Kitabı oku: «The Forbidden Promise», sayfa 4

CHAPTER 7

What on earth had she got herself into? She’d done this job for years. But normally she turned up, following in the footsteps of a well-executed business plan, was pretty much thrust a strategy and then off she’d run and drum up interest with the glossy magazines, bloggers and the Sunday supplements. She’d take journalists out for lunch. She’d organise snazzy, all-expenses-paid press trips and then sit back and wait for the editorial coverage to roll in. She’d had it quite easy. She would be the first to admit to herself; although she’d never dared tell anyone else that, especially her clients.

But this was different. If Liz had outlined exactly how amateur this operation was, would she have come? God, no. She was a publicist, not a business strategist. She was the cherry on the cake, not the cake itself.

Kate looked at her watch as she lay in bed, unable to sleep. Ordinarily, it would be too late to text someone, but she knew Jenny would be awake and doing something slightly bonkers such as an all-night spin cycle class. ‘Help,’ Kate messaged. ‘They have no idea what they’re doing.’ She paused before typing again. ‘And neither do I,’ she finished with a flourish before sending a follow-up with a very brief summary of the situation.

Kate watched three dots appear on the screen, indicating Jenny was composing a reply.

‘You’ve handled worse than this, I’m sure,’ she replied. ‘Remember that diabolical spa that thought they were good enough to get coverage in Vogue? You can do this blindfolded. Do you need more in the way of a pep talk or can I go to my trampoline disco class now?’

Kate replied with a heart symbol and left Jenny to her latest late-night exercise fad.

She wasn’t ready to sleep yet and was annoyed with herself that she’d forgotten to ask Liz what the Wi-Fi code was for the house. Kate actually rather suspected there wasn’t one. After trying unsuccessfully to connect her laptop to her phone’s 3G, she gave up and just scrolled through sites using the hazy 3G on her phone. She had one bar of signal and so had to wait an interminable amount of time for a page to load, but at least it was loading. She was looking up famous country houses, to see what they were doing to drum up business. She couldn’t possibly be expected to formulate the entire business strategy, could she? If so, what the hell had James been doing until now, if not that very thing? Liz had said he was some hotshot who’d come home to Invermoray to run the house. Run it into the ground, clearly.

Kate thought of all the country houses she’d visited over the past few years, though there weren’t that many. She googled Longleat, near Bath, remembering it thrived thanks mainly to a Safari Park. That was out of the question. She moved on to Chatsworth, Blenheim Palace and then looked more locally at Cawdor Castle before realising she was completely out of her depth.

This was a disaster. She’d been hired under false pretences. Although she suspected Liz had no idea of the difference between PR and business strategy and now they were all in this mess together.

She switched her phone off and put her head in her hands. She had two options. She could give in, explain to Liz that she’d been mistakenly hired for a job she wasn’t qualified to do. Or she could breathe deeply and be pragmatic.

The sun streamed through a chink in the curtains and Kate blinked and looked at her watch. It was early, but not so early she could try to grab forty more winks before starting her first day at work. She’d had very little sleep, had been up all night formulating a rough kind of plan and had engaged in a stern chat with herself on more than one occasion to force herself to continue. She wasn’t going to give in. For one thing, she could imagine the smug joy on James’s face when she confessed she had no idea what she was doing and that it was probably best for all concerned that she drive back to the airport and not darken their door again. The image of his self-satisfied face riled her. But it was something else stopping her. Kate always made a point of giving clients the best service she could offer. She’d always told them that she treated their business as if it was her own. And she meant it. What would Kate try to do if Invermoray was her house?

And so, with careful, methodical planning, throughout the night she’d filled a notebook with short-term, and long-term ideas for raising cash. In short, she created something vaguely resembling a business plan. She’d made a point of not sleeping until she’d run out of ideas. And the ideas kept flowing, which meant she hadn’t slept. So it was with an exhausted excitement that she stood zombie-like in the shower and tried not to fall asleep upright.

