Читать книгу The Inheritance: Racy, pacy and very funny! - Тилли Бэгшоу - Страница 19

‘Have you seen that stack of marked Year Three homework anywhere? The robot sketches?’

Dylan Pritchard Jones ran a hand through his curly chestnut hair and scanned the mess that was his kitchen. Aside from the detritus of breakfast, almost every surface was covered with copies of Country Living, Elle Décor, Period Homes and every other conceivable variety of interiors magazine. Dylan’s wife, Maisie, was expecting their first child and had gone into a frenzy of what the pregnancy websites called ‘nesting’. Apparently this was a woman’s primitive urge to spend thousands of pounds on expensive Farrow & Ball paint and decorative antique rocking chairs. Dylan prayed it would soon pass. On an art teacher’s salary, it was not easy to make Maisie’s Homes & Gardens dreams come true.

‘Last I saw them they were upstairs on the landing.’ Maisie chewed grimly on a piece of dry toast. ‘I passed them on my way to the loo at about five a.m.’

Pregnancy had not been kind to Dylan’s young wife. Relentless morning sickness had turned Maisie’s former peaches and cream complexion an unattractive shade of greenish-grey. At only a few months gone she was already thirty pounds heavier than usual, and her legs were covered with revolting varicose veins that reminded Dylan of mould running through a slab of Stilton cheese. Apparently there were men who found their pregnant wives uniquely attractive and desirable. Dylan Pritchard Jones could only imagine that their wives looked more like expectant supermodels – lithe amazons with compact little bumps beneath their lululemon tank tops – and less like the swollen, exhausted figure of his own other half. He tried to be a patient and understanding husband. But he couldn’t help but count down the days till it was over, and prayed that Maisie intended to get her figure back quickly afterwards. His suggestion last week that she think about hiring a trainer had been met with what he felt was excessive frostiness.

‘Thanks, you’re an angel.’ Kissing her on the head, Dylan raced upstairs, grabbed the work and ran out to his car, a piece of peanut butter toast still clamped between his teeth. St Hilda’s art teacher was perennially late. It was part of his charm, along with his broad, boyish smile, twinkly, bright blue eyes, and the mop of curls that made him look years younger than his actual age of thirty-three, and that women had always found hugely attractive. Dylan Pritchard Jones enjoyed being the ‘cool’ teacher at St Hilda’s, the one whose classes the children actually looked forward to, and with whom all the pretty mothers flirted at parents’ evening. Yes, Fittlescombe’s primary school was a small pool. But Dylan was the prettiest fish in it, if not the biggest. He loved his life.

In the staff room at St Hilda’s, tempers were fraying. The Year Six SAT exams were less than a month away now, but the government had seen fit to choose this moment to dump an enormous amount of additional paperwork on its already overloaded state teachers. This morning’s staff meeting had been called to agree a consensus on whether or not Max Bingley should hire an additional administration person. Cuts would have to be made to pay for such a hire, so it was vital that all the departments be represented. The art department, as usual, was late.

‘We really can’t put this off any longer.’ Ella Bates, one of the two Year Six class teachers, voiced what the entire room was thinking. ‘If Dylan can’t be bothered to turn up for the vote, he doesn’t deserve a say in it.’

‘It’s not a matter of what he deserves,’ Max Bingley said calmly. ‘We need consensus, Ella.’

In Max’s long experience, all staff rooms were political snake pits, even in a tiny, tight-knit school like this one. It had been the same story at Gresham Manor, the private boys prep school in Hampshire where Max had spent most of his career, as head of History and, latterly, deputy head of the school.

Max Bingley had loved his job at Gresham Manor. He would never have taken the St Hilda’s headship had his beloved wife not died two years ago, plunging him into a deep depression. Susie Bingley had had a heart attack aged fifty-two, completely unexpectedly. She’d collapsed at the breakfast table one morning in front of Max’s eyes, keeled over like a skittle. By the time the ambulance arrived at Chichester Hospital she was already dead. Max had kept working. At only fifty-three – with a mortgage to pay, not to mention two daughters still at university – he didn’t have much choice. But without Susie, life had lost all meaning, all joy. He moved through his days at Gresham like a zombie, barely able to find the energy to get dressed in the mornings. The Fittlescombe headship offered a new start and a distraction. Max had taken it under pressure from his girls, but it had been the right decision.

