by Rosalie Ash
“He sounds like a bit of a wide-boy to me,” Victoria said. Jessica hooted with laughter.
“Oh, most certainly not, he’s a director of a highly respected firm of antique and fine art auctioneers. But there was a time, not too many years ago, when Matt was extremely hard up. He had an odd upbringing, I believe, but he never talks about it.’
Victoria thought about his cold silence during the short drive from the farm, and nodded with a twist of a smile,
'I can imagine.'
“Anyway, now he’s CEO of De Lember and Greysteils. Incredible really, as he’s only early thirties. They’ve got showrooms you could park a couple of Jumbo-jets in. Strings of companies all over the world, specialising in this and that. All to do with arts and antiques. Matt is actually their top art and porcelain expert, but really he’s incredibly knowledgeable about just about anything you care to name in the antique world. Andrew thought he’d be the person to call in. I mean, apart from knowing far more than Andy does, it would have been too embarrassing for Andy to do it.”
Victoria could see her point. It was far better for a complete outsider to come in and select some valuable items worth selling to bale Dad out of his financial difficulties. Andrew was too close to it all.
“How come you’ve invited him to stay the weekend?” she asked her sister, “I mean, he’s hardly a laugh a minute, is he!”
Jessica looked surprised, and to Victoria’s confusion even blushed slightly. “Matt? He may appear a bit formal, but he’s a very old friend. Both Andy and I are really fond of him. Besides, it’s nice to have a visit from someone who still lives in the Big City.”
“Ah, yes! I’m surprised you haven’t gone back to work by now.”
Jessica’s glanced was appalled. “What? I don’t need to zoom back to accountancy to prove I’m an intelligent human being, you know! Child-rearing is a very important job!”
Victoria hastily amended her words. “I didn’t say it wasn’t. All I meant was, I’m surprised you prefer being at home to…to your high-powered world of finance. Are you really as contented as you seem?”
Jessica sat down and took a sip of wine, her eyes level.
“Yes, I am. I’m surprised you should doubt it I mean, Mum and Dad made a pretty good job of home-making for us, didn’t they? Apart from with Megan. But…well, anyway, I want to re-create a happy home life here for William and all the rest of the children I intend to have!”
Victoria felt a hard lump in her throat, and gave her sister an impulsive hug. “And you already have,” she said, moved by the frank, somehow vulnerable admission. William was prompted into a chant of “Me cuddle, me cuddle” until she relented and picked him up, holding the warm, solid little boy tightly in her arms and dancing around the kitchen with him until he squealed with laughter.
“Don’t get him too excited, its bedtime. Is that Matt coming back downstairs? Go and talk to him, will you darling?”
Pulling a face, Victoria tiptoed theatrically to the door and peered round it, finger to her lips.
“It’s OK, Andrew’s just come in, and he’s taking him into the sitting room.”
“Well, listen, will you get me some of that clotted cream you brought up from Exeter with you out of the freezer? Then go and be sociable with the men while I get on with things.”
“Must I? It seems a shame to leave everything to you.”
“No, that’s all right. Mira’s coming in a few minutes. She’ll take over down here while I get Wills to bed.”
“Mira? What happened to Sheila?” Sheila had been Jessica’s daily help for as long as Victoria could remember.
“Sheila and her husband retired to Dorset this summer. You remember Mira. She used to cook at the Golden Lion. She comes and helps me with the house and William and so on.”
“Oh, Mira!” Victoria visualised the glamorous thirtyish blond from the village pub, “She helps with cooking and cleaning and babysits for you?”
“Yes, when she and Pete got divorced she got fed up with cooking meals at the pub, and offered to be our sort of nanny and housekeeper. God knows what we’d do without her, I’m terrified she might suddenly decide to go back to Bosnia and leave me in the lurch!” Jessica said with feeling, then briefly glancing at Victoria, she added, “And for goodness’ sake, get showered and changed! You look like one of Fagin’s urchins in that state.”
“Yes miss, no miss,” Victoria mock-saluted as she reached into the freezer for the cream, then making a dash across the hall and upstairs, hearing the low drone of male voices from the sitting room and anxious to get cleaned up before she bumped into Matt Larson again.
Chapter Two
Thirty minutes later, she reassessed her appearance in the cheval mirror in her bedroom. All the grime was showered away, and gone was the waif in stained T-shirt and cut-offs, with dusty plimsolls on her feet and a dirt-streaked face. Instead a slender, foxy young woman stared back from the mirror. Her new blue jeans that showed off her long, slender legs, a sleeveless black silk top with a neckline that dipped just enough to show a hint of cleavage, silver hoops in her ears and a silver choker and bracelet at her neck and wrist, her hair brushed into a cascade of thick red-gold curls down her back. She admired her newly painted pink toenails before she slid her bare tanned feet into black leather ballet flats, and smoothed on some smoky-bronze eyeshadow, a stroke of dark mascara and a slick of pink lip-gloss. As a final inspiration, she sprayed on some of her favourite perfume, a musky one from Vera Wang. There, that should show him! She sauntered to the landing ready to stroll downstairs.
