I leant my overfilled suitcase against the wall, and asked, ‘Can I help?’
Isabelle jerked her head up to look at me, and she lost her grip on the vase in her hand. It tumbled to the floor, spilling water across the floor tiles and crushing one of the rose’s stems. I darted forward and righted the vase, miraculously still intact. For one, brief moment, I saw the depth of the shock she must be feeling flash across her face, before she recovered her composure.
She really hadn’t expected me to come. As much as I knew the lack of an invitation wasn’t a mistake, I realised a small part of me had been hoping against hope that it was. That I hadn’t been forgotten, cut out.
Except I had.
‘Hi,’ I said, trying to look less nervous than I felt.
‘Kia, darling, really!’ Isabelle smiled, but she still looked a little shaken. Older, too, I realised. Faded. Frail. ‘You should have told us you were coming. You can’t just show up, scare people half to death.’
I reached my arms around my grandmother’s body, feeling bones and skin. ‘I did tell you. Well, I told Nathaniel I’d be here, when he rang to invite me. I even emailed him the train times after he called last week.’ He’d wanted to check I was still coming. I wasn’t sure that it was a good sign that Nathaniel was so desperate to have me there to witness whatever he had planned to add excitement to Isabelle’s party. It almost made me an accessory.
Not to mention the fact he hadn’t told anyone else he’d invited me. What did that say about the welcome I should expect?
Isabelle wriggled out of the embrace and, regaining her natural poise, set about choosing a new rose for her vase. ‘And isn’t it just like him not to mention it.’
‘Perhaps he wanted it to be a surprise?’ I suggested, feeling even more uneasy. I’d honestly assumed he’d have at least told them I was coming. I should have known better. This all had the stink of one of Nathaniel’s Plans – and they seldom ended well.
‘I’m sorry, Isabelle. I really thought Nathaniel would have told you.’ Isabelle sniffed, but looked faintly mollified, so I went on, ‘Where’s everyone else?’
Isabelle checked her watch and ticked them off on her fingers. ‘Your parents have taken Caroline to buy a dress for the party, as the one I picked for her was apparently unacceptable to her. Your grandfather has the ‘Do Not Enter’ sign up on his door, so I choose to believe that he is writing. Therese is probably still wandering the woods aimlessly, and has forgotten she’s supposed to be collecting foliage for me. Edward’s here, though. He can help you with your bag.’
No mention of the two people I wanted to know about most, I noticed. Had it been Ellie Isabelle sent for vases? I wanted to ask a thousand questions. About how Ellie was, how she’d been, since I left. Whether she still hated me as much as I imagined she must. And, most urgently, what had Ellie told our grandmother about why I left? From Isabelle’s reaction, I suspected that she knew more of my secrets than I’d like. When I’d left, while Ellie and Greg were on their honeymoon, what happened had been a secret between the three of us. I couldn’t imagine that Ellie would want anyone else to know, any more than I did. But it was clear that Isabelle knew something.
God, what if everybody knew? My hands started to tremble at the very idea, a horrible sense of dread seeping through my veins. What if my secret was out, and I was walking into a house full of people who utterly – and rightly – despised me?
It was enough to send me running back to the train station, and the safety of my flat, hundreds of miles away in Scotland. But then, something curious about her list struck me.
‘Edward?’ I asked, trying to shift my focus away from my fear. I was pretty up to date on family members, despite my absence, and I was sure that there hadn’t been an Edward when I’d left.
‘Yes.’ Isabelle moved to the stairs and called, in as genteel a manner as possible, ‘Edward!’
I went and picked up my suitcase. If my grandmother had started hallucinating household help, I’d probably better get used to carrying things around myself.
To my relief, when I turned back a tall, slim stranger was leaning on the banister at the top of the stairs, looking utterly at home. ‘You hollered, Isabelle?’ The man raised a sandy eyebrow. ‘I don’t suppose that you were just missing my company?’
‘Always, dear,’ Isabelle said, absently. ‘I thought that you might like to help Saskia with her bags, while I call Sally and Tony and inform them that their prodigal daughter has returned.’
