Jacqueline and Anastasia were always away. Both had married rich men and spent their time trailing round the world on endless holidays with friends. Suki didn’t know what they had to take holidays from, since neither of them had worked a day in their lives.
When Mrs Lang came back into the room to check on drinks, Suki ordered a martini.
‘Make a strong one, Mrs Lang,’ she muttered grimly. ‘Make it a Kyle Senior Special.’
That was code for double measures of everything. Suki had never asked for such a thing in the Richardsons’ house before – that was the prerogative of Kyle Senior – but she didn’t feel like playing the dutiful ex-daughter-in-law right now. A martini with a powerful kick was what she needed.
When dinner was ready, the four of them made their way to the dining room and sat in state at the huge dining-room table.
The food was good, but there wasn’t enough wine. Suki emptied her glass quickly and had to wait an age before anyone filled it up. They were on to a cheese and fruit course before the subject of the unauthorized biography was raised again.
‘Father says that nobody –’ Kyle stared hard at Suki – ‘nobody is to cooperate with this man.’
Suki glared back at him. ‘I have no intention of cooperating, and I’m insulted at the implication that I might,’ she snapped. ‘It’s not as if I don’t know where all the bodies are buried in this family, but I have never spoken about any of that, to anyone.’ She paused purposefully and looked Antoinette straight in the eye. There was a silence and then Antoinette intervened.
‘Of course nobody is suggesting that you would do something like that, Suki,’ she said. ‘Kyle is merely reiterating his father’s wishes. Nobody in this room would do anything to upset the family, we know that. But other people, other people don’t have the same loyalty. Loyalty is something that is sadly missing today. I’ve often said that. When I was young, loyalty was one of the most respected virtues, but not today, sadly.’
‘My grandpa always says that loyalty is so important,’ echoed Leesa virtuously.
‘I believe in loyalty,’ said Suki, looking from Antoinette to Kyle. ‘As long as people are loyal to me in return.’
She’d had enough. She couldn’t understand why they’d summoned her, unless it was to intimidate her. She got to her feet. ‘You must forgive me, everyone, I am overtired and I think I’ll go to bed.’
Unable to endure one more minute with them, she said goodnight and went to her room, where she sat on the bed and tried not to cry.
The Richardsons were so much more powerful than she was. Compared to them, she was a nobody. If the truth came out, they could easily twist it so that she came out the villainess. One way or another, the family would come up smelling of roses, while her name would be mud.
Stanley the estate agent had no gush left. There was, he had learned, no point. People either had the money or they hadn’t. And if they hadn’t, no amount of gushing and going into raptures over beautiful club fenders, stone fireplaces and plaster mouldings that had once been painted delicately by hand with gold leaf was going to make a difference. No, the sort of person with the money to buy and restore somewhere like Avalon House would not be susceptible to having their head turned by a eulogizing estate agent.
That certainly seemed to be the case where Cashel Reilly was concerned. An alpha male with knobs on, in Stan’s estimation. He’d arrived from Dublin in a Maserati Grand: a sleek, dolphin-grey, quite subtle-looking Maserati, but a Maserati nonetheless. Everything he wore, everything about him, reeked of money, power … and precisely zero patience with not getting his own way.
‘Have you been here before?’ said Stan, cautiously, wanting to figure out which way the ground lay. If what he’d heard was true, and Cashel Reilly really had grown up in the area, perhaps he’d lived here at some stage. It wasn’t as if there were any other houses in the town that fitted the profile … But no, the Powers had lived here. Stanley was a blow-in and didn’t know all the families properly. Perhaps Mr Reilly had visited a childhood friend who’d lived here. But looking at Cashel’s stony face, Stan decided it would be inadvisable to ask.
‘Yes, I’ve been here before,’ said Cashel.
Clearly a man who never used more words than necessary.
‘I won’t do the spiel then,’ said Stan.
‘No,’ agreed Cashel.
Stan used to love showing these old Irish houses in the days when people actually had money to buy them. It gave him such a buzz, pointing out all the original features to some delirious client with money to burn and an urge to spend it on historically correct plastering and historically correct painting of fiddly ceiling mouldings. They’d thrown money at these houses, thrown it. Now, you couldn’t shift this type of place for love nor money. Most clients didn’t have the wherewithal, and the ones that did weren’t about to spend it on some run-down pile without the benefit of central heating or modern plumbing.
Stan took a risk.
‘Since you’ve been here before, do you want to walk around yourself while I wait in the hall?’
He was rewarded with the glimmer of a smile.
‘Good plan,’ said Cashel. ‘I know my way around.’
There wasn’t a lot of furniture left in the old house, but Stan found a shabby-looking kitchen chair and pulled it out to the hall, sat down and began to go through his text messages. This Reilly fellow certainly seemed like the sort of bloke who had enough money to buy Avalon House, but whether he would or he wouldn’t, who could tell?
Having long since learned that what would be would be, Stan applied himself to his phone:
Yes, love, home for dinner, fish pie would be great, xx Stan
What astonished Cashel most was how different the house felt. As a child, it had been like some magical palace, home to the amazing Power family, Avalon’s gentry. Whether they were broke or not was immaterial: they could trace their ancestors back hundreds of years. Most people in Avalon would be lucky if they could go back three generations. The Reilly clan did not have a particularly long or noble family tree. When he was a teenager, that had upset him. Mainly because, by then, he had got to know the Powers and was aware of their long heritage. And felt slightly diminished by it.
Suki and Tess could boast a lineage of noble earls and kings. He and Riach were descended from a man who lived his life in the bookmaker’s shop or the pub.
Now, he was proud of his rootlessness. Proud of the lack of rich relatives. Everything he had achieved had been a product of his own hard work. There had been no family money to help him on his way.
Whenever he was invited to give talks to groups of youngsters on how he’d got where he was today, he’d conclude by telling them:
‘It’s not who you are that matters. It’s what you do with who you are. The blood running through your veins is the only blood that matters. When you go out into the world, you have the chance to leave the past behind.’
It was strange how the past seemed so close now as he began his tour of Avalon House.
He started off in the ground-floor drawing room, purely because it was one of the rooms he’d never seen as a child. The left side of the house had always been off limits, according to his mother and Tess. They were the grand rooms, relics of a bygone age when there had been parties and balls up here on the hill. He’d imagined glamorous titled ladies and gentlemen wandering around in evening dress, listening to scratchy gramophones and talking about hunting and estates in the colonies – the way he’d seen