She smiled at the silent, brooding figure half hiding himself behind Caroline, trying not to betray how shocked she was by the change in him. Agnes had never liked her nephew. But the sneering, arrogant, malicious young man she had known was nowhere to be seen in this rather pathetic, sullen individual. He must have put himself through hell, simply to avoid admitting his sexuality. What a waste! A waste and a shame. She wondered if Caroline felt guilty about all the favoritism she’d shown Cameron over the years: the cloying, adoring love that had not only driven her daughter away from her but had obviously left the boy feeling that to be himself was never an option.
“How are you? Pleased to be home, I expect.”
Cameron looked at her blankly.
“It’s all right, darling,” said Caroline, kissing him softly on the cheek. “You go on into the kitchen and have that hot chocolate. I’ll find the cards and be there in a minute.”
Once Cameron had left, Agnes said apologetically, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize he was still so fragile.”
“He isn’t fragile,” Caroline snapped. “He’s fine. He was shocked to see you, that’s all. We all are.” Fetching a pack of cards from the bridge table in the corner, she turned to follow her son. “I suppose I’d better go and ask Mrs. Cullen to make you up a bed. You know, it wouldn’t have killed you to call ahead, Agnes. I understand that Drumfernly is your home. But arrangements do have to be made, you know.”
“Oh dear,” said Agnes, after she’d gone. “I honestly didn’t mean to cause any trouble, Hugo.”
“Yes, well.” Scarlett’s father sounded unconvinced. He loved his sister, but a troublemaker she had always been. “Perhaps you should go upstairs and change. Have a little nap or what have you. I’ll smooth things over with Caroline.”
“A nap?” She sounded suitably disgusted. “I’m not old, you know. No, if you have a pair of boots I can borrow I think I’d like to go for a walk around the grounds with Scarlett.”
She pronounced the word “grinds,” which made Scarlett smile. She really was a relic from a lost era. Having her at Drumfernly automatically brought some of the house’s magic back to life.
“Come on then.” Scarlett got to her feet. “I’d better find you a parka as well. It looks like it’s going to pour.”
Striding through the wet ferns half an hour later, invigorated by the whipping wind and the ubiquitous smell of the pines, Aunt Agnes listened while Scarlett talked. And talked. About Drumfernly, Cameron, and the apparently insurmountable problems that had kept her a virtual prisoner on the estate since the spring.
“I assume you’ve spoken to your father about all of this?” said the old woman once they reached the top of the hill that bordered the castle’s north side and Scarlett finally paused for breath.
“I tried to,” said Scarlett. “At the beginning. But I don’t think he realizes how serious the situation is. We’re already remortgaged to the hilt. Daddy’s answer to everything is to pawn another painting or a piece of furniture, but there isn’t an endless supply. The whole concept of sustainability is a closed book to him.”
“And your mother?”
Scarlett laughed.
“Mummy? Are you kidding? Mummy wouldn’t know how to balance a checkbook if world peace depended on it. Daddy tells her things are fine, and she believes him. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to worry her with money problems. She puts on a brave face, but this whole nightmare with Cameron has crushed her. One more setback and she’ll be the next Drummond Murray carted off in a straitjacket.”
“Yes. I do see,” said Aunt Agnes, leaning on Hugo’s mahogany walking stick for support as they picked their way down the bumpy field on the other side of the ridge. Above them, bruise-gray clouds were gathering. The entire sky felt heavy with foreboding, low and close and oppressive. “Awfully difficult for you, though. Shouldering it all alone.”
Scarlett smiled bravely. “Yes, well, you know. It could be worse. At least I’m not going through the hell that Cameron’s had to cope with.”
“Or not cope with,” said Aunt Agnes.
“I just thank God that the News of the World never ran those pictures. I have no idea why they changed their minds, but can you imagine if they’d run it? I honestly think he’d have killed himself. Mummy too, in all probability.”
“I paid them.”
She said it so quietly, without breaking stride, that at first Scarlett thought she must have misheard.
“I’m sorry?”
“I paid them. The newspaper. I bought them off,” said Aunt Agnes, matter-of-factly.
