. On the scale of Great British Don’t-Give-A-Shitness, she was right up there with Simon Cowell.
The media loved her for it. But her own father had spent his last years in a misery of embarrassment and despair over Tatiana’s behaviour and, in the end, the idea of handing over his beloved Furlings to his tearaway daughter had proved too much. Rory had changed his will, apparently without breathing a word to anyone. Rumour had it that Tatiana had turned up at the lawyers’ offices in high spirits, fully expecting to take possession of her inheritance. Only to be told by her godfather Edmund Ruck, senior partner at Jameson and Ruck, that a house that had been in Flint-Hamilton hands for over three hundred years had in fact been left to distant cousins, and she was out on her pretty little, diamond-studded ear.
‘Guts?’ Gabe spluttered. ‘Come off it.’
‘I’m serious,’ said Will. ‘It must be bloody humiliating, wandering around the village trying to act normally, when everyone knows her old man cut her off.’
Gabe grunted noncommittally.
‘Imagine how you’d feel if your dad had disinherited you?’ Will went on. ‘If he’d left Wraggsbottom Farm to some random Aussie family.’
Brett Cranley, Rory Flint-Hamilton’s appointed heir, was an Australian property magnate. Famous in his native Australia, he was evidently extremely wealthy in his own right. Somehow that made the whole inheriting Furlings thing worse, at least in Will Nutley’s eyes.
‘The Cranleys aren’t random,’ said Gabe. ‘They’re relatives.’
‘Barely,’ said Will. ‘I heard Rory never even met them before he carked it. They’re total strangers.’
‘Yeah, well, whatever,’ said Gabe. ‘It wouldn’t have happened to me because I’m not a vacuous socialite with no sense of responsibility who’d let the whole estate go to hell in a handbasket before you could say “pass the cocaine”.’
Gabe and Will were sitting in the beer tent at the annual Fittlescombe village fete on what had blossomed into a blisteringly hot May morning. Always held on May Day and in Furlings’ sprawling lower meadow, this year’s fete had been given an added frisson of excitement thanks to the gossip surrounding Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s disinheritance. The latest word was that Tatiana had decided to take Furlings’ new owners to court over it. Apparently she had some scheme brewing to have her father’s will declared invalid. Although nobody seemed clear quite how such a challenge might succeed. Rory Flint-Hamilton was old but quite sane when he died. And by all accounts the Cranleys were as surprised by the contents of his will as his daughter was, so they could hardly be said to have coerced him.
In any event, the case had split the village, and the entire Swell Valley, down the middle. There were some who approved of Rory’s decision to leave his ancient family estate in safer hands than those of his feckless, scandal-prone daughter. But many others felt aggrieved on Tatiana’s behalf. After all, it wasn’t as if all her Flint-Hamilton forefathers had been saints and angels, especially in their youth. Tati should be given a chance to grow up and prove herself. The fact that Rory’s appointed heirs, the Cranleys, were not only card-carrying nouves but, worse, Australian, only served to fan the flames of local ire.
Of course, no one had actually met Furlings’ new owners yet. The Cranleys were due to arrive next week. But that hadn’t stopped the rumour mill from going into overdrive. Mrs Worsley, Rory Flint-Hamilton’s old housekeeper, was the only person with first-hand information, having apparently Skyped with Brett Cranley and his wife on numerous occasions. On the basis of these conversations, the housekeeper pronounced her new employers ‘charming’ and ‘terribly down to earth’. Of course Fiona Worsley had more reason than most to support Rory’s Australian heirs over his daughter. Mrs Worsley had been there through the very worst excesses of Tati’s teenage years and had seen first hand just how spoiled, destructive and Machiavellian she could be. She was fond of Tatiana deep down, but the thought of working for her, not to mention sitting back and watching helplessly while she and her rich, druggie London friends turned Furlings into some sort of party-house, was more than the old woman could have borne.
On Mrs Worsley’s advice, Brett Cranley had already won over a few cynics by giving permission from Sydney for the village fete to go ahead as usual, and for the meadow to be used.
‘You see what I mean?’ Furlings’ housekeeper had purred. ‘He’s as nice as pie and generous with it.’
What Furlings’ new owner hadn’t anticipated was that his absence had left a window for his cousin Tatiana to swoop in unannounced and effectively take over proceedings. She’d even demanded that Mrs Worsley put her up in her old room at Furlings for the week of the fete.
‘I presume I’m welcome as a guest, at least? In my own bloody home,’ she fumed.
Once installed, Tati had begun the Herculean task of trying to win over the locals. Her challenge to her father’s will was based on the premise that Furlings had never really been Rory’s to leave. That there was an effective entailment, inferred from generations of local practice. It was a shaky case, to say the least, but it was all she had. In order for it to stand a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding in court, she would need extensive local support. Hence, in Gabe Baxter’s view, her cynical ‘sudden interest’ in the village.
‘You have to admit, she’s done a good job running the fete committee,’ said Will Nutley, draining the dregs of his cider and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. ‘This must be the best turnout we’ve had in a decade. Loads of celebs have shown up because of her.’
‘So?’
‘So it’s all money for the village, isn’t it? I saw Kate Moss earlier at the craft stall. And Seb Harwich said Hugh Grant was milling around somewhere.’
‘Probably complaining,’ said Gabe, downing the rest of his Merrydown in a single gulp. ‘He’s such a miserable git.’
Will grinned. ‘Sure you’re not just jealous because he’s getting all the female attention?’
Gabe gave his trademark, arrogant laugh. ‘Jealous? Please. Anyway, he’s not getting Laura’s attention,’ he added proudly. ‘That’s the only female I’m interested in.’
At the top of the meadow, Laura Baxter, Gabe’s pretty young wife, mopped her brow with a handkerchief. Christ it was hot today! The weather at least seemed to be on Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s side. At this rate the fete would raise a fortune, and Tati would get all the credit.
‘I’ll ’ave five tickets for a pound, please.’ Mr Preedy, the proprietor of Fittlecombe Village Stores, gazed appreciatively at Laura’s breasts, straining for escape from her pale pink linen shirt-dress.
In the grip of some temporary fever, Laura had agreed weeks ago to man the tombola, without doubt the most boring job at the entire fete. She passed a handful of tickets to the little bald shopkeeper and watched as he carefully unfolded and examined each one.
‘Look at that! I’ve got a winner!’ Practically hopping with excitement, Mr Preedy handed his last ticket back to Laura. ‘Five hundred and ten. Winners end in a zero, right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, what’ve I won, then? Don’t keep me in suspense.’
Laura looked along the table. She found the appropriate ticket taped to a peeling packet of Yardley bath salts.
‘Erm … these?’ She handed them over apologetically.
Unperturbed, Mr Preedy beamed as if he’d just won a luxury cruise. It was so sweet, Laura quite forgave him his earlier breast-ogle.
‘Smashing! I never win anything, me. You must be my lucky charm. I’ll give ’em to the wife,’ he said, clutching the salts to his chest. ‘Earn meself some brownie points. You can’t put a price on that now, can you?’
‘Indeed you can’t.’
Laura smiled as he disappeared into the crowd. She loved the way that such small things seemed to give people here pleasure. Especially on days like today. The Fittlescombe fete really was a throwback to another, gentler, happier world. And what a wonderful turnout this year, thanks to the combination of the glorious bank holiday weather and the undoubted star power of Miss Flint-Hamilton, returned from her jet-setting life in London to ‘recommit’ to the village.
Not that Laura, of all people, had a right to judge Tati for that. This time two years ago, Laura had been living in London herself, working all hours as a television writer, completely immersed in city life as she climbed the greasy pole. But she too had returned to the Swell Valley, the place where she’d been happiest as a child, at a low point in her life. And now here she was, utterly immersed in the rhythms of the countryside, married to Gabe – a farmer’s wife, no less – and happier than ever. It was incredible how quickly, and totally, life could change.
Of course, she and Gabe had their moments. He could be a terrible flirt sometimes, but Laura wasn’t really worried by it. She knew he loved her, and was faithful. It was annoying though, especially after he’d had one too many drinks at The Fox. Then there was his ambition, which for some reason always surprised her. He’d already started talking about trying to buy some of Furlings’ farmland from the new owners.
‘Rory Flint-Hamilton swore blind he’d never sell a single blade of grass. But he mismanaged that estate something terrible. Maybe the new bloke’ll be more amenable? Just think what we could do if we owned all that land along the valley.’
‘Go bankrupt?’ offered Laura.
The unfortunately named Wraggsbottom Farm had been in Gabe’s family for almost as long as Furlings had been in the Flint-Hamiltons’ hands, and was just as beautiful in its own way. It was, however, altogether a more modest enterprise. Like all the working farming families they knew, Gabe and Laura struggled financially, a fact that Gabe conveniently forgot during his fantasies of empire-building.
‘We’re barely breaking even as it is,’ she reminded him. ‘You’re talking about doubling the size of the farm.’
‘I know,’ Gabe grinned. ‘We’d be a real estate. If I can only convince this Aussie to let me buy those fields …’
‘With what money?’ Laura asked, exasperated.
‘Mortgage.’
The nonchalant shrug with which Gabe offered this solution sent chills down her spine.
‘I don’t want to be lady of the manor, darling.’ She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. ‘I just want a lovely, quiet life here. With you. Preferably not in a debtors’ prison.’
They’d dropped the subject before it turned into a proper row. But it was only a matter of time before it reared its ugly head again. Laura adored Gabe, but it did sometimes get tiring, always having to be the boring grown-up in the family.
Down the hill from the tombola, Tatiana Flint-Hamilton was chatting up villagers waiting in line at the coconut shy. She’d swept down from the house earlier, making sure that everyone knew she’d been staying at Furlings – staking her claim – and looking more beautiful than ever in a demure, pale buttermilk shift dress, with her long blonde hair tied up with a whimsical blue ribbon. It was a far cry from the raunchy, barely-there outfits with sky-high stilettos she was known for in her tabloid days. But, of course, a lot had changed since then.
She wants people to like her so badly, thought Laura, pityingly. This time two years ago, she had it all. And now look at her, a guest at her own house.
Unlike Gabe, Laura Baxter felt sorry for Tati. She didn’t blame her for fighting her father’s will. If I grew up in a house like Furlings, I’d fight like hell to keep it too, she thought, glancing over her shoulder at the Queen Anne mansion perched serenely at the top of the hill.
The house looked more gorgeous than ever today, dazzling in the May sunshine with its sash windows dripping in wisteria and its lawns criss-crossed by box hedges and winding gravel paths, dotted with elaborate topiary. How awful to think of it being lived in by strangers! And how hard for Tati to have to stay there now as a guest, even before her hated cousins had arrived. Secretly Laura was rather rooting for Tati to turf the interlopers out, although that was highly unlikely. The bylaw that Tatiana was hoping to invoke was properly ancient. As for convincing the naysayers in the village that she was suitable lady of the manor material? With her history, that was going to be a tall order. It would certainly take a lot more than a Julie Andrews dress and a hair ribbon.
‘It’s impossible,’ Tatiana complained good-naturedly to the woman standing next to her at the coconut shy. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t this hard when I was a girl. Are you sure it’s not rigged?’
‘Pretty sure,’ the woman laughed.
‘I reckon they’ve glued them onto the stands.’
‘Nonsense.’
A wildly attractive Latin-looking man whom Tati dimly recognized appeared at her elbow. ‘You just need the right technique.’
In chinos and a blue linen shirt that matched his eyes and perfectly offset his olive skin, the man was easily the best-looking specimen Tati had seen since her return to Fittlescombe. With the Cranleys due to arrive in a week, she would soon be kicked out of Furlings and have to find herself more modest accommodation in the village while she put together her legal case against her disinheritance. The prospect of months spent living in some dismal local hovel had been filling Tati’s heart with gloom for weeks now. As had the idea of begging for a job as a lowly teacher at the village primary school.
The real kicker in Rory’s will, the part that no one in the village even knew about yet, were the conditions the old man had placed on Tatiana’s trust fund. Not content with robbing her of Furlings, he’d effectively taken steps to cut her off from all family money unless she, as he put it, ‘got her life in order.’
With this in mind, the old man had stipulated that if Tati agreed to take a teaching job at St Hilda’s Primary School in the village, he would authorize the trust to release a ‘modest’ monthly stipend. Even then, the money would only ever be released to her in the form of regular income payments. At no point would Tatiana receive a large lump sum of money.
For Tati, this had been the final twist of the knife. She recalled the scene in her godfather’s London office as if it were yesterday.
‘You’re telling me I’m penniless?’ She’d glared at Edmund Ruck accusingly.
‘Hardly,’ London’s most eminent solicitor responded evenly. ‘You have the equivalent of a modest trust fund for the time being. As long as your life remains stable, the monthly payments will go up considerably every year. Any capital remaining at the end of your life will pass to your children.’
‘It’s a fucking pittance!’ spat Tatiana.
‘It’s more than most people earn in a lifetime, Tati.’
‘I don’t care what “most people” earn. I am not “most people”.’ Tati’s arrogance hid her fear and profound shock. ‘And I won’t get any money coming in at all till I’m thirty-five. Thirty-fucking-five! I might as well be dead.’
Edmund Ruck suppressed a wry smile. He’d known Tatiana all her life and was fond of her, but he understood why Rory had declined to trust her with the family fortune, still less with the magical historic seat at Furlings. Even so, leaving the estate to a distant cousin he’d never met had been a surprising move on the old man’s part. The will had raised Edmund Ruck’s eyebrows, so he could hardly expect it not to raise his goddaughter’s.
‘Some money can be released to you earlier,’ he explained, ‘as long as you comply with the conditions set out in your father’s letter of wishes.’
Tati let out a short, derisive laugh. ‘As long as I go back to Fittlescombe and become a schoolteacher, you mean? Don’t be ridiculous, Edmund.’
‘Why is that ridiculous?’
Tati looked at him witheringly, but Edmund pressed on.
‘You trained as a teacher, didn’t you?’
It was true that Tatiana had studied, abortively, for a teaching degree at Oxford Brookes, before dropping out. She’d always been incredibly bright, especially at maths, but had never worked hard at school, or cared about her grades. The world of yachts and private jets and wealthy lovers, of winters in Kitzbühel and St Barth’s and summers in St Tropez and Sardinia, had exerted an irresistible pull. Besides, why bother with university when one was never going to need to get a job?
‘Did my father seriously think, even for a moment, that I was going to agree to become a village school ma’am? That I would be content to live in some poxy cottage, while Furlings – my house, my bloody birthright – was occupied by some jumped-up bloody Australian and his family, the Cranfords?’
‘Cranleys,’ her godfather corrected, patiently.
‘Whatever.’
Tatiana had been full of fight that awful day in Edmund Ruck’s offices. And yet she had returned to Fittlescombe, just as her father had demanded. And she would take the job at the school, because she needed that money. But anyone who interpreted those things as her acceptance of Rory’s will would be making a grave mistake. Tatiana was here for one reason and one reason only: to fight for her real inheritance.
The Adonis standing next to her at the coconut shy might at least provide a welcome distraction while she did what had to be done.
‘You hold the ball like this.’ He slipped one arm confidently around Tati’s waist, placing the ball in her hand. ‘And throw overarm, aiming downwards. Like so.’
‘I see,’ said Tati, inhaling the delicious, lemony scent of his aftershave as she released the ball into the air. She looked on as it sailed skywards in a perfect arc before dipping to strike the coconut clean onto the ground.
‘That’s amazing,’ she said delightedly, spinning around to face her instructor. ‘Thank you. I’m Tatiana, by the way.’
The handsome man smiled and shook her hand.
‘I know who you are, Miss Flint-Hamilton. Santiago de la Cruz. A pleasure to meet you.’
De la Cruz. The cricketer. Of course! Santiago played for Sussex. Tati had heard he’d moved to the valley last year. After a week holed up at Furlings with nothing but Mrs Worsley’s scowling face for company, or trapped in deathly dull fete committee meetings with the church flowers brigade, it felt wonderful to be flirted with again. Tati tried to remember the last time she’d had enjoyable sex or even been on a date with an attractive man – she didn’t count this morning’s disastrous encounter with the semi-fossilized Minister for Trade and Industry – and drew a complete blank. It must have been before that awful day in Edmund Ruck’s office. Before the world stopped spinning and her life fell apart. She smiled at Santiago coquettishly, tossing back her long ponytail of honey-blonde hair. ‘Santiago,’ she purred. ‘What a glorious name.’
‘And this is my fiancée, Penny.’
A middle-aged woman wearing a hideous gypsy skirt and a T-shirt covered in paint splatters had appeared at Santiago’s side. Tati’s smile wilted. From the look of pride on Santiago’s face, you’d think he’d just introduced her to Gisele Bündchen. Talk about love being blind, thought Tati. Still, ever mindful of her charm offensive, she shook Penny’s hand warmly.
‘Lovely to meet you.’
‘We’ve met before,’ Penny Harwich reminded her, although it was said without reproach. ‘I’m Penny Harwich. Emma’s mother.’
Oh yes. Emma Harwich. The model. Tati vaguely remembered the family, although not particularly the ragamuffin of a mother.
‘Of course. How silly of me.’ Her smile didn’t waver. ‘Your fiancé just won me a coconut.’
‘Did you, darling? How sweet.’ Slipping her arms around Santiago’s neck and standing up on tiptoes, Penny Harwich kissed him blissfully. Tatiana felt the envy as a physical pain, like a cricket ball lodged in her chest. Not because she fancied Santiago. Although of course she did. But because she didn’t have anyone herself. She was alone, now more than ever. Other people’s happiness felt like a personal affront.
‘Is that the time?’ She glanced at her Patek Philippe watch, an eighteenth birthday present from her father. ‘You must excuse me. I think I’m wanted at the duck racing.’
Turning away, Tati walked towards the pond, nodding and smiling at villagers as she went till her jaw and neck both ached. There was old Frank Bannister, the church organist, and the Reverend Slaughter who’d been the vicar of St Hilda’s Church in Fittlescombe for as long as Tati could remember. There were new faces too, scores of them, whole families that Tati didn’t recognize. It was so long since she’d spent any time here, she thought, a trifle guiltily. Although really her father ought to bear some responsibility for that. In the last five years of his life, Rory had been so disapproving, so resolutely unwelcoming.
He practically drove me away. And now he wants to punish me for it from beyond the grave.
‘Tatiana!’ Harry Hotham, Tati’s old headmaster at St Hilda’s Primary School and a lifelong friend of her father’s, waved from the gate that linked Furlings’ lower meadow to the village green. It was less than two years since Tati had last seen Harry, at the same Hunt Ball where she’d infamously run off with Laura Tiverton’s boyfriend, but he’d aged two decades in that short time. Stooped and frail, leaning on a walking stick, his remaining wisps of hair now totally white and blowing in the breeze like tufts of dandelion seeds, he tottered towards her.
‘How marvellous to see you. And how divine you look, my dear. Yellow is definitely your colour. I’d heard you were back in the village. Do tell me you’re staying?’
Harry’s enthusiasm, like his smile, was utterly genuine. Tati was touched.
‘That rather depends,’ she said, kissing him warmly on both cheeks. ‘You heard about Daddy’s will?’
‘Yes.’ Harry nodded gravely. ‘Bad business, that.’
