Where The Story Starts

by Imogen Clark

  Today they were tackling the large quantities of cutlery that lay in the polished wood canteens, unused from one month to the next. In her parents’ day the Hall had thrown more than its share of huge dinner parties but Grace and Charles had been less hospitable, preferring smaller supper gatherings for close friends in the early days, and then almost no entertaining at all when Charles had been so often away from home. Now that she was on her own, Grace couldn’t imagine that the silver cutlery would ever see the light of day again.

  Still, it needed keeping on top of so that it didn’t tarnish beyond rescue. The pair of them, both wearing white cotton gloves to prevent grease transferring from finger to blade, had a system, and they worked companionably side by side, chatting about small inconsequential matters as they polished. Grace was just thinking how lucky she was to have her daughter at home when a bellowing voice sliced through the quietude.

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  Hector was on the warpath. Again. Grace and Clio exchanged glances, Clio rolling her eyes and shaking her head.

  ‘Now what?’ she said. ‘I don’t know why you put up with him, Mum. Ever since Dad died he’s being a total pain in the backside. Anyone would think he was the only person in the world who had ever lost their father.’

  ‘Go easy on him, Clio,’ replied Grace gently. ‘He’s still struggling but he’ll adjust, given time.’

  Clio harrumphed. ‘Well, I’m sick of it,’ she muttered under her breath as Hector stormed in, pushing the open door with such force that the hinges creaked in complaint.

  ‘That bloody house,’ Hector spat as he approached.

  ‘Which house?’ asked Grace, although she had a pretty good idea.

  ‘The one in Whitley Bay. The woman who lives there is playing silly beggars. She has rung the solicitors with some cock-and-bull story about owning the house outright. The solicitors weren’t fooled, of course, but now they want to check everything out before they’ll take any further action. More delays.’

  Something between panic and anger forced Grace to her feet.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she demanded. ‘Why did she ring the solicitors? Did you instruct them to write to her? After I specifically told you to leave the poor woman alone? You may manage my estate for me, Hector, but please don’t forget who it belongs to. You had no right to contact the solicitors when you knew that I had specifically told you not to.’

  Grace spoke calmly but there could be no mistaking her fury. Hector opened his mouth to defend himself and then closed it again. He ran his hand through his hair and Grace saw the image of her husband in her son, although she never remembered Charles looking as cross as Hector did at that moment.

  She could feel her panic building. They were on very dangerous ground. Obviously, it was vital that she steer Hector away from this course of action – mainly so that Leah and her children didn’t lose the roof over their heads; but there was far more at stake than that. If Leah kept objecting to the eviction, then the solicitor would want to speak to her directly, and she would tell him that it was her father who had bought the house. It wouldn’t take long for Hector to put two and two together and work out that Leah had to be his half-sister, and then the whole web would unravel. That had to be avoided at all costs.

  ‘I want you to ring the solicitors straight back and tell them to take no further action until they hear from me. In fact, I’ll do it myself, so there can be no misunderstanding.’ Grace pressed the word to emphasise that she knew that no one had misunderstood anything. Hector had just done exactly as he pleased. He looked a little chastened, picking at a thread on his jacket, his eyes low.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said grudgingly. ‘I’ll do it. But I’ve decided to drive out to Whitley Bay tomorrow to see the place for myself. You don’t object to that, I assume.’

  Grace did object. She objected with all her heart, but she could not think of a single legitimate reason to stop him going.

  ‘Do you really think that’s wise?’ she said urgently, her voice brash and more high-pitched than usual. ‘Isn’t that tenant harassment or something?’ She was grasping at straws, she knew.

  ‘Is she a tenant when she doesn’t even pay any rent?’ asked Hector. ‘Squatter, more like. No. My mind is made up. I’m going over there in the morning.’

  ‘Then I’ll come too,’ said Grace.

  ‘And me,’ said Clio.

  53

  GRACE – NOW

  Hector drove with Clio sitting up beside him.

