Читать книгу A Spring Wedding - Alice Ross - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

Jake O’Donnell didn’t swear. Normally. Today, however, he made an exception. Stopping his jeep at the gate of the third field of cows the grating voice on the sat nav directed him to, he uttered a couple of expletives before stabbing at the button and switching it off. He could do a better job without it, despite not having a clue where he was, or being able to rely on that old-fashioned time-served method of following a map: his misjudged faith in modern technology meant he hadn’t brought one. Oh well, he couldn’t be any more lost so he might as well carry on driving until he stumbled upon his destination of Buttersley, or met someone who could point him in the right direction. Still, there was one consolation he concluded, as a waft of warm June air scented with manure drifted through the open window: he was - however inadvertently – discovering the delights of the Yorkshire countryside and, with the sun beating down from the dazzling cloudless sky, he couldn’t have chosen a better day for it.

Annie Richards’s calves ached. And she had a stitch. And she could feel a blister bubbling on her left foot. But she was determined not to stop running. If she could just make it back to Buttersley, she would have completed five miles - the longest distance she had ever run in her entire life. Visualisation! That was what the running magazines recommended. She needed to visualise herself completing the Buttersley 10k race in a few weeks’ time. Oh yes. She could imagine it now: the deafening roar of the huge, flag-waving crowd spurring her on – although, given how small Buttersley was, it would more likely be a low-key rumble from a handful of pensioners flapping their bus passes. Still, that rumble would, hopefully, make all the hours of training, the blisters and the aching muscles worthwhile. If it didn’t, Annie knew exactly who to blame: her best friend Portia Pinkington-Smythe.

Were it not for Portia, Annie would never have contemplated running anything other than the bath. She often wondered why she couldn’t have a normal female best friend instead of a gorgeous war correspondent, who also happened to be a member of the super-rich aristocratic Pinkington-Smythe family. But, for all their differences, the two of them had forged a bond which had lasted three decades – ever since their first day at boarding school. Had it not been for the nominal fees Annie’s mother’s head teacher post entitled her to, it was likely the two girls’ worlds would never have coincided. But Annie was immensely grateful they had. Particularly over the last few years. Indeed, without Portia she had no idea how she would have coped. The girl had proved a lifesaver, although, given that this running business had been her suggestion, she might well be a life-ender if Annie dropped down dead with a heart attack.

‘Oh, look – a list of forty things to do before you’re forty,’ Portia announced a couple of months ago, sitting in Annie’s kitchen cradling a mug of coffee and flicking through a magazine. ‘I’m going to pick ten for you and you have to make sure you do them in the next five years.’ She rummaged around in her handbag and pulled out a red pen.

Across the table, Annie spluttered on her herbal tea. ‘Er, don’t forget that it’s not just me turning forty in five years’ time. We’re in this together remember. And you’re a month ahead of me.’

‘I’m perfectly aware of that, thank you,’ replied Portia, shaking back her mane of glossy dark hair. ‘But I’m not the one who is in a rut.’

‘Neither am I.’ Annie set down her cup with great purpose.

Portia began circling things on the list. ‘Oh no?’ she asked, without looking up. ‘When was the last time you had a proper night out? Met someone new? Did something … exciting?’

Pushing back her chair from the table, Annie stood up and took the four steps necessary to reach the kitchen sink. ‘I don’t want to do anything exciting,’ she said, turning on the tap and squirting washing-up liquid over the dishes in the bowl. ‘I’m perfectly happy with my life as it is.’

‘So you keep saying. But it’s not normal for a gorgeous woman in her prime to sit in every evening watching TV and playing with Lego®.’

‘Um, in case you had forgotten,’ pointed out Annie, frothing the bubbles in the bowl with her hand, ‘I am a single mother with a five year old child. And I think you’re overegging it with the “gorgeous”.’

‘No I’m not. You are gorgeous. Or at least you would be if you made more of an effort; wore some make-up every now and again. There are lots of yummy mummies around these days. The celeb mags are full of them. .’

‘Those mummies have wall-to-wall hairdressers, wardrobes full of designer clothes and a squadron of personal trainers. This one owns a tiny cake shop which just about funds a bi-monthly cut-and-blow and her daughter’s shoes.’

‘Well, it’s not right,’ huffed Portia, putting down her pen and taking another slug of coffee. ‘You’re always putting yourself last. It’s time you did something for you.’