Right, but not easy, either personally or professionally. When Max first arrived at St Hilda’s he’d been forced to cut back a lot of dead wood. Inevitably his decisions to fire certain people had angered some of the remaining staff. As had his hiring choices. The staff room was already divided into ‘Camp Hotham’, the old guard hired by his predecessor and championed by Ella Bates, a heavy-set mathematician in her late fifties with a whiskery moustache, brusque manner and penchant for pop socks that drew an unfortunate amount of attention to her wrinkly knees; and ‘Camp Bingley’, made up of the new teachers and those amongst the old who, like Dylan Pritchard Jones, approved of Max’s old-school teaching style and relentless focus on results. Even Camp Bingley, however, had been resentful of Max’s hiring of Tatiana Flint-Hamilton as an assistant teacher. The fact that Tati was unpaid did little to assuage the anger.

‘We don’t have time to waste training charity cases,’ was how Ella Bates had put it. ‘She’s a drain on resources.’

With the notable exception of Dylan, the other teachers all agreed. So far Max Bingley had held his ground: ‘If we do our jobs and train her properly she could be a vital addition to resources at a fractional cost,’ he argued. But, in truth, he too had doubts about the wisdom of bringing Tatiana on board, doubts made worse by the new administrative pressures they were under.

‘Sorry I’m late.’ Dylan breezed in, looking anything but sorry. Mrs Bates and the headmaster both gave him angry looks, but the rest of the (mostly female) staff swiftly melted beneath the warm glow of the famous Pritchard Jones smile.

‘Traffic,’ he grinned. ‘It was bumper to bumper on Mill Lane this morning.’

This was a joke. There was no traffic in Fittlescombe. Tatiana laughed loudly, then clapped a hand over her mouth when she realized that no one else was following suit. ‘Sorry.’

She’d made the mistake of inviting a girlfriend from her party days, Rita Babbington, down to Greystones for the night last night. Inevitably the two of them had begun reminiscing – Tati’s days and nights had been so unutterably boring recently, just talking about excitements past felt like a thrill – and Rita had demanded cocktails. Multiple home-made margaritas later – Tati might never have had to pay for a drink in her life, but she certainly knew how to make a world-class cocktail and after four lines of some truly spectacular cocaine that Rita had brought down with her ‘in case of emergency’, Tatiana had collapsed into bed with her heart and mind racing. She’d woken this morning with a dry mouth and a head that felt as if she’d spent the night with her skull wedged in a vice, tightened hourly by malevolent elves. It was a testament to her friendship with Dylan Pritchard Jones that he still had the capacity to make her laugh.

Not for the first time, Dylan reflected on how beautiful St Hilda’s new teaching assistant was, and how out of place such a stunning young creature looked in their grotty staff room. Although he did notice the shadows under Tatiana’s feline green eyes this morning. Clearly she’d had a lot more fun last night than he had.

The headmaster’s voice cut through his reverie. ‘Right. Now that we’re all here, a vote. To hire an additional PA for a year will cost us thirty thousand pounds. That’s money we don’t have. It would have to be funded out of a combination of cuts to nonessential classes – that’s art, music and games – and salary cuts. I don’t have all the numbers worked out yet. I just need to know if, in theory, this is something you’re open to or not. So. A show of hands please for making this hire.’

Nine hands, including Mrs Bates’s, went reluctantly up. Dylan Pritchard Jones’s did not. Nor did Orla O’Reilly’s, the reception teacher, or Tatiana’s.

‘I can’t afford a pay-cut,’ said Orla. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘And I don’t see art as nonessential,’ said Dylan. ‘I’m not sorry,’ he added, winking at Tatiana.

‘What about you, Tatiana?’ Max Bingley asked.

‘What?’ Sarah Yeardye, the Year Two teacher, failed to conceal her outrage. ‘You can’t seriously propose giving her a vote? She doesn’t teach here. None of this affects her.’

A chorus of angry ‘hear-hears!’ rang out around the room.

‘I assumed I didn’t have a vote,’ Tati said meekly.

‘Well you do,’ said Max. He believed in consulting his staff and gaining consensus where he could. But he was headmaster here. He wasn’t going to be dictated to by Miss Yeardye and Mrs Bates. He also suspected, rightly, that a lot of the antipathy towards Tati from the other teachers was rooted in nothing more worthy than old-fashioned envy. Before Tati came along, Sarah Yeardye had been widely acknowledged as the most attractive teacher at St Hilda’s, the one that all the fathers fancied. Now she was as good as invisible.

