Kitabı oku: «Fame and Wuthering Heights», sayfa 3

‘Laughable,’ said the New York Times.

‘You didn’t know where to look,’ wrote The Post.

‘Embarrassingly wooden.’

‘About as much sex appeal as a cold bowl of soup.’

Dorian told her to forget it. ‘What do they know? So you made a couple of mistakes, flubbed a few lines. Big deal. They’re just jealous because you’re a huge TV star. You know how these critics get off on bringing people down.’

But Chrissie could not forget it. Mortified at such public humiliation, she lost her nerve completely, quitting the Broadway show as soon as her contract allowed, then promptly walking off the set of her NBC show as well. For months she holed up at home in LA, refusing to attend any auditions or give a single interview about her shock departure from Rumors. Meanwhile, of course, Dorian’s career was taking off in spectacular style, a success for which Chrissie could never quite forgive him.

After fifteen years, Dorian still spoke loyally in interviews about his ‘stunning, talented wife’, and was famously immune to the manifold temptations of Hollywood. His fidelity was considered all the more admirable in industry circles since for years it appeared that his wife refused to have his children. Most people viewed this as the height of selfishness on Chrissie’s part. In fact, her unwillingness to become a mother mirrored her refusal to go to auditions, or to take any of the leading roles that Dorian offered her gift-wrapped in all of his movies. She was afraid. Trapped by her own insecurities in the wildly luxurious life Dorian had built for her, she complained ceaselessly about LA, how shallow it was and how being a famous director’s wife made her feel empty and invisible.

Then, four years ago, three things happened. The first was that Dorian found out his wife was having an affair, with the leading man in one of his movies. The liaison was actually the latest in a string of extramarital adventures that Chrissie had used over the years to prop up her fragile self-esteem. But it was the first one that Dorian knew about, and he was utterly devastated by it. The second thing was that, at long last, Chrissie agreed to get pregnant and conceived Saskia, the Band-Aid baby that both she and Dorian hoped would repair their marriage. And the third thing was that the Romanian government contacted Dorian out of the blue, to tell him that they had begun the process of restoring pre-revolutionary property to its rightful owners. Would Dorian like to return ‘home’ to claim his inheritance, the Rasmirezes’ historic Transylvanian Schloss, complete with all its priceless treasures?

At the time, Romania had seemed like a lifeline, the fresh start that he and Chrissie so badly needed. Chrissie had cheated on him because she was unhappy in LA and felt like a failure there. Dorian believed in marriage. His parents had managed it for the better part of fifty years under far more difficult circumstances. He owed it to Chrissie and to himself to try to repair the damage. Here was a chance to take Chrissie and their newborn daughter as far from the Hollywood madness as it was possible to go. Dorian would sweep Chrissie up on his white charger and install her as queen in his fairytale castle. Little Saskia would grow up as a princess. And they would all live happily ever after.

Or not.

If he were completely honest with himself (not always Dorian’s strongest suit), becoming a father had not been the seismic, emotionally transformative event that he’d expected. The baby was sweet enough. But, after waiting so long for parenthood, Dorian began to realize that the idea of having a child was considerably more intoxicating than the exhausting, often deathly dull reality. He also realized, not without a sense of shame, that a part of him was disappointed that Saskia had not been born a boy.

For her part, Chrissie also revelled in the idea of motherhood or, more specifically, the idea of herself as the perfect mother: devoted, selfless, instinctively maternal. It was a self-image Chrissie clung to doggedly as Saskia grew older, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and one that she demanded her husband validate by praising her mothering skills at every possible opportunity. But the truth was that, like Dorian, Chrissie Rasmirez found young children boring and her own daughter was no exception. By now a semi-professional martyr in her marriage (Chrissie had long ago convinced herself she had sacrificed her career for Dorian, and not on an altar of her own fear), her new role as tireless carer to a demanding toddler added another arrow of resentment to her ever-growing armoury.

