Wild Oats (12 page)

‘So who is this developer?’

Jack didn’t answer immediately. He drew breath, ready to drop perhaps the biggest bombshell of them all.

‘Rod Deacon.’

A swirling red mist came down. Jamie could barely speak.

‘Rod Deacon? You’re not seriously telling me you’ve done a deal with Rod Deacon –’

‘He’s as sound as a pound, Jamie.’

Jamie spluttered. ‘I hope you counted your fingers after you shook his hand.’

Jack looked at his hand, as if he suddenly expected to see a digit missing.

‘You misjudge Rod. He’s not like the others –’

‘You watch. They’ll all be living here. They’ll be swarming all over the place like bloody tinkers. Your washing won’t be safe on the line.’

Jack stared at her bleakly. His voice became harsh; defensive.

‘Unless you’ve got any better ideas, I’ve got no alternative.’

‘I don’t know how you dared go through with this without consulting me. This is my home too, you know.’

‘You’ve been somewhat incommunicado. Or had you forgotten?’

‘I won’t allow it!’

‘Jamie – it’s a done deal. There’s nothing you can do. It’s in the hands of the solicitors.’

Jamie glared at her father. How could she have been lulled into a false sense of security? He was never going to change. He was going to go to his grave with a champagne lifestyle on a beer income, totally irresponsible, utterly selfish.

‘You’ll have to get rid of me first.’

She swept out of the barn, as dignified as she could be in a Snoopy nightshirt and hiking boots. Olivier shrank back into the corner as she went past, desperately wishing he was somewhere else. As soon as she’d gone, he looked at Jack, who looked like a dog that had been caught weeing on an expensive rug.

Jack smiled weakly.

‘Let’s take her for a spin, shall we?’

Olivier hesitated.

‘I should go after her.’

Jack put up a warning hand.

‘No. Give her a bit of time to think about it. Trust me. Jamie always goes off at the deep end – she’ll calm down when she’s had a chance to think about it.’

But Olivier felt the situation had been handled badly. He could see that Jamie was most upset by having a bombshell dropped upon her in front of a relative stranger, and he wanted to reassure her that he wasn’t part of some evil plot. The look of distaste she had thrown him as she left the barn made it clear she thought he was colluding.

‘I’m just going to make sure she’s all right.’

He caught up with her by the back door.

‘Jamie!’

‘Fuck off.’

‘You’re bound to be upset.’

She snorted in derision. ‘Upset?’

‘I don’t think your dad explained things very well –’

‘Is it any of your business?’

‘Of course not. I’m just trying to help.’ Olivier was starting to realize he would have done better not to interfere. Jamie looked at him venomously.

‘If you want to help,’ she hissed at him, ‘then do the washing-up. This place is a fucking pigsty.’

She stomped over the flagstones in her boots and up the stairs, wishing she hadn’t said that. She wasn’t the sort of person who bitched about dirty plates lying around. But anything was better than entering into a debate with Olivier about what she’d just heard.

9

Forty miles away, on the drive in front of a sprawling gentleman’s residence in Edgbaston, Claudia Sedgeley sat astride the bonnet of
her
Bugatti, dressed in a white satin trouser suit and a matching fedora, her red-nailed feet bare and a huge Havana cigar clamped between her teeth. The photographer from the
Birmingham Post
snapped away in delight. The paper was running a series of features on local girls infiltrating worlds traditionally dominated by men, which certainly made a change from photographing the usual charity committees and be-chained dignitaries. Meanwhile, the stylist was sulking. The cigar had been Claudia’s idea. And the bare feet. And it worked a treat.

From the grandeur of his portico, her father watched and smiled.

Anyone who called Ray Sedgeley a scrap-metal merchant was asking for trouble. He preferred steel-broker. Scrap metal was one up from being a rag-and-bone man. Though he couldn’t deny he’d once ridden round Kidderminster on the back of his dad’s flatbed truck, slinging in people’s unwanted junk. He’d come a long way since then. Now there was a depot, offices, staff, a fleet of trucks. And a large house on the outskirts of Birmingham. Built in the thirties, Kings-wood
sat in grounds of nearly an acre in leafy Edgbaston, and had served Ray and his wife Barbara as a very comfortable family home for over twenty years.

