Country Pursuits (31 page)

Powers looked less than impressed at the prospect. ‘Guv, do we have to?' he grumbled. ‘We didn't find diddly squat last time. Maybe send someone else, eh? A fresh pair of eyes?'

‘I want
your
eyes, so button it,' said Rance crossly. ‘You've both got a head start, you know the patch.
So get yourselves out there again.' Powers stood up muttering, only slightly mollified at the thought of seeing Angie and Caro's chests again. He left the room with PC Penny trotting at his heels like a faithful Yorkshire terrier.

CAMILLA WAS UTTERLY
distraught at her best friend's disappearance. Like Frances and Ambrose, she couldn't bring herself to think the worst had happened. The whole Standington-Fulthrope family, dreadfully upset themselves, all rallied round her. Her parents called twice a day from Barbados to check up on her and see if there was any progress on the case. Camilla started having dreadful nightmares and waking up screaming and drenched in sweat, so Calypso shared her bed on the nights she wasn't with Angus.

Camilla also handed her notice in at work. ‘I was going to anyway, for the wedding.' She spent hours walking Errol Flynn, working on the ball, and feverishly cleaning No. 5 The Green. Anything that would keep her busy and stop her thinking what could have happened to her dear, dear Harriet. Her absence was like an awful, yawning chasm. The pair had been in contact every day for most of their lives; if not seeing each other, then by phone and ‘Forever Friends' cards and, later on, emails and text messages. Camilla didn't know what to do without Harriet.
She couldn't face up to the fact she might be dead.

Ambrose was taking it badly as well. At night, Frances would hear him restlessly pacing the corridors of Clanfield Hall, then by day he would shut himself away in his study. A six-figure reward put up by the couple had gone unclaimed. There had been several false leads, including one from a deranged-sounding caller from Hull who said he'd seen Harriet working as a topless go-go dancer at the local working men's club. DI Rance and PC Penny had endured a hellish four-hour drive up there to find out that ‘Harriet' was actually a transvestite called Helena who looked no more like Harriet Fraser than Rance did Sylvester Stallone. He had cursed about wasting police time all the way back down the M62.

A week after Harriet had disappeared, Frances had been overcome with helplessness. Desperate to feel like she was doing something, she had worked long into the night making up posters of Harriet, and the next day she had asked Jed to drive her round so she could pin them up. It had ended up taking them three days, and Frances had had so many kind words from the well-wishers she came across, it had threatened to crack her famous poise on several occasions.

The posters were pinned up on every village notice board, shop window and telegraph pole in the county. The word MISSING stood out in searing red letters, above a picture of Harriet that Ambrose had taken of her in the garden last summer. The sunlight had caught the auburn tones in her hair perfectly, and laughter danced in her eyes. Devastatingly, the posters yielded nothing. Every
time Frances drove through the village and saw one of them fluttering in the breeze, every time she saw the same picture flash up on the news, she thought her heart might break into a million pieces.

With Ambrose shutting her out through his own grief, Frances tried to seek solace with Devon at Byron Heights. She had become quite fond of the Victorian monstrosity, spending hours walking in the gardens, and taking comfort in the simple, home-cooked meals Nigel made at night. Occasionally, Devon would find Frances crying on the terrace or elsewhere. Then he would sweep her up in his arms, carrying her to bed to make tender love to her, making her feel wanted and cared for, letting her forget just for a short precious time the tragedy she was going through.

Although he didn't like to talk about it to Frances at that moment, Devon's music was going from strength to strength. He'd even managed to track down the members of his old backing band, who'd all been doing their own thing for years, and persuade them to come to Byron Heights for the weekend. When the ‘Three Ts' – Taz, Terry and Todge – turned up, the years fell away instantly. It was as if they'd never been apart. Like others before them, they were gob-smacked at the quality of the songs Devon was playing, and after a few bars of his second track, they had told him they were definitely in. The four of them spent all weekend in the studio reminiscing and then jamming. When they left that Sunday evening, the Three Ts had privately agreed Devon Cornwall was on the best form of his life. The public were not going to know what hit them.