Annie rolled her eyes. Honestly, as much as she loved her best friend, it was glaringly obvious sometimes that they inhabited completely different worlds. ‘And when do you suggest I find time to do that?’ she asked archly.

‘You could leave Sophie with your parents for a couple of weeks and fly over to Majorca. Stay at the villa. You’d have a great time. And … you might even find a sexy rich man.’

Annie turned off the tap and spun around to face her friend. ‘You know I can’t leave Sophie with my parents. They’re far too old to cope with an energetic five year old, who, incidentally, now has to go to school. Besides, I don’t want a sexy rich man. Or a man of any description. Do I need to remind you how my last relationship ended?’

Portia sniffed derisively. ‘That’s because Lance is a louse. They’re not all like that. I know you find it hard to believe but there actually are some decent men out there. You’ve just got to give them a chance. Look here – number thirty-eight on this list: fall madly in love.’

‘Written by a deluded romantic,’ tutted Annie. ‘I’d rather trust a funnel-web spider than another man. Life is much more straightforward without them. Now, what else is on that list?’

‘Run a marathon.’

‘Now that –’ Annie chuckled, ‘– is a much more tempting proposition.’

And so Annie had seized that last challenge and ran with it – literally. Given that anything remotely resembling aerobic activity until that day had been a trot around her bijou lounge with the vacuum cleaner, she was building up gradually, starting with the 10k. Needless to say, the first sightings of her in her running shorts, puce-faced and dripping with sweat, caused much consternation amongst the village residents, several of whom questioned her sanity. But Annie was relishing the challenge. It was a long time since she’d set a goal and thrown herself into achieving it. All goal setting belonged to a former life, one which now seemed a million light years away. Things had changed dramatically since then. She had changed dramatically since then. Yet, despite these dramatic changes, she was determined to complete this race – even if they had to carry her over the finish line – which, given her stitch, blister and aching limbs, was more than a remote possibility.

The glorious sunshine, dazzling blue sky and stunning Yorkshire countryside still abounded but Jake’s appreciation was waning. Rapidly. It felt as though he’d been driving for days – weeks even – instead of the six hours it actually was. He drove so rarely these days, he wasn’t used to it. Nor was it an activity he enjoyed, which was hardly surprising given what had happened five years ago. And on roads just like these - apparently innocuous, idyllic country roads where fatal disaster seemed unimaginable. Yet Jake could imagine it all too well – even now, years on. Still, now wasn’t the time to dwell on that. He shook his head in an attempt to temporarily dislodge the memory of that fateful day. He would never erase it permanently. It was etched on his mind like the words on Nina’s marble headstone – something else he did not want to think about just now. He took a deep breath in and concentrated on his driving. Tension gripped his shoulders and his back ached. All the roads were beginning to look the same and he hadn’t seen a signpost for miles. He desperately needed a pint and something to eat. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Almost two o’clock. No wonder he was starving. At this rate he may have to resort to boy scout tactics and go and catch a fish or something. But no – there was hope. He pushed his sunglasses a shade higher up the bridge of his nose. He could see a runner in the distance. There was life out there after all. His spirits lifted as he applied a little more pressure to the accelerator.

A serious stitch pierced Annie’s left side. But she couldn’t stop running. She only had a mile to go. That should take her approximately ten minutes. Ten minutes before she could kick off her trainers and sink into a steaming hot bubble bath. She attempted to visualise that scenario but failed. The stitch was too bad. Instead, she turned up the volume on her iPod. Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk flooded her ears – the perfect tune to spur her on. Taking a deep inhalation, she gritted her teeth and continued running.

Jake eased off the accelerator as he approached the runner. It was a girl, with a ponytail of honey-blonde curls swinging from the back of a pink baseball cap. Courtesy of her black running shorts, though, it was her legs that really caught his attention – long, toned and tanned legs, moving at an impressive rate. Manoeuvring the jeep parallel to her, he pressed the button to lower the passenger-side window.

‘Excuse me,’ he ventured, one hand on the steering wheel as he leaned towards the open window.

The girl appeared not to notice him. Jake could see that she had earphones in. He rolled the car a little further ahead. As it hit her eye-line, she started slightly and turned to face him, still running. He could just make out the lower part of her face, the rest obscured by the rim of her cap.

