‘Have you thought any more about what we talked about?’ asked Mason.
‘What’s that?’
‘Moving the wedding forward?’
‘Oh!’ Flora put down the half-opened coffee machine and frowned. ‘Well, yes. Sort of. I mean, I’d like to. But it’s just, you know, logistics. I’m here. You’re there. Christmas is really soon.’
‘We’ll get a wedding planner. They can do logistics. You just show up and marry me.’
Flora laughed. ‘I’m not sure it’s quite that simple, honey.’ She looked up at the kitchen clock, a heavy, turn-of-the-century wooden affair with a loud, ominous tick you could never quite turn into background noise. ‘Shit! I’m really sorry, Mason, but I have to go. I’ve got a meeting up at the castle in, like, ten minutes.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Mason, sounding distracted himself all of a sudden. Was that a woman’s voice Flora could hear in the background? ‘I have to go too. Henrietta’s organized a boat trip.’
‘That’s nice of her,’ said Flora through gritted teeth. Maybe she could fall overboard?
‘I know, isn’t it? We’re all headed to some private island for lunch. It should be great. I’ll call when I’m back in New York, OK, honey? Don’t work too hard.’
‘I won’t,’ said Flora. But Mason had already hung up.
She’d left Peony Cottage in a fluster, feeling anxious and not a little depressed about the thought of Henrietta Bitch Branston whisking her fiancé off to some fancy island for a romantic picnic. But as soon as Flora crested the hill at the top of Hanborough’s long, tree-lined drive, her worries floated away like seeds on the wind.
It was as if the castle exerted some strange kind of magic over her; some heady, hypnotic pull. Perhaps the Normans had known something Flora didn’t when they positioned it here? She wasn’t a big believer in mysticism, energy lines and feng shui and all that nonsense. But there was no question that simply being at Hanborough promoted a deep sense of wellbeing. It made Flora feel calm and content, the architectural equivalent of smoking a really mellow joint.
Or perhaps, more prosaically, she felt relaxed because it was a glorious June day, Henry was away until tomorrow morning, and he’d taken his secretary, the sweet Mrs French, with him. That meant Flora could have her meetings in peace – two contractors were preparing their bids this morning. After that, Flora was free to roam the castle and grounds alone, letting her creativity flow. The prospect made her feel excited, like a teenager on her first, unchaperoned date.
The contractor meetings were mercifully brief. The first guy, a leering middle-aged wide boy named Brian Hunter, was a definite no. Having first asked Flora to ‘fetch her boss’, he then expressed frank amazement that Flora was in charge, and proceeded to patronize her for the next twenty minutes, taking only short breaks from comments like, ‘You leave that to me, love. I’m the expert’ or, ‘With respect, darling, you’re not an architect, are you?’ to drool at Flora’s tits. (It was warm today, and Flora had made the mistake of wearing a lowish-cut army-green tank top and Bermuda shorts. On another woman these would have looked unremarkable, but on Flora’s pneumatically pint-sized figure, they were more temptation than Brian Hunter could bear.)
The second man, Tony Graham, was better. Older and a bit of a stickler for detail (with his monotone, accountant’s voice, it was fair to say Tony wasn’t going to bowl anybody over with his charisma), he was also professional and thorough. Equally importantly, he was prepared to follow directions. A lot of contractors thought they knew better than the architects or designers, but Graham seemed content to stick to the spec. Flora liked him.
Even so, she was thrilled when Tony’s van finally pulled out of the drive and she was alone at last. With a sketchpad and pencil in hand, she wandered inside, deciding to start at the top, in the old servants’ quarters, and work her way down.
Two hours later, with a fat wodge of notes and sketches under her arm (there was so much potential here, beyond what was in the original architect’s plans), she’d made it as far as the master bedroom suite above the old chapel.
There were plenty of larger, grander rooms in the castle. Clearly Henry and Eva had chosen this one for its romantic feel rather than its square footage. The medieval arched windows, complete with mullioned panes, made you feel like Rapunzel when you looked out of them, and the leaning floor and uneven, original wood-panelled walls imbued the space with a real sense of history. An antique Elizabethan four-poster bed completed the look, although glancing at it Flora felt sure it would work far better turned ninety degrees, to give its occupants a view across Hanborough’s parkland. Or was it too low for that?
