One Christmas Morning & One Summer's Afternoon (19 page)

Penny watched as Emma’s face froze, then fell, then hardened into a mask of white-hot anger.

‘Well, can’t you tell them you’ve got a prior engagement?’ There was a pause. Then Emma said, ‘I see. Well, it’s your loss.’ She slammed down the phone.

‘Told you,’ said Seb.

‘Fuck off,’ Emma shot back. All of a sudden her eyes lit on Penny, who was in an armchair in the corner. Emma needed a focus for her anger and, as so often recently, her mother provided it. ‘What are you looking so damn happy about?’

‘Me?’ said Penny.

‘Of course you,’ said Emma. ‘You fancy him yourself, don’t you? That’s why you don’t want me to go out with him. You’re jealous!’

‘Darling, that’s ridiculous,’ said Penny. Putting down the cushion cover she’d been working on, she got up and tried to put a comforting hand on her daughter’s shoulder. But Emma – still shaken from the conflicting emotions of her picnic with Will, and now reeling with disappointment at Santiago’s casual rejection, since clearly he thought nothing at all of cancelling their dinner – lashed out. She hadn’t intended to push Penny so hard, but the angle at which she caught her, combined with the force of the gesture, sent her mother reeling backwards. Losing her footing on the flagstone floor, Penny slipped and cracked her head hard on the hall table. She cried out in pain.

‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ Seb yelled at Emma, rushing to their mother’s aid. ‘She had a fucking concussion yesterday and now you’re pushing her around!’

‘It was an accident,’ said Emma, her own eyes welling up with tears, mostly of shock. In her anger she had wanted to get Penny off her. But she hadn’t intended to hurt her. Less than an hour ago, at Wilmington with Will, she’d been so happy. But now, like a spool of yarn unravelling, everything was going horribly wrong. The waters of self-pity lapped around Emma like a cool, comforting pool.

When the phone rang again, Seb snatched it up. ‘If that’s you, de la Cruz, you can fuck off, OK?’

‘Hello, Sebastian. Actually it’s Piers Renton-Chambers. I wondered if your mother—’

‘And you can fuck off too,’ said Sebby, hanging up.

‘Who was it?’ groaned Penny weakly.

‘Piers.’

She let out a horrified wail. ‘Piers? Why were you so rude to him?’

‘Because he’s annoying. Sorry, Mum, but it’s not exactly a good time. I’ve got better things to do right now than talk to bloody Piers, and so have you. He acts like he’s part of the family, and he’s not.’

For once, Emma agreed with her brother.

The phone immediately rang again. This time Penny snatched it out of Seb’s hand.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she began. ‘Seb didn’t mean it. We’ve had a bit of an incident here and …’ Her voice trailed off. When she spoke again she sounded as if she’d been winded. All the energy and life had been sucked out of her voice like air from a popped balloon. ‘Oh. Hi, Paul. Yes, I’m fine, thanks. It was just a prang.’

‘Is that Dad?’ Emma’s face lit up.

Penny passed her the phone and she pressed it to her ear like a magic talisman, disappearing upstairs without a backward glance, still less a word of apology.

‘Are you OK, Mum?’ Seb asked Penny.

‘I’m fine,’ said Penny, returning to her seat in the armchair. ‘The insurers called your father about the car. He was calling to make sure I was all right, that’s all.’

‘I didn’t mean about Dad. I meant about Emma,’ said Seb. ‘Why do you put up with it? Why do you let her be such a bitch to you all the time?’

‘She doesn’t mean it,’ Penny said wearily. ‘She misses your dad.’

‘So do I,’ said Seb. ‘That doesn’t mean I go through life being an epic dick.’

Penny smiled. She did love Seb’s turns of phrase. ‘No darling. I know it doesn’t.’

‘I tell you, all this bloody drama. Anyone would have thought it was Emma who was playing the most important match of her life tomorrow, not me. I’m supposed to be Zen-ing out tonight, you know. George said we all need rest and focus.’

He looked so serious when he said this, so adorably earnest, it was a real effort for Penny not to laugh. Instead, she bit her lip and said, ‘Well, off you go, then. Go and rest and focus in your room. I’ll do supper early so you can get a good night’s sleep. But try to stay out of your sister’s way, Seb.’

Seb gave a grunt that might have been agreement and sloped off upstairs.

‘And, when she’s off the phone, you must ring Piers back and apologize!’ Penny called after him.

Seb gave a second grunt, the meaning of which was more unequivocal.

*****

Later that night, after a scratch supper of ham, smoked salmon, salad and baked potatoes that Seb had inhaled and Emma had picked at in a desultory manner, Penny went out for a stroll.

