Wild Oats (7 page)

But Jamie’s favourite incarnation was Louisa the party girl, the sparkling hostess, forever throwing spontaneous drinks parties, impromptu barbecues, spur of the moment Sunday lunches that went on well into the night. A mere half an hour could see a total transformation from one of the above personae, and Louisa would descend the stairs looking for all the world like a film star in a fitted silk dress that would show off her tiny waist, her rich chestnut hair piled on top of her head, the merest hint of eye-liner and lipstick enhancing her fragile, translucent beauty. Her dark-brown velvet eyes spoke volumes and held everyone in their thrall. Under her gaze, you felt like
the only person in the world. For somehow, Louisa always made everyone and everything feel special.

Jamie remembered when she was a child. There’d been Easter egg hunts with ingenious clues hidden all over the farm, long cross-country rides with picnics in some magical spot Louisa had discovered, a puppet show for her birthday with fairy-tale puppets Louisa had been sewing all day and all night for weeks. And she carried that magic across all the generations – there’d been pensioners in the surrounding villages who lived for her day on the Meals on Wheels rota, when she’d help them with the crossword, join them in a quick sneaky sherry, listen to their moans and groans without looking as if she wished she was somewhere else. She made them feel as if they mattered for a golden half-hour in their grey, dreary lives.

She had her faults, of course. She was hopelessly impractical when it came to anything boring. Both Jamie’s parents were. Anything that involved making a decision, or filling out a form, or hitting a deadline, and they were infuriatingly ostrich-like, the pair of them. As she grew older, Jamie often found herself having to chivvy them into confronting day-to-day realities – they seemed to think they had immunity from the mundane. It could be immensely frustrating.

And Louisa had her dark moments: times when she was distracted; when she would hide herself away and take little interest in her surroundings or other people. Sometimes she would take off somewhere for a few days at a time, declaring that she needed ‘space’.
But that was because she was an artist. Eventually, she would emerge from the gloom with a renewed vigour and energy, throwing herself into some new project or social engagement with such enthusiasm that you soon forgot the dark side. It was like the sun appearing from behind a cloud; when you were enjoying its warmth, you couldn’t imagine it ever raining again.

She’d been such a strong presence that Jamie couldn’t believe even now that she wasn’t going to walk into the room with a plate of cheese straws fresh from the oven, face smudged with flour or paint or earth, depending on what she had been doing, then curl up in her big, old, battered leather chair by the fire, feet bare and her hair in a knot skewered with a paintbrush.

Instead, bloody Lettice was in that very chair now, unwinding herself from several yards of chiffon scarf and kicking off her stilettos, which were a ridiculous height for a woman of sixty plus. Jamie prayed fiercely that her father wasn’t thinking of marrying the old witch. She’d heard plenty of horror stories about widowers marrying on the rebound…

In the sanctuary of the drinks cupboard that was tucked away in the corner of the room, Jack counted down four champagne glasses with a trembling hand and put them on a tray, then quickly uncorked a decanter of whisky and poured himself a slug. He hoped he’d hidden it well, but he’d had a terrible
shock. Seeing Jamie like that on the path, like a ghost, an apparition… for one moment, a moment both glorious and dreadful, he’d thought it was Louisa. Jamie looked more like her than ever, now her hair had grown and she’d lost so much weight. Jack felt a bit of a fool, then told himself it was a mistake anyone could have made, with her appearing from nowhere like that with no warning.

And it wasn’t the first time he’d thought he’d seen Louisa. In the first dreadful months after her death, she’d appeared to him many times, usually courtesy of a bottle of his namesake, Jack Daniels. He drank it to blot out her memory, but sometimes she came to him before he’d managed to drink enough to slink into oblivion. She would smile at him through his alcoholic haze, unreachable, untouchable, only disappearing when his consciousness slipped finally away from him in a drunken stupor. There had been nothing for it but to drink harder and faster, to keep her apparition at bay.

Thank God the boy had appeared like that, and given him something else to think about, or Jack was sure he would, eventually, have gone quite, quite mad.

