Anything but Vanilla...

by Liz Fielding

‘He was cheating on his fourth wife when he died. She couldn’t have been surprised,’ he said, ‘since she’d hooked him the same way.’

  He sounded distant, detached, and yet he’d kept his father’s car, and she suspected the watch he wore had been his, too.

  ‘My mother remarried within a year of the divorce,’ he continued, anticipating her next question. ‘Her second husband is a diplomat and they travel a lot. They were in South America the last time I heard from her.’

  Distant, detached, uninvolved...

  Her instinct was to throw her arms around him and give him a hug. It was what her mother would have done. It was what Ria would have done, but her own emotional response had been in lockdown for so long that she didn’t know how to break through the body-language barrier he’d thrown up to ward off any expression of pity.

  ‘You’re a travelling family,’ she said, because she had to say something.

  ‘We travel. We were never a family.’ He shook his head once, as if to clear away the memory. ‘Shall we go?’ he asked, abruptly. ‘I’ll follow you.’

  ‘Right.’

  Heart sinking at having triggered bad memories, she walked to her van. By the time she’d backed out he was waiting for her to take the lead, and as she drew alongside him she lowered the window and said, ‘If we get separated by traffic head for Longbourne.’

  She half expected him to suggest she’d be better off having tea with her financial advisor, which was undoubtedly true. The only danger Graeme represented was his prejudice against anything to do with Ria.

  ‘Longbourne?’ he repeated. No excuses, just surprise. ‘I thought you lived at Haughton Manor.’

  ‘That’s my big sister. Sean is the estate manager and Scoop! rents an office in a converted stable block. No concessions for family,’ she added. And then it hit her. ‘It was your father who had the affair with Ria?’

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

  ‘That’s why you feel responsible. Was she the woman on the boat?’

  He shook his head. ‘It happened years ago, when my parents were still married. She was an intern working at WPG. Young, lovely, full of life, I imagine, and, from everything I know about him, exactly the kind of girl to catch my father’s eye.’

  ‘He married her?’ she asked, stunned.

  ‘Oh, no. She wasn’t a keeper. She was too young, too innocent, too besotted to play that game.’

  Too young for it to end well, obviously.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It’s Ria’s story. You’ll have to ask her.’ He was rescued by a toot from an impatient guest. ‘We’re blocking the car park.’

  She glanced over her shoulder, raised a hand in apology and then said, ‘If we get separated, drive straight through the village, past the common and you’ll find Gable End about a hundred yards past the village pond on the right hand side.’ Then, since the name was faded almost out of sight, ‘White trim. Pink roses round the door.’

  ‘It sounds idyllic,’ he said, clearly wishing he’d let her walk away with Graeme.

  ‘No comment, but if we’re lucky there’ll be a beer in the fridge.’

  * * *

  Alexander followed Sorrel through the posts of a gate that sagged drunkenly against the overgrown bushes crowding the entrance.

  Blousy pink roses rambled over a porch, scattering petals like confetti and lending a certain fairy-tale quality to the scene, but closer inspection revealed that the paintwork was peeling on the pie-crust trim. If this really were a fairy tale, the faded sign on the gate would read ‘Beware all ye who enter here...’

  He’d do well to heed it. He should never have gone to Cranbrook Park. Except that he’d enjoyed being part of it, enjoyed being with Sorrel, watching her at work, teasing her a little. Being close to her.

  She’d touched something deep inside him, releasing memories, a private hurt that he’d locked away. There was only one other person he’d talked to so openly about his parents, but then Ria knew his history, shared his pain.

  This was different. A dangerous pleasure.

  Beware...

  Sorrel drove around the side of the house. Here the modern world had touched what must have once been stables; the door opened electronically as she approached and she parked beside the ice-cream van he’d seen on the website. He pulled up in the yard and went to take a closer look.

  ‘This is Rosie? She’s in great condition.’

  ‘She gets a lot of love and attention,’ she said, smiling as she ran a hand over the van’s bonnet, the same loving gesture with which she stroked the Aston’s bonnet and then, as if aware that she was being sentimental, she looked back at him. ‘You might think ice cream is frivolous, not worth bothering about, but her arrival changed our lives.’