  ‘I still don’t understand why we can’t leave well alone,’ Clio hissed at him as the car pulled out of the estate and turned towards the coast. ‘This is ridiculous, us all piling over there like this.’

  ‘You didn’t have to come, Clio,’ snapped Hector. He rarely called her by her real name, preferring the nursery nickname LeeLee that he had given her when she was a baby. Now, though, such was his anger with her that he had clearly resorted to more formality. ‘I can just drop you off here.’

  Hector slowed the car as if to let her out, and the air was rent by an objecting horn from the car behind. Grace jumped and Hector speeded back up again.

  ‘This trip is totally unnecessary, given that we will not be evicting anyone, but as we seem to be going anyway let’s just see if we can all get along, shall we?’ said Grace, adopting the tone she had used when the pair of them had been squabbling children.

  She sat back in her seat and watched the now-familiar scenery slide by. Hector had put the address into the sat nav system and cursed each time a manoeuvre needed to be made. Grace said nothing, fearful that if she spoke she might give something away. She could take them directly to the house without the need for a digital assistant, but that was something the others didn’t need to know just yet.

  As the car pulled into the road, Grace felt her chest tighten and she put a hand to her heart as if to reassure it that there was no need to panic. What was the best way to approach this? If she stayed in the car, she wouldn’t be able to protect Leah from whatever Hector was planning to unleash on her, but if she got out, Leah would recognise her immediately as Mrs Newman, the lady from the church. Of course, she was neither Mrs Newman nor from the church, and any explanation that followed would make it inevitable that Charles’s sordid double life that she had kept hidden from her children for so long would all come spilling out.

  ‘Will you go to the door with your brother, please, Clio,’ Grace said.

  This was surely the best compromise. At least with Clio there, Hector might be contained.

  Clio pulled a face. ‘I’m not sure,’ she mumbled. ‘Maybe if . . .’

  But Hector wasn’t listening.

  ‘I’ve been here before,’ he said, cutting right across her.

  Grace’s world shifted beneath her feet.

  ‘You can’t have been,’ she said. ‘You must be confusing it with somewhere else.’

  But Hector was shaking his head as he scanned the street first one way and then the other. ‘It’s that house there, isn’t it?’ he said, pointing directly at number 5. ‘Dad brought us here for the day when we were small. I don’t know where you were, Mum. Maybe you’d gone to Auntie Charlotte’s? We had ice cream on the beach and chips for tea. And is there a lighthouse?’

  Clio was nodding. How did she know? Did she remember coming too?

  Grace’s fear morphed quickly into anger. Was the mess that Charles had made not bad enough on its own? Did he really have to bring her children here so that they too were tainted by his dishonesty? It was so typical of Charles to have diced with danger like that, to have pushed his luck just that little bit further to see how far it would stretch. She supposed that she shouldn’t be surprised. Of course, he was going to bring his children here. That way he could enjoy his subterfuge all the more by sharing it with others. He must have been gambling on them being too young to remember much about it. What deal had he cut with them to keep their mouths shut and not tell her? she wondered.

  ‘Was ther
e anyone else in the house when you came?’ Grace asked. She couldn’t help herself. In that moment she didn’t care if it all came out. Her hunger for details of Charles’s other life suddenly seemed so much more vital to her well-being than her need to protect her children.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Hector, shaking his head slowly as he searched his memory for faded details. ‘It was just a holiday house. There was furniture, some pictures on the walls. I remember one of a woman holding a red telephone which was kind of melting. Do you remember that, LeeLee?’

  Clio shook her head.

  ‘I can’t remember much else,’ Hector continued. ‘But I do remember the colour of the house. I’d never seen a house painted red before. Right. I’ll go and see who’s in.’

  Hector flicked off his seat belt, climbed out of the car decisively and strode up the path. He rapped on the front door like a debt collector. Clio got out too, but she loitered near the car. Grace just held her breath. Was this the moment when the whole house of cards came tumbling down around them?

  Nothing happened.

