‘Hey, want a house guest this weekend?’
Whoops of delight emanated from the other end of the phone. ‘Tell Jill, I’ll be down in time for dinner, Friday. Lots of love.’
She replaced the phone. It was a start. That’s all she had asked for.
The heady perfume of Theo’s flowers filled the room. It was extraordinary. First Gemma and then Theo. Between them they had given her the courage to face up to the world again.
One a stranger and the other the enemy. The future was beckoning in a very strange way. Ellie wasn’t sure she understood anything, except she had taken the first step back on the road to recovery, and now what was she to make of the enemy?
Chapter Sixteen
Ellie spent Friday morning cleaning her flat with an energy and determination that would have left even Amanda, used to Ellie’s need for order around her, begging her to slow down. Satisfied that weeks of neglect had now been thoroughly eradicated, she ran a hot, foaming bath and sank gratefully into it, turning the hot tap with her toes to maintain the comforting heat that was easing more than her aching limbs.
After Gemma’s extraordinary visit, Ellie had made herself do something that she had never in her life done before. Something she had never expected, and had never until now had any desire, to do. She had finally accepted help. Not financially or materially, but emotionally. This time she had needed her family. Needed the comfort of just being herself and being with people who accepted her for just that.
Suddenly Ellie wanted to go home. Delcourt, Oliver and Jill and their domestic contentment no longer seemed flat and lifeless. With an almost blinding clarity it came to her that to need someone or something has nothing at all to do with becoming dependent on them. Just saying I need you wasn’t so hard after all. What was hard was being strong enough to admit it, to have the courage really, and these days Ellie had needed to plumb the depths of her soul to find the courage just to get out of bed in the morning.
Gemma had taught her all this — laughing, friendly, concerned and so practical and realistic. Ellie had long ago come to believe that people like Gemma had ceased to exist.
It wasn’t something Ellie felt very proud of but she was uneasily aware that it wasn’t that they had ceased to exist, but that she had ceased to include them in her life. Not deliberately, not consciously. But somewhere along the way to the fast lane, just as Polly had now relegated her to the back of her mind, in her own way Ellie had done the same to people who had touched her life: Amanda, Jill, and when was the last time she had written to or phoned Aunt Belle?
Ellie jabbed angrily at the tap, sending a jet of scalding water into the bath. Cursing, she rapidly twisted it off. No, she wasn’t yet ready to confront some of the more uncomfortable facts of her life and nowhere near prepared to include Gemma in the list of people who had deserved, but not received, her attention.
The existence of Gemma rankled more than the others. She had lived upstairs for over a year, was clearly pregnant and not once had Ellie enquired about her or Bill and certainly shown no interest in her. Why? Because, she told herself bitterly, stepping out of the bath and wrapping a soft, warm towel around her, shaking out her wet hair, because she wasn’t any use to you and your wonderful, marvellous, unbeatable career.
It was a sobering thought and one that threatened to push her back twenty-four hours since she had sat staring at Theo Stirling’s card, and the message that had given her the strength to fight back. No-one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
The Pollys, the Annes, the Pauls of this world had eclipsed real friendship, real involvement. It was not something she wanted to acknowledge too closely, but it was strange that it had taken someone like Theo Stirling to find just the right words to put her life back in perspective.
A phone call to Jed had solved that particular mystery. He had met Theo and Debra Carlysle at the premier of Debra’s latest film. Theo had mentioned that he was flying back to New York the next day and somehow, Jed couldn’t quite remember the details, he had found himself telling Theo that Ellie no longer worked at Focus.
‘Did you say I had been made redundant?’ asked Ellie.
‘Well, not exactly,’ replied Jed. ‘But I had to be honest and say I hadn’t heard from you for a week or two and I suppose he figured the rest out. Why? Does it matter?’
Only that Theo would now know she had nothing to threaten him with, no magazine in which to print a profile, no clout to pull a name or two to protect her from the likes of him. As she spoke to Jed, her gaze swivelled round to the bowl of white flowers. A peace offering or a consolation prize?
