‘Oh yes, I’m sure he said all he wanted was a few days away. He wouldn’t miss Cecily’s ninetieth birthday. Not for anything.’
‘Of course he wouldn’t. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.’
‘That’s all right.’ She laughed. ‘It makes a change for someone else in the family to have the memory lapse.’
He laughed too. ‘It’s my age, Pen. Sorry again that I woke you. I’ll see you soon. Bye.’
Stirling ended the call and pushed his mobile back into his pocket. He drained his glass of whisky and stared thoughtfully and not without a frisson of foreboding into the darkness. What was Neil up to?
More to the point, where was he?
When Ian returned from his trip to Dubai, Katie waited twenty-four hours before sharing her news with him. First she explained about being made redundant and then she told him about going to the solicitor’s office.
Afterwards he kept saying that he couldn’t believe she hadn’t told him straight away or that she was behaving as calmly as she was. ‘If I found out something like that I’d be furious,’ he said over and over. ‘I don’t think I’d ever forgive my parents for keeping something so important from me.’
He also, rather irritatingly, kept going on about the trust fund. Just as she hadn’t mentioned it to Tess straight away – only deciding to do so after they’d opened the envelope and learnt the name of her father – she had omitted to tell Ian anything about it. But in bed last night she let something slip, and out it all came.
He was astounded, and at one point he punched the air. ‘Bloody hell!’ he laughed. ‘I’ve bagged myself a trustafarian!’ His reaction shocked her.
‘You’ve done no such thing,’ she retorted.
He kissed her and said, ‘I’m only joking. You’ll always be the same old Katie to me, even if you are loaded.’
‘I’m not loaded,’ she said. ‘The money’s not mine, and I’m never going to touch it.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘Look at my face. Am I laughing?’
‘But Katie, this is an answer to a prayer for you. You’ve just been made redundant; you need that money. It couldn’t have come at a better time. You could use a fraction of it to live off and tuck the rest away somewhere safe.’
‘What are you suggesting, that I stash the best part of three-quarters of a million quid under the mattress?’
‘Don’t be daft. I mean invest it. Then it would be there ticking away nicely until you need it.’
‘There’s an awful lot of ticking and tucking you suddenly want me to do. And anyway,’ she added, ‘I don’t need anything. Especially not conscience money. I’d rather give it all to charity than touch a penny of it myself.’
She’d then switched off her bedside lamp and turned her back on him in what could only be described as a marked manner.
He had been sensible enough not to pursue the subject further then.
But now, the following day and back from work, he was trying to convince her that she shouldn’t make any hasty decisions.
They were in the kitchen. Sitting at the table, he was going on about her entitlement to the trust fund, at the same time checking something on her laptop whilst she cooked supper.
Cooking was stretching it; she was assembling food, emptying packets of M&S prawns and salad on to plates. She’d spent the day gardening, trying to distract herself from the madness that was inside her head. Ian had got it wrong when he said she was taking it all so calmly. She wasn’t. She was angry, and that anger was growing exponentially. It didn’t help to recall how Mum had often said that she was like Dad, that she had the capacity to hide her feelings better than most people.
‘Shall we eat outside?’ she asked, when her culinary skills had concluded and she was throwing away the plastic bags into the appropriate recycling bin.
‘Give me two seconds,’ he said, without looking up from her laptop. ‘I think I’ve found something.’
‘I didn’t know you were looking for anything.’
He smiled and tapped his nose.
Curious, she went over to see what he was looking at. It took her a couple of seconds to home in on what was of such interest to him on the screen. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked. Although it was damned obvious what he was doing.
‘I’ve found your father,’ he said. He looked up at her, his expression triumphant. ‘And it was dead easy. All I did was—’
‘All you did was totally disregard my feelings,’ she snapped. ‘Did I ask you to go snooping about on the internet? No! In fact I seem to recall very clearly that I said I wasn’t interested in knowing anything about him. Which bit of that did you not understand?’
He put his arm around her waist. ‘Katie,’ he said, ‘you can’t just ignore him. You’re trying to un-know something and you can’t. He’s real. He’s very much out there; your flesh and blood. Don’t you want to know him, or know anything about him, just a little?’