New parenthood wasn’t the Rasmirezes’ only problem. Despite yearning for a fresh start, Dorian had misgivings about the move back to his homeland. Romania had been his father’s dream, never his. And while he felt a sense of duty (and curiosity) about his ancestral home, unlike Chrissie, Dorian enjoyed his life in LA, and did not relish leaving it. If he was going to continue working, he’d have to get used to a gruelling transatlantic commute. The thought of having to spend time away from Chrissie made his chest tighten painfully with anxiety. But if it saved the marriage, it would all be worth it. He owed it to his father and Chrissie to go back.

Though she would rather die than admit it now, Chrissie had been very enthusiastic about the idea at first. Transylvania! Even the word sounded romantic. From what Dorian had told her, the house – castle! – was stuffed with wealth beyond even her wildest imagination: hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of antique crap. Apparently, the Romanian government had some ridiculous rules about all the treasures having to stay in the country, but a good American lawyer would find them a way around all that old-world baloney. If she could no longer enjoy fame in her own right, Chrissie could at least experience the thrill of being European royalty and joining the ranks of the super-rich. Plus, domestic help would be super-cheap over there, so she could have nannies and housekeepers up the wazoo. She would be Queen of the Castle, ordering around a fleet of servants, and go to bed at night draped in emeralds that had once belonged to Catherine the Great. Not bad for a little girl from the valley. Who knew, maybe she’d even think about trying for a second baby, and giving Dorian the son he so obviously still wanted.

Needless to say, it had not worked out like that. Almost from day one, Chrissie loathed Romania. The Schloss was as palatial as she could have wished it, the staff as slavishly obsequious, the emeralds as big and heavy as golf balls. But there was nothing to do. No one to see. Sure, the scenery was breathtaking, as lush and green and spectacular as a still from Shrek. Little Saskia was entranced by the Transylvanian landscape, with its wide, fast-flowing rivers, brooding pine forests and romantic, snow-topped mountains that ringed the castle like mythical, protective giants. ‘Polar Express!’ she would squeal excitedly every time they drove into town, pointing to the snow-tipped Carpathian Mountains with barely contained rapture. But her mother failed to share her enthusiasm. What use was it, ruling your own fantasy kingdom, if you couldn’t go out to Cecconi’s on a Friday night and boast about it to your friends?

Within weeks of their arrival, Chrissie’s boredom was fermenting into resentment. It was all Dorian’s fault, for dragging her here. He was punishing her for her affair by immuring her and Saskia in this gilded prison, while he jetted off to enjoy their old life back in LA, which from eight thousand miles away no longer seemed so terrible. She, Chrissie, had sacrificed her career for her husband, and what did she get in return? Neglect. Abandonment. Using the only weapon left available to her, she did a 180-degree about-face on a second baby, point-blank refusing to even contemplate another pregnancy until Dorian ‘sold this dump’ and moved them back home to spend the proceeds. No amount of explanation by Dorian would convince her that this was both a practical and legal impossibility; that the Schloss was theirs to enjoy, but not theirs to sell.

Moreover, unbeknownst to Chrissie, their finances back in the States were in fact in increasingly dire straits. Dorian’s last film, the exquisitely shot but hugely over-budget war movie, Sixteen Nights, had been a major critical success. But it was box-office receipts that paid the mortgage on Dorian and Chrissie’s Holmby Hills mansion and the upkeep on the Schloss, not to mention financed Chrissie’s couture habit, and those had been distinctly lacklustre. Two studios had offered to come on board with funding but, unable to bear the thought of ceding creative control, Dorian had turned them down, ploughing millions of dollars of his own money into the movie instead. He’d ended up massively in the red.

To make matters worse, since the news of Dorian’s inheritance, Chrissie’s spending had multiplied exponentially. Nothing could convince her that they were not now billionaires – they had Renoirs in their drawing room, for fuck’s sake! – and she laughed openly at Dorian’s claims that the castle’s upkeep was in fact bleeding them dry.