Not that he ever tried to hide where he had come from. Ray was a rough diamond, and he didn’t care who knew it. He made few attempts to soften his image or modulate his Black Country accent. With his brightly coloured silk shirts, close-cropped hair and Rolex the size of a dinner plate, he knew he looked like a gangster. In his opinion, that was a good thing. In his line of business, people had more respect for a hard nut than a suit with a posh accent.

Ray only had one weakness and that was his youngest daughter, Claudia. She was his Achilles heel, the one part of his life over which he had no control, but which really mattered to him. She was beautiful, untameable and mischievous and she was going to break his heart one day, when she finally got married and went off to make some other man’s life hell.

She’d certainly led Ray a merry dance. Until she was twelve, she was merely lively. It was when the hormones kicked in at thirteen that the trouble started. She failed every single exam that she sat at the private school he paid through the nose for – he might not mind looking like a gangster, but he wanted his daughter to have polish. Her teachers despaired. Educational psychologists were brought in; discreet suggestions made of some attention deficit disorder or hyperactivity. But no one could make a conclusive diagnosis. They were all clear about one thing. Claudia
was perfectly bright. If she applied herself she could do well.

But Claudia just wanted to play. And to be the centre of attention. If she couldn’t be the thinnest, richest and prettiest, she found some other way of outshining those around her. Ray tried very hard to think of her misdemeanours as youthful high spirits, but sometimes it made him shudder to think how close she came to danger.

He remembered when she was fourteen, and had ostensibly gone to a friend’s house for the night. A chance phone call had ascertained that the mother of the friend thought
her
daughter was spending the night at Claudia’s. A frantic search of all the bars and clubs on Broad Street had ensued. He’d finally found Claudia and Naomi at about one o’clock, being plied with champagne by unscrupulous-looking men in suits and black T-shirts.

A middle-aged man dragging a screaming, barely-dressed pubescent girl out of a nightclub was bound to attract attention. Protestations that he was her father had received cynical glances, especially as Claudia volubly denied this, and declared him a pimp. The bouncers had turned nasty. The police had been called. Ray had to put in a call to a superintendent friend of his and only narrowly escaped being locked up. Claudia was unashamed, defiant. What did he expect, for spoiling her fun?

Grounding her had no effect. She just ignored it. Short of tying her up and locking her in her bedroom,
there was nothing Ray could do. Stopping her allowance didn’t help either. The one time he’d done that, she’d taken to shoplifting, coming home with bags of designer gear she’d brazenly pinched, totally unrepent ant – even when she’d got caught. He’d had to spread some backhanders around that time. For years, he prayed that she would calm down, that someone or something would catch her eye and absorb her attention.

His wife Barbara eventually became battle-weary and withdrew from the fracas, writing Claudia off as a lost cause and concentrating her attention on Debbie and Andrea, Claudia’s sensible and reliable older sisters. Left to deal with his daughter alone, Ray despaired time and again. He’d heard the phrase ‘tough love’; he considered washing his hands of her entirely, throwing Claudia out on the streets to give her a short, sharp shock. But Ray Sedgeley, tough and uncompromising Ray Sedgeley, who’d been known to sack a man for a misdemeanour as minor as making private phone calls on his time, couldn’t do it to his own flesh and blood.

For somehow, just when he’d reached the end of his tether, Claudia would always do an about-face and surprise him by playing the doting daughter, and she did it so well his heart would melt and he would forgive her for the hell she’d put him through. Over-night, she would become biddable and demure, loving, affectionate and thoughtful. He found it unsettling, because it usually heralded trouble. But he made sure he enjoyed it while it lasted.

Once she left school, Claudia’s life had settled into a pattern. She would find something to occupy her, a new job or a new business project with a friend, and for a couple of months she would be totally absorbed and apparently fulfilled. Until the novelty wore off. Then there were usually disastrous financial consequences and a falling out, followed by tears, tantrums and a credit card bending to make up for the fact that she, Claudia, had yet again been let down or betrayed or stitched up – because it was never her fault. And Ray was always there to pick up the pieces. What the hell else could he do?

