by Terry Tyler
Jane and I laughed. Isabella smiled thinly. “I mean it, Erin. There are going to be a lot of changes.” Her smile broadened. “And I’ve got another surprise for you. A big one.”
“What?”
“I think it’s time I came home.”
A moment’s silence. Erin just stared, expressionless. “Meaning?”
“Here. Our family home. I haven’t lived here since the day my mother and I were forced out. I think it’s my turn to be lady of the manor, don’t you? Especially seeing as, according to the terms of Dad’s will, I actually own the place!”
Ouch. In Erin’s grief over Jaz’s death, and all that was going on with the firm, I don’t think she’d given this much consideration, and I hadn’t liked to remind her about it.
“We’ll keep Pat on, of course,” Isabella went on, standing up and walking around, as if inspecting all that was now hers. “I’d like to get another cleaner in, too, though. I don’t feel right about Pat doing all the skivvying for us, especially not when she does such a marvellous job with the household accounts.”
“Good idea,” Erin said, in a small voice.
“I’ll be asking her to tighten up the budget.” She whipped round, another bright smile on her face. “I reckon if we cut a few extravagances here and there, the cost of another cleaner can be swallowed up, easily.”
“Uh-huh,” Erin said. She looked quite faint. Erin wasn’t good at cutting extravagances.
“But I’m afraid there’ll be one more significant area of household expenditure before we begin the new regime,” Isabella said. “I want my bedroom completely revamped before I move in. New bed, new carpets, the lot. I want a whole new look.”
“It was only redecorated two and a half years ago,” Erin said, “when Mollie came to stay. It still looks great; I chose that William Morris wallpaper—”
“Oh no,” her sister said, and that triumphant expression returned to her face. “I don’t mean my childhood bedroom. I mean the master bedroom.”
A sharp intake of breath from Erin. “Dad’s room? Isa, you can’t—even Kate—well, I mean, when Aiden moved in they took a different room.”
Isabella leant her hands on the edge of the table. “Erin, it’s my house now. Do you think Mum and Dad had any qualms about moving in there after Granddad died? It’s where the master—or mistress—of the house sleeps. It’s mine, now, and when I get married my husband and I will wake up every morning and look out onto the gardens, just the way Mum did when she first moved in here with Dad. She’s told me, so many times, how happy she was when she moved in here. History will repeat itself, minus the part where Mum got kicked out by Dad’s bit on the side!” She laughed, and gave Erin’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “I’m only joking, sis; I don’t hold what Annette did against you.”
“Much,” Erin muttered to me, as Isabella teetered out to the kitchen, a little unstably. “And as for that talk about her and her husband—well, she’s got to find a man who’ll put up with her first.”
Isabella returned with a bowl of olives, still in high spirits. I watched her chatting away and I got a sudden, strange feeling of déjà vu. She reminded me of someone, something, but it took me a while to work out what. I was a bit befuddled by champagne too, you see. When I realised why and who it was, I was more than a little concerned.
It was the slightly maniacal look in her eyes, you see.
Isabella reminded me of my sister, Sybil.
Yes, that’s right, the one who suffered from addictions and severe depression. And schizophrenia.
Chapter Six
Isabella
August 2010—May 2011
People say, oh, Isabella never got over her parents getting divorced, it’s time she let the past go and moved on, but they haven’t got a clue what I went through, or they’d know it couldn’t do anything but colour the rest of my life.
I was thirteen when my mother and I were chucked out of our home so that Dad could return with the scheming tart Annette Hever in tow, and she could produce her own daughter to take my place in my father’s heart.
At thirteen, I was given the message, you’re not wanted anymore. You’re not important; you can be replaced, at whim.
My wonderful, handsome, godlike father was bored with his family, and wanted a new one. He cared for me no more, he waved me goodbye as I trailed after my mother when we walked out of our home for the last time. I will never, ever forget that day. I carried a canvas tote bag containing my school books, the jewellery box he gave me when I was six and my old teddy that I’d had since childhood. He took the bag out of my hand so he could hug me, he was acting all upset, and I just thought, why are you pretending to care? It’s you who’s sending me away. Because of Annette Hever, I have to leave my lovely bedroom in our lovely house with the lovely garden. My home.