‘Don’t you see?’ he told her, exasperated. ‘That’s why the Romanian government were so keen to have us back here! They couldn’t afford to keep the place going themselves, and they figured we were rich enough to do it for them.’

Chrissie shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Well, we are.’

No we’re not! Dorian wanted to scream. But he was too frightened of Chrissie leaving him to force another confrontation, or to admit the full extent of their debts. He’d already seen her flirting with some of the younger, more attractive boys on their staff, and lived in constant dread of another affair. And Chrissie was right. He was the one who’d brought her here, brought them all here as a family. It was up to him to make it work, to dig them out of this financial hole he’d gotten them into, and to make her happy. Either that or give up the castle, which to Dorian would be tantamount to trampling on his dad’s grave.

‘More champagne, sir? Or something to eat, perhaps?’

The stewardess’s voice brought Dorian back to the present. They were at cruising altitude now, and his fellow passengers were reclining their flatbed seats or turning on their entertainment systems, scrolling down the list of movies. Dorian had already read the in-flight guide before takeoff. Three Harry Greene movies. None of his.

Dorian tried not to mind that Harry Greene’s truly terrible, derivative Fraternity franchise continued to go from strength to strength. But it was hard to be magnanimous when Greene seemed to have made it his life’s mission to destroy Dorian’s reputation, slagging him off not only in public, in the press, but also in private amongst Hollywood’s power brokers. Harry Greene was an immensely powerful man in Hollywood. He was also a recluse, prone to wild fits of paranoia, especially where women were concerned. Twice he had taken girls to court: having bedded them, in the morning he’d accused them of petty theft simply because he couldn’t remember where he’d left a certain coat, or a pair of cufflinks. Once he’d even tried to have his housekeeper arrested for attempted poisoning. A lamb stew had given him a stomach upset, apparently, and Harry was convinced the wholly innocent Mexican grandmother had laced the dish with arsenic.

His beef with Dorian had begun over a script. Harry had fallen out with a certain screenwriter, and the row had turned ugly. When the screenwriter came up with his next movie idea a few months later, he brought it to Dorian instead of Harry. The irony was, Dorian never came close to making the film. It was a bromance, commercial but far too vanilla for Dorian’s taste. Nonetheless, Harry Greene became convinced that Dorian and this screenwriter were ‘in league’ against him. Over time, thanks to some shift in Harry’s addled brain, the screenwriter faded from the picture, leaving Dorian as the sole target for his bizarre conspiracy theory.

It wasn’t long before his professional resentment began to turn personal. For all its international influence, Hollywood remained a small town at heart, and the paths of two major producer-directors like Dorian Rasmirez and Harry Greene were bound to cross socially. After the script incident, Dorian did his best to avoid Harry. But a few years ago, for reasons that to this day Dorian had never fully understood, Harry got the idea into his head that Dorian had badmouthed him to his then wife, Angelica. And that it was Dorian’s malicious intervention that had wrecked his (Harry’s) marriage.

In reality, Dorian barely knew Angelica Greene, then or now, and had said nothing to her about her husband’s womanizing, which was in any case an open secret in Hollywood. The only person responsible for the demise of Harry Greene’s marriage was Harry Greene. But, be that as it may, in the wake of his divorce, Harry gave numerous interviews blaming Dorian, and did his best to have him ostracized by Hollywood’s elite. As the Fraternity franchise went from strength to strength and Harry Greene’s influence grew, the more difficult Dorian’s life became.

He returned his attention to the stewardess, who was still hovering with her drinks tray.

‘No, thank you,’ he said politely. ‘I’m fine.’

‘OK. Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me. I did just want to say, I really enjoyed Sixteen Nights. I love your work.’ The stewardess blushed.

‘Thank you,’ said Dorian. ‘You’re very kind.’

She was a pretty girl, he noticed, not hard and over-made-up like so many of her profession. You could still see her creamy, natural complexion, and the tops of her full breasts jiggled invitingly beneath the white blouse of her uniform. Sexy. But not a patch on my Christina. ‘I hope you’ll go and see my new movie when it comes out.’