‘I can do this,’ Kate whispered as she stood in the kitchen and loaded the silver cafetière with coffee, ‘I can do this.’ In the morning light things weren’t as bad as she thought. Often she’d make suggestions to clients about how to tweak their business. She understood getting people through doors. What they wanted. What they needed. With the hash they’d made of it at Invermoray so far, things could only get better. Kate had rallied her confidence and had chosen to wear skinny jeans tucked into ankle boots and her nicest shirt, which wasn’t too crumpled from being packed away. She needed to find out where the iron was. Overall, she hoped the outfit conveyed seriousness to her role without being too staid.

‘I can do this,’ she repeated.

‘It’s not that complicated,’ James said as he entered the kitchen, startling her so that she spilled coffee granules over the counter.

‘Fill with boiling water, leave a few minutes and then push the plunger,’ he continued.

‘Right, yes.’ She knew how to make coffee.

‘Jolly good,’ he said dryly. ‘Enough in there for me?’ His tone was lighter, not by a lot, but he certainly wasn’t on as much of an offensive as he had been last night.

Kate made them both coffee as James scraped a kitchen chair out and sat down at the table. Maybe this wouldn’t be as awkward as yesterday.

‘So …’ he started and then stopped.

‘So …?’ Kate echoed. She was wrong. The awkwardness was seeping back into the room.

‘So you’re basically the cavalry,’ James said with a thin smile. ‘Come to rescue us because we’ve cocked it up?’

‘Oh no,’ Kate said quickly. ‘No no no. I see us as more of a team …’

‘Pfft,’ James replied.

She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. And it was hardly fair given she didn’t know she was meant to be the cavalry.

‘Do you know,’ he started, looking out the kitchen window, ‘I gave up my job to come back here. I don’t know why now. I’ve been here all of five minutes, I think I’ve just about worked out where things are going wrong, I’ve sorted what I believe is a decent plan of attack and then without a chance to do anything about it I get …’

‘You get …?’ Kate prompted.

‘I get you … to be blunt … thrust upon me. Who’s running who? Who’s in charge? You or me? I’ve got no idea. But if you think you can just strut in here and throw orders around, you’ve got another—’

‘That’s really not why I’m here,’ Kate cut in. And then she noted what he’d said. ‘I’m sorry, you’ve only been here five minutes? What do you mean?’

‘Three months,’ James said. ‘I’ve been back for all of three months. I wasn’t going to. I came back after Dad died, got things sorted for Mum. But I had a job. A life. One I enjoyed, so I went back to that. And then Mum issued her call to arms and like a dutiful son I said I’d come and help. So I apologise for my hostility towards you yesterday, but I want you to see it from my point of view. I wasn’t expecting … well … you know.’ He gestured towards Kate and then sipped the coffee she handed him. But he clearly wasn’t done and she watched him take a deep breath. ‘In truth, I wasn’t expecting to be told I was shit quite so soon, especially when I don’t really want to be here.’

Kate nodded slowly. He’d been here for three months. Which meant that when she’d been hired a month ago and had worked her notice period, he’d only been here for two months when Liz had interviewed her. It sounded cut-throat but perhaps Liz just knew things needed to move at a quicker pace than they had been then.

‘I’m sorry,’ Kate said. ‘I don’t know what to say. Only, I think I’ll be good at this and—’

James’s eyebrows lifted. ‘You think you’ll be good at this?’ he repeated. ‘What the hell does that mean? Have you not done this before?’

Kate was spared answering as Liz arrived. ‘Ah, good morning, all. Kate, shall we have the tour after breakfast and then we can talk plans as we go?’

Across the kitchen table, James’s eyes narrowed.

CHAPTER 8

They moved through the house, Kate clutching her notebook and pen, writing things down as Liz and she discussed plans. Kate tried to keep the horrified expression from her face as they looked in some of the other guest bedrooms that were even chintzier than her own. Most had en suites, which would be a blessing when it came to offering bed and breakfast packages. No guest wants to traipse down a hall in the middle of the night in search of a loo. It doesn’t exactly scream luxury and so Kate offered up a silent word of thanks to the McLay ancestors who’d seen fit to install additional bathrooms.

