The Inheritance (25 page)

So why can’t I let it go? Cut my losses and walk away?

God knew she didn’t relish the humiliation of being defeated by Brett in court. But at the same time, she couldn’t bear him to see her as a quitter, or as someone he could bully into submission, the way he bullied poor Jason and so many others in his life. She had to see this through. As a child, everything Tati did was done to gain her father’s attention. She had no mother or siblings. Rory had been her sole audience, and she kept dancing for him, long after the dance had ceased to be fun for either of them. As much as she loathed him, as much as he revolted her, the truth was that Brett Cranley made her feel the same way. In some sick, twisted way, he had stepped into her father’s shoes. She yearned to impress him, like a lost dog yearning for home.

Closing her eyes and stretching out her legs, she tried to relax, focusing on the sunlight warming her skin and the soft hum of bees in the grass. An image of Marco’s handsome face floated into her mind and she held it there like a talisman, pushing out the other face: the face with the angry flashing eyes; the face intent on her destruction.

She fell into a deep, mercifully dreamless sleep.

Up at Furlings, Jason Cranley stared at his bedroom ceiling.

He had never been in love before. Perhaps he wasn’t in love now? With nothing to compare it to, it was awfully hard to tell.

All he knew was that when Tatiana left today, curling her lip at his father as if Brett were nothing, a mere irritant, a fly in her consommé, he’d wanted to pull her into his arms and never, ever let her go.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Angela Cranley sat bolt upright, gasping for breath.

‘Ange?’ Concerned, Brett shook her by the shoulders. ‘Ange, what’s the matter? Are you all right?’

She looked at his face, then around the room. One by one, familiar objects reasserted themselves. The thick red damask curtains she’d bought at auction in London. The antique French dressing table they’d had shipped over from Sydney. The horrible oil painting of the Sydney opera house that Brett adored and insisted on hanging directly opposite the marital bed, wherever they lived. Her panic attack subsided.

‘I’m fine.’

I’m home.

At Furlings.

The summer’s over.

It had all gone by so quickly, it was easy to imagine it had been a dream. Or should that be a nightmare? Finding Brett in bed with Tricia, meeting Didier, attempting to piece back together the shattered fragments of trust for the hundredth time. Now that she was back in Sussex, back in her role of wife and mother and mistress of the house, none of it seemed quite real.

But it was real. Brett had betrayed her again. And for all his apologies and promises, all his apparently sincere remorse, the wound felt deeper this time. About a week ago, Angela had allowed Brett to make love to her again. It was awful. Brett was tender, loving and apologetic, as he always was after he’d been caught out with another woman. Angela went through the motions, allowing her body to accept his apology. But inside she felt cold and dead and numb to a degree that frightened her.

Didier had texted and emailed a couple of times, while she was still out in France. It was obvious he wanted something more to develop between them. Angela didn’t have the stomach for an affair, all the lies and deceit. But it did feel good to have a small, romantic secret of her own for a change. And Didier’s attentions strengthened her in other ways too. She wanted to get her marriage back on track. But she didn’t want to go back to the way things were before. Back to being passive. Back to being the frightened mouse of a woman she had always been with Brett, since the day he first walked into her parents’ bakery. Something
had
to change. Going back would be death.

But then the holiday ended, they returned from France, and almost immediately the panic attacks began. Furlings, the house Angela had loved so much and felt such an instant connection to back in the spring, suddenly felt like a prison. It didn’t help that Logan was ecstatic to be back.

‘Do you think Gabe will notice my tan?’ she’d asked her parents on the drive back from the airport, craning her neck out of the window as they passed Wraggsbottom Farm. ‘I’ve matured a lot this summer,’ she added, blowing an enormous bubble with her last piece of strawberry Hubba Bubba, then sucking it back into her mouth with a satisfying
snap.

‘Have you now?’ laughed Brett. ‘I’m sure Gabe Baxter has better things to do than check out your suntan. I don’t want you hanging around that farmyard all the time, annoying people.’

‘I don’t annoy people,’ said Logan, stung. ‘
You
annoy people.’ She stuck out her bubble-gum-pink tongue in Brett’s direction.

‘Don’t talk back to your father,’ Angela said automatically. But Brett had just laughed. He was happy to be home too, to be going back to work, back to ‘normal’. Only Angela, it seemed, was struggling to readjust.