Olivier came back in with a bottle of cold Bollinger as Jack appeared with the glasses. The champagne was poured ceremoniously and Jack proposed a toast to Jamie’s return. As she sipped her bubbles, she reflected that this was far from the homecoming she’d expected, to be knocking back the Bolly with Olivier
Templeton and Lettice Harkaway, each of whose presence made her wary. She longed to be alone with Jack. He was obviously delighted to see her home, skitting about like a frisky kitten, thoroughly overexcited by the occasion, performing for his guests as usual.

At long last, Lettice drained her glass with an air of finality.

‘Righty-ho, darlings. I must toddle off, I’m afraid.’

Thank God, thought Jamie.

‘Not staying for supper?’ Jack asked.

‘No, no – the last thing I want to do is intrude. You’ve got such a lot to catch up on.’

Jamie let out an audible sigh of relief as Lettice poked her feet back into her shoes and stood up. As she walked past Olivier, she pinched his bottom.

‘You gorgeous thing!’ she rasped. Jamie was nearly sick, but Olivier just grinned. He was obviously used to it. As the Bentley roared off down the drive, all that was left of Lettice was the overwhelming smell of Trésor and the bright pink lipstick on her champagne glass.

‘Well,’ said Jack.

‘Well,’ said Jamie.

They looked at each other for a moment, then Jack held out his arms.

‘Come here,’ he said gruffly, and Jamie buried herself in his embrace, trying very, very hard not to cry.

‘I think I’ll go and have a bath,’ said Olivier hastily, and made himself scarce.

5

Tiona was in the little boxroom she had commandeered as her private office as soon as it became clear that Hamilton Drace wasn’t coming back to work after his funny turn and that she was, for the time being, in charge. Hamilton had never had his own office. He always said he couldn’t get a feel for what was going on if he was locked away. But Tiona needed privacy. She didn’t want anybody earwigging on her transactions, even though she thought most of the staff at Drace’s were too thick to cotton on to what she was up to. She insisted she needed complete peace and quiet to discuss terms with clients, blaming her own lack of concentration, implying that a fluffy little creature like her couldn’t possibly walk and chew gum at the same time, and everyone seemed to accept it.

She had one last call to make before clocking off for the day. She stabbed out Mrs Turner’s number, then twizzled the cord round her finger, batted her eyelashes and smiled her sweetest smile, knowing they would transfer themselves down the telephone line.

‘Mrs Turner? Tiona Tutton-Price here. I’ve got some fantastic news.’ She sounded breathy and excited, as if she could barely contain herself. ‘I was just about to type up your particulars, when a man
came in to register his details. He was after just what you’ve got to offer. He’s prepared to give you the asking price. Cash, no strings. He doesn’t even want to view.’

Mrs Turner hesitated.

‘But I thought what we wanted was two or three people interested –’

Shut up, thought Tiona. You weren’t supposed to actually pay attention to what I was telling you.

‘Let me put it into perspective for you. You’ll be saving yourself a fortune. No advertising, no board up, no photography. And I’m sure we can come to some arrangement over our fees. After all, I won’t have had to work terribly hard.’

She gave a tinkling laugh, but there was no reply. Tiona knew from experience that Mrs Turner was struggling to take the information in. It took the old so bloody long to cotton on.

‘Peace of mind, Mrs Turner. If we move very quickly you will be safe in the knowledge that you’ve got a definite sale. He’s happy to exchange ASAP. Whereas it could be weeks before we get a firm offer…’

Tiona also knew that the old liked nothing better than certainty; that they hated taking risks, waiting on decisions. It would just take one quick turn of the thumbscrews.

‘And the market’s very volatile, don’t forget. It could take a plunge any moment. We only need an increase in the interest rate.’

‘So you think I should accept his offer?’

Tiona feigned hesitation.

‘Strictly speaking, I’m not supposed to influence your decision. It’s entirely up to you.’ She lowered her tone confidentially. ‘Let’s just say if it was me…’

Outside in the main office, Christopher Drace heard the town clock strike six and put down his pen with a sigh that was part satisfaction, part frustration. He thought, at last, that the office was running smoothly. The last three months had been fraught. He’d lost count of how many houses they’d let slip through their fingers while they sorted things out, but that had been fine by him. Better not to handle a sale at all than handle it badly. Once he’d been satisfied they could do the job properly, he’d allowed Tiona out of the door to do valuations again, and now a satisfying rash of Drace’s boards were popping up around Ludlow.