Slipping off her espadrilles, Flora lay back on the bed, twisting her head to the right and craning her neck to see if one could, in fact, look out whilst lying down.
‘Oh my God. Oh my God! Who are you?’
Flora sat up to find a blonde Amazon standing in the bedroom doorway. She had an embroidered overnight bag in one hand and a small Chanel purse in the other. Even in no make-up and wearing a tatty pair of boyfriend jeans and a white T-shirt, she was instantly recognizable as Henry Saxton Brae’s supermodel girlfriend, Eva Gunnarson.
‘I’m Flora.’ Flora blushed, hopping back down off the bed and feeling like a dwarf next to Eva. ‘I’m the new designer. You must be Eva.’
Eva glared at her. ‘What were you doing in our bed?’
‘Oh. That.’ Flora blushed as it suddenly dawned on her how it must have looked. ‘I was measuring. I was, er … trying to see the view.’
‘Henry!’ Eva pushed past her, storming first into the master bathroom, then into the dressing room. ‘Henry! Come out, you coward!’
Flora watched mortified as this beautiful girl opened wardrobes and slammed them shut again, tears streaming down her face. Finally she dropped to her knees and actually looked under the bed, before turning furiously back to Flora.
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s not here.’ Flora looked at her pityingly.
‘Don’t lie to me!’ Eva screamed. ‘Just how stupid do you think I am?’
Then suddenly, and without warning, she burst into explosive tears.
‘Oh gosh. Oh, no, please don’t. This is my fault. I didn’t know you were coming back today.’
‘Evidently!’
‘No! No, no, no. Look, Henry really isn’t here. He’s at a meeting. In Birmingham. Mrs French has gone with him.’
Eva looked confused. ‘Mary? How do you know Mary?’
‘She let me in, when I arrived last weekend,’ said Flora. ‘She gave me a cup of tea and I spilled it on your rug. Look, I really am the designer. And I really was measuring your bed height. For the view. There’s nothing … Henry and I … I mean I would never … I’m engaged!’ she finished desperately, waving Mason’s stunning ring in Eva’s general direction.
Eva looked from Flora’s ring to her face and back again. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed with her head in her hands.
‘Oh God. I’m sorry. Of course you are. I’m turning into one of those women.’
‘What women?’ asked Flora.
‘Pathetic, jealous, paranoid women. Women who don’t trust their own partner.’ She looked up at Flora miserably. ‘You must think I’m such a fool.’
‘Not at all,’ said Flora truthfully. ‘It’s my fault entirely. I can only imagine what I’d do if I came back to my apartment and found a strange chick in my fiancé’s bed.’
Eva giggled. It all seemed rather ridiculous suddenly.
‘Flora, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Eva.’ They shook hands. ‘Let’s never tell Henry about this.’
‘Never!’
Flora smiled broadly. She had a funny feeling that she and Eva were going to become friends. She just wondered how someone so vulnerable and nice had ever made it to the top in the cut-throat world of modelling? Or why she would choose to throw herself away on a smug, arrogant jerk like Henry Saxton Brae.
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‘We’re having a dinner party next Saturday night,’ Eva announced suddenly. ‘Just a few local friends, nothing fancy. You must come.’
‘Oh no. I mean, thank you. But I wouldn’t want to intrude,’ Flora said, remembering Henry’s graceless comment about he and Eva ‘valuing their privacy’ and Hanborough not being a commune. Clearly he wasn’t the sort of man who considered his interior designer to be a social equal. ‘Besides, I have a ton of work to do. I’m still playing catch-up on the project. You have an incredible home, and I want to do it justice.’
‘And I’m sure you will,’ Eva said kindly. ‘But you have to eat. We’ll expect you next Saturday. Eight o’clock.’
‘I still don’t understand why you had to invite her,’ Henry grumbled.
It was an hour before the party, and he was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, shaving. Stark naked after a shower, other than the white beard of shaving foam covering the lower half of his face, he looked as beautiful as ever, a Michelangelo sculpture in warm, damp flesh.
I’ll never stop wanting him, Eva thought. Never.
‘I didn’t have to invite her. I wanted to. She’s nice.’
‘She’s stroppy,’ said Henry. ‘More to the point, she’s an employee.’