‘Yes or no?’

Surveying the sea of hostile faces, Tati locked on to Dylan Pritchard Jones’s encouraging smile.

‘No,’ she said boldly.

Fuck them all. They’re never going to like me, even if I vote yes. And Dylan could use the support.

‘That’s still nine to four in favour,’ said Ella Bates stridently.

‘Nine to five. I also vote no,’ said Max Bingley. ‘It’s an unnecessary expense.’

‘It is not unnecessary!’ Mrs Bates snapped.

Things looked set to deteriorate into a full-on slanging match until Sarah Yeardye piped up: ‘Why can’t Tatiana take on the extra paperwork?’

Everyone fell silent.

‘She’s a free resource we already have just sitting here,’ said Sarah.

The entire room brightened up at this suggestion. Even Max had to admit it was quite a good idea. Before long the chorus of ‘yes, why nots?’ was quite deafening.

‘Tatiana,’ Max asked. ‘Would you be willing?’

‘Of course,’ Tati said through gritted teeth. Bloody Sarah. That bitch had been out to get her since day one. ‘I mean, I may need some guidance …’

‘I’m afraid none of us has time for handholding,’ Ella Bates barked unkindly. ‘If you can’t fill in some simple administrative forms, then you’ve no business being here in the first place.’

Ella Bates’s chin was so whiskery and wart-ridden, she reminded Tati of a Roald Dahl character. Mrs Twit, perhaps. The fact that there was apparently a Mr Bates somewhere, or had been once, astounded her.

‘I have time,’ said Dylan, helping himself to coffee from the machine in the corner. ‘If Tati’s prepared to help me save the art programme for our children, the least I can do is give her some guidance.’

‘Marvellous.’ Max Bingley rubbed his hands together with satisfaction just as the bell went. ‘That’s settled then. Let’s get to class.’

‘Thanks,’ Tati said to Dylan as they all filed out.

‘What for?’ said Dylan. ‘You just saved my neck. All our necks, although those old clucks are too blind to see it.’

‘They hate me,’ Tati sighed.

‘No they don’t.’ Dylan put a friendly arm around her shoulders. ‘They hate change, that’s all. They’re set in their ways. And maybe just a wee bit jealous. Don’t let them get you down.’

Dylan dashed off to his art class while Tati headed to the library. On the rare occasions she was actually allowed to help with teaching, she felt flashes of happiness and confidence. But most of her days were spent on menial chores such as today’s, when she was scheduled to spend the morning re-cataloguing the school’s library books. It was a boring, mindless job. But it gave her much-needed time to think about her legal battle and the all-important next steps.

Tatiana’s challenge to her father’s will was due in court in September, only three months hence. Raymond Baines, Tati’s lawyer, had asked her to put together a dossier of all emails, letters and conversations in which Rory had alluded to her inheritance of Furlings. She was also supposed to be getting him detailed research on the estate’s history, particularly anything that might smack of an historic entailment; and a list of villagers prepared to attest to the fact that they understood the local manor would always be owned by a Flint-Hamilton and who were actively supporting Tati’s claim. So far she had about thirty definites on the list, including Mr and Mrs Preedy at the Village Stores, Danny Jenner, the publican at The Fox, who’d always fancied her, Harry Hotham, St Hilda’s ex-headmaster, and Lady Mitchelham, a prominent local magistrate. Will Nutley, Fittlescombe’s cricketing hero, was a highly probable, and a smattering of other families had agreed to help Tati in her fight to oust the Cranleys. She was touched by their support – she’d worked hard for it – but the case was still a long shot at best. Collating the documents her solicitor needed was a painstaking, time-consuming and frequently frustrating job, which was already monopolizing all Tatiana’s evenings and weekends. Just how she was supposed to fit in a boat-load of St Hilda’s paperwork on top of all that, she had no idea. But she had to try, or the money would stop dead. And it might help her win round some of the staff to add to her list of supporters.

So far her trustees had been as good as their word and released a monthly income to her as soon as she accepted this poxy unpaid job at the school. Tatiana’s father had what he wanted – for now. She was back in the village, working with children, keeping out of trouble.

But not for long, she told herself, pulling stacks of the Oxford Reading Tree down from the shelves and dumping them on one of the library tables for sorting. After September I’ll have my life back. First Furlings. Then all of the rest. This whole period will seem like a bad dream.

