and wore moccasins and smoked damp roll-ups, and not when you were sixteen and just wanted to go on a date without having to explain why your shoes were made of hay (that was an exaggeration—but only just).
Olivia saddled up. Thanks to this conversation she felt every inch the grumpy adolescent: how did coming home always achieve that?
‘Wish me luck,’ she muttered, before she could mutter anything else.
‘Don’t let that Lomax give you any trouble,’ counselled her mother. ‘He’s meant to be downright insufferable. Any nonsense and you tell him what for.’
In finding her feet on the pedals Olivia almost toppled sideways. It was ages since she’d ridden and the squeaky brakes and cranky gears did little to bolster the confidence. Flo gave her a push and she teetered off down the path.
Olivia might find herself pining for the city, but even she couldn’t deny how free she felt flying down Lustell Steep with the wind in her hair, up on the handlebars, sheer momentum carrying her. She could taste the ocean and hear the swooping cries of seagulls as they wheeled overhead. Over the mount she passed the church. Sweet buds nestled in hedgerows and the back-end of a hare darted into the mossy verge.
This was the way she used to come in the holidays, racing against her best friend Beth to reach the old bench first. Past the weathered seat there was a gap in the border, big enough for two girls to squeeze through. They called the field beyond the Hush-Hush—perhaps because it had been quiet as a lake on the day they’d found it, or perhaps because they’d sworn to keep its discovery a secret. In the hot months it was bright with corn and rape, kernels you could pick off in juice-stained fingers and pop their oily pods in your mouth. In winter it was rough with earth and churned up like the sea in a gale. This was where her mother had taken them when she’d first bought the 2CV, picking them up from school with a tray of eggs laid out on the rear shelf, pink and smooth as pebbles and lined up neatly in rows like a cinema for bald people. Flo had driven fast as a rocket across the field and the car had gone bouncing and bounding and leaping over the ridges, Olivia and Beth in the back, clutching each other and laughing till they cried, shrieking, ‘Slow down!’ even if they hadn’t wanted her to, and when they stopped they were amazed to see the shells still intact.
‘There you go,’ Florence had triumphed. ‘Best set of wheels on the market.’
That was before Olivia found out that Farmer Nancarrow owned the Hush-Hush land. She had never told the boys this, but once, ages ago, she had seen him kissing her mother at a barn dance, a dark, dusky giant of a man, and she had hid in the wings of the stage, wide-eyed and watching.
By the time she reached the foot of the Usherwood drive, the sun was lowering in the sky and early evening shadows were lengthening across the plots.
At the entrance a sign announced the house, faded with age and leaning to one side. Across the cattle grid the route opened up and Olivia rode faster, the track galloping away beneath her wheels. All her life the estate had been a distant wonder, perpetually beyond reach, the untouchable palace of the aristocracy. She’d been ten when Lord and Lady Lomax had died, and supposed she must have come once or twice when she was little, but the memories became eclipsed by their grim successors: TV crews descending; reporters on the streets; the canvas of shocked, sad faces as the cove had digested the news. People like that—rich, glamorous, exceptional people—didn’t just disappear. For months afterwards, Olivia had imagined divers scouring the ocean depths, finding nothing except a diamond bracelet winking on the seabed.
She had been too young then to appreciate what it must have been like for the children left behind. Losing her own father at six had at least spared her the pain of a proper understanding, the significance of it too big, too serious, to process. Even when Flo had held her close and told her Dad was never coming back, Olivia had secretly known that he would. He’d show up one day and surprise them. Got you, monkey! A game; like when he’d chase her round the garden and throw her over his head, forcing her to squeal her delight. But as the weeks turned into months and the seasons unfurled, so did the realisation that her mother had been right. Grief assailed her gradually; there had been no ambush. The Lomax boys had been ambushed.
Through a canopy of trees Usherwood at last came into view. It was beautiful and sad and majestic all at the same time. The entrance was arched, the exterior dotted with dozens of bay windows that gazed enquiringly back at her. Curvilinear gables, peaked like the spade suit in a deck of playing cards, adorned the ridges like icing. Close up, telltale signs of decay blushingly revealed themselves: chalky efflorescence on a renovated chimney, a weathered ox-eye on a central facade, twisted pillars pockmarked by age … Yet nothing could rob the mansion of its splendour.
The drive widened into an oval expanse of gravel, stones grinding beneath her tread, and Olivia climbed off to wheel the rest of the way.
She spotted a man up a ladder, his back to her. From what she could see he was fixing a gutter. She pictured how she must look, a stranger with a cloud of auburn hair and thistle scratches on her legs, pushing a bike whose pannier was stuffed with a beach towel and a crumpled sketchbook.
Two dogs bounded over, hindquarters bowed in excitement, their tails going frantically. She made a fuss of them, patting their flanks and scuffing their ears.
‘Hello,’ she called. ‘Hello there!’ She gave a pointless little wave, like someone on the deck of a ferry.
The labourer swore. He sucked the tip of his finger where he’d splintered it, or bashed it with a hammer, or whatever it was he was doing up there, and turned.
‘Can I help you?’ he hollered down irritably. His voice was very deep, and low, like a shout thrown back from the distant end of a tunnel.
Olivia couldn’t see his face, just a big black shape where he obscured the melting sun. ‘I’m, er, looking for a job,’ she replied uncertainly. ‘I saw the ad at the beach; you’re after someone to help with the gardens? I hope I’m in time …’
The man thought for a moment before climbing down. She could practically see his bad mood, sense it like a squall on the water when she was out on her board and the weather was changing. As he came nearer she was dwarfed by his size. He had a tousle of coal-black hair and his shoulders were treble the width of hers. He was so tall she barely came up to his chin. His eyes were darker than three a.m.
‘I’m Olivia,’ she started. ‘Olivia Lark.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I know.’
She took in his paint-splashed work trousers and faded checked shirt. He had a clever, angular face, catching the sun on one side. His eyelashes were long. Sooty. She wondered if he had helped out on her mother’s allotment.
‘Could I speak to the owner?’
His frown deepened.
‘Or if now’s a bad time …?’
He continued assessing her in that peculiarly penetrating way. She had never been on the receiving end of such stark, unapologetic scrutiny.
‘The thing is,’ she forged on, ‘I’m an artist. That sounds massively wanky, but it’s the truth so I might as well be truthful, and the other truth is that I’m unemployed and I need to make money so that I can move back to London and get on with things.’ Why was she babbling? She never babbled. His frown became more of a scowl. ‘So I’m back for the summer, and I’m hardworking, and reliable, and I wouldn’t ask to be paid too much. I’m good with plants and stuff—and I cook a bit … though actually,’ she retracted