Getting out of bed, she walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower in an attempt to avoid further conversation with Brett. She didn’t want to be quizzed about her panic attacks, or the bad dreams that had plagued her ever since they got back. But to her surprise, Brett followed her into the shower. Pressing his naked body against hers, he wrapped his arms around her in an unusual display of tenderness.

‘It’s probably the stress,’ he said, kissing her neck.

‘Stress?’ Angela frowned.

‘The court case,’ said Brett. ‘This damn nonsense with Tatiana’s been hanging over us for far too long. You’ll feel better once it’s over and we can relax in our own home.’

God, the court case. Angela had barely given it a thought, but it was next week, the same week that Logan went back to school. Although it was unlikely, there was at least a technical possibility that they might lose Furlings. While they’d been away in France, Tatiana had evidently been waging a relentless charm offensive on the locals, and had apparently obtained a stack of signatures supporting her claim to her father’s estate. The thought of the ruling going against them made Angela shiver beneath the streaming jets of hot water.
I don’t want to lose this place
,
she realized suddenly. It wasn’t Furlings that had been making her feel trapped, but her own state of mind. Ridiculously, she found herself wishing her father were here. He would know what to do.

Instead, she leaned back against Brett. He hadn’t been much support lately, but he was all she had. She clung to him.

‘It will be all right, won’t it?’ she asked him.

‘Of course it will,’ said Brett. ‘Tatiana hasn’t a snowball’s hope in hell and she knows it.’

The Cranley vs Flint-Hamilton hearing was held at the High Court in London. Brett Cranley arrived early, dashing into the famous Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand beneath an umbrella held by his lawyer, Justin Greaves, London’s pre-eminent probate and contested wills specialist.

‘Is she here yet?’ Brett asked Greaves, a wiry man in his fifties with coarse grey hair like a Brillo pad and thick-framed glasses that continually slipped down his nose.

‘No. Her lawyer’s over there,’ he said, pointing to the anxious-looking figure of Raymond Baines. In a cheap suit two sizes too big for him, the fat Chichester solicitor looked shorter, balder and even less impressive than usual, completely out of place in such grandiose surroundings. ‘That’s the third time he’s looked at his phone in the last minute. He’s obviously lost her. Maybe she’s bottled it?’

‘I doubt that,’ said Brett. Tatiana Flint-Hamilton had numerous weaknesses, but she wasn’t one to shy away from a fight.

‘Well she’d better show up soon or the judge will start without her. Judge Sir William McGyver QC’s presiding, which is good for us.’

‘Is it?’ said Brett.

‘Yup. Sexist, patriarch, old as the hills and a stickler for form,’ Justin Greaves said bluntly. ‘Won’t take kindly to Miss Flint-Hamilton playing the diva and wasting court time.’

At that moment, right on cue, Tatiana burst in. Her long hair was wet from the rain and had started to curl into damp spirals around her flushed face. She wore a beige macintosh raincoat, also wet, which she removed to reveal a sleek cream woollen suit. The look was conservative and professional, but somehow this only seemed to heighten her desirability. As if the wild, passionate creature beneath the demure clothes were begging to be unleashed. Brett couldn’t take his eyes off her, but Tatiana ignored him completely, muttering apologies about traffic as she hurried over to join Raymond Baines.

Moments later they were called into court. Justin Greaves leaned over to whisper in his client’s ear. ‘You’re staring. Try not to.’

‘Sorry.’ Brett forced himself to look at the judge, and not at Tatiana, who was crossing and uncrossing her legs on the other side of the aisle in a distinctly distracting manner. He’d told Angela he wanted this court case over, and Tatiana out of the village and out of their lives for good, and he meant it. The girl disconcerted him, attracting and infuriating him in equal measure. Something about her drew him in, but not in a good way. More like the Death Star, exerting an irresistible force over any stray spacecraft that happened to fly too close.

Judge McGyver was talking, his voice a droning irritant in the back of Brett’s mind. He was calling for opening arguments. Justin Greaves and Raymond Baines both stood up. For a split second, Tatiana looked across at Brett and their eyes met. A crackle of electricity passed between them. Brett wasn’t sure if it was lust or hatred. Then she looked away.

The battle had commenced.

