A glance in the mirror belied any hope of order.
She wasn’t about to use anti-bacterial hand wash on her face and she’d been a bit too enthusiastic with the splashing. Her shirt was wet, almost transparent. She had to change, get back to work. Bad enough to be going back empty-handed, but late buses was an excuse that she could only take so far.
Hal wasn’t in the kitchen and she pushed open the green baize door that divided upstairs from downstairs. She’d expected it to be stripped bare, but it was much as she remembered, family portraits and all.
‘Having a good look round?’
‘I’m just surprised it’s all still here, but I don’t suppose there’s much of market for second-hand ancestors.’
‘It depends whose ancestors they are,’ he said.
She glanced at him.
‘There’s no one here important enough, distinguished enough to excite anyone who isn’t a Cranbrook, and the previous owner’s nursing-home room isn’t big enough to accommodate them.’
‘Poor man. It must be so difficult for him.’
‘He made bad choices, Claire. He has to live with them.’
He sounded, looked so hard.
‘Have you never made a bad choice?’ she asked.
‘I got married.’ For a moment she thought he was going to say more, but he just looked at her. ‘What about you?’
‘I fell in love with the wrong man,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure that choice had much to do with it but I let down my family.’
‘And Robert Cranbrook let down his.’
‘I suppose.’ She looked up at a portrait of Sir Robert’s mother, holding her son. There was a faded border around it, where there had once hung a larger portrait of his father, replaced when it was damaged. ‘So,’ she said, turning away, looking around at the serried ranks of Cranbrooks rising up the stairs, ‘the portraits were thrown in with the fixtures and fittings. Like unwanted carpets and curtains.’
‘I can almost see the cogs turning in your brain. It’s not a story, Claire.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Something told her that it was, but she let it go. ‘I told you, I’m off the clock.’
‘So you did. Shall we take these into the morning room?’
He handed her a mug and led the way to a small, shabby but comfortable sitting room with French windows that stood open on to a sunken walled rose garden.
She carried her mug onto the terrace.
‘It breaks my heart to see it in this state,’ she said, sipping at her tea. ‘It makes my fingers itch to get stuck in with the sécateurs.’
‘You love gardening?’
‘There’s something about restoring order out of chaos that appeals to me,’ she said. ‘And then putting back just enough chaos to make it interesting.’
‘You’ll find all the chaos you need here. This has been neglected since Cranbrook’s wife left him. Fortunately, it’s not like the Hall, where every single item of architectural detail has to be approved before it can be replaced.’
‘Replaced?’ She looked up at him. ‘Please tell me that you’re not planning to grub it up? Plant tidy rows of bedding plants. All the same colour, the same height…’
‘You said it. Order out of chaos.’
‘I didn’t mean… Some of these roses are really old, Hal. Heritage varieties.’
‘Old, dying, heritage varieties.’
‘It takes more than neglect to kill a rose. These just need some TLC. You should consult a specialist. You might be able to interest a grower in a restoration project.’
‘And have sponsorship signs all over the place? I’ll stick to the bedding plants, thanks.’
‘All they’d want is a discrete little plaque somewhere, acknowledging their contribution. I’ve seen them in other great gardens.’
‘So what do they get out of it?’
‘In this case I imagine they’d love the chance to take cuttings, use modern methods to breed from your old varieties,’ she offered. ‘Their PR people would commission a book on the restoration project—you could sell it to your guests—and provide articles for gardening magazines, the Sunday supplements, lifestyle magazines. Everyone wins.’ She put down the mug, aware that she was letting her passion run away with her tongue. ‘I have to get back to work, Hal.’
‘Next time bring cake.’
‘Is that an open invitation? I do a great Victoria sandwich with homemade raspberry jam—’
‘Goodbye, Claire.’
‘I make the jam myself,’ she said, her mouth running away with her, even while her head was saying, ‘Go. Now.’ ‘With raspberries from my garden.’
‘That would be perfect. And don’t forget that you owe Archie two applies.’
‘Two?’ He’d remembered her desperate appeal as she was chased down the path? ‘While I’d be the first to admit that Archie is a smart donkey, I doubt he keeps a tally,’ she said. ‘Besides, since he didn’t deliver on the deal, I don’t think he has a leg to stand on.’
‘Then just come yourself. He gets lonely.’
‘What about you, Hal? This is a big place to live in on your own.’
‘Two apples, a Victoria sandwich,’ he said, ‘and you can send me the name of a rose specialist. Just in case I change my mind.’
HAL stood at the open French windows, listening to a blackbird sing, trying to blot out the image of Claire Thackeray.
Her concerns for an old donkey, a neglected garden, for Gary were beginning to eat away at his armour, undermine his determination to visit the sins of the father on her head.
Bea was right. He should have left this to the professionals.
* * *
Claire walked home, her head in a whirl, scarcely noticing where she put her feet. Talk about the good news and the bad news…
All she’d wanted to do was reassure herself that Archie was okay. Job done. But walking into the courtyard and seeing Hal on his back with a motorcycle in bits around him had been a heart-leap moment, a flashback to the boy in leathers astride his own bike. Today, though, she hadn’t been an outsider. She’d been there, working alongside him and for a while had felt like a kid herself.
It couldn’t last.
On some subconscious level, she’d always known that her father must have been involved in Hal’s banishment. He’d been the estate manager, he ran Cranbrook Park. He engaged and dismissed staff, dealt with maintenance, arranged shoots and fishing parties.
Keeping order had been his responsibility.
She might be reduced to jelly-bones by Hal, but she could well understand why he’d been so peppery when they’d met. It hadn’t just been the crash. She was a Thackeray and in his shoes she wouldn’t have wanted to have anything to do with her, either.
She was amazed that he answered her phone calls. He could easily have left them to Penny, or let them go to voice mail. And he’d listened to her on the rose garden. That was good news. It would mean he was invested in Cranbrook Park, in the Hall.
As for that moment when he’d challenged her commitment to her job, being