by Karen Swan
‘Oh, do you think so?’ Willow asked, hopefully, looking around herself with objective eyes: she took in the faux-bamboo mirror above the fireplace, her father’s favourite oil painting on the wall, a campaign chest that had belonged to his great-grandfather during the war, the grandest silk Oushak rug that had fitted in this room. As ever, the colours were riotous, prints clashing boldly against one another, with not a trace of beige to be seen anywhere. She had painted the walls apple green herself, wearing one of her father’s old shirts. It wasn’t like there hadn’t been anything else to do. With her trying to keep away from Connor at the castle and her mother trying to keep away from her here – she was still at the Flanagans’ – the days were long and lonely. ‘It’s been a real race against time to try and get the place set up for Mam. She didn’t react well to being told that she had to move out of the castle with twenty-four hours’ notice.’
‘I can imagine not,’ Ferdy grimaced. ‘The castle was her home for how many years?’
‘Thirty.’
‘That’s a big part of anyone’s life.’
Willow nodded, looking into the fire and remembering her mother’s stunned expression as she had detailed what she had agreed to, and the frenetic schedule it entailed. ‘I know it’s hard enough for her adapting to being a widow, without all this other change to deal with too. It’s not so bad for my sisters – they’ve been living in their current homes on the estate for a while now – but when I wake up in the morning, in that moment right before I open my eyes, I can’t actually remember which building I’m in, much less the room. It’s the oddest feeling to be lying there, with absolutely no concept of where I am. I feel so displaced . . .’
‘I get that when I travel,’ he commiserated. ‘I travel a lot for work and wake up in hotel rooms not knowing where I am either.’
‘It’s disconcerting.’
‘Absolutely it is, but you should be proud of what you’ve achieved. You’ve done more to this estate in the past few weeks than anyone else has managed in at least five hundred years. You’ve done the hard part.’
‘Actually I think you’re doing the hard part,’ she smiled. ‘I don’t know how you know where to start. We’ve so much stuff.’
‘Beautiful stuff,’ he clarified. ‘I stopped in at the castle on my way over, just to make sure nothing was overlooked in the cellars and attics, and I couldn’t even count the number of tradesmen they had on site.’
‘Really?’ she asked blandly, trying not to imagine it. Him. ‘I’ve been trying to keep out of the way.’
‘Very wise. There must have been thirty vans on the drive. It appears to be a slick machine they’re running. Incredibly efficient.’
‘Well, they’re highly motivated,’ she said with a tight smile. She hadn’t seen or heard from Connor since she’d left him in the pub at the weekend, the look of disbelief on his face as she ran out on him running in a loop through her head. ‘Did you . . . see how it’s looking?’
He thought for a moment. ‘They’ve lifted the carpets and sanded the floors, and I think they’re stripping the panelling at the moment. It’s all much . . . softer looking. Still grand but with a contemporary feel, I suppose.’
‘Right.’ She felt a tremor of fear, not entirely sure what that meant. Not for the first time, she wondered what the hell she was doing, allowing this.
‘I think you’ll like it.’ He looked at her. ‘Although I must say I’m somewhat amazed you’d allow such comprehensive works for just a temporary hire.’
This was it, the moment to say out loud – tell someone it’s all but sold. Lorne Castle is sold. Tell everyone. ‘We needed to do the work anyway so it’s something of a win-win for us,’ she said instead, her courage failing.
He shrugged. ‘Well, anyway, thanks for seeing me at short notice. I know you’re busy.’
She looked down at her paint-splattered jeans, father’s shirt, her dark hair tied back in an old Hermes scarf of her mother’s. ‘I’m grateful for the opportunity to stop, to be honest. I’m just sorry Mam’s not here too. It’s her sale after all.’ Not that she’d been involved for a single step of it.
‘Well, we’re in good shape for moving to the next stage of the process. Everything’s pretty much been listed in the warehouse now and so we’ll move on to researching provenance and such before coming up with valuations and preparing a catalogue for the sale.’
