Tati waved a hand dismissively. ‘Every lawyer has a different opinion. And I’m already being ripped off. I don’t see that it can get much worse.’
‘That’s because you’re young, my dear,’ said Harry, patting her hand affectionately. ‘It can. Believe me.’
‘Well, it’s early days yet but I need funds to pursue my case,’ Tati went on, ignoring Harry Hotham’s warnings. ‘A war chest, if you will. I wanted to talk to you about that actually.’
‘My dear Tatiana, I’d happily give you my last farthing, but I’m afraid you are looking at a very poor man,’ Harry said matter-of-factly. ‘There’s no money in teaching, you see. Not a bean.’
‘Oh, no!’ Tati laughed, embarrassed. ‘I wasn’t asking you for money. It’s a bit of an odd request, but I … I was hoping for a job.’
‘A job?’
‘Yes. Did Daddy not say anything to you before he died?’
‘Say something?’ Harry looked confused.
‘It would just be for a few months, while I sort out my legal situation,’ said Tati. She explained about her trust fund, and the codicil in Rory’s will that would release money to her but only on the condition that she move back to Fittlescombe and work as a teacher at St Hilda’s.
‘Dad always had a ridiculous fantasy about me settling down and teaching one day. Ever since I did that awful course at Oxford Brookes.’ Misinterpreting Harry Hotham’s pained face, she added, ‘Look, I know it’s madness. But you’d be doing me a huge favour. When I get my inheritance restored to me, I promise to fund a new school building and anything else you want.’
‘It’s not that my dear,’ said Harry. ‘The job would be yours if it were mine to give. But I’m afraid I retired.’
‘What?’ Tati frowned. ‘When?’
‘At Christmas. I had a fall and I … well, I realized I wasn’t up to snuff any more. Physically, I mean. I recovered and all that. But I still need this blasted thing.’ He shook his walking stick reproachfully. ‘Running a school is a younger man’s game.’
‘Oh, Harry. I’m so sorry,’ said Tati, truthfully. ‘I can’t imagine St Hilda’s without you.’
‘Yes, well, things move on. And the new chap’s terribly good,’ said Harry, graciously. ‘Bingley, his name is. He’s a widower and rather a dish, so I’m told. All the yummy mummies are after him. He could probably use one of these himself,’ he waved his walking stick laughingly, ‘to beat them all off with!’
Tati forced a smile, but this was not good news. Working at St Hilda’s would always have been tough, a desperate measure for desperate times. But at least with Harry Hotham she’d have known where she stood. They’d have worked out some arrangement to satisfy her trustees – a few hours volunteering in the library or helping the girls play netball – and no one would have been any the wiser.
But this new fellow, Bingley, was an unknown entity. No doubt he’d already heard all kinds of bad things about her from village gossip, if not from the Daily Mail’s society pages.
‘Cheer up,’ said Harry Hotham, taking her arm. ‘You look like you’ve lost a shilling and found sixpence.’
‘Do I, Harry?’ Tati laughed. Somehow being around Harry Hotham reminded her of all the good things about her father and the past. Harry was part of her history, of Furlings, of all the things she was fighting for. ‘I’m off to judge the duck races. Would you like to come with me?’
‘Dearest Tatiana,’ enthused the old man. ‘I’m sure I can think of nothing I would like more.’
‘Wow.’
Angela Cranley gasped as she drove her Range Rover over the crest of the hill.
‘Wow.’
‘Stop saying “wow”, Mum. You sound like a dork.’
Logan Cranley, Angela’s ten-year-old daughter, rolled her eyes in the back seat. After the long flight from Sydney, Logan was tired and grumpy. She hadn’t wanted to leave her old school, or her friends, and couldn’t understand what had possessed her parents to uproot themselves overnight and move to the other side of the world, just because some old guy had died and left them a house. Even at ten, Logan understood that her family were extremely wealthy. Her father, Brett, was a real-estate developer and one of the richest men in Sydney. The Cranleys already had a bunch of houses, including a grand apartment in London. What was so special about this one?
Secretly though, she too was impressed by the stunning scenery that surrounded them as they got nearer to their new home. Narrow ancient lanes flanked by high hedgerows guided them through the rolling chalk hills of the Downs; they passed a Tudor pub, The Coach and Horses, that looked exactly like Logan’s dolls’ house back home in her playroom in Australia, all white wattle walls and criss-crossing black beams, with mullioned windows. There were meadows full of buttercups, picture-postcard villages made up of clusters of flint cottages, medieval churches and the occasional grand Georgian manor house. Queen Anne’s lace, grown wild and as tall as the top of the car, reached over from the grass verges and brushed the windscreen as they passed, like delicate white-gloved fingers waving an ecstatic welcome. And everywhere the late spring sunshine, light, bright and clear, bathed the countryside in a glorious, magical glow.
In the front passenger seat, Logan’s older brother gazed vacantly out at the patchwork of hills and fields. At just turned twenty, Jason Cranley was painfully withdrawn. Tall and thin, with a pale, freckly complexion and sad, amber eyes, it was hard to believe that he was genetically related either to Logan, or to their father, Brett. Both Jason’s little sister and his father were dark-haired, olive-skinned and bewitching, like gypsies, or members of some exotic tribe of Portuguese pirates. Jason took more closely after his mother. Angela was blonde and fair-skinned, the sort of colouring that could easily have gone to red and that had zero tolerance for sun. Jason glanced across at her now, smiling, enchanted by this new world unfolding before her.
She’s so brave, he thought. So optimistic. After everything that’s happened, she still believes in fresh starts.
How he wished that he did, too.
‘This is it. Fittlescombe. We’re here!’
Angela Cranley squeezed her son’s leg excitedly as they passed the sign for the village. The Range Rover had descended a steep escarpment, then forked sharp right at the valley floor. The village was completely hidden from the main road above, folded into the downs like a baby joey enveloped in its mother’s pouch. It made it feel like a secret place, a hidden jewel only to be discovered by the chosen few. Despite herself, Angela felt her excitement building and her hopes start to blossom like the first buds of spring. This, surely, was a place where people were happy. Where the miseries and betrayals of the past could be left behind.
The most recent betrayal, in the form of Brett’s mistress Tricia Hong, a pushy young news reporter for SBS who had done everything in her power to destroy Angela’s marriage, was now a satisfying ten thousand miles away. Brett had been unfaithful before, of course – countless times. But Tricia had been a threat of a different order: intelligent, ruthlessly ambitious and utterly without scruple. Perhaps it was no surprise that she and Brett had been drawn to one another. They were so very alike. Still, in the end, even Brett had been taken aback by the beautiful young Asian’s tenacity. He, too, had begun to feel under siege. Rory Flint-Hamilton’s surprise bequest could not have come at a more opportune time. Nor could it have brought them to a more idyllic spot.
‘Oh my God, look