  Hector knocked again, more loudly still. An elderly face appeared from behind a yellowing net curtain in the house next door, but nobody came to the door of number 5. Grace let out a short breath of relief. Leah was out. Thank God. Now all they had to do was leave before she got back, and then Grace could work on Hector and coax him down a different path.

  ‘There’s no one in,’ Hector called back.

  Grace longed for him to keep his voice down. They didn’t need an audience. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Never mind. Shall we go then?’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Clio, opening the car door without hesitation and making to slip back in.

  ‘But we’ve come all this way,’ objected Hector. ‘And now that I recognise the place it’s all starting to make a little bit more sense. What say you we go and get a 99 for old times’ sake and have a walk on the beach? The tide’s out, look!’ He pointed at the sea which was indeed far enough away to reveal a wide ribbon of golden sand.

  ‘No,’ said Grace, her voice so sharp that both her children snapped their heads round to look at her, their brows furrowed in confusion. ‘We should leave,’ she continued. ‘It was a wild goose chase coming here in the first place as I shan’t allow you to evict the tenants, no matter what you want to do. And you have no right disturbing them anyway, Hector. Aren’t they entitled to quiet enjoyment of their property? Isn’t that what it’s called?’

  ‘I hardly think that knocking on their door once will put us in breach of that, Mother,’ replied Hector in a such a patronising tone that Grace briefly considered stripping him of his job as her estate manager there and then. ‘In fact, now I come to think about it,’ he continued, ‘we should probably introduce ourselves whether we’re going to evict them or not. They have a right to know who their landlord is, after all. Let’s go for a walk and then call again on our way back.’

  When he put it like that it all sounded completely reasonable, and Grace struggled to think of any further way of objecting without making him suspicious of her.

  ‘I still think we should leave them in peace,’ piped up Clio stroppily. Grace noticed that her cheeks had turned quite pink in frustration at her brother’s attitude, and she felt grateful to have an ally. ‘They are going to be shocked enough by that ridiculous letter that you sent, Hector, without us all turning up on their doorstep.’

  ‘Let’s go down to the beach and then we can see how the land lies when we get back,’ said Hector in the kind of over-reasonable tone that Charles had sometimes used to get his own way.

  Grace sighed and glanced at Clio, who was raising her eyebrows questioningly at her. It almost felt, Grace thought, as if she and Clio were defending Leah together and, even though this couldn’t be true, Grace liked the idea.

  And so the three of them trooped down the pavement side by side towards the beach.

  ‘Well, I suppose it makes sense that Dad would bring us here for a treat,’ Hector said, his brain clearly working to piece the jigsaw together. ‘Although I can’t for the life of me think why you didn’t know about it, Mother. The canny old bugger must have bought the house as an investment and let it out to the holiday trade. Maybe he wanted a little bolt-hole away from us all.’

  He laughed at the audacity of his idea and Grace felt sick to her stomach.

  They bought ice creams from a kiosk on the promenade, an Orange Maid for Grace and 99s with raspberry sauce for Hector and Clio, and then headed down the sandy steps to the beach. The weather was nothing special and the beach wasn’t busy; a few joggers and one or two people walking dogs. A woman with two children, one tall and fair and the other short and dark, was standing near the water’s edge. Grace could see at once that it was Leah and she held her breath, hoping that she stayed where she was so that they could all pass by without her noticing. Those are my grandchildren she thought with an aching heart, although it wasn’t strictly true.

  Hector set off towards the water like an Exocet missile but Grace held back, trailing after him more slowly. His path would take them to a spot about fifty yards to the left of Leah. If she kept her head down then hopefully Leah wouldn’t notice her, and the children had never even met her. Leah’s back was turned to them but even from here, Grace could see that a heaviness hung about her shoulders. Grace’s own son had done that to her. He had caused this worry to his half-sister without even being aware of who she was. Grace’s conscience was shouting so loudly in her head that the sound of it almost deafened her. This was an impossible position. She wanted desperately to protect Leah from what was coming, but what about her own children? She had spent over a decade burying what their father had done, keeping them safe from the hurt and scandal that the truth would bring with it. And now it looked as if that was all about to come crashing down around her.

