‘I was a lot younger then.’ It seemed like a hundred years ago. And yet somehow he could still touch the feeling of something fresh and new.
‘John spoke to me about sending me there for my first assignment. I’ll have to check out your bricklaying skills.’ She was clearly testing the water, waiting for Jaye’s opinion on the matter.
‘Well, when you get there, take the path that runs around the back of the building. We all put our initials in the cement, under the window of the main ward.’
Megan gave a broad smile. ‘I will. I can’t wait...’
She seemed to have said all she’d come to say and had begun to fidget nervously. Jaye stretched his legs out in front of him, wondering if he might persuade her to stay. Just so he could breathe her scent a little longer.
‘What do you think of the course so far?’
‘It’s been great, really helpful. It’s been good to talk to people from other charities and compare the different approaches. And being in this house has made all the difference.’
Jaye had always felt he paled into insignificance next to the great house, set in its spectacular landscape, but it was disappointing to hear the words on Megan’s lips. He wouldn’t have minded so much if Sonia hadn’t fallen so irrevocably in love with the place. When he’d first brought her here, she’d hardly looked at him all day, as if he’d suddenly melted into a poor second place in her heart. Jaye had tried to dismiss the feeling, but it had turned out to be a warning of things to come.
‘You think the house is what makes the difference. Not the people in it?’
She flashed him a withering look, as if he’d misunderstood on purpose. ‘What I meant was that we don’t leave every evening, so we sit and talk a lot more. Don’t you think that surroundings have an impact on how people operate?’
Jaye chuckled. ‘Yes, I do. It’s one of the founding principles of the clinic in Sri Lanka. We tried to make it a quiet place, where people could find healing and balance.’
‘The principles of Ayurvedic medicine? You practise that?’
‘No. But we understand that tradition sometimes has a lot to offer. We respect it.’
Megan nodded. ‘Everything I hear about the clinic in Sri Lanka just makes me want to go even more...’
She’d relaxed now, her shoulder brushing his arm as she turned to put her laptop on the stair next to her. That one touch seemed to linger.
‘So what impact do you think this house has had on the way the group has operated?’
‘Apart from the fact that I’m tempted to take a sandwich with me when I trek from my bed over to the shower in the mornings...? Not that my room isn’t lovely, of course, and very comfortable.’
‘Of course. And leaving your early morning hunger pangs out of it?’ Jaye filed the information under the category of irrelevant but nice to know.
‘It’s like a bubble. It seems as if it’s been here for ever, and it must have seen so much over the years. That makes almost anything possible.’
Jaye swallowed hard. She seemed to have reached into him and found his own response to the house he’d been brought up in. Megan had seen past the glitz and the glamour that seemed to preoccupy so many others.
‘These are all the past Dukes?’ She was pointing up at the portraits, which stretched along the landing and up the stairs.
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘And you’re carrying on their tradition.’
‘Not necessarily.’ Jaye heard his own laugh, almost breathless in the bubble that Megan had created around the two of them. ‘Some of them were rogues. The one just there almost gambled the estate away. Luckily for us, his son was a little more prudent. He’s the next one along.’
Megan craned her neck, staring at the painting and then glanced back at Jaye. ‘I can see a likeness, I think... Between you and the son.’
‘I’d be proud if there was one. He was one of the more enlightened Dukes of Marlowe.’
‘Why?’ She turned and Jaye shivered in her steady gaze. ‘What did he do?’
‘He was a campaigner against social injustice, at a time when no one thought about the sufferings of working people. He put his principles into practice, here on the estate.’
‘You’re very lucky, to have someone like that in your family.’
That was what his father had taught Jaye. When he’d been barely old enough to understand, his father had told him that this collection of paintings was a reminder of the choices that he could make in his own life.
‘We all have someone in our family we can look up to, don’t we?’
‘No. We don’t.’ Megan was shaking her head, quirking her mouth down.
If anything was possible, surely Jaye could ask her what made her so sure of that. But he didn’t dare.
‘I’m very lucky, then. My father’s always been someone I could look up to.’
‘Yes, you are.’ She puffed out a breath, as if whatever was on her mind didn’t matter so much after all, and she may as well say it. ‘Me and my father aren’t close, and that suits me fine. He had an affair with my mother—he was married and she was his secretary. I’m his awkward little secret.’
There was a weary defiance in her tone, as if she were challenging him to think whatever he liked. It occurred to Jaye that saying he was sorry to hear it would be quite the wrong thing to do.
‘Not so much of the little, I think...’
She stared at him for a moment, and then suddenly laughed. ‘Thank you. I don’t consider myself as little either, although I wouldn’t be surprised if my father did. He has a multi-million-pound business to run and much bigger fish to fry.’
It was one more piece in a puzzle that he was becoming compelled to complete. It really had been personal when Megan had walked out on him that first day. She’d thought he was like her own father, and that tough, personal experience had lent an edge to her anger.
‘And you don’t want any part of that?’
‘No, I don’t. I don’t like secrets, and this is his secret, not mine.’
Jaye called her bluff. ‘What’s his name? Maybe I’ve heard of him...’
Megan laughed, shaking her head. ‘Maybe you have, if you read the financial pages in the paper. And I’m not telling you, he has a wife and two sons. It wouldn’t be fair to them.’
He could respect that. All the same, it seemed that Megan was more burdened by the secret than she let on. But there was no chance to ask any more.
Voices sounded, growing louder as the group started to straggle back into the conference room, some still carrying their coffee with them. Megan sprang to her feet, looking around as if someone was going to appear out of nowhere and admonish her for sitting here, talking.
‘I’ve got to go...’
‘I’ll be along in a minute.’ Jaye suppressed the urge to tell her that this was his home, and she could sit here and talk with him for as long as she liked. She was already halfway down the stairs, clutching her laptop across her chest.
He watched through the bannisters as she joined the first of the group to appear in the hallway. Much as he had when he’d been a child, watching the guests arrive at one of his parents’ parties.
Jaye craned his neck, watching the top of Megan’s head disappear. He was no child now, and some possibilities were no longer a part of his future. He’d been scarred by love, and Megan was just making those scars ache a little.