  ‘That sounds like quite a story,’ he said, hoping to steer her away from what had happened to Ria.

  ‘It is, but here’s the deal. I’ll tell you mine if you’ll tell me yours.’ She didn’t wait for his answer but headed around the side of the house. ‘Brace yourself.’ As she opened the side gate, a dog hurled itself at them. Sorrel sidestepped. He caught the full force.

  ‘Down, Midge! Geli, will you control this animal?’

  ‘He’s fine,’ he said, folding himself up to make friends with a cross-breed whose appearance suggested a passionate encounter between a Border Collie and a poodle. The result was a shaggy coat that looked as if someone had tried—unsuccessfully—to give it a perm.

  He ran his hand over the creature’s head, then stood up. ‘Come on, girl.’

  Behind him, Sorrel muttered, ‘Unbelievable,’ as Midge trotted obediently at his side. By the time they reached the back door he had three dogs at his heels.

  ‘Uh-oh...’

  ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘If the sun’s shining and the door is shut it means there’s no one home,’ she said, producing a key. Inside, the only sign of life was a cat curled up in an armchair in the corner of the kind of kitchen that had gone out of fashion half a century or more ago. The kind of kitchen that a family could live in although, in a house this size, it would once have been the domain of the domestic staff.

  Sorrel peeled a note off the fridge door.

  ‘“Gran too tired to cook so we’ve gone to the pub,”’ she read, opening the fridge and handing him a beer. ‘I should have thought.’

  ‘You’ve had a lot on your mind,’ he said, replacing the beer and taking a bottle of water. ‘I’m driving.’

  ‘You could always walk back along the towpath,’ she suggested. ‘It can’t be more than three miles to Ria’s. No distance at all for you.’

  ‘Less, but I only flopped there last night because it was too late to do anything else. I have an apartment in the gothic pile,’ he said, tipping up the bottle and draining half of it in one swallow. ‘So, here’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.’ Midge leaned against his leg, whining in ecstasy as he scratched her ear. ‘Can you cook?’

  ‘Cook?’ she repeated, clearly anticipating that they would follow her family’s example but, having snatched her from under the nose of a man who didn’t have the courtesy to listen to her, he wasn’t eager to share Sorrel with a pub full of people. He wanted her all to himself.

  ‘I was promised home cooking,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Promises and piecrusts...’ She looked up at him, half serious, half teasing, and he wanted to kiss her so badly that it hurt.

  Beware...

  Too late.

  It had been too late when he’d walked into Jefferson’s and bought himself a pair of shorts and a polo shirt. When he’d agreed to sub-let Ria’s ice cream parlour to her for a month. When he’d kissed her.

  It had been too late from the moment she’d turned around and looked at him.

  ‘Promises and piecrusts?’

  ‘Made to be broken and in this instance it’s for your own good,’ she said, laughing now. ‘Honestly.’

  One of the other dogs sidled up and pu
t his front paws on his foot, laid his head on his knee, nudging Midge out of the way, claiming his hand.

  ‘You can’t cook?’

  ‘I can use a can opener and I have been known to burn the occasional slice of toast.’ She shrugged. ‘Sorry, but building a business has taken all my time.’

  She was leaning back against a kitchen table big enough for a dozen people to sit around, cucumber fresh in the pale green dress that fitted closely to her figure then billowed out around her legs, masking the chilli that he knew lurked beneath that cool exterior. All he had to do was reach out, pull the pins holding up her hair and let it tumble about her shoulders...

  ‘How about you? How do you survive in the jungle?’ she asked.

  Did that mean that she didn’t want to take the easy option, either, but, like him, wanted to stay here? Just the two of them. Eat, talk, let this go wherever it would.

  He took another long drink, felt the iced water slide down inside him. It didn’t help.

  ‘I don’t starve,’ he admitted. ‘What have I got to work with?’

  ‘Let’s see.’

  She stepped over a terrier, too old and arthritic to reach his hand. He leaned forward and stroked his head.