‘Oh, I will,’ she gushed. ‘I certainly will. What is it?’

‘Actually it’s a remake,’ said Dorian. ‘Wuthering Heights.’

The stewardess gasped. ‘Oh my God, I love that book. Such a romantic story.’

Dorian smiled. ‘You know it?’

‘Of course,’ she laughed. ‘Doesn’t everyone? Heathcliff and Cathy. They’re like Romeo and Juliet in the rain.’

For the first time all day, Dorian felt a fraction of the tension ease out of his body. One of his concerns about his new project had been that the story might be considered too highbrow, too much of a classic for ordinary moviegoers to be interested in. Dorian had first read the book in high school and had been instantly captivated by the plot. Heathcliff, a mysterious orphan boy, is adopted by the kindly Mr Earnshaw and brought to live at Wuthering Heights, a grand but lonely house in the Yorkshire moors. Tragedy ensues when Heathcliff falls in love with Earnshaw’s daughter Catherine, who also loves him, but decides to make a more socially acceptable marriage to a neighbour. The ramifications of Cathy’s rejection of Heathcliff: her regret, his madness, and an ongoing saga of death and revenge, of innocent children being forced to pay for the sins of their parents, made for uniquely compelling drama, not to mention one of the most enduring love stories in English literature. But, cinematically, Wuthering Heights was a challenge. Whoever played Heathcliff would have to age convincingly, while remaining attractive enough to work as a romantic lead. Should original Cathy and young Cathy, her daughter, be played by two actresses, or one? How to deal with Nelly, the book’s nurse narrator? And then of course there was the issue of location. In a plot where the house was as much of a character as any of the protagonists, finding the right location would be key.

A couple of the big studios had tried to warn Dorian off, as had his agent and friend, Don Richards.

‘You can’t follow Olivier and Merle Oberon, man. That 1939 movie is one of the all-time greats.’

‘They only shot half the book,’ said Dorian. ‘It’s half a story.’

‘That’s because the whole story’s unfilmable. It’s a fucking miniseries.’ Don frowned. ‘Did you see the seventies version? It blew.’

‘I know,’ Dorian smiled. ‘That’s why I’m doing a remake.’

‘If you do it, you’re gonna need two big names in the lead roles,’ Don warned him. ‘And I mean real bankable stars, none of your “respected character actor” bullshit. Oh, and Cathy’s gotta get naked. A lot.’

‘I see,’ said Dorian wryly. ‘Young Cathy or Old Cathy?’

‘All the Cathys have to be young,’ said Don firmly. ‘And hot.’

‘Right. So all I need is to find a major movie star who’s prepared to work for peanuts and get her panties off for some gratuitous nudity.’

‘It wouldn’t be gratuitous.’ Don looked offended. ‘There’d be a very important point to it.’

‘Uh-huh. And what might that be?’

‘Ticket sales,’ said Don.

Dorian had the good grace to laugh. ‘OK. Well if anyone springs to mind, you be sure to let me know.’

‘Actually, someone does. How about Sabrina Leon?’

At first, Dorian had assumed his agent was joking. When he realized he wasn’t, he dismissed the idea out of hand. Sabrina was toxic right now, a Hollywood untouchable. Plus she was known to be a majorly disruptive influence on set: demanding, diva-ish, unpredictable. Just associating Sabrina’s name with a project could be enough to kill it before they shot a single take.

‘All true,’ agreed Don. ‘But she’s still a huge star.’

Dorian held firm. ‘No way.’

‘Plus, everyone’s watching to see what her next move will be.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Plus, she loves getting naked, on and off set. The kid’s allergic to clothes.’

‘I know Don, but c’mon. I need a serious actress.’

‘She’ll work for free.’

And that was it. Jerry McGuire had Dorothy Boyd at ‘hello’. Don Richards had Dorian Rasmirez at ‘free’.