I wasn’t a child, I knew what was happening; I knew Dad had affairs with other women, because I had a brother I’d never seen, who lived in America, and I could remember Mum crying down the phone one night to my auntie Joanne that he was ‘out screwing that slag Mary’ (who was Annette’s sister!), but before Annette Hever he was like a naughty child who went out playing all day and came back to me and Mum when he was tired. So I knew it had to be her, wheedling her way in because she wanted to live in our house and be married to a rich, handsome man.
Once I grew up, I saw the situation as it really was. Dad had been sexually obsessed with Annette, who had that sluttish sort of appearance that men like, so he thought he was in love with her.
When Erin was born I wanted to hate her. I was so jealous, but she was just a sweet little baby, it wasn’t her fault. Then I thought it might be nice to have a sister.
Eventually Dad saw Annette for what she was, i.e. a complete disaster, and chucked her out so he could marry Jenny, who was a bit dim but quite nice, and they had Jaz, who I adored with all my heart. I used to love going to Dad’s to see my little brother and sister. I loved both of them, even though my feelings towards Erin have always been so mixed.
My adolescence was miserable. We lived in a house that was far too small, and Mum wept all the time. We hardly had any visitors except Tom Morley and Will Brandon, and I was so lonely and wretched that I alienated anyone at school who might have been friendly. I got put back a year, not because I was stupid, but because I was so unhappy that my schoolwork was affected. So I felt even more out of place, and got ribbed about it, too.
After a few years Mum met Roy so she was happy again, but I wasn’t. We moved out to Kimbolton in Cambridgeshire and once again I was forced to leave all that was familiar. I’ve been on the edge, apart, my whole life. I never really connected with anyone, even at university; I had a social circle and lost my virginity, but I never became part of a close-knit group, or found a man who wanted me for more than a fling. I was about to say that my love life has been a disaster, but it wouldn’t be true, because there’s not been much of it to be disastrous. Men aren’t attracted to me. I don’t know why not. I’m slim and quite good-looking, but I don’t plaster myself with make-up, or employ feminine wiles. The sort of coy, flirtatious behaviour that so many women adopt makes me sick.
I went to work for Lanchester Estates after university. Where else? At last there was somewhere I fitted in, because so many people there had known and loved my mother. I knew then that I’d found my home and I wanted it to be mine one day, badly, though indeed I would have purged myself of such desires had I known how it was to become so.
As time went on, many of the people who remembered my mother left, and new people came in; I stopped being ‘Cathy’s girl’ (fond smile) and started to be ‘Harry’s stuck-up daughter’ (nasty snigger). I’m not stupid. I know people think I’m weird. I don’t look weird, I look like Mum was when she was young, except that by the time she was my age she was fat. I’m not bothered about food. I like to practise a Spartan regime; it makes me feel strong.
I don’t want to be weird. I want to be like Erin, and have people use words l
ike ‘vibrant’ and ‘fascinating’ to describe me. Sometimes she looks just like Annette Hever, and then I hate her, but even when I love her she still makes me so sick with jealousy that I almost hate her again. Mum says I have to learn to forgive Annette Hever, because she’s dead and we’re alive, but I can’t, and I see her in my sister all the time.
Erin and I should have pulled together after Dad died, but she sided with the Dudleys, who were trying to take our company away. I thought we might become proper sisters, friends, but she’s not to be trusted. I have some real friends now, though. I have Hannah, dear Jane Dormer, my secretary, and Susan Clarence, who is Jane’s admin assistant. Susan is my personal shopper; buying clothes bores me rigid but Susan adores it, and has a real eye for colour and style, so I just tell her what I need once every few months, and she goes off to get it. It’s easy when you’re tall and thin, because everything looks right on you, which saves much time and mucking about. Jane and I call Susan ‘Mistress of the Robes’, which amuses us.
My father’s last wife, Kate, was my friend, too, but she’s gone away now. Which of course was Erin’s fault. She showed her true colours, there. How could she do that to Kate?
