‘Why? Because I had a privileged upbringing?’ She shook her head. ‘I’m not close to my family. Except for Will, when he’s here, which isn’t often now. The only thing holding us all together is family obligations and money.’
Her voice was oddly detached.
‘You’re not close, then, you and your brother?’ he said, keeping his voice neutral. He concentrated on stripping the bark from a few drier branches so they would catch fire easily.
She added more sticks to the pile and sat down cross-legged to watch him.
‘We were very close as kids. I’m only a year or so older so we’re very close in age. I wanted to do everything he did, boys’ stuff, you know. All the time, not just when we were on holidays. I was a right pest.’ She paused. ‘Will was always closer to my father than I was. Then after my mother died we were sent to separate boarding schools. Will headed off into the military like my father and my uncles. He fitted right in. Sometimes I envy him that. He knew what was expected of him. Role model and career path, all mapped out. I never really had any sense of direction like that.’ She shrugged. ‘Not until the TV stuff anyway, and that was never something I aspired to. It just came out of the blue.’
‘I’m sorry about your mum,’ he said.
‘It was a long time ago now.’
She dashed off a brief smile and went straight back to sorting through the pile of wood. He watched her as she chose a stick and began picking at some loose bark, felt a pang of sympathy for her. Not that he’d had both parents on hand for a cushy perfect upbringing, but what you never had you never missed. His father had barely been on the scene, only resurfacing now and then to persuade his mother to give him another chance, none of which had ever lasted. One such encounter had resulted in Helen. For Jack there was no before or after to compare, just years of his mother holding it all together, working two or three jobs.
‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘What are your family like?’
He paused for a moment. Small talk about family background wasn’t a regular fixture on his camping trips. Candidates came for team building, to learn new skills and find themselves. They weren’t interested in asking him personal questions. Maybe, now he thought about it, that was part of the appeal.
‘I grew up with my mum and sister,’ he said shortly. ‘My father was never really around.’ He wondered for a moment how Helen had felt when he’d been away in the army. Had she told people they weren’t close? Had she felt that he wasn’t interested or bothered about her?
‘It’s easy to get cut off from family when you’re away on tour,’ he said. ‘The army becomes like this replacement family. You come back home and people have changed, life has shifted without you.’ He paused, not sure if he was trying to justify himself to Evie or make himself feel better. ‘I wish I’d stayed in touch more,’ he said.
She smiled at him as he arranged the sticks ready to light a fire.
‘You’re back now though—right?’ she said. ‘Back to normal, properly in touch.’
‘I’m back now, yeah.’
He didn’t elaborate on just how disastrously life had shifted for Helen when his eye was off the ball.
‘And, of course, you have your own lives whether you’re living close or on different continents,’ she carried on, clearly just running with thoughts as they entered her head. As someone who was cautious about giving literally anything of himself away, that non-filtered conversation was unfamiliar. ‘However close—or not—your family might be, you have to take responsibility for your own life, pick yourself back up after mistakes, make your own way. I think it’s good to count on yourself. I’ve got no desire to be babysat through my life or kept under someone’s thumb.’ She sighed, almost to herself. ‘I wish someone would tell my father that.’
Jack dug in his backpack for matches in silence. There was an almost imperceptible lightening of the heavy brick of guilt that he seemed to constantly drag around with him. It was as if she’d unknowingly chipped a corner of it off with her mad desire for independence parroting Helen’s recent gerroff-my-back complaints at his overprotectiveness. Never mind that Evie and Will were from a different world from him and Helen. They were still brother and sister with the same army distance between them, the same challenges. It was hard. Letting someone make and recover from their own mistakes was hard when they were the kind of mistakes Helen made.
‘Can we light the fire?’
Her face was eager and his heart turned over softly before he could get a grip. She made him feel better about himself. Not astoundingly so; there was no bolt of lightning in which he suddenly felt at ease. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be capable of that—of a sudden exoneration from blaming himself. It was more a tiny loosening of tension, so gradual that he barely picked up on it, but there just the same. It had been a long time since anyone had done that.
* * *
Jack handed her the pack of matches and Evie scratched one and held it against the bark until the flame ate its way to the tips of her fingers. The flames grew easily and she caught herself kneeling opposite Jack and beaming with excitement. For Pete’s sake, less than a day in wind and rain with no Internet access and she’d reverted to someone who was impressed by a bloody fire. What had he done to her?
Ten minutes later and Jack had fed the fire into a steady burn.
‘I wondered why you hadn’t turned up at the hotel with a gang of hangers-on,’ he said, watching the flames. ‘I’d expected a team of people and it turned out to just be you.’
‘My entourage?’ she said with a smile. ‘That’s actually quite funny. My father’s reaction to the whole thing was to offer to spirit me out of the country until the media fuss died down. He was hardly going to come and cheer me on when I went ahead with this show.’ She pointed at him with a stick. ‘Not that he’s ever cheered me on at anything really. He’s so hideously convinced that I’ll never get through the weekend, no way was I going to give him the satisfaction.’