‘Might like to?’ Edward asked, taking the stairs at a lazy jog, long legs making easy work of the wide steps.
‘Would if I asked you to,’ Isabelle clarified.
‘Of course.’ Edward hopped over the last few stairs and landed on one foot on the hall tiles. ‘And I assume that this is Saskia,’ he said, turning on his heel to face me. He looked a little older than my twenty-six, with the start of tiny laugh lines around his eyes. He wasn’t smiling now, though, and he didn’t seem in any way pleased to meet me. In fact the coldness I felt from him suggested exactly the opposite.
‘I’ve heard a lot about you from Ellie,’ he said, which explained the chill. Even if she hadn’t spilled the whole story to this stranger, I was under no illusion that she’d have spoken about me in anything approaching glowing terms.
‘Oh good. Listen, I’m fine carrying my own case, honestly.’ I had four whole days stretching ahead to spend time with people who disapproved of me. I didn’t really feel up to starting off with someone I’d never even met before.
Edward took two long strides across the hallway and snatched up my bag. ‘Not a problem.’ He gave me a short, tight smile, then swung round to face Isabelle, suitcase swaying in his hand. ‘Which room is she in?’
‘My room,’ I said, as if that should be obvious, at the same time as Isabelle said, ‘You’d better put her in the Yellow Room.’
‘Right-ho.’ Edward hefted the case up the first few stairs.
‘Hang on. What’s wrong with my room?’ It was, after all, my room. I snatched the case out of Edward’s hands.
‘Caroline’s sleeping in it.’ Isabelle looked vaguely regretful for a moment, but it didn’t last. ‘But really, Kia, it is a little girl’s room, and Caro’s too big for the box room, now. She’s almost ten. She needs her own space.’
Caroline – our last-minute-accident baby sister, and the shocking evidence that our parents were still having sex into my secondary school years. How could she be ten already? How much had she changed in the last two years? How much had I missed?
‘It’s my room,’ I said again, even as my brain acknowledged the ridiculousness of this statement.
‘Your room is the candy-stripe confection in the attic?’ Edward reached out and retrieved the case from my hands again, his long slim fingers brushing against mine as he took the handle. I gritted my teeth against the slight shiver his touch gave me, even in the warm summer air.
‘My grandfather helped me decorate that room.’ One long summer when my parents were abroad and Ellie and I had stayed at Rosewood for six glorious weeks, instead of sweating it out in our semi in the suburbs of Manchester. It had taken an age, because Nathaniel had been working on Rebecca’s Daughters at the time and would regularly disappear into his study for hours in the middle of painting the walls.
Edward grinned. ‘Strange. Nathaniel never struck me as a candyfloss kind of guy.’
‘Who are you, anyway?’ It didn’t seem fair. I’d been home mere minutes, and I was already being mocked by strangers.
‘I’m your grandfather’s assistant,’ Edward said, making his way up the stairs, lugging the case alongside him.
I looked to Isabelle for confirmation. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘We were surprised too. But he’s been here over a year, now.’ And no one had mentioned him to me – not even Nathaniel. Which said more about how far I’d run away than the seven hours it had taken me to get back by train that day.
Edward reached the top of the stairs and pa
used, obviously waiting for me to follow. I looked at him with a new appreciation. The last assistant Nathaniel had hired, six months before I left for the wilds of Scotland, had lasted approximately a fortnight before falling down those very stairs in his hurry to get away from Rosewood. Granddad did not work well with assistants.
‘Well, okay then.’ Picking up my handbag, I turned back to Isabelle. ‘Do I really have to sleep in the Yellow Room?’
‘It has a lovely view of the Rose Garden, darling.’
‘But all the roses are in here!’ I waved an arm at the overflowing buckets of blooms.
‘Don’t be melodramatic, dear. There are plenty of roses left. We’re only using the yellow ones, anyway.’ She plucked a few leaves from the bottom of a rose stem and added the flower to the bucket. ‘Besides, these are just for the house displays. The florist is doing the stands and centrepieces outside.’