Stretching his long legs out in front of him, Dorian at last began to relax. If American Airline stewardesses were fans of the story, it clearly couldn’t be that highbrow. It’s gonna be all right, he told himself. Sabrina Leon had signed on the dotted line. Of course, casting her as Cathy – both Cathys – remained a dangerous, double-edged sword. Dorian would have to keep a tight grip on her behaviour. But Don Richards had convinced him she was a risk worth taking. He’d just have to do the sell of his life to convince distributors that, by the time the movie was due for release, the furore over Sabrina’s Tarik Tyler comments would have died down.

‘Even if it hasn’t, people’ll still come and see the movie,’ said Don.

‘You reckon?’

‘Sure. They like watching her. It’s like slowing down on the freeway to gawk at a car crash.’

Dorian hoped he was right. Because, if he wasn’t, it would be Dorian’s career, life and marriage that would be the car crash. Almost certainly a fatal one.

For Dorian Rasmirez, everything depended on the success of this movie.

Everything.

CHAPTER FOUR

As Dr Michel Henri lifted the child out of its crib, Letitia Crewe watched his beautifully defined biceps rippling beneath his grey T-shirt and thought: I have to get a grip. I’m here to play with the children, not ogle Michel like a love-struck puppy. But it was hard. What business did a paediatrician have being that attractive? There ought to be a law against it.

Tish Crewe had come out to Romania in her year off to spend six months working with orphans in the northern city of Oradea. Five years later and she was still here, visiting hospital wards like this one, rehousing as many abandoned children as she could. It was gruelling work, and distressing at times, but it was also addictive and rewarding. Dr Michel Henri felt the same way. It was one of the things that had first brought him and Tish together, their shared compassion and sense of purpose. That and the fact they both wanted to rip each other’s clothes off the moment they laid eyes on one another. Tish still felt the same way. It was Michel who’d moved on.

Watching him move purposefully from bed to bed, engaging each child with eye contact and talking to them in that deep, gentle voice of his before each examination, Tish calculated that she had been in love with him for a full year now.

Wow. A year of my life.

It felt like twenty.

Michel was so wise. So good. So capable. Tish Crewe was capable herself, very much head-girl material, and she admired this trait in others. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Michel also looked like a younger version of George Clooney, complete with sexy, two-day stubble growth and smouldering coffee-brown eyes. Nor that he was so good in bed, Tish had had to restrict the lovemaking during their brief, six-week affair to Michel’s apartment, afraid that she might make so much noise at home that she would wake up Abel, her adopted five-year-old son, and scare the living daylights out of him.

It wasn’t Michel’s fault. He’d been honest with her from the beginning. ‘I don’t do commitment,’ he told Tish bluntly, the night they first kissed on the bridge over the Crisul Repede in Oradea’s old town. ‘My work is my passion. If you’re looking for something serious, I’m not your man.’

Tish had assured him she was not looking for something serious. After four years of almost total celibacy, living in a city that still looked and felt as dour and grey and lifeless as it had under communism, the idea of some fun, especially the kind of fun that Dr Michel Henri was offering, sounded utterly perfect. Since founding her own children’s home three years earlier, and particularly since adopting her darling Abel, Tish barely had enough time in the days to eat and shower, never mind indulge in a sex life. I deserve some fun, she told herself. Why not?

But of course she’d had to go and spoil it all by falling in love with him. Fool, she told herself, but then how could one not? When Michel took up with a pretty orthopaedic surgeon from Médecins Sans Frontières a few weeks later, Tish’s heart was crushed like a bug. It had taken every ounce of her self-control to hide the worst of her anguish from Michel himself. But to everyone else who worked with her, it was painfully obvious.

‘He’s not worth it, you know.’ Pete Klein, the head of one of the American NGOs, had been watching Tish gaze longingly after Michel’s retreating back in the hospital car park a few weeks ago.

He is to me, thought Tish, but she forced a professional smile.

‘Hello, Pete. How are you?’

‘Better for seeing you, my dear.’

