The Real Katie Lavender (8 page)

With only a couple of months separating them in age, the two boys had attended the same schools and had both gained places at Cambridge. Rosco had read law and graduated with a 2.1 and Lloyd had opted for philosophy and graduated with a first. It had seemed horribly unfair to Gina, knowing just how hard Rosco had worked, that he hadn’t been rewarded with a first, especially when Lloyd downplayed his own achievement, claiming it was a fluke.

Whereas Rosco had always had a very clear idea about his future – Cambridge followed by business school before joining Nightingale Ridgeway – Lloyd hadn’t had a clue what he wanted to do. After Cambridge, he had messed about for a few years doing voluntary work in some godforsaken eastern European country, and when he returned to England he’d helped his mother with the initial transformation of the garden at The Meadows and then announced his intention to start up a business making bespoke garden furniture. All that expensive education and he wanted to be no better than a carpenter! ‘Just like Christ,’ Rosco had teased his cousin. ‘Next you’ll be saying you can walk on water.’

To Gina’s astonishment, Lloyd had made a go of his business. Some of his garden furniture was too wacky for her taste – a touch too much Mad Hatter’s Tea Party in style – but he seemed content enough muddling along playing the part of callus-handed artisan to the tune of his parents’ praise.

Of course they’d say they were proud in public, but in private it had to be otherwise. Or at least for Neil: Pen would probably argue that all she wanted was for their son to be happy, but fathers had a different relationship with their sons; they had different expectations. Unquestionably that was true of Stirling and the poles-apart-way he treated Rosco and Scarlet – Scarlet could get away with murder, but not so her brother.

A daddy’s girl right from the word go, Scarlet had openly hero-worshipped her father throughout her childhood. She still did. In turn, Stirling had tolerated her legendary tantrums and her capricious nature with fond indulgence. When Charlie had come along and shown himself to be serious about Scarlet, Gina had doubted that Stirling would be able to stand aside and accept that a greater being had eclipsed him. Amazingly he had.

Things had been quite different with Rosco. From an early age he had been taught by Stirling to do his best, that anything less was not acceptable. Lucky for Stirling, then, that Rosco had been born with a blistering sense of determined ambition. He cut his first tooth nearly a full month before most babies did, he sat up early, and he talked and walked early. As one paediatrician had described him, he had been a high-achieving baby and toddler. He had been hard work, though, and all too often Gina had been exhausted and nightmarishly near the end of her tether. Oh how she had envied Pen! It was the only time she had ever been jealous of her sister-in-law. Slow to talk and walk, as if he really couldn’t be bothered, Lloyd had been such an easy, placid baby. She could remember how he would sit on his own, propped up by cushions and seemingly fascinated by nothing but a tiny ball of fluff. In contrast, Rosco was toddling about on his sturdy legs, demanding to be played with and screaming at the top of his voice if anyone dared to ignore him. One was a thinker, the other a doer was how the family had described the two boys. Gina had felt the slight of the labels; she had thought it disparaged Rosco, casting him as an empty-headed bull in a china shop and Lloyd as some great philosopher.

All these years later, it was plain for all to see that Rosco had easily outperformed his cousin. Gina would never admit this to anyone, but she firmly believed that genes always won out. Rosco’s genes were of an indisputable pedigree, but with Lloyd, well, who knew their origin?

Another thought she would never openly voice, not even with Stirling, was that the up side of Lloyd not wanting to work for the family firm was that the way was clear for Rosco to take over the running of things one day. In her opinion, this was exactly how it should be. Lloyd didn’t have the same drive that Rosco did, and had he joined Nightingale Ridgeway, he would only have been a hindrance. In exactly the same way as Pen’s help in arranging a party could only ever be a tiresome interference.

The caterers had arrived forty-five minutes ago, and deciding she had given them sufficient time to unload the van, Gina went through to the kitchen to see how they were getting on.

She was informed of a small hitch, nothing for her to worry about, they assured her; the problem would be resolved. She viewed this assertion with unease. Unexpected problems were anathema to her. She simply didn’t countenance things not going perfectly to plan.