The month dragged on, and so did the investigation. The police learned that Harriet had taken fifteen hundred pounds out of her bank account the day before she disappeared. But according to her mother, she had been planning on buying some new furniture for the cottage, so it could have been for that. No other transactions or withdrawals had been made. The police, armed with dozens of sniffer dogs, had made a painstaking search of the grounds of Clanfield Hall. Rance had told Sir Ambrose and Lady Fraser that he was looking for evidence, but they had all known what he was really looking for. Watching from her sitting room window as the distinctive black and white uniforms combed every inch of the estate, Frances had thought her heart might break.

One morning towards the end of October she was in her dressing gown in the powder room, applying her make-up, when there was a knock on the door. ‘My dear, may I come in?' Ambrose's voice called out.

Frances was surprised: he hadn't been in that room for years. ‘Of course, the door's open.'

Ambrose entered. He was wearing his staple outfit of tweed trousers, shirt and bow tie, with a dark-green wool jumper over the top. Frances thought that in the past few weeks he had aged twenty years: his face was tired and lined, the once-sparky eyes defeated and flat.

Ambrose sat down on the overstuffed chaise longue, which ran the length of one wall, and let out a long, deep sigh.

‘Am I a bad man, Frances?' he asked his
wife. ‘You must tell me, I know you'll be honest.'

Frances stared at him in shock. She had never heard him speak that way. ‘Ambrose, of course not! My goodness, whatever makes you say that?'

Her husband appeared not to have heard her. ‘I must be a bad man, to have this happen to us. Why else would it?'

‘Ambrose—' Frances started, but he carried on.

‘Or am I just a bad father?' He sighed again. ‘Is this someone's way of punishing me? Lord knows I've been hard on Harriet over the years, but it was only because I thought it was the best thing for her.' He swallowed. ‘I've been a fool, Frances, a stupid, bloody-minded old fool.' And with this, Ambrose started to cry: racking, great, unfamiliar sobs that took over his body. ‘Now I might have lost the best thing that ever happened to me, and I won't ever be able to tell her that!'

Frances's eyes were welling up now, and she crossed the room to embrace her husband. They felt each other's pain but drew strange comfort from it. They were the only ones who really understood, and now they had each other again. ‘We'll get through this, my darling, we've got to!' whispered Frances.

Afterwards, she knew what she had to do. When Frances went over to Byron Heights and told Devon she would always treasure their friendship, but that she could no longer carry on with its physical side, he felt he had been kicked in the stomach. But he told her he understood. He did, to a certain extent. Devon didn't have any kids, but he knew how he would feel if he lost Nigel, who was the closest to family he had. Frances was telling him
she had to be there for her husband, and in a funny way, it made his feelings for her even more powerful. Her compelling decency – which had so attracted him in the first place – was back, stronger than ever.

As Frances drove away from his house that evening, she felt a mixture of sorrow and regret. It hadn't just been about sex with Devon, he'd brought out a side of her she had never known existed. The thought of never again lying in the four-poster bed at Byron Heights, lazily chatting and laughing in a post-coital glow of happiness, brought a lump to her throat. She fought back the tears and took a deep breath, steeling herself.

She was Lady Frances Fraser. She had a duty to her husband – and daughter – to invest her all in keeping the family together.

Frances wasn't the only one in the village to suddenly see life more starkly. Camilla was about to drop the most enormous bombshell on Angus. Ever since Harriet had disappeared, he'd done his best to comfort her, but unfortunately, Angus didn't possess one sensitive, empathetic bone in his entire body. He was, in his own way, extremely shaken by the disappearance of Harriet, but his idea of cheering Camilla up was driving an even bigger gulf between them. It involved trying to roger her senseless, taking her for bone-jarring rides in his old Land Rover or inviting her to play drinking games with his farming mates down the pub. Although Camilla knew he was trying to help, when Angus suggested she take all her clothes off and run round
the bar setting light to her farts, she just felt infinitely worse.