That sounded like an awful lot of flowers. ‘But the Yellow Room’s all…yellow.’ There was a muffled snort of laughter from the top of the stairs, and I mentally glared at Edward, wondering what it was about Rosewood that made me thirteen again. ‘Never mind. I’ll go get freshened up, and maybe by the time I get back my parents will have found their way home.’
‘Perhaps. Kia…’ Isabelle paused, as if trying to decide whether to speak again or not. Finally, she said, ‘Did your grandfather say particularly why he wanted you to come back?’
I blinked in surprise. ‘It’s a family occasion. I assume he wanted us all here.’
Isabelle gave a sharp nod, and turned back to her buckets of roses. ‘Of course.’
Confused, I turned to follow Edward. But I couldn’t help wondering what Isabelle thought Nathaniel was up to this time.
‘There you go, then,’ Edward said, placing my bags on the windowsill. ‘I’ll leave you to settle in.’
I nodded, gazing around at the sunshine walls and golden blankets, wondering how many guests had visited twice, after being put to stay in the Yellow Room.
Probably all of them – at least any that had been invited back. A weekend at Rosewood had been a highly sought after ticket, back in the day. Well, according to Isabelle, anyway.
‘Actually,’ I said, trying to sound decisive, rather than just unsettled, ‘I think I might go and find Great-Aunt Therese. It must be almost time for her afternoon tea.’ Never mind that I’d spent seven hours on various trains and really could do with a shower; first, I needed to feel home again. And after that very lacklustre welcome from Isabelle, I knew I wasn’t going to find that feeling in the Yellow Room. At least Aunt Therese might be pleased to see me.
Assam tea and Victoria sponges in Therese’s cottage garden were more familiar to me than even my attic bedroom. Nathaniel had moved his younger sister into the cottage on the edge of Rosewood’s gardens as soon as her husband died, the year I was born, when she was only forty-one. Almost every afternoon I had spent at Rosewood since had always paused for tea with Therese at half past three, first with my mum and Ellie, and later just the two of us.
Edward shrugged indifferently. ‘I’ll come with you, then. May as well see if she’s finished collecting leaves for your grandmother. Pre-empt being sent.’
‘If you’re Granddad’s assistant, why aren’t you assisting him rather than Grandma?’ I asked, as we trotted out into the sunlight. It felt odd to be at Rosewood with a stranger – especially one who seemed far more at home than I did.
‘He’s having one of his Great British Writer days. Doesn’t like anyone hovering, in case it disturbs his flow.’ Which might explain why Edward had lasted longer than the other assistants. A keen sense of when to get lost.
‘So you’re just making yourself useful until he needs you again?’
‘Got to earn my keep somehow.’ Edward gave me a quick smile as he turned off the drive and onto the long, rambling path that led, eventually, to Therese’s cottage.
He didn’t seem inclined to any further conversation, and I found my attention drawn instead to the familiar sights along the way – the huge magnolia that overhung the path, the strange fountain statue that Isabelle had found on holiday in France one year and had shipped back, the wild flower patch my mother planted which, over the course of a few summers, overtook almost a whole lawn.
As we reached the bend in the main path that led down to the abandoned ruin of the old stables and Therese’s tiny cottage, my great-aunt appeared in the distance. Therese was unmistakable with her 1950s’ silhouette of full skirt and tight cardigan even when, as now, her arms were full of eucalyptus leaves.
Edward squinted up into the sun, the light bleaching his sandy hair even paler. ‘This looks like another of those ‘earn my keep’ moments,’ he said. ‘Might as well pre-empt being sent back.’ He jogged away down the path to relieve Therese of her leafy burden. He had a point; Isabelle never came down to Therese’s cottage if she could send someone else. In fact, I didn’t think I’d ever seen her there. ‘I’ll take these up to the house for you, Mrs Williams,’ I heard Edward say. ‘Save you the trouble, since I’m heading back anyway. Besides, you’ve got a visitor.’