Scarlett stopped in her tracks.
“How much?”
Aunt Agnes turned around. “Darling, do stop dawdling; the heavens are about to open. For a substantial sum, as it happens. But I think it was money well spent, don’t you?”
“But…but…” Scarlett hurried down the hill after her aunt, who was still walking. “Daddy doesn’t know, does he?”
“No,” said Aunt Agnes. “And we must keep it that way. I wouldn’t want your father to feel under any obligation. Something needed to be done, and I had the means to do it. Between you and me, Scarlett, I’m considerably wealthier than your father realizes. Divorce has been kind to me, and I’ve been lucky enough to make a number of good investments over the years. South African real estate’s done frightfully well, you know.”
Scarlett didn’t know. Not for the first time, she felt in awe of her favorite aunt’s ability to surprise them all, even in her eighties.
“All of which brings me to the real reason I’m here.”
They’d reached the bottom of the field now, where a rickety wooden bridge crossed a thin, crystal-clear stream. Aunt Agnes eased herself gingerly down onto the step of the stile that led to the bridge, pausing for a few minutes of well-earned rest.
“This situation can’t go on, Scarlett.”
“What situation?” Hopping over the fence in one easy, long-legged bound, Scarlett sat down cross-legged on the bridge, looking up at her aunt. With her flushed, makeup-free face and tendrils of her dark hair blowing around in the wind, she looked as fresh and innocent as a teenager.
“This situation. You, staying here, sorting out Hugo’s problems for him,” said Aunt Agnes.
“But there’s no one else to do it.” Scarlett shrugged. “I have to.”
“Fiddlesticks,” said Aunt Agnes firmly. “What you have to do is get yourself back to Los Angeles and marry Jake.”
Scarlett was so shocked she laughed out loud.
“What on earth makes you think I should do that?”
“Because you’re in love with him,” said Aunt Agnes simply. “And he’s in love with you.”
Scarlett looked away: at the silver water, dancing over the rocks below her; at the brooding, stormy sky above; anything rather than looking Aunt Agnes in the eye.
“It’s more complicated than that,” she mumbled. “You’ve never met Jake. If you had, if you knew him, you’d understand.”
“As a matter of fact, I have met him,” said Aunt Agnes. And she told Scarlett about their dinner at the Peninsula back in February. Scarlett listened, open-mouthed, as Aunt Agnes recounted their conversation, including the part where Jake had admitted he loved her. “We’ve kept in contact since, you know. The Internet is a quite marvelous invention; I’m something of a whiz at it nowadays.”
“I’m sure you are,” mumbled Scarlett, still trying to take in the idea that Jake and Aunt Agnes were apparently secret BFFs. Was there no woman Jake Meyer couldn’t charm?
“Even if he did love me,” said Scarlett eventually, “we broke up for a reason. We’re too different. I don’t want to make myself out as some sort of saint, but you know Jake really doesn’t care about anyone but himself. He always loathed my work with Trade Fair.”
“You’re quite wrong,” said Aunt Agnes bluntly. “He may have behaved as if he loathed it. But I can assure you he was very proud of you, and your charity work had a profound influence on him. Did
you know about his involvement with the orphanage in Freetown?”
Scarlett couldn’t have looked more disbelieving if she’d just been told a UFO had landed on Buckie town hall.
“Jake? No, you must be mistaken. Trust me, African orphans are not on his radar.”
“He read the books you gave him about Sierra Leone last year,” Aunt Agnes continued doggedly. “After he went out there, he started sending money to a wonderful woman by the name of Dr. Katenge. I know this for a fact, Scarlett, because he managed to persuade me to make a donation. Nothing particularly large, mind you,” she added, humbly. “But the point is, he’s not the unremittingly selfish individual you appear to have convinced yourself that he is.”
“But if…” Scarlett shook her head, trying to make sense of it all. “If he was doing good work in Sierra Leone, I mean, why didn’t he tell me?”
“For heaven’s sake child, how should I know? That’s the sort of question you need to be asking him. Male pride, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m not saying Jake doesn’t have his faults. But I can’t abide to see two young people so obviously in love with one another making such an almighty hash of things.”