Eva frowned, adjusting the straps on her pretty, vintage sundress. ‘You sound like a Victorian. She’s a designer, not the man who comes to empty the bins. And, by the way, her fiancé’s very rich. Mason Parker. I googled him. He comes from a very upper-class American family.’
‘There’s no such thing,’ Henry said dismissively. ‘Americans don’t understand about class. And who’s this other bod you’ve asked?’ he added, before Eva could object to this last remark. ‘The random dog-walker?’
‘He’s a writer. His name’s Barney, and he’s also nice.’
‘How do you know?’ Henry asked reasonably. ‘You’ve only met him once.’
‘Twice,’ Eva corrected him. ‘I ran into him again the day before yesterday. So tonight will make three times. We need to meet some new people, darling.’ Walking up behind him, she ran a hand lovingly over Henry’s bottom.
‘I don’t see why,’ said Henry, rinsing off his face. Splashing on some aftershave, he started to get dressed.
He wasn’t thrilled about spending an evening with Graydon James’s number two and some random Paddy whose only claim to fame was that he obviously fancied Eva. But the real fly in tonight’s ointment was the fact that George Savile and her deathly dull husband Robert were coming. Evidently Henry had invited them months ago, to show off Hanborough, and forgotten all about it. But after his recent relapse, the thought of having Georgina – loose-lipped and drunk – under his roof and at the same table as Eva was enough to make him want to break out in hives.
As far as Henry was concerned, this evening couldn’t end soon enough.
‘Good to see you, mate.’ Richard Smart handed Henry an embarrassingly cheap bottle of wine as he stood in front of Hanborough’s grand portcullis. ‘Shame about this place, though. Bit of a shithole, isn’t it? Did you realize that bit’s actually falling down?’
He gestured behind him to the ruined northern tower and battlements.
Henry grinned. He loved Richard. Other than gaining a few inches in height, and a seriously fun and amazing wife, Lucy, he hadn’t changed at all since Henry first met him at pre-prep school when they were both five years old. He had the same cheeky smile, the same sandy blond hair that managed to look permanently dirty and unbrushed, no matter what he did to it, the same puerile but undeniably funny sense of humour. As a country GP, with a modest inheritance from his oil-executive father, Richard was comfortably off, but he’d never come close to the sort of fame and success that Henry had enjoyed. Not that he cared. Richard Smart didn’t have an envious bone in his body. In fact it was Henry who sometimes begrudged Richard his perpetually sunny nature. As Lucy put it, ‘If Rich got any more optimistic, he’d have to be sectioned.’
‘You’re late,’ said Henry.
‘Naturally,’ said Richard. ‘That’s how you know it’s us and not aliens who’ve stolen our bodies.’
‘Archie threw up,’ Lucy added helpfully over his shoulder.
Archie was either one of their sons or one of their dogs. Henry couldn’t keep up with the Smart menagerie. Every time you turned around some new yet-to-be-domesticated creature seemed to have joined the household.
‘Well, thank God you’re here,’ said Henry. ‘It’s like the house of bloody horrors in there.’
Richard leaned forward to hug him, but Henry assumed a look of mock disgust. ‘Not you, you big pleb. No one’s pleased to see you. It’s your wife I’m interested in. You don’t think anyone would ask you to dinner if it weren’t for Lucy, do you?’
‘Probably not,’ Richard admitted, watching impassively as Henry scooped Lucy up into his arms and made a big show of kissing her while she laughingly told him to get lost. In cut-off jeans and a slightly stained Madonna T-shirt, Lucy Smart had taken the evening’s casual dress code to its limits, but she still managed to look lovely, exuding warmth and mischief like a naughty schoolgirl. With her short, tomboyish haircut and long, slightly off-kilter nose, Lucy was sexy rather than pretty. But she had the sort of confidence that made both men and women love her. Henry had also always got the impression that Lucy was seriously highly sexed, although Richard had never said so, and that was one question even Henry didn’t have the balls to ask.
Putting Lucy down, he read the label on Richard’s wine. Then he led the two of them into the castle, holding the bottle at arm’s length and dropping it into the moat with a satisfying plop on the way, without breaking stride.
‘Oi!’ complained Richard. ‘That was Tesco Finest!’
‘Exactly,’ drawled Henry. ‘I love you, Rich, but I can’t let you poison us. Not all of us anyway.’
