If she looked any more sour, she’d turn into a lemon, thought Tati. Silly old witch.
‘I wonder,’ said Jason, ‘do you think you could find us a spot of lunch? I’m starving after all that traipsing around and I’m sure Tatiana is too, aren’t you?’
‘Famished,’ grinned Tati, who was really starting to enjoy herself. Mrs Worsley’s face was a picture.
‘Just a salad or something would be great,’ Jason said innocently, adding insult to injury. ‘We’ll be in the dining room when you’re ready.’
Tati would have enjoyed the smoked salmon salad and fresh baked bread more had she not been wondering whether or not Mrs Worsley had spat in her helping. Certainly her father’s former housekeeper maintained the pained expression of a cat chewing a wasp throughout the meal, making it hard to focus completely on conversation.
Despite the tension of having a self-appointed conscience spying on her every move, Tatiana enjoyed talking to Jason. She particularly enjoyed watching his shyness gradually fall away as they spent more time together in the dining room where Tati had eaten countless meals in the first twenty years of her life. Jason was clearly lonely, a state of mind Tati understood only too well. When he spoke about his mother and sister being away in France, it was clear that he missed them, even though their return would also mean the unwelcome return of his father and an end to his moonlighting as a pianist, at least for now.
Tati let him talk for a good hour before excusing herself to go to the loo. Mrs Worsley finally seemed to have made herself scarce, and Tati was able quickly and quietly to slip up the kitchen stairs to the first floor. Brett had turned the old servants’ rooms into a set of adjoining offices. It was as good a place to start as any. Darting inside, Tati pulled open a filing cabinet at random and began riffling through papers. She didn’t know what she was looking for specifically. Just anything that might help Raymond Baines to strengthen her claim on the estate. It didn’t help that her heart was pounding against her ribs like a jackhammer and her palms were so sweaty she could barely separate one document from the next. I’d make a useless cat burglar, she thought, glancing anxiously at her watch. She couldn’t be too long or that old dragon Worsley would smell a rat and come looking for her.
But it was no use. There was nothing here except old tax returns, at least six years’ worth, together with carefully photocopied receipts and correspondence with the Australian tax office. Replacing the last of the documents, Tati was just about to close the drawer when she froze.
Footsteps.
They were faint at first. Tati hovered and listened, hoping to hear them recede. But instead they came closer. Was it Mrs Worsley, snooping around looking for her? No. The tread was a man’s, heavy and purposeful. It must be Jason.
Glancing round the room, she searched in vain for somewhere to hide. The office was little more than an eight-foot-square box. It didn’t even have curtains. There was a desk she could crawl under, but anyone who stepped more than a couple of feet into the room would see her there, crouching like a naughty child. She was still standing helplessly, like a deer in the headlights, when the footsteps stopped outside the door. The handle began to turn. Tati felt her stomach slide into her shoes. What excuse could she possibly give Jason? She could hardly say she was lost, in her own house. That she wandered into the office by mistake. Oh God.
Mrs Worsley’s voice rang out like a siren.
‘Mr Cranley! My goodness, whatever are you doing here? When I heard noises I thought it was an intruder.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Brett’s growling, Australian baritone rumbled through the door. Tati would not have been surprised to see her heart leap out of her chest and start jumping up and down on the desk. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you. I had to come home on business for a few days. It was a last-minute thing or I would have called.’
‘No need to apologize to me,’ said the housekeeper. ‘It’s your house. But do let me make you something to eat and unpack your things. Jason’s downstairs. With a … visitor.’
Tati waited for Mrs Worsley to elaborate, or for Brett to quiz her, but neither of them did. Instead, miraculously, Brett let go of the door handle and agreed to go down to join his son. Tati waited until she heard both sets of footsteps disappear down the kitchen stairs. Then she slammed closed the filing cabinet, bolted out into the corridor and ran as fast as she could to the front of the house, flying down the main staircase and into the loo off the entrance hall. Sixty seconds later, having washed her hands and face and regained her composure, she walked as casually as she could back into the dining room.