‘Excuse me, but I’m looking for Buttersley. You couldn’t point me in the right direction could you?’

She pulled out her right earphone. Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk drifted out. ‘Sorry,’ she puffed, holding out the earphone to indicate she hadn’t heard him.

‘Buttersley?’ repeated Jake, raising his eyebrows optimistically.

‘Left at the junction and you’re there,’ she replied, tossing him a cursory smile.

‘Great. Thanks.’

She didn’t look at him again, but held up her hand in reply, before stuffing the earphone back in.

Well, thank goodness for that, mused Jake. He was on the right road – at long last. He glanced in his rear-view mirror as he drove away. The girl was still running – with those legs. He swiped a bead of sweat from his brow and suddenly felt quite peculiar.

An hour later, eventually arriving at his destination via the village pub where he’d tucked into a hearty portion of fish and chips followed by apple pie and custard, Jake almost had to pinch himself. Fate had definitely shone on him the day he bumped into Jasper Pinkington-Smythe at the London airport a few weeks ago. Jake was flying home to Scotland after a meeting with his literary agent. Jasper had been en route to his family’s villa in Majorca. He asked Jake what he was up to and Jake muttered something about having a stab at writing a book. The predictable ‘what about?’ followed. Never comfortable talking about his writing, Jake mumbled something vague about a murder-mystery set in a medieval castle.

‘If you’re looking for somewhere atmospheric to write it, you could always use Buttersley Manor - our family pile in Yorkshire,’ Jasper chuckled. ‘Not quite a castle, but it’s medieval and even has the obligatory ghost apparently.’

‘That’s very kind,’ Jake replied. ‘But I couldn’t.’ He hadn’t seen Jasper for years. It didn’t seem right. Jasper, on the other hand, didn’t seem remotely bothered by that fact.

‘Why not? The place will be empty for the next six weeks. Seriously. You’d be doing us a favour. Always better to have someone in it. Security and all that.’

‘It’s really good of you to offer, but I couldn’t,’ Jake insisted.

And the subject had been dropped. Or so Jake had thought. Emptying his rucksack at home later that evening, he’d discovered a large brass key wrapped in a brown paper bag. On the bag were a couple of blobs of strawberry jam and scribbled directions to Buttersley Manor. Jasper had obviously hidden it in the bag when Jake wasn’t looking.

Jake’s initial reaction was to return the key. But, bitten by curiosity, he couldn’t resist Googling the manor. The images had blown him away. Seeds of inspiration had sprouted just looking at them. But he couldn’t possibly take Jasper up on his offer. It didn’t seem right. Then again, hadn’t he said the place would be empty for the next six weeks? Hadn’t he insisted Jake would be doing them a favour? And, if the man had been resourceful enough to slip Jake the key, didn’t that provide some indication of how much he wanted him to go? Flicking through the pictures Jake decided he did want to go. Very much. Six glorious uninterrupted weeks in a majestic setting, where he could write to his heart’s content. What more could an author ask for?

Now, inside the manor, wandering from wonderful room to wonderful room, breathing in the heady mix of wood polish, dust, and centuries of Pinkington-Smythe family history, Jake couldn’t believe his luck. The place was a writer’s heaven, a creative paradise oozing atmosphere from every knot of wood, stone fireplace and panelled wall. Excitement bubbled in his stomach. He would stock up on provisions, find the perfect writing spot – a small drawing room on the ground floor overlooking a lawn looked promising – and he would absorb himself in the writing of his next book. Lose himself, once again, in another imaginary world – one infinitely preferable to the real world.

Of course, Jake had not always harboured such reclusive tendencies. A short time ago such an existence would have seemed complete anathema to him. A life without the buzz and banter of the office – without the adrenalin rush of split-second, multi-million pound decisions, and without the constant need to keep one step ahead, to keep one’s pulse on world affairs and second-guess the markets – would not have seemed like a life worth living. But that had been five years ago. Before Nina’s death. Before her beautiful young life had been abruptly ended on a country road by a cocky seventeen year old.

