The Inheritance (29 page)

‘Welcome to Heathrow.’

The steward’s voice woke him with a start. Looking down, he saw the front of his shirt was wet with tears.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The night of Jason Cranley’s twenty-first birthday party finally arrived, and everyone agreed that Furlings had never looked more beautiful. In its last few years under Rory Flint-Hamilton’s care, the old man’s ill-health had meant that the house had been allowed to fray a little at the edges. Nothing dire or drastic. Peeling paint around a window here, crumbling brickwork there, the wisteria that snaked over half the façade allowed to explode unchecked, so that its roots worked their way into the stone, causing deep cracks, like lines in the mud of a dried-out river bed, or wrinkles in the face of a very grand, very old woman who had once been a great beauty.

Over the last year, however, Angela Cranley had begun to change all that, painstakingly starting to restore Furlings to its former glory with a combination of love, patience and good taste, all washed down with limitless money. She’d stuck to her guns and made sure that the theme for this evening was very much ‘Birthday Party’. As well as the contested balloons, found everywhere in cheerful clusters of yellow, red, blue and green, and emblazoned with kitsch gold sparkly number 21s, she’d ordered Jason an enormous chocolate cake in the shape of a grand piano, and had tablecloths made up out of photographs from Jason’s babyhood and childhood years, printed against a background of the Australian flag. But despite these relaxed, youthful touches, the house itself radiated understated elegance and good taste, as every grand old English estate ought to. A wonderful smell of roses and gardenias, combined with beeswax wood polish, filled the grand state rooms. Bathrooms were lit by Jo Malone candles in mandarin or lime. Priceless antique rugs and solid, Jacobean English furniture shared space with modern sculptures and artwork, but it was a testament to Angela’s skill with interiors that the juxtaposition never felt forced or awkward. Similarly, none of the guests seemed put off by the fact that, having approached the house through a formal lavender walk, accompanied by a violin quartet playing Handel, they walked into a brightly lit hallway throbbing to the beat of pop music.

The guest list was huge and eclectic, but somehow on the night it worked, with Jason’s village friends and local schoolteachers rubbing shoulders happily with Brett’s property-tycoon cronies and a decent smattering of celebrities, many with second homes in the idyllic Swell Valley. The age range was equally broad, with at least two ladies from the Fittlescombe Conservative Association topping the hundred mark, and Logan’s posse of St Hilda’s Primary School mates starting at just seven.

Max Bingley was one of the first to arrive, arm in arm with his new love, Stella Goye. In her late forties, with a sleek bob of dark hair that Max always thought made her look rather French, and a face that was attractive and intelligent rather than pretty (long nose, high cheekbones, small, expressive mouth and merry green eyes, deeply wrinkled from years of smiling), Stella had gone for a floaty, vintage look tonight. Privately, Max wasn’t a fan of the gypsy look. (His daughters informed him it was known as ‘boho’ these days, but to Max Stella’s tasselled patchwork dress and jangly gold bangles made her look as if she lived in a caravan and/or read tarot cards for a living.) Her graciousness and warmth more than made up for any fashion-related shortcomings, however, and Max felt proud introducing her to Angela Cranley.

‘I’ve heard such a lot about you,’ Angela said kindly as they shook hands. ‘We’re so glad you could make it.’

In a floor-length Calvin Klein shift dress in slate grey, low cut at the back, and no jewellery other than a plain diamond cross necklace, Angela looked stunning, as pared down and chic as Stella was colourful and eccentric. Max saw Angela regularly at school and in the village, once a week at least, but rarely remembered her looking quite as radiant as she did tonight. Indeed, the last time she’d seemed so completely happy was in the garden of The George Inn at Alfriston. They had never spoken about that day since, or about Angela’s mystery Frenchman. True to his word, Max had told nobody, not even Stella, about running into her. In some unspoken way, he felt that his chance encounter with Angela Cranley that afternoon had deepened their friendship. It was a moment he wanted to keep for himself – rare and, in its own way, quite perfect.

Angela certainly appeared genuinely pleased to see him here tonight. As for Max, he was always happy to see Angela. She was one of those women, like Stella, who could light up a room simply by walking into it.

‘Your house is breathtaking,’ Stella was saying.

‘Thanks. It might be more breathtaking if Gringo hadn’t chewed up half the upholstery,’ Angela joked. ‘You don’t want to buy a very poorly trained basset hound, do you?’