Brett and Jason were both standing, glaring at one another. As soon as Tati walked in, it was clear what their confrontation had been about.
‘Speak of the devil,’ said Brett, without humour. ‘Thought you’d sniff around the place did you, while I was gone?’
‘Exactly,’ Tati replied mockingly. ‘It was all part of some dastardly plan.’
‘Dad, please,’ Jason blushed. ‘Tatiana was just—’
‘I know what she was just doing,’ said Brett. ‘And now she’s just leaving. Aren’t you?’
Tati turned to Jason, bestowing him with her warmest smile. ‘Thank you for a lovely lunch. We must do it again some time.’
‘You stay away from my son!’ thundered Brett as she walked away.
‘Or what?’ Tati called defiantly over her shoulder as she left the room. ‘You’ll put me over your knee?’
‘Don’t tempt me,’ growled Brett, his eyes flashing dangerously.
Tati met his gaze for a split second, then turned and hurried away.
That had been far too close for comfort.
It was almost tea time by the time Tati got back to Greystones. The walk had been long enough for her to calm her frazzled nerves, although the close shave with Brett and her unexpected salvation by Mrs Worsley, followed by the disconcerting confrontation in the dining room, had left her feeling physically drained.
Closing the front door behind her, she felt a comforting sense of safety and relief. For all its drawbacks, the rented farmhouse felt like home in a way that it hadn’t only a few short months ago. Somehow the whole place seemed more cheerful now that high summer had arrived. With no money to employ a gardener, Tati had let the long sloping lawn at the back of the house grow into a veritable forest of long grass and wild flowers. But the general eruption of flora had a joyous, riotous feel to it that she wouldn’t have traded for neatly trimmed borders or sedate rose beds, even if she did have the money. As for the house itself, that was still a mess too. But with every window open and the summer light and scents pouring in, and with some plain white bedspreads thrown over the ugliest pieces of the landlady’s furniture, it was not without a certain shabby-chic charm. A chipped jug sat on the kitchen table, rudely stuffed with peonies, and the fruit bowl on the sideboard overflowed with plums from the tree in the garden, which looked in danger of toppling to the ground any minute from the sheer mass of fruit weighing it down.
Making herself a glass of elderflower squash, Tati wandered out into the back garden. Dusting the cobwebs off a decrepit deckchair she found lurking in the shed, she sank down into it, enjoying the sensation of being completely hidden by the long grass. She remembered playing this game as a child. ‘Boats’, her father used to call it. Rory would sing her the song of the owl and the pussycat, and she would imagine the grass as the tall sides of a ship and herself sailing away for a year and a day. She didn’t cry, but a wave of nostalgia overwhelmed her suddenly, bringing a lump to her throat.
It was hard to believe that it was still less than a year since Rory had died and Tati’s world had been turned inside out. Yet, at the same time, when she thought about the school or the endlessly long, boring afternoons she’d spent in Raymond Baines’s drab offices, it felt as if she’d been stuck in her present rut for a lifetime. Then, in the last few weeks, her mental landscape had suddenly shifted again. Brett Cranley’s taunts at the parents’ meeting had started it
, sowing a seed of ambition in Tati that had never been there before. That very same night, as fate would have it, she’d met Marco, and the seed had been watered. Teaching was something she could do. Her father had believed that at any rate, and now Max Bingley believed it too.
Of course, Brett was right that she would never make a fortune on a teacher’s salary. But what if there were a way to combine education and business? Wouldn’t it be satisfying to prove Brett Cranley wrong, and with him every man who’d ever dismissed her as nothing more than a party girl with a pretty face? Marco could open doors for her, help to introduce her to the right people … Yes, it was a pipe dream. But it wasn’t impossible. After all, if Jason Cranley could quietly pursue his dreams, his talents, with his vile father breathing down his neck, why shouldn’t she do the same with nothing but her own fears holding her back?