Admittedly Katie hadn’t started the day with too much of a plan, other than to go with the flow and see what transpired, but things were beginning to get crazily out of hand.

It had all started when she’d had that funny turn in Penelope Nightingale’s garden. If she closed her eyes and imagined herself back at The Meadows, she could relive that lovely spellbinding sun-filled moment when for a couple of brief minutes she had felt wonderfully happy and worry-free. It was extraordinary that a garden could have that effect on her.

If that wasn’t surreal enough, now she was dressed in a white blouse and a black skirt that was mortifyingly too short for her long legs. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail and she looked every inch a waitress. Which, funnily enough, was what she was expected to be.

When she’d left The Meadows, she had followed the road – just as that nice woman had instructed – and in no time she was parked at the end of a drive beside an open gate with a sign bearing the name Willow Bank. At the sight of it she had suddenly lost her nerve. What on earth was she doing? What did she plan to do? Waltz in and introduce herself as Stirling Nightingale’s daughter?
There, you old devil, bet you didn’t see that coming, did you?
Or maybe he did. Maybe, once he’d agreed to Mum’s terms and had got on with his life pretending the affair had never happened, he had lived in constant fear of a child turning up out of the blue and putting a spanner in the works of his carefully ordered life. Was that what she wanted to do? To disrupt the equilibrium of his life just as her mother’s letter had done to hers?

Shamefully, a part of her had wanted to do exactly that, and knowing that it was wrong, she had driven away from the house to take stock.

An hour later, after driving round the beautiful countryside and walking along the towpath of the river, she had decided to rework the ruse she had used earlier, but with a twist. She would go back to Willow Bank and pretend she had a delivery for a Mr Neil Nightingale. If she hit lucky and it was Stirling Nightingale who answered the door, it would give her the opportunity to satisfy her curiosity, to meet her father in the flesh. She would do that and then she would leave. The only problem she could foresee, given that she didn’t actually have anything to deliver, was if she was told that she could leave the parcel at Willow Bank and they would make sure it was passed on to Neil Nightingale. If that happened, she would have to say something about it being company policy that the recipient signed for it in person. Improbable to anyone with half a brain, but the best she could come up with in the circumstances.

But when she had returned to the entrance to Willow Bank, she had found herself caught up in a cavalcade of taxis. What was going on? A party? Again her nerve was in danger of running out on her, but there was no way she could turn around: another taxi had driven in after her, and so resigned to pressing on, she had stopped in the only available space, alongside a small cream-coloured van with the words
Elite Caterers
written on the back of it. No sooner had she registered the words than a heavy-set woman wearing a striped blue and white apron appeared beside her car. Katie had lowered the window and the woman had spoken in a breathless rush. ‘Thank goodness you made it, and at such short notice! We were beginning to panic. The agency was my last resort. I told them not to worry, that I had a uniform here for you. We always have a selection of spare skirts and blouses in case of accidents. You’ve just got time to change and then it’s action stations.’

She should have said there and then that the woman had got it wrong, that Katie was no more a waitress than she was Lady Gaga booked as the entertainment act. But she hadn’t. She had seized her opportunity – nobody ever noticed a waitress at a party; it would be the perfect way to observe Stirling Nightingale at close quarters. And feeling like an undercover agent, she told herself that if it all went wrong – that when the real replacement from the agency arrived – she would say there must have been a mix-up.

Luckily she had worked as a waitress in her student days, and so a heavily laden tray of glasses or canapés posed no problem for her. There was only one other waitress, and as the heavy-set woman – whose name was Sue – explained, they had fifty-six guests to serve. Sue had a sidekick called Merrill, and as Merrill handed Katie a tray of filled champagne flutes, she definitely seemed the calmer of the two women.

The other waitress – Dee, who looked about seventeen – was already on duty in the hall, handing guests a glass of champagne or a non-alcoholic drink as they arrived and pointing them in the direction of the garden. Katie’s first job was to replace Dee so that she could return to the kitchen for another tray of drinks. Left on her own in the hallway, she was so absorbed in her task, she had almost forgotten why she was here. It was only when Dee returned and there was a lull in arrivals and the girl discreetly pointed out Mrs Nightingale as she crossed the hall towards the kitchen that Katie reminded herself of the reason she was putting herself through this charade. ‘What about Mr Nightingale?’ she asked. ‘Where’s he?’