She thought of her father’s angry phone call the night before she’d left for Scotland. His fury had been at such dizzying levels she could almost feel his apoplexy over the phone and it brought another sickening surge of resentment. His words resounded in her mind:
‘You haven’t a hope in hell of completing a survival skills course. There’s no point arguing with me, Evangeline, you simply don’t have it in you. You’ll make an even bigger fool of yourself than you already have. Just drop the plan right now. You can stay in the house in France until the whole thing blows over.’
‘This is the first time in my life that I’ve really taken control,’ she said. ‘With the TV show, I mean. My father’s been in charge of everything since I was just a kid. The school I went to, what I did during the holidays, where I live, the people I mix with. He supports me financially so he sees that as his right. He called me before I left for Scotland and it was the most rattled he’s been since I was suspended from school for causing an explosion in the science lab.’
She glanced up to see him grin at that.
‘He wanted me to go and stay at our house in the South of France, out of the country and swept under the carpet until he decides this whole mess has blown over. Until I behave. Basically he wanted to hide me away where my family don’t need to think about me. Cracks nicely papered over.’
Sticking out this weekend was the only way she had of putting things right, of regaining that great few months when all was going well, when viewing figures were climbing and she was in demand for TV appearances and magazine shoots, when the public were friendly, when she had some independence and felt worth something for once.
‘I said no,’ she said. ‘Obviously. There was no way he was going to come and cheer me on after that. And Will is away.’
‘What about friends?’
‘The people I socialise with are mainly to do with the TV show. They weren
’t really keen on leaving London for the Highlands. So I came on my own.’
He stood up and walked the short distance to the stream to fill a pot with water.
Her background wasn’t exactly the cushy number he’d taken it for. Oh, there was money there, of course, but it sounded as if she had no one in her life that really cared for her. He wondered what the deal was between her and her father. There was obviously no love lost there.
‘Have a look through my rucksack—there should be a pack of rice in there,’ he called back to her. ‘We’ll cook up some rations.’
She got up onto her knees and began rummaging.
‘You really know how to plan a meal,’ she said. ‘Bugs for dinner, rice for supper.’
‘And all the time you could be relaxing in the South of France.’ He grinned, coming back. He moved the pot into place on the fire and tipped in some rice. ‘Seriously, I don’t get it,’ he said, sitting back down on the opposite side of the fire. ‘You had the choice of a sunshine holiday or doing this TV show with me. Not that I’m complaining. I’m glad you’re here.’
‘You are?’
His heart gave a sudden jump as he looked up to see her watching him, clear eyed, through the woodsmoke.
‘If this show hadn’t gone ahead my kids’ initiative would have been in serious trouble,’ he qualified quickly.
‘Right.’ She dropped her eyes. What else had she expected him to say? His pulse kept up the speed.
‘At the time you agreed to do this thing at that crazy meeting in London, you didn’t have a clue about the charity side of my work but you were determined to go ahead with it anyway.’ He stirred the rice with a wooden spoon. ‘So what I’m saying is, are you really that fame-crazed that you’ll do anything at all to keep the limelight?’ he said, his brows knitting in a puzzled frown. ‘Is that what this is about? Keeping yourself in the public eye?’
The more he thought about it, the more the situation just didn’t seem to add up. She didn’t come across as a publicity animal at all; she was nothing like the girl he’d seen on the few clips of Miss Knightsbridge that he’d been able to stomach and the lack of designer clothes and gloss had nothing to do with it. He had no idea what the real story was with her.
‘It’s not about being fame-crazed—that’s just a side-effect,’ she said quietly.
He truly thought that was all she was after, then—headline chasing. She’d bigged up that persona to the country at large and now they all thought of her as shallow. Worst of all, he thought that, despite all the encouragement and challenge of the day. It made her stomach churn miserably. Somewhere along the way she’d come to like him despite all the gruff outdoorsy stuff, and now she cared what he thought of her. As if she needed that.
He was looking at her with interest and she turned away, unfastening her sleeping bag from her pack, and the mat that would underlie it. Finding a flat spot with no tree roots and stones was going to be a bit of a challenge. Only tonight to get through. She had no need to discuss this with him; a quick fob-off would surely be enough. There must be hundreds of things they could talk about. If she just got him started on outward-bound stuff he must have hundreds of gut-churning, all-weather endurance anecdotes to take them into the night.
‘I do have a wealthy background but that girl on TV really isn’t me,’ she said, before she could overthink it, not looking at him. ‘It’s complicated.’
* * *
Jack could see just from the way she was fiddling with the sleeping bag and kit that she was uncomfortable. Now she was pawing more stuff from her backpack, sorting through it. Why the stressing?
‘In what way?’ he pressed.
There was a pause long enough for him to assume that was all he would get, and then unexpectedly, ‘Can you keep a secret?’ she said at last.
Their eyes met across the crackling fire. Her blue gaze was cautious and he tried for a joke. At her expense unfortunately.
‘You’re asking me that?’ he said. ‘After your loose-lipped cock-up in that restaurant?’
She threw her hands up.
‘For goodness’ sake, do we have to cover that again? How many times do I have to apologise? Just forget I said anything. Let’s just get on with the cooking.’
He held up his hands.
‘OK, OK, I’m sorry. Bad joke. Yes, I can keep a secret.’