He’d lost track of the ventures he’d subsidized. A sandwich delivery service. A tanning studio. And one involving counterfeit designer handbags that had resulted in a visit from the Customs and Excise people. Ray’s name had been on all the paperwork and for a nasty moment he’d been convinced he was going to end up in jail. Claudia had drifted through the entire episode oblivious and unperturbed.

Thus Ray had accepted that things weren’t going to change, until, miraculously, they did, one glorious Saturday in June. He’d been invited to a corporate day out by his stockbrokers; they were taking a hospitality tent at a vintage race meeting and had asked a select number of clients to come and watch the fun. Ray quite fancied going, as it sounded eccentric and English, but Barbara had promised to babysit for two of their grandchildren. He’d resigned himself to going on his own, when he found Claudia lounging in front
of the telly at a loose end. Not thinking she’d take him up on it, he suggested she came with him. He was amazed when she agreed, even more amazed when she was standing by the car less than half an hour later, suitably dressed and seemingly looking forward to a day out with her dad.

They’d been well looked after, with a salmon and strawberry lunch. As for the racing, Ray thought at best it was a bunch of overgrown schoolboys tearing round a track, potentially bashing up cars that represented more money than most people would earn in a lifetime. Mildly amusing, but for him it didn’t have the thrust of Formula One, the death-defying speed. He worried that Claudia was bored. There weren’t any female retail opportunities; it wasn’t something people dressed up for, so she couldn’t look at the outfits.

To his amazement, she was utterly transfixed. The smell of oil, the roar of the engines, the dirt and smoke, the passion, the sweat, the concentration – she lapped it all up eagerly. As they watched the victor in his Bugatti circle the track in a lap of honour, a wreath of laurels round his neck, Claudia turned to her father, her eyes shining. ‘That,’ she declared, ‘is what I want to do.’

To test his daughter’s dedication, he sent her on several courses, so she could learn her skills and have the safety measures drummed into her. She passed her advanced motor-racing certificate almost effortlessly. He was satisfied she had proven herself. For her
twenty-first birthday, he presented her with a Bugatti Type 35, parking it outside their front door with a huge pink ribbon tied around the long, black bonnet. He’d had it custom built to his exacting specification, by a company that specialized in restoration. Of course, he could have bought a total replica, but by obtaining an old chassis, which entitled it to an authentically old registration, Ray had it fitted out with the best of everything. If people wanted to consider that cheating, let them. It didn’t break any rules. It was eligible.

A combination of her ‘too fast to live too young to die’ attitude, her utter determination to be the best and an innate feel for the sport made Claudia deadly on the track. Of course, Ray was utterly terrified that she would kill herself in the process. But then, she’d always taken risks, and it was better for her to die in the pursuit of glory than to end up with a needle in her arm. She’d been to some dark places in the past, but at last Ray was able to see the fruits of Claudia’s labours; the success she could achieve if she applied herself.

He found her a coach – a woman, because he felt sure a veteran female driver would recognize the forces driving Claudia and would be able to head off potential weaknesses and build on her strengths. Agnes Porter-Wright was an eccentric old bird from the Cotswolds who used to race Bentleys. She took absolutely no crap from Claudia, and Ray was once again amazed to see Claudia have respect for someone.

Repeatedly, he thanked God for saving Claudia from herself. And when she’d entered her first race the year before, even though she only clocked up twelfth place, he was bursting with pride. She’d run up to him in her overalls, eyes shining, and flung her arms round him in triumph, and for a moment he was taken back to her winning her first rosette at a gymkhana when she was nine. It was as if all the turbulent years in between had never happened.

Now, a year later, Ray was even more grateful that the novelty hadn’t worn off. After each race he’d been terrified that she would become truculent and despondent. But it seemed to spur her on. Even over the long winter months, when there was no racing, she pored over old videos, spent hours in the garage, talked on the phone to Agnes.

Once, she’d taken Ray out on the road, and he’d been so terrified that he vowed never to repeat the experience. It wasn’t that she was a reckless or dangerous driver. Far from it. It was the consummate skill with which she drove, the confidence with which she took corners, changed gear, judged distances, decelerating and accelerating as if it was second nature. Fast, furious, spine-tingling, exhilarating, a white-knuckle ride that Ray never wanted to relive.