‘Well I’m not giving up,’ said Tati, jutting her chin forward defiantly. Harry Hotham remembered the look well from Tatiana’s days as his pupil, a tearaway even then but charming with it, at least in Harry’s eyes. ‘I’m contesting it.’
Harry frowned. ‘Yes. I heard that too. Are you sure that’s wise, Tatiana?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Only that, knowing your father as I did, I imagine he took very thorough legal advice. I’d hate to see you ripped off by some ghastly lawyer.’
Tati waved a hand dismissively. ‘Every lawyer has a different opinion. And I’m already being ripped off. I don’t see that it can get much worse.’
‘That’s because you’re young, my dear,’ said Harry, patting her hand affectionately. ‘It can. Believe me.’
‘Well, it’s early days yet but I need funds to pursue my case,’ Tati went on, ignoring Harry Hotham’s warnings. ‘A war chest, if you will. I wanted to talk to you about that actually.’
‘My dear Tatiana, I’d happily give you my last farthing, but I’m afraid you are looking at a very poor man,’ Harry said matter-of-factly. ‘There’s no money in teaching, you see. Not a bean.’
‘Oh, no!’ Tati laughed, embarrassed. ‘I wasn’t asking you for money. It’s a bit of an odd request, but I … I was hoping for a job.’
‘A job?’
‘Yes. Did Daddy not say anything to you before he died?’
‘Say something?’ Harry looked confused.
‘It would just be for a few months, while I sort out my legal situation,’ said Tati. She explained about her trust fund, and the codicil in Rory’s will that would release money to her but only on the condition that she move back to Fittlescombe and work as a teacher at St Hilda’s.
‘Dad always had a ridiculous fantasy about me settling down and teaching one day. Ever since I did that awful course at Oxford Brookes.’ Misinterpreting Harry Hotham’s pained face, she added, ‘Look, I know it’s madness. But you’d be doing me a huge favour. When I get my inheritance restored to me, I promise to fund a new school building and anything else you want.’
‘It’s not that my dear,’ said Harry. ‘The job would be yours if it were mine to give. But I’m afraid I retired.’
‘What?’ Tati frowned. ‘When?’
‘At Christmas. I had a fall and I … well, I realized I wasn’t up to snuff any more. Physically, I mean. I recovered and all that. But I still need this blasted thing.’ He shook his walking stick reproachfully. ‘Running a school is a younger man’s game.’
‘Oh, Harry. I’m so sorry,’ said Tati, truthfully. ‘I can’t imagine St Hilda’s without you.’
‘Yes, well, things move on. And the new chap’s terribly good,’ said Harry, graciously. ‘Bingley, his name is. He’s a widower and rather a dish, so I’m told. All the yummy mummies are after him. He could probably use one of these himself,’ he waved his walking stick laughingly, ‘to beat them all off with!’
Tati forced a smile, but this was not good news. Working at St Hilda’s would always have been tough, a desperate measure for desperate times. But at least with Harry Hotham she’d have known where she stood. They’d have worked out some arrangement to satisfy her trustees – a few hours volunteering in the library or helping the girls play netball – and no one would have been any the wiser.
But this new fellow, Bingley, was an unknown entity. No doubt he’d already heard all kinds of bad things about her from village gossip, if not from the Daily Mail’s society pages.
‘Cheer up,’ said Harry Hotham, taking her arm. ‘You look like you’ve lost a shilling and found sixpence.’
‘Do I, Harry?’ Tati laughed. Somehow being around Harry Hotham reminded her of all the good things about her father and the past. Harry was part of her history, of Furlings, of all the things she was fighting for. ‘I’m off to judge the duck races. Would you like to come with me?’
‘Dearest Tatiana,’ enthused the old man. ‘I’m sure I can think of nothing I would like more.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_894bc87f-69d8-5064-99c7-eea82f9a5535)
‘Wow.’
Angela Cranley gasped as she drove her Range Rover over the crest of the hill.
‘Wow.’
‘Stop saying “wow”, Mum. You sound like a dork.’
Logan Cranley, Angela’s ten-year-old daughter, rolled her eyes in the back seat. After the long flight from Sydney, Logan was tired and grumpy. She hadn’t wanted to leave her old school, or her friends, and couldn’t understand what had possessed her parents to uproot themselves overnight and move to the other side of the world, just because some old guy had died and left them a house. Even at ten, Logan understood that her family were extremely wealthy. Her father, Brett, was a real-estate developer and one of the richest men in Sydney. The Cranleys already had a bunch of houses, including a grand apartment in London. What was so special about this one?
Secretly though, she too was impressed by the stunning scenery that surrounded them as they got nearer to their new home. Narrow ancient lanes flanked by high hedgerows guided them through the rolling chalk hills of the Downs; they passed a Tudor pub, The Coach and Horses, that looked exactly like Logan’s dolls’ house back home in her playroom in Australia, all white wattle walls and criss-crossing black beams, with mullioned windows. There were meadows full of buttercups, picture-postcard villages made up of clusters of flint cottages, medieval churches and the occasional grand Georgian manor house. Queen Anne’s lace, grown wild and as tall as the top of the car, reached over from the grass verges and brushed the windscreen as they passed, like delicate white-gloved fingers waving an ecstatic welcome. And everywhere the late spring sunshine, light, bright and clear, bathed the countryside in a glorious, magical glow.
In the front passenger seat, Logan’s older brother gazed vacantly out at the patchwork of hills and fields. At just turned twenty, Jason Cranley was painfully withdrawn. Tall and thin, with a pale, freckly complexion and sad, amber eyes, it was hard to believe that he was genetically related either to Logan, or to their father, Brett. Both Jason’s little sister and his father were dark-haired, olive-skinned and bewitching, like gypsies, or members of some exotic tribe of Portuguese pirates. Jason took more closely after his mother. Angela was blonde and fair-skinned, the sort of colouring that could easily have gone to red and that had zero tolerance for sun. Jason glanced across at her now, smiling, enchanted by this new world unfolding before her.
She’s so brave, he thought. So optimistic. After everything that’s happened, she still believes in fresh starts.
How he wished that he did, too.
‘This is it. Fittlescombe. We’re here!’
Angela Cranley squeezed her son’s leg excitedly as they passed the sign for the village. The Range Rover had descended a steep escarpment, then forked sharp right at the valley floor. The village was completely hidden from the main road above, folded into the downs like a baby joey enveloped in its mother’s pouch. It made it feel like a secret place, a hidden jewel only to be discovered by the chosen few. Despite herself, Angela felt her excitement building and her hopes start to blossom like the first buds of spring. This, surely, was a place where people were happy. Where the miseries and betrayals of the past could be left behind.
The most recent betrayal, in the form of Brett’s mistress Tricia Hong, a pushy young news reporter for SBS who had done everything in her power to destroy Angela’s marriage, was now a satisfying ten thousand miles away. Brett had been unfaithful before, of course – countless times. But Tricia had been a threat of a different order: intelligent, ruthlessly ambitious and utterly without scruple. Perhaps it was no surprise that she and Brett had been drawn to one another. They were so very alike. Still, in the end, even Brett had been taken aback by the beautiful young Asian’s tenacity. He, too, had begun to feel under siege. Rory Flint-Hamilton’s surprise bequest could not have come at a more opportune time. Nor could it have brought them to a more idyllic spot.
‘Oh my God, look at the post office! Isn’t that the cutest, with the roses round the door? And the school. Look, Logan. St Hilda’s. That’s where you’ll be going. What do you think?’
Logan made a noncommittal, grunting noise. She refused to get excited about her new school, however idyllic it might look. She still hoped there was a chance her father would change his mind and that they could all go home to Sydney and reality and forget this whole thing. Her mum kept telling her that she and Rachel and Angelica would stay friends, that they could Skype. But it wasn’t the same. She was going to miss Wellesley Park Elementary’s summer fair. She was going to miss everything. Rachel and Angelica would become best friends and wear the best friend necklaces, the ones with two pieces of a heart that fit together perfectly. She, Logan, would be forgotten. Erased. She’d probably start speaking with an English accent, God forbid.
‘Stop.’
Jason’s voice rang out, startling his mother. He hadn’t said a word since they pulled out of Heathrow. Having watched him go through a series of depressions, Angela wasn’t surprised by his silence. She had learned to sit with her son’s sadness, to stop trying to snap him out of it. But she still found it hard.
‘That was it. Furlings. There’s a sign at the bottom of the drive.’
Angela reversed. Sure enough, there it was. Damp and faded, and partially covered by overhanging trees, a simple wooden sign: ‘Furlings – Private Property’.
The driveway had seen better days. The four-wheel drive bounced and juddered over potholes, rattling its occupants like cubes of ice in a cocktail shaker. But after about a hundred yards of winding their way up the hill that overlooked the village, the private track widened into a grand, gravelled forecourt with a stone fountain at its centre. The house stood back from the gravel and was set slightly above it, atop a flight of six wide stone steps. A grand, square central section was flanked by two, lower symmetrical wings, all in the same red brick typical of Queen Anne architecture. Elegant sash windows peeked out shyly beneath thick fringes of wisteria, and the formal gardens at the front of the house gave way to stunning, oak-dotted parkland below, the green hills rolling all the way down to the village green.
It was quite the most exquisite house Angela Cranley had ever seen, combining elegance with an undeniable grandeur. It was also, to Angela’s way of thinking, enormous. If this was a small stately home, she struggled to imagine what a large one might look like.
‘It’s a palace!’ Logan squealed delightedly, forgetting all her heartfelt objections in the joy of the moment as she tumbled out of the car and ran towards the steps. ‘Oh, Mum, isn’t it gorgeous?’
Angela also got out of the car, stretching her aching legs. ‘It is, darling. It is gorgeous.’ She craned her neck and stepped back, trying to get a sense of the scale of it. ‘What do you think, Jase?’
‘Yeah. It’s very nice.’
Jason pulled the two heavy trunks out of the boot, wishing that Furlings’ beauty could affect him the way it ought to. Wishing that anything could. The cases thudded onto the ground with a crunch. Most of the family’s furniture and effects were arriving by separate plane in the coming days, but they’d brought a few ‘essentials’ with them. Jason’s father was supposed to come down to see the new house in a week. Brett had business in London, and preferred to stay in town than to deal with the hassle of moving in. ‘Your mother can do that. Women love all that nesting crap.’
‘It’s a lot of work, Dad,’ Jason had protested. Unusually for him. Jason Cranley was afraid to provoke his father. Everybody was afraid to provoke Brett Cranley.
‘Rubbish,’ said Brett. ‘There’ll be a housekeeper there to help her. Mrs Worsley. Old man Flint-Hamilton asked me to keep her on. And you can pitch in, can’t you? God knows you’ve got nothing else to do.’
Ever since Jason had dropped out of college, his father had been berating him for laziness, for failing to get a job and a life. Brett Cranley did not believe in depression. ‘We’ve all got our shit to go through,’ he told the family therapist at the one and only session Angela had convinced him to attend. ‘Wallowing in it doesn’t help. The problem with Jason is that he doesn’t realize how damn good he’s got it.’
Logan had already raced up the steps and run inside, darting in and out of the house like an over-excited puppy. Behind her, a smiling, soberly dressed woman in her mid-sixties appeared in the front doorway, plainly amused by the little girl’s high spirits.
Angela climbed the steps, her hand extended. ‘Mrs Worsley?’
‘Mrs Cranley. Welcome. You must be shattered after such a long journey.’
The older woman’s hand was cold and her grip firm, her Scottish accent clipped and efficient. She had grey hair, swept up into a neatly pinned bun, and wore no make-up, but her bright eyes and warm smile stopped her from appearing severe.
‘I suspect I’ll be tired later,’ Angela smiled back. ‘To be honest I think we’re all a bit too excited now. Excited and overwhelmed. What a house!’
‘Indeed.’ Mrs Worsley beamed with pride, as if she’d built Furlings herself, brick by brick. ‘Everyone in the village is so excited about your arrival,’ she lied. ‘It’ll be wonderful to have a family here again. Mr Flint-Hamilton was on his own for such a terribly long time.’
Jason had begun dragging the heavy cases up the steps but Mrs Worsley hurried forward, assuring him that Mr Jennings, the gardener, would ‘see to all that’.
‘He’s not really called Jennings, is he?’ The faintest of smiles traced Jason’s lips.
That boy looks ill, thought Mrs Worsley. As pale and pasty as rolled-out dough. With any luck the country air will sort him out.
‘He is,’ she said aloud. ‘And he’d be mightily upset to see you manhandling your own luggage, Mr Cranley.’
‘Jason,’ said Jason, embarrassed.
‘Jason.’
Mrs Worsley smiled. First impressions weren’t everything, of course, but she liked this family. The rambunctious little girl; the shy, polite son; the beautiful, perhaps slightly sad-looking mother. She felt certain that dear Mr Flint-Hamilton would have liked them too.
Fiona Worsley had worked at Furlings for over thirty years. She had known Tatiana’s mother, Vicky, and loved her dearly, grieving with Mr Flint-Hamilton when she died, and helping him to raise his infant daughter. A few years after Tati’s mother’s death, Mrs Worsley’s own husband, Mick, had also died, suddenly from a heart attack aged only forty-one. Rory Flint-Hamilton had returned the favour, supporting his housekeeper through her loss. The bond forged between them through mutual grief was a strong one. Never romantic. But as unique and powerful as any marriage.
Without children of her own, Mrs Worsley had focused all her love and attention on the young Tatiana, although she was a strict mother-figure and not especially demonstrative. In an odd, unspoken way, she, Rory and Tatiana had become a family unit of sorts up at Furlings, although none of them would ever have described the relationship in those terms. It had broken Mrs Worsley’s heart, watching Tatiana throw her life away on parties and unsuitable men as soon as she got into her teens, both for Tati’s sake but also for her father’s. Rory Flint-Hamilton had been a lovely man and, in her own way, Fiona Worsley had loved him. She’d particularly hated watching dear Mr Flint-Hamilton agonize over his will and Furlings’ future during the last, painful months of his life, and she laid the blame for his suffering squarely at Tatiana’s door. As such, she was firmly in the pro-Cranley camp when it came to the dispute over Rory’s will.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love Tatiana, or that she resented her, as many people in the village assumed. But at this point, after so many years of bad behaviour and broken promises, the housekeeper shared her former employer’s view that tough love was Tatiana’s only chance of salvation. And then there was the estate to think about. Furlings was as much a part of Mrs Worsley’s life as it was of Tatiana’s. At least now the estate would be preserved. Not only that, but it would become a family home again, cherished and brought back to life as a great house should be. She couldn’t understand why so many people in Swell Valley seemed unwilling to give this young Australian family a chance.
‘Come and see my bedroom!’ Logan was shrieking, circling her mother like a deranged shark as Angela finally made it across the threshold of her new home. ‘I’ve picked it out already, it’s right at the top and it’s amazing! There’s room for bunk beds. Can I have bunk beds? I really really really want bunk beds, and yellow wallpaper.’
‘I don’t know about the yellow wallpaper,’ said Angela. All of a sudden she did feel tired, and achy and sore and in desperate need of a shower and change of clothes. ‘Let’s see what Dad says.’
Furlings wouldn’t be home until Brett got here and gave it his seal of approval. It was hard to imagine how he couldn’t love it – how anyone couldn’t. But Angela intended to spend the next week making the house as perfect and homely and welcoming as was humanly possible.
If Brett’s happy, we’ll all be happy.
We’ll settle down here. Put down roots.
Angela Cranley closed her eyes and willed it to be so.
Brett Cranley closed his eyes and willed himself to come. Normally he had no trouble in that department, but the stress of opening up new offices in London combined with family pressures and physical exhaustion had taken their toll. Either that, or the girl just wasn’t hot enough.
‘Oh, that’s good! That’s so good.’
The secretary moaned, arching her back and giving her new boss a better view of the eagle tattoo across the top of her buttocks. Brett was not an admirer of tattoos, on men or women. He found himself becoming irritated – why had the stupid girl gone and done such a thing? – which was not helping him to orgasm. He closed his eyes again. Focus, for fuck’s sake.
Reaching around, he grabbed hold of the girl’s breasts which were large and heavy, like two water balloons. Her nipples were small and erect, twin pink diamonds between his thumb and forefinger. Better. She was pretty, sexy in a slightly chubby, accessible sort of way, with short hair – a pixie cut, he believed it was called. Tricia had had glorious long hair, black as tar and silken. Thinking about it now, Brett felt his erection strengthen and his excitement start to build at last.
‘Oh Brett! Brett!’
Thrusting harder and faster, he wanted to say her name but realized he’d forgotten it. Michelle, was it? Or Mary? Something with an ‘M’. He’d only hired her a week ago as the receptionist for Cranley Estates’ new London office. He couldn’t be expected to remember everything.
Reaching behind her, the girl cupped a hand underneath his balls and began to stroke them. That was it. ‘Oh … Jesus.’ He came, finally, collapsing on top of her, sweat pouring from his brow.
‘That was nice.’ The girl smiled cheerfully, wriggling out from under him.
‘Wasn’t it?’ Brett sighed, rolling onto his back. The carpet felt rough and scratchy underneath him, but he was too tired to move. Bending over him, the girl expertly removed his condom, carried it over to the waste bin in the corner of the office and dropped it inside. Then, still stark naked, she grabbed a few sheets of printer paper, balled them up and dropped them on top, concealing the evidence.
Brett grinned. She’s thorough. I like that in a secretary. A self-starter, too.
He wondered how things were going down in Sussex. Whether Ange and the children had reached the house yet. He must call them in a minute, once what’s-her-name had gone.
He glanced at the clock on the wall: 4.30 p.m. The secretary was already almost fully dressed, doing up the top buttons on her silk blouse and straightening her hair as if she’d just got back from the gym. Clearly she had no expectation of post-coital affection from him: another huge plus. Tricia had been painfully demanding in this regard. In every regard, come to think of it. Brett missed his mistress’s lithe, gymnast’s body, but nothing more. Tricia had broken the sacred code of the other woman and made a nuisance of herself with Angela, calling the house, showing up at events where she knew his wife would be present. She’d become a threat to his marriage, to his family. Brett Cranley couldn’t tolerate that. His own parents had divorced when he was young, and Brett saw himself decidedly as a family man. Sure he played around. Who didn’t? But he loved his wife and it would be a cold day in hell before he left her for another woman.
But this girl – Michelle. It’s definitely Michelle – she seemed to have a much clearer idea of the boundaries. She also seemed nice, sunny natured, a good sort of chick to have around. Perhaps he could overlook the tattoo and the hair?
Brett Cranley had not grown up poor. His father had run a successful dry-cleaning business and his mother, Lucille, was a hairdresser. What Brett had done was grown up quickly. Both his parents were dead by the time he turned fourteen, his father from a car accident on Christmas Eve, hit head-on by a drunk driver, and his mother from breast cancer. It was Lucille’s death that had affected him the most. An only child, Brett had always adored his mother. And while the loss of his father was shocking and sudden, Lucille Cranley’s protracted illness, her pain and fear, her desperate, dashed hopes of remission, had profoundly changed Brett’s psyche. The teenage boy lost his faith, not only in God and modern medicine, but in other people altogether.
There was no point in loving people, because the people you loved would eventually be taken away from you.
