Echoes of Love (2 page)

‘Ah, you’re back – at last!’ she commented, eyeballing Gaby, who turned away with a barely disguised look of contempt.

‘Now look,’ Marina went on, taking a deep breath and perching on a stool, ‘we need to chat. Your father and I have had a long talk about the sale of this house and . .
.’

Gaby exploded. ‘No way would Dad sell this house, now or ever! He promised.’

‘Gabriella, your father is in the habit of making promises he can’t keep – that’s half the trouble,’ Marina replied acerbically. ‘There’s no getting
away from the fact that he is deeply in debt and something has to be done. If Walter does what I suggest —’

‘He can do whatever he likes – it’s none of your business!’ Gaby snapped, her face reddening.

‘Gaby, of course it’s her business,’ Anna burst out. ‘You know Mummy asked her to look out for us, and anyway, she’s only trying to help. God knows, we need all the
help we can get.’

‘Whatever,’ Gaby muttered, picking up the newspaper to immerse herself in the horoscope page. ‘Hey, what’s happened to the paper? It’s a total mess.’

‘Now, as I was about to say,’ Marina continued, talking over her and tucking an escaping strand of hair back into place, ‘I have managed to come up with a solution which might
– just might – suit everyone and mean that Hampton House can remain in the family.’

‘So we don’t have to move?’ Mallory said hopefully.

‘Well, it’s not quite as straightforward as that,’ Marina admitted, avoiding her gaze. ‘Anna dear, why don’t you make a pot of coffee and then we can all sit down
with your father and talk this thing through like adults?’

It occurred to Anna, as her sisters stomped moodily out of the kitchen behind Marina and her dad, that making coffee was the easy part. Expecting adult behaviour from anyone else in her family
showed a faith that was as touching as it was naive.

Anna pulled the newspaper cutting from her back pocket, smoothed out the creases and, casting an anxious glance over her left shoulder to ensure that her father was still occupied in the other
room, scrutinised the photograph – the photograph of Cassandra Wentworth. Anna couldn’t look at her without being reminded of Felix.
If it hadn’t been for her
, she thought,
I’d still be with Felix
.

She crumpled the paper and shoved it back into her pocket. What was the point of even thinking about it? It only made her miserable – miserable and angry in equal parts. And not just with
Cassandra, but with her dad and Marina; and with herself for the way in which she had allowed them both to manipulate her.

‘I know I can never replace your darling mummy,’ her godmother had said repeatedly at the time, ‘but she was my dearest friend, and I want to try to do what she would have done
had she still been with us. And she would have been saying just what your father and I are saying, believe me.’

And I did believe her
, Anna thought, breathing in the aroma of percolating coffee.
I was taken in by all that stuff about how Mum always took Dad’s side, bolstered his image no
matter what, and I should do the same, and show loyalty . . . Oh yes, Marina had done a great job. Right down to that gentle, but often repeated phrase, ‘Just imagine what your mummy would be
saying right now.’

Those words had been enough to make her do just what she was told. But now, she wondered whether in fact her mother really would have meant her to give in so easily. Alice Eliot had been a
sensible woman who kept both feet firmly on the ground. She was no quitter, and she had always been the one to calm her husband down when his over-inflated opinion of himself threatened to cause
trouble yet again.

‘Give it six months and you’ll have forgotten all about this,’ Marina had told Anna every time she found her sobbing in a corner. ‘This is just puppy love –
it’ll pass.’

But Anna hadn’t forgotten and it hadn’t passed. There wasn’t a single day when she didn’t think about those magical few months before she messed everything up and lost
the most perfect guy in the world.

‘Anna? What’s taking you so long?’ The sound of her godmother’s voice snapped her thoughts back to the current crisis. (Was there ever, she wondered, going to be a time
when her family would lead a normal, mundane life?) She dumped the coffee jug on to a tray, tipped the contents of the biscuit barrel on to a plate, took a deep breath, and prepared for the next
major upheaval in the Eliot family saga.

As she slid the tray on to the glass coffee table in the sitting room, it struck Anna that it wouldn’t be difficult, even for a total stranger, to form a pretty accurate picture of the
Eliot family dynamics from a quick glance round the room that morning.