An image of Brett Cranley’s arrogant, taunting face popped into her mind, strengthening her resolve. This would be her first and last term at St Hilda’s, putting up with the backstabbing and bitchiness of Ella and Sarah and the rest of them.

Thank God for Dylan Pritchard Jones. Without his kindness and good humour, Tati wasn’t sure she could survive even that.

‘What the hell is this?’

Brett Cranley waved the presentation document in his son’s face furiously, as if it were a weapon. Which, in some ways, it was.

‘I put you in charge of this. I gave you more responsibility, which you said you wanted. And this is the best you can come up with? Jesus Christ, Jason. It’s embarrassing.’

Jason stared out of the window of his father’s London office, wishing he were somewhere else.

Had he said he wanted more responsibility? He certainly couldn’t remember doing so. It seemed most unlike him. Jason viewed coming to work in the family business the way that most people needing root-canal surgery viewed a trip to the dentist. As something deeply and profoundly unpleasant that could not be put off forever.

Brett’s office had great views across the Thames to Tower Bridge. All Brett’s offices had had killer views. The one in Sydney, looking out across the harbour towards the iconic opera house, had been jaw-dropping. Jason assumed it was a power thing, this need for a big, swanky corner office and huge windows and a view that said, Look at me, world. I’ve made it.

Most of Cranley Estates staff worked in modest cubicles on the floor below, with the little natural light coming from windows overlooking the car park and council estate housing blocks to the rear of the building. As they had in Sydney. Brett might have changed things up geographically, but he was still the same bullying megalomaniac he’d always been.

‘I’m sorry you don’t like it.’ Jason spoke in a monotone.

‘It’s not a question of me not liking it,’ Brett goaded. ‘This isn’t a matter of taste. It’s crap. It’s full of typos. The artwork’s shit and what there is of it is out of focus. I’ve seen school kids put together more professional-looking work on Photoshop. This is for McAlpine, for fuck’s sake. They’re a huge potential client.’

‘I know. I’m sorry,’ Jason said again, staring at his shoes.

‘Look at me when you’re talking to me,’ Brett commanded. ‘You really don’t give a shit, do you?’

About the real-estate business? No, I don’t. About you being a dick? Yes, Dad, I give a shit about that. But what can I do?

To his intense distress, Jason found his eyes were filling with tears. He fought them back desperately, forcing himself to meet his father’s angry, disappointed gaze. How he wished he didn’t care! How he wished he had the strength to shrug off Brett’s relentless, soul-crushing criticism and become his own man, making his way in his own world. But that was like a penguin wishing it could fly.

‘I should have asked the art department for help,’ he stammered. ‘I can see that now.’

‘So why didn’t you?’

‘I didn’t want to bother them. They seemed to have a lot on their plates already.’

Brett put his head in his hands and groaned. ‘God give me strength.’ Picking up the phone, he summoned Michelle from reception into his office.

‘Sweetheart, would you see what you can do with this in the next hour?’ He handed her the offending document. ‘Jim Lewis and I are going in to McAlpine this afternoon at two. We sure as hell can’t offer them that load of old bollocks.’

‘Sure. I’ll see what I can do.’

Jason noticed the way Michelle’s hand brushed his father’s as she took the document, and the conspiratorial flash of eye contact that followed. It was an exchange he’d seen scores of times before.

They’re having an affair.

He felt the anger rise up within him. Mostly for his mother – how could Brett do this to her again? Here, in England, what was supposed to be their ‘fresh start’? But also because, in his quiet way, Jason had liked Michelle and hoped she might become a mate. With her short hair and her raucous laugh and her slightly wrong, too-sexy-for-the-office clothes, she seemed kind and irreverent and a laugh. A breath of fresh air in a corporate world that Jason found choking and stifling in the extreme. Now he would have no choice but to avoid her. Another door closing.

As soon as Michelle left the room, Brett turned on him again.

‘What’s wrong now? You look like you’ve swallowed a wasp. I’m the one who should be pissed off here, Jase, not you. You’ve let me down. Again.’

‘You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you?’

Jason was almost as astonished to hear the words come out of his mouth as Brett was.

‘I beg your pardon?’

Brett sounded dangerously angry, but it was too late to back down now.

‘M-M-Michelle,’ Jason stammered. ‘She’s your new mistress, isn’t she? I saw the chemistry between you just now. How could you? How could you do it to Mum?’