At first people blamed shock for Jake’s change in behaviour. Time is a great healer, they said. But it wasn’t. Jake could still remember opening the door to the chubby policeman as if it had been yesterday. The man’s hands had been covered in flecks of white paint. For some unfathomable reason it was those flecks of paint Jake had focused on as the devastating news had drifted from the constable’s mouth. The words had bounced off him like hailstones off a tin roof. He’d heard them but couldn’t take them in. It wasn’t until Nina’s funeral ten days later, as he stood in the graveyard watching the mahogany box which contained her beautiful body – the body he had known so intimately – being lowered into the hole in the ground, that the implications of what had happened struck him. Nina was dead. And so, too, was the child she’d been carrying, the child they’d created together, the daughter he would never now hold in his arms. That evening he cried until the tears ran dry. Then he sat up all night and made some life-changing decisions.

‘But you can’t sell the business,’ his second-in-command, Mark, protested the following day. ‘You’ve spent years building it up. Look at all the blood, sweat and tears you’ve put into it. You’re exactly where you wanted to be – the most successful fund manager in Europe.’

‘Well, maybe I don’t want to be there any more,’ Jake countered. ‘Maybe now I want something completely different.’

‘You’re rushing into things. Why don’t you take a few months off? Go travelling or something? Do … I don’t know … whatever you feel like doing.’

‘This is what I feel like doing.’

‘But you’re in shock. It’s only days since Nina … since Nina … ’

‘Died, Mark. Nina is dead,’ Jake cut in, amazed that such a tragic incident, which had ended two lives and touched so many others, could be summed up in three short words.

‘Exactly. Which is why this is not a good time to make any decisions, never mind one so drastic.’

‘It’s what I want to do.’

And so, despite the media furore and industry speculation, Jake organised a management buyout, offloading the business to his employees. He sold his Chelsea apartment and bought a small cottage in Scotland on the banks of Loch Tay - a modest, peaceful house in a secluded spot, nestled amongst the heather. After a few months the invitations to London parties and requests to visit dwindled. Jake had been relieved. London – and his old life - seemed a million miles away, as if it had all belonged to someone else.

Becoming accustomed to his own company, Jake spent weeks exploring the Scottish countryside, days walking from dawn ‘til dusk. Then, as winter drew nearer and the days grew shorter, he looked for something to occupy his time indoors. He decided to write a book.

From a germ of an idea, a dark mystery set in Victorian London sprouted. With only a vague idea of the plot, once Jake began to type, the words flowed and flowed - at an astonishing rate. It took only ten weeks for him to complete the book. Ten weeks in which he completely absorbed himself. He didn’t listen to the radio, he didn’t watch TV, he didn’t read a newspaper, he scarcely set foot outside the house. Then he looked at the four hundred pages filled with neatly typed words and wondered what to do with them. In the absence of any better ideas he emailed them to a literary agent in London using the pen name Martin Sinclair. To his amazement, he received a reply eight weeks later, saying they were very interested and would like to meet him.

It had been strange flying down to London for the meeting. There was a whole world out there he’d completely forgotten about: a bustling, busy world he no longer belonged to. He made his way to the agent’s office in Mayfair where he was introduced to Tanya. He had intended to say little about his past but, to his dismay, Tanya recognised him immediately.

‘Oh my god,’ her glossy red lips gasped. ‘This is fantastic. Marketing will have so many angles to go at. Jake O’Donnell – billionaire financial genius – now a successful author.’

‘No,’ Jake protested. ‘I want the book published under my pen name.’

As if addressing someone of below-average intelligence, Tanya’s voice adopted a quelling edge. ‘Now that would be silly. Using your real name we could triple sales, quadruple them even. You could make a fortune – well, another fortune,’ she added, with a knowing titter and a flutter of heavily-mascaraed lashes.

Nausea engulfed Jake at the mere thought of all the media hype. ‘I don’t care,’ he maintained. ‘Either the book goes out under my pen name, or it doesn’t go out at all.’

And so, despite Tanya’s pouting and whingeing and unsubtle attempts to use her feminine wiles to persuade him otherwise, Jake won. His first novel had been published under his pen name, as had his subsequent two books. And in each one the author biography merely stated Martin Sinclair lives in rural Scotland. Unlike other authors Martin Sinclair had no website, no blog, and, most significantly of all, no media photograph. The agency remained unimpressed but, with the books contributing significantly to their profit margin, on the whole they kept quiet. It was a situation Jake was more than content with. And now, at Buttersley Manor, he itched to start work on his next offering, to lose himself in a new book. To erect yet another temporary shield to protect himself from his feelings. Feelings he had had never admitted to another living soul.