'Can see your problem, me dear. Rotten old luck.' Rotten? Old? Luck? Rotten old luck that I happened to be going out with the worst shit in England who was prepared to do anything to keep his stupid seat on a board of directors? Rotten old luck that the house owes trillions of pounds to the bank and they've taken all the furniture away? Or rotten old luck that a tonne of foreign visitors will be descending on the house tomorrow?
'I might have an idea. The old grey cells are whirring,' Aunt Winnie says before I can reply. 'Can I call you back?'
'Sure!' I say in surprise and go through to eat something. Things always look better after tuna sandwiches.
I am just tucking into my third when the phone rings again. It's Aunt Winnie.
'I think I might have the solution, me dear! It came to me in a flash!' she shouts. There is no need to relay the conversation as the entire room can hear exactly what she is saying. 'I was watching that marvellous Hugh Scully! Gorgeous man!'
'What is it?'
'Don't you worry about it. I'll turn up tonight with the furniture.'
'We need it for sure, Aunt Winnie.'
'And you'll have it for sure. Now, which rooms are you talking about and is there anything specific you need?'
I hand the mobile over to Monty so he can issue further instructions. Thank God for Aunt Winnie. A pity they can't clone her and fill the government with her.
'Astounding woman, that,' says Monty as he puts the phone down. 'She says she'll turn up tonight with it. I told her not to use the main gate. One of us will have to go down to the gate in the woods to meet her.'
'Where's she going to get it from?' Will asks.
I shake my head. 'I don't know.' And nor do I want to, I think to myself.
The rest of the afternoon is spent making up the rooms for the foreign visitors. The rooms themselves also look a little shabby and so I spend over an hour collecting flowers and greenery from the garden to brighten them up. Dominic and I will have to move out of our old bedrooms tomorrow and into a twin room in another wing of the house. Oh joy.
At about eight o'clock, I go out to the walled garden to be alone for ten minutes.
'Penny for them?'
I spin round to see Simon standing in the archway to the walled garden. I'm fingering a sprig of rosemary and trying to make some sense of everything.
He walks slowly towards me and I manage a half-smile. I wish he would just go away and leave me to try to put my tumbling thoughts into some order. I go back to my fiddling as a massive hint that I want to be left alone, especially if he's going to ball me out again. I know I deserve it but perhaps we could save some for later.
'Rosemary,' he says. 'For remembrance?'
'Can I get you anything?' I ask, trying to bring the conversation back to more comfortable, professional ground.
He shakes his head and says, 'Dad says you've sorted the furniture situation?' I nod and he continues, 'The team have all gone. The American investors will arrive tomorrow as scheduled.' He looks absolutely shattered.
'Look, Simon, Dom and I are supposed to be going back to London tomorrow. Do you want us to stay to help with the visitors? I mean, it is what we do for a living.'
'But it'll be over the weekend.'
'That's okay. We don't have a function and we were due back here on Monday anyhow so I won't need to tell the office. I know Mrs Delaney has got the food sorted but I was thinking of the general entertainment stuff. I could take the hostess role.'
'Actually, that would be great.'
'And I thought Dominic could become your resident butler for a few days. Help with the image.'
'Is he okay with that?'
'He suggested it!' Dominic has done no such thing but he deserves it after the cigarette situation. 'I'll run into Bury St Edmunds first thing and hire him a suit.'
'Thanks.'
There's a pause as he also wanders over to the rosemary bush and extracts a sprig. He comes back towards me, sprig in hand, examining it intently.
'This was my mother's garden. She used to spend every minute out here. Sometimes I think she used to prefer this garden to us!'
'You can tell how much it used to be loved,' I remark, looking around at the once tamed and tethered clematis and honeysuckle, now riding roughshod over everything in their path.
'I shouldn't have let it get so overgrown.'
'It just needs some attention,' I say, trying to comfort him for a second as he looks so befeft. Despite all we've been through, I feel a rush of affection for him. Whether I like it or not, a great deal of my past is tied up with this man. He looks up at me and I'm jolted by his eyes. Something passes through them that I recognise but can't put into words. Then it's gone.
'Do you want to walk down to see the deer?' he asks.
'Em, I don't think I'm wearing the right shoes for that.' I look at my neck-breaking flip-flops.
'I'll wait for you if you want to put on something else?'
For a second I'm tempted. I had glimpsed something. Something warm and comfortable and easy to fall back into. But then I remember everything that came after it.
'No, I'm sorry, Simon. I've got things to do.'
He smiles at me and holds my eyes for a second. 'I'm sorry too,' he says lightly and then turns and walks away, leaving me staring after him.
I go up to my room, take off my rugby top and replace it with a clingy pink T-shirt. Meg the dog and Dom appear in my doorway.
'Where are you off to?' Dom asks suspiciously, clocking the different clothes. 'Secret assignation?'
'No, just felt grubby suddenly. Thought I would change for supper.'
'Then why are you putting on lipstick?'
'I always put on lipstick.'
'Not for me you don't.'
Well that's because you're gay, I nearly say, but then wonder what that's got to do with it.
'Have you asked if they want us to stay this weekend and help with the Americans?' Dom continues.
'Em, actually I've just asked Simon and he says that would be marvellous. Did you have any plans for the weekend?' I think I'll save my wonderful butler news for when we have a little more time for Dominic's certain hysterics.
'I can change them. I'll just tell, er, whoever that I can't make it. They'll understand.'
'You know, Dom, I don't care who you're seeing.'