A kindly, born-again Christian in his early sixties, Pete Klein had decided to make it his personal mission to find the lovely Miss Crewe a suitable husband. She was, after all, a gorgeous girl. Not gorgeous in an obvious, long-legged, modelly sort of way. No, Tish’s beauty was of an altogether more wholesome variety. Slight and naturally blonde, with a long nose, strong, aristocratic bone structure and a glorious wide, pale pink mouth that Pete had seen express every emotion from compassion to courage to delight, Tish had a natural, make-up-free charm to her that a certain type of man would give his eyeteeth to come home to every night. As Tish’s schoolfriend Katie had once accurately, if tactlessly, put it: ‘You’re Jennifer Aniston, Tishy. Guys like Michel always go for the Angelinas in the end. You’re too nice.’

Pete Klein didn’t believe a person could be ‘too nice’. Nor could he see what on earth wonderful young women like Tish Crewe found attractive in good-for-nothing fly-by-nights like that slimy Frenchman Dr Henri. Forget Doctors Without Borders. Michel Henri was a Doctor Without Scruples, and he’d hurt poor Miss Crewe badly.

‘You should have dinner with my friend Gustav,’ Pete told Tish.

‘Oh, I don’t know, Pete …’

‘Yes, yes, you must,’ Pete insisted. ‘Lovely young man, from a very nice family in Munich. Just started working for us. Brilliant with computers,’ he added, with a wink that made Tish wonder if this was intended as some sort of double entendre. Except that Pete Klein didn’t do double entendres. He did earnest and avuncular and kind.

So, ‘too nice’ to say no, Tish dutifully had dinner with ‘lovely young Gustav’, who was indeed brilliant with computers; though not quite so brilliant at either conversation or romance, judging by his clumsily attempted lunge in the back of the taxi after dinner, reeking of garlic sausage and cheap aftershave.

‘What are you doing?’ said Tish, squirming away from him.

Gustav looked aggrieved. ‘I thought you were single?’ he accused her.

‘I am,’ stammered Tish.

‘Well, what’s the problem then?’ demanded Gustav. ‘Everyone knows the only reason singles come out on these voluntary do-gooder vacations is for the sex. I mean, come on! We’re not in Romania for the scenery, are we?’

That much, at least, was true. Tish was not in Romania for the scenery. But why was she still here, really? Tish was the most English person she knew and she missed home dreadfully. Not a day went by when she didn’t stare unseeingly out of her car window at the bleak Romanian landscape, daydreaming about hedgerows and Marmite and EastEnders. It didn’t get any easier. She told herself she was here for the children – both the sixteen she’d been able to permanently rescue from institutions and bring to the bright, cheerful, family-run home she’d built just outside Oradea; and for the hundreds of others she was forced to leave behind, but whom she and her staff visited regularly in their hospitals. But, gazing at Michel’s strong, warm hands now as he changed a little boy’s dressing, remembering the feel of them on her skin, part of her knew that she was also staying for him.

Tish was doing what all the books said you should never do. She was waiting. Hoping, praying that eventually Michel would see the light and realize that the two of them were meant to be together. He’d make a wonderful father for Abel. So noble. So dedicated …

‘Tish!’ Carl, one of her co-workers, was tapping Tish forcefully on the shoulder. ‘Did you hear me?’

‘Hmmm?’ She blushed. ‘Sorry. I was, erm … distracted.’

‘There’s a problem back at Curcubeu, Carl repeated patiently. Curcubeu was the name of Tish’s children’s home. It meant ‘rainbow’ in Romanian. ‘Child services just showed up on the doorstep. They’re saying Sile hasn’t got all his releases signed.’

‘But that’s ridiculous. Of course the releases are signed. I picked up his paperwork myself.’

‘Whatever, they reckon he needs something else. They tried to seize him on the spot.’

‘What?’ Tish placed the sleeping baby back in her crib. Sile was an adorable, curly-haired two-year-old boy, the latest addition to her happy brood at Curcubeu. He’d only been with them a week and already child services were kicking up a fuss, no doubt hoping for yet another backhander. ‘How dare they!’ she seethed. ‘They have no authority.’

