Honeycote (35 page)

Kay decided to go back to the hotel for a couple more days. Get some rest, get her head together. It was luxurious enough, and she was impressed to hear that the manager had phoned up twice to check on her welfare. She was sure she’d be well looked after while she contemplated her future, because the plans she’d made only four days ago were now obsolete. She certainly couldn’t take on a job at the estate agent knowing she was due to give birth in just over three months – even if she could hide her condition under a well-cut jacket. And she’d have to phone the girl who owned the Coach House, tell her the deal was off, due to unforeseen circumstances. She wouldn’t give her the details: the girl probably wouldn’t believe her. She wasn’t sure if she believed it herself.

She gathered her belongings together, thanked the consultant and the nurses, and strode out into the night air to find a taxi.

That evening, Caroline let herself into her house and immediately wished she’d gone somewhere – anywhere – else. The cold air jumped up and caught her in the back of the throat. She knew it would take at least an hour to warm up, even if she turned every heater up to full blast. She wondered about filling a hot water bottle, turning on the electric blanket and climbing into bed to mull over her predicament.

She thought of the optimism she’d woken with that morning. How she’d looked forward to a bracing ride to clear away the vestiges of Christmas over-indulgence, followed by a couple more days of indulgence with James, interspersed with a bit of merriment and high jinks at Honeycote House.

Now here she was, horseless, manless, moneyless, with nothing but a pretty clear message from most of the Liddiards that they thought she was a waste of space. Even though she’d been trying to help – albeit because she had a vested interest. But she was stung by their slurs, their intimations that she was only after James for his money, which couldn’t be further from the truth. She admired him because he was everything she wasn’t – controlled, patient, organized, tidy – and she was a great believer in opposites attracting. You couldn’t live with someone who was your own mirror image. You’d end up boring each other to death. Perhaps that’s what would happen to James and Lucy, if they ended up together. They’d suffocate each other with their understated bloody good taste.

OK. So the Liddiards had made it clear between them that she’d never be one of them. They’d slammed down the portcullis and pulled up the drawbridge. She’d got the message all right. She wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life being patronized and looked down on.

It didn’t do, did it, mixing with the wrong class? She should try someone ordinary, someone who knew how to have fun. She thought of Gerry, who’d started as a photographer on the paper three months ago and had hounded her from day one. He was cheeky, comical, with a wry sense of humour and absolutely no airs and graces. They’d have a laugh together.

She walked over to the phone and punched in his number. He’d given it to her often enough. He answered after three rings.

‘Hello?’

‘Gerry? It’s Caroline.’

‘Cazza! How are you doing?’

‘Fine. I just wondered… that drink you’re always going on about. Do you fancy it?’

There was a silence that Caroline could detect was embarrassed.

‘Shit, Cazza. I’d have loved to. But… I’m going out with Gemma. You kept me hanging around too long, babe. I never thought I was in with a chance.’

Caroline put the phone down slowly, then picked up a cup and threw it at the wall. It exploded with a satisfying smash, leaving a spattering of coffee in a four-foot radius. She tried a glass, with the same effect – red wine everywhere. Suddenly she found she couldn’t stop. Everything within her reach was hurled at the wall, until she collapsed in a heap, crying despite herself. She’d sworn they wouldn’t get to her. But what did she have? Fuck all.

Lawrence’s hand was shaking with excitement as he sat at the kitchen table with a sheet of graph paper, trying to work out exactly how much living accommodation the brewery could offer.

He hadn’t been able to remember the brewery’s shape and size at first. A few square feet here and there would make a huge difference to the profit margins. He’d rummaged in the hallway until he found a pair of racing binoculars, then rushed out to his car. No. Too conspicuous. He went back inside and found the keys to the Fiesta that the garden centre staff borrowed sometimes. He could hardly bear the five minutes it took to reach Honeycote Ales. He found a vantage point and trained the binoculars on his prey, straining his eyes in the dark. Eventually he refreshed his memory as to its layout and greedily counted up the outbuildings, each one a potential unit yielding hard cash.