Halfway down, she stopped, suddenly unsure. She didn’t usually care what people thought of her appearance. They could take her or leave her. So what was making her deliberately dress up for Matt Larson?
Once she’d admitted to herself that she was dressing to impress Matt Larson, she was about to rush back upstairs and change into baggy jeans and a jumper when the sitting-room door opened and Andrew saw her.
“Ah, here’s Victoria, my favourite sister-in-law!” Andrew called jovially, “Come and talk to Matt, Vic.” He ushered her into the sitting-room, his blue eyes glinting with amusement as he studied her appearance.
“You’re looking very…sophisticated, Vic! I’m finally beginning to understand why this lovesick chap Sebastian keep ringing you up!”
With a slightly embarrassed smile, she reached up to kiss his cheek just above his sandy stubble. Andrew Mackenzie was a wryly humorous Scot, with a habit of poking fun at life in general and his wife’s younger sister in particular. Victoria was used to him, but even so there were times when she could happily strangle him.
“The way you and my father keep on, you’d think Sebastian was my boyfriend, or something!” she said, “He’s just a friend, Andrew. The way Karen and Caroline and Shelley are just friends. We all hitched round Europe together this summer, remember? I think I’d have noticed if there was any love sickness in the air.”
Her brother-in-law was about to comment, but he caught the warning glitter in her eyes and decided to stop goading her.
“OK, OK! I gather you and Matt met earlier, over at the farm?”
“Yes, we did.”
She finally risked glancing towards the other man, who had risen from a chair by the fireplace when she walked in and was now standing, leaning against the mantelpiece, tall and self-contained. Andrew handed her a glass of wine, and then he and Matt continued a conversation about the situation at the farm, her father’s money troubles and the possibility of selling one or two pieces to tide him over his difficult times, but their voices seemed to recede to a far-away murmur, meaningless background noises, and her gaze was locked in that aloof, ice-chip stare which threatened to rip her composure to shreds.
She took a large gulp of wine and blinked her attention elsewhere with a huge effort of will power. Jessica had lit a log fire, a precaution against the autumn chill in the evenings, and it was slowly smoldering into life in the inglenook fireplace, intermittent tongu
es of flame flickering up from the smoke. She went to sit in the window-seat, watching the beginnings of the fire.
When Andrew left the room in response to a call from Jessica, she sat stiffly in the silence, suddenly determined that Matt Larson should make the first attempt at conversation this time. That brief taste of his detached, patronising attitude in the car this afternoon still rankled.
“So,” he said at last, “If I raised my original estimate by about five years, would I be nearer the mark?”
She blinked up at him, confused.
“Sorry?”
“Well, I hate to admit it,” his wide mouth twisted wryly, “But I’d put you down as about fifteen this afternoon!”
She felt something thaw, just a little, inside her. There was enough self-mockery about his hard voice to make him seem, suddenly, slightly more human. She found herself warming to him. Perhaps he was just shy, she decided. Some men were, and they tended to hide it behind that kind of cold, macho unfriendliness. Her naturally friendly instincts began to surface again.
“Well, don’t worry! I’m not offended,” she laughed, “You were probably entitled to the mistake. I was feeling nostalgic down there in the woods this afternoon. Reverting to childhood. There’s something repressive about being grown up, isn’t there?”
“Is there? I’ve always thought it was the other way round,” he said, his tone becoming absent, flat and slightly bored again, she thought furiously, hardly inviting further conversation, let alone polite small talk.
“Oh?” She tailed off, as the silence between them grew again. She found herself remembering Jessica’s remarks about his childhood. Had he found his childhood repressive? She tried to imagine a childhood which wasn’t filled with rich, warm security, love and boundless optimism as hers had been. Or mostly had been. Maybe, once or twice, she'd sensed that everything wasn't quite as cosily reassuring as it appeared on the surface. But the good times were the ones she recalled, not the bad. And they had been in the majority, hadn't they?
She watched Matt's long, brown fingers linked loosely round his glass of Perrier water, and took another large gulp of her wine. Jessica was right, she found herself acknowledging. He was attractive. Blindingly so. He had changed out of the formal grey suit into relaxed weekend gear of worn-looking Levis and a white T-shirt. The T-shirt revealed an impressive set of abdominal muscles. He looked sexy, brooding, the hard lines of his face like a cross between Daniel Craig and James Dean.
Clearing her throat, she fixed him with a calm, slightly surprised gaze, making it clear that she expected him to make some contribution, to break the socially unacceptable silence. Suddenly he seemed to break out of his brooding reverie, and with a slight easing back of his wide shoulders he shot her a rueful look.
'Sorry,' he said, 'I was miles away, thinking about a business problem.' He took a sip of Perrier and levelled his clear grey eyes on her with what she took to be a genuine attempt at interest. She wasn't sure whether to be flattered or insulted at this obvious effort he was making.
'So tell me,' he went on, politely. 'How old are you?'
'Nineteen. Well, nearly. In a couple of months. I'm at university in Exeter, doing history and English.'
