‘Of course he said no. How must he have felt? So hurt, so let down by her. You’d already done your damage by then. Can’t you see that?’
Nina didn’t answer.
Hilary abruptly stood up. ‘I have to go. I can’t talk about this with you now.’ She took Lucy’s headphones off and gathered up her belongings. ‘Come on, honey. Time we went home.’
Nina kissed Lucy goodbye. Hilary didn’t lean forward for a kiss or a hug. She walked away, hand in hand with Lucy. She didn’t look back.
In Perth at the end of the second day’s play, Tom switched on his BlackBerry to check his messages. There was one from Simon, inviting him to a barbecue the Saturday after he got back. A pause, then he heard Emily’s voice in the background, mentioning Gracie, Simon shushing her. Tom wasn’t surprised. Emily was very persistent.
It was the other message that did surprise him. It was from his aunt in Cairns.
‘Tom, it’s Hilary. I want you to ignore all I said about going to Templeton Hall again. I think you should, as soon as you can. If you want to know why, ask your mother.’
In London, Hope was on the phone to Gracie in Australia. Hope was reclining on the sofa in her sitting room. Gracie was calling from the front steps of Templeton Hall. She’d explained to Hope that the mobile phone coverage wasn’t great inside the Hall.
‘Never mind,’ Hope said. ‘I’ll lobby a local politician to get it improved.’
‘In time for your visit this week? You’re hopeful.’
‘By name and by nature,’ Hope said. ‘Tell me everything. How does the Hall look?’
Gracie gave her a full report. It was still standing, the basic furniture was still there, there were no signs of break-ins or floods or rats or mice. The garden was very neglected.
‘I’ll take care of the garden. What about the bedrooms? All still habitable?’
‘Yes, but I’ve only made up your old room and mine. Did you want to try the others?’
Hope cursed her own big mouth. She was getting ahead of herself. Now her departure was this close, she was dying to see the Hall again and decide if her idea truly had legs. Her main worry had been that the building would need extensive repairs, and quite frankly, she’d had enough of that the first time round at Templeton Hall. But from what Gracie was saying, it was in good enough shape to start putting her plans into action immediately. Of course, there was the minor matter of tracking Henry down and getting him to agree to lease it to her – for a peppercorn rent, of course – but why wouldn’t he? The Hall had been lying empty for years. And hadn’t Eleanor, Charlotte, Audrey and Spencer already made it abundantly clear they had no interest in it any more?
Hope realised Gracie was still waiting on an answer. ‘No, of course not. My old room is fine. I was just wondering what condition the rest of the place was in.’ Time to change the subject before she gave everything away. ‘So, you’ll be okay there on your own until I get there on Wednesday? You haven’t had any nosy locals sniffing around yet, I hope?’
‘I haven’t seen anyone,’ Gracie said.
‘Really? No one at all?’
‘No.’
Hope couldn’t tell if Gracie was telling the truth or not. When Tom Donovan had rung after getting her letter, she’d been very clear about Gracie’s arrival date and time, and while he hadn’t said anything specifically, she had the impression that he intended to meet Gracie on arrival, or definitely before Hope herself arrived. And he’d also been very insistent she keep their conversation to herself. He’d been very impressive, in fact. She did like that kind of strength of will in a man, young or old.
‘Well, that’s good,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then, Gracie. Thank you again. Do buy anything you need to make the place comfortable, and be sure to keep the receipts.’
‘Receipts?’ Gracie laughed. ‘But it’s your money I’m spending. Don’t you trust me?’
Hope kicked herself again. Gracie wasn’t to know Hope planned to write off this entire trip as a business one for tax purposes. It was a business trip, after all. An investigating-possible-business trip. ‘Don’t mind me,’ she said with a casual laugh. ‘Victor was a stickler for paperwork. See you in two days, Gracie.’