‘Probably with his mother, it’s her birthday party. She’s ninety today. Not that you’d think so. I mean, she’s clearly old, but she just looks old as opposed to ancient. I mean, ninety, it’s just too awesome. I can’t imagine ever living that long.’

‘Have you worked for the family before?’

‘Loads of times. Uh-oh, Mrs Nightingale’s on her way over. Smiley face on. Sue and Merrill insist on that.’

‘Dee, there are only a few guests yet to arrive,’ Mrs Nightingale said, ‘so you can start serving the canapés in the garden now.’ The woman abruptly switched her gaze from Dee to Katie, and the length of her skirt, or rather the lack of it. ‘You must be the replacement from the agency. Thank you for coming.’

Mrs Nightingale’s voice was so crisply authoritative and regal, Katie felt compelled to curtsy. She restrained herself, and unable to think of a suitable reply, widened her smile then watched the woman –
her biological father’s wife
– walk away, straight-backed and supremely composed. A cool customer and no mistake. It was hard to pin an exact age on her, but Katie decided she had to be in her mid-fifties. Tall and slim with silvery blonde hair (probably not entirely natural), cut into a sleek bob that flattered her face perfectly, she was wearing an elegant off-the-shoulder dress the colour of coral. She could not have been more different to Katie’s mother. Had that been Mum, she would have had a jumbled, windswept look about her, and more than likely would have bumped into someone or knocked something over as she walked away. Mum’s mind had always been elsewhere, working on at least half a dozen things at the same time. It was doubtless what had caused her to step out into the road that day into the path of the oncoming car.

Slim, cool and composed were not words one would ever have used to describe Mum. For as long as Katie could remember, her mother had battled with her weight. But then, as she had constantly joked, it wasn’t much of a battle, since she had no willpower when it came to fresh bread and French cheese and a glass or two of red wine. And as for chocolate and cream cakes, she had been a total pushover. She hadn’t ever been really overweight; she just had what Dad had called a cuddlesome body. Before her father’s death had impacted on their lives and become a grim reality, Mum had joked about dying with a chocolate eclair in her hands, saying it would be the ideal way to go.

Mrs Stirling Nightingale didn’t look like the sort of woman who ate too many eclairs. Unlike Mum, who had had an Oscar Wilde approach to life – she could resist everything but temptation – she appeared to be a very disciplined woman. The sort of woman who liked things just so. How would she react if she discovered that her husband’s past wasn’t as squeaky clean as she had always thought it was?

There again, it was possible that her husband might have confessed his affair in order to make a clean break of things. Admitting to an affair was one thing, though; confessing that he’d fathered a child? That was altogether different.

But there was no more time to ponder the imponderables; there were chicken satay and mini frittata canapés to serve. And Stirling Nightingale to run to earth. Katie wanted to get the measure of the man who had betrayed his marriage and this coolly composed woman; the man for whom Mum had betrayed her own marriage.

Stirling was worried. There was still no sign of Neil.

Pen had phoned earlier when he’d been on his way to collect his mother to say that Neil hadn’t arrived home. Despite his own growing alarm, Stirling had done his best to allay Pen’s concerns, saying that he had probably just got delayed somewhere. ‘But why hasn’t he been in touch?’ she’d asked. ‘I hadn’t realized until now, but it’s five days since I last heard from him.’

It was a reasonable concern. ‘Perhaps he’s misplaced his mobile,’ Stirling had responded calmly. ‘We’ve become so dependent on them these days, we’re completely lost without them. Don’t worry, just get yourself here for Cecily’s big night. And Pen, let’s not worry Cecily with this, let’s keep it between ourselves. I’ll tell her Neil’s been held up, because I’m sure that’s exactly what’s happened. OK?’

Now, as he slipped away from the party and shut himself in his study, he decided to ring Lloyd. Lloyd was in New Zealand for a friend’s wedding, and it would be early there, just after seven in the morning, but it was possible he might have heard from his father.