The advantage of this particular pipe dream was that it was in Tatiana’s own hands. Unlike the court battle over her father’s will. Standing beside Brett’s filing cabinet today like a fool, waiting to be caught red-handed, she’d suddenly realized how desperate she’d become. She knew now what she’d been looking for in those files: a miracle. Because, without a miracle, she was going to lose in court in September. Brett Cranley knew it. The lawyers knew it. Deep down, Tatiana knew it too.
So why can’t I let it go? Cut my losses and walk away?
God knew she didn’t relish the humiliation of being defeated by Brett in court. But at the same time, she couldn’t bear him to see her as a quitter, or as someone he could bully into submission, the way he bullied poor Jason and so many others in his life. She had to see this through. As a child, everything Tati did was done to gain her father’s attention. She had no mother or siblings. Rory had been her sole audience, and she kept dancing for him, long after the dance had ceased to be fun for either of them. As much as she loathed him, as much as he revolted her, the truth was that Brett Cranley made her feel the same way. In some sick, twisted way, he had stepped into her father’s shoes. She yearned to impress him, like a lost dog yearning for home.
Closing her eyes and stretching out her legs, she tried to relax, focusing on the sunlight warming her skin and the soft hum of bees in the grass. An image of Marco’s handsome face floated into her mind and she held it there like a talisman, pushing out the other face: the face with the angry flashing eyes; the face intent on her destruction.
She fell into a deep, mercifully dreamless sleep.
Up at Furlings, Jason Cranley stared at his bedroom ceiling.
He had never been in love before. Perhaps he wasn’t in love now? With nothing to compare it to, it was awfully hard to tell.
All he knew was that when Tatiana left today, curling her lip at his father as if Brett were nothing, a mere irritant, a fly in her consommé, he’d wanted to pull her into his arms and never, ever let her go.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Angela Cranley sat bolt upright, gasping for breath.
‘Ange?’ Concerned, Brett shook her by the shoulders. ‘Ange, what’s the matter? Are you all right?’
She looked at his face, then around the room. One by one, familiar objects reasserted themselves. The thick red damask curtains she’d bought at auction in London. The antique French dressing table they’d had shipped over from Sydney. The horrible oil painting of the Sydney opera house that Brett adored and insisted on hanging directly opposite the marital bed, wherever they lived. Her panic attack subsided.
‘I’m fine.’
I’m home.
At Furlings.
The summer’s over.
It had all gone by so quickly, it was easy to imagine it had been a dream. Or should that be a nightmare? Finding Brett in bed with Tricia, meeting Didier, attempting to piece back together the shattered fragments of trust for the hundredth time. Now that she was back in Sussex, back in her role of wife and mother and mistress of the house, none of it seemed quite real.
But it was real. Brett had betrayed her again. And for all his apologies and promises, all his apparently sincere remorse, the wound felt deeper this time. About a week ago, Angela had allowed Brett to make love to her again. It was awful. Brett was tender, loving and apologetic, as he always was after he’d been caught out with another woman. Angela went through the motions, allowing her body to accept his apology. But inside she felt cold and dead and numb to a degree that frightened her.
Didier had texted and emailed a couple of times, while she was still out in France. It was obvious he wanted something more to develop between them. Angela didn’t have the stomach for an affair, all the lies and deceit. But it did feel good to have a small, romantic secret of her own for a change. And Didier’s attentions strengthened her in other ways too. She wanted to get her marriage back on track. But she didn’t want to go back to the way things were before. Back to being passive. Back to being the frightened mouse of a woman she had always been with Brett, since the day he first walked into her parents’ bakery. Something had to change. Going back would be death.
But then the holiday ended, they returned from France, and almost immediately the panic attacks began. Furlings, the house Angela had loved so much and felt such an instant connection to back in the spring, suddenly felt like a prison. It didn’t help that Logan was ecstatic to be back.
‘Do you think Gabe will notice my tan?’ she’d asked her parents on the drive back from the airport, craning her neck out of the window as they passed Wraggsbottom Farm. ‘I’ve matured a lot this summer,’ she added, blowing an enormous bubble with her last piece of strawberry Hubba Bubba, then sucking it back into her mouth with a satisfying snap.