Later that same afternoon, Max Bingley was enjoying the drive back from Arundel. He’d been at an NUT conference, some nonsense about opting out of OFSTED reports. It had rained all day while Max was stuck inside, listening to a bunch of dreary, leftie graduate teachers bemoaning the state of the education system. But now that he was on his way home, free at last, the grey skies had miraculously cleared, and the still-wet fields around him glistened like emeralds beneath a bright September sun. The entire landscape seemed fresh and alive after the rains, the flint cottages of the villages washed clean, and even the winding lanes gleaming black, like newly poured rubber.

Max looked at his watch. It was still only four thirty, and he had no particular reason to rush home to Fittlescombe, other than a pile of SATs marking that could definitely wait till the weekend. On a whim, he turned left at a wooden sign for Alfriston, and soon found himself parking his Mini Cooper by the green and stretching his long legs in one of England’s prettiest villages.

Max hadn’t been here for years, not since he was a young married man and he had brought his girls to Drusilla’s zoo nearby. Happily the village hadn’t changed much. It was a more twee, slightly more touristy version of Fittlescombe, but deeply charming nonetheless, with its beamed Tudor sweet shop full of glass bottles stuffed with old-fashioned gobstoppers and sherbet saucers, its second-hand book shop and its wisteria-clad coaching inn, The George. It was the latter that called to Max, with its open front door, through which could be glimpsed both the bar and a pretty beer garden beyond. After the unrelenting tedium of today’s conference, Max reckoned he deserved a pint at the very least. Taking off his jacket, he sauntered inside.

‘What can I get you?’

The barman was young and ruddy-cheeked, a typical Sussex farm boy. Max cast his eye over the list of local ales written up on the chalkboard behind him when he suddenly froze. There, sitting a few tables away in a floaty blue dress with flowers printed on it – white daisies – and her blonde hair loose to her shoulders, was Angela Cranley. Max’s first thought, other than surprise at seeing her here, was how young Angela looked, and how happy. Moments later he saw why. A man – a young, handsome man – returned to the table carrying two glasses of wine.

Max felt as if he were watching a scene from a movie. The tableau only lasted a few seconds. The man sitting down and smiling, making a joke that had Angela rocking back in her chair with mirth. They hadn’t kissed or touched one another, but it was clear from their body language that there was a powerful attraction between them. This was a side to Angela Cranley that Max Bingley had not known existed.

An affair! Who would have thought it?

In those few seconds, Max felt all manner of things. Happiness, to see such a lovely, downtrodden woman looking happy for once; nostalgia, for his own days of passion – how very long ago they seemed now. And an uncomfortable, unwelcome emotion that he was loath to acknowledge, but at the same time couldn’t deny: envy. Max envied the young man at Angela’s table, bitterly.
He
wanted to be the one to make Angela smile that youthful, pretty, carefree smile.
He
wanted to be the one to rescue her from her ghastly husband and her lonely life, shut up at Furlings like the Lady of Shallot. Before he’d had a chance to delve deeper into any one of these emotions, Angela turned and saw him. The colour drained from her face.

‘Mate?’ The barman broke Max’s reverie. ‘What can I get you?’

‘Oh, erm … a pale ale please,’ said Max. Angela said something to her companion, who looked at Max with ill-concealed irritation. Seconds later, they both made a hurried exit.

Max felt awful. He’d clearly intruded on a private moment. Entirely accidentally, of course. But he felt guilty all the same, as if he were some sort of revolting old peeping Tom.

His beer arrived. He drank it gloomily and had almost finished when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

‘Hello.’ Angela was alone. She still looked pale, although not quite as horrified as she had done when she first saw him. ‘I suppose I owe you an explanation.’

‘My dear Mrs Cranley …’

‘Angela.’

‘Angela. You owe me nothing of the kind. I’m mortified to have intruded.’

‘You didn’t,’ said Angela, with a shy smile. ‘Shall we go outside?’

The beer garden at the back of the pub was completely deserted. Angela and Max took a seat beneath a gnarled apple tree, its trunk bent double with age, and watched two pale blue butterflies flutter and weave their way across the sky. Across the meadow behind the garden wall the river Cuckmere could be heard burbling merrily, the only sound other than the constant chirrup of birdsong and the occasional lazy bleat of a sheep from the surrounding fields. The Cuckmere met the river Swell further down the valley, which meant that the same water they were watching now would be flowing through Fittlescombe in an hour or two. For some reason the thought made Angela happy.