She sounded really quite cross.
“He’s not in love with me,” Scarlett insisted, miserably. “He’s seeing someone else in LA.”
“Well, of course he is,” said Aunt Agnes, not unkindly. “You left him, darling. Locked yourself away up here like some sort of damsel in distress. You can’t expect him to come and rescue you.”
“I don’t expect anything of the kind!” said Scarlett indignantly.
“Good.” Aunt Agnes smiled. “Because we women have got to learn to start rescuing ourselves. Now, I’d like a straight answer to a straight question. Do you love Jake Meyer?”
Scarlett bit her lip and nodded helplessly.
“But I can’t…”
“No buts.” Aunt Agnes was firm. “Like I told you, darling, not to put too fine a point on it, I’m rich, and I have no children of my own. You’ve always been like a daughter to me, Scarlett.” Her eyes welled up with tears, and Scarlett found her own following suit. “I’ll have a talk with Hugo. We’ll appoint some decent accountants and a full-time business manager to do what needs to be done at Drumfernly.” Pulling her shawl more tightly across her bony shoulders, Aunt Agnes shivered. “I wouldn’t want to live here, but it’s my childhood home, and I have no intention of allowing Hugo to let this place slip through his lazy, incompetent male fingers.”
Scarlett sat silently for a moment. Could it really be that easy? Could she simply walk away from Drumfernly, fly back to LA and her old life? Pick up with Flawless where she left off? Perhaps even work things out with Jake? Aunt Agnes made it sound so straightforward. Predetermined, almost. But of course it wasn’t. What if Jake really was in love with this girl, as Nancy’s letter had suggested? What was she supposed to do, waltz in and demand that he break up with her, on the basis of one, probably drunken, conversation that he’d had with Scarlett’s aunt half a year ago?
“I know you’re frightened,” said Aunt Agnes, reading her mind. Climbing down onto the bridge herself, she helped Scarlett to her feet. “But look at it this way, darling. What’s the worst that can happen?”
He’ll reject me, thought Scarlett. Oh God. I can’t bear it.
“You need to know if it was meant to be with Jake,” said Aunt Agnes. “And if not, you need to get back to work and to your own life. You can’t hide away up here forever.”
“I’m not hiding. I’m helping, or trying to,” said Scarlett.
But even as she said the words, she knew they were a lie.
She knew that she would go back home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“OH GOD. OH Jesus. That’s not normal. I don’t know what that is but it cannot be normal. For fuck’s sake, will one of you help her? Where’s the fucking doctor?”
Danny Meyer’s panicked screams could be heard the entire length of the St. John’s Hospital maternity suite.
The midwife smiled.
“It’s perfectly normal, Mr. Meyer,” she said. “That’s the baby’s head. He’s crowning. Won’t be long now.”
“He?” Danny’s ears pricked up. “Can you tell the sex?”
“Not from the top of the head, no,” said the midwife patiently. Diana had requested a midwife-only birth. In the midwife’s opinion, it was a shame she hadn’t banished the father as well as the doctors. Men were worse than useless, especially with their first child. “Why don’t you put the cool cloth on Mom’s forehead?” she suggested gently. “Everything’s under control down here.”
Danny, who had never felt less “under control” in his life, did as he was told, reluctantly. As much as the horror movie between Diana’s legs scared the shit out of him, it was better than having to watch the pain on her face as she desperately tried to breathe and focus her way through the final stages of what had been a long, hard labor.
“Can’t you knock her out?” he pleaded, dabbing at her head with the wet cloth while she moaned a low, animal sound that frightened him.
“No,” Diana panted, shaking her head violently. “No drugs.”
“There’s nothing we could do now anyway,” said the midwife. “The head’s almost out. One more push, Diana. Come on! All you’ve got now.”
Diana clenched her teeth and focused all her energy on the pain deep within her. Danny found himself yelling out in sympathy, a long, sustained aaaagh!
“That’s it, that’s it!” the midwife cried excitedly. “The head’s out. The next contraction and you can hold your baby!”