‘Let’s hope we’ll have a following wind on the day,’ she said nervously.
‘Don’t worry on that score. I’m confident this sale will attract significant interest. Your father had a great eye. His military silverware collections and the continental oils especially are really going to attract some big bidders.’
‘Here’s hoping.’ Willow took a sip of her tea.
‘There was just one thing that I wanted to double-check with you.’
Willow arched an eyebrow. ‘Oh yeah? What’s that?’
‘It’s why I popped in to the castle for another look actually, in case it had been stored away somewhere and missed. It’s not a small matter – we appear to be missing a Gainsborough.’
Willow groaned. ‘Oh no, Mam didn’t tell you about that, did she?’ She sighed and gave an apologetic look. ‘It’s nothing more than family legend, I’m afraid. Wishful thinking on the part of some debt-addled gambling ancestor.’
‘Well, that’s the thing. It’s not. We’ve found a reference to it in an old housekeeping book in one of the kitchen cupboards.’
Willow looked at him in astonishment. The kitchen? Had her father seen it then? Was that why he’d been so determined, so desperate to find it? ‘What kind of reference?’
‘There’s all sorts in the log – details of building works and charges, rebuilding costs after a fire in 1749. Wages paid to the servants. Housekeeping costs. And according to an entry made on 3 February 1752, one of your great-great-greats paid a princely sum for a portrait – by Gainsborough. Ferdy looked at her. ‘Willow, it would really make this sale an international event if we were able to find and include that painting.’
Willow stared at him, wishing she could offer some kind of hope. ‘I just . . . don’t think there’s any chance. Dad scoured the castle over the years looking for it, but we thought it was wishful thinking. We never took it seriously. It was a running joke in the family about him putting on his headtorch and knee pads to crawl through rafters and pull up old insulation – which made him sneeze like a beggar! – hoping to find it. If anyone was going to find it, it would have been him. He was certain it’d be the answer to all our problems.’ She smiled wistfully, falling back into an old memory. ‘One time, we discovered a bricked-up fireplace in the old kitchen and he was so excited, thinking it must have been hidden up there. His face when all he found were old birds nests . . .’ She looked back at Ferdy again; his disappointment was nothing to her father’s. ‘In the end, he concluded it had either been sold off to settle some debt, stolen by a vengeful servant or destroyed in one of the various fires over the years.’
Ferdy gave a regretful sigh. ‘Well, it really would be a shame if it came to one of those ends. Although, if it had been sold off – either by an ancestor or servant – I think it would have surfaced by now in some private collection or other.’
‘Yeah, probably,’ Willow agreed. ‘So most likely it succumbed to the flames then?’
He winced and nodded. ‘In the absence of any confirmed sightings since . . . yes.’ He set down his tea on the slender-legged George III card table and got up. ‘What a shame.’
They walked to the front door together, standing in the narrow hallway. She had set a red poinsettia on a cherrywood console to bring a dab of colour to the otherwise gloomy space. It was a feeble first attempt to try to inject some festive spirit into the house but Willow suspected her mother would feel disloyal decorating any further for Christmas; as though she should apologize for continuing to live after her husband had died.
‘I’m not going to ask you how much that painti
ng would have been worth in today’s market,’ she said.
Ferdy turned and looked back at her with a wince. ‘Probably best not.’
‘Oh God!’ she groaned. ‘That much?’
‘You’ve just got to think of it this way – you can’t mourn what you never had.’ He shook her hand again and stepped out onto the overgrown path. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he called over his shoulder.
Willow closed the door, her gaze falling to Rusty now standing awkwardly – and somewhat menacingly – behind it. There had been no question of entering it into the sale but equally there was nowhere here for it to go either.
She remembered again her father wearing it at her mother’s birthday party. It had clanked and squeaked with every movement, the bruises afterwards monstrous. It had been brought back to life that night, as vital again as it once had been on the battlefield, but now it stood stiff and silent, just a shell. A reminder of past glories, and past happiness. A reminder that her father, the last knight in Ireland, was gone. A reminder that there was no one to protect her now.