‘Now you listen here.’ Brett grasped his son by the shoulders. Although Jason didn’t think so, Brett loved him. He hated Jason’s depression because it was a problem he couldn’t fix, and he resented the boy’s sensitive, open nature because he was congenitally incapable of such emotions himself. But he did love him, and he valued his family more than anything. ‘I don’t know what you think you saw. But you’re wrong. I’m not “doing” anything to your mother. I don’t have a mistress, and if I did, it wouldn’t be one of my employees. Understand?’

Jason nodded, willing it to be true.

‘Go out and get yourself some lunch,’ Brett added gruffly. ‘Clear your head. I’ll see you after the meeting.’

‘OK.’

Brett watched his son leave, shoulders slumped, feet dragging, as defeated as any retreating infantryman. He sat back down at the desk, punching the polished teak in frustration. What the fuck was wrong with the boy? He just didn’t understand it. It was as if he didn’t want to be happy, didn’t want to succeed.

Whatever Jason’s weaknesses, he certainly wasn’t stupid. At least not emotionally. He’d picked up on the vibe between him and Michelle in an instant, like a bloodhound stumbling upon a scent.

I’ll have to be a lot more careful if I’m going to continue to have him work here.

Although it pained Brett to admit it, perhaps he’d been rash in forcing Jason to join the family business. At the time it had seemed an obvious solution to his listlessness. Ever since they arrived in England Jason had been moping around like a wet weekend, hanging around the house and the village, getting under Angie’s feet. It seemed clear to Brett that he needed something to do, some structure to his life. An eight-to-six job interning at Cranley Estates fitted the bill perfectly. Add in the commuting time – Brett spent at least three nights a week at his London flat, but Jason took the train back and forth from Fittlescombe daily – and he wouldn’t have time to dwell on whatever it was that was bothering him.

The theory still sounded solid. But the reality was that Jason loathed the rhythms of office life and found no excitement, no thrill in business, in the daily battle to beat one’s competitors and make money. All Brett had done was to inadvertently parachute a spy into his London life, a spy with the potential to cause serious damage to his family idyll down in Sussex.

Because it was an idyll. Angela was happy to a degree that Brett hadn’t seen in years. Logan seemed to have settled in at school. And Brett felt his own heart soar and spirits lift on a warm Friday evening, leaving grimy, gridlocked London behind, driving through lanes lined with cherry and apple blossoms as he weaved his way through the ancient Downs. Turning into the driveway at Furlings, walking into his beautiful home, to be greeted by his beautiful, smiling, loving wife … It all gave Brett a sense of security and deep contentment that he hadn’t felt since before his mother died.

London, the office, Michelle – not to mention all the other girls he brought back to the flat during the week: that was all part of a different life, a life that Brett had gone to great lengths to compartmentalize, both practically and emotionally.

The thought of Jason jeopardizing this perfect balance sent iced water through Brett’s veins. As did the prospect, remote though it was, of losing Furlings to Tatiana Flint-Hamilton.

Brett Cranley had grown used to scaring off would-be competitors or threats to his interests through a combination of bullying and flexing his economic muscle. If a rival real-estate developer showed an interest in a property Brett wanted, for example, he either simply outbid that developer, or intimidated him into backing down by making multiple threats to his business. And Brett Cranley’s threats were not idle. Renowned as one of the most maliciously, aggressively litigious players in the market, Brett had a legal war chest bigger than the GDP of many small African countries. By dragging out lawsuits, he was able effectively to filibuster smaller players out of the game.

Unfortunately, this strategy did not seem to be working with the tenacious Tatiana Flint-Hamilton. Despite her lack of funds, or even any serious legal case, she’d managed to rally significant support in the village. A County Court judge had already ruled there was enough there for the challenge to be heard in the High Court, and a date had been set for September.

Brett had already spent a fortune employing a team of legal experts to look into every possible loophole that Tatiana might conceivably exploit in court. Although he hadn’t paid her another visit in person since their first, ill-fated but memorable encounter, he’d had lawyers send an array of bullying letters in an attempt to get her to drop the case. Tatiana had responded to none of them, and had even had the nerve to hand the last, most aggressive missive to Logan at school. Sealed in a fresh envelope, with ‘Return to Sender’ written boldly on the front, she’d instructed the little girl to deliver it to her father.

‘What is it?’ Logan asked.

