with my father, who was super rich by then and kept getting richer. It was like being dropped into a whole different world. I hated it,’ I said.
I sighed. ‘And then Mum died when I was fifteen.’
‘I’m sorry,’ George said, all traces of his usual lurking smile gone. ‘That must have been hard for you.’
‘It was awful.’ I pressed my lips together in a straight line. Just thinking about that time could still send a wave of desolation crashing over me.
Mum was only thirty-nine when she dropped dead at the sink one day. ‘The doctors said it was an embolism, and that she wouldn’t have felt a thing. I wasn’t there,’ I told George. ‘I was at school, and a neighbour found her. By the time I got home, they had taken Mum away.’
I swallowed hard, remembering how I had stood in the kitchen in dazed disbelief. One minute my mother had been there, the next she wasn’t. Gone, just like that.
There was nothing I could have done, even if I had been there. Everybody said so. But deep down, I always felt as if I should have known. I should have said goodbye and told her I loved her instead of cramming a piece of toast in my mouth and running for the bus. I wish I could remember the last thing I said to her, but I can’t. It was just an ordinary day.
And then it wasn’t.
‘My whole world fell apart.’ I’d almost forgotten that I was talking to George by then.
My nice safe life had vanished the moment that clot blocked my mother’s brain and I was pitched into an existence where nothing seemed certain any more. For months I flailed around in a hopeless search for something to hold onto, until I realised one day that the only thing I could be sure of was myself.
Slowly, carefully, I built a new life, and I made it as secure as I could. Friends sighed and called me a control freak, and maybe I was, but routines and plans at least gave me a structure, one that nobody else could take away from me without warning. Without them, I would have been lost.
‘Presumably you went to live with your father then?’ said George after a moment.
‘If you can call being packed off to boarding school “living” with him,’ I said. ‘At least I had Saffron in the holidays. She’s over seven years younger than me, but neither of us had a mother and she was so desperate for attention that we used to spend a lot of time together then.
‘It was Saffron who painted the eyelashes over Audrey’s headlights,’ I told George.
‘I wondered about that.’
‘She was so pleased with them, I didn’t have the heart to paint them out, and now they’re part of her.’ My smile was probably a little twisted. ‘Saffron’s spoilt, but she’s got a sweet nature and all she wants is a little attention. Unfortunately, this wedding has made her hysterical.’ I sighed, remembering the situation. ‘I just hope Lord Whellerby’s not too angry.’
‘You haven’t met Roly yet, have you? If you had, you’d know you’ve got nothing to worry about,’ said George when I shook my head.
‘Easy for you to say,’ I said tensely. ‘It’s not your sister having hysterics over your most important client!’
* * *
We were bowling up an avenue lined with stately trees. To either side stretched lush parklands, with placid cows grazing under the horse chestnuts. The Land Rover rattled over a cattle grid, the avenue curved round over a hill, and I caught my first sight of Whellerby Hall. I’d been too busy to visit before, and my jaw dropped.
It was an extravaganza of a house, a vast Baroque structure with a domed roof in the centre, and two wings stretching out on either side, set atop a slope on the far side of a serene lake.
George drove right up to the imposing entrance and parked with a crunch of gravel. The door was opened by a cadaverous-looking individual who looked offended by George’s cheerfully casual greeting but unbent enough to explain that Lord Whellerby was in his private sitting room.
‘That’s Simms.’ George led the way up a sweeping marble staircase, past massive oil paintings of naval battles and skimpily clad nymphs. My father’s house was ostentatiously ornate, but still I had to make an effort not to goggle at the sheer size of the Hall. ‘He was old Lord Whellerby’s butler, and Roly inherited him along with the house. Roly’s terrified of him.’
‘I don’t blame him.’
‘You’d get on well with Simms. He always refers to Roly as Lord Whellerby too. He’d really like Roly to be out shooting peasants all day and coming home to sit over his port and cigars.’
‘It’s a strange way to live, isn’t it?’ I said as we climbed another flight of stairs, rather less imposing this time.
‘I know. I feel as if I’m part of a costume drama whenever I come to see Roly. I keep expecting a dowager duchess to pop up and tick me off for seducing the housemaids under the stairs—and no, before you ask,’ he said, turning his head with a smile that did odd things to my breathing. ‘There are no maids. A very efficient cleaning firm comes in once a week, and they’re far too busy to dally with me anywhere.’
‘Disappointing for you,’ I said tartly to cover the fact that my lungs were still not cooperating with the business of inflating and deflating. Perhaps it was all these stairs, I thought hopefully. George was taking them awfully fast. It was hard to believe a single smile could have such an effect.
‘Not at all. I’m fussy about who I dally with,’ said George. ‘I like a challenge,’ he said, turning his head to look straight at me. ‘I like to be intrigued. I like classy girls who don’t need me and maybe don’t even like me. I like to feel that any dallying I do will lead to something really...special.’
I waited for him to smile to show me that he was joking, but he didn’t. He just kept looking into my eyes and for some reason my breathing got all tangled up again.
So, nothing to do with his smile. Must be those stairs after all.
‘Here we are.’ A minute or so later, when we had trekked down a long corridor, and I had given up trying to work out whether or not he had been serious, George flung open a door. ‘Frith to the rescue,’ he announced.
There was a moment of silence in the room, and then both occupants of a sofa leapt to their feet.
I had a professional smile fixed on my face to greet Lord Whellerby, but Saffron gave me no chance to make the fluent apology I had planned. She stumbled across the room to throw herself into my arms. ‘Oh, Frith,’ she wailed. ‘I’m so glad to see you! Everything’s gone so horribly wrong!’
I held her close and patted her back comfortingly, while trying to grimace apologetically over her shoulder at Lord Whellerby, who was hovering anxiously. I could see why George had been amused when I insisted on referring to him as Lord Whellerby. He had a pleasant face, fair skin that clearly flushed as easily as mine, a solid figure that was already growing stout and a hesitant air in marked contrast to George’s easy assurance.
I could feel George watching us, and, although I couldn’t see his face, I knew that his eyes would be dancing. We must have looked ridiculous. Saffron was so much taller than I was, she had to bend right over to bury her head on my shoulder.