It wasn't that there wasn't a decent chap under all the bluff and bluster, just that Angus struggled when it came to feelings or matters of the heart. He had only ever cried once in his life, and not at either of his parents' funerals, but long before, when he was six years old and his older cousin Edward had accidentally run over and killed Angus's rabbit Ace with a BMX bike in the farmyard. When Angus had burst into tears over the untimely demise of his beloved pet, Edward and his friends had teased him so mercilessly that the young boy had sworn to himself he would never cry again.

Camilla had already postponed her wedding-dress fitting twice, telling everybody she was too upset about Harriet. They understood, and Camilla was telling the truth, but a little bit of her did wonder guiltily if she was using Harriet as an excuse as well. If she had been feeling confused about the wedding before, she now felt a million times worse. Ironically, the only person in the world she felt she could really have talked to wasn't there. Camilla felt utterly lost.

Things finally came to a head at the end of October. The nights were drawing in, and several lashing thunderstorms had reduced the countryside to a sodden mass. The brilliant sun which had so dominated the summer crept down in the sky earlier and earlier, only occasionally throwing out milky, luke-warm rays.

Camilla and Angus were having a night in at the farm. His spring-clean hadn't lasted very long. Camilla looked round in despair at the piles of dirty
washing everywhere and the muddy footprints that trailed through the house.

Angus was sitting across the kitchen table from her, boots up on the table, drinking a beer and reading a copy of
Trout Weekly
, his large goofy mouth moving slightly as he read aloud to himself. Letting out a large belch, he looked at Camilla for praise, then scratched his crotch and went back to his paper. Angus looked as happy as a pig in muck, and it suddenly dawned on Camilla that he was never going to change. Angus was happy with things as they were, but she knew she never would be.

‘Angus, we need to talk,' she said nervously.

‘What's that, sweet cheeks?' he said, putting down his paper. ‘Does the naughty filly want little Angus to give her a good seeing-to again?'

That was enough. ‘No!' she shouted, pent-up frustration and emotion pouring out.

Angus was startled. ‘All right sexpot, keep your hair on. What is it, then? Bored, are you? I've got a British Lions DVD next door if you fancy it, bloody good game of rugger, that.'

It was like they were communicating in different languages, she thought despairingly. ‘Angus, do you ever think we're too different?'

Angus paused to consider for a moment. ‘Not apart from the fact I'm hung like a rogue elephant, with a swinging set of balls to match. But you don't want those, do you?' he chortled.

‘Angus, will you stop joking for just ONCE!' she shouted. ‘Please, I'm trying to talk to you.' She paused, suddenly quite weary. ‘Oh, I just can't go on like this. What with Hats and now this . . .'

By now, it was sinking into Angus's thick skull that something was wrong. ‘Now what?' he asked nervously.

Camilla wondered how on earth to work the conversation round. ‘What do you want from life, Angus?' He looked perplexed, not being used to such searching questions.

‘Well, to live on a farm and grow and shoot things, but I've got that already.' He looked around. ‘Er . . . to go on the beers with the chaps, maybe have a jolly in Will Thorpe-Jones's box at Twickers every year, er . . .'

‘Anything else?' asked Camilla pointedly.

He thought for a few seconds. ‘Beat the Snifferman's record of drinking a yard of ale in 4.8 seconds. If I can do that, I'll die a happy man!' he guffawed.

Camilla looked at him. ‘What about
me
?'

‘What about you?' He smiled at her indulgently. ‘You're my foxy little filly, who's going to live here and pop out lots of manly sons I can go shooting and hunting with. Oh, and who'll carry on the family name at Harrow. There's been an Aldershot there in every generation for the last hundred and fifty years!'

‘What if I
don't
want that, though?' Camilla cried. ‘Maybe I want to go and do a degree or go travelling or something instead.'

Angus looked at her blankly. ‘But why would you want to do that when you've got Highlands? If you fancy getting away, we can always go up to Aunt Gwendoline's estate in Perthshire . . .'

Camilla knew then there was no hope. She walked round the table and knelt by her
soon-to-be-ex-fiancé, holding his bear-like, muddy paws. ‘Angus, you're a wonderful man and you're going to make someone very happy,' she whispered. ‘It's just not me.'