‘Yes, well, don’t worry,’ said Carl. ‘Lucio didn’t let them in the door. But they’ll be back in the morning with a warrant. We need to get it sorted, today.’

Damn, thought Tish. She’d really wanted to talk to Michel today, to get his advice. Yesterday, she’d received a letter, rather a distressing letter, from home. The letter meant that she might need to leave Romania, at least for a while, an idea that filled her with such a conflicting mix of emotions that she’d barely been able to string a sentence together since she read it.

Michel will know what to do, she thought. He’s always so level-headed. But now there’d be no time to consult him. By the time she’d sorted out this bullshit with Sile and child services, she’d have to race home in time to put Abel to bed, and Michel would already have left for Paris. He was flying home for the weekend to attend his sister’s wedding. Maybe once he sees her in a white dress, making that commitment, sees how happy and glowing she is …

‘Tish?’

‘Yes. Sorry. I’m coming.’ Tish reluctantly switched off the fantasy. ‘Go down and start the car. I’ll explain what’s happened to the nurses and meet you downstairs in five.’

The rest of the day passed in a blur of frenetic activity and stress, with Tish and Carl breaking every speed limit in the book in Tish’s ancient Fiat Punto, tearing from one government agency to the next in an effort to prove their legal guardianship of little Sile. Two bribes, a phone call to the British Consulate and countless vicious screaming matches later – Romanian Child Services did not consider Letitia Crewe to be ‘too nice’; as far as they were concerned, she was a bolshy, strident, harridan who’d been a thorn in their side since the day she set foot in the country – the matter was at last resolved. ‘For now,’ the Child Protection Officer warned Tish sternly.

As if we’re any bloody threat to him, Tish thought furiously as she finally started the drive back to her flat in the city. As if anyone on God’s earth gave a crap about that little boy until we took him in. Sometimes, most of the time, her work was so frustrating it made her want to scream. The Romanian government were like dinosaurs, terrified of change, resentful of any ‘outsider’ who wanted to help. As if any of the foreign NGOs wanted to be there. Don’t you think we’d love it if you sorted out your own bloody country and took care of your own kids, so we could all go home?

Home.

The word had been turning over and over in Tish’s mind all day. She would have to make a decision soon, tomorrow probably, and start making some concrete plans. She’d wanted Michel’s advice today, but deep down she already knew what he would have told her. Go. Go home and do what you need to do. There was no other way.

Home for Tish was Loxley Hall, an idyllic Elizabethan pile in the heart of Derbyshire’s glorious Hope Valley. Much smaller than neighbouring Chatsworth, but widely considered more beautiful, Loxley had been the ancestral seat of the Crewe family for over eight generations. Growing up there as a little girl, Tish had never noticed the house’s grandeur, not least because behind the intricately carved, exterior with its stone mullioned windows and fairytale turrets, the family actually lived in a distinctly down-at-heel ‘apartment’ of seven, shabby rooms, and not in the immaculately preserved ballrooms and dining halls that the public saw. What Tish was aware of, however, was Loxley’s magic. The beauty of her grounds, with their ancient clipped yew hedges, endless expanses of lawn and deer-covered parkland beyond, punctuated by vast, four-hundred-year-old oaks. At the front of the house, beneath a crumbling medieval stone bridge, the river Derwent burbled sleepily, little more than a stream in the narrow part of the valley. As a child, Tish would sit on the bridge for hours, legs dangling, playing Poohsticks with herself or watching hopefully for an otter to make a thrilling, sleek-headed appearance. Her older brother Jago had never shared her fascination with the river, nor her romantic belief in Loxley Hall as some sort of magical kingdom. Mostly, Tish remembered him as rather distant and aloof (‘sensitive’, their mother called him), always playing inside with his computer games or his older, sophisticated friends from Thaxton House, the local boys’ prep school. Tish’s childhood playmates were her Jack Russell, Harrison, the family housekeeper Mrs Drummond, and on occasions her elderly but much beloved father, Henry.