‘Not really,’ laughed Stella. ‘Max said your son still lives at home. I must say, now that I’ve seen the place, I don’t blame him. He’s a lucky young man.’

‘In some ways he is,’ Angela agreed. ‘He hasn’t always felt lucky. But I think – I hope – he does tonight.’

‘When I was twenty-one, my dad took me to the pictures and bought me a gin and tonic in the pub and my mum baked rock cakes with little silver keys on top made from sugar,’ said Stella. ‘I thought that was the height of sophistication.’

Angela smiled.
She’s nice
, she thought.
Funny and genuine. No wonder Max looks so happy.
She felt a tiny, unworthy stab of envy, but stifled it. After all, she was happy too, wasn’t she?

Brett had got home yesterday morning from New York and was clearly making a real effort to shake off his bad mood and get back into her good books. Business had gone well out there evidently. He’d arrived home from the airport with an enormous duty-free gift bag for Angela, as well as a hand-tied bouquet of flowers that he’d actually stopped off to buy from the flower shop on Brockhurst High Street. Logan had launched herself into his arms the moment he got through the door, claiming her father for herself as she always did. But Brett had made a point of putting her down and coming over to kiss his wife.

‘I missed you, Ange,’ he whispered in her ear, reaching down and grabbing her hand tightly for emphasis.

She’d felt happy. Relieved. ‘I missed you too,’ she told him. She looked around the room now for Brett, hoping to introduce him to Stella, but he’d disappeared off somewhere.

Angela made small talk for a few more minutes, mostly about Stella’s work as a ceramicist and how she was finding life in the village. Then Max Bingley and Stella Goye drifted away, and another couple came up to talk to Angela; then another; then some business friends of Brett’s … Before Angela knew it, it was ten o’clock. She hadn’t seen Brett in hours and, other than catching a half-glimpse of him walking onto the dance floor with Logan,
hadn’t laid eyes on her son at all.

It was a relief when Mrs Worsley, tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Could I have a word, Mrs Cranley? It’s about the cake.’

‘Oh God,’ sighed Angela. ‘What’s that bloody dog done now?’

But for once, Gringo wasn’t the guilty party. In a fit of exuberance, brought on in part by running around the tables drinking the dregs of the adults’ cocktails, two little boys from Logan’s class had apparently decided they couldn’t wait for candles and speeches and had attacked Jason’s beautiful piano cake with their bare hands. Dylan Pritchard Jones, eager to impress Jane Templeton, his putative future boss, had apprehended the culprits and, disregarding their protests of innocence (‘You’ve got half a ton of chocolate cream icing round your mouth, William!’), dragged them to Mrs Worsley for punishment.

‘I’m so sorry,’ the housekeeper was saying over and over, wringing her hands despairingly. ‘If only I’d
seen
them. Sixteen hundred pounds’ worth of chocolate cake, ruined! Poor Jason.’

‘Jason will be fine,’ Angela reassured her. ‘And I’m sure the cake’s not ruined. It’s as big as a house, they can’t have eaten
that
much of it.’

The two little boys in question looked so terrified when they saw Logan’s mother coming over, not to mention sick to their respective stomachs from the combined effects of cake and alcohol, Angela didn’t have the heart to yell at them. Instead, instructing Mrs Worsley to put on a DVD in the playroom and dump all the under-elevens in front of it, she wandered outside into the grounds in search of Brett. Suddenly she wanted to be with him, wanted the two of them to be a couple on this special day, twenty-one years since their first child was born.

Outside, Furlings’ rose garden was heaving with people. Most were having a wonderful time flirting, star-spotting and drinking copious amounts of Brett Cranley’s vintage champagne. A few, however, were less than happy. While Angela Cranley ploughed her way through the crowd in search of her husband, Dylan Pritchard Jones stood rooted to the spot beneath a mulberry tree, listening to Jane Templeton tell a long and unremittingly tedious story about a friend of hers from Oxford who’d attempted a bicycle ride across the Asian Steppe, got lost in Mongolia and written a book about it. Dylan hadn’t noticed it before, but St Jude’s chair of governors was really quite spectacularly ugly. She had blotchy skin, a whiskery chin like a witch’s, and the sort of thick ankles more normally associated with extremely elderly women in support stockings. Jane Templeton wasn’t elderly. Dylan guessed she was in her mid-fifties. But there was a matronly quality about her, from her heavy, pendulous bosoms to her resolutely undyed grey hair that made her look far older.