The polished ballroom and well-planted orangery were in good condition, although a pane of glass had smashed on the far side of the orangery and had been boarded up. Kate resisted asking how long it had been like that. A while, she suspected, and made a note in her pad to get it fixed. This was really a job James and Liz should have already tackled, but as she moved further through the house with Liz it was clear they were at sixes and sevens and Kate would have to take on a lot of everyday tasks if they were going to get Invermoray suitable for visiting journalists and paying guests.

By the time they finished the tour of the house, Kate’s notebook was full of jobs that needed doing, the first of which was to organise the official paperwork to change Invermoray House from a residential property to a bed and breakfast.

‘You can give that job to James,’ Liz said. ‘He’s good at that sort of thing.’

Curiosity got the better of Kate. ‘What did James do? Before he came back home?’

‘Oh, something in computers,’ Liz said dismissively. ‘He’s been in Hong Kong living the high life and, to be honest, I never quite understood what it was he did, tapping away all day on a keyboard. All sounded very dull, but like most dull things, it made him an awful lot of money.’

Did Liz have another reason for calling James back home other than helping run the house? Kate would try and work that one out later.

‘Shall we look at the gardens?’ Liz suggested.

Kate nodded. She had seen them, briefly, from her window last night and was rather excited to see them in daylight. As she walked, her mind whirred. Where was all this money James had made then? And why wasn’t he ploughing it into the estate? Perhaps it was wrong of her to assume he would spend his hard-earned cash on his mother’s house, even if it would be his one day, especially if he didn’t want to be here – a fact he had made abundantly clear.

The ornamental gardens were a view to behold. Kate had been expecting another ramshackle sight but the gardens were lush and well maintained, the hedges clipped in linear fashion.

‘This is my passion project,’ Liz confessed. ‘I do spend rather a lot of time gardening.’

‘I can see. It’s beautiful,’ Kate said softly. The gardens, bordered by angular hedges, swept down towards the loch. At the centre was a statue of a globe held by three cherubs. Dahlias, hydrangeas and begonia beds held a stunning array of peach, pink and orange flowers.

‘I’ll confess I probably spend far too much time out here, and not enough in there.’ Liz gestured back towards the house. ‘I’ve probably spent too long with my head in the sand. Or the flowers. After my husband died, I’m not sure I was really up to it … saving the house, I mean. In fact, I’m not sure I understood the house needed saving until recently. It all became a bit topsy-turvy without me really noticing. By which point James had come back, and seemed better equipped to handle the day-to-day running of the house – quite willing too. And I think I rather left him to it.’

Liz brightened. ‘But not anymore. I’ve placed too much pressure at his door and now it’s time he had help. Not that he accepts it, of course. But in time he’ll come round. Now, I wonder if I can leave you in James’s capable hands for the remainder of the tour?’

At this, Kate’s heart plummeted into her stomach. ‘Of course.’

‘Good, I want you to see the ghillie’s cottage. I do think it would make rather a good holiday let but it’s a bit of a journey round the far side of the loch so I think it’s best James drives you.’

Kate’s heart lifted itself back into place at this. A holiday cottage. She knew that would bring in much-needed revenue, although given the state the rest of the house was in, she dreaded seeing the condition of the cottage.

James was in the estate office, a low-level outbuilding made of the same grey stone as the main house and nestled between the house and the disused stables. Kate was distracted by the stables’ distressed wooden doors hanging off their hinges. Through the open, wonky doors, she could see the stable was being used for storage. Furniture and all sorts of boxes stood piled up at odd angles. It may be worth a ransack later, to see if anything could be salvaged and used. There were clearly a lot of items and she was starting to see how easy it was to hoard. Generations of McLays had been adept at collecting.

The junk in the stables was nothing to the carnage that awaited her in the estate office. Liz led the way but it was a squeeze to get inside the room. Boxes of paperwork and filing cabinets jostled for space. There was barely an inch of floor. They picked their way across the room towards the set of two large mahogany desks where James sat facing them, watching warily as they approached. Kate was careful not to slip on pieces of paper that had obviously fallen to the floor from the piles of paperwork that needed a more permanent home.

