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‘That was heartfelt. Why do I get the feeling that if you’d realised I was waiting you’d have left by the rear entrance?’
‘Why on earth would I sneak out the back way?’ Claire demanded, all the more indignant because it was true.
‘I don’t know. The words “rabbit” and “headlights” came to mind when you saw me in your space for a change.’
‘You’re the one who avoids the press.’
‘Oh, it was merely surprise? I thought perhaps you were worried that having poked your stick into my wasp’s nest—’
‘Don’t worry, Hal, I get it,’ she said. ‘I’ve been stung.’
He hadn’t complained about her, hadn’t got her the sack. Instead, he’d got her taken off the news desk, placed at his beck and call for weeks on end and had himself officially transformed from Mr Mean into Mr Generous at a stroke.
There would be no more snarky headlines written by her, or anyone else.
A result in anyone’s language.
‘So, coffee,’ she said briskly. ‘Shall we try the café in the craft centre? It’s Ally’s favourite.’
‘Ally?’
Ally, fed up with being taken to one boring place after another, having to be quiet and well-behaved instead of having fun like everyone else at half term, had been dragging her heels behind her, sliding down the wall with a sigh when she’d seen her mom stop to talk to someone. Not complaining, but thoroughly fed up.
Well, that was all about to change.
‘Come and say hello to Mr North, sweetheart, he’s going to buy you a milkshake.’
‘A milkshake?’ She scrambled to her feet, looked up at Hal. ‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously. You deserve one.’ She picked up Hal’s long, thoughtful look, smiled. ‘I did give you every chance.’
‘No. That would have meant you’d told me that you had your little girl with you,’ he said in the same pleasant tone, his own smile pitch perfect. Then, before she could let him off the hook, tell him that she was going to drop her off at Penny’s for the afternoon he turned to Ally and said, ‘Tell me, Alice, is your heart set on a milkshake at the craft centre? Or could I possibly tempt you to lunch by the river?’
‘Penny’s making you lunch,’ Claire said before she could answer. ‘Spaghetti with meatballs. Your favourite,’ she added, to soften the blow.
‘But what about the milkshake?’ she asked, with a confused little frown. Ally did a very good confused little frown.
‘I’ll make you one when I get home.’
‘It’s not the same,’ she said. ‘You can’t make it so thick that you can hardly suck it through the straw.’
‘Penny? Would that be Penny Harker?’ Hal asked, rescuing her before she was promising double, triple scoops of strawberry ice cream in the shake. ‘Gary’s mother?’
‘Yes. Of course you know her.’
‘I know why she couldn’t work this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Why she won’t work full-time.’
‘You asked her to work full-time?’ Claire was shocked. ‘I had no idea.’
‘Well you do now so the least you can do is call and tell her you won’t need her to babysit this afternoon. Make everyone’s day.’
His day, Penny’s day, Ally’s day. She wasn’t so sure about hers…
Leaving her to it, he turned to Ally and with the utmost seriousness said, ‘Tell me, Alice, is the Birdcage still the best place in town for lunch?’
Ally’s eyes widened. ‘The Birdcage? Is that the place that looks like a birdcage? That has birds? In cages.’
‘That sounds like the place.’
‘I’m not sure I approve of birds in cages,’ she said. ‘Can they fly about? Not just hop around like Savannah’s budgie?’
‘Why don’t you ask your mother? She used to go there all the time when she was your age.’
‘I went there once!’ Claire said, with a glare that warned him that making plans for her was one thing, making them with her daughter was quite another. ‘And there is still a problem.’
‘Why am I not surprised?’ There was nothing in his voice, his manner to betray him and yet she sensed his impatience. He had a plan and she was messing with it. Tough. ‘If you’re worried about timekeeping I’ll swear it was a working lunch.’
‘What else would it be?’ she snapped. Dammit, lunch with Hal should have been… Nothing. ‘Unfortunately, and I’m really sorry about this—’ it wouldn’t hurt to apologise, no matter how insincerely ‘—but I imagine you were planning on going by car?’
‘I wasn’t going to walk,’ he said, using the fob he was holding to unlock the doors of a glossy black Range Rover parked at the kerb.