‘It’s a birthday card.’

‘But Daddy’s birthday’s not till August.’

‘It’ll be his first then, won’t it?’ Tati smiled sweetly. She was very fond of Logan, who was in her remedial reading group at school, and did her best to forget that the child was a Cranley.

Brett opened the envelope that evening at dinner. Inside was his latest lawyer’s letter and a two-word note from Tati.

‘Bugger Off.’

That was the night he’d decided to take Gabriel Baxter up on his offer and sell off two hundred acres of Furlings’ farmland. Once the deal was done, Brett had played Tati at her own game and sent copies of the new deeds with Gabe’s name on them to school, via Logan. His envelope also contained a two-word note.

‘Give Up.’

But of course Tati hadn’t.

Even more infuriating than his inability to bully her out of court were the erotic dreams Brett found himself having about her almost nightly. The whole of England knew about Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s wild sexual exploits in the years leading up to her father’s death. But as far as Brett could see, since she’d returned to Fittlescombe and hunkered down on his doorstep, like a fungus asserting its unwanted presence at the roots of a giant oak, Tatiana had lived the life of a nun. Once or twice Angela had reported seeing her looking chummy with the married art teacher at St Hilda’s, Dylan Pritchard Jones, a jumped-up popinjay of a man if ever Brett saw one.

Curious, Brett had asked Gabe Baxter in conversation what he thought of Dylan.

‘He’s all right,’ Gabe had shrugged, but he said it in a tone that made it plain he wasn’t a fan. ‘We used to be mates. We play cricket together.’

‘But …?’

‘He’s vain. I’m not surprised he and Tatiana are getting friendly. They’re like two peas in a pod.’

The thought of Tatiana’s perfect, youthful, curvaceous, sinfully sensual body being plundered by a vain village schoolteacher was not a pleasant one. But it was hardly worse than the idea of her going to bed alone every night, less than a mile from the spot where Brett himself was trying and failing to go to sleep, twitching with anger and frustration. It wasn’t simply that he couldn’t have her, although that certainly rankled. It was the idea of all that youth and beauty going to waste. In far too many ways, Tatiana Flint-Hamilton felt like a thorn in Brett Cranley’s side. He longed for September, for the court case to be over and done with, and for the girl to go crawling back to her old, dissolute lifestyle somewhere far, far away from Furlings and from him.

And yet …

Michelle knocked on his office door.

‘Is the coast clear?’ she asked conspiratorially. She held a mug of hot tea in each hand, one for her and one for Brett. Pushing the door closed behind her with her bottom, she handed Brett his tea, kissing him fleetingly on the lips as she did so. Brett put the mug down on his desk and slipped a hand under her sweater, more out of habit than desire.

‘We’re going to have to cool it,’ he said, caressing her wonderfully full, heavy right breast. ‘Jason’s suspicious.’

‘I see. And this is you cooling it, is it?’ Michelle smiled, closing her eyes and enjoying the sensation of Brett’s warm hands on her bare skin. She knew Brett Cranley was a shit. That their affair – if you could even call it that – was going nowhere. But he was so funny and charming and exciting and so interested in her. When Brett looked at her, she didn’t feel like Michelle Slattery, secretary from Colchester. She felt like somebody important, somebody who mattered. Like a muse. Josephine to Brett’s Napoleon, Cleopatra to Brett’s Caesar. It was that ego boost, more than anything, that she couldn’t quite bring herself to give up.

Reluctantly, Brett removed his hands. ‘I’m serious. Just for a while, while Jase is here. I wouldn’t want to upset the apple cart, if you know what I mean.’

Michelle knew exactly what he meant. If it upset her, she hid it well, changing the subject with her usual good-humoured briskness.

‘He’s a sweetheart, your son, but he did make a bit of a pig’s ear of that document.’

Brett rolled his eyes. ‘Can you fix it?’

‘Oh yes.’ Michelle said confidently. Brett loved her competence almost as much as he loved her warm, welcoming, womanly body. ‘I’ll whip it into shape. Drink your tea now. I’ll be cross if you let that get cold.’

By late June a heat wave had descended over the whole south of England. In London this meant office workers in rolled-up sleeves eating their lunches in the park, and restaurants shoving tables out onto pavements, doing their best to look as if they were in Rome. Fittlescombe, like the rest of the Swell Valley, opened its back doors and spent an inordinate amount of time lounging about in its collective gardens in deckchairs. Whittles, the off-licence in the village, sold out of Pimm’s. Red-faced children sucked greedily on Wall’s ice lollies. And everywhere a holiday mood prevailed.