‘Have you now?’ laughed Brett. ‘I’m sure Gabe Baxter has better things to do than check out your suntan. I don’t want you hanging around that farmyard all the time, annoying people.’
‘I don’t annoy people,’ said Logan, stung. ‘You annoy people.’ She stuck out her bubble-gum-pink tongue in Brett’s direction.
‘Don’t talk back to your father,’ Angela said automatically. But Brett had just laughed. He was happy to be home too, to be going back to work, back to ‘normal’. Only Angela, it seemed, was struggling to readjust.
Getting out of bed, she walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower in an attempt to avoid further conversation with Brett. She didn’t want to be quizzed about her panic attacks, or the bad dreams that had plagued her ever since they got back. But to her surprise, Brett followed her into the shower. Pressing his naked body against hers, he wrapped his arms around her in an unusual display of tenderness.
‘It’s probably the stress,’ he said, kissing her neck.
‘Stress?’ Angela frowned.
‘The court case,’ said Brett. ‘This damn nonsense with Tatiana’s been hanging over us for far too long. You’ll feel better once it’s over and we can relax in our own home.’
God, the court case. Angela had barely given it a thought, but it was next week, the same week that Logan went back to school. Although it was unlikely, there was at least a technical possibility that they might lose Furlings. While they’d been away in France, Tatiana had evidently been waging a relentless charm offensive on the locals, and had apparently obtained a stack of signatures supporting her claim to her father’s estate. The thought of the ruling going against them made Angela shiver beneath the streaming jets of hot water. I don’t want to lose this place, she realized suddenly. It wasn’t Furlings that had been making her feel trapped, but her own state of mind. Ridiculously, she found herself wishing her father were here. He would know what to do.
Instead, she leaned back against Brett. He hadn’t been much support lately, but he was all she had. She clung to him.
‘It will be all right, won’t it?’ she asked him.
‘Of course it will,’ said Brett. ‘Tatiana hasn’t a snowball’s hope in hell and she knows it.’
The Cranley vs Flint-Hamilton hearing was held at the High Court in London. Brett Cranley arrived early, dashing into the famous Ro
yal Courts of Justice on the Strand beneath an umbrella held by his lawyer, Justin Greaves, London’s pre-eminent probate and contested wills specialist.
‘Is she here yet?’ Brett asked Greaves, a wiry man in his fifties with coarse grey hair like a Brillo pad and thick-framed glasses that continually slipped down his nose.
‘No. Her lawyer’s over there,’ he said, pointing to the anxious-looking figure of Raymond Baines. In a cheap suit two sizes too big for him, the fat Chichester solicitor looked shorter, balder and even less impressive than usual, completely out of place in such grandiose surroundings. ‘That’s the third time he’s looked at his phone in the last minute. He’s obviously lost her. Maybe she’s bottled it?’
‘I doubt that,’ said Brett. Tatiana Flint-Hamilton had numerous weaknesses, but she wasn’t one to shy away from a fight.
‘Well she’d better show up soon or the judge will start without her. Judge Sir William McGyver QC’s presiding, which is good for us.’
‘Is it?’ said Brett.
‘Yup. Sexist, patriarch, old as the hills and a stickler for form,’ Justin Greaves said bluntly. ‘Won’t take kindly to Miss Flint-Hamilton playing the diva and wasting court time.’
At that moment, right on cue, Tatiana burst in. Her long hair was wet from the rain and had started to curl into damp spirals around her flushed face. She wore a beige macintosh raincoat, also wet, which she removed to reveal a sleek cream woollen suit. The look was conservative and professional, but somehow this only seemed to heighten her desirability. As if the wild, passionate creature beneath the demure clothes were begging to be unleashed. Brett couldn’t take his eyes off her, but Tatiana ignored him completely, muttering apologies about traffic as she hurried over to join Raymond Baines.
Moments later they were called into court. Justin Greaves leaned over to whisper in his client’s ear. ‘You’re staring. Try not to.’
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