‘Well, that’s it, you see. Ally doesn’t have her booster seat with her and, as I’m sure you know, it’s against the law for a child to travel in a car without one.’ She waited for the count of three. ‘I suppose, if your heart really is set on The Birdcage, we could catch the bus?’
‘The bus?’ Hal appeared to consider it. ‘That’s a possibility,’ he said. ‘Or Alice could use the booster seat that Bea had fitted for her little girl.’
He lifted an eyebrow, inviting her to counter his check.
Claire had none to offer. Her only thought was that the plum-voiced Ms Webb had a daughter who visited often enough for Hal to need a booster seat in his car.
No more than her journalistic antenna twitching. His relationships were news. There was no other reason for her to be interested. At all.
‘Well…’ she said. ‘How great is that, Ally? I wasn’t much older than you the one time I went to the Birdcage.’ Emphasis on the ‘one.’
‘My mistake,’ Hal said, as he lifted Ally up. She scrambled across onto the booster seat and quickly fastened her seat belt before any more objections were raised. ‘Your mother talked about it so much that I assumed it must be a regular event. According to my mother,’ he stressed, presumably to establish that he was not in the habit of gossiping with her mother. As if. ‘Didn’t you have a good time?’
She concentrated on checking Ally’s seat belt then shut the door before turning to face Hal. ‘Truthfully?’
‘What else?’ he asked.
‘I hated every minute of it.’
‘Really? Well, you weren’t with me on that occasion,’ he said as he opened the passenger door for her.
‘My mother would never have invited you out to tea with a bunch of little girls.’
‘With or without,’ he agreed, with a wry smile. ‘I was definitely not her type, a sentiment I returned with interest. But little girls would have been safe enough.’
‘I don’t doubt it. You had bigger fish to fry.’
She caught his eye and despite doing her best to be cool, she discovered that what she wanted to do most of all was smile right back at him.
Despite the bad start, the prospect of lunch with Hal North at a pretty riverside restaurant had a ridiculously uplifting effect on her. Which was, well, ridiculous.
‘Let’s see,’ she said, doing her best to keep her feet firmly planted on the ground. She had to remember that he hated her father, was messing with her career and she knew practically nothing about his life since he’d left Cranbrook Park. Who knew what ulterior motive was driving him? ‘It was my eighth birthday so you must have been about fourteen or fifteen…’ She pretended to think about it, but she could remember exactly what he’d been doing—or at least who he’d been doing it with—the year she was eight.
She’d seen him from the back of her mother’s car that day. She’d been dressed up for her tea party in a pink frilly nightmare of a dress and as they’d driven through the village she’d seen him standing at the bus stop with his arm around a girl in a skirt so short that her legs had looked ten yards long.
Her mother had kept her eyes on the road, but there had been a distinct ‘tut’ as they’d passed.
She, on the other hand, had been green with envy, turning round in her seat to stare until her mother had spotted her in the mirror and told her to sit up straight before she creased her dress.
‘That,’ she said, ‘if I’m not mistaken, was the year you were going out with the incredibly, um, precocious Lily Parker.’
‘Was it?’ His eyes creased into a smile that warned her she’d said too much, remembered too well, betrayed an interest she would have denied with her last breath. ‘Possibly, although I can’t imagine that even Lily, with her undoubtedly precocious assets, lasted an entire year.’
‘So many girls, so little time,’ she said, as he held the door and then as she hesitated at the high step up, placed his hand on her bottom and boosted her up into the front seat. For a moment their eyes locked. It was like descending on a roller coaster. That sensation of falling, leaving your stomach behind…
Working with Hal North Rule Number Three: Don’t make eye contact.
‘I was desperately envious of her red-leather skirt,’ she said, just so that he’d know that it was Lily she’d noticed, rather than him. ‘I always swore I’d have one exactly like it when I was fourteen.’
‘And did you?’
‘Oh, please! Do you think my mother would have allowed me out of the house wearing something like that?’
‘A clever girl like you would have found a way. Did you never climb out of your bedroom window?’
‘Is that what Lily did?’
‘That would be telling.’
In other words, yes, but by the time she was old enough there had been no one to be bad with. Make that no one she’d wanted to be bad with.