James closed his laptop slowly and gave both Kate and his mother a look that indicated he was being ambushed. Why was this man always on the offensive? Why the near-open hostility? Kate knew he felt replaced, although if he gave her half a second to explain, and his mother too for that matter, he’d be able to understand that she wasn’t there to bring the house down around his ears, but to work with him to save it. She would make a point of convincing him to like her later. Even if it killed her, Kate had to get him onside.

‘James, darling,’ Liz placated.

James lifted an eyebrow, making it clear he knew he was being buttered up.

‘Would you be a dear and take Kate over to the ghillie’s cottage? Explain what you’ve done and what you’ve been doing in general?’

James took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘Yeah. Sure. I’ll take Kate over and explain myself to her.’

‘Goodo,’ Liz said as she left, entirely misunderstanding his tone.

‘I don’t need you to explain yourself,’ Kate said once Liz had gone. ‘Not to me. I just …’ She paused and tried a less flustered approach. ‘I think you and I have got off on the wrong foot.’

He put his arms behind his head. ‘Do you, now?’

‘Yes,’ Kate said. ‘You don’t? You enjoy meeting new people and there being a permanent air of awkwardness?’

‘Who says it’s awkward?’

Kate looked at him wide-eyed.

‘And who says it’s permanent?’ James continued. ‘By all accounts you’re only here for six months.’

It was Kate’s turn to breathe deeply. ‘Are you always like this?’ she muttered under her breath.

‘Pretty much,’ he replied.

‘Good to know. Listen,’ she said, ‘forget about the tour. Just hand me the keys to the cottage and I’ll go on my own.’

‘The key’s under the mat but you’ll never find the cottage on your own.’

‘We’ll see. Where is it exactly?’

‘It’s on the far side of the loch, through the trees. But there’s no path from the loch anymore. The footpath that once was there has overgrown and the ferns and trees have grown up around it. The cottage is almost hidden now. I’ve been driving round from the woodland. I’ve cut a vehicle path through it and hacked my way through the rest to make a footpath to the front door. Take the Land Rover if you want. Just, try and drive a bit more carefully than you normally do.’

Kate ignored that last comment. ‘I’m sure I’ll find it on foot. I could do with the walk.’

‘OK, so you’re not listening,’ he said, exasperation tingeing his voice. ‘You won’t see it. You’ll miss it completely.’

‘Key’s under the mat you say?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah, be my guest.’

Kate had never been so glad to get out of a place in her life. James was positively hostile, rude and unbelievably arrogant. And so … knowing. She breathed down the clean highland air and walked round towards the ornamental garden in order to find the path down to the loch.

‘You won’t find it,’ Kate mimicked James as she slipped through the arched opening in the hedge towards the shore. Was the cottage invisible then? Stupid man. She walked along by the water’s edge. The sun streamed down onto the expanse of still water. Kate paused to take in the view, feeling the warmth of the sun on her face and arms. Despite James’s behaviour, her shoulders were unstiffening and she felt her body relax. A few moments standing in front of a peaceful loch were far more effective than the weekly yoga class she’d been taking back in London. A walk through the woods was just what the doctor ordered and she skirted the loch, feeling the comforting crunch of pebbles and shingle under her boots.

On the far side, Kate turned back by the tree line and faced the house. It really was a handsome building: imposing, baronial, stately – especially from here, where the view across the water and the ornamental garden gave the house an immaculate air, masking the near dilapidation inside. Kate smiled at her luck having landed a job here, then headed into the woods.

How long had she been walking? Half an hour? An hour? She really hadn’t thought this through at all. The large pine trees loomed skinny and tall and their leaves rustled overhead as a hint of a breeze swept through before growing silent almost as fast as it had started. The ground was blanketed in green spindly ferns. It was a job to know where to place her feet, hoping they landed correctly on the ground, out of sight, beneath the deep greenery. Every few yards or so a clump of tall purple foxgloves grew, unexpectedly sturdy and tall between rocks and crevices. Further along, Kate smiled to see thistles, feeling like a tourist at having spotted Scotland’s national flower. The purple flowers crowned them, completely juxtaposed with the rest of their oversized spiky appearance, transforming them into a thing of unexpected beauty. A large rock protruded by a series of trees, grouped together. She had passed this; she was sure she had. Was she going round in circles? What had first appeared striking woodland now appeared almost malevolent.