After she hung up, Hope checked the time. Not even midnight. She was too awake to sleep yet. Once upon a time she might have enjoyed a glass of wine now, or perhaps even taken a small pill to help bring on sleep, but these days all of that was out of bounds. God, the boredom of it. The most she managed now and again was an occasional joint, the guilty feelings associated giving her as much a high as the drug itself. Her AA mentors would be horrified if they knew, as would her clients. It was a good thing they didn’t.
She went into the spare room of the three-storey townhouse Victor had so kindly left her. The marijuana and the papers were hidden in the bottom of the antique bureau drawer in an old make-up bag. It took her only a minute to roll a perfect joint. Her next stop was her office on the first floor. The folder of paperwork she wanted to read again was on her desk. The hundred-page research document had cost her nearly ten thousand Australian dollars, but she considered it money well spent. If the Australian high-end residential drug-treatment market was anywhere near as lucrative as the English one, she’d make that ten thousand back from her first client in a fortnight.
Honestly, what had taken her so long to have this brainwave? It was almost criminal that Templeton Hall had been lying unused for so long. She should have thought of it when she heard about the failed attempt to use it as a meditation clinic. That had ended in disaster, from what Hope had gathered from Eleanor. Her own clinic wouldn’t. She’d make as big a success of it as she had the three clinics here in London. Not only that, it appeared she might even be able to get Australian government assistance to establish it. What a wonderful country! It was all there in the folder. The research firm had certainly done their job. It was compelling reading, filled with data about existing rehabilitation clinics and programs, statistics on drug and alcohol addiction, even facts about referral procedures and treatment costs.
The one thing she hadn’t asked the firm to do was find a location for any possible future clinic. She’d decided that for herself already. And once she’d visited the Hall again, with Gracie there beside her to record all the measurements and possibly stay on to do all the dogsbody preparation work for her regarding permits and builders’ quotes and the like, she estimated it would take her less than six months to employ all the counsellors and administration staff she’d need to get it up and running. A year at the very most. What to call it, though? The Templeton Hall Clinic? No, she’d have to change its name, or there would be endless streams of those ridiculous tourists turning up, convinced it was operating as a stupid living museum again. Something more discreet. She smiled. Why not? It was a vanity project, after all. Yes, she’d call it the Hope Clinic.
An hour later, she’d read all the research data she wanted to read and smoked another joint as well. She’d taken her shoes off, enjoying the sensual feel of the wool carpet under her bare feet. Her eyelids were fluttering, she was yawning and feeling pleasantly buzzy and languorous at the same time. Time for bed.
She was halfway between the first and second landings on the way to her third-floor bedroom when it happened. She’d been meaning to get the stairway carpet repaired since she’d noticed a snag in the expensive wool pile. Afterwards she had no recollection of the moment she tripped, but she must have snagged a toe, twisted, overbalanced and while trying to right herself, fallen back down a flight of stairs onto the first landing.
It took her several moments to catch her breath, sit up, check her head, then her body. There was no blood. She could move her neck. Nothing too serious, thank God. The dope must have relaxed her muscles. It was when she tried to stand up, putting her weight on her left leg and shrieking with sudden agony, that she realised what she’d done.
The pain was excruciating as she inched down the stairs to the phone. The first number she trie
d was Eleanor’s. No answer. She tried again. Still no answer. Who else could she ring? She had no other friends in London. There was only one option. She dialled 999.
Twenty kilometres away, in a fine French restaurant in the middle of Mayfair, Henry Templeton was entertaining a table of four men and one woman from Hong Kong.
He’d arrived in London only that afternoon and would be flying back to San Francisco before lunch the next day. The expense – and the jetlag – would be worth it. When he’d heard from a London contact that this Chinese investment team were in England on a brief business trip, he hadn’t hesitated to make any arrangements necessary to meet them.