For all her supposed family, she was on her own.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The same day
‘Is that snow?’
Ottie looked up, turning a circle slowly, one hand upturned to the sky. Soft flakes fell into her palm like sifted icing sugar, disappearing on contact. She gave a small shiver and pulled the zip on her coat higher under her chin. ‘They said it was coming.’
‘I’d better buy a coat then too,’ Ben said.
‘I think so,’ she smiled, hitching the shopping bags higher on her shoulder, the strings beginning to dig in through her jacket. ‘Although it must be annoying having to buy all this stuff when you’ll be home in a few days or so anyway.’
‘As long as the physio gives me the sign-off later,’ he said cautiously.
‘Of course she will. You said she indicated as much at your last appointment.’
He looked dead ahead as he swung on his crutches. ‘Yes, but there are no guarantees.’
That wasn’t true. He’d worked tirelessly on his exercises, eliminating all possible risk of failure. He would be on that plane come Sunday, he’d made sure of it. ‘How could she not let you go? You’ve worked so hard. This place will be a distant memory a week from now.’
‘Hardly,’ he said, glancing over. ‘Besides, everything I buy today can be a souvenir of my time here.’
‘Ah, well, that’s nice to know you’ll think of us every time you pull on your new stripy socks,’ she laughed with an ease she didn’t feel. Something had changed between them since the moment in the kitchen yesterday, though she couldn’t say what exactly. It was barely there, like a trick of the light, visible only at certain times.
They walked slowly. She felt protective of him in the crowds, wanting to hold a stick out and wave it in circles around them, keeping people away. Bags swinging in their hands, concentration on shopping lists, they didn’t tend to see his stick or the brace on his leg – much less the cast on his wrist – until the very last moment and several times this afternoon she had had to launch herself forward as a barrier between him and some distracted shopper about to barrel straight into him.
Pools of light fell from the shop windows, mannequins frozen in position with jazz hands and kicked-up heels, draped in sequins, plush velvets and chunky knits. Overhead, Christmas lights were strung up between lamp-posts, giant stars and icicles twinkling as if magically suspended. An enormous Christmas tree draped with gold baubles stood proudly in the pedestrianized square, stalls selling hot chocolate, waffles, crepes and toasted hazelnuts set up around it.
‘I suppose you must be very used to snow in New York,’ she said. ‘You get proper snow there.’
‘Oh yeah. It doesn’t play at it. When it snows, it’s serious.’
‘Is it snowing there at the moment?’
‘Yep.’
‘I bet you can’t wait to get back. Are you excited? This time Sunday you’ll be in the air.’
‘I’m not sure how I feel. It’s been an intense couple of weeks,’ he said, looking at the ground as he swung over a puddle.
‘Have you missed home?’ she asked. The only times the phone had rung for him, it had been work calls – brisk hurried voices asking if he was ‘contactable’.
‘I guess,’ he shrugged. ‘Although New York’s just where I live. It’s not where I consider to be home.’
‘Oh? Where’s that then?’
‘Nantucket, a few hours further north of Manhattan. Not dissimilar to here really – rugged Atlantic coastline, small communities. Pretty rural. You’d like it, I think.’
‘Well, maybe I’ll come visit some day then.’
He said nothing and she felt a rebuke in the silence. No? Didn’t he want to stay in touch?
She looked sidelong at him, seeing how he winced with each step. They hadn’t been able to make this trip yesterday after all. In spite of his protestations to the contrary, she had seen the pain he was in as he’d emerged from the bedroom after a rest and she had point-blank refused to drive him. It was just about the only power she had over him. He wouldn’t allow her to even make tea at all now, and the promise she’d made to Bertie about convincing him to drop the lawsuit seemed an ever more impossible task. Several times she had opened her mouth to ask him, steeled herself to use their friendship to manoeuvre him into a position from which he couldn’t refuse her, but each time her courage – and voice – had failed; for reasons she didn’t understand, it felt like a betrayal to him, not Bertie.