Kate stood still and listened. To her left she could hear the soft sound of running water, which couldn’t be the loch. She was too far inside the forest. Other than the sound of moving water, there was silence. She walked in the direction of the sound to find a wide stream running through the woodland, its water tumbling over rocks, and its mossy banks dipped gently, easily accessible. Kate felt a bit like Bear Grylls all of a sudden and knelt, putting down her notebook and pen and dipping her hands into the cold water. There was Bear Grylls and then there was idiocy, so she sniffed the water dubiously. It smelt fine and, parched, she drank it. It didn’t taste odd so she cupped her hands into the water again, feeling rather proud of herself at the same time.

‘So you can take the city out of the girl,’ James said from behind her. Still crouching, Kate whipped her head round. He smiled and there was a flicker of a handsome man hiding underneath his sullen exterior. And then the smile left his face and frown lines returned as if he’d just remembered he was waging his own private war against her. His Labrador bounded up to Kate, gave her a nudge with his nose and then turned his attentions to the river and began drinking.

‘Sometimes,’ Kate replied with a small smile, drying her hands on her jeans before retrieving her pad and pen as she stood. ‘Where did you come from?’ She glanced around. He’d not been following her haphazard route on foot; of that she was sure.

He gestured over his shoulder. ‘I drove round. I just knew you’d get lost.’

‘Not that lost,’ Kate countered. ‘You found me.’

‘Not easily. I’ve been in these woods for about twenty minutes. And you’re about ten minutes’ walk from the cottage. In the wrong direction.’

‘Oh,’ she said quietly.

‘I did try and tell you,’ James said.

They stood and looked at each other. He was obviously a man who had to have the last word and Kate wasn’t in the mood for a fight.

‘What’s your dog’s name?’ She changed the subject.

James smiled. ‘Whisky. I didn’t name him. He was my dad’s dog. He’s just sort of become mine since Dad died.’

‘Good name,’ Kate said. ‘Appropriate, given we’re probably surrounded by distilleries.’

‘True. Although depending on the mood he was in, it was often difficult to tell if Dad was yelling for someone to bring him a stiff drink or if he was summoning the dog for a walk.’ James looked wistful and as he smiled there was a hint of mellowness in his eyes. He was almost pleasant when he let his defensive barriers down.

‘Shall we look at the cottage then?’ Kate suggested.

‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ James replied as he turned. She followed him. ‘It’s not been lived in since before the war. The house hasn’t had a ghillie since then, so it’s fallen into disrepair. I’m in the process of doing it up. I want to get it ready to let, then that’s one thing ticked off the never-ending list of jobs. We’ll get some incoming cash and it can help fund us while we sort the main house and whatever else we intend to do.’

Kate nodded. ‘That actually sounds like a good idea,’ she confessed.

‘Actually?’ James queried. ‘You weren’t expecting me to have come up with a decent plan myself?’

She sighed. It was disappointing how quickly he reverted back to defensive. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘Anyway,’ he continued as they trampled through the thick undergrowth, snapping twigs and dodging nettles as they trod. ‘As the main house started to fall away, so did the ghillie’s cottage. After the war, there weren’t as many staff, no ghillie, no real estate management – either land or financial from what I could gather. It was a case of trying to eke the coffers out as far as they’d stretch.

‘Even my father, when he arrived some years later, with all good intentions, didn’t have it in him to cast his eyes further than Invermoray House itself.’

‘When he arrived?’ Kate questioned. ‘What do you mean?’

James looked at Kate as they walked. He was quite tall and she could feel herself almost jogging to keep up with his long strides.

‘Has Mum not explained the family history to you?’

‘No.’

He exhaled. ‘God, where do I start?’

‘At the beginning?’ She smiled.

James raised an eyebrow and half-smiled in return as he launched into the story.