Leading them into the kitchen – they still didn’t have a table large enough for the formal banqueting hall, and Eva preferred kitchen suppers anyway – Henry made the introductions.
‘Everyone, this is Lucy Smart and some guy she took pity on.’
Richard walked around the table, smiling and shaking hands with everyone.
Henry went on, ’This is Barney Griffith, a friend of Eva’s. And Flora, who’s taking over the restoration work at Hanborough.’
Christ, thought Richard, looking at Flora’s impressive assets squeezed into a figure-hugging dark green shift dress. What happened to the gay guy? Eva had better watch her back there.
‘You know my brother and his wife, Kate?’ Henry went on.
‘How nice to see you again,’ Kate said regally, offering her hand to Lucy Smart like a duchess awaiting a kiss of submission.
‘Hi!’ Lucy smiled, ignoring the hand and hugging her, an experience Kate appeared to enjoy about as much as having lemon juice squirted into her eye.
Henry looked with irritation at the two remaining empty chairs.
‘We’re still waiting for the Saviles.’
Richard Smart rolled his eyes. ‘George is coming?’
‘Sadly,’ muttered Henry.
Richard knew Henry’s business partner, Georgina Savile, of old, and had always disliked her. At school, girls like Georgina – the ones who were too pretty to bother making an effort – had always made a beeline for Henry, looking through Richard as if he didn’t exist. George’s husband Robert was all right, but a crashing bore, always banging on about his latest case, which usually involved tax or shipping and was never a nice juicy celebrity divorce, or a murder, or something you might actually want to talk about at a dinner party. Unchivalrously, Richard took the seat next to Flora’s, leaving Lucy beside the Saviles’ empty chairs.
‘Hello.’ Richard grinned at Flora. ‘You are absolutely bloody gorgeous.’
Flora laughed loudly. She’d forgotten how direct English men could be.
‘Er … thank you?’
‘Richard Smart. You can trust me, I’m a doctor.’
They shook hands. ‘So where are you from, Flora Fitzwilliam? And what are you doing here? I detect an American accent.’
‘How do you do it, Holmes?’ Lucy teased him from across the table.
‘I’m from New York,’ said Flora. ‘Well, I live in New York. With my fiancé,’ she heard herself blurting, unnecessarily.
‘Git,’ said Richard. ‘I hate him already.’
‘Leave the poor girl alone, Rich,’ said Lucy, adding to Flora, ‘If he annoys you, just hit him.’
‘Let’s eat,’ said Henry, leaning over and helping himself to a large scoop of Jansson’s Temptation, a delicious Swedish dish of potato and onion with cream and anchovies that was one of Eva’s specialities.
‘Shouldn’t we wait for Robert and George?’ asked Eva.
‘Definitely not,’ said Henry, kissing her on the mouth. (Rather too ostentatiously in Barney Griffith’s opinion, although nobody else seemed to mind.) ‘If they’re rude enough to show up late, we can be rude enough to start without them. Besides, I’m starving.’
Christ, he’s arrogant, thought Barney. He wasn’t sure why exactly, but there was a vibe about Henry Saxton Brae that he didn’t like one little bit. The cut-glass accent didn’t help. But it was more than that. Something to do with the possessiveness of that kiss, as if Eva were a car or a diamond necklace, a trophy to be paraded. There was just a certain assumption, an entitlement to all of Henry’s gestures, looks and words that spoke of a deeply ingrained sense of superiority. He didn’t seem like Eva’s type at all.
Still, it was all good stuff for the novel, Barney thought, knocking back his second glass of better-than-decent claret: dinner in a castle, Henry being dastardly, Eva being good and wholesome and bewitching, an exquisite but fragile glass doll.
Barney had been astonished last week when Eva Gunnarson had tracked down his cottage, knocked on the door and invited him to dinner. (Why did that sort of thing – random dinner invitations from supermodels – never happen when other people were around? Like his ex-girlfriend Maud, for example?) So astonished that he almost said no, on some sort of weird, self-defeating autopilot. The thing was, Barney barely knew Eva. They’d bumped into each other once or twice walking the dogs, and somehow he found she was wonderfully easy to talk to, but that was it. Astonishing as it seemed, this stunning girl was clearly lonely.
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