Now here he was, committing his plan to paper, and feeling an increasing sense of excitement. The time was right for a new challenge. The garden centre at Barton Court was running itself, having achieved its maximum potential. Expansion now would mean acquiring another branch and the thought of that bored Lawrence rigid. He hated doing the same thing twice.

He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of this before. He could already see the brochures. Glossy, exclusive, inviting… they’d be queuing up to view the show-home; buying apartments off plan. Bloody fantastic. Money up front. The whole enterprise would finance itself beautifully. And destroy the last generation of Liddiards. It would be on a par with pillaging and sacking.

Honeycote Grange. A huge pair of crested, gold-tipped, remote-control wrought-iron gates with an intercom and a video entryphone. Reproduction carriage lamps. Floodlit fountains with piddling cherubs. Lawrence knew that even he would never stoop that low, but it made him chuckle to think of it. That would be the ultimate humiliation for the Liddiards. New money pissing all over their heritage.

Lawrence had decided on exclusive apartments rather than houses. Because they would need security and maintenance and lots of little added luxuries that you could charge a fortune for. As well as a nice fat management fee. All the grounds could be landscaped and maintained by Barton Court – he could offload all his end-of-line garden statuary. He chuckled to himself. There was something in the saying ‘To those that have…’

And to those that are in deep shit… Lawrence reached for the phone and dialled Cowley’s home number. He didn’t care if he was settling down to a nice relaxing Boxing Day supper of coronation turkey. This could mean mega bucks.

That night, at Denham House, both Lucy and James lay awake, but in separate rooms. Lucy had spent a lot of the day asleep, but James had insisted at about three o’clock that they should go out for a walk. He didn’t think it was doing her any good to mope. The fresh air had, indeed, done her good, enough to get her head together to phone Keith Sherwyn and ask him to keep the girls for another day, which he’d said would be his pleasure – he’d take them to the sales.

But because she’d spent half the day asleep, she now couldn’t. She knew that the next day she was going to have to confront Mickey. There was no point in putting it off. But she didn’t know what to say. Worse than that, she didn’t know what he was going to say. Her greatest fear was that he was going to tell her he didn’t love her any more. Or, worse still, that he never had. She wondered how she could have gone for so long without noticing anything amiss. She went back over the last week, the last month, the last year, looking for signs of dissatisfaction, infidelity, and couldn’t find any. Was it that she wasn’t observant, or was he so cunning and clever that he’d managed to keep it hidden? She felt sick at the thought that the man she loved could have been so actively duplicitous. Had he and Kay spent their time making love and laughing at how easy she made it for them? Lucy tossed and turned as these images and worse tormented her and kept her from sleep.

Meanwhile, in the room next door, James congratulated himself on getting Lucy safely landed in his net, and wondered how long he should leave it before he made his next move. Was it best to close in while the wounds were fresh and raw, or was that too ungentlemanly for words…?

At Honeycote House, Mickey lay alone in his marital bed, unable to take the cold chill off the sheets and watching the hands of the clock pass every hour.

Every bone, every muscle, every nerve in his body was crying out for a drink to help him get to sleep, but he was determined to see the night through. By three o’clock in the morning he was ready to give in, but realized that there wasn’t a drop to be had in the house, unless he took an axe and chopped the cellar door down. But he didn’t want to have to explain that to anybody, so he screwed his eyes shut and counted sheep, which turned into fluffy barrels of beer, until eventually he dropped off into a troubled sleep just before dawn.

18

When Patrick came down to breakfast the next morning, he found Mickey surprisingly buoyant and optimistic. He made his son coffee, and Patrick pretended not to notice that his hands were shaking ever so slightly. There was a false heartiness about him that was disconcerting, but Patrick supposed it was better than him wallowing in a morass of self-pity. They didn’t discuss Mickey’s revelations of the day before. Instead, Mickey suggested that Patrick go and collect the girls from Keith and Mandy’s, which suited Patrick’s plans nicely. He didn’t want to be around if there was going to be any sort of confrontation between Lucy and Mickey. He couldn’t think of anything much more distasteful or unsettling. Patrick didn’t like confrontation, unless he was in control. He certainly didn’t like being on the periphery while anyone else washed their dirty linen. And he knew he would feel honour bound to intervene on Lucy’s behalf, whatever happened, because at the end of the day his father was in the wrong. He’d always felt protective of Lucy, because he’d never forgotten how special and important she’d made him feel when he arrived at Honeycote all those years ago, and how she’d never made him feel marginalized even though Sophie and Georgina were her real daughters and he wasn’t related to her in any way. But he really didn’t want his loyalties put to the test, because he loved his father too. So Solihull was definitely a safer option. He took the keys to his father’s Defender, even though it was the most uncomfortable ride known to man, as Lucy had the Volvo.