She wriggled out of his embrace. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Until a few days ago, I didn’t even know he existed. Why should I suddenly care about him? He’s never cared about me, has he?’
Ian frowned. ‘He created that fund for you. It’s a hell of a lot more than most men would do in that situation. You have to give him credit for that. And from what I can see here,’ he pointed at the laptop screen, ‘he’s not short of a bob or two. He and his brother run a very successful business. There’s even a mention of them in the
FT
.’
‘I don’t care if he’s been mentioned in
Heat
magazine or
The Beano
, I don’t have to give him credit for a thing. And I’d appreciate you not telling me what I should or should not do.’ She heard the telltale break in her voice, giving away the fact that her inner anger bunny was itching to be let loose. Then she saw the wounded look on Ian’s face and breathed in deeply, forcing herself not to argue, worried that if the conversation escalated further, she might well take out her confusion and anger on him. And she knew that wasn’t fair; he didn’t deserve that. ‘Now stop going on about it,’ she said more reasonably, ‘and come and have your supper.’ She sounded more in control now, but also like she was reprimanding a naughty child.
They ate in the garden, in silence, until finally Ian cracked. Just as Katie knew he would.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. I honestly thought I was helping. I thought that perhaps once you knew more about him, you might start to view things differently. Hand on heart, aren’t you at all curious? And don’t forget, it’s what your mother wanted. She made that very clear in her letter.’
Katie knew it had been a mistake to let Ian read her mother’s letter. She put down her knife and fork. ‘I hope you’re not going to say something silly like I must respect the wishes of a dying woman,’ she said. ‘Because that wasn’t the case. Mum wrote that letter when she was fit and well, ages before she had the accident.’
‘Does that change anything? It was still something she wanted you to do when the time was right.’
Katie looked at him. ‘You’ve changed your tune, haven’t you? Talk about a U-turn. At first, when you were putting yourself in my shoes, you were practically beating your chest with scandalous shock. Now, ever since last night, you’re pushing me into the arms of a stranger. What’s changed?’
Ian shrugged. ‘I’ve had time to think about it, I suppose. I’m looking at it more objectively, putting my emotions to one side.’
‘You’re sure that’s what it is? You wouldn’t, for instance, be swayed by the idea of all that money?’
He leant back in his seat, his eyes wide. ‘That’s a terrible thing to say!’
‘Isn’t it just?’ she said.
His face flushed. ‘You’re accusing me of something, Katie, and I don’t like it. I’m only thinking of you.’ He pursed his lips. Then: ‘I thought I knew you; I thought you were levelheaded and warm-hearted, but now I’m not so sure. I’ve never seen you like this before, so cold and accusatory. I have to say, it doesn’t suit you.’
‘What? You expected me to be pathetically flaky, rushing to throw myself into the arms of a man who had sex with my mother thirty years ago, crying “Daddy, oh my daddy!” like that fool of a girl in
The Railway Children
?’
‘I’d expect you at least to have an open mind. And not bite my head off for trying to help.’
‘Well, boo-bloody-hoo, I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ she said stiffly. ‘Though what else could you expect when you’re doing such a bang-up job of annoying me? But if you do really want to help me, there is something you can do.’
His expression brightened. ‘What’s that?’
‘You can leave me in peace with my cold and accusatory self. Because you know what, I don’t need anyone else messing up my life right now.’
The next morning, Saturday, and after sleeping well for the first time in a week, Katie woke with a clear sense of purpose and resolve.
She hated to admit it, but Ian had been right last night. She
was
curious. But she would no more admit that to him than she would tell anyone what she was about to do. With Tess and Ben away in Barcelona for a long weekend, she felt she had free rein to do as she pleased, that while the cat was away, the mouse would play. Not that she was answerable to her best friend, but undoubtedly Tess would have something to say on the subject, and Katie didn’t want to explain herself or her actions.
She knew that as plans went, it was on the woolly side, but in the circumstances it was the best she could come up with. If it came to nothing, what would it matter anyway? She suddenly felt that she had to do something; she had to be proactive and stop sitting around griping and feeling angrily sorry for herself. Her energy might be better put to use by looking for a job, but right now that didn’t feel such a priority.
