Authors: Vanessa Fox
He glanced at her as he opened the bottle, ‘I thought you wanted this between you and me?’
‘
Exactly. So why ask her?’
Pouring the wine, Sebastian kept his eyes on the glass, ‘I didn’t. The estate isn’t any of her business. Yet.’
Might never be – the words suddenly arrived in his head, ping-ponging madly backwards and forwards. Shaking them away, focusing on the wine, Sebastian handed Alex a glass, fighting to keep his face serious. She looked good tonight – her hair tamed into a professional pony tail, her caramel eyes and tan set off by a printed silk scarf tied stylishly at the neck of a cream silk blouse, her beige tweed hacking jacket, tailored at the waist. High-heeled boots and narrow brown jeans. Simple, very Continental and very sexy. He took a sip of his wine, then lifted his glass.
‘
Welcome back.’
It took Alex a moment to register what he was saying. Welcome back? Good God, now he was trying to schmooze her. She took a sharp intake of breath as she reached for the glass. Whatever about earlier, she definitely needed a drink now. She took a slug of the chilled sauvignon blanc, feeling the gentle fingers of the alcohol reach out to her empty stomach, giving her courage. Sebastian was standing there like nothing was wrong – like he hadn’t recently shot her father, like he hadn’t just invited his fiancée to dinner when he was supposed to be talking to her, like he hadn’t painted her naked and stuck the picture over his bed.
‘
Welcome back? Good God, you are the end, the absolute end. I’m here to sort out my father’s future, and you think we’re having a party. Did you invite anyone else apart from Caroline?’ Alex took another slug of her wine, emptying the glass, putting it down on the table with a crack.
Sebastian looked at her like she was mad. ‘I haven’t invited Caroline, why on earth…?’
‘
So who’s this for eh? Table set for a cosy twosome, dinner in the oven?’
Uncomprehending, Sebastian looked from the range to the table and back at her, then said, like it was perfectly obvious, ‘It’s for you. We’ve got a lot to cover. I thought we could talk over supper. You might be superwoman now, but you have to eat.’
‘
Supper for me?’ Alex said it, but it still didn’t register.
‘
It’s only chicken with lemon and rosemary. The pantry’s a bit limited here.’
Now it was Alex’s turn to look at him like he was mad, ‘How can we sit down and have a nice cosy dinner with my dad lying in a hospital bed?’ Her voice hardened, ‘This isn’t a social call.’
Sighing, Sebastian leaned forward and re-filled her glass. ‘I’m perfectly well aware of that, but we can at least try to be civilised. I can promise you no one regrets what happened to Tom more than I do.’
Watching him pour the wine Alex was suddenly conscious of the strength in his forearm, of the agility in his wrist, spanned by a battered leather watch strap, the watch, chunky, chrome, well-worn; of the heat in the kitchen. She needed to take her jacket off. Dragging her focus back to the conversation, her voice tart, she delivered her own shot, one definitely meant to hurt.
‘
That wasn’t the impression I got from Caroline.’
Sebastian threw her a withering look, ‘I think we both know that Caroline has a lot to learn about running an estate like this one. She doesn’t have your advantages.’
‘
My advantages?’ Alex blurted it out before she could stop herself. Then, horribly aware that her voice sounded too loud in the cavernous room, she grabbed her glass, taking another mouthful to hide her confusion, buying time before she said more calmly, ‘growing up in service that would be, would it?’
‘
I didn’t mean that. My God why do women always twist your words? You’re worse than bloody Caroline.’ Sebastian shook his head.
‘
Well what do you mean exactly? What advantages? She isn’t totally stupid is she? Any fool can play mistress of the manor.’
Sebastian paused, grimacing to himself. Caroline could play at being mistress of the manor all right – she certainly didn’t have any difficulty with that part of her role.
‘
Running the estate isn’t about dinner parties. What I meant was that you know how things are done here. You understand how we work. That’s all.’
Alex’s voice was low, ‘I thought I did. I thought you had a high regard for your staff, that you looked after them. But that was before you shot my dad.’