At Furlings, Angela Cranley finally felt as if she were getting into her stride. She’d hired Karen, a girl from the village, as a cleaner to help out Mrs Worsley, as well as a boy to assist Jennings in the garden. The Flint-Hamiltons’ old gardener was highly resistant to the idea.

‘I know me way about,’ Jennings muttered stubbornly when Angela first suggested it. ‘I don’t need some bloody little Herbert getting under me feet.’ But in fact, he did need it. His arthritis was so bad at times that he could hardly hold a pair of secateurs, still less get on his hands and knees to weed the rose and lavender beds at the front of the house. Angela didn’t know exactly how old Mr Jennings was. (Nobody did, it seemed, not even the man himself.) But he was certainly over seventy. His face was as gnarled and weather-beaten as a pickled walnut and his chest made a terrible wheezing, rattling sound as he shuffled about, like a concertina punctured by a sword.

Happily, however, once eighteen-year-old Alfie finally arrived and began tidying potting sheds, mending tools and making Jennings cups of tea like a whirling dervish, the old man relented. Sitting out on the terrace at the back of the house, overlooking the lawn and rolling acres of parkland beyond, Angela watched happily as man and boy tended the flowerbeds, Alfie pruning and Jennings given directions, waving his spindly old arms about like a general on a battlefield.

Noticing that her own arms were turning pink and freckly, despite the lashings of factor fifty sun block she’d applied only an hour ago, Angela retreated indoors. It was half past two on a Friday afternoon, almost time to collect Logan from school. Logan, thank God, seemed to have settled in brilliantly both at school and in the village. Sweetly, she’d developed a thumpingly enormous crush on Gabe Baxter, the local farmer to whom Brett had just sold some fields. Angela suspected Brett had only done the deal to get back at Tatiana Flint-Hamilton, but that was by the bye. A few nights ago she’d been tidying Logan’s room when she’d found four sheets of A4 paper stuffed under the bed, covered in practice signatures, all of them either Logan Baxter, Mrs Logan Baxter or Mrs Gabriel Baxter.

‘Should we be worried?’ Angela asked Brett. ‘She’s only ten, for God’s sake. Surely we should have a few more years before this starts?’

But Brett had been enchanted, insisting that they keep the papers and frame them. ‘It’s adorable. We should give them to her as a birthday present on her twenty-first.’

Brett would be coming home tonight, along with Jason, whose low moods were starting to worry Angela again. She’d hoped that the job up in London might have opened up some new friendships for him. The village was lovely, and Jason seemed to appreciate it, but there weren’t many opportunities for him to socialize with people his own age. Other than the pub, but Jase had never been the sort of confident man’s man who can strike up easy conversation in a room full of strangers. Unlike his sister, Jason seemed lonelier than ever since their move.

Grabbing a sun hat and a wicker shopping basket (she needed to stop at the greengrocer’s for some white cherries on the way home), Angela set off for the village, pushing her worries about Jason out of her mind for the time being. It was such a glorious day, with the dappled sunlight pouring through the trees and the heady scents of honeysuckle and mown grass hanging thick in the warm air. Turning right out of Furlings’ drive towards the green, she heard the church bells of St Hilda’s toll three times, and watched the front doors of the cottages open one by one as the other village mothers began their various school-runs. They reminded her of the little wooden people that used to come out of her father’s weathervane back home in Australia. There was a woman with an umbrella who popped out if it was raining and a male peasant in breeches and shirtsleeves if it was fine.

Life here can’t have changed much since Elizabethan times, she thought happily. It was odd to feel a connection to the past generations of Fittlescombe dwellers – essentially to dead people – but Angela found that she did, and that the idea of being one in a long line of people who had lived here and loved the place gave her a profound sense of belonging.

Relations with her living neighbours were a little more problematic. Thanks to Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s negative PR campaign, a solid third of the village had taken against the Cranleys before they’d even arrived. Angela had done her best to reverse this, knocking on doors, mucking in at school events, making sure that everyone knew the door to Furlings was always open. But it wasn’t easy, not least because the antipathy wasn’t personal, but rooted in age-old traditions that Angela could barely understand, let alone change.