‘Ah, I see. It was the reference to studying that fooled me. I assumed you were on holiday from school.'
'I've just passed my prelims.'
'And you're enjoying it?'
'Very much!' she nodded emphatically, 'I've always loved English. And history. Maybe I should thank my history mistress at school, Miss Parkinson. She brought it all to life for me.' She moved to the edge of the chair, her face unconsciously glowing with animation as she sought to explain herself. 'I like thinking about all the generations who lived before me. All those roots and rhythms, the patterns of things.' She laughed, suddenly aware of the intent expression on Matt's face and becoming conscious of getting carried away, 'Sorry, I bet you think I'm completely mad now!'
'No, not at all,' he said, 'I don't share your love of the past, at least not in the same sense. But I can see it might provide a sense of continuity.'
'That's it. Sometimes, if I sit alone in a really old building, and I wait and listen, I can imagine myself blending back into the past, I can feel a sense of life spanning generations…I don’t suppose you believe in ghosts, do you?’
He smiled faintly. ‘No.’
'I quite like the idea, I think it’s helped me to come to terms with my mother's death. The feeling that death isn’t necessarily the end of everything, a sense of continuity.'
She flashed a dazzling, slightly embarrassed smile at Matt, and drained her wine-glass, aware that she was drinking too much yet unable to take a hold on her heady emotions. 'I must be boring you, Mr Larson.'
'No, you're not boring me at all. I'm sorry about your mother, Victoria. It must be hard to lose your mother when you're so young. And please call me Matt. When young girls call me Mr Larson it makes me feel very old,' he added, with a twist of a smile.
'Matt, then,' she agreed. Not Mathias, God’s gift to women, she thought, thinking about Jessica’s comment with an inner giggle. 'But I'm not that young! I’m nearly nineteen. Nineteen's well past the age of consent, you know!’ Oh God, where had that come from? She ploughed on desperately, ‘And I think I've grown up quicker in the last twelve months, going to university and living away from home. I share a house in Exeter with some other students. And then Mum dying . . . that somehow gives you the feeling you've got to grow up, cope all on your own.' She tailed off, conscious of sounding morose, and then she smiled at him teasingly, 'But I suppose, compared with me, you are very old!' she said, and was mortified to see a faint, dark flush of colour in his already dark cheeks. She wished she could bite off her tongue.
'I'm sorry, I really didn't mean that to sound as rude as it did,' she said, watching him in apprehension for signs that she had mortally offended him. 'I'm afraid it's a bad habit of mine, saying things without thinking!'
There was a short silence, after her rush of words, and then to the complete demolition of her composure Matt laughed.
It was an ice-splintering laugh, crinkling the corners of his eyes, and creasing the hard cynical lines of his cheeks into an almost boyish, wholly appealing grin. She was ensnared by the transformation.
'Now we're quits,' he said, still laughing. 'I thought you were fifteen, you think I'm ‘very old’?'
'No, absolutely not!' she blurted out, in confusion.
'I’m thirty-three,' he supplied calmly. 'Nearly old enough to be another generation to you.'
‘Fifteen years older than me hardly makes you another generation!’ She wanted to add that, far from looking like a member of another generation, he looked the sort of man schoolgirls pinned in poster-form to their bedroom walls and drooled over at bedtime.
But she refrained from making any more outrageous remarks. She was feeling curiously drawn to him, as if he wasn't a comparative stranger she had met only a couple of hours ago, but someone she had known intimately, someone achingly familiar, from some long ago, half-remembered meeting.
She stared into his eyes for what seemed aeons of time. Gradually she saw the amusement fade from his eyes.
Oh God, she was making a complete idiot of herself. Her pulses had speeded up to a frantic pounding, and a rush of nameless emotion was affecting her stomach muscles in a warm, cramping longing she had never felt before.
'Victoria.' Andrew was bending over her, proffering more wine, and heedlessly she nodded as he topped up her glass. With another nervous gulp she tore her eyes from Matt, and tried to erase the imprint of him in her mind. She lowered her lids briefly, squeezed her eyes tight shut for a second, but the image was still there, of laughing eyes growing cooler, retreating from her, dispassionate and coldly appraising again as if he had read her mind and strongly disapproved of her silly, romantic fantasies.
'Are you all right, Vic?' Andrew was looking at her in surprise, and she stood up, forcing a smile.
'Yes,
I feel a bit…dizzy, that's all. Too much walking on my hands this afternoon, probably. I’m just going out on the terrace for a minute.'
She escaped through the French windows into the chill of the evening air. She tried to drag her shattered nerves together as a blackbird twittered melodiously from the apple tree on the lawn.
Something had happened to her just then, as she had stared into Matt's eyes. It was a thing people didn't do on casual acquaintance, stare into each other's eyes. There was something too revealing about prolonged eye-contact. She shivered, gazing blindly across the yellow and russet chrysanthemums bordering the terrace. She knew now why his eyes were so startling. The pewter-grey irises were ringed with black, yet flecked with silver, just like ice-crystals on deep, still water.