‘Stop.’
Jason’s voice rang out, startling his mother. He hadn’t said a word since they pulled out of Heathrow. Having watched him go through a series of depressions, Angela wasn’t surprised by his silence. She had learned to sit with her son’s sadness, to stop trying to snap him out of it. But she still found it hard.
‘That was it. Furlings. There’s a sign at the bottom of the drive.’
Angela reversed. Sure enough, there it was. Damp and faded, and partially covered by overhanging trees, a simple wooden sign: ‘Furlings – Private Property’.
The driveway had seen better days. The four-wheel drive bounced and juddered over potholes, rattling its occupants like cubes of ice in a cocktail shaker. But after about a hundred yards of winding their way up the hill that overlooked the village, the private track widened into a grand, gravelled forecourt with a stone fountain at its centre. The house stood back from the gravel and was set slightly above it, atop a flight of six wide stone steps. A grand, square central section was flanked by two, lower symmetrical wings, all in the same red brick typical of Queen Anne architecture. Elegant sash windows peeked out shyly beneath thick fringes of wisteria, and the formal gardens at the front of the house gave way to stunning, oak-dotted parkland below, the green hills rolling all the way down to the village green.
It was quite the most exquisite house Angela Cranley had ever seen, combining elegance with an undeniable grandeur. It was also, to Angela’s way of thinking, enormous. If this was a small stately home, she struggled to imagine what a large one might look like.
‘It’s a palace!’ Logan squealed delightedly, forgetting all her heartfelt objections in the joy of the moment as she tumbled out of the car and ran towards the steps. ‘Oh, Mum, isn’t it gorgeous?’
Angela also got out of the car, stretching her aching legs. ‘It is, darling. It is gorgeous.’ She craned her neck and stepped back, trying to get a sense of the scale of it. ‘What do you think, Jase?’
‘Yeah. It’s very nice.’
Jason pulled the two heavy trunks out of the boot, wishing that Furlings’ beauty could affect him the way it ought to. Wishing that anything could. The cases thudded onto the ground with a crunch. Most of the family’s furniture and effects were arriving by separate plane in the coming days, but they’d brought a few ‘essentials’ with them. Jason’s father was supposed to come down to see the new house in a week. Brett had business in London, and preferred to stay in town than to deal with the hassle of moving in. ‘Your mother can do that. Women love all that nesting crap.’
‘It’s a lot of work, Dad,’ Jason had protested. Unusually for him. Jason Cranley was afraid to provoke his father. Everybody was afraid to provoke Brett Cranley.
‘Rubbish,’ said Brett. ‘There’ll be a housekeeper there to help her. Mrs Worsley. Old man Flint-Hamilton asked me to keep her on. And you can pitch in, can’t you? God knows you’ve got nothing else to do.’
Ever since Jason had dropped out of college, his father had been berating him for laziness, for failing to get a job and a life. Brett Cranley did not believe in depression. ‘We’ve all got our shit to go through,’ he told the family therapist at the one and only session Angela had convinced him to attend. ‘Wallowing in it doesn’t help. The problem with Jason is that he doesn’t realize how damn good he’s got it.’
Logan had already raced up the steps and run inside, darting in and out of the house like an over-excited puppy. Behind her, a smiling, soberly dressed woman in her mid-sixties appeared in the front doorway, plainly amused by the little girl’s high spirits.
Angela climbed the steps, her hand extended. ‘Mrs Worsley?’
‘Mrs Cranley. Welcome. You must be shattered after such a long journey.’
The older woman’s hand was cold and her grip firm, her Scottish accent clipped and efficient. She had grey hair, swept up into a neatly pinned bun, and wore no make-up, but her bright eyes and warm smile stopped her from appearing severe.
‘I suspect I’ll be tired later,’ Angela smiled back. ‘To be honest I think we’re all a bit too excited now. Excited and overwhelmed. What a house!’
‘Indeed.’ Mrs Worsley beamed with pride, as if she’d built Furlings herself, brick by brick. ‘Everyone in the village is so excited about your arrival,’ she lied. ‘It’ll be wonderful to have a family here again. Mr Flint-Hamilton was on his own for such a terribly long time.’
Jason had begun dragging the heavy cases up the steps but Mrs Worsley hurried forward, assuring him that Mr Jennings, the gardener, would ‘see to all that’.
‘He’s not really called Jennings, is he?’ The faintest of smiles traced Jason’s lips.
That boy looks ill, thought Mrs Worsley. As pale and pasty as rolled-out dough. With any luck the country air will sort him out.
‘He is,’ she said aloud. ‘And he’d be mightily upset to see you manhandling your own luggage, Mr Cranley.’
‘Jason,’ said Jason, embarrassed.
‘Jason.’
Mrs Worsley smiled. First impressions weren’t everything, of course, but she liked this family. The rambunctious little girl; the shy, polite son; the beautiful, perhaps slightly sad-looking mother. She felt certain that dear Mr Flint-Hamilton would have liked them too.
Fiona Worsley had worked at Furlings for over thirty years. She had known Tatiana’s mother, Vicky, and loved her dearly, grieving with Mr Flint-Hamilton when she died, and helping him to raise his infant daughter. A few years after Tati’s mother’s death, Mrs Worsley’s own husband, Mick, had also died, suddenly from a heart attack aged only forty-one. Rory Flint-Hamilton had returned the favour, supporting his housekeeper through her loss. The bond forged between them through mutual grief was a strong one. Never romantic. But as unique and powerful as any marriage.
Without children of her own, Mrs Worsley had focused all her love and attention on the young Tatiana, although she was a strict mother-figure and not especially demonstrative. In an odd, unspoken way, she, Rory and Tatiana had become a family unit of sorts up at Furlings, although none of them would ever have described the relationship in those terms. It had broken Mrs Worsley’s heart, watching Tatiana throw her life away on parties and unsuitable men as soon as she got into her teens, both for Tati’s sake but also for her father’s. Rory Flint-Hamilton had been a lovely man and, in her own way, Fiona Worsley had loved him. She’d particularly hated watching dear Mr Flint-Hamilton agonize over his will and Furlings’ future during the last, painful months of his life, and she laid the blame for his suffering squarely at Tatiana’s door. As such, she was firmly in the pro-Cranley camp when it came to the dispute over Rory’s will.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love Tatiana, or that she resented her, as many people in the village assumed. But at this point, after so many years of bad behaviour and broken promises, the housekeeper shared her former employer’s view that tough love was Tatiana’s only chance of salvation. And then there was the estate to think about. Furlings was as much a part of Mrs Worsley’s life as it was of Tatiana’s. At least now the estate would be preserved. Not only that, but it would become a family home again, cherished and brought back to life as a great house should be. She couldn’t understand why so many people in Swell Valley seemed unwilling to give