Sommersgate House (5 page)

Julia shed the
suit she had not found the time to change out of and took a quick
shower. Veronika had made certain her shampoo and soap were exactly
where they needed to be.

Even though
she was exhausted, Julia knew she would not sleep, it was daytime
in Indiana and, anyway, sleep had eluded her for months.

She located
and then put on a pair of pale blue yoga pants and a white, ribbed
tank top and inspected Veronika’s work. The fact that she hadn’t
unpacked her own case made Julia uncomfortable, not that Veronika
would be inappropriate, just that Julia was not used to someone
else doing her chores. Nevertheless, Julia had to admit Veronika
did very good work. Everything was put in place, properly (even
obsessively) hung or folded and Julia noted, a bit stunned, ironed.
Rows of shoes matched carefully and lined up perfectly. Her
toiletries were nicely displayed at the dressing table and, when
Julia went back to the bedroom, the framed photographs and scented
candles she’d brought with her were arranged to their best
advantage.

A photo of the
kids, Gavin and Tamsin with Patricia and Julia sat on the bedside
table, everyone with their arms around each other in front of
Patricia’s Christmas tree from two years past. Julia stared at it,
felt the familiar hot tears at the back of her eyes and shook her
head. She couldn’t give in, she’d shed enough tears and now was the
time of healing, of moving forward, of making the best of an
impossible (and inconceivable) situation.

She sat down
and opened the desk. Someone, most likely Mrs. K, had thought to
put some writing tablets, pens and pencils and other office
supplies in the shelves and drawers.

Just a few
days ago, Julia was the head of a grant-making foundation attached
to a small group of three non-profit hospitals. She had been
responsible for disbursing the profits of the hospitals. With her
small team, they called for and assessed grant projects for
everything from equipment for basic research laboratories to doctor
and nursing fellowships to scholarships for students studying any
kind of medicine, be it nursing, physical therapy, midwifery, or
the like.

She’d worked
there for twelve years. She loved it there. She would miss her
staff, her duties, even her damned desk.

Julia shook
her head again to oust the melancholy that always seemed
threateningly close to drowning her and started to do what she’d
always done when a project loomed.

She wrote a
list.

She’d need a
mobile phone.

She’d need a
computer and e-mail.

She’d need a
driver’s license and a car.

She’d need a
work permit and to have her visa extended.

And she
carried on writing everything she needed and then prioritising
it.

She took out
another piece of paper and she wrote down what she knew to be in
her bank account and her investment accounts. She’d made a tidy
profit from her house and car. She had some savings. She wasn’t
destitute.

She started to
budget her money, what she’d need, what she could afford. She’d
have to have a talk with Douglas about a lot of things, including
what she would put into the house. Keeping a house like this had to
cost an extraordinary amount, anything she contributed would be a
drop in the bucket. But she had not been brought up not to pay her
way.

As she looked
at the figures she realised that without a job she’d be out of
money way too quickly. She had a six month visa but did not have
the right to work or to healthcare. She’d need insurance… and it
went on and on.

Julia started
adding to her list and wondered how much insurance would cost and
bent her head to the task of diverting her brain in the hopes of
exhausting it so she could fall asleep and not thinking of anything
else.

She put her
elbow on the desk and touched the middle three fingers of her hand
to her forehead, closing her eyes and rubbing away the gentle ache
that had begun to throb there.

But no matter
how hard she tried, she couldn’t keep the thoughts at bay.

She hadn’t
expected very much out of her life. She never had big dreams or
ambitions. She didn’t want fancy cars, huge houses, jetting around
from exotic place to place. Sean had given her a taste of that and
it wasn’t worth the price you had to pay to get it.

She was not a
risk-taker. She liked things steady, familiar and normal. She liked
her family close, her friends next door and to know exactly what
aisle the cake mixes were in at the grocery store. All her life she
did her utmost to keep everything just that way.

She had been
pleased with her lot (after she’d divorced Sean, of course). She
had a house she loved. She’d lived there five years and just the
summer before had managed to renovate the last room so every inch
of carpet, every piece of furniture, every last wineglass was
exactly what she wanted.

And she had
friends she was going to miss. She was going to miss Josie’s
Margarita Mayhem Night that was held every year on the longest day.
And the Christmas Party where they all trooped out in posh outfits
to see the Nutcracker Suite and then came back to Tom and Mary’s to
eat the vast array of delicious nibbles Mary spent days making. And
Kelly’s Annual Birthday Extravaganza which was always a blast.

And of course
there was Mom. She was really going to miss Patricia.

The three of
them, Patricia, Gavin and Julia, had always been close. They had to
be once Dad left them high and dry with only a token look back
every once in awhile at the family he created and then
abandoned.

Patricia was
never the “cool” Mom. She was the stern and loving Mom and she was
very wise. Life hadn’t dealt her a good hand, divorced young with
two kids and an ex who forgot to pay the child support far more
often than he remembered. He also forgot he had another family,
vastly preferring (and not too concerned to show it) his two
daughters and son from his beautiful, wealthy and upper class
second wife. “The Izod Family” Gavin used to call them as a joke
but it was too real to be truly funny and it always made Mom’s
mouth tighten at the corners to hear him say it.

But, despite
all this, Patricia had made a happy home, full of laughter, good
times and support (with a great deal of meddling). She tried to
fill the void (although sometimes failed) of an absent, careless
father.

And as the
years went by, Patricia and Julia’s relationship had changed from
mother and daughter to confidants and friends.

