Starting Over (2 page)

Rather oddly it had French windows that gave onto an attractive little town garden and when the woman saw her looking at it she smiled.

'We only moved into these premises a little while ago. It was originally a cafe and we bought the house next door. The office was the house's back parlour and we decided we'd leave the French windows....'

'It's very pretty.' Sara smiled.

'Well, yes, and hopefully next summer we shall be able to make better use of it. I'm Frances Sorter, by the way,' she introduced herself. 'I expect the agency will have told you that my husband and I own the restaurant. Our chef is so keen on organic produce my husband grows as much as he can himself.

'Now, I don't know whether or not the agency discussed terms with you.'

'Er, no, they haven't,' Sara replied truthfully.

Now was the time to tell Frances Sorter that there had been a mistake and that she wasn't the person the woman thought she was but for some reason Sara discovered instead that she was actually listening whilst she was told the surprisingly generous terms of her

'employment.'

'It will only be for a few months, of course,' she was told a shade anxiously. 'You do know that, don't you? Only Mary, our regular office manageress, is having a baby and she says she will want to come back, but...'

A few months... Sara started to frown. She had decided to move on from the school where she had been working as a supply teacher at the end of the previous school year. She had several options she was considering, including working abroad and her father had even suggested she could have her old university holiday job back with him working as his assistant if she wished. There was really no earthly reason why she should want to come and work here in 'Crightonville.'

In fact, there was every reason why she shouldn't. So why was she nodding her head and assuring Frances Sorter that yes, the salary they were paying was fine?

She had always been inclined to be impulsive, a trait which had got her into plenty of trouble as a girl but even she was surprised to hear herself accepting the job whilst saying, 'There's one problem though.

I...er...don't actually have anywhere to live locally as yet and—'

'Oh,
that's
no problem.' Frances Sorter beamed.

'There's a flat upstairs that you could have rent free.

In fact, if you did you would be solving another of our problems. The insurance company are insisting that the flat is tenanted. Apparently they consider that an empty property is more at risk from thieves and vandals. It's only small but the previous owners had it completely refurbished since they lived "over the shop" and, well, let me take you up and you can see for yourself.'

Well, Sara reflected ruefully half an hour after she said goodbye to Frances. This morning as she left her friend the last thing on her mind had been coming to Haslewich, never mind accepting a job here, and yet here she was... Sara was a firm believer in fate and in taking the kind of chances other people more cautious and less imaginative would give very wary distance to. Life was an adventure—or at least it should be. Her eyes began to sparkle. Who knew, she might even get the opportunity to even the score a bit for her sweet vulnerable little stepgrandmamma and put some of those powerful lordly Crightons in their place. Now
that
was a challenge she would accept with relish!

NICK CRIGHTON stifled a small sigh. It had been very kind of his brother Saul and his wife Tullah to offer him a room in their home to recuperate in following the injuries he had sustained whilst visiting one of his clients who was incarcerated in a Thai jail.

Another inmate had attacked Nick's client in a drug-crazed frenzy and when Nick had gone to help him, he had ended up being knifed.

Luckily the knife had missed all his major internal organs, even if his recovery was taking longer than expected thanks to an infection that had developed in the site of the wound. That had cleared up now but he had been told by his doctor to take things easy until the wound had completely healed.

Yes, it was kind of Saul and Tullah to insist that he stay with them, but the truth was that he was beginning to get rather bored by all the cosseting he was receiving.

He was a grown man, after all, a man used to spending his spare time on the outdoor pursuits he enjoyed: rock climbing and sailing, white water rafting...

anything with just that little touch of exhilaration and excitement about it—not that he ever took foolhardy or dangerous risks.... Well, not often!

The last time he had had a medical check-up he had tried to persuade his doctor that he was well enough to return to work. After all, as a lawyer he was hardly likely to be overtaxing himself physically he had suggested slyly to his GP.

'Mmm...I take your point,' the other man had agreed. 'Sitting at an office desk or even standing in court certainly aren't going to do you too much harm now that the wound has actually started to heal....'

'Great! So I can go back to work then?' he had pounced eagerly.

'Don't be so ridiculous, Nick,' the doctor had refused affably. 'You
may
be a lawyer but I happen to know that your job is very much a hands-on affair.

You run a business that involves taking the kinds of risks that no sane man with a healthy respect for his own physical safety would ever take.'

Nick had shrugged, knowing that there was nothing he could say. His work as a negotiator for people caught up in the legal systems of other countries often took him into situations that were physically dangerous. It hadn't been unknown for him when dealing with a particularly corrupt government to bribe his

'client' out of gaol and then have to make a quick and sometimes dangerous getaway over the border with him or her.

As a newly qualified solicitor he had volunteered to help the parents of a university friend to make an ap-plication to a far Eastern government for their daughter to be released from prison where she was being held on drug smuggling charges.

After he had successfully won the case he had been besieged by other parents requesting his help with similar cases.

It appalled Nick that even now when surely the most naive of travellers must be aware of the dangers, young people, especially young girls, fell into the trap of allowing themselves to be used—sometimes knowingly but more often than not as mules—by drug traf-fickers.

He did other work, of course, as a locum which allowed him plenty of time to travel. Work to Nick was a means to an end, not an end in itself.

'I've booked us a table at the Sorters' new restaurant for tonight,' Tullah had announced this morning over breakfast. 'They've got their Michelin now and I must say I'm looking forward to sampling their latest menu. You'll enjoy it, Nick.'

Well, yes, he would enjoy it, but...but what he was hankering after right now was something a little bit more adventurous than domesticity of the type enjoyed by his brother Saul and his wife and family. It was all very well...all very cosy, but it was not for him...not yet. This mating, nesting instinct that seemed to have affected so many members of his generation of Crighton males was not one he shared. Not that he was against commitment or marriage per se...he wasn't; he just didn't want it for himself—not now—not ever!