She shook her head. ‘I had too much homework to spend my nights hanging around in Maybridge,’ she said, turning away to pull down her seat belt. ‘Okay, sweetheart?’ she asked, twisting in her seat to smile at Ally as he shut the door and walked around to take the seat beside her.
Ally nodded but she was sitting very still, clearly anxious not to do anything to make this unexpected treat go away. She was really missing Savannah, but refused to talk about it.
‘Okay?’ he asked, when she’d called Penny.
‘Fine.’
Not fine. He’d offered Penny a full-time job and she’d turned it down because she needed someone to look after Ally. She paid her, but not as much as Hal, who had apparently put all the estate staff on the same pay scale, and with the same benefits, as his HALGO staff. She couldn’t match that kind of hourly rate.
‘I’ll talk to her about working full-time when I see her,’ she said. ‘So, what’s wrong with your ceilings?’
‘My ceilings?’ He shrugged. ‘A combination of old age,’ he said, looking over his shoulder to check the traffic before pulling out, ‘and a leaking roof.’
‘Ouch. That sounds expensive.’
‘It will be. You might be better occupied devoting your front page to the scourge of thieves who are stripping lead from the roofs of churches and listed buildings.’
‘If you’d talked to me about it, I would have done.’ She lifted her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, no. That’s not possible. You don’t talk to the press.’
‘I’m talking to you.’
‘Too late. I’m off the news desk.’ She shrugged. ‘Actually, with several million to spend on property I think I’d have chosen something rather less of a liability than Cranbrook Park.’
‘Would you? And here was me thinking that you were in love with the place. All those Christmas parties in the great hall, picnics, gymkhanas courtesy of Sir Robert.’
‘You can mock, but it’s been the backdrop to my life since I was four years old,’ she told him. ‘It’s a big part of local history and every stone is full of stories. That doesn’t mean I’d want to be responsible for it. Or live in it.’
‘I was born in Cranbrook,’ he reminded her, ‘which gives me a good few years on you, but you’re in excellent company. My accountant would endorse the former sentiment and my PA would definitely agree with the latter.’
‘Miss Webb doesn’t enjoy country life? Or is that Mrs Webb?’ she asked.
‘Does it matter?’
‘Not to me. Presumably it does to her.’
‘She’s Mrs Webb. Divorced but—’
‘There’s a lot of it about,’ she said, not wanting to know about her ‘buts.’
‘Her problem isn’t with country life, it’s to do with country plumbing.’
‘Wimp,’ she murmured.
‘I wouldn’t let her catch you saying that,’ he replied. There was nothing wrong with his hearing. Nothing wrong with any bit of him…
She was the problem. She had the wrong name.
She glanced back at Ally, but she was too busy looking out of the window to be interested in them.
‘So?’ She kept her voice light as she asked the big question. ‘Why did you buy Cranbrook Park?’
They were paused at the traffic lights and he looked at her. ‘Because I could?’ he offered.
And then he smiled.
It was nothing spectacular as smiles went, no more than the tiniest contraction of lines fanning out from indigo eyes but the effect was like sticking wet fingers into a live socket and the fizz went all the way down to her toes.
‘It’s about power, then,’ Claire said, doing her best to ignore the tingle. Was there anything more galling than getting that kind of a sexual buzz from a man you didn’t want to fancy? That it would be crazy to fancy?
Working with Hal North Rule Number Four: Don’t say anything that will make him smile.
‘No, it’s about a promise I made the day I left Cranbrook,’ he replied. Clearly the memory was not a good one because he abruptly lost the smile and the tingle was reduced to something more like the aftermath of pins and needles.
It wasn’t over, but you could breathe again.
‘Really?’ she said, working to keep it that way. ‘Did you swear to return rich as Croesus and buy out the wicked baron?’
Bad mistake. As an anti-smile strategy it worked for him but she found her own imagination running wild with the mental picture of some over-the-top confrontation between Hal and Sir Robert as he parked his motorcycle on the marble floor of the entrance hall. The miscreant—in black leathers rather than armour—swearing a fierce oath to return and claim his rightful place. A modern version of the dispossessed knight.
No.
Really.