But marring this triumph were three pressing problems that he couldn’t ignore. And he had to admit he didn’t have a clue what to do about any of them. Sorting out the agency had certainly been a challenge, but it was largely a question of assessing the damage, then limiting it. There were practical solutions that could be immediately implemented. His other conundrums were more ethereal, more complicated.

His biggest concern was Zoe. For a start, he knew he wasn’t spending enough time with her. He was working a six-day week, Saturdays being the busiest
for any estate agent, and occasionally he had to work Sundays too. He tried very hard to be home by seven o’clock each night, if only to have twenty minutes with Hugo and Sebastian, who were already in their pyjamas and slippers and liked to have their bedtime drinks with him, one on each of his knees, even though Hugo was really too big. By then, Zoe would be in the kitchen, three-quarters of the way down a bottle of Jacob’s Creek. ‘We couldn’t wait!’ she would chirrup cheerfully, as if Rosemary had somehow been instrumental in its opening and subsequent consumption. Christopher knew his mother had probably had an inch in the bottom of her glass, while Zoe, judging by her glazed expression and the roses in her cheeks, had golloped the lion’s share and would rush to open another bottle for, apparently, Christopher’s benefit.

She was obviously desperately unhappy, and Christopher felt helpless. If only there had been money to do up the house, she would have been occupied. She had a good eye. But she wasn’t one for making do. Christopher didn’t like to suggest gardening. Zoe couldn’t even keep a pot of Sainsbury’s flat-leaf parsley alive. The problem was she’d been in London too long. Noise and fumes and traffic jams and crowds were the stuff of life to her. The silence at Lydbrook House unnerved her – she kept the television on all day if only for the background chatter. The unrelenting darkness at night totally freaked her. Christopher adored its comforting velvety cloak, dark as Guinness. Zoe had to have the landing light on. She would stay
awake for hours, longing for the familiar background noises of traffic, sirens, car alarms and revellers on their way home to lull her into the land of nod. Eventually, she would drop off, then sit bolt upright, heart racing, when the hoot of an owl ripping her from unconsciousness would mean another two hours of agonizing insomnia.

It was such a contrast to the Zoe of only six months ago; the Zoe with the rackety social life, who rushed from the gym (twenty minutes cardio; two hours cappuccino) to girlie lunches to crucial shopping trips involving the quest for the perfect pair of boots. Then there would be hordes of small boys back for tea – as she didn’t work she was often an unpaid childminder for her career-orientated friends, but this never fazed her; she never bitched or complained that she was being used. It was this generosity of spirit that made Christopher love her so much. He’d had no idea that the gloriously happy muddle she lived in could not be transplanted. She’d been uprooted – more unwillingly than she’d let on, he suspected – and now she was wilting before his very eyes.

Equally as worrying as his wife’s state of mind was his father’s. Christopher had to force himself to go and visit Hamilton in the home, because he found his condition so depressing. The doctors had insisted there was nothing physically wrong with him. But he rarely spoke, rarely ate, didn’t take part in any of the activities laid on by the home, wouldn’t have bothered washing or dressing if the nurses didn’t chivvy him
ruthlessly, day in, day out. Something, some light, some vital component, had gone out in him, and there seemed to be nothing anyone could do. His life, to all intents and purposes, seemed to be over. And he was only sixty-seven.

Christopher had made the mistake of thinking the boys might bring him back to life, but Hamilton had merely given them the flicker of a benevolent smile, lifted his hand to touch each of them on the head and turned back to gaze at the wall. The experience had upset both of the children, who had fond memories of their grandpa taking them down to the river to tickle trout, or to pick raspberries or light a satisfying bonfire. And it had cut Christopher to the quick, making him realize he was powerless to help.

Lastly, there was his mother. Brave, uncomplaining, but deep-down bewildered Rosemary, who drifted unhappily about the house in the clothes that were starting to hang off her. She wouldn’t have looked out of place in the home next to Hamilton. But then, when your husband of over forty years was cruelly snatched away from you, and you didn’t have the closure of death, but a cadaverous reminder you were duty-bound to visit every day – well, the most ebullient of personalities would be affected.