There was no point relying on people, because they would let you down.
There was only one life: this life. And in this life, you were on your own.
These were the lessons Brett Cranley learned from his parents’ deaths.
In some ways they changed him for the better. Having always been a rather lazy pupil, with no fixed goals or plans for his future, Brett suddenly threw himself into his studies. Living with his aunt Jackie and her two children, who were jealous of his good looks, intelligence and modest inheritance, and made sure he knew he was tolerated rather than loved within the family, Brett spent hour after after locked in his room, cramming for exams. When he won a place at a prestigious boarding school on a mathematics scholarship, his aunt didn’t want him to go.
‘It’s six hundred miles away, Brett. You won’t know a soul. Won’t you be lonely?’
‘No.’
‘Your mum wanted you to live here, with us. She thought that’d be best for you.’
‘She was wrong.’
Aunt Jackie looked pained. ‘It was what she wanted. I promised her …’
‘It doesn’t matter what she wanted,’ Brett said angrily. ‘She’s dead.’
‘Brett!’
‘I’m alive and I know what’s best for me. I’m going to St Edmund’s.’
In the end Brett had had to apply to the executors of his father’s will to release funds for his education and had petitioned the family courts to be allowed to go away to school. He never returned to his aunt’s house, or to Burnside, the Adelaide suburb where he’d spent his childhood. It was the first of many battles that he would win in his determined pursuit of wealth and worldly success, the only ‘security’ that meant a damn in Brett’s book. By his sixteenth birthday he was fully legally independent, the top performing scholar at the top school in Sydney, and the youngest-ever applicant to be awarded a place at ANU, the Australian National University in Canberra, for applied mathematics.
ANU was to change Brett Cranley’s life. Not because he graduated with first-class honors and went on to Melbourne Business School to begin an MBA he would eventually be too successful to have time to finish. But because it was at ANU that he met the two women who transformed him from a boy into a man.
The first was a professor’s wife by the name of Madeleine Jensen. Maddie spotted the dark, angry-looking boy on campus in his first week in Canberra.
‘Who is that?’ she asked her husband. Professor Jamie Jensen was the head of the math faculty at ANU, a quiet, scholarly man considerably more interested in Fermat’s Last Theorem than he was in his wife’s sexual needs. Or any other needs, for that matter.
‘That’s Brett Cranley. The prodigy, or so they say. Ridiculous to send a child of that age away to college in my view, but there we are.’
‘I wouldn’t call him a child,’ said Maddie, catching Brett’s eye and the wild hunger beneath his brooding exterior. ‘He’s very good looking.’
‘If you say so, my dear,’ Professor Jensen muttered absently.
Maddie did say so. Not just to her husband, but to Brett himself when she approached him after lectures a few days later. ‘Are you a virgin?’ she asked him bluntly.
Brett replied in the affirmative. Since his mother’s death he’d undergone a self-imposed ban on all interaction with the opposite sex. Not that he had no libido. Quite the opposite. But the strength of the physical longing welling up inside him was at war with the terrible fear of loss and abandonment that had become as much a part of him as his own flesh and bones. Brett adored women – both sexually and for the warmth and intimacy they offered, warmth and intimacy that he desperately longed for – but he was afraid of them.
‘Do you want to be?’
Whether it was Madeleine’s directness, her utter lack of guile, or the fact that she was almost old enough to be his mother; or whether it was her beauty, or her own deep sexual need speaking to his, Brett didn’t know. What he did know was that he wanted to go to bed with her. Very, very badly.
‘No.’
‘Good.’ Maddie smiled. ‘Follow me.’
Sex opened up a new and glorious world for Brett Cranley. Before long it rivalled ambition as the key driver in his personality. His relationships with women were wildly conflicted: needy, passionate and adoring on the one hand; angry, frightened and controlling on the other; each one a reflection of his feelings for his mother, frozen in suspended animation at fourteen. He and Maddie Jensen remained lovers for over a year, but there were many, many others, too many to count, let alone remember, a sea of faces and bodies and, before long, a trail of broken hearts left in his wake. Brett needed sex like a plant craving sunlight. Both the physical rush and the emotional validation fuelled his confidence and ambition like a shot of adrenaline in the arm.
He’d been sure of himself before ANU, before Maddie Jensen.
Now he felt invincible.
It was in his last year, his last few months at ANU, that Brett Cranley met the second woman who was to change his life forever.
Angela Flynn was not a student at the university. A shy, sweet, quietly funny eighteen-year-old girl, with no life experience and no particular ambition, she worked in the Belwood Bakery close to the mathematics faculty building. Brett used to see her when he bought his lunchtime sandwich and was immediately drawn to something about her. It was a combination of innocence, kindness and fragility. Angela was so pale she looked almost like a ghost, with her white-blonde hair and amber eyes, oddly translucent beneath her spun gold lashes. She was the sort of girl who looked as if she might faint if exposed to too much sun, or cold. And yet her disposition belied her appearance. As Brett got to know her, he discovered she was a relentless optimist, as hopeful and trusting of the world as he was cynical and dismissive. He also discovered that she was a virgin. For some reason that he couldn’t define, even to himself, this was important.
His attraction to Angela was different to that with all the other women he had gone to bed with, something that would remain the case throughout their long marriage. He wanted to own her, to protect her, to carry her around with him in a glass case, like a guardian angel. His angel. His Angela. He was sure that his mother would have loved her.
As it turned out, marrying Angela Flynn was not the easy feat he’d assumed it would be. She had a father, and three older brothers, all of them Irish Catholic, deeply protective and not remotely inclined to let their teenage sister ‘throw herself away’ on a kid not much older than she was and well known to be a player on campus. Nevertheless, Brett persisted, proposing to Angela before he went away to business school and agreeing to a chaste, three-year engagement at the Flynn family’s insistence. Even after he founded Cranley Estates at only twenty years old, backed by MacQuarie Bank, then dropped out of business school and became a multimillionaire almost overnight, Angela’s family held firm. They finally married on Angela’s twenty-first birthday, not a day before, in a tiny local church in Canberra.
The bride wore white.
It was the happiest day of Brett Cranley’s life.
‘You’d better get dressed,’ Michelle said, matter-of-factly.
She was back in PA mode now, as if the sex had never happened, scrolling through the rest of the day’s agenda on her Samsung phone while Brett lay sprawled out naked on the carpet with his arms and legs outstretched, like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian man.
‘The guy from Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s gonna be here in ten minutes.’
‘Oh, God. Really?’
‘Really. And I don’t think those are the assets he’s interested in, do you?’ She looked down at her boss’s wilting dick and grinned broadly.
‘I certainly hope not.’ Brett grinned back, feeling happier by the minute that he’d hired this girl. If they didn’t give him an ‘Investor in People’ award next year, there’d be no justice in the world. ‘Be an angel and hand me my clothes, would you? And call down and order a pot of tea for … what’s his name, the GSAM bloke?’
‘Kingham. Anthony Kingham. Will do.’
Brett had forgotten completely about the Goldman meeting. He must be tireder than he thought. He’d have liked to cancel, but it was too late now.
Never mind. The call to Angela and the kids would have to wait.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_fd7aae14-3d8c-5631-b631-733c3824ab23)
Max Bingley walked down Fittlescombe High Street with a spring in his step.
‘Good morning, Mrs Preedy!’
The village shopkeeper’s wife smiled and waved. She was wearing an old-fashioned apron with deep front pockets and had a wicker basket, filled incongruously with leeks, under one arm. She reminded Max of Mrs Honeyman, the village gossip from Camberwick Green, a 1960s children’s programme made with puppets that he and his younger brothers used to watch as kids. There was something wonderfully innocent and timeless about Fittlescombe that regularly took Max back to earlier, happier times. The Preedys’ shop was at the heart of it all, along with the excellent village pub, The Fox.
‘Enjoying the break, Mr Bingley?’
Mrs Preedy had unloaded her leeks into a crate of fresh vegetables outside the front door of the shop and was now polishing apples with the front of her apron.
‘I am indeed. Hard not to with such lovely weather.’
It was indeed a perfect day, blue-skied and warm for May, with the faintest hint of breeze carrying the scent of honeysuckle and early flowering jasmine on the air. Half-term had run late this year, and school wasn’t due to start again for another week, so the unexpected sunshine was an added boon. Max Bingley was thoroughly enjoying his new job as headmaster of St Hilda’s Primary School, and didn’t mind the idea of going back. But nothing could quite beat a week’s walking and fishing in the glorious Downs countryside. Not for the first time, Max said a silent prayer of thanks that he’d had the good sense to take the St Hilda’s job when it was offered to him.
When Harry Hotham, St Hilda’s headmaster of over twenty-five years, unexpectedly announced his retirement last year, and the governors approached Max about the position, he found himself on the receiving end of a relentless campaign by his daughters to accept the job. Max had been depressed since his wife, their mother, had died two years earlier.
‘You need a fresh start, Dad,’ said Rosie, now in her fourth year of medical school at Cambridge. ‘The Swell Valley is supposed to be ridiculously beautiful.’
‘You need a challenge, too,’ chipped in her sister May, already Dr Bingley and now studying for a second PhD in Medieval History in London. ‘Mum would hate to see you wasting away like this. You’re still young.’
‘I’m not young, darling,’ Max smiled, ‘but thank you for saying so.’
‘Well you’re not old,’ said Rosie. ‘More to the point, you’re a wonderful teacher. You have so much more to give professionally. And Fittlescombe’s a lovely village. I went there once for a wedding.’
‘I’m sure it is …’
‘We should at least go and take a look.’
All Max’s objections – he’d never taught in a state school, the pay was awful, he was a rotten administrator – were swatted aside by his daughters like so many pesky, insignificant flies.
‘You should have made head years ago, but you never pushed for it. And where better to make a difference than in a state school? Why should the wealthy kids get all the good teachers? Anyway, St Hilda’s is a charter school so there won’t be that much admin. The governors run it, and they obviously like you and your methods. You’ll have free rein.’
Little by little, Max had been worn down. Then he’d come to Fittlescombe, and walked into the cottage that May and Rosie had already found for him online. Half the size of his present house, Willow Cottage was utterly charming with its flagstone floors, open fires and enchanting sloping garden leading down to the river.
‘Private fishing rights, dad,’ May said with a wink. ‘And you wouldn’t need a mortgage.’
So Max took the job of headmaster at St Hilda’s, more because he lacked the energy to fight than for any positive reason. Now, nearly five months later, things were very different. He was very different. Revived and energized professionally in a way he wouldn’t have believed possible a year ago, he’d already had a profound impact at the school. Not everybody loved his old-fashioned methods – desks in rows, teacher at the front, blackboards and chalk and weekly tests on everything from spelling to times tables to French verbs. But the OFSTED report in March had given the school a glowing review, and if the current Year Six performed as well in their SATs as they had in the Easter mock exams, St Hilda’s had every chance of topping the West Sussex league tables. Quite an achievement for a four-room village primary school with a tiny budget and over thirty children to a class.
But it wasn’t only the school that had transformed Max Bingley. Day by day, week by week, the village of Fittlescombe had worked its magic on him, drawing him in and making him one of their own. The community was friendly, but it went far beyond that. It was the place itself, the solid stone walls of Willow Cottage, the church with its yew hedges and ancient tombs, the houses and shops squeezed together along the high street, like the last line of resistance against all that was ugly and vulgar and painful in this modern world. And then, of course, there were the Downs, surrounding Fittlescombe like protective giants, as vivid green as wet seaweed and as softly undulating as feather pillows. Max walked, and fished, and drank in the beauty of his new home like a humming bird gorging on nectar. And although his daughters despaired over the state of his cottage, and his utter lack of interest in painting a wall or hanging a picture, or even curtains, the truth was that the move to Fittlescombe had brought Max Bingley back to life.
At the end of the High Street he turned left, along the lane that led to the bottom of Furlings’ drive. Everybody in the village knew that a family of rich Australians had moved into the big house, the first non Flint-Hamiltons to live there in three centuries. Max Bingley had been surprised but delighted to learn that the new owners intended to send their daughter to the village school. Typically families with that sort of money sent their little darlings off to prestigious prep schools, like the one where Max had spent most of his career. Then again, Australians were supposed to be more down to earth and egalitarian by nature, weren’t they? Perhaps the Cranleys were champagne socialists? Either way, Max wasn’t above buttering up St Hilda’s new, mega-rich parents in the hope of a future donation to the school. He’d only been there a term and a half himself, but he already had a wish list for St Hilda’s as long as both his arms. More teaching assistants would be a start. And a central heating system that stood at least a fighting chance of seeing them through the next winter.
Straightening his tweed jacket, he headed purposefully up the long, bumpy drive.
‘Jason? Have you seen those cushions? They were in the big box. The one from the General Trading Company. Jason!’
Angela Cranley ran an exhausted hand through her hair. Brett was coming home tonight, for the first time. Home. It was funny how quickly Angela had come to think of Furlings in those terms. But nothing, nothing, was ready. The twin Knole sofas she’d ordered from Peter Jones had been the wrong colour and had had to go back. Her and Brett’s bed, shipped over from Sydney at Brett’s insistence because it was the most comfortable bed in the world, had been damaged in transit and now sat in the master suite with a huge crack in its antique mahogany headboard. The food order from Ocado had arrived, but the bloody people in Lewes had made a bunch of substitutions, including swapping out the seabass Angela had planned for Brett’s welcome-home supper with cod. Brett hated cod. And now the cushions – four large, down-stuffed squares of hand-embroidered Belgian lace, designed to cover the dreaded headboard crack – appeared to have gone missing in action.
To top it all off, Mrs Worsley had been called away to a family emergency, something to do with her sister and a boiler (Angela had only been half listening), and was not due back until tea time, only a few hours before Brett walked through the door. Which left Jason, who’d been in a world of his own these past few days, as Angela’s sole helper. (Unless you counted Logan who, last time Angela had seen her, had been painting her toenails in rainbow stripes with a packet of felt tip pens on the kitchen floor.) Now Jason, too, was gone.
Perhaps my son and four Belgian lace cushions are together somewhere, knocking back sour apple martinis and enjoying themselves while I lose my mind? Angela thought hysterically. She’d been pacing the library like a madwoman for the last five minutes, as if a two-by-three-foot crate from the General Trading Company were going to magically materialize before her eyes, simply because she remembered leaving it there yesterday.
The ringing doorbell did nothing to calm her jarred nerves.
‘Coming!’
Running into the hall, she collided with Jason, still in his pyjamas and looking as if he hadn’t slept a wink. Insomnia was one of the worst parts of depression, but Angela was too frazzled to offer much sympathy this morning.
‘Where have you been?’ she wailed. ‘I need you.’
‘In bed. Sorry.’
‘Have you seen the new cushions? They were in that big box …’
‘They’re in your dressing room. Mrs Worsley carried them up last night, remember?’
Clearly, Angela didn’t remember. She hadn’t felt this stressed since the day that horrendous Tricia woman showed up at the house in Sydney and announced, cool as a cucumber, that she and Brett were ‘madly in love’. The doorbell rang again.
‘Yes, yes! I’m coming. Give me a chance, for God’s sake.’
She pulled open the door, unaware of quite how deeply she was frowning, or how far her voice had carried.
‘I’m s-so sorry,’ the man on the doorstep stammered. ‘I do apologize. I’ve come at a bad time.’
The man was older, maybe a decade older than Brett, with a fan of wrinkles around each eye, but he wasn’t unattractive. Tall, and still only partially grey, with a slightly military bearing and a kind, intelligent face, he looked quintessentially English in his tweed jacket and bottle-green corduroy trousers. Angela could see at once that she’d embarrassed him by being so unwelcoming.
‘Not at all. God, please. I’m sorry. What must you think of me? I’m not normally so rude. Or so scruffy.’ She looked down at her crumpled jeans, stained at the knees with wood polish, and at the chipped nail enamel on her bare feet, and blushed what she knew to be a perfectly hideous tomato-red. ‘How can I help?’
She’s not at all what I expected, thought Max Bingley. He’d imagined diamonds and perfectly coiffed hair and a fleet of servants answering the door, not a harassed housewife with bags under her eyes dressed like a charwoman. Perhaps the Cranleys were not as well off as local gossip suggested?
‘Max Bingley.’ He proffered his hand. ‘I’m the new headmaster at St Hilda’s, the primary school in the village. I understand your daughter will be joining us next term?’
‘You’re Logan’s headmaster? Oh, crap.’ The words were out of her mouth before she knew she’d said them. Angela’s colour deepened. ‘I can’t believe I just said that out loud! I am soooo sorry.’
Max laughed. Her discomfiture clearly amused him.
‘That’s quite all right, Mrs Cranley. I promise I won’t be sending you to my office. Or your daughter. Not yet, anyway. What did you say her name was?’
‘Logan,’ said Angela, smoothing down her dishevelled hair.
Max resisted the urge to say ‘like the berry?’ and merely smiled politely.
‘We have a son too. Jason. But he’s twenty so I doubt you’re going to want him in your classroom, ha ha ha ha!’
What’s wrong with me? thought Angela. Why am I babbling away like a lunatic?
‘No. Quite so.’ Max shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. This was the moment when he’d expected her to invite him inside for a cup of tea, or at least to ask a few polite questions about the school. Instead she just stood in the doorway looking flustered. I shouldn’t have come. I should have waited to meet her at school like everybody else. ‘Well, I won’t keep you. I just wanted to say welcome and I look forward to meeting … Logan.’
He turned the word over in his mouth as if it were some strange fruit he’d never tasted before. There weren’t too many Logans to the pound in Fittlescombe. Or in England, come to that.
‘Right, well. I look forward to seeing you both at school,’ Max finished awkwardly. ‘Goodbye!’
He smiled and gave a cheery wave, but it had clearly been an embarrassing encounter for both of them.
Angela walked back into the hall, closing the front door behind her. ‘I just made a total dick of myself in front of the village headmaster,’ she told Jason.
‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ said Jason, not looking up from the box of books he was unpacking.
‘I did. I said “crap”.’
Jason smiled. ‘I reckon he’ll recover, Mum. Crap’s not that bad. It’s not even a real swear word.’
‘It fucking well is,’ said Angela. They both giggled.
‘You need to chill out, you know,’ said Jason. ‘It’s only Dad coming home. It’s not the pope.’
‘I know,’ Angela sighed. ‘But I promised him the house would be ready and it’s a bloody disaster.’
Jason hugged his mother. He hated to hear the fear in her voice. But the truth was, Angela was afraid of Brett. They all were. Not physically afraid. But afraid of his disapproval, his censure, his disappointment. Brett Cranley was a bully.
So what if you promised him? Jason wanted to scream. What about all the promises he made to you, and didn’t keep? Anyone would think you were the one who’d been unfaithful, not him. But he knew it would do no good.
‘The house is not a disaster. It’s beautiful. Dad’s gonna love it, you’ll see. Now go and have a bath and get changed.’
‘A bath? I can’t. The cushions …’
‘I’ll do the damn cushions. And I’ll unpack the rest of these boxes too,’ said Jason. ‘Please, go and take a chill pill before you hurt yourself. You’re no use to anyone in this state.’