Why on earth would he do that? Besides, he’d already told her it wasn’t that incident which had got him banned from the estate.
On the other hand he hadn’t bothered to deny it. And why else would he ride in through the front door, if not to make some statement of intent.
‘It’s a bit of a cliché isn’t it?’ she suggested, pushing him to tell her what had really happened.
‘Clichés are what happen in moments of high drama, Claire.’
True her own small drama had contained just about every cliché in the book, but it was his story she was interested in.
‘What drama?’ she asked. ‘How high?’
More importantly, who had he made that promise to? His mother? Sir Robert? Or just himself? Who was still around who might know?
Her mother almost certainly, but they’d have to be on speaking terms before she could ask her.
His mother…
‘How is your mother?’ she asked.
He glanced at her, a slight frown buckling his forehead as, unsurprisingly he hadn’t followed her thought processes. ‘She’s well enough. She’s living in Spain.’
‘Will we see her? What does she think of you buying the estate?’
‘She doesn’t know.’
‘Oh.’ Weirder and weirder… ‘She was always very kind to me. I missed her when she left.’ She looked at him, but his expression gave nothing away. ‘After your father died.’
His mouth tightened. ‘It was an accident waiting to happen. The towpath on a foggy night is no place for a drunk.’
‘Hal…’ she warned, with a touch to his arm, reminding him that they weren’t alone. Curling her fingers back when he looked across at her. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know. About your dad.’
‘Why would you? You were never around when he came home after closing time.’
‘No.’ Had he been a violent drunk, or a sullen one? She restrained a shiver. ‘Even so it was a shocking thing.’
‘Why don’t you say what’s really on your mind, Claire? Where was I when my mother needed me?’
‘No… At least I assumed the ban was still in place,’ she said. ‘I begged my mother to speak to Sir Robert. It seemed so cruel.’
‘Did you?’ Was that a smile? Stupid question, her heart rate had gone through the roof… ‘And did she?’
She shook her head. ‘She said I didn’t understand. That it wasn’t that simple. That you’d never come back.’
‘How wrong can you be?’ He took the slip road off the ring road. ‘Have you told her?’
‘That you’ve bought Cranbrook Park? No.’
‘Mothers. Always the last to know anything…’ He shrugged. ‘Well, when you do you can inform her that she was wrong on both accounts. It wasn’t the ban that kept me away.’
He slowed for the roundabout, his hand brushing her leg as he changed down. She jumped as his touch shot through her like a charge of electricity but he didn’t appear to notice.
‘The boring truth is that I was in India on business when it happened and my mother made sure that I didn’t hear about it until it was all over and done with. I had her out of here the minute I did.’ He glanced at her. ‘She wouldn’t leave before. In case you were wondering.’
‘Why would I wonder? I had no idea you were so successful. Or that she might be unhappy.’ She swallowed. ‘I’m sorry, Hal.’
‘Don’t be. At least not for me.’ He picked up speed, reached for the stick shift to change up but before she could move her knees out of the danger zone, he said, ‘Jack North wasn’t my natural father.’
Claire, stunned, opened her mouth, but couldn’t think of a thing to say and closed it again.
Hal, shockingly, laughed. ‘Could that be you losing the power of speech?’ he asked.
‘No!’
Not his father?
Well, that made sense in a weird sort of way. They hadn’t been a bit alike…
‘Well, maybe. Just a bit,’ she admitted, with a rueful smile.
So who was? Someone on the estate? Who did he look like? There was something flickering in the back of her mind. Something she’d heard, maybe, or seen…
‘Was that your intention?’ she asked, refusing to ask him outright. If she’d learned anything in her brief dealings with Hal North, it was that if he wanted her to know something he’d tell her. If he didn’t, he’d change the subject.
Then, suspiciously, ‘Was it even true?’
Working with Hal North Rule Number Five: Don’t believe everything he says.
‘If it was my intention, clearly I’m going to have to try harder,’ he said, turning off the road and pulling into the riverside car park. ‘But why would I lie?’
‘To wind me up?’
‘Why would I bother when you do such a great job all by yourself.’
Okaaay…
Working with Hal North Rule Number Six: Disregard Rule Number Five.