So with the satnav fired up, a map on the passenger seat and the information she had printed off from her computer, she was on her way to Henley-on-Thames, or more precisely, to a village called Sandiford, which was about three miles from Henley.
Thanks to Ian’s snooping on the internet, she had Stirling Nightingale’s business address but not his home address. However, Ian wasn’t the only one to play at being Sherlock Holmes; after some digging around on her laptop whilst she’d been eating breakfast, she had discovered that the wife of Stirling Nightingale’s brother was a serious gardener, and that her garden had featured in several magazines. It had even popped up in an episode of
Gardener’s World
several years ago for a feature about newly created gardens. From what Katie had seen online, it looked beautiful.
With The Meadows as her destination, she figured that as joint MDs of Nightingale Ridgeway Investments, the two men wouldn’t live that far apart, and on that basis one would lead to the other. She had ruled out tracking down Stirling Nightingale at his work address for the simple reason that it was the weekend and he wouldn’t be there. And now that she had made a decision, she didn’t want to wait until Monday.
She had no intention of blundering in on Stirling Nightingale. Quite the contrary. If it was possible, she wanted to observe him from a safe distance, to see what kind of a man he was. Again, she didn’t really know how she would manage to do that, but she would cross that bridge when she came to it. She had seen several photographs of him online, along with his brother, but they were artificially posed – typical examples of corporate portraiture. They told her nothing about him. He was merely a tanned, silver-haired man in a suit. He could be anyone. Certainly he bore no resemblance to her. She could detect nothing in his face that she recognized, nothing that suggested he had passed on any of his genes to her.
With a plan of action now securely fixed in her brain, some of her anger had cooled. She wanted to believe that she was beginning to think more rationally, but she suspected that she had grown tired of being angry. It didn’t suit her temperament. She wasn’t one of those people who thrived on drama and high emotion; she needed a steady equilibrium to her life. Some might say that was a boring way to live, but she had always been that way. Over the years, friends had described her as being rock-solid and dependable, the one they could turn to in a crisis. She hadn’t liked it last Saturday when Zac had described her as being sweet and adorable and as edgy as an After Eight mint; he had made her sound dull.
Being cool-headed was, she knew, what had enabled her to cope with the deaths of her parents. When Dad had died, she had put her own grief to one side and helped her mother through hers. Then when Mum had died last year, she had had no choice but to keep it together and cope. What was the alternative?
Undoubtedly her emotions had got the better of her last night with Ian. She had been anything but sweet and adorable. She had been horrid. She really shouldn’t have spoken to him in the way she had, or insisted that he leave. He had only been trying to help her; she could see that now. But it was as if all the tensions of the last week had collided and found a release in being cruel to him. She should ring him later and apologize.
The village of Sandiford was the last word in picture-postcard perfection: it was
Midsomer Murders
territory with a dash of
Vicar of Dibley
thrown in. Immaculate thatched cottages rubbed shoulders with Georgian and Victorian houses, and the narrow lanes were lined with overblown cow parsley and a generous sprinkling of buttercups. Ignoring the satnav, which was instructing Katie to prepare to take the next right, she turned into the car park of a thatched pub called the Riverside, the front of which was decked out with overflowing wall troughs and hanging baskets – petunias, lobelia, busy Lizzies, nasturtiums and geraniums cascaded in a blaze of colour. There was a sign declaring that wholesome food was served all day. That was handy, because she was starving and it was late afternoon, long past lunchtime.
In the cool, dimly lit interior of the pub, she was greeted with a cheery smile from the woman behind the bar and enough boating paraphernalia to make her think she was in a chandlery. There were coils of ropes behind glass cases, oars crossed and attached to the beamed walls and ceiling. Shiny copper lanterns hung from hooks and photographs of boats and strapping young rowers, mostly black and white, adorned what wall space was left. Above a cavernous fireplace there was a glass case containing a very large and very dead fish of some sort. Painted and varnished to a high sheen, it had a beady eye that would probably follow Katie round the bar if she put it to the test. Actual customers seemed to be somewhat thin on the ground. Perhaps the fish didn’t make for good company.