Once she’d gone, reluctantly and only after leaving a barrage of instructions about what needed to be done in the next hour, Jason returned to unpacking. The few books the family had had shipped from Australia looked ridiculous in Furlings’ enormous library. Rory Flint-Hamilton had bequeathed his vast collection of Victorian first editions to Sussex University, so the endless shelves in the grand mahogany-panelled room were bare. Like the mouth of an old man who’s lost all his teeth, thought Jason. He couldn’t imagine how they were ever going to fill them.
Perhaps he could persuade his parents to turn it into a music room? The acoustics would be perfect for a Steinway grand piano. Jason’s father had never encouraged his music, partly because he considered it to be a useless attribute in a man, and partly because, as he told Jason brutally, ‘You’re not good enough, mate.’
In this latter observation, however, Brett was correct. Jason was a good, solid pianist, but he lacked the talent and flair to make it professionally, at concert-level. The idea that a person might want to play the piano for pleasure, without making any money from it, was anathema to Brett Cranley.
‘Why don’t you do something useful? Something you can make a living at?’ Brett would ask his son. Jason had long ago given up trying to reason with his dad. It would be like an eagle trying to communicate with a gorilla. Utterly futile.
The doorbell rang again. People were seriously social in this village. Jason hesitated – he was still in his pyjamas – but he knew if he didn’t get it, Angela would heave herself out of the bath like something out of The Kraken Wakes and run dripping down the stairs. She’d probably open the door stark naked, she was in such a bloody state about Dad and the house.
Skidding back into the hallway, sliding along in his socks like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, he opened the door.
‘Oh my goodness. Hello.’
The most beautiful woman Jason Cranley had ever seen stood before him, looking him up and down, curling her upper lip with a combination of amusement and disdain.
‘Do you know who I am?’
No, thought Jason. But suddenly, I want to. The girl was tall and slim, with a cascade of honey-blonde waves falling onto her shoulders and down her back. She was wearing tight jeans tucked into riding boots, a dark green cashmere sweater that clung unashamedly to her large, pert breasts, and aviator sunglasses that hid her eyes but could not conceal the chiselled beauty of her features. Her cheekbones looked as if they could cut through glass.
‘I’m Tatiana Flint-Hamilton,’ the goddess announced, without waiting for an answer. Just as well, as all Jason seemed able to do was to open and close his mouth like a guppy. ‘I’m here for my painting.’
Pushing past him, Tati strode into the hall. She’d both longingly anticipated and dreaded coming here today to face Furlings’ new owners. Or rather, to face the imposters who had, temporarily, appropriated her birthright. Tati would never, ever view the Cranleys as anything other than squatters, no matter how many pieces of paper they or their lawyers waved in front of her. This was her home. She had no intention of giving it up without a fight, and indeed had already engaged a solicitor to contest Rory’s will on her behalf.
She clung tight to her indignation now, as a tumult of emotions threatened to overwhelm her. Nostalgia. Grief. Regret. Ignoring Jason completely, she stormed off down the corridor, pushing open doors into rooms that were either bare or filled with strange, jarring, modern furniture. Other people’s furniture. Tati found herself fighting back tears. She’d stayed here herself only a few weeks ago for the fete, and it had still felt like home. She’d inhaled the smell of stone and wood, faintly infused with smoke from last winter’s fires, and run her fingers lovingly along the heavy, damask curtains in the drawing room. She used to like to hide behind those curtains as a child, eating Carlsbad plums she’d stolen from the pantry, much to Mrs Worsley’s fury. But now the curtains were gone and the house smelled of lavender and some Godawful room spray from The White Company. Like a bloody hotel!
Tatiana turned on Jason, who’d been following her around silently like a confused puppy since she arrived.
‘Where’s Mrs Worsley?’
She said it accusingly, as if Jason had kidnapped the housekeeper, or murdered her in her bed and concealed the body.
‘She took the day off.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. She never takes days off. To do what?’
‘Erm, I think her sister …’ He left the sentence hanging, both intimidated and enthralled by Tatiana’s beauty and her astonishing confidence. She hadn’t asked if she could come in, or even inquired as to his name. She’d simply swept past him, like a queen reclaiming her castle.
‘Is there anything I can help with? I’m Jason by the way.’
Tatiana deigned to remove her Ray-Bans. ‘Jason. How do you do? I would say it’s nice to meet you but, under the circumstances,’ she smiled thinly, ‘I won’t bother. When will Mrs Worsley be back?’
‘I’m back now.’
The disapproving Scottish voice that Tatiana knew as well as her own rang out behind her, filling the room that until a few months ago had been Rory Flint-Hamilton’s study.
‘What do you want, Tatiana?’
Tatiana looked at the housekeeper with narrowed eyes. She was certain the old witch must have known about the changes to her father’s will. She’d probably encouraged him. God knows she’d had enough opportunity to sow the seeds of doubt in Rory’s mind. Tati could hear her now:
‘It would be tragic to think of Furlings going to wrack and ruin.’
‘Poor Tatiana’s her own worst enemy. The last thing she needs is more cash in her hand.’
She probably thought Daddy would leave her something as a token of his appreciation. The sanctimonious, money-grubbing, scheming old shrew.
Underneath Tatiana’s anger there was love there, and a grudging respect for the woman who had practically raised her. But, as on Mrs Worsley’s side, the hurt feelings ran deep, with both women feeling let down and betrayed by the other.
Tatiana had insisted on staying at Furlings in the run-up to the fete, but Mrs Worsley clearly hadn’t wanted her there. Perhaps unsure of her status since Rory’s death, she had given in and allowed it anyway, despite her better judgement. But now, with the Cranleys safely installed, she obviously felt emboldened.
‘You know you shouldn’t be here,’ she chided.
‘I’ve come for Granny’s painting,’ Tatiana responded stiffly.
‘I see. Well, you know where to find it.’
‘Obviously.’
While the two women glared at one another, arms folded, the doorbell rang yet again.
What now? thought Jason, irritated to have to go back to the front door rather than stay and watch the standoff.
‘Can I help you?’
It was a man at the door this time, blond and stocky and with a disarmingly genuine smile.
‘Gabriel Baxter. We’re neighbours.’ Gabe offered Jason his hand. ‘Is your father at home?’
Just at that moment, Angela came downstairs. Fresh from the bath, with her still damp hair tied up in a bun, she looked younger than her forty-two years in a plain white Gap T-shirt and a pair of cut-off jeans. She wore no make-up and seemed fragile and tiny in her bare feet.
‘My husband’s still in London.’ She smiled at Gabe. Having made such a poor impression on Max Bingley, she was determined to be friendly to any other villagers who showed up on the doorstep. ‘We’re expecting him this evening. I’m Angela. Would you like a cup of tea?’
Tatiana, her painting tucked under one arm, marched back into the hallway. She was about to storm straight out but stopped in her tracks when she saw Gabe.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked rudely, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. Tatiana knew Gabe was one of the leading voices against her in the village. She also knew that when her father had been alive, Gabe had tried relentlessly to convince Rory to sell off parcels of Furlings’ land. She didn’t trust him an inch.
‘Just being neighbourly,’ lied Gabe. ‘How about you?’
I live here, Tati wanted to shout. It’s my fucking house. But she managed to restrain herself.
‘I’m collecting a painting. My grandmother’s portrait. One of the few pieces of my inheritance that wasn’t stolen from me,’ she added caustically. Belatedly catching sight of Angela, she introduced herself, extending the hand not holding the painting with regal disdain.
‘Tatiana Flint-Hamilton.’
‘Oh!’ Angela smiled warmly. ‘Hello. I didn’t know you were coming. I’m Angela. I’m so sorry about the mess. You should have called.’
‘Should I indeed?’ Tati’s voice quivered with resentment and hostility.
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Angela blushed. ‘I just meant …’
‘Don’t apologize,’ Gabe Baxter interjected. ‘It’s your house.’
Tati shot him a look that would have turned a lesser man to stone.
‘Besides, you’re quite right. Tatiana should have called.’
‘Don’t you have a ewe that needs lambing, Gabriel?’ sniped Tati. ‘Or an episode of The Archers to listen to? Gabriel’s terribly rustic,’ she added patronizingly to Angela and Jason. ‘A real local character. If you ask him nicely, I expect he’ll come round and do a spot of Morris dancing for you, won’t you, Gabriel? It’s really quite adorable.’
Gabe’s features hardened. He looked at his watch.
‘My goodness, is that the time? You’d best get home to your rented cottage, Tatiana. It’s almost coke-o’clock.’
Blushing scarlet, Tatiana pushed past him and stormed out, throwing the painting into the back seat of her Mini Cooper and driving off. Gabe Baxter followed swiftly after, promising to come back and call on Brett at the weekend.
Once the door closed behind him, Angela and Jason exchanged shocked glances.
‘Is everybody in Fittlescombe so … dramatic?’ Angela asked Mrs Worsley.
Or so attractive? thought Jason. Watching Gabe and Tatiana going at it was like watching a pair of peacocks fanning out their tails for battle. Terrifying but beautiful.
‘No ma’am,’ said Mrs Worsley with feeling. ‘I can assure you that most of your neighbours are quite normal, sane and friendly people. Miss Flint-Hamilton – Tatiana – I’m afraid she can bring out the worst in folk. Especially around here.’
Angela bit her lower lip anxiously. She’d already heard whispers in the village about Tatiana’s legal challenge to the will. Brett had assured her that the legacy was watertight, and Furlings was theirs. But having seen Tatiana in the flesh, Angela got the strong sense that Rory Flint-Hamilton’s daughter was a force to be reckoned with. Perhaps Brett had underestimated her?
‘You don’t think she plans to cause trouble, do you?’
She looked at Mrs Worsley nervously.
‘Unfortunately Mrs Cranley, Tatiana’s done nothing but cause trouble since the day she was born. And since she turned fifteen …’ She rolled her eyes heavenwards. ‘Her father was always too soft on her, bless his soul. Try not to worry, though,’ she added, noticing Angela’s tense expression. ‘She’s full of hot air about the will.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘Oh, yes. She would need the support of the whole village to be able to launch a challenge, and she certainly hasn’t got that. Even if she did, Mr Flint-Hamilton was a clever man, and a thorough one. These so-called loopholes are all in Tatiana’s head.’
‘I do hope so,’ said Angela.
The thought of packing everything up and returning to Sydney, Tricia and their old life now was more than she could bear.
Twenty minutes later, pushing open the stiff door of Greystones Farm, Tatiana collapsed on the ugly, brown sofa feeling exhausted and depressed.
It had been a pretty devastating two days.
Unable to afford a decent London lawyer, she’d retained a local, Chichester man, Raymond Baines of Baines, Bailey & Wilson. Their meeting yesterday had been less than Tati had hoped for.
‘To be perfectly honest with you, Miss Flint-Hamilton, I don’t believe you have a case.’
Short and bald, with thick, owlish glasses and a distinctly passive, mild-mannered, absolute-opposite-of-a-go-getter-lawyer demeanour, Ray Baines looked at his would-be client steadily.
‘But I already have half the village behind me,’ Tati protested. ‘The tide of local opinion is definitely turning. Nobody wants some upstart Australian installed at Furlings. I made good headway running the fete committee, and by the time it comes to court I’m sure I can—’
‘It won’t matter,’ Raymond Baines cut her off, not unkindly. ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you.’
‘Are you saying you are unable to act for me, Mr Baines?’ Masking her disappointment with anger, Tatiana bristled with aggression.
‘No, Miss Flint-Hamilton. I am able to act for you. And technically speaking you are correct. We could mount a challenge based on the premise that Furlings was subject to an ‘effective’ entailment which your father had no legal authority to break. However I am advising you that it is my legal opinion that such a challenge will fail. With or without local support.’
‘Yes, but you don’t know that. You only think it.’
‘I think it very strongly.’
Tatiana knew she was clutching at straws. But drowning as she was in a sea of shattered hopes, she had no choice but to clutch on regardless.
‘What are your fees, Mr Baines?’
Raymond Baines told her. The number was modest, a tiny fraction of what Tati’s godfather’s firm would have charged for the same service. But it would still represent a dent in Tati’s meagre savings that she could ill afford.
‘Savings’ was perhaps the wrong word for the few thousand pounds remaining in Tatiana’s bank account. Having split from Piers, her latest wealthy lover, and moved out of his Belgravia flat, Tatiana had taken the jewellery he’d given her, along with any other gifts from former paramours she suspected might be of value, and auctioned the lot at Christie’s. The resulting windfall had been enough to pay off her debts, rent Greystones for six months, and leave a modest sum to fund a legal battle with the Cranleys.
Unfortunately, she would need a lot more than a modest sum. At a minimum, she would need full access to the pittance of a trust fund her father had deigned to leave her. That would mean crawling cap-in-hand to St Hilda’s new headmaster, Harry Hotham’s replacement, to beg for a job. So far Tati’s pride had prevented her from availing herself of this much-needed source of funds. It was bad enough having to leave London and return to Fittlescombe, but that was a necessity. Ending it with Piers meant she’d lost the roof over her head, and rents in any part of London where she might actually want to live were astronomical. Still, if the court case dragged on as long as Raymond Baines seemed to think it might, the fact was she was going to need a job of some kind. And as the school job was the only one that unlocked her trusts, this was the obvious path to take.
The prospect terrified her. Tatiana Flint-Hamilton had never worked a day in her life. As for teaching, she wished she shared her godfather’s faith in her abilities. Or her father’s, for that matter. The simple truth was that she no more knew how to control a class full of children than she knew how to mill flour or discover a cure for cancer.
She’d hoped that going back to Furlings today and seeing the new owners installed there might revive her fighting spirit and boost her courage. Remind her that the fight was worth it. In fact, all it had done was make her desperately sad. The fact that the Cranley family seemed so nice and friendly, and so ensconced already, only made Tati feel worse. Mrs Worsley was already firmly on their side, defending their right to be there like the wretched dragon that she was. It didn’t seem to bother her in the least that Furlings might end up in the hands of a boy named Jason with a sister who, if local gossip was correct, appeared to have been named after a berry. Granny Flint-Hamilton would be rolling in her grave! As for Gabe Baxter, he was little more than a jumped-up farmhand himself. It was hardly any wonder that he was pro-the Cranleys, already hanging around Furlings like a bad smell. People like Gabe ran on envy the same way a car runs on petrol.
Shit-stirring little Bolshevik. I wonder what he’s after, exactly?
Getting up from the sofa, Tati wandered into the kitchen and put the kettle on, more for something to do than anything else. It was a long time since she’d felt so profoundly alone. Greystones, the farmhouse she’d rented, was simply furnished, almost to the point of sparseness, and Tati had brought nothing with her from London, beyond some bed sheets and a preposterously expensive couture wardrobe, wholly unsuitable for country life. Her shoe collection alone, more than fifty pairs of Jonathan Kelsey, Manolo Blahnik and Emma Hope stilettos in a rainbow of gleaming, candy colours, would have been enough for a deposit on a house like this one, if only she’d spent her money a little more wisely. Then again, she’d assumed she would always be rich. And why wouldn’t she? How was she supposed to know that her vengeful bloody father had been plotting to disinherit her all along, in some sort of macabre, sick joke from beyond the grave?
Having never put roots down anywhere other than Furlings, it had never occurred to Tati to acquire furniture or clocks or books or favourite cushions, the things that would have helped to turn a house like this into a home. She hated the poo-brown sofas, and the incongruously modern, sixties-style Ikea plastic chairs around the dining-room table. As for her landlady’s rugs, they were so vile – swirly affairs in orange and lime green and other colours that had no place in a beautiful, Grade II-listed Sussex hall house – that Tati had rolled them all up on the day she’d arrived and stacked them en masse in the back of the garage. The original flagstones and wide-beamed oak floors beneath were infinitely preferable. But without a single rug of her own to warm the place up a bit, the overall effect was one of bareness. Stark and barren, like a tree stripped of its leaves after a storm.
The kettle switched itself off with a click, the steam from its spout fogging up the kitchen window. Tatiana wiped the glass clean with her sleeve and looked out into the garden. It was a stunning day, blue-skied and clear, like the summers of her childhood. Greystones Farm was really little more than a cottage on the outskirts of Fittlescombe, but its garden was enormous, its various sections – rose garden, orchard, vegetable patch and lawn – tumbling into one another willy-nilly, as each exploded and overflowed with colour and scent and fruit and life. There must have been a planting plan once, a design. Tatiana could see where the crumbling walls and overgrown beech hedges had once delineated and organized more than an acre of space. But now, untended, other than a weekly lawn-mowing by old Mr Dryer from the village, the garden was a joyously jumbled eruption of blossoms and greenery. Gazing out at it, watching a rabbit skip about in the white carpet of fallen apple blossom, even Tatiana’s spirits lifted a little. Making herself a cup of Earl Grey and two slices of toast and honey, she pushed open the back door and wandered outside.
Could I be happy here? She wondered, savouring the deliciously sweet, buttery toast as she strolled through a towering row of hollyhocks. Tati hadn’t lived in the countryside, or spent more than a week at a stretch here, since her childhood. And those weeks had always been spent at Furlings, riding her beloved horse, Flint.
There were times when Tati thought she missed Flint even more than she missed her father. The grey stallion was a former racehorse, and had been a wildly extravagant tenth birthday present from Rory Flint-Hamilton to his daughter. Mrs Worsley had disapproved from the start, but Tatiana would never forget that magical day. Rory leading her, blindfold, around to the stable yard and telling her to open her eyes as Flint pranced majestically out of his horsebox.
‘For you, my darling. What do you think?’
‘Oh, Daddy!’ Tati had gasped, fighting back tears of joy. ‘He’s beautiful. He’s so beautiful! Is he really mine?’
‘All yours, my angel. You deserve him.’
Memories of that day still brought Tati to tears. Perhaps because it represented a time before it all went wrong? A time when her father adored her unconditionally. A time before she’d disappointed him. Before she grew up.
Six years later, Flint had also been the cause of one of their worst-ever rows, a terrible turning point in their relationship. Blind drunk after breaking into Furlings’ wine cellar and stealing Rory’s Pierre Ferrand 1972 Vintage Cognac, Tati had ridden Flint bareback up to the main A27 road. Terrified by a passing lorry, the stallion had bolted into a nearby field, badly injuring his right foreleg.
‘How could you be so irresponsible!’ Rory had chastised her the next day. The vet was still not sure whether or not Flint would be permanently lame.
Tati, severely hungover and secretly riddled with guilt, had lashed out defiantly, refusing to apologize. ‘He’s my horse. I can do what I want with him.’
‘He could have been killed, Tatiana. You both could have been killed.’
‘So? It’s my life. I can do what I want with that as well,’ Tati snarled at her father before throwing up violently all over the tack-room floor.
Looking back now she couldn’t for the life of her remember what she had been so angry about. She only remembered that she was angry, and out of control, and that somewhere deep down, even back then, she knew it.
Standing in the garden at Greystones Farm, she wondered whether that episode with Flint had been the turning point. The horse had recovered and been sold, and Tatiana pretended not to care. But losing Flint had marked the end of an era.
And now I’ve lost Furlings, too.
It was Furlings that had brought her back to Fittlescombe. The house itself had always been the draw. It was the house that kept calling to her, through all the later dramas and distractions of her adult life.