Piers had been his usual kind, understanding self when she’d rung him back to apologize for Seb’s outburst earlier. But, embarrassingly, Penny realized when they spoke that she’d completely forgotten to let Piers know about the drama of her car accident after their dinner last night. Perhaps she’d imagined it, but he’d sounded distinctly peeved when she’d told him about it, and more concerned about Santiago de la Cruz driving her to Chichester Hospital and running her home afterwards than about what had actually happened.

‘I don’t trust that fellow, sniffing about,’ Piers had said crossly. ‘He’s got ulterior bloody motives.’

This, of course, was true. Clearly, Santiago was after Emma, although what exactly his motives were was becoming increasingly unclear to Penny.
Something
had happened between them when Emma had gone over to Wheelers Cottage the other day. That much was plain. And Santiago had shamelessly used Penny’s injuries yesterday as an excuse to get into Emma’s good books and ask her out on a date. But now he’d cancelled that date and seemed to be blowing hot and cold. Admittedly, it was the night before the big match. But instinct told Penny there was more to Santiago’s behaviour than a devotion to the Brockhurst team. It was part of some sort of strategy – playing hard to get, perhaps? She felt fearful for Emma, and for herself. The last thing Penny’s shattered family needed was to be messed around by another feckless man.

Pulling her thin grey pashmina shawl more tightly around her shoulders, she turned left and continued up the lane towards Brockhurst village. They’d reached that part of high summer when the evenings seemed endless, and twilight stretched into dawn with almost no true darkness in between. Beneath a pale moon, the lane and hedgerows were bathed in a magical blue light and the warmth of the day still clung to the earth. On either side of Penny, fields of tall grass still buzzed and teemed with life. A dragonfly swooping low overhead like a kamikaze pilot made her duck as it flew towards the river, while fat, inebriated bumble bees made their less graceful way alongside her, moving drunkenly from flower to flower, sated on nectar and the endless bounty of summer.

As she reached the outskirts of Brockhurst, past the first little row of farmworkers’ cottages with their pretty front gardens crammed with towering hollyhocks and tumbling dog roses, she heard the bells of St Hilda’s Church strike eight. Normally Penny loved the sound of church bells ringing, but tonight for some reason they reminded her of Paul. How many times had she and her husband listened to those bells together, strolling along this same lane, feeling blessed to live in such a beautiful place, blessed with their children, with their life?
We were happy
,
thought Penny. Except, of course, Paul hadn’t been. All those years, all the time she’d felt so safe and secure and content, he’d been living another life. Miserable. Plotting his escape. Even now, more than a year since the bomb dropped, Penny still struggled to take in the enormity of what had happened. Did one ever truly get over something like that?

Angrily, she pressed her shawl to her eyes, wiping away the tears. They weren’t only for Paul, but for Emma and Sebby and all that was lost. Stopping by the side of the road to collect herself, she was surprised to find she’d already walked as far as Wheelers Cottage, Santiago de la Cruz’s beautiful rented house. With its thatched roof, leaded windows and wisteria-covered façade, it was an iconic property in the village and indeed throughout the valley, prominently featured on postcards and tourist brochures advertising the idyllic Sussex Downs.

Penny saw that a light was on downstairs. Curious to see what the place was like inside, and knowing Santiago was out with the Brockhurst team, she crossed the lane to peer through the sitting-room window. She was only a few feet away when she suddenly jumped out of her skin. Unaware he was being watched, Santiago walked right past the window. Having stooped down to change the DVD in the machine, he walked back over to the sofa. Slumping back down into his seat, he settled back with a bottle of beer and packet of crisps to enjoy his movie.

So there was no team dinner!
thought Penny, watching him from the safety of the shadows.
He lied. Cancelled on poor Emma for no reason
.

She tried to feel angry on Emma’s behalf, but instead found herself feeling curious. Why had Santiago stood Emma up? Why bother to go to the trouble of asking her out only to let her down at the last moment? Clearly, he was arrogant and vain and well known for keeping a string of women at his beck and call. Was this just part of his modus operandi as a playboy? Possibly. And yet the man who had pulled Penny out of her car yesterday and shown such concern for her at the hospital hadn’t seemed cruel or spiteful. Piers had talked about his having an ulterior motive. No doubt that was true. But there was also something decent, something kind about Santiago, beneath all the bullshit.

At least, Penny thought there was.

Then again, for twenty years, Penny had thought she was married to a straight man who loved her. What did she know?