She narrowed her eyes in a very cute sceptical expression as if she was trying to read his mind. His pulse gave a jolt in response.
‘I can,’ he repeated. ‘What happens in the Highlands stays in the Highlands. You have my word.’
She paused a moment longer. Bloody hell, was she going to ask him to sign in blood?
She took a deep breath.
‘The TV It-girl thing is just a front,’ she said. ‘I’m nothing like her at all. It’s a fit-up.’
SEVEN
There was a moment’s pause as she waited for him to process that, still wondering if she was crazy for telling him. Why the hell would he care that she had a TV image? Except that he hadn’t been impressed for a single moment by diva Evie. Quite the opposite, in fact. He’d been far nicer to her since she was scrubbed of make-up, in hideous clothes and probably smelling awful too. Supportive and encouraging. It had been lovely to be herself for once without feeling invisible. Even if it was just for the weekend with a man she’d never see again.
‘I don’t understand. You do have that background, right?’ he said, his expression puzzled. ‘You’re that Staverton-Lynch. I read up on it. Your family is one of the oldest in the country. They made their millions from property.’
The familiar surge of unease kicked in, as if he somehow knew how tenuous her link to that family really was, which of course he couldn’t possibly. No one knew. She tried to act normal and gloss over it. What the hell else could she do? She could hardly say, Actually, I’m not that Staverton-Lynch. I’m an imposter, and if it weren’t for Will I’d have no link to that family at all. As far as she was aware no one knew her secret. Even Will. For all appearances she was the eldest child of John Staverton-Lynch. That was the way her father wanted it, and without an identity or alternative life of her own she was too scared to do anything but go along with his wishes.
She felt an odd sense of embarrassment about her no-expenses-spared background, as if it weren’t public knowledge. He must think she’d sailed through life on a cushion of wealth while he’d grafted his way up and there was the usual assumption that the money had somehow made that life a breeze. He’d been reading about her. Her pulse quickened a little at that and she shook her head lightly. What did she care if he’d showed an interest in her background? It didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t as if he had to look very hard; it was probably rehashed in every current newspaper.
‘Yes, I am that Staverton-Lynch, as you call it,’ she said. ‘But I’m not really anything like the girl you see on TV. It’s an image, built up for the show. The public think I’m some headline-grabbing, fame-crazed diva who hangs out in glitzy nightspots and acts like a spoilt brat in shops.’
He stared at her until the rice pot made an attempt to boil over. He leaned in quickly to stir it and shook his head slowly.
‘Forgive me if I’m missing the point, but if you’re not like that, and you have the wealthy background, why the hell are you doing that ludicrous Miss Knightsbridge show at all?’ He stirred the rice vigorously. She could almost see his mind working. ‘You don’t need the money and now you’re telling me the rich diva lifestyle isn’t your thing. So that means—what—it really is all about fame for you?’
His expression was mystified. And no wonder. It sounded ludicrous, even to her.
‘No, it’s not about the fame! It never has been. I just kind of fell into it and before I knew where I was this whole persona had been built up.’ She picked up one of the sticks f
rom the woodpile and peeled at a piece of loose bark. ‘The thing was that when the show took off it opened up a whole lot of new options for me. That’s what it’s really about. I know Roasted Ratgate hasn’t exactly been a picnic for you—’ she pointed at him with the stick ‘—but I really shot myself in the foot with that comment. There’s a lot more riding on the show for me than fame.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ve built your business up on the back of your show, haven’t you?’ she said. It was something she couldn’t help admiring about him, that he’d seized the opportunity that had fallen into his lap and made something real from it. Something more than the fake public interest, hell, the fake life that she’d managed. ‘Well, I’m hoping to do the same.’
She chanced a look up at him through her eyelashes, her heart suspended mid-beat as she waited for an expected reaction to match her father’s. His expression was one of interested surprise. No negativity that she could see. She looked down again quickly before she bottled out of telling him.
‘When all this stuff kicked off I was just about to launch my own business, something serious that I’d been too afraid to do for years.’ She took a breath. ‘I make jewellery. Silver mostly. I did a course a long time ago and I’ve been developing designs ever since.’ She smiled to herself. ‘For a long time it was doubtful any of it would get beyond my living room. I made gifts for friends, that kind of thing, and I made things for myself, but I was way too scared of going further than that. And then a couple of viewers contacted the TV show, asking where they could buy a dress ring I’d worn.’
The excitement she’d felt at that moment bubbled back through her. She couldn’t imagine that feeling ever getting old—the sensation that someone liked her designs without knowing their origin. Liking her for her own talent or ability, unfettered by prejudice at the kind of person she might or might not be, without reference to her family ties or lack of them.
‘I realised I could use the show as a springboard to launch my designs commercially,’ she said. ‘I’d been so afraid of the whole thing tanking that I’m not sure I’d ever have dared go ahead with it if it wasn’t for the TV show. I realised that if I linked my jewellery brand to the show there was less risk of screwing up because I had a captive market. I would be making my own money. I thought I could prove my father wrong for once.’ She paused. ‘He thinks I’m good for nothing.’
Man vs. Socialite Page 9