  But she could save the situation if she could just keep Hector far enough from Leah . . .

  ‘Clio!’ shouted a voice, small but filled to the brim with excitement.

  Grace turned her head. The little boy with Leah had spotted Clio and was waving frantically at her. He tugged at Leah’s sleeve.

  ‘Mummy! Mummy! It’s Clio. There!’

  Leah turned to see where he was pointing and when she saw Clio gave her a huge smile and raised her arm high overhead in an enthusiastic greeting.

  ‘Hi,’ she called, beaming broadly at Clio. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Grace was completely lost. What was going on? How had Clio met Leah? From the child’s greeting they clearly knew each other pretty well. Grace looked at Clio and then back to Leah. Leah’s smile slipped and Grace watched as a myriad emotions crossed her face one after another. Clio had gone very pale.

  ‘Leah. Hi. This is my brother Hector.’ Clio gestured to Hector, who gave her a tight smile and a nod. ‘And my mother, Lady Hartsford, Grace.’

  Grace kept her eyes low, but she could feel Leah’s stare as keenly as if it were a hot brand.

  ‘Mrs Newman?’ Leah said, a tentative smile creeping across her face. ‘That is you, isn’t it?’

  Grace nodded. ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Hello, Leah.’ She gave a hesitant smile in return, but Leah was positively beaming back at her.

  ‘Do you two know each other?’ asked Clio, frowning.

  ‘This is Mrs Newman,’ said Leah, her eyebrows raised questioningly. ‘You know. The nice lady from the church that I told you about. The one that helped me when Mum died.’

  Clio shook her head slowly as if she could make no sense of the picture that was emerging. Her eyes flicked from Leah to Grace and back again.

  Then Hector spoke, his voice loud and authoritative. ‘What the hell is going on?’ he demanded.

  54

  LEAH – NOW

  My eyes flicked from Clio to her mum and then back again. I’d heard what Clio had just told me, but I couldn’t take it in; the words didn’t string together into an order that my brain could grab hold of. But the evidence was right there
in front of me. There was no denying it. Clio was the spit of her mum: the same small, neat features, strong cheekbones, full lips. But this was Mrs Newman, the lovely woman from the church who I’d visited every other week for years after Mum died. How could she be Lady Hartsford of Hartsford Hall? Or perhaps more importantly, why had she lied?

  ‘Do you like my pattern, Clio?’ Noah asked, cutting straight through my thoughts. ‘Come see!’

  He grabbed Clio’s hand and dragged her towards the water’s edge where he’d carved a series of hieroglyphics into the wet sand. Reluctantly, Clio allowed herself to be pulled along. Sensing that she too would be better elsewhere, Poppy tagged along behind them.

  Lady Hartsford, Grace, Mrs Newman, whoever, took a couple of steps towards me and reached out, gathering my hand up in hers. Her skin was cool and very soft. She squeezed my fingers gently and with her other hand she lifted my chin so that she could see me clearly. Looking into her kind eyes again sent me straight back to those dark days in the church and the rush of sorrow that hit me was so powerful that for a moment I couldn’t get my breath.

  ‘But . . .’ I spluttered. ‘How . . . ?’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Grace, her voice low and calm just like it had been when I was eighteen. It felt comforting to hear it again, safe somehow, like being wrapped in a warm blanket on a cold day, even though the world around me seemed to be tipping dangerously. It had never occurred to me at the time, but the woman in the church, Grace, had been like my substitute mother, listening to me cry and mopping up my tears. And now, here she was again, and suddenly I felt very small and scared as if all those years as a fully functioning adult counted for nothing.

  ‘I should have told you,’ Grace continued. ‘I should have made it clear who I was right from the start, but I was frightened. I was so desperate to protect my world, to keep it safe, but at the same time I couldn’t just leave you floundering on your own, Leah. As soon as I heard about what had happened to your poor mother, I knew that I had to make sure you were all right. You were so very young to have been left to cope and yet you managed so incredibly well. But I know I should have told you at the time.’