  ‘Uh-oh.’

  ‘That’s the second time you’ve said that. I’m suspecting the worst.’

  ‘Geli has been in London all week, Gran and Basil have been at KG all day. No one has been shopping.’ She looked round the fridge door at him. ‘Clearly it wasn’t just Gran’s tiredness that prompted an adjournment to the pub. What we have is a chunk of cheese, a carton of milk, a couple of cans of beer and some water.’

  She turned to look up at him. Her skirt was brushing against his thigh, her lips were just inches away and for a moment neither of them moved. Then Midge nudged him, demanding his attention.

  Sorrel looked away.

  He caught his breath. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be doing this. A swift adjournment to the pub was the sensible move.

  ‘The options are limited, but if your repertoire includes an omelette,’ she said, holding up the cheese, ‘I can handle the salad.’

  ‘Great idea...’ sensible clearly wasn’t on the menu ‘...but we appear to be missing two of the vital ingredients. Eggs and salad.’

  ‘Not a problem. Come with me.’ She closed the door, picked up an old basket and headed down the garden, followed by the dogs. Once they were beyond the lilac, a daisy-strewn lawn opened up surrounded by perennial borders coming to life. Beyond it there was a well-maintained vegetable garden.

  The walls were smothered with roses beginning to put out buds, suggesting that it had once had a very different purpose, but what had once been flower beds were now filled with vegetables. One had a fine crop of early potatoes, onions and shallots were coming along apace and sticks were supporting newly planted peas and beans. On the other side of the wide, herb-lined grass path, rows of early salad leaves, spring onions, radishes and young carrots basked in a weed-free environment.

  ‘Salad,’ Sorrel said and, with a casual wave in the direction of a large chicken run sheltered beneath a blossom-smothered apple tree at the far end of the garden, ‘Eggs.’

  ‘You’re into self-sufficiency?’ he asked as half a dozen sleek brown hens and a cockerel paused in their endless scratching for worms to regard him with deep suspicion from the safety of a spacious enclosure.

  ‘Not by design. There was a time when growing our own wasn’t a lifestyle choice, it was a necessity. I hated it.’ He caught a glimpse beneath the façade of the bright, confident woman who knew exactly what she wanted and took no prisoners to get it and saw a girl who’d had to dig potatoes if she wanted to eat. ‘Fortunately, Gran has green fingers.’

  ‘Not Basil?’

  ‘Basil is the skeleton in our family cupboard. We didn’t know he existed until five years ago when he and Rosie turned up on our doorstep.’

  ‘That would be the long story?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it would.’ She was smiling, so he guessed that part of it at least was a good one, but she didn’t elaborate. ‘When I was little this was a mass of flowers. The kind of magical country garden that you see in lifestyle magazines. It was even featured in the County Chronicle. Gran had help in those days and she held garden open days to raise money for charity.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘What always happens to this family, Alexander. A man happened.’

  ‘I feel as if I should apologise, but I don’t know what for.’

  Sorrel shook her head and a curl escaped the neat twisted knot that lay against her neck. ‘Gran’s always been a bit fragile, emotionally. That’s what a bad marriage can do to you. And then my mother died, leaving her with three girls to raise on her own. She was easy meat for the kind of man who preys on lonely widows who have been left well provided for. She needed someone to lean on...’ She sighed. ‘It wasn’t just her. We all needed someone and he made the sun shine for us at a very dark time. He took us out for treats, bought us silly presents, made us laugh again. We all thought he was wonderful.’

  ‘If your mother had just died, you were all vulnerable,’ he said, wondering where her father had been while all this was happening. ‘And likeability is the stock in trade of the con man.’

  ‘I know...’ She shook her head. ‘He romanced us all, entranced us, but it was all a lie. He took everything we had and a lot more besides.’

  ‘Did the police ever catch up with him?’

  ‘We never reported it. What was the point? Gran had signed all the documents and I don’t suppose for a moment he used his real name.’

  ‘Even so.’

  ‘I know. He probably went on and did the same thing to other women, but Elle was terrified that if the authorities knew how bad things were Geli and I would be taken into care.’