Neither seemed to matter anymore. Deep inside she felt something of the old fighter in her trying to surface, but just for today, just for these few moments, she didn’t want to fight anyone at all. Not yet.
And when I do, she thought sadly, there will be nothing but myself with which to fight the world.
Ellie had done some hard thinking in the last twenty-four hours. Redundancy was something that happened to the best of people, the worst of them. It was nothing to be ashamed of; Gemma had convinced her of that. Ellie had, of course, always known it, but sitting in a silent flat, unable to interest anyone in her talent, only too aware that Jed — most definitely not a yes man — and Angus and Rosie and many more had not lost their jobs, she had been assailed by doubts and misgivings about her own competence. But now, although she was still not sure that she was ready to be quite so honest about her predicament, she knew that she would have the courage to admit she had lost her job if someone asked, as Gemma had done. As Theo had obviously done.
‘No,’ she said into the phone. ‘It isn’t the redundancy that’s the problem anymore. It’s getting another job.’
Money was now a real problem, but she knew it would be even more critical if something didn’t happen soon. Freelancing was hit and miss. Publishers, like everybody else, were still being cautious. The flat might have to go, she could find something cheaper perhaps. Renting. As Gemma had said, a bit of lateral thinking often helped. But with lateral thinking you had to know the end first, and Ellie neither knew or cared to know what that might be. Not yet. Not this weekend.
Dropping the towel into the laundry basket, she walked through to her bedroom where she pulled on some leggings, trainers and a baggy sweat shirt, scraped her still damp hair into a pony tail and packed enough clothes for a long weekend in the country into a Gucci suitcase and zipped it firmly shut.
Lastly she went around locking doors and window frames, turning electricity and heat off and finally moved Theo’s flowers to the cooler climate of the kitchen. White flowers. Beautiful, inspiring: a symbol of hope that had come so unexpectedly into her shattered life. Spraying them, she watched the tiny drops of water glistening on the velvet leaves of the roses, poised delicately on the tips of the camellias and freesias. Ellie knew she had never received a more precious gift.
Impulsively she leaned over and plucked one tiny white camellia from the arrangement and, finding a pin in the top drawer of the dresser, clipped it to her sweat shirt. It was a curious adornment for such a casual sweater, but it made her smile. Ellie thought it very appropriate and it summed up her life these days to perfection: a very strange one indeed.
Satisfied that she had left things in the kind of order that would be easy to come home to, she let herself out of the flat, ran upstairs to thrust a note through Gemma’s door telling her that she was going to Oliver’s for a long weekend and, for the first time in weeks, she felt almost at peace with herself as she jumped into her car and thankfully headed for the M3.
*
Of course Oliver could have opened his hotel anywhere, she mused as she sped down the motorway, but without having to be told she had understood and endorsed his decision to go ‘home’.
Every time she left all motorways behind as she threaded her way towards the beautiful West Country coastline, Ellie felt the pressures of London and her problems begin to lift. By the time she drov
e the last mile through Willetts Green and pulled left into the sweeping gravel drive lined with avenues of silver birch trees and up to the front of the hotel, she was a different person.
For a minute she just sat and soaked up the setting in the rapidly fading light of a chilly autumn’s afternoon.
The ivy-clad old Georgian manor house, now Oliver’s hotel, sat at the edge of a tranquil lake, beyond which lay the much loved but now threatened wildlife reserve, a view which never failed to restore her spirits.
The welcoming sight of chintz-covered armchairs, blazing log fires glimpsed through long lamp-lit windows, with Oliver or Jill always on hand to fuss over weary travellers, had more than once made Ellie understand why so many people found it hard to drag themselves away, back to the grind of city life.
So far, she had never been one of them.
Oliver and Jill’s house was a pair of thatched sixteenth century cottages which they had restored from the ruins they had become, and it was there that Ellie headed. With boisterous twins and a family life they regarded as priority, it was essential that they did not live and work in the same place. The low-beamed sprawling layout of the cottage suited all their needs, but the stone-flagged kitchen with its open fireplace, latticed windows and deep old sofas, was the heart of their existence.
