The Right Thing (8 page)

‘No, of course I don't mind. It's hardly as if we're short of accommodation.' It would have to be the sofa bed in her attic studio though, she thought, unless she trudged out in the dark and made up one of the beds in the barn. ‘Do you mean these aunts just turned up and chucked you out right there and then? What on earth were you doing?'

‘Nothing! Just my absolute very best as a family friend, same as anyone would,' Rose squealed, her eyes innocent and wide. ‘Poor Tom's distraught, doesn't know what day it is, the children were wandering that great place like lost cats and after the funeral when everyone had gone, well, I just felt they couldn't be left like that. It was so big and so empty. Someone had to make sure those children hadn't run out of Coco Pops and that the dogs were let out.'

‘But why you? Were there no staff?'

‘There's a dopey au pair who's trying to book a flight home, three dailies who come in – you saw them, the ones handing out drinks – and a couple of garden chaps, oh and the farm staff of course, but no
family.
I couldn't believe they all just went off home. Quite honestly, I was glad to see the aunts.' Kitty couldn't help grinning and Rose's eyes widened again. ‘No, truly,' she insisted. ‘I am just a friend, you know. Ever since we made that programme. BBC2, you might have caught it, Antonia and I got on terribly well. I was due to go back to research another show, but now I don't suppose . . . Anyway, the aunts had been to the funeral and gone home, and then just turned up back again as if they'd had a powwow and decided I was the sort who'd nick the silver. Someone must have phoned them.' She frowned, trying to pin a name on the traitor. ‘Ben knew where I was, you know. Well, I mean I hadn't told him I'd be anywhere else.'

‘I don't think he did know, actually. Julia rang.'

Rose laughed. ‘Well he will by now then, now that I've spoken to her. Can you imagine her having any piece of information that she doesn't broadcast?'

‘Oh it happens, occasionally.'

‘Talking of which . . .' Rose reached into her handbag and hauled out a pale grey leather Filofax. ‘In here somewhere . . . oh yes, here it is. Julia asked me to pass this on to you. Some number about adoption. She said you should ring it and they'll be able to help.' She handed the slip of paper over to Kitty who read on it the address and phone number of the Post-Adoption Centre, a north London address that couldn't be far from Rose and Ben's own home.

‘Very mysterious. What's it for?' Rosemary-Jane looked intently at Kitty. ‘Are you adopting a baby? Are we allowed at our age? Or are you looking for your real mum? I never did think you looked much like yours.'

Kitty folded the paper and took it to the dresser where she placed it carefully in a box covered in shells that Lily had made at school.

‘It's no to both of those. Just something for a friend,' she replied to Rose. ‘Have another drink and I'll whip up a mushroom omelette for you. Then I think if the football's finished, you should meet the rest of my family.'

‘What time do you have to be back?' It was a passion-shattering question to nuzzle into Amanda's ear but Petroc had to ask, just so he could make an effort to pace himself and stay awake for the long drive back to her home. Getting her back here had been strangely easy and he kept expecting things to ton difficult. He'd spent the evening not believing his luck, since Hayley had got the train back to Redruth and Amanda had said yes to his offer of chips in the Penzance harbourside car park, sharing them with the greedy gulls, all through the couple of hours in the pub spending every last bit of his month's lunch money on her rum and Cokes.

It was pitch starless black in the yard at the back of the barn, and Amanda was keyed up and giggling from the last few hundred yards where he'd switched off the headlights and relied on instinct and the protection of the saint of showing-off to get him down the last part of the lane and through the gateway so he could park out of sight of the house. His mum was a great one for inviting people in: ambushing visitors the moment they walked in through the door, encouraging his and Lily's mates to come and join them downstairs and chat, when all they wanted to do was dash through the hallway, rush up the stairs and hurl themselves into the privacy of their own rooms where they could just hang out and where conversation was not something to fill spaces with. If they went in, his dad would sit Amanda down and ask her about university choices and think he should still give her advice, and his mum would offer her coffee and then look at the length of her skirt as if she was calculating how very few inches long it was.