But why would he tell her something so personal? Did he really believe that removing her from the news desk would totally silence her? Surely no man so careful of privacy would be that naive?
No way. He’d told her because it didn’t matter. She’d mentioned the tragic accident in that first piece she’d written about him, but Jack North was a drunken labourer who’d fallen into the river and drowned one misty night. How much worse could it get?
No. He simply wanted to shock her. Send her off on some wild goose chase, no doubt. But while her curiosity was aroused she felt nothing but relief that she wouldn’t have to write it.
Get this Wish thing over with and she’d happily report town-council meetings and agricultural shows until the cows came home.
He’d climbed out, opened Ally’s door while she struggled to make sense of it. ‘First one to the island gets an ice cream,’ he said, as he lifted her down, then having wound her up, stood back to let her race away over the bridge.
‘Oh, for goodness sake.’ She scrambled down. ‘Not before lunch!’
‘And the milkshake you promised her?’
She glared at him. ‘Don’t go too close to the water, Ally!’
‘Spoil sport.’
‘Try responsible…’ She sighed. ‘Oh, never mind.’
He was right. She’d been happy enough to use a treat to wind up Hal and Ally was having a miserable half term. An ice cream would do no harm.
She walked on, Hal’s hand still on her arm, holding her at his side as if fearing that she, too, might bolt, run on ahead.
‘I’m sorry, Hal. It’s half term. Jessie Michaels usually has her in the mornings. She and Savannah are best friends, were best friends. They’ve fallen out.’
‘How are you managing?’
‘Like every other woman in my situation. And every man. With a combination of help from my friends, expensive childcare and, when all else fails, doing what I did today and taking her with me to the office.’
‘Not ideal.’
‘No. She’s being good, but it’s a bit like living with a volcano with the lid on. You know it’s going to blow and that the longer it takes the worse it’s going to be.’ She sighed. ‘At least now, thanks to you, I can work at home.’
‘You don’t sound particularly grateful.’
‘Forgive me if I don’t weep with gratitude, Hal, but I don’t think you meant to be kind.’
They’d reached the far end of the bridge where Ally was waiting for them, jumping up and down with excitement.
‘I won, I won…’
‘You beat us,’ Hal said, taking a handful of coins from his pocket. ‘Okay, let me see… I think I’ll have a ninety-nine…’ He looked at her. ‘Claire?’
She shook her head but said, ‘The same. A small one.’
‘Two ninety-nines and whatever you want for yourself,’ he said, dropping the change into Ally’s upturned hands.
‘She’ll buy something ghastly with a load of E numbers,’ Claire protested.
‘Fuelling the volcano,’ he said, taking her arm and heading along the bank. ‘We’ll be looking at the ducklings, Alice,’ he called back.
‘This is ridiculous,’ Claire said.
‘The ice cream? Lunch? Or are you telling me that you don’t want to be the Wish Fairy?’
Oh, fudge, here comes the smile again…
‘I thought it was your aim in life to wave a wand over everyone and make their dreams come true.’
‘If I wave it over the rose garden will you send away the contractor?’
‘You can try.’
Alice caught up with them, walking carefully as she carried a little cardboard tray supporting their ices. Hal took one and offered it to her. There was a momentary collision of fingers, fuelling the little personal volcano inside her. The ice should have melted on the spot.
He took one for himself, accepted his change, then, admiring the traffic-light coloured nightmare that would have her daughter spinning like a top, said, ‘That looks interesting.’
Resisting the urge to snatch it out of Ally’s hand, she bit off the top of the chocolate flake on her own ice. Seeing her spin and whoop, even if it was an additive-induced high, had to be better than the misery of the last week or two.
‘Rose gardens, dog walkers, donkeys,’ Hal said as he steered her along the bank in Ally’s wake until they reached a bench.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Magic-wand time. You appear to have a soft spot for dog walkers, donkeys, even teddy bears.’
‘Especially teddy bears,’ she said, sitting down on a bench strategically placed so that two weeping willows offered a theatrical view of the river. A stage set with brief walk-on parts by passing swans, oarsmen, a passenger boat on its way upriver to Melchester.
‘Everyone, in fact, except me.’
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