For the past two hours, he’d been sharing his best anecdotes of life in the antiques trade with them. There was nothing people liked to hear more than stories of dusty brooches found at the bottom of jumble-sale boxes being worth tens of thousands of pounds; of envelopes hidden inside the linings of cupboards turning out to be filled with rare and very valuable stamps. His guests had hung on his every word, even gasped collectively when he explained how a simple-looking red vase found in a charity shop had turned out to be an eighteenth-century Chinese masterpiece, made in 1740 for the Emperor Qianlong, worth not just tens but hundreds of thousands of pounds. So what if the stories he told weren’t all from his own experience? This was a business dinner, and what he was telling them was best for his business.
Yes, it had been a very satisfying night, he decided an hour later as he shook hands with the last of his guests and returned to give the maître d’ a handsome tip. Unfortunately the tip took the last of his cash, and his taxi fare, but a walk to his hotel in Belgravia would do him good. He was quite sure that by Monday morning two and possibly three of the potential investors at his table would be in touch to say they were prepared to back his latest venture.
Why had it taken him this long to realise that the real money and real success lay not in the small items of life – antiques, jewellery, even cars – but in the solid concrete of property investment? And everyone knew that China was where the action was these days.
There would be obstacles, of course. The upfront construction expenses would be the biggest. But it was always about risks, wasn’t it? That’s what made it all so exciting. Who would ever have thought, for example, that he would make such a success of that vintage car business in the States? In the past decade, that had been by far his most successful enterprise. Even now, it still made an annual profit that quite frankly astonished him.
Reaching the hotel, he nodded good evening to the receptionist and took the stairs rather than the lift to his second-floor suite. Every bit of exercise helped. Letting himself into his room, he was pleased to see his personal mobile phone lying on the side table. He’d realised in the taxi to the restaurant that he’d left it behind, but knowing punctuality was all-important to Chinese businesspeople in particular, he hadn’t gone back for it.
Four missed calls. He smiled as he listened to the first two messages, both from Adele, his girlfriend of almost two years now. A Harvard graduate, fluent French, Spanish and Japanese speaker and CEO of her own corporate translation company, Henry was growing very fond of her indeed. He’d been concerned that at thirty-nine she was too young for him – it hadn’t been much fun explaining who Procol Harum were – but the positives about her certainly outweighed the negatives.
Her messages were warm, flirtatious, slightly bossy, a reflection of all he liked about her. He didn’t need to call her back, she said. She was just reminding him of the dinner engagement they had the following night with possible new clients for her company. She’d collect him at the airport and they’d go straight on to the restaurant.
The next two messages were surprising. They were from Eleanor. It was years since she’d called him directly, even though his lawyers always ensured she had his contact numbers. Her voice was cool, her message brief. ‘Henry, can you call me please?’ No mention of the children. A good sign or not?
He rang the number she’d left immediately. No answer. Just her recorded voice calmly asking him to leave a message.
‘It’s Henry. Are the children all right? I’m in London on business. Please ring me as soon as you get this.’
He waited for her to call back. Nothing. It wasn’t until well after midnight and after two large whiskies that he managed to sleep.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
At home in Brunswick, it took Nina twenty minutes before she found it. The tin biscuit box was at the back of the hall cupboard under an old suitcase, behind the ironing board. She had moved it many times over the years but this was the first time she’d considered looking inside.
The lid opened more easily than she expected. The box was packed with paperwork: letters, faxes, postcards – twenty, perhaps even thirty items, all addressed to Nina. Most of them were in Gracie’s handwriting.
They weren’t the letters Gracie had written to Tom. Nina had thrown them out as quickly as they’d arrived. Day after day they’d come, redirected to her from all over Victoria, from the cricket academy in Adelaide; even the police sergeant in Castlemaine. Nina had felt like she was under attack from Gracie, under attack from the whole family, Eleanor’s words still ringing in her head, mingling with the shock and anger she felt every time she looked at her poor broken Tom. All her humiliation about Henry had come flooding back as well: his promises, his sweet-talk, how easily she had fallen for it, fallen into bed, fallen for him. Each time she’d thrown away one of Gracie’s letters she hoped it would suppress some of that self-hatred. It hadn’t. All it had made her feel was even more protective of Tom, determined to do whatever she needed to keep him from any more pain.
