Years, she thought on a sigh, staring out of the window and making no move to reach behind her for the file. Four years to rebuild the life he had unwittingly taken to pieces and left lying there. Four years to forget the man who had taken her virginity and all the innocence that went with it and for three years had allowed her the stupid luxury of thinking that what they had was going to be permanent.
She could remember the first time she had ever laid eyes on him. It had been a wet winter’s night and she had been working for his father for almost a month. Despite that, she had still not seen most of Highfield House. There had been just so much of it. Rooms stretching into rooms, interspersed with hallways and corridors and yet more rooms. And of course Henry Claydon, wheelchair-bound, had not been able to show her around himself.
She could explore, he had told her, to her heart’s content, and had then proceeded to pile so much work onto her that she had barely had time to think, never mind explore the outer reaches of the house.
She had loved it, though. Sitting in that warm, cosy library, surrounded by books, taking notes as the old man sifted through files and documents, watching the bleak winter outside settling like a cold fist over the vast estate and beyond. So different from the tiny terraced house in which she had spent most of her life before her mother died. It had been wonderful to look outside and see nothing but gardens stretching out towards fields, rolling countryside that seemed to go on and on for ever.
She had grown up with a view of other terraced houses and the claustrophobic feeling of clutter that accompanied crowded streets. Highfield House was like paradise in its sheer enormity. And she’d loved the work. She’d loved the snatches of facts, interspersed with memories, which she had to collate and transcribe into a lucid format, all part of a book of memoirs. She’d enjoyed hearing about Henry Claydon’s past. It had seemed so much more colourful than her own.
She had been working on, alone, in the study, when James Claydon had walked through the door, and against the darkness of the room, illuminated only by the spotlight on the desk, he had appeared like a figure of the night. Long, dark coat, dark clothes. And she had fallen in love. Hopelessly, madly in love with handsome, debonair, swarthy James Claydon.
‘Do I get an answer to my question?’ Victor asked. ‘Or do you intend to spend the entire journey with your head in the clouds?’
‘What? What question?’
‘Oh, good heavens,’ he muttered under his breath, ‘you’re as good as useless like this. I hope you intend to snap out of it sufficiently to be of some help to me on the trip. I don’t want you drifting down memory lane when you should be taking notes.’
‘Well, I did ask whether I might be excused from this particular job.’
‘So you did. And you never gave me your reason. Is it the house? You lived around here, didn’t you?’
Alice looked at him, surprised that he would remember a passing detail on an application form from eighteen months back.
‘Well? Didn’t you?’
‘Not very far away,’ she admitted reluctantly. It had. been her first job after her mother died, and London the bolt-hole to which she had fled in the wake of her miserable affair. Still, the first she had seen of Highfield House had been when she had applied for the job of working alongside Henry Claydon, even though the name was well enough known amongst the townspeople. It was a landmark.
‘How close? Everyone knows everyone else in these little country villages, don’t they?’
‘No,’ Alice said bluntly. ‘The town I grew up in was small but it wasn’t that small. People who live in the city always imagine that anywhere fifty miles outside of London is some charming little hamlet where everyone is on first-name terms with everyone else.’
‘And it isn’t?’ Victor exclaimed with overdone incredulity. ‘You shock me.’
‘Ha, ha.’
‘Oh, dear. Don’t tell me that your sense of humour has gone into hibernation.’
Alice shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something had changed between them, almost unnoticeably. It was as though his sudden curiosity about her background had moved them away from the strictly working relationship level onto some other level, though what she couldn’t make out. Whatever it was, it made her uneasy.
‘So, what’s the town like?’ He glanced at her and continued smoothly, ‘Might be interesting if we’re to find out how saleable Highfield House is for visiting tourists.’
Alice relaxed. This kind of question she could cope with. ‘Picturesque,’ she said with a small frown as she cast her mind back. ‘The high street is very pretty. Lots of black and white buildings which haven’t been mown down in favour of department stores. There’s still a butcher, a baker...’
‘A candlestick maker...’
She smiled, almost without thinking. ‘Very nearly. Or at least, there was when I was last there.’
‘Which was...?’
‘A few years ago,’ she said vaguely.
‘Any historic sights nearby?’
‘Remains of a castle. I’m sure there must be quite a bit of history around it, but if there is, then I’m the last person to ask because I don’t know. Stratford-upon-Avon’s not a million miles away.’
‘Sounds good. Any stately home that’s open to the public can only benefit from having interesting surroundings.’
‘Yes, that’s true,’ she said, wondering for the first time whether the town would have changed much, whether her mother’s old house was still standing, whether Gladys and Evelyn who had lived on either side were still finding things to argue about. She had not given any of this much thought for years, but as the Jaguar ate up the miles she couldn’t help casting her mind back.
‘So Highfield House is close to the town centre...?’ Alice glanced at him and his face was bland. Interested, but purely from a professional point of view. Or at least that was what his expression told her.
‘Not terribly. At least twenty minutes’ drive away and not readily accessible by public transport.’
‘Set on a hill, though, from what I remember from the photos. Quite a commmanding view.’
‘Yes.’
‘And correct me if I’m wrong, but there was an old man there, wasn’t there? James Claydon’s father, I believe.’
‘That’s right.’ He had never known about her infatuation with his son. James had only appeared occasionally. She could remember anxiously looking forward to his arrivals with the eagerness of a teenager waiting for her first date. And he inevitably would arrive with flowers, or chocolates, or little trinkets which he would bring from London, or wherever else he had been. And there would be a few days of stolen heady passion, followed by weeks of agonising absence.
‘Died... Can’t quite remember when...’
‘After my time, I’m afraid,’ Alice said shortly. ‘I’d already left for London by then.’
‘Ah,