I’ll tell you what my biggest fear is. It’s that I’ll end up living with Mum, the two of us being weird together, the mad old unwanted mother and daughter. Mum was fine when she was married to Roy, warm and happy again, but since he died, and she moved out to Framlingham in Norfolk, she’s turned to religion and become very odd indeed. She says things like ‘I have found my home in the Lord’, and is now ‘married to the church’, apparently. She’s fifty-nine now, and looks every year of it and more. Overweight, grey-haired and unadorned by make-up, accessories or attractive clothes. Says the love of God is the only cosmetic she needs. Fair enough, I suppose, but if I was a fat middle-aged woman I’d rather be like Hannah, who wears scarlet and purple, and big earrings, and laughs a lot. I don’t suppose I would be, though. I’d probably be a grey-haired religious oddball like Mum.
I’ll tell you something else. On the day I got rid of Jim Dudley, I peeped into his office to check that he really was packing his stuff up, and I saw him with that PR tart. They were sitting on the sofa in each other’s arms, and the expressions on their faces made me think, I’d give this company up in minute if I had a man who looked at me the way he was looking at her. Like she was the only woman in the world and he’d die if she left him. Didn’t help that I found him so horribly sexy. We were always at each other’s throats; if my life was a romcom our constant sniping would have brought forth the revelation that he was secretly crazy about me, but unfortunately my life is more Greek tragedy than Hugh Grant film. Jim really did think I was a tedious pain in the arse.
In my lonely bed at night I used to fantasise about us frantically screwing in the boardroom ten minutes after we’d been hollering at each other in meetings, but strong, sexy men like him fancy women who are confident in their femininity, not hard twisted bitches like me.
I’d go to work the next day, see him down the corridor and feel embarrassed about my sad, solitary orgasms of the night before.
If he’d wanted to have an affair with me I would have let him have his wretched hotels. On his last day he was being charming and a little bit flirtatious, and had I not discovered the night before that he’d already found a mistress (men like him always have one) I may well have softened. I was enjoying it so much. I couldn’t bear what I knew, though, I was so jealous. I couldn’t have stood to see them going off together at lunchtimes to screw, or whatever. That’s my secret. I’ll never tell anyone, not even Jane.
Stupid little bitch with her tart’s fake nails, all the better to scratch his back with. I wanted to scratch her pretty little dewy eyes out.
I’m hard because I have to be. It’s all I’ve got. Being a woman in a man’s world is incredibly difficult, so I have to assert my authority or I’ll be doomed.
I haven’t always been hard. I had a proper love relationship once. Emil was German; he was working at Lanchester Estates for a few months. He was sweet and kind, bookish and thoughtful. But then he went back to Bavaria, and I never heard from him again. It was wonderful at the time, though. It made me feel as if I’d joined the human race.
***
I was glad it was autumn when I was taking charge. I like autumn because everything dies, for everyone, not just the things in my life. In summer love and sex are everywhere you look, but in the autumn the girls in the office stop wearing clothes I don’t consider appropriate for work, put tights and trousers over their sexy brown legs, and the men don’t ogle them so much.
I made all the staff changes I’d promised, and more. The wonderfully no-nonsense Cecilia Williams headed up the legal department, Ruth Rochester took charge of Finance, and Will slid into Jim Dudley’s old chair, to oversee all operations. I wanted a ‘yes man’ in that position, not someone with his own ideas, and dear Uncle Will fitted the bill perfectly. I had a Skype meeting with Rob Dudley who, to my surprise, was perfectly amenable about selling Calais and the land in France, and also about coming back to run Lanchester Commercial.
“I look forward to the challenge, Isabella,” he said, with his white-toothed, handsome smile. “You’re right; it’s the perfect position for me, with the contacts I’ve made over the years, and as for being in Norfolk—well, it couldn’t work out better, with Amy’s family. I’ll be in the right position to maybe do some land deals with my father-in-law to be, as well.”
“That’s what I’d anticipated,” I said. Rob was like Jim; he made one feel all woman, even over a not very satisfactory Skype connection. I nearly started spouting about him not holding my dismissal of his father against me, smiling warmly and thrusting out my non-existent bosom, but I stopped myself in time. I had to show strength, not justify my actions to an underling.