At about half ten, Mickey phoned James. He picked up the receiver and dialled before he could give himself time to think about it, and spoke heartily to his brother when he answered.

‘James – is Lucy there? We need to speak.’

James was taken aback by his brother’s lucidity. He thought he sounded surprisingly perky, and not at all drunk. He’d have put good money on him being plastered, even at that time in the morning. So wrong-footed was he that he went to get Lucy without demurring.

Lucy was wary.

‘Hello?’

Mickey was deliberately upbeat.

‘I just wanted you to know I’ve done the horses, so you needn’t worry.’ Actually, he’d rather enjoyed it. He thought he might do the mucking-out every morning. It helped clear your head and it was good exercise trundling barrows full of manure to the muck heap and back.

‘I wasn’t worried. I assumed you and Patrick could manage it between you.’

‘Oh.’ Mickey was a little put out that his gesture had been devalued so instantly.

‘Anything else?’

‘I thought we should… talk.’

There was a pause that could only be described as icy.

‘I’ll come over some time this morning. I’ve got to pick up some clothes anyway.’

Pick up some clothes? That didn’t sound good. That sounded as if she wasn’t planning on coming back in the near future. But Mickey told himself that once they’d spoken, once he’d reassured her and given her a demonstration of how he was going to mend his ways, then she’d mellow.

They said their polite, distant goodbyes, then Mickey charged around the house making sure everything was spick and span, even vacuuming up the needles under the Christmas tree. He carefully hung the picture Lucy had got him for Christmas in a prime spot in the drawing room, splashed on some aftershave, got out all the paraphernalia to make fresh coffee… He was pleased with his handiwork and even more pleased with the clearness of his head. Even when he didn’t have a hangover, hadn’t actually overdone it, he always felt slightly sluggish in the mornings.

Perhaps it was a good thing that all this had happened. He was meant to stand back and take an objective look at where his life was going. This was going to be the new regime. No drink, fresh air, exercise… and it wasn’t even time for New Year resolutions yet.

Mickey felt his stomach lurch into his mouth as he heard a car coming up the drive. It couldn’t be Lucy yet, could it? And anyway, Pokey was barking her head off, so it must be a stranger.

He looked out and suddenly his bullishness evaporated into thin air. Every fear and anxiety he’d had in the past couple of days came washing back over him. It was Cowley. And Mickey was pretty sure he hadn’t popped by to drop in a belated Christmas card.

Graham Cowley hadn’t liked Lawrence Oakley’s attitude one little bit. There was a hidden assumption that when Lawrence said jump, you said ‘How high?’ And although Cowley liked to play the deferential bank manager, it was only when it suited him. He hadn’t taken at all kindly to being phoned the night before and ordered to a meeting when he should have been relaxing at home. His wife had been very slitty-eyed about it, and rightly so. She’d made it quite clear that if he wasn’t back in time for his pheasant casserole at lunchtime, he needn’t bother at all.

They’d met in the Little Chef off the main Evesham Road. Cowley, who was always five minutes early for any appointment, had got there early so he could choose his spot and not give Lawrence the upper hand. And then Lawrence had swept in, put the cards on the table and told Cowley exactly how they were going to play them. He was presumptuous, to say the least. The truly galling thing was that of course his plan made total sense, on every level. But Cowley was going to admit that over his dead body.

He wondered how it was that Lawrence was so well informed about the state of Honeycote Ales, and then reasoned that you didn’t need to be John Harvey-Jones to work it out and Lawrence was the type of businessman who saw opportunities before they presented themselves. He was like a vulture, pouncing on his victims before they even stopped breathing, pecking out their eyes before their blood had become cold.