‘The estate never used to be Dad’s. He lived and grew up in a house in London,’ James said. ‘Dad was an artist …’ This explained the modern artwork around the sitting room, Kate thought. ‘Not the tortured kind, more the jovial kind,’ he continued. ‘But certainly the kind that never made any money. He and Mum lived happily in London with holes in the ceiling and the boiler forever going wrong. It’s why Invermoray’s fared the same in terms of maintenance. I think it’s an attitude thing. Anyway, he inherited Invermoray in the 1980s, when relations of his passed away. Very distant relations from what I could work out. Either way, it was his. Dad quite fancied playing lord of the manor and so we sold the London house and decamped completely up here when I was a kid. In truth, I’ve never quite forgiven them.’

They stopped as they reached a clearing. ‘I just assumed it had been in your family for generations,’ Kate said.

‘It has been, since it was built in the early Victorian era. But for the other branch of the family, the McLays. Our last name was … is … Langley but the will asked for the McLay family name to be carried on, bolted on to ours. You can’t dictate that kind of thing from beyond the grave, the solicitor said, but Dad did it regardless; felt he owed it to them. So we became Langley-McLay, officially. Dad used it. Mum still does. But I don’t.’

‘Why not?’ Kate asked.

‘I suppose I felt like an idiot, changing my name, and a bit resentful at having moved up here. Invermoray never really felt like home. Never really felt like me.’

‘So who were the McLays then?’ Kate was curious now. ‘Who asked you to adopt their name in exchange for the house, which by the way sounds like a really fair trade?’

‘Fair trade? It’s the worst kind of trade. This house is a bloody drain on us. Always has been.’ James screwed up his face as he thought. ‘It’s some boring connection,’ he told her. ‘One of Dad’s cousins or something like that. He and his wife were elderly. I think he died in the early Eighties and then she followed not long after. It’s all a bit odd really if you think about it. They had two grown-up children, I believe. There’s portraits of them in the house. Mum found the pictures buried in the attic a while back.’

Kate remembered the portraits on the stairs, the young man in RAF uniform, the girl in the silver-grey dress. She wondered if they were who James meant.

‘They should have inherited, one or the other of them, according to Mum,’ James continued. ‘But for one reason or another they’d lost touch with their parents, or maybe died. I’m not sure. There was a family rumour they had been disinherited years and years earlier but Dad and his parents didn’t take it seriously. So it was a complete shock when the line of inheritance missed out the McLays’ direct descendants for whatever reason, skipped sideways and landed on us Langleys.’

Kate hadn’t been paying too much attention to her surroundings. Instead she’d been entranced by James’s strange tale. It was with some surprise that she found they had reached the cottage. James had been right. From the direction of the loch, the hedges had tangled into thicket and had built up to a high level, camouflaging it from view. It was unlikely she would have seen it had she been alone. Instead they had doubled round and approached the cottage from the direction of the road that ran to the front of the estate. James’s battered Land Rover was parked some distance away on the track. It was a marvel he’d managed to locate her really.

‘Thank you,’ Kate said.

He frowned. ‘What for?’

‘Making the effort to find me, out there.’ She gestured to what she had now decided was The Wilderness.

He shrugged. ‘Don’t worry about it. You might have found it eventually.’ He raised his eyebrows theatrically. ‘Then again … you might not.’

She couldn’t help but laugh.

James bent down and pulled the brass key out from underneath the mat.

‘That’s a really brave place to keep it,’ Kate said. ‘Anyone could find it.’

‘Out here?’ He rolled his eyes as he unlocked the thick wooden door. ‘You couldn’t.’ He looked pleased with his own joke. ‘Besides, it’s not here permanently. I left it there so the roofer could finish and pick up his tools. At least it’s watertight now. As I said—’ he indicated the cottage ‘—it’s not much.’ James turned the handle and Whisky beat his tail as he caught up with them, impatient to be let inside. ‘In fact some of the ghillie’s stuff from before the war is still here. Dusty. Moth-eaten. The McLays couldn’t be bothered to chuck it all out it seems, and neither could my dad. I did have half a mind that I could tosh the furniture up a bit instead of buying new. Holidaymakers love that reclaimed look, apparently. So don’t be surprised if you think it looks like a museum. Because it does.’

He opened the door, pushed it open and they stepped inside.