  He looked around the garden. Hard times maybe, but what he was seeing here was survival. A glimpse of what had made Sorrel strong enough to stand her ground when he’d tried to drive her away. Strong enough to win business from hard-headed businessmen whose first reaction must have been much the same as his.

  What he didn’t understand was why she would need the approval of someone like Graeme Laing. The man had spoken to her as if she were a wilful child rather than an intelligent adult.

  ‘You managed to keep the house,’ he said. ‘That’s something.’

  ‘He’d have taken that, too, leaving us out on the street without a backward look if he could have got hold of the deeds. He must have been digging for information when Elle helpfully explained that Grandad had left the house in a trust for his grandchildren. That it can’t be sold until the youngest reaches the age of twenty-one.’

  ‘Your grandfather didn’t trust your grandmother?’ He thought of Lally’s distress when he’d mentioned her smile.

  ‘They didn’t have a good marriage and he spent most of his time working abroad, but I think it was my mother he was really worried about. She was a serial single mother; three babies by three different men, each of whom was just passing through. Elle believes that it was deliberate. She wanted children, a family, but she’d seen enough of her parents’ marriage not to want a husband.’

  ‘Are you saying that you don’t know your father?’

  ‘None of us do.’ She lifted her shoulders in a careless shrug, as if it didn’t matter. ‘Probably a good thing.’

  ‘Child support might have helped.’

  ‘She didn’t need it. Grandad looked after us, but I imagine he saw a time when some totally unsuitable man would realise the potential and, instead of planting his seed and moving on without a backward glance, would decide to stick around and make himself comfortable.’

  ‘How on earth did you manage?’ he asked. Trying to imagine how an old woman and three young girls had coped with a huge house they couldn’t sell and no money.

  ‘Elle held everything together. Held us all together, as a family. She sold anything of value to pay off the debts, the cre
dit-card companies and, instead of going to college to study catering, she took a job as a waitress to pay the bills and make sure we didn’t go hungry. She deserves every bit of happiness.’

  And not just her sister... ‘How old were you when your mother died, Sorrel?’

  ‘Thirteen. Cancer, caught too late,’ she said, matter-of-factly, but he saw a shadow cross her face like a passing cloud, and gone as quickly. ‘It was just the four of us until Great-uncle Basil turned up.’

  ‘He’s your grandfather’s brother?’

  She nodded. ‘He’s been so good for Gran. She’s a changed woman since he arrived.’ And with that she summoned up a smile, putting the bad memories behind her. ‘He does most of the hard work in the garden these days. The rescue chickens are a recent addition. Geli volunteers at the animal shelter and tends to bring home the overflow.’

  ‘Rescue chickens? You’re kidding.’

  ‘They had scarcely a feather to bless themselves with when they arrived,’ she said, opening the rear door and feeling inside the nest boxes for eggs.

  ‘They don’t seem very grateful,’ he said, taking the basket, with its single egg.

  ‘No.’ She grinned. ‘How do you feel about chicken soup?’

  He laughed. ‘Oh, right, I can see that happening,’ he said, putting his arm around her and heading back towards the house. ‘Don’t worry. I’m going to be very generous and agree to eat in the pub.’

  ‘Good decision. Just give me five minutes to change.’

  ‘Not so fast,’ he said, putting down the basket and keeping a firm hold on her waist, turning her so that she was facing him. ‘There’s one condition.’

  ‘Oh?’ She made a move to tuck the stray curl—the one with a mind of its own—behind her ear but he beat her to it, holding it there for a moment, feeling the flutter of her pulse as his thumb caressed her throat. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I get to choose the pub.’

  Sorrel stopped breathing.

  For a moment there she had remembered the mission. Security. Safety. To be in control of her destiny. To be the partner of a man who would be there always. Not like her grandfather who’d spent most of his life working abroad to avoid the woman he’d married. Not like her father, just passing through. Not like the man who’d reduced them to penury. But Alexander’s hand was at her waist, his voice soft as lamb’s fleece, wrapping her in a kind of warmth that she had never known.