She gave a small groan. ‘Ugh, my feet are killing me,’ she said, pulling a grimace. ‘I don’t suppose you fancy stopping for a drink? I could really do with a sit-down.’
The look came into his eyes. The one where he knew she was lying.
‘What?’ she asked, feeling herself blush.
‘I am fine. And you are an atrocious liar, for the record!’
She bit her lip. Busted. ‘You’re wincing.’
‘Yes. But it’s manageable.’
‘It shouldn’t have to be manageable. You’re pushing yourself too hard.’
‘I need to recover and get out of your way.’
‘But you’re not in my way. As far as I’m concerned take all the time you want. I’m enjoying the company.’
‘Ottie, you’re very kind, but we both know you can’t . . .’ He seemed to struggle for the right words. ‘You can’t live your life properly with me in your house.’ He looked at her and she felt sure he was avoiding saying something, that sleight of light flashing between them, uncatchable, indefinable.
‘Ben, that’s absolute poppycock.’
‘Poppycock. Huh. Another new word.’ He began walking again. ‘I’ll file it with Big Bananas.’
She laughed. He liked teasing her for her creative language and she had realized she liked him teasing her.
He stopped outside the window of the fanciest designer boutique in town – she’d never been in for that reason; she couldn’t afford a pair of tights in there – and looked at the male mannequin wearing a slate-grey Canada Goose parka.
‘A coat. Great. Done,’ he said resignedly, limping in.
Done? Just like that? It was a four-figure purchase!
She hurried in after him.
‘– take the coat in the window in a medium, please,’ he was saying to the assistant.
Ottie stood in the middle of the store, biting her lip as they waited, her eyes raking over the rails of expensive dresses and cashmere jumpers, vertiginous shoes and studded handbags.
Her gaze fell on a mid-length red silk dress. It had long bell sleeves and a drawstring waist, a deep notched neckline with ties. She wandered over as the assistant hurried back to Ben and he slipped the coat on for size.
She let the fabric slide through her fingers. It was fluid and light, the skirt full and flowy, a delicate gold thread spun through at intervals.
‘Try it on.’
She turned. Ben was standing beh
ind her, the coat already off again and being carted to the till by an overjoyed assistant. His easiest ever sale, surely.
‘What?’
‘The dress. You should try it on.’
‘Oh jeesht, no,’ she pooh-poohed, immediately letting the sleeve drop from her fingers.
‘Why not?’
‘You mean apart from the fact it costs more than my car?’
‘Apart from that.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘I’d never have anywhere to wear something like that, for one thing. I don’t live a Red Dress kind of life.’
He stared at her. ‘I think that might be the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.’ But there was a wry glint in his eyes and she laughed.
‘I know,’ she chuckled. ‘Tell me about it.’
He wandered over to the till to pay for the coat and wore it out of the store. She had to resist the urge to stroke its furry trim.
‘Well timed,’ she said, looking up at the flakes falling harder now. It was beginning to settle. ‘Was there anything else you wanted to get?’ So far they’d bought him new jeans, boxers, socks, some T-shirts, two casual shirts, a jumper, a pair of loafers and now this coat. And she was carrying it all – something which clearly bothered him as he winced every time he looked at her, as well as every time he took a step.
‘No, that should do me now till I get home. You won’t have any more washing to do for me.’
‘Yes. Hurray,’ she said limply, her eyes briefly meeting his again. It was beginning to feel odd, wrong even, the idea of him going home. Living in such close proximity, the relationship – friendship, she supposed – had accelerated quickly. She’d come to think of him as a housemate; she’d never had one of those before – and wouldn’t again. It was Christmas in five days’ time and in spite of her airy offer to stay as long as he needed, Bertie would be moving in to the cottage with her; she had been adamant she wouldn’t have Shula leaving her own home. ‘Well, let’s head off then. It’ll no doubt surprise you to hear I don’t have winter tyres on my car.’