After the funeral, Holly’s parents had offered to take Carly, but they were an older couple who, much as they loved their granddaughter, lived a life far too quiet and retired for a lively five-year-old, and so, without making any deliberate decision, Sara had found herself slipping into the role of surrogate mother to Carly, and nurse-cum-companion to Sam. If nothing else, it gave her some reason to keep on living.
Over the last six months Sam had commented on several occasions that she should get out more, make new friends. New men friends, he meant, but that part of her life had gone for ever. Where she had once been warmed by her love for Rick, she now felt cold—dead, really. She had no desire to replace him. A psychologist would no doubt put her lack of interest in men down to the fact that she was afraid … afraid of loving and losing again, but logic, no matter how well founded, was no opponent for feelings. She had loved Rick and she had lost him, and she could never again be the girl she had once been. Everything about her now was muted and slightly withdrawn. She had become a woman who preferred the cool protection of the shadows to the heat of the sun.
As she sat down in an armchair opposite her brother, her eye was caught by a letter lying on the coffeee table. As she read the letter heading and recognised the name of her brother’s solicitors, her body tensed.
Ever since the accident, a long legal battle had been going on between Sam’s solicitors and those acting for the man who had caused the accident.
Even now, Sara could not think about Wayne Houseley without her stomach cramping with agony and bitterness flooding her heart.
The first time he approached her she hadn’t known who he was. The police had simply told her that the driver of the large, powerful car which had smashed into Holly’s small Citroën had been drinking before the accident.
Wayne Houseley was fairly well known as an entrepreneur, and certainly Sara had seen his name in the papers. Sam had been convinced that he was driving the car, and it was later confirmed that he and his wife had been on their way home from a luncheon party, but when the police reached the scene of the accident, Wayne Houseley had informed them that his wife had been driving the car.
There had been no witnesses to the accident, barring Sam, who of course could not be considered impartial … and although Sara was sure that the police believed her brother, legally speaking it looked as though Wayne Houseley was going to get off any charges, other than that of careless driving levelled at his wife.
Sam’s insurance company and solicitors had assured them that financially this would not make any difference—the Houseleys would still have to pay considerable damages, and Wayne Houseley had been properly insured—but it was the man’s arrogant ability to avoid any responsibility for what he had done that made Sara bitter. She was convinced that her brother had been right when he said he saw Wayne Houseley in the driver’s seat of the large BMW and not his wife, and it seemed to Sara that Wayne Houseley was typical of that breed of men who considered that their wealth and the power it brought them set them above the law.
It was wrong that Wayne Houseley should not be punished, wrong that his wife should be forced into accepting the blame, but then of course his wife had not been drinking …
‘Houseley wants to settle the damages out of court,’ Sam now told her, seeing her frown. ‘Jenkins thinks I should accept.’
He watched as Sara’s mouth tightened, saddened to see what the last eighteen months had done to his sister. Sara had always been a pretty girl, and now she was a beautiful woman, but one who carried with her a haunting aura of pain. The blue eyes, that once danced with laughter and happiness were clouded and withdrawn; her dark auburn hair seemed to have lost some of its gloss and glow. She was thinner, he recognised guiltily. He had been so wrapped up in his own pain that he hadn’t always realised that his tragedy had been Sara’s, too.
‘I’ve asked Mrs Morris to look after Carly for the afternoon,’ he told her, answering her earlier question. ‘I wanted to have a talk with you.’
He paused, and Sara had the impression that he was intensely excited about something. His thin face had a colour she had not seen in it for months, his eyes—the same shade of blue as her own—snapping with the fierce enthusiasm that had once been such an integral part of him, but which had been lost since the accident.
‘Look at this.’ He picked up a glossy magazine from behind his chair. It was open at the property advertisement section, and a brilliant red circle was drawn round one of the ads. Sara read it slowly.
‘For sale—part-Tudor cottage badly in need of sympathetic renovation in accordance with Grade One Listed Buildings requirements, plus one acre of land and private gardens.’
‘It sounds idyllic,’ commented Sara idly, ‘but it’s very much off the beaten track, isn’t it?’ The address given was in a part of Dorset that Sara knew to be rather remote. As children she and Sam had lived some twenty miles away from the village mentioned, and both of them knew the area reasonably well.
She looked up and and saw the expression in her brother’s eyes, her own opening wide as she breathed unbelievingly, ‘Sam, you aren’t thinking of buying it, are you?’
‘Not thinking of it,’ he agreed with a grin. ‘I’ve already decided.’ He saw her face and added hastily, ‘Look, before you start objecting, let me tell you what I’ve got in mind. I rang the agents up last week and arranged to go down and see the place. I took Phil Roberts with me—you remember, he’s an old friend of mine from Cambridge who’s now with one of the big London estate agents. I wanted him to check the place over for me, and he was quite impressed. Basically it’s pretty sound, although very, very run down. But best of all, it’s got enough outbuildings for us to convert them into a ground floor self-contained unit for me,’ he grimaced faintly, ‘I’m sick of sleeping in the sitting-room, and a traditional bungalow doesn’t really appeal, so …’
‘But Sam, it’s miles from anywhere … totally cut off … and all that land—–’
‘It’s what I want, Sara,’ he interrupted, looking directly at her. ‘Holly was the one who liked London, and it was always on the cards that we’d leave one day. There’s nothing to keep me here now. I can work just as easily from Croft End as I can from here—more easily once the new computer’s installed. And think of the benefits for Carly—and for you. You always did have a yen for a cottage with roses round the door.’
He was teasing her, Sara knew, but there was a grain of truth in what he said. Their father’s job had been one which necessitated almost constant moves, and as a child she had longed for security, for what she had seen as the comfort and protection of a small village atmosphere.
‘But all that land …’ she protested again.
‘Not just the land,’ Sam told her with a grin. ‘A donkey, two cats and a dog go with it.’ He laughed when he saw her expression. ‘It’s quite a story. Apparently the property was owned by a rather eccentric old lady, and she specified to her solicitors that the house was only to be sold to someone who could take on the responsibility of her animals. Apparently she also specified that it was not to be sold to her next-door neighbour—the chap whose land runs adjacent to hers is Croft End’s equivalent of the local squire—owns the largest house in the neighbourhood, that sort of thing. He also owns and runs a highly profitable nursery garden, apparently, selling mainly wholesale, and he very much wanted the paddock attached to the cottage to extend his operation.
‘I don’t know the full story, but according to the estate agents there was some sort of quarrel between him and Miss Betts which led to her specifying that on no account was he to be allowed to buy either the cottage or the land. Apparently the proceeds from the sale are to go to an animal charity. Anyway, no one else seems to be interested—the property isn’t cheap, and the alterations won’t be either, because of the building being listed, but with the money I’ll get from this place I should be able to afford it. There’s a huge garden, complete with vegetable plot and fruit bushes; you always did fancy yourself as something of a back-to-nature freak, as I remember!