Therese’s pale blue eyes widened and her red lips pursed as I came close, and I wondered what changes she saw in me. But then she smiled, and I was eighteen again, home from university as a surprise one weekend, folded into her expensively perfumed embrace and thoroughly kissed, leaving lipstick marks on my cheeks. Therese was an anachronism, a throwback to a decade she’d only just been born for, with her fifties’ costumes and curled and pinned hair. But she was a part of Rosewood for me, every bit as much as Isabelle’s cocktails before dinner and Nathaniel’s stories.
‘It’s so good to have you home,’ she said, leading me inside, and I blinked away unexpected tears as I realised just how much I had missed her. At least someone was pleased to see me.
Therese’s cottage was as I had left it, filled with knick-knacks and jugs full of sweet peas and dishes laden with glass bead necklaces. The only difference, as far as I could see, was the vast collection of clothes that hung from every hook and corner and ledge in the lounge. And the hallway. And running up the stairs. Dresses and skirts and blouses and coats and handbags, with gloves and scarves and tops and shoes spilling out from old steamer trunks, stacked carelessly against the walls.
Therese had always been a bit of a clothes horse, but this was taking things to extremes, even for her.
I peered into the lounge from the hallway, and saw that in amongst all the accessories, my favourite photo of her still sat on the mantelpiece. Therese, aged nineteen, pale and pouting in black and white with crisply waving hair surrounding challenging pale eyes. It must have been taken in the tail end of the sixties, I’d worked out once, but Therese looked like a screen siren from thirties’ Hollywood. It was one of a very few photos I’d seen of Therese out of her fifties’ costume, and even that was out of sync with the rest of the world – but fitted perfectly at Rosewood.
Rosewood existed in a bubble all of its own, out of time, because that was the way Nathaniel liked it. I wondered absently how Edward was coping with the lack of internet at Rosewood. Maybe I’d ask him later.
Picking up the picture frame, I studied the photo, finding familiar lines in the much younger face. She kept it up as a reminder, Therese always said. A reminder that she’d been beautiful once. Before life happened.
Turning to watch her potter around the tiny kitchen, filling the kettle and warming the pot, I knew that she was still beautiful. Why had she never remarried? ‘Once was enough,’ she always said, but she’d only been forty-one when Great-Uncle George had died. Therese would have been quite a catch, with her perfectly pinned hair, slim waist, beautiful outfits, and her pale blue eyes. She and Isabelle together as young women must have been a formidable sight.
Great-Uncle George had always been a little bit of a mystery. He’d died before I was born, so all I really had to go on were occasional snatches of parental conversation, when the adults thought I wasn’t li
stening. I’d asked, once, but hadn’t really received any satisfactory answers.
As far as Ellie and I had been able to piece together, George had been some hotshot trader in the city when he met Therese and they’d fallen instantly in love. They’d married shortly after and gone to live in London, where he showered his new bride with lavish gifts of jewels and dresses. Isabelle, it seemed, was always a little sore on this point.
Still, and this was the part that didn’t make any sense, when George had suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of only forty-seven, creditors had swooped in and taken the house, the furniture, the cars, and most of the jewels. Therese had showed up at Rosewood with a suitcase of evening gowns, planning to stay only until she was back on her feet, and she had never left.
Isabelle mentioned that part often, pointedly, usually when Nathaniel and Therese had their heads together, laughing over some private, shared joke the way only siblings could. The way Ellie and I used to.
In fifteen years’ time, would I be back at Rosewood, begging asylum again? And if so, would Ellie resent my presence as obviously as Isabelle had always resented Therese’s? Probably.
‘We’ll take tea in the garden,’ Therese said decisively, smoothing a lace cloth over a plain silver tray, and laying out the china cups, sugar bowl, milk jug, and a plate of chocolate-covered ginger biscuits. ‘Will you bring the pot, Kia?’
Wrapping the handle of the delicate teapot with a clean tea towel, I did as I was told, and followed Therese out through the back door into her tiny, hedged garden.
Therese’s flower beds were tended and nurtured daily, and carefully trained to appear as a hodgepodge cottage garden. Lupins and delphiniums and foxgloves loomed over fuchsias and snapdragons; sweet peas clambered up canes set against the cottage wall, sending their familiar scent past me on the breeze.
Christmas at Rosewood Page 11