Julia
needed that. After she’d left Sean, her heart in tatters and her
self-esteem so low she had to dig a ditch to drag it around after
her, with the added burden of living a life as the unwanted
daughter, Julia had decided she did not ever want another man. The
men in her life had torn her heart out and kicked it around. Her
father by not wanting her. In Sean’s case, four years she suffered
his bad moods, cruel words, relentless attacks on her confidence,
flirtations and infidelities. She figured she might find someone
else eventually (although she didn’t really look). But Julia had
rules. Whoever that someone would be, he wasn’t going to be
handsome, wealthy or accomplished. He just had to be
there
. There to
listen to her when she had a bad day. There to help her unpack the
groceries. There to drive the car every once in awhile.

She was tired
of always having to be the one to drive the car. She just wanted to
get in and let someone else drive.

But now, any
thought of that was far away. Now she had the children and this
inconceivable situation and would likely be driving the car
forever.

On that
thought, she felt it and her head come up as her hand dropped.

What
it
was, she
didn’t know. A draught against her ankles, but not just any
draught, this was intensely cold and felt, somehow, menacing. She
had kept the door to her room open just in case one of the children
called, maybe it came from there.

She felt it
again. It wasn’t a chill throughout the room, just a draught at her
ankles. It was mid-October, and cold, but even the chill outside
was not of the fierce arctic of the draught at her ankles.

She looked
around the room and saw nothing. She’d turned on most of the lights
but had not drawn the drapes. She stared out into the dark night
wondering if Douglas had come home and opened the front door
letting in the cold. Surely she’d have seen the lights of his car
as the length of her suite ran along the front drive.

She got up to
look out the windows and then she saw them, two headlights coming
down the hill and around the bend where the Chapel was ensconced.
Douglas was just arriving home, Julia watched him park by the
fountain.

Then she heard
it.

A scream.

A frightening,
terrible, blood-curdling, high-pitched woman’s scream.

“Dear God, the
children…” Julia whispered and she ran out into the hallway as fast
as she could in the direction of the scream.

The
Problem

Douglas Ashton
drove his Jaguar through the winding country roads outside Bristol
Airport.

Normally
Carter would have collected him from the airport. However that
morning when he left, Carter had to get to Heathrow to pick up
Julia.

Douglas
thought, at the time, this was likely the first in a long line of
inconveniences he’d have to put up with concerning Julia.

Now he was
glad for the chance to be alone, behind the wheel of the car, on
the dark, deserted roads.

He thought
ahead to the call he’d be getting from Japan in a few hours time,
to his trip to Munich tomorrow, the meeting there in the afternoon
and then on to the business he needed to see to in St. Petersburg.
When he was certain that all plans were in place and nothing had
been left to chance, he let his mind turn to Sommersgate and what
awaited him there.

Julia
Fairfax.

She’d changed
her name back after she’d divorced her ass of a husband.

Douglas’s
mother had loved Sean Webster. “How she would even dream of finding
someone better than him is beyond me. She doesn’t know how lucky
she was to trap him in the first place,” Monique had declared when
she’d heard the divorce was made final.

Douglas
had wondered distractedly why Julia had
settled
for the bastard in the first place. He was from
money, as Monique mentioned more than once, but Julia very
obviously outclassed him from the first.

What Monique
didn’t know about Sean, and probably, Douglas thought, wouldn’t
have cared about, was that Sean made a pass at anything in a skirt,
including Tamsin.

Tamsin never
told Gavin, but she told Douglas.

His sister had
always been a smart girl. Gavin, being Gavin, mellow and
good-natured most of the time, but fiercely loyal and, in Tamsin
and Julia’s case, protective, would have immediately lost his mind
and done something immensely stupid.

Douglas wasn’t
so impetuous.

Julia may have
been blinded by love (or, more likely, from Douglas’s vast
experience of women, money) to fall for Sean Webster, but Douglas
was counting on the fact that she was smart enough or, at the very
least proud enough, not to keep him around.

She
didn’t.

Everyone was
surprised at Sean’s accident three months after the divorce was
final.

Douglas was
not.

He felt no
remorse. He had ordered that Webster would not sustain a lasting
injury. But there was only one human being that Douglas Ashton had
ever loved in his thirty-eight years and that was his sister. He
could not allow anyone to make her even the slightest bit
uncomfortable.

Sean Webster
had made that mistake therefore Douglas had made him
uncomfortable.

Smoothly
negotiating a deserted roundabout, Douglas allowed his thoughts, as
they had for obvious reasons of late, to move to his sister.

Growing up,
Tamsin had been the only bit of warmth in their cold home, save the
Kilpatricks but they were servants and therefore, it had been
drilled into Douglas and Tamsin at an early age, had their place
and that place was not a familial one.

But Tamsin,
she was like a changeling, not born of their family.
Sweet-tempered, kind-natured and she loved Douglas openly. She
thought he could move mountains, she thought he could rule worlds.
Until Gavin, the sun rose and set for Tamsin through Douglas.

She saw the
best in him even when Mother ignored him or after one of Father’s
fierce tirades. Douglas rarely permitted his thoughts to turn to
his father, mainly because there was no purpose to it. Maxwell
Ashton was dead, but he had been dead to Douglas years before his
father’s heart exploded. This, Douglas thought, was the ultimate
irony because he’d always thought his father hadn’t had a
heart.

His sister’s
death meant certain unbidden, long-buried memories resurfaced,
though Douglas had long since grown too detached for them to affect
him. He allowed them to drift through his consciousness now but he
was, as always, immune.

If Douglas
brought home a poor grade (anything less than a first was an excuse
for a screaming, red-faced lecture that lasted at least an hour) or
he had not been made captain of the rugby or cricket teams (no
matter that he was the best player at both) or any of number of the
myriad other ways Douglas disappointed his father, Maxwell would
unleash a verbal fury on Douglas that shook the windows.

And Douglas
disappointed his father often.

Maxwell had
never once used his fists on his son but back then Douglas often
wished he would. Douglas had seen, and done, violence in his life
and those kinds of wounds healed a great deal more quickly.