‘No particular time,' Amanda whispered. ‘They don't much care what I do. I expect it's because I'm adopted,' she giggled softly, joking about it as only a securely loved child could. Petroc knew he had a half-sister somewhere out there in the world who perhaps also made lightweight, careless comments like that. Occasionally he wondered if she looked like Lily, all skinny and water-coloured, or if she was darker and more solid like him. Amanda's perfect pouty mouth was breathing warm and damp on Petroc's neck and he weighed up whether to slide a hand through to her skin now while they were snugly close in the car, or wait till they could get even more comfortable inside the barn. She might cool down on the way in and decide to become all sensible and prim. Or she might not. ‘Though I've got to be up early for the milking. My turn, Wednesdays.' She pulled away a little and smiled, biting her bottom lip. Her face and hair looked ghostly against the black night and the looming building.

He groped in the side pocket for his trusty Maglite, reached across and pushed her door open. ‘Come on, I'll just show you round. There's a brilliant room for parties. I've got great plans for this barn next time the parents go away.' He tried to make it sound as if his mum and dad spent half their lives flitting off on Concorde, leaving him and Lily to organize a social life worthy of London's best clubs. All he really cared about just now was that the barn, out of season, provided an enviable choice of many empty bedrooms. Amanda was the third girl he'd sneaked in there like this. The other two had been gratifyingly impressed.

‘Are we really allowed in here?' Amanda clung to Petroc's hand as they crept in through the barn's back door and she stumbled on the step in the darkness.

‘Course we are,' he said, ‘it's only another part of home. I'm only not putting the lights on because I don't want the parents to start thinking there's burglars and come out looking.'

‘Would they mind, if they did and they found us?' Amanda had a soft Cornish accent, less strident than the local girls who picked Rita's daffodils, more like something that you heard on television when people were trying to sound West Country combined with posh.

‘So who have we here?' A light snapped on, leaving Amanda and Petroc blinking helplessly. Amanda squeaked and clung to Petroc, hiding her face in his shoulder as if it made her invisible.

‘Shit. I'd forgotten,' Petroc said, looking the amused man in the eyes and attempting a smile. ‘Are you George Moorfield?'

George treated him to a sardonic grin. ‘And are you burglar or squatter or,' and his head inclined towards Amanda who was now gazing at him with blatant interest, her mouth unprettily gaping, ‘just looking for somewhere private for a shag?'

Amanda giggled and Petroc felt foolish and caught out. ‘I'm Petroc, Kitty and Glyn's son. And I forgot you were here and I'm really sorry to have barged in. We'll go now.' He tugged on Amanda's hand but she didn't move.

‘Are you really George Moorfield? I've read all your books. I think they're wonderful, especially
Framing Cain,
' she gushed. Petroc sighed, sensing imminent defeat. George ran his fingers through his long sparse hair and gave her the kind of smile Petroc assumed he kept for charming intellectually uppity arts-programme interviewers.

‘Why don't you two come in and join me for a drink?' he oozed at Amanda. ‘Tea or coffee though, as I'm off the other stuff for now.'

‘I should get you back home. It's getting late,' Petroc tried lamely to claim her back. ‘And you've got to get up for the milking tomorrow, you said.' She looked from him to George who put up his hands in mock surrender. ‘Up to you entirely. Or maybe you two would prefer to dash up the stairs and take advantage of room eight?' Petroc glared but he continued, ‘After all that's what you came here for, isn't it? I do remember lust you know, even at my age. Especially at my age, come to think of it.'

Amanda looked flustered and took hold of Petroc's hand again. ‘I do have to get up early,' she said, ‘so maybe we should just go.'

The air was damp and chilly in the yard. Amanda climbed into the Mini, drew her legs up onto the seat and wrapped her arms round them. ‘George Moorfield!' she sighed, ‘I've always really deeply admired him. When he writes about sex, it's not like, you know, just prose. He does something with the words so it's like sacred or something, even higher than poetic.' It was the longest and most enthusiastic speech she'd come out with all day and Petroc felt depressed. The girl was clearly thrilled, but not by
him.
Well, not any more.

Petroc tried starting the car, the engine whining over and over. Furious with the whole world, he shoved his foot hard down on the accelerator. The engine still wouldn't turn over. ‘I haven't read him,' he said flatly. Didn't intend to either, he thought, smarmy git. He tried the ignition again. ‘Shit, I think I've flooded it. Now we'll have to wait.'