As Mrs Preedy at the shop put it, ‘It’s not about you, dear. I’m sure you’re lovely. It’s not about that Tatiana either. It’s about what’s right and proper and fair. Not having a Flint-Hamilton at Furlings would be like not having a river in the valley. Old Mr F-H should have consulted local feeling before he went out and changed things, all secretive like, behind people’s backs.’

Not having ever met Rory Flint-Hamilton, there was little Angela could say to this. Even those who approved of the inheritance kept their distance. As the new, rich, foreign owner of ‘The Big House’, Angela was treated with polite deference by the other mums at school, rather than being met as an equal. Without equality there was little chance of friendship. Gabe Baxter’s wife Laura had been kind, even though she obviously disapproved of Brett. As had Penny Harwich, another local engaged to Sussex cricketing hero Santiago de la Cruz. Penny had gone out of her way to include Angela in village WI meetings and girls’ nights out. But Angela still missed her girlfriends back home, and wondered if she would ever truly fit in in the Swell Valley, as much as she loved it here. Of course, if Tatiana won her court case in September, it wouldn’t matter. They’d all have to move again. Angela couldn’t imagine that Brett would agree to stay in Fittlescombe if they lost Furlings. With a shudder, she pushed the thought out of her mind.

She’d arrived at the school gates now. Hovering behind a group of mothers in Logan’s class, about to steel herself to go and join them, she stopped when she overheard a snippet of their conversation.

‘Apparently he’s a total sex addict,’ one of the mums was saying. ‘Worse than Tatiana Flint-Hamilton. He was known for it in Australia.’

‘Well I don’t know about that,’ said her friend. ‘But Oliver saw him in The American Bar at the Savoy on Tuesday night with a girl half his age on his lap, acting like he didn’t have a care in the world.’

‘Yes, well, he doesn’t does he?’ a third woman piped up. ‘He’s got his lovely house, his lovely wife, his lovely life in London. Cat that got the cream, I should say.’

‘Is Oliver sure it was him?’ the first mother asked.

They all laughed at that. ‘You can hardly mistake him. He’s so bloody good looking.’

‘Do you think so?’ The first mother wrinkled her nose. ‘I’ve only met him once but he gives me the creeps. Anyway, what was your husband doing at The Savoy on a Tuesday evening, that’s what I’d like to know? Oliver might have made the whole thing up to cover his own tracks!’

‘Yeah, right. Somehow I don’t think my Ollie has quite the pulling power of Brett Cranley.’

The mothers’ conversation moved on. Behind them, Angela Cranley stood rooted to the spot. She felt dizzy all of a sudden. The sounds of birdsong and chattering voices and the school bell ringing all merged into one muffled dirge that grew louder and louder until she found herself clutching her head. Spots swam before her eyes.

‘Are you all right?’

Someone was touching her arm. Angela turned to look at them but could see nothing but blackness. She felt herself falling, sinking. Then nothing.

‘Mrs Cranley. Mrs Cranley, can you hear me?’

Angela opened her eyes. Max Bingley, Logan’s headmaster, was standing over her. He had one hand on her forehead and the other on her wrist, apparently taking her pulse. When he saw her look up at him he smiled reassuringly.

‘Thank goodness. You had us all worried there for a moment. Mrs Graham, would you fetch Mrs Cranley a large glass of water?’

While the school secretary scuttled off, Angela took in her surroundings. She was in the headmaster’s study, stretched out on the sofa. Copies of the latest OFSTED report lay neatly stacked on the coffee table, and the walls were covered from floor to ceiling with bookshelves. Bingley had an eclectic collection, everything from teaching manuals and curriculum guidelines to Victorian novels and books on travel and adventure.

‘You’re a reader,’ Angela croaked.

‘I should hope so, in my job,’ Max Bingley said amiably. ‘I think you must have had a touch of sunstroke out in the playground. How do you feel?’

‘Embarrassed,’ said Angela. ‘I can’t believe I fainted.’

Painfully, the mothers’ conversation came back to her. It doesn’t mean anything, she told herself angrily. It’s just gossip. A man in Brett’s position gets that sort of crap all the time.

The secretary returned with the water and Max handed it to Angela, propping her up with cushions.

‘Nothing to be embarrassed about,’ he said kindly. ‘Its ridiculously hot out there. I suspect you got a bit dehydrated, that’s all.’

In fact, Max knew what had happened. After Angela passed out, one of the mothers admitted they’d been talking about Brett.