Now, banished from Furlings, and with her former London party life gone up in ashes and smoke behind her, she found she was noticing Fittlescombe village and its glorious surroundings almost for the first time. This garden, for example: humble and gone to seed, a far cry from the formal grandeur of Furlings, was equally idyllic in its own way. So were the rolling chalk giants behind it, and the lane leading down from Greystone’s front gate to Fittlescombe High Street with its shops and church and green and wisteria-covered pubs. It was all beautiful. A wonderland, really. Tati couldn’t imagine what had prevented her from seeing it before.
But as time passed and she meandered through Greystones’ garden, Tati’s heart began to harden. Wonderland indeed. Get a grip. You’re not some tourist on a sodding walking holiday, she told herself sternly. You’re here to get Furlings back. If she lost sight of that purpose, that goal, there would be nothing left at all. No point to her life. No identity. No future. No hold on the past.
She shivered. It was cold, and getting dark. How long had she been out here, walking and thinking? Too long, clearly.
Inside the house she turned on the central heating and all the lights, forgetting the expense for once in her dire need for some cheer. What else did she want? Noise. Something mindless. She turned on the television and flipped channels, settling for Kelly Osbourne on Fashion Police poking fun at celebrities’ outfits. It didn’t get any shallower or more distracting than that. Finally, she opened the larder cupboard and pulled out a packet of Pringles and a bottle of cheap red wine, liberally filling glass after glass as she ate and watched, watched and ate, pushing all deeper considerations out of her head.
By the time she thought she heard the doorbell ring, Tati was in a warm, alcohol-induced glow. The process of deciding definitively that the bell had – indeed – rung, standing up, brushing the Pringles crumbs off her jeans and weaving her way unsteadily to the door took another few minutes, by which time the caller had gone. Leaning on the porch step in the darkness, however, was a tightly bubble-wrapped package.
Pulling it inside, Tati closed the door and ran to the kitchen for scissors. With drunken abandon she sliced away at the plastic wrapping, finally wrenching the contents free with her hands. It was a set of miniatures, tiny, intricately painted portraits of Tati’s grandmother Peg and her three siblings. Of course! She’d completely forgotten that her father had left her these too. Perhaps because, unlike the large Sutherland portrait of Peg, they weren’t particularly valuable. Not that Tati had any intention of selling any of them.
Tati turned each of the miniatures over in her hands. Granny, Uncle John and the two older sisters, Maud and Helen, whom she never knew. For a moment she thought it might be Mrs Worsley who had sent them in a moment of forgiveness. But the note was from Angela Cranley, who realized she’d forgotten them and had them sent over. Even Tati had to admit that that was kind and thoughtful. She tried not to resent it as she propped each of the tiny pictures up along the kitchen countertop. Picking up the large painting, she set it beside them, studying it closely for the first time.
There was her grandmother Peg, a young girl of twenty-one in the portrait but with the same sharp, knowing eyes she’d had as an old woman, and that Tati remembered so vividly from her own early childhood, in the years when her mother had still been alive. Peggy was Tati’s mother’s mother, but the two women hadn’t been remotely physically alike. Tatiana’s own mother, Vicky, was all softness and curves, a round, gentle loving woman, as welcoming as a feather bed or a favourite cushion. Peggy, by contrast, was intelligent and cynical, a tall, slender person of angular proportions and gimlet stares, rarely seen without a strong French cigarette in one hand and a tumbler of whisky in the other. Much more like me, thought Tati.
Sinking down into one of the ugly plastic dining chairs, Tati gazed at the painting for a long, long time. Her grandmother would have been horrified to see a family of Australians installed at Furlings, of that Tati felt sure. She was less sure as to whom Granny Peggy would have blamed for the situation: Rory, for changing his will? Or her, Tati, for driving him to it?
It doesn’t matter anyway. She’s dead. They’re all dead except for me. Peggy and her siblings. Mum and Dad. I’m the last. I’m the living. It’s what I think that matters.
She didn’t realize until hours later, when she got up to go to bed, that her face was wet with tears.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_f2e3b9fc-e836-5918-a7b5-692d7d0d0f58)
Angela Cranley tied the silk belt of her kimono robe loosely around her waist and smiled down at her husband.
‘Come back to bed,’ growled Brett, reaching for her hand and pulling her towards him.
‘I can’t. You know I can’t,’ giggled Angela. ‘It’s Logan’s first day at school this morning.’
As always after they’d made love there was a glow about her. Brett loved his wife the most like this, with her tousled hair and flushed cheeks and that smile that said more about her love for him than words ever could. Thank God he’d left Sydney and that bitch Tricia! He didn’t know what he would do if he ever lost Ange.
It was three days since Brett had first arrived in Fittlescombe and walked through the front door of the house that was to be his home for the foreseeable future. All Angela’s anxieties about Furlings not being ready had been for nothing. Brett had instantly seen past the teething problems of the move and fallen almost as deeply in love with the house as he was with his wife and children. (Well, one of them, anyway. Jason still seemed miserable and distracted, but then that was becoming a permanent state of affairs with him.) Brett had seen numerous images of Furlings online, of course, so he’d already known the house was a beauty. But this was one of those rare cases where reality had trounced anticipation. Brett Cranley had grown used to having lovely things, to buying whatever he wanted and designing his life to order. Despite this, ever since he’d learned of Rory Flint-Hamilton’s will and seen those first pictures, Furlings had seduced him. It was a bit like having an arranged marriage and then discovering your bride was a supermodel.
He noticed that Angela had been nervous at dinner that first night, but he put it down to the house call she’d received earlier in the day from old man Flint-Hamilton’s daughter. Apparently Tatiana was threatening to challenge the will.
‘She seemed awfully determined about it,’ Angela said, refilling Brett’s wine glass and re-folding his napkin like an over-attentive Geisha. ‘She’s clearly heartbroken about losing the house.’
‘I don’t give a shit,’ Brett said brutally. ‘She had no right turning up here unannounced and worrying you like that.’
Angela didn’t say that her only real worry had been how Brett would take the news. Her husband doled out law suits the way that other people sent out Christmas cards. She couldn’t face beginning their new life in this idyllic village under a cloud of conflict and rancour.
‘She lost the house because of her own shitty behaviour. Rory’s letter of wishes made that very clear. She’s no one to blame but herself. As for challenging the will,’ he drained his wineglass, throwing the burgundy liquid down his throat angrily, like a man trying to put out a fire, ‘she hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell. Forget her.’
In her relief that Brett was happy, and that they were going to stay here, Angela had forgotten Tati. She’d sleep-walked through the last two days in a blind stupor of contentment, helping Mrs Worsley sew name tapes into Logan’s uniform and ordering expensive lingerie online to surprise Brett, who was always trying to get her into negligees and stockings, usually with no success.
‘Jason can take Logan to school,’ Brett said now, refusing to release Angela. Slipping one hand beneath her kimono he cupped her left breast, simultaneously kissing her ear and neck as he dragged her back beneath the covers.
‘He can’t,’ Angela protested half-heartedly, her lips finding her husband’s as she kissed him back. ‘Not on the first day. She’ll be nervous.’
‘Logan?’ laughed Brett. ‘Nervous? Please. She’ll be eating those poor teachers alive. That kid’s got more confidence than Muhammad Ali on steroids.’
It was true. Logan took after her father in that regard, as in every other.
‘I have to take her, darling.’ Angela smiled. ‘Jase can pick her up this afternoon. The school’s only down the lane, I’ll be back by nine.’
‘Just make sure you are,’ said Brett, his voice thick with desire as he reluctantly released her. ‘I don’t like being kept waiting.’
‘I don’t like being kept waiting.’
Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s cut-glass voice ricocheted off the walls of St Hilda’s school office like a shower of diamond-tipped bullets. It was three o’clock in the afternoon on the first day back after half-term. With only half an hour until the bell went, the school office was calm and quiet for the first time all day. Or rather it was until Tati walked in.
‘How long is he going to be?’
‘Mr Bingley’s exceptionally busy this afternoon,’ said the school secretary tersely. It had been a long and trying day. The last thing she needed was attitude from Fittlescombe’s self-appointed Lady Muck.
‘Yes, well so am I,’ lied Tati.
She realized she was being obnoxious and that her rudeness wasn’t helping matters. But her nerves were out of control. It had taken all of her reserves of courage to steel herself to come here today in the first place, to swallow her pride and ask for the job that her father had arranged for her before he died.
But Rory had been dealing with Harry Hotham. Harry had known Tati all her life. He’d taught her as a child and flirted with her gently but incorrigibly as she blossomed into womanhood. Harry would have adored the tight-fitting Gucci skirt suit and vertiginous Jimmy Choo heels she’d chosen for today’s interview. But suddenly Tati felt nervous that the new man, Bingley, might not be so appreciative. With her long hair cascading down her back like a river of honey and her wide, pale pink lips glistening with Mac gloss like two delicious strips of candy, her look did not scream ‘village schoolmistress’.
Not that it mattered what she wore if the new headmaster couldn’t even be bothered to see her.
‘This is ridiculous.’ Snatching up her Chanel quilted handbag, Tati headed for the door. If she hurried she’d miss the first of the parents arriving to collect their little darlings and be spared the embarrassment of being seen loitering around a primary school as if dressed for a Vogue cover shoot. ‘Tell Mr Bingley I’ll call to reschedule.’
But just as she pushed open the double doors, Max Bingley emerged from his office. ‘Miss Flint-Hamilton? Do come in. I’ve only got a few minutes but I can see you now if it’s quick.’
Tati hesitated, wildly unsure of herself and feeling particularly foolish in her teetery heels. Max Bingley was younger than Harry Hotham but he had far more gravitas, and none of Harry’s playful twinkle in his eye. With his military bearing and craggy but handsome face, he radiated authority like a star radiates heat. In one sentence he had successfully asserted his dominance over Tati and taken complete control of the situation, a state of affairs that Tati was neither used to, nor enjoyed.
‘I … erm … all right,’ she stammered, following him back into his room and sitting meekly in the chair that he indicated.
‘How can I help?’ Max asked. His tone was friendly but brisk.
‘I … well. It’s about the job,’ Tati began uncertainly.
Max raised an eyebrow. ‘What job?’
‘Well, my father … you see, he and Harry Hotham …’ Tati blushed. What on earth was she doing here? The last thing she wanted to do was get into the ins-and-outs of her father’s will with this complete stranger, some second-rate schoolteacher from who knows where. She took a deep breath.
‘Harry Hotham was a friend of my family,’ she blurted. ‘My father and he were keen that I should teach at the school. But then I learned Harry had retired.’
Max Bingley frowned. ‘I see. Are you a qualified teacher?’ He looked Tati up and down with what she took to be a combination of curiosity and distaste.
‘Well, no. Not exactly. I’m a …’ Tati searched for a word to describe herself. ‘Socialite’ made her sound vacuous. ‘Heiress’, sadly, was no longer accurate. She cleared her throat. ‘I did train as a teacher.’
‘But you never qualified?’
‘No.’
‘Have you ever worked in a school?’
‘Not until now.’
Tati smiled and flicked her hair alluringly.
Max Bingley’s frown deepened. ‘So let me get this straight. You have no experience or qualifications. But my predecessor offered you a teaching position here?’
‘Yes,’ Tati said defiantly. ‘With respect, Mr Bingley, I hardly think that teaching a few five-year-olds is beyond me. We’re talking about the village primary school, not a fellowship at Oxford!’
She laughed, earning herself a withering glare from across the desk. The interview wasn’t going at all the way she’d hoped.
‘Look, it wasn’t a formal offer or anything,’ she backtracked hastily. ‘I don’t have a letter. Harry didn’t operate like that.’
‘Didn’t he indeed?’ muttered Max Bingley.
‘My father was keen I should use my training,’ Tati ploughed on. ‘Now due to … family circumstances, I find myself back in Fittlescombe for a while. So I thought, you know, why not?’
She leaned back languorously in her chair and re-crossed her legs, giving St Hilda’s new headmaster a front-row view of her perfectly toned upper thighs. He wasn’t so easily manipulated, but realizing the game she was trying to play, for a split second it was Max Bingley’s turn to feel flustered and unsure of himself. But he quickly regained his composure.
‘I’m afraid I can think of a number of reasons why not, Miss Flint-Hamilton, the main one being that the children of this village, of this school, deserve a decent education. I can’t parachute in a completely inexperienced teacher on the back of some vague offer that may or may not have been made to you by my predecessor! The very idea’s ridiculous.’
Tati got to her feet, stung. ‘There’s no “may or may not” about it,’ she said hotly. ‘Harry Hotham promised me a job. Do you think I’d be here otherwise?’
She looked so terribly upset that for a moment Max Bingley relented. He had two daughters of about the same age as Tatiana and flattered himself that he understood young women. Behind the cocky façade, Max realized, this girl was terrified. Terrified and embarrassed in equal measure.
‘Sit down,’ he said kindly. ‘I’m not doubting your word. I’m merely saying that it wouldn’t be right for me to give you a job as a teacher here, even if I had a position available. Which, as it happens, I don’t. Without experience, you wouldn’t succeed at it, Miss Flint-Hamilton. The children would suffer and so would you.’
Tati sat down, deflated. She was hardly in a position to argue with any of the above. On the other hand, if she were going to stay and fight for Furlings, she needed the money from her trust fund. And if she were going to eat, never mind buy any furniture for Greystones, she needed a salary. She needed this job.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, picking up her handbag. ‘I’ve clearly wasted both of our time.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Max. ‘If you’re seriously interested in teaching and would like to gain some experience, I might consider taking you on as a classroom assistant.’
Tati brightened. Classroom assistant. Would the trustees go for that?
‘You’d have to do a three-month trial first, so I could assess your suitability for the job.’
‘A trial?’ Tati frowned.
‘Yes. Unpaid, although we’d cover your basic expenses.’
‘Unpaid?’ There was no disguising her outrage now. ‘Thank you, Mr Bingley, but if I’d wanted to volunteer my time I’d have gone directly to Oxfam. No doubt I’ll see you around the village.’ And with that she stormed out, slamming Max Bingley’s office door shut, the smell of burning olive branches lingering in the air behind her.
The bell must have rung while she and Max were talking. Outside the playground was thronged with overexcited children and weary mothers, rolling their eyes at one another as lunchboxes, backpacks and discarded items of uniform were thrust into their outstretched arms.
Blinded with rage, at herself as much as anyone, and desperate to get out of there, Tati stumbled in her high-heeled shoes and careered into one of the fathers. Dropping her Chanel bag onto the asphalt she looked on in horror as its contents spilled everywhere.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ she hissed through gritted teeth.
A stunningly pretty ten-year-old girl, resplendent in what looked like a brand-new St Hilda’s summer uniform of red and white gingham dress, white ankle socks and straw boater with a red ribbon, gasped.
‘She said the “f” word!’ Did you hear her, Jase? She said the “f” word!’
Belatedly, Tati caught the Australian accent. Looking up she saw that the ‘father’ she had bumped into was not a father at all but Jason Cranley, the mute, freckled guy she’d met up at Furlings a few days ago. The little girl must be the daughter, Logan.
‘She’s got cigarettes in her bag!’ Logan squealed accusingly, picking up a half-empty packet of Marlboro reds and shaking them in Tati’s direction. ‘Don’t you know smoking is the most dumbest thing you can ever do? You can die! And you can get wrinkles.’
For some reason this last rejoinder made Tati laugh.
‘Wrinkles? My goodness. That sounds very serious.’
‘It is.’ Logan’s huge, dark eyes widened beneath her long lashes. She really was an extraordinarily pretty child, although it struck Tati that she looked nothing like either her mother or brother. ‘I’ll throw them in the bin for you if you like.’
Jason, who’d watched silently until now, finally found his voice. ‘You can’t throw other people’s property in the bin, Logan.’ Taking the cigarettes from his little sister, he handed them back to Tatiana.
‘No. But you can steal it from under their noses, apparently,’ Tati shot back waspishly, ‘by conning a dying man into leaving you his home.’
Jason blushed. ‘I’m n-n-not the enemy, you know,’ he stammered. ‘None of this will business has anything to do with me.’
‘No, well. I suppose not,’ Tati conceded grudgingly, appraising him more closely than she had done at Furlings a few days ago. He wasn’t bad-looking. But he was very much a boy rather than a man. There was a fragility about Jason Cranley, one might even say an innocence, that made one want to protect and mother him. Perhaps it was the freckles? Tati couldn’t imagine him having sex, although it was clear from the way he blushed and avoided eye contact that he was attracted to her.
‘I’d like it if we could be friends,’ he mumbled.
Tati considered this. She had no problem with Jason Cranley. Only with his greedy, conniving, inheritance-pilfering father. Besides, it might turn out to be useful to have a Cranley family member on her side. She may lack experience as a teacher, but when it came to pulling a young man’s heart strings, or fanning his sexual obsession, Tatiana Flint-Hamilton was very much an old hand. Jason could be her ‘man on the inside’ at Furlings. If she were going to win this legal battle over the will, she would need all the help – and inside information – she could get.
‘Me too,’ she smiled. ‘I had a shitty day, that’s all. Of course we can be friends.’
Reaching out, she touched his arm in a conciliatory gesture and was gratified when Jason blushed as if he were on fire.
‘What was so shitty?’ Jason asked. In her sexy, expensive clothes, exuding glamour like a movie star or a royal princess, it was hard to imagine Tatiana’s days being anything other than gilded and wonderful.
‘Oh nothing.’ She waved a hand dismissively in the direction of the school buildings. ‘The new headmaster doesn’t think I’m capable of ascending to the dizzy heights of village schoolteacher. He wants me to audition to be some PGCE nark’s assistant. An “unpaid trial”, that’s what he offered me. Can you believe the nerve?’
Jason Cranley couldn’t. From his limited first impressions, Tatiana Flint-Hamilton seemed capable of absolutely anything. He certainly wouldn’t have the balls to cross her.
‘Anyway,’ Tati smiled, pulling a cigarette out of her packet ‘I’ll definitely be needing one of these to calm my nerves.’
‘No!’ Logan, who’d been watching this exchange between her brother and the very beautiful lady with interest, shook her finger up at Tati disapprovingly. ‘Wrinkles, remember?’
Tati shook her finger back and lit up. ‘Wrinkles Schminkles.’
To Jason Cranley’s delight, and the other parents’ slack-jawed astonishment, she winked at him as she sashayed out of the playground.
Back at Furlings, Brett Cranley was in the kitchen. Sitting at the table with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his arms folded, he was listening intently to his new neighbour, Gabriel Baxter.
‘They can’t be developed,’ Gabe was saying. ‘The whole valley’s an area of outstanding natural beauty. The only thing they’re good for is farming. And your yields – the estate’s yields – over the last ten years have been dismal.’
‘So why do you want them so badly?’ asked Brett. He liked the young farmer sitting opposite him. In jeans and an open-necked shirt, his naturally pale skin tanned the colour of just-cooked-toast from long summer days spent out in his fields, and with his blond hair flopping over his eyes messily like a handful of straw, Gabriel Baxter came across as honest, ambitious and direct. But Brett Cranley took nothing at face value when it came to business.
‘Because I’d do a better job at farming them,’ said Gabe bluntly. ‘Farming’s my business. It wasn’t Rory’s and it isn’t yours. Plus, they abut my land directly, so I could almost double my holdings and benefit from all those economies of scale.’