‘Boring.' Amanda was grumpy now. ‘Oh look he's coming out again.' She wound down her window and let in a blast of misty air.

‘Having trouble? I could hear you not getting started.' George Moorfield's lion mane of grey hair was horribly close to Amanda's face. Petroc scowled at him, sensing that ‘not getting started' referred not just to the car. ‘Just a bit flooded, I'll try again.' He did and the engine whined miserably. ‘You're flattening it,' George pointed out helpfully. ‘But I've got to get home!' Amanda fretted.

Petroc groaned, knowing what was coming next, and it did, ‘No problem, I'll run you there, if you just give me directions,' the Great Author told her, opening the passenger door at the same time. Amanda scrambled out and grinned back at Petroc, looking, he thought, like a little rock chick abandoning the roadie for the lead guitarist. It was pointless to offer to go with them. ‘My car's just through here behind the trees . . .' Petroc heard him say, watching miserably as a large hand appeared like a scuttling crab splayed against the pale beacon of Amanda's hair, guiding her out of Petroc's life.

Petroc slammed his hands against the steering-wheel, feeling like bashing his head against it too. He made one last feeble attempt to start the Mini, watching, as his engine struggled to turn over, the vast turquoise Bentley sweep past him out of the yard, with Amanda smiling like royalty next to the prizewinning writer. Petroc's only compensation was that George Moorfield, used to the well-lit, wide and direct routes of London, now had a twenty-two-mile round trip on some of the narrowest and most rutted lanes in Cornwall. He wouldn't dare take his hands off the steering-wheel, at least not till they arrived.

They were on the second bottle and Kitty had some questions that were not about Antonia's husband.

‘Tell me how you came to end up married to Ben. I thought you'd have met some potential Nobel prizewinner at Oxford and never deigned to visit the dismal provinces again.'

Rose laughed. ‘Oh, I met Ben in Paris when I was getting over the first husband. I'd married
him
straight from Oxford but he wanted immediate heirs and offspring and all that, which simply wasn't going to happen. We divorced and the next thing I knew his was the name destined to marry some pearl-necked dozy deb smirking from that front page they used to do in
Country Life.
' She stopped and sloshed more wine inaccurately into the glass. ‘I expect they've got a whole litter of pink-faced little mouse-haired buggers by now. Probably
born
wearing velvet padded headbands. Anyway, I came across Ben at some wine-tasting in Paris, learning the wine trade from his old man, who soon conveniently snuffed it leaving Ben the deliciously thriving business. Coincidence about Paris, wasn't it? He remembered me from that pub we all used to go to near school.' She frowned. ‘I didn't honestly remember much about him from then. He said he'd been out with you a bit.' She laughed, a harsh abrupt noise. ‘I should sleep with your Glyn, then we'd be quits on the husband stakes.'

‘You love him though, Ben I mean . . .' Kitty realized she was quite drunk – it seemed such a ridiculously sentimental question, as if the next thing they should do was to sob on each other's shoulders about the miracle of romance.

‘Oh, love! How to define it . . .' Rose gulped her wine. ‘Yes, actually I suppose I must do. We're the best of friends. You have to be when you don't have children, though we do have a dog. We prefer skiing and hot expensive holidays – and the boat. Oh and work. I couldn't be without my work.' She grinned and looked sly. ‘It does mean I can get out and about such a lot. And I have to have that, absolutely have to.'

‘I'm glad she didn't stay long.' Glyn had said it more than once, as if chanting a spell to ward off any possible future visit from the demon Rose. Kitty was getting annoyed. On the easel in front of her was a half completed painting of Coverack harbour and before Glyn had clattered up the attic stairs she had been absorbed in picking out colours for the fishing-boats. Her paintings were bright and vibrant and often described in patronizing gallery blurbs as ‘charmingly naïve'. She felt they should be undertaken in as light and happy a mood as possible if they were to gladden people's hearts and wallets, but here was Glyn like a mobile grey cloud, pacing the floor of her workroom and stirring up cooling air. He kept glancing out of the window as if half expecting Rose's silver BMW to flash into the yard again.