Her father, immaculate as ever in cream linen trousers and a handmade lilac shirt, was frowning into the ornate mirror suspended above the marble fireplace and pulling fiercely at a stray grey
hair. Throughout his colourful and somewhat chequered life, her father had had several passions – racehorses, classic cars, yachts, and yes, Anna’s mum – but none was as
over-riding as his love of himself. Years earlier, when the girls were younger and he was still one of the country’s most popular chat show presenters, he had delighted in scouring the
internet for reviews of his shows, and far from dodging the paparazzi when out with his family, he had positively encouraged them. His extravagant lifestyle and willingness to share his views on
any subject under the sun made him perfect tabloid fodder; his tendency to lose his temper on live TV boosted the ratings – and just as his deep gravelly voice had brought him plenty of work
in voice-overs, so his rugged good looks were in demand notably, for a short while at least, as the Face of Pinnacle – ‘the cosmetics range for the man mature enough to care for his
skin.’ It was, Anna thought now, as she poured the coffee, a pity that he hadn’t had the maturity to care for his finances while he had still had a job. Several unfortunate outbursts on
air just before his wife’s death had cost him his job with the BBC, and the disclosure that he was heard to have said that he considered Pinnacle products to be over-priced rubbish but
he’d promote them as long as they paid him mega bucks, meant that a new Face of Pinnacle had long since graced the pages of the upmarket magazines.

He had had hopes of a great comeback with his two shows,
Walt on Wednesday
and
Walt at the Weekend
, on ITV3 and for a while it seemed as if his star might once again be in the
ascendant. Such hopes had been abruptly dashed after what the press had delighted in calling ‘The Walter-gate affair’ – something for which Anna knew deep down he still blamed
her. She loved her father dearly, but knew that, as Marina was heard to mutter on more than one occasion, he was a media has-been; the only person who seemed oblivious to this fact was Walter
himself.

Not that he was the only member of the family who had an inflated opinion of their own importance. Gabriella, three months short of her twentieth birthday, and home from university for a long
weekend, was her father’s favourite and always referred to as ‘the pretty one’. In fact, she was more than pretty; she was stunningly beautiful and knew it. Tall and willowy with
a bosom to die for, long dark hair and eyes the colour of cocoa beans, she was at that moment sprawled on the larger of the two white leather sofas, alternately buffing her nails and flicking
through the latest edition of
Vogue
, muttering ‘That would look so much better on me’ or ‘gorgeous’ at every fashion advert. Gaby had innate style, bags of
confidence, and a total lack of sensitivity to the needs of others.

Mallory, at seventeen the youngest of the three and home from boarding school for the weekend, was ‘the fragile one’ and the only one of the girls to take after their dead mother, in
looks if not in character. She was slender, with azure-blue eyes that filled with tears on demand, ash-blond hair that fought against her straighteners on a daily basis, and pale skin that now, in
the middle of summer, was dotted with freckles. But while Alice Eliot had been feisty to the end, never once complaining or asking ‘Why me?’ as she battled the cancer that was to kill
her, Mallory was permanently imagining the worst possible outcome from every scenario and looking to other people to rescue her from any situation that she found even mildly challenging. Despite
the fact that she could be hugely irritating on a regular basis, Anna felt very protective towards her; since Gabriella didn’t have a maternal bone in her body, it had been Anna who had
effectively taken her mother’s place and cared for Mallory when she was younger and it was a role that she still felt duty-bound to continue, even though she was well aware that Mallory
milked it for all it was worth.

Watching her sister now, perched on the window seat with her bright pink mobile phone clamped to her ear, it was easy to guess that she was engaged in the activity she was best at: twisting
other people round her little finger. In this case, it was Charlie Musgrove, her boyfriend; Anna worked that out, firstly from the forced coyness in her sister’s voice and then by the sudden
switch to a pleading ‘but you promised me’, when there appeared to be a chance that she wasn’t going to get to dictate what they did that evening.