He valued and needed his freedom far too much.

'Do YOU THINK he'll like it?' David asked his wife as they stood arm in arm studying the just finished small suite of rooms they had had converted from a loft over what had once been stables but which were now a garage.

'He'll love it,' Honor assured him with a smile, her breath racing in her lungs as he turned to kiss her.

'You two!' the elder of her daughters from her first marriage had complained the last time she had visited them. 'I've never known a couple so besotted with one another.'

'Mmm—are you besotted with me?' David had asked her whimsically after Abigail had gone back to London.

'Certainly not,' Honor had denied sternly, her voice softening as she added, 'Only just totally crazily head over heels in love with you—that's all!'

'I wonder when he's going to arrive?'

They had been married a few short weeks ago and had known one another less than a year but Honor had never for one moment doubted that she was doing the right thing. She knew the story of David's past with its shadows and secrets, its shame, and she knew too of his glorious resurrection, his rebirth from the shell of his own past. Now she was looking forward to welcoming into their home the man who had played such a large part in that rebirth—Father Ignatius—the Irish priest turned missionary who was presently in Ireland on a visit. David and Honor were pleased that they had managed to persuade him to leave Jamaica and make his home permanently with them.

'He's due to fly to Manchester from Dublin tomorrow,' David said with concern. 'I wanted to meet him off the plane but he wouldn't let me. He said there were things he had to do.'

'Yes, I know,' Honor agreed patiently as though she hadn't heard all of this a dozen or more times already.

'And then he said that he wanted to make his own way here and not have me drive over to Dublin to collect him.'

Honor smiled soothingly again.

'I just hope he's going to be happy here with us.'

'He will be,' Honor told him positively, adding softly as she leaned close to him, 'It's you he's coming here for, David...you he wants to be with....'

Honor had met the priest briefly when she and David had married in Jamaica and she had discovered that he was everything David had told her he was and more. They shared an understanding, a belief in the dignity of nature and a respect for the world.

A rueful smile lit David's eyes and he laughed. 'All right, so I'm fussing,' he agreed.

There were still days when he had to pinch himself to make sure that he was really awake and not merely dreaming. It humbled him unbearably to reflect on how lucky he was—and how undeserving. He had said as much to Jon, but his brother had shaken his head in denial of his claim.

David had been given so many precious gifts in this fifth decade of his life. His friendship with the priest.

The love he shared with Honor, his acceptance back into the hearts and lives of his family. David's eyes became slightly shadowed because, of course, there was one member of his family who had
not
accepted him back, Olivia, his daughter. She had every reason not to do so. David understood that. He had not been a good father to her and she had been forced at a very young age to take charge not just of her own life but those of her younger brother and their mother as well.

When you allied to that his own father's dismissive attitude towards her whilst Jon's son Max was praised, it was no wonder that she should feel so hostile towards the father who had failed to take her part.

But the pain he felt at their continued estrangement was not just for himself, it was for her as well. He was a different David from the one who had simply walked out of his old life because he wasn't able to face up to what he had done. Now he knew and understood the power negative emotions had to hurt their owner even more than those they were directed against. And Olivia was hurting—David knew that.

'Give her time,' Jon had counselled him.

There was David's son as well, but Jack had had the benefit of getting the parenting from Jon and Jenny that David and his ex-wife Tania had not been there to give him. Jack, unlike Olivia, was secure in himself...happy in himself. Jack might watch him with a certain wariness...waiting, judging...but there was none of the fury or the fear in Jack's reaction to his return that there had been in Olivia's.

Her point-blank refusal to see him or speak to him was perhaps understandable. Her father's return had come as a shock to her—he knew that and he knew, too, that he had hardly given her any reason to either love or respect him; but he had hoped that she would mellow a little towards him and at least attend the wedding party he and Honor had given at Fitzburgh Place. He was desperate to make some kind of reparation to her, to talk to her, to explain...apologise.

He had no right to expect her love; he acknowledged that. But it was her pain that made him hurt more than his own...her pain, his blame.

Every time he looked at Max and saw what Jon's son had become he reminded himself that Max had the very best parents any child could possibly have had, just as whenever he thought of Olivia he knew that she had not and that he and his selfishness were to blame for that.

As Honor saw the sadness in his eyes she guessed what had put it there—Olivia... She couldn't imagine how she would feel if one of her daughters were to reject her...to feel so hurt by her and detached from her that they refused to let her into their lives; or rather she could, and it was so untenable that it made her shiver.

Honor was a good listener and she had heard a lot about Olivia from other members of the family, not because they had gossiped about her or criticised her.

No, the Crightons if they were nothing else, were fiercely loyal to each other. No. What she had learned was how very concerned in their different ways all her relatives were for her.

'She was so happy when she and Caspar married,'

Jenny had said. 'And when the girls arrived...'

And her inference had been that the happiness had gone.

'She works too hard,' someone else had said and there had been other comments, all made with loving anxious concern which Honor had correctly interpreted as meaning that Olivia's life was shadowed and unhappy.

'Sometimes she seems almost...afraid to let herself relax and have fun....' had been the most telling statement of all made by Tullah, Saul's wife, her magnificent eyes darkening as she spoke. There had been, Honor guessed, enough damage done to Olivia as a child for her to feel a need to take refuge in controlling and pushing herself to reach self-imposed targets. And to have a very fragile sense of self worth.

Leaning over to nibble on David's ear Honor whispered enticingly, 'Let's go to bed.'

'What!' David pretended to be shocked. 'It's still afternoon....'