Feeling tired suddenly, she turned away from Wheelers Cottage window and began the slow walk home.

Will Nutley opened his eyes and looked at the numbers glowing red on his bedside clock: 5:05 a.m. Closing his eyes again, he slumped back against the pillow and put his hand to his lips. He could still taste Emma’s kiss there, still feel the passion and desire with which her body had responded to him. Her words yesterday had told him not to hope. But her lips had conveyed a different message. Will clung to it this morning, like a drowning man grasping a buoy in choppy seas.

He would stick to his original plan. He would play like a god today and annihilate Santiago de la Cruz. He would be a hero to the whole village, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Emma, swept up in the euphoria of the moment, would forget her head and listen to her heart.

In her heart, she loves me
, Will told himself.

The first ball would be bowled in less than five hours’ time.

*****

Less than half a mile away from the modest cottage where Fittlescombe’s star batsman was waking up, Rory Flint-Hamilton was already up and looking out of his bedroom window with a pair of binoculars, gazing across the village green with more than a hint of nostalgia. This would almost certainly be his last Swell Valley cricket match. His doctors had given him up to a year to live, but Rory could feel in his bones that the end was nearer than that. He wouldn’t see another summer in this most idyllic of villages, his home of the last seventy years.

A practical man, not given to sentimentality, Rory Flint-Hamilton was not especially afraid of death. Indeed the prospect of joining Vicky, his darling wife whom he’d missed so terribly these past fifteen years, was altogether an appealing one. The anxiety weighing on his chest this morning was all focused on his wayward daughter, Tatiana, and the future of Furlings, the Flint-Hamilton family estate that Rory felt it his sworn duty to protect and preserve. What on earth was going to happen to the place, and to his daughter, when he was gone?

Outside, a soft grey mist rolled gently across the village green and the cricket pitch beyond. Rory watched as old Stan Driscoll, Fittlescombe’s arthritic groundsman, emerged from the pavilion and began pacing the ground, searching for any bumps or irregularities in the immaculately manicured grass. It wasn’t yet six in the morning, but Stan was taking no chances. The local bookies had all written off Fittlescombe’s chances of victory since the contentious addition of Santiago de la Cruz to Brockhurst’s First XI. But, win or lose, no one would be able to cast aspersions on the home team’s perfectly prepared pitch. Stan’s honour, and the reputation of the entire village, depended on their hosting a flawless event.

Leaning against the window in his tattered old Turnbull & Asser dressing gown, Rory Flint-Hamilton smiled as he watched Stan Driscoll shuffle about his work. At a time when the old ways of life seemed under threat from all sides, days like today, the annual village cricket match, provided a much-needed sense of continuity and comfort. Of course, Brockhurst were doing their best to lower the tone, as usual. Their new captain, Charlie Kingham, was a thoroughly disreputable little oik, who seemed hell-bent on turning the Swell Valley match into some sort of commercial, moneymaking circus. Even so, Rory felt confident that there were enough locals prepared to protect the old ways, and preserve the spirit of the great event, even after he was gone.

Rory’s one regret was that he couldn’t umpire this year, or give out the coveted Swell Valley CC cup. His health was so fragile, with collapses liable to occur suddenly and unexpectedly, and he would be mortified to be the cause of any disruption or embarrassment. Even so, it was a blow to have to hand over the reins to that twit Piers Renton-Chambers. Rory Flint-Hamilton was not a fan of his local MP, or of politicians in general. Even worse, Renton-Chambers was a Brockhurst man. And a horrible rumour had gone around a few months ago that he’d been spotted in The Fox wearing a pair of grey shoes.
Grey shoes!

Rory shuddered. Piers had better not think of making such an epic
faux pas
today.

Rory Flint-Hamilton had made his peace with dying of cancer, but not with dying of shame.

*****

By nine thirty, Fittlescombe village looked like Wimbledon on Men’s Final day. Every street, lane, car park and available field was jammed with cars, and the media had descended on the valley like locusts. To Sky Sports’ fury, and the profound disappointment of Charlie Kingham, Brockhurst’s captain, who had hoped to profit from brokering a deal between the network and the local council, they had
not
been awarded exclusive television rights. As a result, the match was a media free-for-all, with both television and radio stations, corporate sponsors and private individual cricket fans all fighting one another for the best vantage points. Enterprising villagers with houses overlooking the cricket field had rented out rooms to rich Londoners willing to pay good money for a front-row seat. With a third of the stands reserved for locals, and another, woefully inadequate third cordoned off for the television camera crews and assorted sporting and social press covering the event, seating at the ground itself was at a premium.