‘Why do you want to double your holdings?’ Brett asked.
Gabe looked puzzled. ‘Why not? Wouldn’t you?’
Brett smiled broadly. He liked this boy more and more.
‘I’ll think about it.’
Gabe was itching to close the deal. He’d wanted those fields for years, for all the reasons he’d told Brett, and because they were just so bloody pretty. He wouldn’t be happy till he’d nailed a new ‘Wraggsbottom Farm’ sign onto the gate at the bottom of the lower meadow. For the first time since he’d inherited the farm from his father, he could sense they were within reach. But this was his first meeting with Brett Cranley and he knew he mustn’t push too hard.
‘Thank you.’ Standing up he shook Brett’s hand. Just then the kitchen door opened and Logan came skipping through the door, with Jason trailing in her wake, carrying her schoolbag, blazer and straw hat like a put-upon courtier.
‘Have you met my kids?’ asked Brett, his eyes lighting up at the sight of his daughter, who looked exactly like him.
Gabe smiled at Jason. ‘I met your son.’
‘Oh yeah?’ said Brett, uninterested. ‘Well this is my baby girl.’ He pushed her forward proudly, as if she were a prize vegetable he’d just grown.
‘Hello,’ said Gabe.
Logan stared up at him, her dark eyes like saucers beneath her long, camel-like lashes. She didn’t think she’d ever seen such a handsome man in her life. He looked like a prince, or a knight, or a—
‘Say hello to Mr Baxter, Logie,’ Brett prompted. ‘She’s not normally shy,’ he added to Gabe. ‘I think she likes you.’
‘Daddy,’ Logan hissed, blushing vermilion.
‘Oh, come on, pumpkin,’ Brett ruffled her dark hair. ‘I’m only teasing you.’
Gabe said his goodbyes and left. Once he’d gone, Logan swiftly changed the subject. ‘Guess what?’ she asked Brett, making herself an orange squash that was practically neat syrup.
‘What?’
‘Jason’s got a girlfriend.’
Brett looked at his son, half amused and half amazed. ‘Have you? That was quick work. Who is it?’
‘It isn’t anyone. Stop being silly, Logie.’
‘She’s the most beautiful lady I’ve ever seen in my life,’ Logan gushed, between gulps of teeth-rotting orange squash, helping herself to a fistful of McVitie’s chocolate fingers from the jar. ‘She had very tight clothes on and long hair and big boobs. And she winked at Jason in the playground. Everyone saw her.’
‘Who knew the school run could be so exciting?’ said Brett. ‘I should have gone myself.’
He was playing it cool, but inside he was delighted. It had long bothered him that his son was so hopeless with the opposite sex. Brett viewed Jason’s shyness, like his on-and-off depression, as some sort of personal affront. It was almost as if the boy was deliberately asserting his complete ‘otherness’ to Brett and everything he stood for, throwing it in his father’s face: I don’t look like you, I don’t act like you, I don’t think like you. A gorgeous girlfriend – any girlfriend – would be a welcome development indeed.
‘So come on, Jase, spill the beans. Who is this mystery woman?’
‘There’s no mystery,’ muttered Jason, wishing the kitchen floor would open up and swallow him. How was it that his father always managed to take every good thing in his life, however small, and ruin it? ‘Logan’s talking about Tatiana Flint-Hamilton. I ran into her briefly at school, that’s all.’
Brett stiffened. ‘What was that scheming bitch doing at the school?’
‘She’s not a bitch,’ said Jason. ‘She’s actually quite nice once you get to know her.’
‘I’ve no intention of “getting to know her”. She’s already been round here, I gather, causing trouble and upsetting your mother. I won’t have that.’
Why? Because nobody’s allowed to upset Mum except you, you hypocrite? Jason thought darkly.
‘And I won’t have you dating her either,’ Brett ranted on.
‘For God’s sake, I am not dating her,’ said Jason, exasperated. ‘I barely know the girl.’
‘Logan said she winked at you.’
‘She did!’ Logan insisted through a mouthful of chocolate biscuit crumbs.
‘She was being friendly. Jesus.’
‘Winking isn’t friendly. It’s flirtatious. She’s up to something, and you’re too dumb to see it. You shouldn’t even be talking to her.’ Brett’s anger was building, like a steaming kettle about to sing. ‘Where’s your family loyalty?’
‘She is family, in case you’ve forgotten,’ Jason shot back. ‘We wouldn’t be standing here in her house if she weren’t.’
‘Furlings is not her house!’ Brett erupted.
Disturbed by all the shouting, Angela walked in. After spending the better part of the day in bed with Brett, she positively beamed with contentment. Until she saw the expression on her son’s face. Angela knew that look. Angry. Detached. Shut-down.
‘What on earth’s the matter?’
‘Ask him.’ Jason glowered at his father before storming out of the room.
‘Come back here!’ Brett roared. ‘Don’t you walk away from me, you little shit!’
‘Don’t say shit, Daddy,’ said Logan, utterly unperturbed. Knockdown drag-out fights between her father and brother were a daily occurrence. Stuffing more chocolate fingers into her pockets, she went up to her bedroom to think about Gabe Baxter in peace. She wondered if she could see his farm from here, and whether or not her binoculars had been unpacked yet.
Once she’d gone, Angela put a tentative hand on Brett’s arm. ‘What happened?’
Brett’s face was set like flint. ‘Apparently Jason and that Flint-Hamilton woman were all over each other outside the school gates this afternoon.’
Angela frowned. ‘That sounds highly unlikely. Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure she was there. Logan said she winked at Jason.’
‘Well, maybe she did. But I’m sure it was quite innocent.’ Angela could not imagine the poised, sophisticated, drop-dead gorgeous Tati in any sort of romantic entanglement with her cripplingly shy, depressive son. Much as she might like to. ‘Or maybe Logan made a mistake.’
‘She’s staying in the village, isn’t she? Tatiana?’
‘Yes. At Greystones Farm. Why?’
Brett picked up his car keys from the kitchen counter.
Angela looked alarmed. ‘You’re not going over there?’
‘Damn right I am.’
‘Oh darling please, don’t. What will you say?’
‘That I don’t want her sniffing around my son, upsetting my wife, or stalking my bloody daughter on her first day at school.’
Angela wrung her hands miserably. ‘You’re being ridiculous, Brett. If you go over there it’ll only stir up trouble, and you know it.’
But it was no use. Brett was already striding down the hall towards the front door. Angela stood and watched from the kitchen window as he jumped into the driver’s seat of his new Bentley Continental GT V8 and sped off down the drive like a maddened bull. He could fuel that car on testosterone alone, she thought sadly, as the gravel sprayed up into an angry arc behind him. Testosterone and rage.
Standing at the window she offered up a silent prayer.
Please, please, don’t let him start a war with Tatiana Flint-Hamilton.
Some sixth sense told her that Tatiana was every bit as angry and stubborn as Brett. Once begun, this was not a war that would be over by Christmas.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_433dad53-8fa8-5aec-8bcd-ee3d587fb9ce)
Tati lay back in a bath full of Badedas bubbles and inhaled deeply on her cigarette. Even now, a grown woman, half of the pleasure she derived from smoking in the bath was the knowledge of how vehemently both Mrs Worsley and her father would have disapproved of it.
‘Unladylike,’ Mrs Worsley would have called it. Rory would have said it was vulgar, or worse, ‘common’: the ultimate insult in Tati’s father’s book. What they had both failed to appreciate was the deep, profound sense of relaxation the combination of warm water and a shot of nicotine to the bloodstream had on the human body. Fuck yoga. This was the only way to de-stress. Better yet, it was guilt and hangover free, unlike red wine and Pringles …
Flicking ash into a horrid, fish-shaped soap dish on the ledge above the bath (her landlady’s taste really was abysmal; she must get around to putting more of her ghastly tat into boxes and out of sight), she reflected again on her interview with St Hilda’s new headmaster.
Max Bingley had rejected her. Worse, he had patronized her, humiliated her, treated her like a spoiled child who needed to be slapped down, taught a lesson. His voice in her head now made Tati’s stomach churn with shame:
‘I can’t parachute in a completely inexperienced teacher. The very idea’s ridiculous! I might consider taking you on as an assistant …’
How had her life come to this? How? This time last year she’d been sunning herself on a yacht in the Caribbean, enjoying a much-publicized dalliance with an Arab prince. By now the whole village would know that she’d come crawling to the sanctimonious Max Bingley today, begging for work, and been turned down. The humiliation was almost more than Tati could bear. She didn’t even have the luxury of not caring what the locals thought of her. She needed them and their good opinion now, more than ever.
As the bubbles and nicotine worked their combined magic, a small part of her – tiny – admitted the possibility that Max Bingley might, in fact, have been trying to help her this afternoon. That he’d thrown her a lifeline with the offer of a trial position when he really didn’t have to. That in reality it was she who had been rude and surly and entitled, not the other way around. But Tati squashed that part, snuffing it out ruthlessly. Letting it live would mean admitting weakness. That was something she could never do. Not even to herself. Not if she wanted to survive.
Be that as it may, and despite her wounded pride, she already knew that she would accept Bingley’s offer. The job might be unpaid, but without it her trustees would leave her penniless. Of course she could always find herself another rich boyfriend, as she had in the past. But in Tatiana’s experience, while men were more than happy to pay for clothes and trinkets and expensive suites in hotels, they were less likely to stump up for their paramours’ protracted legal battles. Especially when said battles had been consistently advised against by a veritable fleet of lawyers. When it came to fighting for Furlings, she was on her own.
Stubbing out her cigarette, she pulled herself up out of the bath and stood in front of the mirror. Clumps of bubbles stuck to her wet skin like cuckoo spit on a stem of sticky jack. Tendrils of wet hair escaped from the wide white linen hairband she always wore in the bath, coiling themselves into spring-like ringlets that kissed the top of her neck and shoulders. Naked and without make-up she looked younger than her 24 years, except for the green eyes that stared back at her, knowing and cynical beneath dark, wet lashes.
Tatiana was beautiful and she knew it. A small smile escaped her as she admired her reflection. But it soon turned to a shriek of terror. The figure of a man suddenly appeared behind her, looming ominously in the bathroom doorway.
‘Get out!’ Panic manifested itself as anger as Tati reached for the nearest heavy object – a solid pottery vase filled with plastic poppies that stood beneath the mirror – and hurled it at the intruder’s head. He ducked, narrowly missing being knocked out cold, then lunged forwards, grabbing Tati by the wrists.
‘Calm down. I’m not here to hurt you.’
Luckily for Tati her skin was still wet from the bath. With a quick twist of her arms she was able easily to escape his grip. Having no other weapons to hand, she lashed out wildly, kicking, scratching and biting, before finally aiming her left knee towards the man’s groin.
Unluckily, his reactions were as quick as her own. Turning to one side so that her knee collided with nothing more sensitive than his thigh bone, he advanced towards her, forcing her back against the bathroom wall. There he was easily able to pin her down, his weight and strength more than compensating for the lack of a firm grip as he pressed her against the plaster, waiting for her breathing to calm down and her struggling to cease.
‘Please stop screaming.’
‘Fuck off!’ Tati screeched. ‘There’s nothing here to steal, you arsehole!’
‘I’m not a burglar.’
‘I don’t care who you are. Get out of my fucking house!’
‘I’m Brett Cranley.’
It took a few seconds for this information to sink in.
Feeling Tati relax beneath him, Brett cautiously released her. ‘I’m sorry I frightened you. The front door was open. I called your name but there was no answer so I came in.’ Turning around he grabbed a towel, holding it out to Tatiana at arm’s length, waving it like a white flag.
‘Here. You’d better take this.’
Tati stood in front of him, quivering with rage. Brett felt his libido start to stir, like a roused lion. Stark naked, her perfect, high round breasts jutting out at him defiantly, Tatiana was quite simply magnificent, one of the most beautiful girls Brett had ever seen. And he’d seen quite a few. Slim but not skinny, her long legs tapered up perfectly into softly curving hips and waist, like the sides of a cello. A sleek, dark triangle of pubic hair, like the wet hide of a mink, nestled proudly beneath a perfectly flat stomach. Brett did like a woman with some hair down there. Back in the early nineties the explosion of bare, Brazilian-waxed pussies had been new and exciting. But these days it was so commonplace, he’d come to prefer the mystery of the more natural look. It showed confidence. Although not as much confidence as the way that Tatiana steadily met his gaze, acknowledging the hunger in it, taking the proffered towel slowly rather than jumping to grab it. Clearly she was not remotely embarrassed by her nakedness.
‘Get out of my house.’
Her voice was quiet now, and controlled, but there was no mistaking the anger in it.
‘Not yet. I need to talk to you,’ said Brett.
He knew he ought to leave but he was congenitally incapable of taking orders, especially from a woman. He fully expected Tati to lose it and start pushing him out the door, and/or calling the police. But to his surprise she merely said icily ‘Fine. Go downstairs and wait while I dress.’
Ten minutes later, perched uncomfortably on the ugly brown sofa in Tati’s sitting room, Brett began to wish he’d left when she’d asked him to. He’d made a complete balls-up of his first encounter with the Flint-Hamilton girl. Barging up the stairs uninvited had been a foolish thing to do. But he’d been so damn angry, and the open door had felt like an invitation. Now he was very much on the back foot, waiting around for Tatiana to grant him an audience like a nervous kid on a first date. Worse, he now very obviously owed her an apology, which was not the way he’d hoped to begin this evening’s tête-à-tête.
‘So, Mr Cranley. You want to talk.’
Tati came downstairs in a pair of chocolate brown corduroy trousers and an old, sludge-green sweater that looked bizarrely good on her. She was barefoot, her wet hair pulled back in a messy bun, and hadn’t bothered to put on make-up. It was a look that told Brett very clearly, ‘You are not important to me.’ A second jolt of desire surged through him, like the aftershock of a major earthquake.
‘Yes,’ he said gruffly. ‘I apologize for startling you earlier. It was stupid of me to barge in on you like that.’
‘Yes, it was. Not to mention illegal. But perhaps they don’t have breaking and entering in Australia? I daresay in a nation descended from convicts, one shouldn’t be surprised.’
Brett’s eyes narrowed. You arrogant little minx.
‘The door was open,’ he said coldly. ‘As for stupid, I guess you would know. Challenging your father’s will is downright moronic. You haven’t a prayer of getting Furlings back, you do realize that?’
‘Well, we’ll see, won’t we?’ Tati said brazenly. She knew she must not show weakness in front of this usurper. ‘You’ll find I’m not the only person in this village who wants you out, Mr Cranley.’
‘I don’t give a fuck what the village thinks. I won’t have you coming around my house upsetting my wife.’
‘It’s not your house,’ Tati hissed.
‘You can explain that to the police when I have you arrested for trespassing,’ said Brett.
‘You have me arrested?’ Tati laughed. ‘You just assaulted me, naked, in my own bathroom!’
‘Don’t be so melodramatic.’
He stood up and started wandering around the room, picking up random objects and examining them idly. In her shocked state up in the bathroom, Tati hadn’t got a good look at her enemy. Although clearly he’d got a very good look at her. Now, she examined Brett Cranley more closely. Her first thought was how much he looked like his daughter, or rather how much Logan looked like him. Man and girl both had the same dark eyes and blue-black hair, the same swarthy, pirate-like complexion. But whereas Logan was a slender, delicate little thing, Brett had the broad, stocky build of a cage fighter. Moving around Greystones’ drawing room now, he seemed too big for the space, like a bear stumbling around a tea room.
He’s not especially tall. But he has presence, thought Tati.
She’d witnessed the same effect before in countless other powerful, successful men, men who she’d delighted in seducing and bending to her will. Brett Cranley, she suspected, might prove a more difficult fish to catch. Not that she had the remotest interest in him romantically. All Tatiana wanted from her obnoxious third cousin was the deeds to her house. That and his handsome head on a platter.
Brett gave her a questioning look. ‘What are you doing here, Tatiana?’
She glared at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, why are you in this house? This village? You know damn well you’re never going to get Furlings back. Why don’t you go back to London, find some nice, rich schmuck to marry and live happily ever after? A girl like you could get a score of beautiful houses if she wanted to.’
‘I don’t want to,’ said Tati with feeling. ‘All I want is Furlings. Anyway, what do you mean “a girl like me”?’
Brett’s questions were the same ones she’d been asking herself less than half an hour ago. But she instantly bridled hearing them from him.
‘Oh, I think you know what I mean,’ Brett sneered. He had moved close to her now, too close. Tati could smell the faint, patchouli scent of his aftershave and feel the warmth of his breath on her neck. Before she knew what was happening, he had slipped one hand around the small of her back and begun gently stroking her bare skin beneath the tatty sweater, a gesture at once affectionate, erotic and breathtakingly presumptuous.
It was the latter that Tati reacted to, pushing him away violently.
Brett laughed. ‘Why so affronted? You’re a sexy girl and you know it.’
‘And you’re a revolting old lech, whether you know it or not. You don’t seriously think I’d be attracted to you?’
‘Oh that’s right, I forgot. You prefer boys now, don’t you? Like my son,’ Brett said archly, walking away. ‘Strange, that’s not what I read in the papers about you.’
‘I haven’t the remotest interest in you or your son,’ Tati insisted furiously. ‘All I want is my house back. And whether you like it or not, I’m going to get it.’
‘You’re out of your league,’ Brett said languidly. He was mocking her now, a cruel, amused smile playing on his thin lips as he pulled his car keys out of his pocket and tossed them from hand to hand. ‘Pretty girls like you should stick to what they’re good at.’
‘Oh really. And what’s that?’
‘Shopping and shagging. And looking decorative.’
‘That’s what your wife does, is it?’ said Tati, touching a nerve at last. ‘How proud you must be.’
Brett’s face darkened. ‘You stay away from my wife.’
‘I’ll be glad to. Just as long as you stay away from me. I’ll see you in court, Mr Cranley.’
Brett said nothing. He merely walked back to his car, laughing.
Once he’d gone, Tatiana stood frozen to the spot, too angry to breathe, let alone move.
Disgusting, arrogant, entitled, sexist pig!
I hate him.
I hate him more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my entire life.
It was a miracle that both the Cranley children had turned out so sweet. Clearly Angela Cranley must be quite a mother, far from the ‘decorative’ doll of her revolting husband’s imagination.
Conceited little shit.
Shopping and shagging indeed …
Tati had been determined to contest the will even before Brett Cranley showed up at her door. But now? Now she’d sell her own organs to get Furlings back if she had to. Brett Cranley was going to rue the day he underestimated Tatiana Flint-Hamilton.
Laura Baxter brushed her teeth and spat furiously into the basin.
‘I don’t know why you’re so angry,’ said Gabe. Lying on the bed in his boxer shorts in Wraggsbottom Farm’s beautiful, beamed master bedroom, he had a James Bond novel open in one hand and a packet of Maltesers in the other. It was a warm night and the lead-mullioned window beside the bed was open, revealing a glorious view of the valley, with the river Swell at its base and the Downs rolling away to the sea. Gabe had lived here since birth and loved his farm as if it were a person. Since marrying Laura he loved it even more, with all the promise it now held for the future. Their future.
