The family had been unfailingly polite. That branch of the clan used politeness as a weapon of mass destruction. But Hector had always come away humiliated and angry. Vera, who’d never felt any obligation to be loyal to her father, had understood the family’s point of view. Hector would be rude and demanding, usually halfway drunk on the most recent visits. She’d been hugely embarrassed and they’d been kind to her.
On the last visit Vera had been a teenager, perhaps fifteen years old, already a little overweight, awkward, defensive. She couldn’t remember now why she’d been there. Hector had no qualms about leaving her home alone, even as a young child. Perhaps he’d been more nervous about the encounters than she’d realized and had seen her as some kind of shield, or perhaps he’d thought the family would be more sympathetic if they saw he had a daughter to support. It had been a summer afternoon, the sun full and warm, flooding the place with light. They’d sat on the terrace drinking tea, eating thin sandwiches that disappeared in two bites. There’d been meringues. Even now Vera could remember the meringues – all at once crisp and chewy, the intense sweetness contrasting with the soft, bland double cream – more clearly than she could recall the other people who sat at the table. The background sound had been the call of wood pigeons and the faint strains of Bach, coming from a radio in the house.
Sitting with them had been three generations of women: Elizabeth, white-haired and wiry, wife of Hector’s elder brother Sebastian; Harriet, the very glamorous wife of Hector’s nephew Crispin; and her daughter Juliet, a toddler with blonde curls and a knowing stare. If the men were in the house, they’d kept well away. There’d been a conversation, which must have been about money, but which was so hedged around with euphemism that Vera hadn’t been able to work out what was being said. Besides, she’d been focused on the meringues, wondering if it would be rude to take the one which remained on the plate. As always, Hector had left empty-handed and bitter, swearing revenge all the way home.
Now Sebastian and Elizabeth were long dead. Even Hector’s nephew Crispin had passed on. Vera had seen the notice in the local paper but hadn’t gone to the funeral; she’d known it would be a showy affair and anyway, she wouldn’t have been welcome. Only the two women, Harriet and her daughter Juliet, were left, and by now Juliet would be an adult, approaching middle-age.
The baby in the car seat stirred and Vera was brought back to the present. The heating in the Land Rover had never been very effective and she was starting to feel cold. She turned into the drive. The snow was churned by tyre tracks; she hoped that didn’t mean her smart relatives had left the house. She felt strangely anxious about seeing them again, but they would have a phone and the child’s mother might have made her way here. It was the closest form of habitation to the abandoned car. Besides, Vera thought, if she could face murderers and rapists, she wasn’t going to be intimidated by a few weak-chinned minor aristos.
There were more cars than she’d expected parked on the long drive. Some were covered with snow, so had been there for a while, others had clear windscreens. It seemed the Stanhopes had guests. Vera looked at the sleeping baby, lifted out the car seat and made her way to the house.
The sight was like something from a fairy tale. Magical. The flurry of snow had passed and there was moonlight, and a sky flecked with stars. A large cedar stood close to grand stone steps, which were lit from below. The tree had been decorated with hundreds of fairy lights, all white, all twinkling. The ground-floor curtains had been left open and Vera saw a huge Christmas tree, decorated completely in silver. A handful of people, most of them young or very well-preserved middle-aged and all grandly dressed, glasses in their hands, were gathered around an open fire. She checked her watch. Only seven o’clock. Too early in the evening for a party surely? A gathering before dinner perhaps. The house was big enough to accommodate all the guests and this branch of the family might be wealthy enough for lavish entertaining. She wouldn’t know. Some of them had turned out for Hector’s funeral but, since then, there’d been no contact. She paused for a moment, Cinderella looking in: the fifteen-year-old girl again, excluded. Suddenly aware of a different, more glamorous life which would never be hers.
Chapter Three
WHEN THE DOORBELL RANG, clanging and tuneless, Juliet couldn’t think who might be there. Her guests had come early, freaked out by the weather forecast. Two couples had cancelled but six people had made the journey, each carefully chosen by Mark for their wealth and professional standing, and then the vicar and her husband for local colour. Had there been another invitation? Someone she’d forgotten? She felt a return of the panic that had been lingering all day, fended off in the last hour by supermarket champagne and a sense that things hadn’t turned out as badly as she’d feared. Earlier, the day had been a bit of a nightmare, to be honest, because people had started to arrive before she was ready for them, anxious about the forecast of snow. Full of apologies: ‘So sorry, darling! Don’t mind us, we won’t get in the way.’ But wanting to be made comfortable, to be given tea, obviously shocked that the bedrooms were so cold.
They managed to heat the reception rooms downstairs – wood from the estate was free and the ancient boiler just about managed to work down there – but upstairs it was fucking Arctic. That was what Mark said, laughing it off, because the whole lord-of-the-manor thing was still a novelty to