And then there’s me, thought Anna, catching sight of her reflection in the ornate mirror over the fireplace as she passed her godmother a mug of coffee and a chocolate ginger biscuit. Oval
face, dimpled chin, deep-set grey-green eyes and hair the colour of wet straw that was a throwback to her grandmother, from whom she had also inherited her talent for music. Her godmother always
referred to her as ‘the sensible, clever one’ which Anna knew she meant as a compliment but that right now seemed merely a reminder of how boring she was. Her sisters, both of whom she
loved dearly, but neither of whom could be called reliable, had more fun than she did; even Mallory didn’t lie awake at night worrying about exams, the future, or whether anyone would ever
love her again. And neither of them would dream of beating themselves up for every little mistake they made the way she did over the whole wretched Cassandra business.
Stop it
, she told
herself.
You messed up. You blew it. Get over it
.

‘Right, so now we’ve all got our coffee,’ Marina began, breaking in on Anna’s thoughts, ‘let me explain what this is all about.’

‘If there’s any explaining to be done, I’ll be the one to do it!’ Anna’s father turned away from the mirror and strode over to his favourite armchair, brushing an
invisible speck from his shirt sleeve, and gesticulating to Mallory to finish her phone call. ‘The fact is that, through absolutely no fault of my own . . .’ He paused briefly as
Mallory, pouting sulkily, flung her phone on to the sofa. ‘. . . no fault of my own whatsoever, I am experiencing a few minor money troubles.’

‘I’d love to know what major ones would be like,’ Marina muttered, and received a withering look from Walter.

‘The banks are being totally unreasonable, treating me as if I were just some ordinary punter; that lot at ITV3 need their heads examined, and of course, this confounded government
couldn’t manage a two-year-old’s birthday party, never mind stabilising my investments.’ He sighed, as if he alone were the fall guy for the government’s ineptitude.
‘But,’ he went on, brightening a little, ‘I’ve made some cutbacks, which along with a few new irons I’ve got in the fire – aha!
There’s
the
paper.’

His eyes lit up as he seized the paper from the piano stool where Gaby had thrown it once she had deduced what lay in store for Librans. ‘What on earth – the front page is in shreds
and . . . good grief!’

Walter shook the paper impatiently as Anna pulled her T-shirt down over her hips in the hope of hiding the slight bulge in her back pocket. ‘That wretched paper boy – just stuffs the
paper through the letter box – look at this!’

‘Walter, just leave it – we must get this thing sorted and time’s running out,’ Marina said impatiently, glancing anxiously at her watch.

‘In a minute, in a minute,’ he said, waving a hand at her. ‘I had a tip off that I’d be mentioned in the Roving Eye column today.’ He began flicking eagerly through
to the sports pages. ‘Right now, let’s see what they’ve got to say,’ he cried. ‘The meeting at Goodwood yesterday . . . first race won by Triumphant Too . . . yeah,
yeah, blah, blah! Ah, here we are!’

He stabbed the paper with his finger, folded it in half and began reading.

‘Listen to this.
Sorely missed in the owners’ enclosure was the ebullient presence of Walter Eliot, whose lively wit and generous spirit has been a hallmark of the June meeting
for many years.
’

He glanced up from the paper. ‘Lively wit – I like that.’

Anna sighed. She loved her father but his thirst for compliments could be very tiresome.

‘
Following the sale at the end of last season of his two promising fillies, Go Girl Go and Hampton Heroine,
’ he went on, running his finger down the column, ‘
it is
rumoured that Eliott is yet another victim of the economic downturn and concern was being expressed by sources close to the family that since his somewhat public fall from grace . . .
Fall from
grace? How dare they!’ he spluttered. ‘I was the victim of a hate campaign – and what’s this?’ He stubbed the paper with his finger. ‘
. . . he may be forced
to withdraw his sponsorship of the Hampton House Stakes held every September at this course . . .’

‘Sources close to the family?’ he exploded. ‘What idiot has been spreading such malicious gossip?’ He glared at Marina as if half suspecting her of running off to the
press. ‘As if I would dream of pulling out of such a high profile commitment. I’ve sponsored it for years, I have a box there – I mean, what would my friends think if I were to
back out now?’

‘If they had any sense, which I sometimes doubt,’ Marina replied dryly, ‘they would consider it the only possible thing to do in the circumstances. Walter, you are broke: for
whatever reason, you have no job. You made a pile of money and spent treble. You’ve been living on credit and goodwill for years, and now both have run out. Accept it.’