crest of the hill.
‘Wow.’
‘Stop saying “wow”, Mum. You sound like a dork.’
Logan Cranley, Angela’s ten-year-old daughter, rolled her eyes in the back seat. After the long flight from Sydney, Logan was tired and grumpy. She hadn’t wanted to leave her old school, or her friends, and couldn’t understand what had possessed her parents to uproot themselves overnight and move to the other side of the world, just because some old guy had died and left them a house. Even at ten, Logan understood that her family were extremely wealthy. Her father, Brett, was a real-estate developer and one of the richest men in Sydney. The Cranleys already had a bunch of houses, including a grand apartment in London. What was so special about this one?
Secretly though, she too was impressed by the stunning scenery that surrounded them as they got nearer to their new home. Narrow ancient lanes flanked by high hedgerows guided them through the rolling chalk hills of the Downs; they passed a Tudor pub, The Coach and Horses, that looked exactly like Logan’s dolls’ house back home in her playroom in Australia, all white wattle walls and criss-crossing black beams, with mullioned windows. There were meadows full of buttercups, picture-postcard villages made up of clusters of flint cottages, medieval churches and the occasional grand Georgian manor house. Queen Anne’s lace, grown wild and as tall as the top of the car, reached over from the grass verges and brushed the windscreen as they passed, like delicate white-gloved fingers waving an ecstatic welcome. And everywhere the late spring sunshine, light, bright and clear, bathed the countryside in a glorious, magical glow.
In the front passenger seat, Logan’s older brother gazed vacantly out at the patchwork of hills and fields. At just turned twenty, Jason Cranley was painfully withdrawn. Tall and thin, with a pale, freckly complexion and sad, amber eyes, it was hard to believe that he was genetically related either to Logan, or to their father, Brett. Both Jason’s little sister and his father were dark-haired, olive-skinned and bewitching, like gypsies, or members of some exotic tribe of Portuguese pirates. Jason took more closely after his mother. Angela was blonde and fair-skinned, the sort of colouring that could easily have gone to red and that had zero tolerance for sun. Jason glanced across at her now, smiling, enchanted by this new world unfolding before her.
She’s so brave, he thought. So optimistic. After everything that’s happened, she still believes in fresh starts.
How he wished that he did, too.
‘This is it. Fittlescombe. We’re here!’
Angela Cranley squeezed her son’s leg excitedly as they passed the sign for the village. The Range Rover had descended a steep escarpment, then forked sharp right at the valley floor. The village was completely hidden from the main road above, folded into the downs like a baby joey enveloped in its mother’s pouch. It made it feel like a secret place, a hidden jewel only to be discovered by the chosen few. Despite herself, Angela felt her excitement building and her hopes start to blossom like the first buds of spring. This, surely, was a place where people were happy. Where the miseries and betrayals of the past could be left behind.
The most recent betrayal, in the form of Brett’s mistress Tricia Hong, a pushy young news reporter for SBS who had done everything in her power to destroy Angela’s marriage, was now a satisfying ten thousand miles away. Brett had been unfaithful before, of course – countless times. But Tricia had been a threat of a different order: intelligent, ruthlessly ambitious and utterly without scruple. Perhaps it was no surprise that she and Brett had been drawn to one another. They were so very alike. Still, in the end, even Brett had been taken aback by the beautiful young Asian’s tenacity. He, too, had begun to feel under siege. Rory Flint-Hamilton’s surprise bequest could not have come at a more opportune time. Nor could it have brought them to a more idyllic spot.
‘Oh my God, look at the post office! Isn’t that the cutest, with the roses round the door? And the school. Look, Logan. St Hilda’s. That’s where you’ll be going. What do you think?’
Logan made a noncommittal, grunting noise. She refused to get excited about her new school, however idyllic it might look. She still hoped there was a chance her father would change his mind and that they could all go home to Sydney and reality and forget this whole thing. Her mum kept telling her that she and Rachel and Angelica would stay friends, that they could Skype. But it wasn’t the same. She was going to miss Wellesley Park Elementary’s summer fair. She was going to miss everything. Rachel and Angelica would become best friends and wear the best friend necklaces, the ones with two pieces of a heart that fit together perfectly. She, Logan, would be forgotten. Erased. She’d probably start speaking with an English accent, God forbid.
‘Stop.’
Jason’s voice rang out, startling his mother. He hadn’t said a word since they pulled out of Heathrow. Having watched him go through a series of depressions, Angela wasn’t surprised by his silence. She had learned to sit with her son’s sadness, to stop trying to snap him out of it. But she still found it hard.
‘That was it. Furlings. There’s a sign at the bottom of the drive.’
Angela reversed. Sure enough, there it was. Damp and faded, and partially covered by overhanging trees, a simple wooden sign: ‘Furlings – Private Property’.
The driveway had seen better days. The four-wheel drive bounced and juddered over potholes, rattling its occupants like cubes of ice in a cocktail shaker. But after about a hundred yards of winding their way up the hill that overlooked the village, the private track widened into a grand, gravelled forecourt with a stone fountain at its centre. The house stood back from the gravel and was set slightly above it, atop a flight of six wide stone steps. A grand, square central section was flanked by two, lower symmetrical wings, all in the same red brick typical of Queen Anne architecture. Elegant sash windows peeked out shyly beneath thick fringes of wisteria, and the formal gardens at the front of the house gave way to stunning, oak-dotted parkland below, the green hills rolling all the way down to the village green.
It was quite the most exquisite house Angela Cranley had ever seen, combining elegance with an undeniable grandeur. It was also, to Angela’s way of thinking, enormous. If this was a small stately home, she struggled to imagine what a large one might look like.
‘It’s a palace!’ Logan squealed delightedly, forgetting all her heartfelt objections in the joy of the moment as she tumbled out of the car and ran towards the steps. ‘Oh, Mum, isn’t it gorgeous?’
Angela also got out of the car, stretching her aching legs. ‘It is, darling. It is gorgeous.’ She craned her neck and stepped back, trying to get a sense of the scale of it. ‘What do you think, Jase?’
‘Yeah. It’s very nice.’
Jason pulled the two heavy trunks out of the boot, wishing that Furlings’ beauty could affect him the way it ought to. Wishing that anything could. The cases thudded onto the ground with a crunch. Most of the family’s furniture and effects were arriving by separate plane in the coming days, but they’d brought a few ‘essentials’ with them. Jason’s father was supposed to come down to see the new house in a week. Brett had business in London, and preferred to stay in town than to deal with the hassle of moving in. ‘Your mother can do that. Women love all that nesting crap.’
‘It’s a lot of work, Dad,’ Jason had protested. Unusually for him. Jason Cranley was afraid to provoke his father. Everybody was afraid to provoke Brett Cranley.
‘Rubbish,’ said Brett. ‘There’ll be a housekeeper there to help her. Mrs Worsley. Old man Flint-Hamilton asked me to keep her on. And you can pitch in, can’t you? God knows you’ve got nothing else to do.’