‘I went to see a neighbour,’ he said, popping another Malteser into his mouth. ‘I wasn’t selling our first-born child to Pol Pot.’
‘We don’t have a first-born child,’ said Laura. ‘And we’re not likely to if you keep lying to me.’
She came back into the bedroom looking as furious as it was possible to look in a floral Laura Ashley nightdress covered in pale pink rosebuds.
‘I didn’t lie to you,’ said Gabe indignantly.
‘You went behind my back. It’s the same thing.’
‘It is not the same thing. Christ, what is wrong with trying to buy a few fields anyway?’
Throwing back the covers, Laura climbed into bed, punching the pillows as if she had a grudge against them. She hated it when Gabe was deliberately obtuse. Not to mention deceitful.
‘It is not “a few fields”. It’s hundreds of acres of land that we can’t afford. And that may not even be Brett Cranley’s to sell. You know as well as I do that his inheritance is disputed.’
‘All the more reason to buy now, while we’ve got the chance.’
Laura let out a stifled scream of frustration and turned out her bedside light. Pulling the covers around her like a shield, she pointedly turned her back on her husband.
Gabe was equally frustrated. Running the farm was his job. He didn’t tell Laura how to produce television programmes or write scripts. What gave her the right to meddle in his business decisions? On the other hand, he hated fighting with her. Putting down his book and sweets, he wrapped his arms around her stiff, angry body.
‘I love you,’ he whispered in her ear.
Laura didn’t move.
‘I know you want to know what they’re like,’ Gabe teased, slipping a warm rough hand under her nightdress and caressing her wonderful, full breasts. ‘The Cranleys.’
Despite herself, Laura moaned with pleasure. It was utterly infuriating, how good he was in bed.
‘I’ll tell you if you’re nice to me,’ Gabe whispered, his hands moving slowly down over her belly, his fingertips just skimming the soft fur between her legs. Unable to keep up her resistance any longer, Laura turned around and kissed him, luxuriating in the solid warmth of his body. God, he was beautiful.
‘Go on then, tell me,’ she said, releasing him at last. ‘What are they like?’
‘Ha!’ said Gabe. ‘So you do want to know. I knew it! You’re just a sad old village gossip, Mrs Baxter.’
‘What’s he like?’ asked Laura, ignoring him. ‘Brett Cranley.’
‘Actually, I liked him,’ said Gabe. ‘I mean, I can see how he could be seen as arrogant.’
Laura frowned. ‘In what way?’
‘He’s a big personality. Maybe even a bit of a bully. He obviously favours his daughter over his son, and the wife seems a bit afraid of him.’
Gabe told her about his brief encounter with Logan and Jason today, and about Angela’s nerves the first time they met.
‘He sounds vile,’ said Laura. ‘What on earth did you like about him?’
‘I don’t know, exactly,’ said Gabe, thinking. ‘He’s direct. Honest. I don’t think he’d cheat you in business.’
‘Well he certainly cheats in his private life,’ said Laura with feeling. ‘At least if the press coverage is anything to go by.’
‘Oh, yeah, but that’s different,’ said Gabe.
‘Why? Because it’s OK to cheat on women? Just as long as you’re honest with men, is that it?’
Laura felt her hackles rising again. She loved Gabe but sometimes he could be so … unreconstructed.
Gabe sighed. ‘Give it a rest, Germaine Greer. You asked, I answered. I liked him. Sorry if you and the rest of the village lynch mob have already decided he’s the Swell Valley’s answer to Vladimir Putin. But I do have the advantage of having actually met the guy.’
‘Well, bully for you. I hope the two of you will be very happy together,’ said Laura.
Turning away from her, Gabe turned off his own bedside light.
‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ he added defiantly. ‘I’m going to get him to sell those fields to me. So put that in your bra and burn it.’
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_2ec86a21-a724-5a0a-b95c-d0d0363bdaaf)
‘Have you seen that stack of marked Year Three homework anywhere? The robot sketches?’
Dylan Pritchard Jones ran a hand through his curly chestnut hair and scanned the mess that was his kitchen. Aside from the detritus of breakfast, almost every surface was covered with copies of Country Living, Elle Décor, Period Homes and every other conceivable variety of interiors magazine. Dylan’s wife, Maisie, was expecting their first child and had gone into a frenzy of what the pregnancy websites called ‘nesting’. Apparently this was a woman’s primitive urge to spend thousands of pounds on expensive Farrow & Ball paint and decorative antique rocking chairs. Dylan prayed it would soon pass. On an art teacher’s salary, it was not easy to make Maisie’s Homes & Gardens dreams come true.
‘Last I saw them they were upstairs on the landing.’ Maisie chewed grimly on a piece of dry toast. ‘I passed them on my way to the loo at about five a.m.’
Pregnancy had not been kind to Dylan’s young wife. Relentless morning sickness had turned Maisie’s former peaches and cream complexion an unattractive shade of greenish-grey. At only a few months gone she was already thirty pounds heavier than usual, and her legs were covered with revolting varicose veins that reminded Dylan of mould running through a slab of Stilton cheese. Apparently there were men who found their pregnant wives uniquely attractive and desirable. Dylan Pritchard Jones could only imagine that their wives looked more like expectant supermodels – lithe amazons with compact little bumps beneath their lululemon tank tops – and less like the swollen, exhausted figure of his own other half. He tried to be a patient and understanding husband. But he couldn’t help but count down the days till it was over, and prayed that Maisie intended to get her figure back quickly afterwards. His suggestion last week that she think about hiring a trainer had been met with what he felt was excessive frostiness.
‘Thanks, you’re an angel.’ Kissing her on the head, Dylan raced upstairs, grabbed the work and ran out to his car, a piece of peanut butter toast still clamped between his teeth. St Hilda’s art teacher was perennially late. It was part of his charm, along with his broad, boyish smile, twinkly, bright blue eyes, and the mop of curls that made him look years younger than his actual age of thirty-three, and that women had always found hugely attractive. Dylan Pritchard Jones enjoyed being the ‘cool’ teacher at St Hilda’s, the one whose classes the children actually looked forward to, and with whom all the pretty mothers flirted at parents’ evening. Yes, Fittlescombe’s primary school was a small pool. But Dylan was the prettiest fish in it, if not the biggest. He loved his life.
In the staff room at St Hilda’s, tempers were fraying. The Year Six SAT exams were less than a month away now, but the government had seen fit to choose this moment to dump an enormous amount of additional paperwork on its already overloaded state teachers. This morning’s staff meeting had been called to agree a consensus on whether or not Max Bingley should hire an additional administration person. Cuts would have to be made to pay for such a hire, so it was vital that all the departments be represented. The art department, as usual, was late.
‘We really can’t put this off any longer.’ Ella Bates, one of the two Year Six class teachers, voiced what the entire room was thinking. ‘If Dylan can’t be bothered to turn up for the vote, he doesn’t deserve a say in it.’
‘It’s not a matter of what he deserves,’ Max Bingley said calmly. ‘We need consensus, Ella.’
In Max’s long experience, all staff rooms were political snake pits, even in a tiny, tight-knit school like this one. It had been the same story at Gresham Manor, the private boys prep school in Hampshire where Max had spent most of his career, as head of History and, latterly, deputy head of the school.
Max Bingley had loved his job at Gresham Manor. He would never have taken the St Hilda’s headship had his beloved wife not died two years ago, plunging him into a deep depression. Susie Bingley had had a heart attack aged fifty-two, completely unexpectedly. She’d collapsed at the breakfast table one morning in front of Max’s eyes, keeled over like a skittle. By the time the ambulance arrived at Chichester Hospital she was already dead. Max had kept working. At only fifty-three – with a mortgage to pay, not to mention two daughters still at university – he didn’t have much choice. But without Susie, life had lost all meaning, all joy. He moved through his days at Gresham like a zombie, barely able to find the energy to get dressed in the mornings. The Fittlescombe headship offered a new start and a distraction. Max had taken it under pressure from his girls, but it had been the right decision.
Right, but not easy, either personally or professionally. When Max first arrived at St Hilda’s he’d been forced to cut back a lot of dead wood. Inevitably his decisions to fire certain people had angered some of the remaining staff. As had his hiring choices. The staff room was already divided into ‘Camp Hotham’, the old guard hired by his predecessor and championed by Ella Bates, a heavy-set mathematician in her late fifties with a whiskery moustache, brusque manner and penchant for pop socks that drew an unfortunate amount of attention to her wrinkly knees; and ‘Camp Bingley’, made up of the new teachers and those amongst the old who, like Dylan Pritchard Jones, approved of Max’s old-school teaching style and relentless focus on results. Even Camp Bingley, however, had been resentful of Max’s hiring of Tatiana Flint-Hamilton as an assistant teacher. The fact that Tati was unpaid did little to assuage the anger.
‘We don’t have time to waste training charity cases,’ was how Ella Bates had put it. ‘She’s a drain on resources.’
With the notable exception of Dylan, the other teachers all agreed. So far Max Bingley had held his ground: ‘If we do our jobs and train her properly she could be a vital addition to resources at a fractional cost,’ he argued. But, in truth, he too had doubts about the wisdom of bringing Tatiana on board, doubts made worse by the new administrative pressures they were under.
‘Sorry I’m late.’ Dylan breezed in, looking anything but sorry. Mrs Bates and the headmaster both gave him angry looks, but the rest of the (mostly female) staff swiftly melted beneath the warm glow of the famous Pritchard Jones smile.
‘Traffic,’ he grinned. ‘It was bumper to bumper on Mill Lane this morning.’
This was a joke. There was no traffic in Fittlescombe. Tatiana laughed loudly, then clapped a hand over her mouth when she realized that no one else was following suit. ‘Sorry.’
She’d made the mistake of inviting a girlfriend from her party days, Rita Babbington, down to Greystones for the night last night. Inevitably the two of them had begun reminiscing – Tati’s days and nights had been so unutterably boring recently, just talking about excitements past felt like a thrill – and Rita had demanded cocktails. Multiple home-made margaritas later – Tati might never have had to pay for a drink in her life, but she certainly knew how to make a world-class cocktail and after four lines of some truly spectacular cocaine that Rita had brought down with her ‘in case of emergency’, Tatiana had collapsed into bed with her heart and mind racing. She’d woken this morning with a dry mouth and a head that felt as if she’d spent the night with her skull wedged in a vice, tightened hourly by malevolent elves. It was a testament to her friendship with Dylan Pritchard Jones that he still had the capacity to make her laugh.
Not for the first time, Dylan reflected on how beautiful St Hilda’s new teaching assistant was, and how out of place such a stunning young creature looked in their grotty staff room. Although he did notice the shadows under Tatiana’s feline green eyes this morning. Clearly she’d had a lot more fun last night than he had.
The headmaster’s voice cut through his reverie. ‘Right. Now that we’re all here, a vote. To hire an additional PA for a year will cost us thirty thousand pounds. That’s money we don’t have. It would have to be funded out of a combination of cuts to nonessential classes – that’s art, music and games – and salary cuts. I don’t have all the numbers worked out yet. I just need to know if, in theory, this is something you’re open to or not. So. A show of hands please for making this hire.’
Nine hands, including Mrs Bates’s, went reluctantly up. Dylan Pritchard Jones’s did not. Nor did Orla O’Reilly’s, the reception teacher, or Tatiana’s.
‘I can’t afford a pay-cut,’ said Orla. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘And I don’t see art as nonessential,’ said Dylan. ‘I’m not sorry,’ he added, winking at Tatiana.
‘What about you, Tatiana?’ Max Bingley asked.
‘What?’ Sarah Yeardye, the Year Two teacher, failed to conceal her outrage. ‘You can’t seriously propose giving her a vote? She doesn’t teach here. None of this affects her.’
A chorus of angry ‘hear-hears!’ rang out around the room.
‘I assumed I didn’t have a vote,’ Tati said meekly.
‘Well you do,’ said Max. He believed in consulting his staff and gaining consensus where he could. But he was headmaster here. He wasn’t going to be dictated to by Miss Yeardye and Mrs Bates. He also suspected, rightly, that a lot of the antipathy towards Tati from the other teachers was rooted in nothing more worthy than old-fashioned envy. Before Tati came along, Sarah Yeardye had been widely acknowledged as the most attractive teacher at St Hilda’s, the one that all the fathers fancied. Now she was as good as invisible.
‘Yes or no?’
Surveying the sea of hostile faces, Tati locked on to Dylan Pritchard Jones’s encouraging smile.
‘No,’ she said boldly.
Fuck them all. They’re never going to like me, even if I vote yes. And Dylan could use the support.
‘That’s still nine to four in favour,’ said Ella Bates stridently.
‘Nine to five. I also vote no,’ said Max Bingley. ‘It’s an unnecessary expense.’
‘It is not unnecessary!’ Mrs Bates snapped.
Things looked set to deteriorate into a full-on slanging match until Sarah Yeardye piped up: ‘Why can’t Tatiana take on the extra paperwork?’
Everyone fell silent.
‘She’s a free resource we already have just sitting here,’ said Sarah.
The entire room brightened up at this suggestion. Even Max had to admit it was quite a good idea. Before long the chorus of ‘yes, why nots?’ was quite deafening.
‘Tatiana,’ Max asked. ‘Would you be willing?’
‘Of course,’ Tati said through gritted teeth. Bloody Sarah. That bitch had been out to get her since day one. ‘I mean, I may need some guidance …’
‘I’m afraid none of us has time for handholding,’ Ella Bates barked unkindly. ‘If you can’t fill in some simple administrative forms, then you’ve no business being here in the first place.’
Ella Bates’s chin was so whiskery and wart-ridden, she reminded Tati of a Roald Dahl character. Mrs Twit, perhaps. The fact that there was apparently a Mr Bates somewhere, or had been once, astounded her.
‘I have time,’ said Dylan, helping himself to coffee from the machine in the corner. ‘If Tati’s prepared to help me save the art programme for our children, the least I can do is give her some guidance.’
‘Marvellous.’ Max Bingley rubbed his hands together with satisfaction just as the bell went. ‘That’s settled then. Let’s get to class.’
‘Thanks,’ Tati said to Dylan as they all filed out.
‘What for?’ said Dylan. ‘You just saved my neck. All our necks, although those old clucks are too blind to see it.’
‘They hate me,’ Tati sighed.
‘No they don’t.’ Dylan put a friendly arm around her shoulders. ‘They hate change, that’s all. They’re set in their ways. And maybe just a wee bit jealous. Don’t let them get you down.’
Dylan dashed off to his art class while Tati headed to the library. On the rare occasions she was actually allowed to help with teaching, she felt flashes of happiness and confidence. But most of her days were spent on menial chores such as today’s, when she was scheduled to spend the morning re-cataloguing the school’s library books. It was a boring, mindless job. But it gave her much-needed time to think about her legal battle and the all-important next steps.
Tatiana’s challenge to her father’s will was due in court in September, only three months hence. Raymond Baines, Tati’s lawyer, had asked her to put together a dossier of all emails, letters and conversations in which Rory had alluded to her inheritance of Furlings. She was also supposed to be getting him detailed research on the estate’s history, particularly anything that might smack of an historic entailment; and a list of villagers prepared to attest to the fact that they understood the local manor would always be owned by a Flint-Hamilton and who were actively supporting Tati’s claim. So far she had about thirty definites on the list, including Mr and Mrs Preedy at the Village Stores, Danny Jenner, the publican at The Fox, who’d always fancied her, Harry Hotham, St Hilda’s ex-headmaster, and Lady Mitchelham, a prominent local magistrate. Will Nutley, Fittlescombe’s cricketing hero, was a highly probable, and a smattering of other families had agreed to help Tati in her fight to oust the Cranleys. She was touched by their support – she’d worked hard for it – but the case was still a long shot at best. Collating the documents her solicitor needed was a painstaking, time-consuming and frequently frustrating job, which was already monopolizing all Tatiana’s evenings and weekends. Just how she was supposed to fit in a boat-load of St Hilda’s paperwork on top of all that, she had no idea. But she had to try, or the money would stop dead. And it might help her win round some of the staff to add to her list of supporters.
So far her trustees had been as good as their word and released a monthly income to her as soon as she accepted this poxy unpaid job at the school. Tatiana’s father had what he wanted – for now. She was back in the village, working with children, keeping out of trouble.
But not for long, she told herself, pulling stacks of the Oxford Reading Tree down from the shelves and dumping them on one of the library tables for sorting. After September I’ll have my life back. First Furlings. Then all of the rest. This whole period will seem like a bad dream.
An image of Brett Cranley’s arrogant, taunting face popped into her mind, strengthening her resolve. This would be her first and last term at St Hilda’s, putting up with the backstabbing and bitchiness of Ella and Sarah and the rest of them.
Thank God for Dylan Pritchard Jones. Without his kindness and good humour, Tati wasn’t sure she could survive even that.
‘What the hell is this?’
Brett Cranley waved the presentation document in his son’s face furiously, as if it were a weapon. Which, in some ways, it was.
‘I put you in charge of this. I gave you more responsibility, which you said you wanted. And this is the best you can come up with? Jesus Christ, Jason. It’s embarrassing.’
Jason stared out of the window of his father’s London office, wishing he were somewhere else.
Had he said he wanted more responsibility? He certainly couldn’t remember doing so. It seemed most unlike him. Jason viewed coming to work in the family business the way that most people needing root-canal surgery viewed a trip to the dentist. As something deeply and profoundly unpleasant that could not be put off forever.
Brett’s office had great views across the Thames to Tower Bridge. All Brett’s offices had had killer views. The one in Sydney, looking out across the harbour towards the iconic opera house, had been jaw-dropping. Jason assumed it was a power thing, this need for a big, swanky corner office and huge windows and a view that said, Look at me, world. I’ve made it.
Most of Cranley Estates staff worked in modest cubicles on the floor below, with the little natural light coming from windows overlooking the car park and council estate housing blocks to the rear of the building. As they had in Sydney. Brett might have changed things up geographically, but he was still the same bullying megalomaniac he’d always been.
‘I’m sorry you don’t like it.’ Jason spoke in a monotone.
‘It’s not a question of me not liking it,’ Brett goaded. ‘This isn’t a matter of taste. It’s crap. It’s full of typos. The artwork’s shit and what there is of it is out of focus. I’ve seen school kids put together more professional-looking work on Photoshop. This is for McAlpine, for fuck’s sake. They’re a huge potential client.’
‘I know. I’m sorry,’ Jason said again, staring at his shoes.
‘Look at me when you’re talking to me,’ Brett commanded. ‘You really don’t give a shit, do you?’
About the real-estate business? No, I don’t. About you being a dick? Yes, Dad, I give a shit about that. But what can I do?
To his intense distress, Jason found his eyes were filling with tears. He fought them back desperately, forcing himself to meet his father’s angry, disappointed gaze. How he wished he didn’t care! How he wished he had the strength to shrug off Brett’s relentless, soul-crushing criticism and become his own man, making his way in his own world. But that was like a penguin wishing it could fly.
‘I should have asked the art department for help,’ he stammered. ‘I can see that now.’
‘So why didn’t you?’
‘I didn’t want to bother them. They seemed to have a lot on their plates already.’
Brett put his head in his hands and groaned. ‘God give me strength.’ Picking up the phone, he summoned Michelle from reception into his office.
