childhood. As he strode out of the room Olivia closed her eyes, her body tight with tension.
There was a bitter taste in her mouth. She had never really had a childhood. Sometimes she felt she had almost been born knowing that she wasn’t the child—the son—her father, and more importantly her grandfather, had wanted.
Because of them Olivia had grown up determined to prove herself, to prove her worth … her value. Because of them she had pushed herself these last months to meet self-imposed work targets that increasingly made her feel as though she were walking a tightrope stretched across a sickeningly deep chasm. All it would take to send her crashing down would be one wrong step … one missed breath … but she had had to do it. Not just for her own sake but even more importantly for her daughters. There was no way she was going to have them growing up under the burden, the taint of being her father’s grandchildren. Ever since David had disappeared and the truth about him had come to light, Olivia had been haunted by what he had done, haunted by it … shamed by it … tormented by it.
And now he was back and instead of being shunned as he rightly deserved he was being feted, lauded, whilst she …
The pain inside her head intensified and with it her panic and despair.
She would be better once she was back home she promised herself, once she was back at work. Back in control….
HASLEWICH.
Sara Lanyon still didn’t know what she was doing here. She had certainly not intended to turn off the motorway en route home to Brighton from her visit to her old university friend, so some unknown power must surely be responsible for her being here.
Haslewich … Crighton land …
Crighton land. Her mouth with its deliciously full upper lip curled into a line of angry contempt.
She had heard all about the Crightons from her stepgrandmamma, poor Tania.
She had been so very damaged and fragile when her grandfather had rescued her, gently building up her confidence and her life for her.
‘There are always two sides to a situation like this, Sara,’ her father had cautioned her when once she had exploded with anger against the Crightons for what they had done to Tania.
‘But, Dad, she’s so vulnerable, so helpless … there can’t be any excuse for the way they abandoned her. It was heartless … cruel….’
Her dark-green eyes had filled with tears and her father had shaken his head ruefully.
She had been eighteen at the time then and perhaps a little inclined to judge everything in black or white. She was older now and more able to apply a little of Richard Lanyon’s admirable dispassion to her judgements, but deep down inside she still was reluctant to give up her antipathy towards the Crightons. Over-emotional of her—illogical. She shook her head. No, they were plainly an insensitive brutish lot, motivated only by preserving their own interests and sticking together in a clannish fashion.
‘The Crightons practically are Haslewich,’ Tania had once told her in her soft pretty girlish voice. ‘Locally everyone admires them and looks up to them, but …’ She had stopped and shivered. ‘They used to make me feel so … so intimidated and … and unwanted. Even my own children …’
As her eyes had filled with tears so had Sara’s and now, here she was, her car parked just off the town’s main square as she walked curiously across it.
It was almost lunch time and she was hungry—very hungry. She looked uncertainly round the square and then decided to investigate the possibility of a narrow, interesting-looking lane that ran off it.
A signpost at the top of the street read To the River.
The river. Sara loved water. Her father was a keen sailor and Sara had crewed for him as a girl.
She was halfway down the street when she saw the restaurant. A quick glance inside showed that it was busy and the smells wafting from the kitchen were certainly enticing.
Making up her mind Sara pushed open the door and then stopped in bemusement as a harassed-looking middle-aged woman pounced on her asking anxiously, ‘Sara …?’
‘Er, yes,’ she replied automatically, frantically wondering how on earth the woman could possibly know her.
‘Oh, thank goodness for that,’ the older woman exclaimed. ‘The agency have let us down so many times but they promised me this time … It’s this way,’ she added beckoning to Sara to follow her as she wound her way through the busy tables.
Feeling rather as though she had stepped straight into a page from Alice Through the Looking Glass, Sara followed in her wake.
Once they had reached the rear of the restaurant the woman pushed open the door telling Sara as she indicated for her to precede her into the room it led into, ‘I must apologise for the mess. We’ve been so hectic. I’ve tried to keep up to date with the paperwork, but it just hasn’t been possible. Still, now that you’re here … Oh, and the computer’s working again, thank goodness. I think the news that we’d got our Michelin threw it into as much of a state of excitement as it did us. Of course, now we’re being inundated with requests for tables which is marvellous. Or at least it would be if we weren’t committed for the next three Saturdays to weddings. Not that we don’t want them, we do … but …’ As she paused for breath Sara looked round the small cluttered office.
Rather oddly it had French windows that gave onto an attractive little town garden and when the woman saw her looking at it she smiled.
‘We only moved into these premises a little while ago. It was originally a café and we bought the house next door. The office was the house’s back parlour and we decided we’d leave the French windows….’
‘It’s very pretty.’ Sara smiled.
‘Well, yes, and hopefully next summer we shall be able to make better use of it. I’m Frances Sorter, by the way,’ she introduced herself. ‘I expect the agency will have told you that my husband and I own the restaurant. Our chef is so keen on organic produce my husband grows as much as he can himself.
‘Now, I don’t know whether or not the agency discussed terms with you.’
‘Er, no, they haven’t,’ Sara replied truthfully.
Now was the time to tell Frances Sorter that there had been a mistake and that she wasn’t the person the woman thought she was but for some reason Sara discovered instead that she was actually listening whilst she was told the surprisingly generous terms of her ‘employment.’
‘It will only be for a few months, of course,’ she was told a shade anxiously. ‘You do know that, don’t you? Only Mary, our regular office manageress, is having a baby and she says she will want to come back, but …’
A few months … Sara started to frown. She had decided to move on from the school where she had been working as a supply teacher at the end of the previous school year. She had several options she was considering, including working abroad and her father had even suggested she could have her