Danny glanced down at the business end of things and was greeted by the surreal sight of his child’s face blinking up at him, its body still inside its mother. He wasn’t sure which of the two of them looked more shocked. Then, before he knew what was happening, Diana let out a final, piercing cry, and with a grotesque slithering sound, the baby’s body and legs shot out. Seconds later, it was lying, still bloody, in Diana’s arms.
“Oh, he’s beautiful! He’s so, so beautiful!” she breathed, kissing the child’s vernix-covered head. All the pain of the past fourteen hours seemed to have evaporated in an instant.
“It’s a boy?” Danny stood motionless at the bedside, still in shock.
“Yes, Mr. Meyer,” laughed the midwife. “The penis is usually considered a bit of a giveaway.”
“He looks like you.” Diana smiled up at him, cradling her baby joyously. Danny didn’t think he’d ever seen anything quite so beautiful in his entire life.
“He’s covered in slime,” said Danny. “And he looks Chinese. His eyes are all scrunchy. Are you sure he’s mine?”
Diana would have been offended were it not for the delight written all over Danny’s face.
“Blimey,” he said, examining his firstborn more closely. “Check out the size of his tackle! Maybe he is mine.”
“That’s hormonal,” said the midwife, deftly checking the baby’s vital signs without removing him from his mother. “Both sexes can be born with excessively swollen genitals. It’ll go down in a day or two.”
“No, it won’t, love,” said Danny proudly. “He’s a Meyer.”
Outside in the waiting room, Jake stood up and walked to the window. Seventeen floors below he could see the steady stream of afternoon traffic clogging up Wilshire Boulevard, like jostling red and white blood cells pumping through a vein.
“Sit down, babe. You’re making me nervous.”
Ruth, his girlfriend, had insisted on coming with him to the hospital. Perched like a small bird in one of the suede armchairs St. John’s provided for family and friends—no plastic chairs nailed to the floor here, like you got in London maternity wards—she was reading Elle with a calm bordering on ennui that Jake couldn’t help but find irritating.
Diana could be hemorrhaging to death in there for all they knew. If the yells and shouts were anything to go by, Danny could be too. How could she sit there, cool as a cucumber, reading a
bout shoes and fucking handbags?
“I can’t sit down,” he said testily. “I need something to do.”
“Why don’t you call your mother?” suggested Ruth. “She’s texted me six times in the last ten minutes asking for news. You know she’s going out of her mind with worry.”
She meant the advice kindly. In fact, Jake reminded himself, the only reason Ruth was here at all was to support him, to try to do the right, expected, girlfriendly thing. But still he felt his hackles rising. In the short time they’d been dating, Minty had all but adopted Ruth as the daughter she’d never had, and the lovefest appeared to be mutual. Making an effort with his family was one thing. But all the texting and the long, gossipy phone calls were beginning to make him feel trapped. Next thing Ruth’d be changing her ringtone to “Here Comes the Bride.” It was all too much too soon.
Not that she wasn’t lovely. Everyone adored her, even Danny, who’d become such a huge Scarlett fan he’d been almost as upset about Jake’s breakup as Jake himself.
Jake looked at Ruth now, her eyes flitting between Minty’s latest note on the BlackBerry and the magazine in her hands. With her slender legs crossed and her shiny, perfectly blow-dried hair swinging from side to side as she moved her head, she looked polished and professional. Even the white lab coat—she’d come straight from the surgery—seemed to fit her petite figure perfectly. Without wanting to, Jake found himself dredging up a mental picture of Scarlett in that mad, multicolored threadbare sweater she used to wear. He imagined her gesticulating wildly, making some impassioned point (wasn’t she always?) with her long, unbrushed hair escaping from its elastic band like seaweed, and he missed her like a physical pain.
“Honey?” She looked at him quizzically, proffering her phone. “Your mom?”
“Hmm?” Jake came reluctantly back to reality. “Oh, no, just text her back and say we’re still waiting. Once she starts rabbiting on I’ll never be able to get rid of her.”
At that moment a flushed, visibly elated Danny burst through the double doors.
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