She still felt the sting of Hilary’s fury at her in the airport the previous day. Her sister had phoned her that morning from Cairns too.
‘Have you rung Tom yet? Has he rung you? I won’t lie to you, Nina. I left him a message last night. You have to sort this out while Gracie is still in the country.’
‘Hilary, you have to understand. It’s nothing like the time I told him about his father —’
‘No, it’s not, because I understood your reasons that time. But to do it to him twice, Nina? To lie to your son twice, to try and wreck his life again? You had no right.’
‘It was so complicated. The accident, all that happened with Henry, with Eleanor —’
‘What happened to you had nothing to do with Gracie and Tom. And yet you interfered. Overstepped. Lied to him, to Gracie too.’
‘You didn’t see him that day, in that hospital in Italy —’
‘No, but I saw him when he got home. And I saw him as recently as this week. He’s still not right, Nina, and you have to fix it, fix this whole situation, while you can.’
‘He’ll hate me.’
‘That’s what’s stopping you? That makes it even worse. It’s still all about you, not him.’
‘I have to think about it. I have to work out the right way to do it.’
‘You’ve got until tonight or I’m ringing him and telling him the whole story myself. I’m not giving you any more excuses, Nina. He might be your son but he’s also my nephew.’
‘You can’t.’
‘I can and I will.’
It was only in the past hour that Nina’s anger towards her sister had subsided enough for her to be able to think clearly. Now she just felt – what? Guilt? Or something else? Could it be relief? A strange relief that this was being forced out into the open at last?
In her heart, she’d always known it would come to this one day. That Gracie would turn up or Tom would go looking for her. But how to tell him? Where to start? How could she face his reaction? His anger? She already knew the first question he would ask her. Why? She could guess his second question, too. What had she done with Gracie’s letters?
It was so long since she’d opened this box, but perhaps, just perhaps, she hadn’t got rid of every single one of them. If she could even give him one, eight years too late, but one at least, perha
ps it would be a starting point. She took the box out into the living room, sat on the sofa and started to sort through it.
An hour later tears were streaming down her face. She’d stopped trying to wipe them away. There hadn’t been any of Gracie’s letters to Tom in the box. But there had been all of the younger Gracie’s letters to her, from the first postcard she’d sent when the Templetons arrived back in London from the Hall, to the note Gracie had sent just before Tom arrived on his big solo backpacking trip. So many others in between, too. Eight years of Gracie’s life, hopes, dreams and worries, written on page after page and sent to her friend Nina in Australia. There hadn’t just been letters from Gracie in the box either. There were letters, faxes and emails from Eleanor. A thank-you letter from Charlotte in Chicago. Even several faxes from Henry. Proof in writing of the relationships she’d had with all of them. There was even a print-out of an email the then nineteen-year-old Tom had sent her during his first trip to London.
But it was Gracie’s letters that affected Nina the most. How could she have forgotten what Gracie was like? She had turned Gracie into some kind of monster, a stalker, hounding her son. The real Gracie was there on each page, her spirit, her personality, her intelligence, her big heart obvious in every line, as her handwriting changed from that of a young girl to a teenager to a young woman. Her affection for Nina and for Tom obvious in every single line. That was the real Gracie. The Gracie who had fallen in love with Tom. The Gracie Tom must have loved in return.
The Gracie Nina had hurt so very badly.
Nina was still on the sofa, surrounded by the letters, when her phone rang. She looked at caller ID. It was Tom. She couldn’t talk to him yet. She wasn’t ready. She had to take this slowly, make only the right decisions this time. She let it go to voicemail, waited, then replayed his message.
‘Nina, it’s me. I’ve had a message from Hilary, telling me she thinks I should go back to the Hall and that I should ask you why.’ He paused. ‘So this is me asking why.’ Another pause. ‘Okay, I’ll call back later. Or you can try me. Bye for now.’
At Home with the Templetons Page 45