It was at Delcourt that Ellie, on the few visits she managed, shed her career-girl look along with the dust of the motorway and happily lounged around in the kind of clothes she loved best: leggings, track suits, serviceable boots and an ancient parka which was perfect at that time of the year for long walks along the nearby near-deserted beaches.
Nothing more formal was needed until they walked over to have dinner in the hotel after the twins had finally been persuaded by their parents or Jenny, who was Jill’s invaluable right hand, to go to bed. The ritual of eating in the pretty dining room with its cream blinds and cushioned wicker chairs was an immoveable feast as far as the Carters were concerned.
‘Got to be seen enjoying your own food,’ Oliver would explain. ‘And you’re right there to let the clients see you care about their welfare. Every little helps.’
Sitting outside the cottage as she pulled on the brake and turned off the engine, Ellie gazed back at the familiar outline of the hotel now blurring in the eerie half-light of the early October afternoon, and had never been more certain that she had been right to encourage Oliver to buy the place.
After all, how often did life present you with the opportunity to rebuild a dream? And this had been not just Oliver’s dream but hers too.
‘Grab it, take it, don’t wait,’ she had urged Oliver when their former much-missed home, Delcourt, came back on to the market. Its final owner, Conrad Linton, after it had been sold on twice since the day when Robert Stirling had claimed it, had finally given up the ghost trying to restore the house and wanted to spend more time with his sons who now lived in Australia. ‘You’ll never forgive yourself when someone else has seen what potential it has. At least I won’t,’ she had said, only half teasingly. ‘It’s perfect for what you and Jill are looking for. You know the area and heaven knows, you know the house. No-one — except for me — could tell you what needs to be done with it. C’mon, Oliver, remember that game we used to play when we were small? How shall we make it perfect? Well, now’s your chance.’
It was all the encouragement Oliver had needed to bid for their former home and to transform it into the exclusive country house hotel it had become. The deal had delighted everyone. Financially Oliver fell short of buying up the surrounding land, but felt confident enough that Linton’s love of the countryside would ensure no real threat until he himself could afford to buy the fields that stretched across the boundary, beyond the lake. Even though his two-year hotel management course in Switzerland had equipped him with the mechanics of running such a place, only someone as emotionally linked to the crumbling ruin of a house which had defeated two sets of owners since Stirling Industries had bought it from John Carter could have done it with such loving care.
Where Ellie had opted to come to London, her brother had gone to Switzerland to train, using the rest of the money for his education in subsidizing his two years in Geneva. Like Ellie, he never shirked from hard work, using evenings and weekends to work in bars and restaurants to top up his slender income. And of course he had met Jill, on the same course, with the same aims and to his eternal amazement, the same intention that they should spend the rest of their lives together.
Jill’s arrival in Oliver’s life had delighted Ellie. Settled in London with a job she loved, and her father married to Alison, she had been concerned about her elder brother arriving back to a lonely life. But Jill, with her elfin face, her shared enthusiasm for starting a hotel with Oliver and plainly so in love, had left Ellie in no doubt that, while she was mystified that Jill had wanted so little for herself and was so content to fall in with Oliver’s plans, her brother was a truly lucky — and happy — man.
The only disappointment for all three of them was that their father had not been with them on the day when Oliver and Ellie, together with Jill, had returned for the first time to the house they had left so tearfully ten years before.
‘I’m so sorry, Ellie,’ Alison had said when she telephoned at the last minute to say John Carter wouldn’t be able to make it. ‘He’s got to finish this painting, but he’ll come just as soon as he can — perhaps in a few weeks’ time.’
Ellie thought Alison had sounded embarrassed. But although it had dimmed the moment, it hadn’t entirely ruined their pleasure.
Even after all this time, as Ellie climbed out of the car, the familiar protective feeling crept around her. She knew that no-one else would be allowed to threaten them again and see them walk so helplessly away.