The words hit home harder than Alex had expected. A shadow of anguish ran across Sebastian’s face. Reaching for the bottle of wine, turning it until the label was facing him, he fought with his emotions, tears pricking his eyes like hot needles. She just didn’t understand. After she had left, Tom Ryan had become like a father figure to him. They’d spoken every day, discussed everything that happened on the estate. Without Tom Ryan’s calm counsel, his gentle guiding hand, Sebastian knew very well, there would be no estate, at least not a profitable one.
And then – instead of thanking him for years of loyal service, instead of giving him a bonus – he’d shot him.
He’d listened to Caroline’s badgering and made a stupid mistake, broken one of Tom’s fundamental rules: if you were going out shooting, he had to be informed. When he hadn’t been able to raise him on the radio, Sebastian knew he should have been stronger, told her that there was no way they could go out. But Caroline hadn’t been in the mood to listen, had started making comments about calling off the wedding if they couldn’t agree on simple things, and, without thinking, the horror of having to tell his best friend it was all off, of disappointing his grandfather had loomed ahead of him, swayed him into making a decision he would regret until he was old and grey.
‘
You must know how much I regret that. It’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life.’
‘
It’ll certainly haunt Dad for the rest of his life. He’s never going to able to walk without a stick – you know that, don’t you?’
Sebastian nodded, avoiding her eye, finally picking up the bottle he had been twirling, refilling her glass, sloshing the remainder into his own glass, knocking it back in one swift, decisive movement.
‘
And while we’re on the subject, exactly whose idea was it to pretend it was a car crash?’
Sebastian put his glass down, ‘I can’t take responsibility for that one I’m afraid. I’m quite happy to put my hands up and be counted – have been from the start. Tom didn’t want it publicised because he was worried about you.’
‘
About me? What on earth have I got to do with you admitting liability?’
Sebastian turned to face her, his blue eyes suddenly cold, the anger in his voice barely suppressed,
‘
I don’t know. You tell me. It probably had something to do with you hightailing it out of here sixteen years ago, but I wasn’t on the need-to-know list then was I? So why the hell would I be now?’
Before Alex could reply, a buzzer sounded somewhere over beside the range, startling them both. Dodo jumped up yapping loudly, claws skidding in her panic on the tiled floor.
‘
It’s all right girl, settle down there,’ Moving swiftly around the table, Sebastian rubbed the old dog’s broad head affectionately; the movement seeming to calm her, ‘It’s all right, it’s only the timer.’
Thankful for the interruption, thankful that he had his back to her, Alex could feel her face flaming. He was so angry… but what had she expected? Taking another large mouthful of her wine, Alex watched him as he grabbed a tea towel from the counter and opened the range, his entire focus apparently on the food inside. What should she say? How could she explain? She could feel the silence growing, uncomfortable, expectant, almost jumped when he said,
‘
Well I don’t know about you, but I didn’t get time for lunch and this is ready. Are you going to sit down?’
TWENTY EIGHT
In her apartment in Ballsbridge, Caroline was still seething. When the receptionist had called this morning to say there were more flowers she’d expected something half as nice as Peter’s flowers at the very least, had even Tweeted Tiff to say @5thAve Guess what, more flowers!!!
But, far from being anything like Peter’s flowers, when the bouquet had actually arrived, it has been beyond disappointing.
The very second she’d got off the phone with Sebastian she’d shoved the whole hideous bunch, paper and all, into the waste disposal unit, listening with some satisfaction as it ground the stems to pulp. But destroying them hadn’t helped. She was still mad. Worse than that, she was hurt. Peter had vanished into the ether and now this...
And rather than the passage of time bringing calm and putting a sensible perspective on the situation, as each hour had ticked by, Caroline had become more incensed with Sebastian, with the whole situation, the wound left by Peter’s abrupt departure opening deeper, raw and gaping, salted by her anger at being taken for a fool. Parrot flowers indeed. Caroline positively shuddered at the thought.
