style="font-size:15px;"> As for the new house, their ‘fresh start’ far from London, Eddie had mixed feelings about it. It looked nice enough in the photos. But now that he was actually on his way there it felt surreal.
What if we’re not happy there?
What if we hate living in the country?
Annabel had demanded a move, and he was hardly in a position to refuse her. But when she settled on the Swell Valley, Eddie’s heart had tightened. David Carlyle had a place there, a ghastly, overgrown Wimpey home on the edge of the golf course at Hinton. They wouldn’t be close neighbours. But the thought of living within even a ten-mile radius of the man who had single-handedly wiped out his career and demolished his reputation did not fill Eddie with joy.
‘Can’t we try somewhere else?’ he asked Annabel. ‘The country’s full of pretty villages.’
But it was no good. This was the house she wanted. The deal was done.
It’s up to me to make us happy, he told himself firmly. To make things up to her. The house will be fine. We will be fine.
‘Would you like to listen to the Test Match, sir?’ The driver’s voice drifted into the back seat. ‘Coverage is on Five Live, if you’re interested.’
‘Haddon, that is an inspired suggestion.’
Eddie closed his eyes and sighed contentedly.
He was a free man in a free world, listening to the cricket.
Everything was going to be all right.
‘Wilf! God help me, if you don’t stop that racket this instant I will have you put down!’
Annabel Wellesley looked daggers at the scruffy border terrier with his snout pressed against the window halfway up the stairs. He’d been howling, interspersed with the occasional growl, for the last hour straight. Perhaps it was the presence of all the television crews at the end of the drive that had so discombobulated him. Or perhaps the little dog had a sixth sense and somehow knew that his master was coming home today. Either way, the constant noise was threatening to stretch Annabel’s already strained nerves to breaking point.
She’d have liked to go out for a walk. To get some air and clear her head. But there was no way on earth she was going to run the gauntlet of all those vile reporters. Besides which, there was still such a vast amount to do in the house, to make things perfect for Eddie’s arrival.
Moving in to Riverside Hall with no help, not even a cleaner, had been one of the most stressful experiences of Annabel’s life. A naturally gifted homemaker with a flair for interior design, Lady Wellesley was also a perfectionist and a woman who was used to delegating. In London, she and Eddie had had a full-time staff of three, including a cook and a butler, as well as a veritable fleet of ‘dailies’. Here, once the awful, gawping removal men had driven away, she had nobody but herself to turn to. Every surface to be polished, crate to be unpacked and drawer to be filled, Annabel had polished, unpacked and filled herself. Part of her had welcomed the distraction. But another part resented – with every fibre of her tiny, perfectly honed body – being reduced to such menial tasks.
She could perfectly well have afforded servants. It was an issue of trust. After the humiliation, the shame, of Eddie’s trial and incarceration, Annabel trusted nobody. Convinced people were laughing at her behind her back; or worse, that journalists posing as potential chefs or housemaids might weasel their way into the house under the pretext of coming to interview for the jobs, she had put off hiring anybody until Eddie was home and things were ‘settled’. Whatever that might mean.
Walking into the drawing room – anything to get away from the bloody dog – she looked at the two remaining unpacked crates with despair. How was it that every time she unpacked one box another seemed to pop up out of thin air to demand her attention?
In reality, Annabel was being far too hard on herself. It was less than two months since she’d first seen the house. Back then it had been as cold and unwelcoming as a grave. As its name suggested, Riverside Hall sat right on the River Swell. Scenic and inviting in summer, after a long, wet winter the river was swollen, grey and ugly, a fat, wet snake encircling the house. Damp, or a sense of damp, had pervaded everything. The flagstone floors had been as cold as ice, and every window draped with cobwebs.
Today, the house looked like something out of Homes & Gardens. Understated antiques and Wellesley family heirlooms – mostly simple Jacobean oak pieces with the odd Georgian bow-fronted chest of drawers thrown in for good measure – combined effortlessly with classic modern designs like the B&B Italia sofa in pale pink linen or the upholstered coffee table from Designers Guild shaped like a slightly off-kilter kidney bean. Huge vases of flowers plonked everywhere gave the house a casual, inviting air. Annabel had made sure that all the chimneys had been swept and the fires lit, transforming the gloomy rooms she’d visited back in November into welcoming havens of warmth and light. Faded Persian carpets covered all the floors, and an old pine dresser full of cheerful mismatched crockery made the kitchen look as if the family had lived there for years.
But Annabel didn’t see any of that. All she saw were the unpacked boxes. Combined with Wilf’s incessant howling, the fact that she was effectively a prisoner in her own home, and her mounting nerves about facing Eddie again (what was she going to say when he walked in the door, for God’s sake?), she felt close to tears.
The grandfather clock behind her struck twelve.
Noon. He’ll be home soon, surely?
Grimly she cut open another crate of books and set to work.
Penny de la Cruz trudged across the sodden fields, her wellies squelching into the mud with every step. Today was dry and bright, a glorious change from the relentless rain of previous weeks. But the once-green pastures between Woodside Hall – Penny’s idyllic medieval manor on the outskirts of the village – and Riverside Hall remained a slick, brown quagmire.
Not that Penny minded. It was lovely to be outside, although she felt guilty and strange going for a walk without the dog. Delilah, the de la Cruzes’ wire-haired dachshund bitch, had given her a thoroughly reproachful look as she set off with a basket of home-baked goodies under her arm, a welcome present for the Wellesleys. Everybody knew that Delilah was the naughtiest, randiest dog in Brockhurst. If Sir Eddie and Lady Wellesey had a dog, she would be bound to start dry-humping it embarrassingly the minute she got in the door. Best to make this a solo mission.
Like everybody else in England, Penny knew the sordid tale of Fast Eddie Wellesley’s fall from grace. Unlike everybody else, however, she didn’t rush to judgement, either of Eddie or of his wife, a woman the British public loved to hate.
‘She’s so stuck up, she needs surgery,’ Santiago commented over breakfast this morning.
‘How can you say that?’ Penny asked indignantly. ‘You’ve never even met her!’
‘I’ve seen her, though. On TV at Eddie’s trial, looking down her nose at everyone. She’s like Victoria Beckham, that one. She never smiles.’
‘I’m sure she smiles as much as the next person,’ said