Ellie had hardly begun pulling her weekend case from the boot of her car when she heard the shrieks of her nephew and niece, followed seconds later by her first sight of them hotly pursued by Jenny, as they rounded the corner of the house and hurled themselves at her.
‘I swear you’ve been feeding them spinach again,’ laughed Ellie at Jenny’s rueful face while she attempted to disentangle arms and limbs from her neck and waist. ‘You two get stronger every time I come here.’
‘I’m sitting next to you all weekend,’ said Chloe, clinging to her aunt’s arm and pulling her towards the house.
‘No you’re not,’ objected Miles, pushing his twin away. ‘Mum said only for Saturday, I’m having Sunday, you’re always trying to...’
‘Whoa, both of you,’ said Ellie, putting down her case. ‘Or you won’t unpack my suitcase.’
The effect on the bickering children was instantaneous. Not for a minute did they believe Ellie meant to deprive them of the treat, but they weren’t going to push their luck. Not when hidden in there somewhere was usually a present, frowned on by their parents, but tolerated provided it ensured reasonably good behaviour while their aunt’s visit lasted.
And then there was Oliver, running down the path, concern etched on his face for his young sister and soon she was caught in a fierce hug and subjected to a gentle bullying that brought tears to her eyes.
‘Stupid, stupid woman,’ he growled. ‘I am very angry with you,’ and before she could reply, Jill appeared, shooing the twins indoors, flinging her arms around Ellie and joining Oliver in lecturing her.
‘We’ve been frantic. And you wouldn’t answer the phone and…’
‘… I’m so sorry, are you okay, what’s happened here?’
‘... And I said to Oliver, if she hasn’t phoned by …’
‘... Jill thought I should drive up, but…’
Ellie, locked between them, was swept into the house, deposited in an armchair, fussed over and cosseted until in the end she burst into tears, but this time from the sheer relief and joy of being back home.
*
‘Anyone special to be nice to this evening?’ asked Ellie, pausing in the doorway.
‘I’m nice to all my clients,’ s
aid Jill primly, trying to look haughty and failing.
‘No. Thank goodness. We’re on our own, which is just as well, we’re both longing to hear about the awful Jerome, that rat Roland and... well... anything else.’
‘You will,’ said Ellie with a grimace and, with Chloe and Miles in attendance, departed for the room which was generally regarded as hers, tucked away at the end of the house with a view out over the cliffs to the sea.
It was strange being here, knowing there was no urgent need to leave, to return to London. Miles and Chloe were showing an uncustomary amount of courtesy which Ellie knew would last just as long as it took to unearth their presents, but it gave her an unexpected pleasure to watch them carefully remove her clothes from her suitcase, trying desperately not to appear too eager. It couldn’t last and when Chloe, the quicker of the two, spied the packages an unholy row erupted as they squabbled fiercely over which belonged to whom, all thought of Ellie’s unpacking long forgotten.
‘I found them, I found them,’ shrieked Chloe, holding them above her head as her brother tried ineffectually to grab them.
‘Give me them,’ he wailed. ‘I only want to hold them, not open them, Ell... eee!’
Groaning inwardly, Ellie pulled the warring twins apart, prised the parcels out of Chloe’s hands and threatened both of them with no presents at all if they didn’t behave.
Five minutes later, glaring resentfully at each other but in possession of a parcel each, they were summarily removed by Jenny, leaving Ellie alone to undress, while mentally resolving never to underestimate Jill’s achievements in life ever again. Stripping off the leggings and trainers, she pulled the sweat shirt over her head and shrieked as the pin from the camellia scraped her shoulder.
Wincing, she undid the clip, looked round for somewhere to place the wilting flower, and decided it would be best pressed between the leaves of her diary. Rooting around in her case, she pulled out the black leather volume — almost as redundant as its owner, she thought ruefully — and flicked through the blank pages, slipping the flower into a small pocket at the back.
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