As the day had gone on and there had been no sign of any more flowers, or even a card, never mind a courier from Weirs or Boodles, or Appleby’s (and it wasn’t like there was a shortage of top-quality jewellers in Dublin), Caroline’s anger had begun to fester, fuelled by all the other annoying little things that Sebastian had done during their time together: the dinners cancelled due to work (ha!); his obvious disinterest in the ice sculptures she had suggested to go along the drive for the wedding; his dislike of champagne (how could he not like champagne?), topped off by the fact that her engagement ring (which was pretty impressive, even if she wasn’t keen on sapphires), had, in some ridiculous family tradition, to be handed on to the next generation before, quite honestly, she had finished with it, and replaced by a really very ordinary (if large), diamond eternity ring. An eternity ring!
Now, as she stood in front of her dressing room mirror, leaning on the marble washstand, tweezers raised to remove another stray eyebrow hair, she could feel the injustice of the whole situation bearing down on her. She knew if the truth was told that it wasn’t just the flowers. There was more to it than that. A lot more. Like the fact that Sebastian couldn’t come up with an engagement ring that she could keep (she hadn’t tried even explaining that one to Tiffany); like he thought so little of her that he had to cancel dinner and the theatre to fly to Cannes to work (and if he thought she believed that one, he must think that she was a real fool), like the fact that he seemed to light up whenever that bloody Alex Ryan came within spitting distance. And on top of all that he really didn’t do it for her the way Peter did ...but she couldn’t think about that now or she’d go all weepy again.
Pursing her lips in an O-shape in an effort to reveal every last offending hair, Caroline plucked rapidly for a second. Then, relaxing her face, she inspected her high cheekbones and aquiline nose in the ultra-bright light from the halogen bulbs, checking for blemishes, wrinkles, any other unsightly hairs that might have cropped up during the night. And as she did so, she rolled the entire Sebastian situation around in her mind like a snowball, a snowball that had started pure white and full of promise but now seemed to be picking up dead leaves and all manner of detritus at every full turn.
It was time they sorted it all out. High time. Time she told Sebastian exactly what she thought, and found out exactly what he planned to do about it. After all, she didn’t want to find herself having to divorce him after a year. Lady Diana might have been happy to settle for a third-class marriage, but Caroline knew she was born to better things than a sham, knew unequivocally that her husband would have to understand her, love her completely, utterly, totally and unreservedly. Now it was time to make her position clear. Very clear.
Throwing her eyebrow tweezers into the small black Chanel hold-all stuffed full of beauty products, Caroline padded out into her coffee and cream living room and on into the kitchen. She was still in her shell pink silk nightdress and dressing gown – after the flowers debacle this morning it had hardly seemed worthwhile getting dressed, so she’d decided on a relaxing day in front of Sex and the City, an opportunity to moisturise and recharge her batteries.
The CD had flipped sides while Caroline was in the bathroom and now Westlife thumped an upbeat no-nonsense dance tune that matched her mood perfectly. It was time she and Sebastian had a little chat, and she was in just the right frame of mind to make sure her demands were met. Scooping up her lighter and cigarettes, she flipped one out of the pack, sticking it in her mouth as she headed for the kitchen
Holding a crystal tumbler under the ice dispenser of her impressive American fridge, empty except for a pint of low-fat milk, a loaf of Avoca’s fabulous homemade brown bread and a low-fat spread, (why shop for food, when you could eat out?) Caroline watched with satisfaction as a cascade of ice tumbled to the brim, tinkling and cracking as it met the heat of the room. Taking the cigarette out of her mouth, she reached for a bottle of gin and sloshed it in. Slimline tonic next and taking a sip of the almost neat liquid she felt ready for anything.
It was five o’clock. Sebastian should still be in the office. It was time for some home truths.
Picking up her BlackBerry, pressing the memory button, Caroline tried Sebastian’s mobile, frowning as his message service clicked on. She didn’t bother leaving one. The main line next. Checking the screen of the phone, making sure it was dialling the right number, moments later she found herself talking to the receptionist, then waiting expectantly for Sebastian to pick up. She took another quick drag of her cigarette, tapping the ash into an abalone shell on the coffee table, listening to the dial tone.