What made it harder to bear was the fact that there were so many young, beautiful girls here, just waiting to be flirted with. Dylan had already spotted Keira Knightley, a regular in the valley during the summer months, and local model Emma Harwich, who looked spectacular tonight in a backless white dress that clung to her bottom like shrink wrap on a perfectly ripe peach. Tatiana Flint-Hamilton had arrived late and – much to everyone’s surprise after all the hype about her boyfriend – alone. She also looked stunning, much to Dylan’s irritation, in a gunmetal minidress that barely skimmed the top of her thighs and black Alexander McQueen ankle boots. Her long hair was swept up and cleverly pinned so that it looked short. Combined with her dramatic dark eye make-up, the overall look was halfway between punk and rock chick, and spectacularly sexy.

‘So she took it to Simon and Schuster. That was her first port of call,’ Jane Templeton wittered on.

‘Interesting,’ said Dylan, stifling a yawn. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Maisie, his wife, being chatted up by a good-looking man in an immaculately cut dinner jacket. When the man turned his head, throwing it back to laugh at one of Maisie’s jokes, Dylan saw to his fury that it was Danny Cipriani, the England rugby star and one of Maisie’s long-time crushes.

‘… But she didn’t end up with them. There was a bidding war, you see. Even though the book wasn’t finished. Anyway, you’ll never guess what happened after that.’ Jane Templeton gripped Dylan’s arm with her bony, arthritic fingers.

‘No?’ He forced a smile.

He can’t possibly fancy her, can he?
he thought, trying to reassure himself as he sneaked another glance across at Maisie and the rugby star.
I’ll bet she’s boring on about the baby. He’s probably just being polite.
No sooner had Dylan had this thought than Danny Cipriani rested his hand on the small of Maisie’s back in a distinctly impolite, intimate gesture. The cheek of it!

Dylan longed to make an excuse and go over there, but Jane’s grip on his arm was like a vice.

‘Well, she went to New York …’ Jane went on.

Dylan’s eyes glazed over. Just then Tatiana Flint-Hamilton swept past him. She had a flute of champagne in her hand and an amused glint in her eye. Whatever had happened to the boyfriend, it didn’t seem to be fazing her. ‘Hello, Dylan.’ She waved at him regally.

‘Hello, Ta …’ he began. But Tati had already moved on, sashaying through the throng followed by scores of admiring male eyes, paying Dylan no more attention than a passing fly.

Self-important bitch
, thought Dylan, watching her go. When he looked back to where Maisie had been standing with Danny, the two of them had gone.

This was not going to be Dylan Pritchard Jones’s evening.

At the other end of the garden, outside the orangery, Brett Cranley was talking business with an old friend from Australia when he saw Tatiana talking to Jason. They were only together for a moment. Tati leaned in to tell Jason something, probably just, ‘Happy birthday.’ Jason smiled and hugged her, kissing her on the cheek before walking away to join a group of girls Brett didn’t recognize. But even that momentary exchange, those few seconds of touching, felt like a razor blade stabbing into Brett’s heart.

‘Are you all right, mate?’ his friend asked, frowning. ‘You looked a bit crook there all of a sudden.’

‘I’m fine,’ Brett murmured. ‘Excuse me.’

He walked over to Tatiana, like a moth drawn to a flame, even as it can feel the heat start to singe its wings.

‘What happened to lover boy? Stood you up, did he?’

Tatiana spun around. Brett loomed over her. Black tie suited almost all men, but not Brett Cranley. He looked awkward and uncomfortable in his jacket, like a bear squeezed into performing clothes by some sadistic circus ringmaster. Tati made a point of avoiding Brett whenever possible, and it was months since she’d last seen him in the flesh. It bothered her the degree to which his presence could still unnerve her. She felt her stomach churn unpleasantly now, and a disagreeable sensation, halfway between attraction and revulsion, shoot through her.

‘Maybe I got a better offer,’ she smiled sweetly.

‘You did,’ said Brett, deadpan. ‘Mine.’

‘Marco had to work,’ said Tati, deciding it was safer to ignore this last comment. ‘His team have got a big deal closing. You know how it is.’

Brett raised an eyebrow mockingly. ‘Uh huh.’

Irritated, Tati shot back waspishly ‘Where’s Angela? Shouldn’t you be holding her hand, playing the doting husband and father? Today of all days?’