'This is somebody a bit, er, different.'
'Darling, anyone you see would be okay with me,' I say, just to give him the message loud and clear that I will love him whatever.
'We'll talk about it soon, I promise. It's a bit confusing for me at the minute and there's so much going on here with Rob and stuff.'
'I know. Are you coming down for a drink?'
'I thought I might have a bath actually.'
'Okay. I'll see you later!'
I skip downstairs, wondering anxiously if Dom might think our relationship will change or something. He's not normally so backward at coming forward. I then hover in the hallway for a moment, thinking, before running upstairs, to collect my mobile. I have a peculiar need for some reassurance and so I ring my parents. As the call is to Hong Kong and on my mobile, I ask them to call me back on the landline and jog through to the now deserted library. I pick up the phone as soon as it rings. 'Hello?' I say cautiously, just in case it isn't them.
'Darling!'
'Mum!'
'What a
lovely
surprise! We've tried calling the flat; where
have
you been? Your father says where
are
you? Because the
area
code is quite near
Pantiles
, the
Monkwell
estate. Do you
remember
? Where the
horses
were?'
'Yes, I remember. In fact, that's where I am.'
'Where?'
'At Pantiles.'
There's a silence as she obviously sits down and then says to my father, 'That's where she is. At Pantiles.' I wait patiently in the silence until she eventually says, 'Why are you there?'
'It's the strangest thing. I'm here to organise a party for Monty Monkwell!'
They are not receiving the news as I thought they would. I had thought there would be lots of initial gasps and ooh-ing and aah-ing and then we would settle down to a proper chinwag about our memories of the place and then I could launch into my tale of woe. There is none of that, just another awkward silence.
'Er, Mum?' I finally ask. 'Everything okay?'
'Yes,
fine
, darling,' she says eventually. 'Look,
can
we
call
you back?'
'When?'
'In a
day
or so.'
'Of course, but everything's okay?'
'Yes!' she says in an artificially high voice when she clearly means, 'No!'
'Okay then. I'll speak to you soon. Bye!' But the line is already dead. I sit staring at the receiver until Harry comes to get me for supper.
C h a p t e r 17
A
t a quarter to midnight, Will and I set off towards the woods armed with torches and a dog (not Meg, we have decided on a fierce terrier called Albert in case we run into trouble). Part of me cannot help but be thrilled with the secret squirrel theme but the rest of me is tired and would like a long lie down. But I'm glad of the opportunity to speak to Will.
The moon is almost full and very bright so we don't need the torches until we get to the woods. Neither of us have spoken since we left the house, but as soon as we switch our torches on conversation somehow seems permissible.
'All a bit of a shock, isn't it?' I whisper to Will, watching Albert bounding ahead and feeling reassured by his presence. The woods are still as creepy as I remember them being. An owl hoots every now and then and the woods crackle with the noise of things moving about. I firmly tell myself that it is only Albert and resist the temptation to leap into Will's arms like Scooby Doo.
He looks over awkwardly at me. 'I did guess, Izzy. Not to this extent, but I did know,' he says, confirming our earlier exchange.
'But you told me how mean Simon was, and about him throwing those tenants out of the cottages.'
'I couldn't tell you the truth. Besides, I was keeping up the Simon myth.'
I don't think you needed to perpetuate it quite so readily, I think to myself. We both fall silent again, embarrassed.
'I suppose,' Will admits finally, 'that I am jealous of him in some ways.'
'Are you?' I say carefully.
'Well, he gets to defend all of this.' He sweeps his arm around in a circle to indicate the silent trees.
'How do you mean?'
'While I go about my menial day-to-day duties, Simon gets to play … I don't know … he gets to play superheros.'
I clear my throat uncomfortably. We are straying into decidedly male, not to mention sibling rivalry, territory. 'I don't think it has been that much fun. I mean, I think it looks more grand than it actually is.'
'And I was cross that he had kept the truth about the estate from me all these years, as though he thought I wasn't strong enough to take the truth.'
'He said to me that he wanted you to go to Cirencester and was worried you wouldn't. Maybe after that it was too late,' I offer, wondering why I'm sticking up for Simon.
'I'd only just returned to the estate when all that press stuff started up. It's quite hard to hear someone you resent being talked about in God-like terms. I suppose it made me resent him even more. Then the bad stuff started about him and I think I wanted to believe it.'
This chat with Will is starting to make me think. Something is shifting and I don't like it much. Will still seems like the young boy I last saw over fifteen years ago. It's unclear whether he really is a lesser man than his brother but unfortunately he is starting to behave as such. 'So you don't think the recent press Simon's had is completely fair?' I ask him.
'I don't doubt that he's been a bit ruthless, but then wouldn't you with all this to look after? The bank and the mortgage company breathing down your neck all the time?'
Simon did say that the PR company had deliberately played up his war god image. The uncomfortable thought comes squirming into my mind that Simon might actually be justified in all he has done – is perhaps even a little noble?
'He always was ruthless, even in childhood.' I chuck this in just to bring us both down to earth. I don't want us, or more specifically me, to forget who we are actually talking about.
'He was pretty nasty to you, I guess.'
'Yes! He was!' I whisper triumphantly, glad to know that I hadn't imagined that part.
'I feel guilty. I've been so critical of him, secretly thinking I can run the place better. And I suppose I said all those things about him because I wanted to spend some time with you, and I was worried that as soon as Simon got home things would go back to how they were when we were kids. Despite your tiff.'