“Yeah, don’t worry about the thing with Dad,” he said, reading my mind, the clever so-and-so, “he wouldn’t want me to chuck my job up because of what happened. I’m more than happy to stay, Isabella.”
The emphasised use of my Christian name worked, cheesy though it was. He flashed that smile again, and I called an end to the conversation before I gave him one back.
After all, he was another of my sister’s conquests. And engaged to a sweet simpering blonde. And only half as hot as his father. All of which stopped me acting like an idiot.
Rob excepted, I needed to be rid of the people who’d acted behind my back to help Jim put his plans into action. Erin wasn’t keen, but Cecilia Williams and I put our heads together and came up with various ways in which their behaviour could be construed as gross misconduct. Very creative, was Cecilia. Out went various people in Finance and Legal, Erin’s old boyfriend Eddie Courtenay, and Tim Wyatt, who was some relation of one of Annette Hever’s alleged lovers. When anyone complained, and most of them did, I handed them a leaflet about tribunals and told them to get on with it. That soon shut them up. I looked around the company and chose my own people for Sales and Marketing. Allocate positions of power to those whose trustworthiness has been proven. That was what Dad had told me.
Once I had all immediate staff changes in place, I turned my attention to financial affairs.
A weekend with the accounts for the last year made me realise that big, big adjustments were needed.
With the dead wood ousted from Sales and Marketing I no longer had to worry about falsified expense accounts, but I needed a blueprint for our fiscal future. It was Will who helped me out here.
“Ah, I know of something that might interest you,” he said. “When your grandfather feared he was not long for this world, back in 1973, he wrote a fairly detailed reference manual for Harry, outlining all his strategies. Harry being Harry, he only looked at it once or twice, preferring to make his own observations, but I know where it is. It’s locked away in the safe, in Finance.”
We found it, and I spent a couple of days poring over it.
I was completely absorbed.
&
nbsp; It was like stepping back into the past. Jasper’s old secretary, June, who stayed with Dad for some years too, had typed it up; I loved looking at the old-fashioned font on the yellowing sheets of paper. I gained a wonderful feeling of my place in the world as I sat in Jasper Senior’s old chair reading his words, his portrait hanging behind my head.
My grandfather. My family.
Parts of the document were outdated and hilariously irrelevant, especially June’s suggestions for economies within the office; mentions of tea urns, carbon paper and typewriter ribbons made me laugh, and I bookmarked those sections to amuse Will, too. But it gave me lots of ideas to work with, especially Jasper’s theory that if you took care of the pennies, the coffers filled themselves.
I loved that idea. I decided there and then that not a penny would ever be spent that wasn’t absolutely necessary. I would review every single purchase order to our suppliers, but first I would start at the bottom.
On the ground floor, next to the post room, was the stationery and office equipment store. Although two of the clerks in General Accounts did a weekly stock-take and ordered necessary items, there was no control over it. Everyone just went in and helped themselves, a throwback to the extravagant, carefree days of my father. Now, I chose the most efficient of those clerks and made her the full time office sundries distribution manager. She drafted a spreadsheet listing every member of staff, and all requests for stationery, be they for new laptops or packets of biros, would be made via Heather, and logged on the records. The subsequent barrage of complaints proved I was right to implement this procedure; had I gone into the homes of all the staff in Head Office I daresay I would have found Dictaphones, expensive stationery, stacking trays, all sorts. I asked that the new system be installed at Lanchester Commercial, at Lanchester North, and in all the estate agencies, too. In the first month, our office sundries expenses went down by thousands of pounds.
I knew I was mocked for giving my attention to something so trivial in a huge company such as ours; Susan, who acted as my spy, told me that some of the men said things like, “I see Ms Lanchester knows what’s important; take care of the paper clips, and the multi-million pound contracts will take care of themselves,” and some wag in the art department e-mailed round a cartoon of me beaming at a nice tidy stationery cupboard while a huge building was demolished in the background (Jane found it and showed it to me) but I knew what I was doing. I was putting a message across. I was in charge now, the company was being streamlined, I knew every little scam going, and nobody was doing so much as nicking a pencil sharpener without me knowing about it.