‘Sweetheart, would you see what you can do with this in the next hour?’ He handed her the offending document. ‘Jim Lewis and I are going in to McAlpine this afternoon at two. We sure as hell can’t offer them that load of old bollocks.’
‘Sure. I’ll see what I can do.’
Jason noticed the way Michelle’s hand brushed his father’s as she took the document, and the conspiratorial flash of eye contact that followed. It was an exchange he’d seen scores of times before.
They’re having an affair.
He felt the anger rise up within him. Mostly for his mother – how could Brett do this to her again? Here, in England, what was supposed to be their ‘fresh start’? But also because, in his quiet way, Jason had liked Michelle and hoped she might become a mate. With her short hair and her raucous laugh and her slightly wrong, too-sexy-for-the-office clothes, she seemed kind and irreverent and a laugh. A breath of fresh air in a corporate world that Jason found choking and stifling in the extreme. Now he would have no choice but to avoid her. Another door closing.
As soon as Michelle left the room, Brett turned on him again.
‘What’s wrong now? You look like you’ve swallowed a wasp. I’m the one who should be pissed off here, Jase, not you. You’ve let me down. Again.’
‘You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you?’
Jason was almost as astonished to hear the words come out of his mouth as Brett was.
‘I beg your pardon?’
Brett sounded dangerously angry, but it was too late to back down now.
‘M-M-Michelle,’ Jason stammered. ‘She’s your new mistress, isn’t she? I saw the chemistry between you just now. How could you? How could you do it to Mum?’
‘Now you listen here.’ Brett grasped his son by the shoulders. Although Jason didn’t think so, Brett loved him. He hated Jason’s depression because it was a problem he couldn’t fix, and he resented the boy’s sensitive, open nature because he was congenitally incapable of such emotions himself. But he did love him, and he valued his family more than anything. ‘I don’t know what you think you saw. But you’re wrong. I’m not “doing” anything to your mother. I don’t have a mistress, and if I did, it wouldn’t be one of my employees. Understand?’
Jason nodded, willing it to be true.
‘Go out and get yourself some lunch,’ Brett added gruffly. ‘Clear your head. I’ll see you after the meeting.’
‘OK.’
Brett watched his son leave, shoulders slumped, feet dragging, as defeated as any retreating infantryman. He sat back down at the desk, punching the polished teak in frustration. What the fuck was wrong with the boy? He just didn’t understand it. It was as if he didn’t want to be happy, didn’t want to succeed.
Whatever Jason’s weaknesses, he certainly wasn’t stupid. At least not emotionally. He’d picked up on the vibe between him and Michelle in an instant, like a bloodhound stumbling upon a scent.
I’ll have to be a lot more careful if I’m going to continue to have him work here.
Although it pained Brett to admit it, perhaps he’d been rash in forcing Jason to join the family business. At the time it had seemed an obvious solution to his listlessness. Ever since they arrived in England Jason had been moping around like a wet weekend, hanging around the house and the village, getting under Angie’s feet. It seemed clear to Brett that he needed something to do, some structure to his life. An eight-to-six job interning at Cranley Estates fitted the bill perfectly. Add in the commuting time – Brett spent at least three nights a week at his London flat, but Jason took the train back and forth from Fittlescombe daily – and he wouldn’t have time to dwell on whatever it was that was bothering him.
The theory still sounded solid. But the reality was that Jason loathed the rhythms of office life and found no excitement, no thrill in business, in the daily battle to beat one’s competitors and make money. All Brett had done was to inadvertently parachute a spy into his London life, a spy with the potential to cause serious damage to his family idyll down in Sussex.
Because it was an idyll. Angela was happy to a degree that Brett hadn’t seen in years. Logan seemed to have settled in at school. And Brett felt his own heart soar and spirits lift on a warm Friday evening, leaving grimy, gridlocked London behind, driving through lanes lined with cherry and apple blossoms as he weaved his way through the ancient Downs. Turning into the driveway at Furlings, walking into his beautiful home, to be greeted by his beautiful, smiling, loving wife … It all gave Brett a sense of security and deep contentment that he hadn’t felt since before his mother died.
London, the office, Michelle – not to mention all the other girls he brought back to the flat during the week: that was all part of a different life, a life that Brett had gone to great lengths to compartmentalize, both practically and emotionally.
The thought of Jason jeopardizing this perfect balance sent iced water through Brett’s veins. As did the prospect, remote though it was, of losing Furlings to Tatiana Flint-Hamilton.
Brett Cranley had grown used to scaring off would-be competitors or threats to his interests through a combination of bullying and flexing his economic muscle. If a rival real-estate developer showed an interest in a property Brett wanted, for example, he either simply outbid that developer, or intimidated him into backing down by making multiple threats to his business. And Brett Cranley’s threats were not idle. Renowned as one of the most maliciously, aggressively litigious players in the market, Brett had a legal war chest bigger than the GDP of many small African countries. By dragging out lawsuits, he was able effectively to filibuster smaller players out of the game.
Unfortunately, this strategy did not seem to be working with the tenacious Tatiana Flint-Hamilton. Despite her lack of funds, or even any serious legal case, she’d managed to rally significant support in the village. A County Court judge had already ruled there was enough there for the challenge to be heard in the High Court, and a date had been set for September.
Brett had already spent a fortune employing a team of legal experts to look into every possible loophole that Tatiana might conceivably exploit in court. Although he hadn’t paid her another visit in person since their first, ill-fated but memorable encounter, he’d had lawyers send an array of bullying letters in an attempt to get her to drop the case. Tatiana had responded to none of them, and had even had the nerve to hand the last, most aggressive missive to Logan at school. Sealed in a fresh envelope, with ‘Return to Sender’ written boldly on the front, she’d instructed the little girl to deliver it to her father.
‘What is it?’ Logan asked.
‘It’s a birthday card.’
‘But Daddy’s birthday’s not till August.’
‘It’ll be his first then, won’t it?’ Tati smiled sweetly. She was very fond of Logan, who was in her remedial reading group at school, and did her best to forget that the child was a Cranley.
Brett opened the envelope that evening at dinner. Inside was his latest lawyer’s letter and a two-word note from Tati.
‘Bugger Off.’
That was the night he’d decided to take Gabriel Baxter up on his offer and sell off two hundred acres of Furlings’ farmland. Once the deal was done, Brett had played Tati at her own game and sent copies of the new deeds with Gabe’s name on them to school, via Logan. His envelope also contained a two-word note.
‘Give Up.’
But of course Tati hadn’t.
Even more infuriating than his inability to bully her out of court were the erotic dreams Brett found himself having about her almost nightly. The whole of England knew about Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s wild sexual exploits in the years leading up to her father’s death. But as far as Brett could see, since she’d returned to Fittlescombe and hunkered down on his doorstep, like a fungus asserting its unwanted presence at the roots of a giant oak, Tatiana had lived the life of a nun. Once or twice Angela had reported seeing her looking chummy with the married art teacher at St Hilda’s, Dylan Pritchard Jones, a jumped-up popinjay of a man if ever Brett saw one.
Curious, Brett had asked Gabe Baxter in conversation what he thought of Dylan.
‘He’s all right,’ Gabe had shrugged, but he said it in a tone that made it plain he wasn’t a fan. ‘We used to be mates. We play cricket together.’
‘But …?’
‘He’s vain. I’m not surprised he and Tatiana are getting friendly. They’re like two peas in a pod.’
The thought of Tatiana’s perfect, youthful, curvaceous, sinfully sensual body being plundered by a vain village schoolteacher was not a pleasant one. But it was hardly worse than the idea of her going to bed alone every night, less than a mile from the spot where Brett himself was trying and failing to go to sleep, twitching with anger and frustration. It wasn’t simply that he couldn’t have her, although that certainly rankled. It was the idea of all that youth and beauty going to waste. In far too many ways, Tatiana Flint-Hamilton felt like a thorn in Brett Cranley’s side. He longed for September, for the court case to be over and done with, and for the girl to go crawling back to her old, dissolute lifestyle somewhere far, far away from Furlings and from him.
And yet …
Michelle knocked on his office door.
‘Is the coast clear?’ she asked conspiratorially. She held a mug of hot tea in each hand, one for her and one for Brett. Pushing the door closed behind her with her bottom, she handed Brett his tea, kissing him fleetingly on the lips as she did so. Brett put the mug down on his desk and slipped a hand under her sweater, more out of habit than desire.
‘We’re going to have to cool it,’ he said, caressing her wonderfully full, heavy right breast. ‘Jason’s suspicious.’
‘I see. And this is you cooling it, is it?’ Michelle smiled, closing her eyes and enjoying the sensation of Brett’s warm hands on her bare skin. She knew Brett Cranley was a shit. That their affair – if you could even call it that – was going nowhere. But he was so funny and charming and exciting and so interested in her. When Brett looked at her, she didn’t feel like Michelle Slattery, secretary from Colchester. She felt like somebody important, somebody who mattered. Like a muse. Josephine to Brett’s Napoleon, Cleopatra to Brett’s Caesar. It was that ego boost, more than anything, that she couldn’t quite bring herself to give up.
Reluctantly, Brett removed his hands. ‘I’m serious. Just for a while, while Jase is here. I wouldn’t want to upset the apple cart, if you know what I mean.’
Michelle knew exactly what he meant. If it upset her, she hid it well, changing the subject with her usual good-humoured briskness.
‘He’s a sweetheart, your son, but he did make a bit of a pig’s ear of that document.’
Brett rolled his eyes. ‘Can you fix it?’
‘Oh yes.’ Michelle said confidently. Brett loved her competence almost as much as he loved her warm, welcoming, womanly body. ‘I’ll whip it into shape. Drink your tea now. I’ll be cross if you let that get cold.’
By late June a heat wave had descended over the whole south of England. In London this meant office workers in rolled-up sleeves eating their lunches in the park, and restaurants shoving tables out onto pavements, doing their best to look as if they were in Rome. Fittlescombe, like the rest of the Swell Valley, opened its back doors and spent an inordinate amount of time lounging about in its collective gardens in deckchairs. Whittles, the off-licence in the village, sold out of Pimm’s. Red-faced children sucked greedily on Wall’s ice lollies. And everywhere a holiday mood prevailed.
At Furlings, Angela Cranley finally felt as if she were getting into her stride. She’d hired Karen, a girl from the village, as a cleaner to help out Mrs Worsley, as well as a boy to assist Jennings in the garden. The Flint-Hamiltons’ old gardener was highly resistant to the idea.
‘I know me way about,’ Jennings muttered stubbornly when Angela first suggested it. ‘I don’t need some bloody little Herbert getting under me feet.’ But in fact, he did need it. His arthritis was so bad at times that he could hardly hold a pair of secateurs, still less get on his hands and knees to weed the rose and lavender beds at the front of the house. Angela didn’t know exactly how old Mr Jennings was. (Nobody did, it seemed, not even the man himself.) But he was certainly over seventy. His face was as gnarled and weather-beaten as a pickled walnut and his chest made a terrible wheezing, rattling sound as he shuffled about, like a concertina punctured by a sword.
Happily, however, once eighteen-year-old Alfie finally arrived and began tidying potting sheds, mending tools and making Jennings cups of tea like a whirling dervish, the old man relented. Sitting out on the terrace at the back of the house, overlooking the lawn and rolling acres of parkland beyond, Angela watched happily as man and boy tended the flowerbeds, Alfie pruning and Jennings given directions, waving his spindly old arms about like a general on a battlefield.
Noticing that her own arms were turning pink and freckly, despite the lashings of factor fifty sun block she’d applied only an hour ago, Angela retreated indoors. It was half past two on a Friday afternoon, almost time to collect Logan from school. Logan, thank God, seemed to have settled in brilliantly both at school and in the village. Sweetly, she’d developed a thumpingly enormous crush on Gabe Baxter, the local farmer to whom Brett had just sold some fields. Angela suspected Brett had only done the deal to get back at Tatiana Flint-Hamilton, but that was by the bye. A few nights ago she’d been tidying Logan’s room when she’d found four sheets of A4 paper stuffed under the bed, covered in practice signatures, all of them either Logan Baxter, Mrs Logan Baxter or Mrs Gabriel Baxter.
‘Should we be worried?’ Angela asked Brett. ‘She’s only ten, for God’s sake. Surely we should have a few more years before this starts?’
But Brett had been enchanted, insisting that they keep the papers and frame them. ‘It’s adorable. We should give them to her as a birthday present on her twenty-first.’
Brett would be coming home tonight, along with Jason, whose low moods were starting to worry Angela again. She’d hoped that the job up in London might have opened up some new friendships for him. The village was lovely, and Jason seemed to appreciate it, but there weren’t many opportunities for him to socialize with people his own age. Other than the pub, but Jase had never been the sort of confident man’s man who can strike up easy conversation in a room full of strangers. Unlike his sister, Jason seemed lonelier than ever since their move.
Grabbing a sun hat and a wicker shopping basket (she needed to stop at the greengrocer’s for some white cherries on the way home), Angela set off for the village, pushing her worries about Jason out of her mind for the time being. It was such a glorious day, with the dappled sunlight pouring through the trees and the heady scents of honeysuckle and mown grass hanging thick in the warm air. Turning right out of Furlings’ drive towards the green, she heard the church bells of St Hilda’s toll three times, and watched the front doors of the cottages open one by one as the other village mothers began their various school-runs. They reminded her of the little wooden people that used to come out of her father’s weathervane back home in Australia. There was a woman with an umbrella who popped out if it was raining and a male peasant in breeches and shirtsleeves if it was fine.
Life here can’t have changed much since Elizabethan times, she thought happily. It was odd to feel a connection to the past generations of Fittlescombe dwellers – essentially to dead people – but Angela found that she did, and that the idea of being one in a long line of people who had lived here and loved the place gave her a profound sense of belonging.
Relations with her living neighbours were a little more problematic. Thanks to Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s negative PR campaign, a solid third of the village had taken against the Cranleys before they’d even arrived. Angela had done her best to reverse this, knocking on doors, mucking in at school events, making sure that everyone knew the door to Furlings was always open. But it wasn’t easy, not least because the antipathy wasn’t personal, but rooted in age-old traditions that Angela could barely understand, let alone change.
As Mrs Preedy at the shop put it, ‘It’s not about you, dear. I’m sure you’re lovely. It’s not about that Tatiana either. It’s about what’s right and proper and fair. Not having a Flint-Hamilton at Furlings would be like not having a river in the valley. Old Mr F-H should have consulted local feeling before he went out and changed things, all secretive like, behind people’s backs.’
Not having ever met Rory Flint-Hamilton, there was little Angela could say to this. Even those who approved of the inheritance kept their distance. As the new, rich, foreign owner of ‘The Big House’, Angela was treated with polite deference by the other mums at school, rather than being met as an equal. Without equality there was little chance of friendship. Gabe Baxter’s wife Laura had been kind, even though she obviously disapproved of Brett. As had Penny Harwich, another local engaged to Sussex cricketing hero Santiago de la Cruz. Penny had gone out of her way to include Angela in village WI meetings and girls’ nights out. But Angela still missed her girlfriends back home, and wondered if she would ever truly fit in in the Swell Valley, as much as she loved it here. Of course, if Tatiana won her court case in September, it wouldn’t matter. They’d all have to move again. Angela couldn’t imagine that Brett would agree to stay in Fittlescombe if they lost Furlings. With a shudder, she pushed the thought out of her mind.
She’d arrived at the school gates now. Hovering behind a group of mothers in Logan’s class, about to steel herself to go and join them, she stopped when she overheard a snippet of their conversation.
‘Apparently he’s a total sex addict,’ one of the mums was saying. ‘Worse than Tatiana Flint-Hamilton. He was known for it in Australia.’
‘Well I don’t know about that,’ said her friend. ‘But Oliver saw him in The American Bar at the Savoy on Tuesday night with a girl half his age on his lap, acting like he didn’t have a care in the world.’
‘Yes, well, he doesn’t does he?’ a third woman piped up. ‘He’s got his lovely house, his lovely wife, his lovely life in London. Cat that got the cream, I should say.’
‘Is Oliver sure it was him?’ the first mother asked.
They all laughed at that. ‘You can hardly mistake him. He’s so bloody good looking.’
‘Do you think so?’ The first mother wrinkled her nose. ‘I’ve only met him once but he gives me the creeps. Anyway, what was your husband doing at The Savoy on a Tuesday evening, that’s what I’d like to know? Oliver might have made the whole thing up to cover his own tracks!’
‘Yeah, right. Somehow I don’t think my Ollie has quite the pulling power of Brett Cranley.’
The mothers’ conversation moved on. Behind them, Angela Cranley stood rooted to the spot. She felt dizzy all of a sudden. The sounds of birdsong and chattering voices and the school bell ringing all merged into one muffled dirge that grew louder and louder until she found herself clutching her head. Spots swam before her eyes.
‘Are you all right?’
Someone was touching her arm. Angela turned to look at them but could see nothing but blackness. She felt herself falling, sinking. Then nothing.
‘Mrs Cranley. Mrs Cranley, can you hear me?’
Angela opened her eyes. Max Bingley, Logan’s headmaster, was standing over her. He had one hand on her forehead and the other on her wrist, apparently taking her pulse. When he saw her look up at him he smiled reassuringly.
‘Thank goodness. You had us all worried there for a moment. Mrs Graham, would you fetch Mrs Cranley a large glass of water?’
While the school secretary scuttled off, Angela took in her surroundings. She was in the headmaster’s study, stretched out on the sofa. Copies of the latest OFSTED report lay neatly stacked on the coffee table, and the walls were covered from floor to ceiling with bookshelves. Bingley had an eclectic collection, everything from teaching manuals and curriculum guidelines to Victorian novels and books on travel and adventure.
‘You’re a reader,’ Angela croaked.
‘I should hope so, in my job,’ Max Bingley said amiably. ‘I think you must have had a touch of sunstroke out in the playground. How do you feel?’
‘Embarrassed,’ said Angela. ‘I can’t believe I fainted.’
Painfully, the mothers’ conversation came back to her. It doesn’t mean anything, she told herself angrily. It’s just gossip. A man in Brett’s position gets that sort of crap all the time.
The secretary returned with the water and Max handed it to Angela, propping her up with cushions.
‘Nothing to be embarrassed about,’ he said kindly. ‘Its ridiculously hot out there. I suspect you got a bit dehydrated, that’s all.’
In fact, Max knew what had happened. After Angela passed out, one of the mothers admitted they’d been talking about Brett.
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Тилли Бэгшоу
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Welcome to Tilly Bagshawe’s Swell Valley, where the scandal is in a class of its own.Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s gilded cage is torn away when her estranged father dies. As the beloved family estate slips through Tati’s fingers, the portraits of her ancestors look down disapprovingly.The new Lord of the Manor is just as ruthless as Tati. The old-world status of Furlings is everything the wealthy, self-made Brett Cranley has ever wanted. Luckily his wife Angela is the perfect homemaker, happy to fall into line with whatever Brett desires. Along with her two children, Furlings soon becomes Angela’s lifeline, a place she can finally belong. And one she’s not going to give up easily.Losing everything has made Tati realise that her rightful inheritance is all that she now lives for… and she will do anything to get it back.But the fate of Furlings lies in the hands of the villagers.Let the Fittlescombe fireworks begin!