Adored (48 page)

“Yes, I did,” said Freddie, with a meaningful look at Max. “But I am
very
tired. I theenk I’ll go straight up, if you don’t mind?”

“Me too,” chimed in Max, rather too quickly.

“Of course.” Muffy smiled, slightly bemused by Max’s sudden craving for his beauty sleep. He usually didn’t hit the hay until the small hours. But she was relieved that they were both making themselves scarce. Something had obviously gone wrong if the pictures were back, and she wanted to talk to Henry on his own.

Once Max and Freddie had disappeared upstairs with somewhat indecent haste, Henry walked over to her and gave her a hug. He didn’t speak, but just stood there in the kitchen swaying slightly, his wife in his arms.

“So?” she prompted him gently when he finally let her go and sat down at the table.

Henry took a deep breath. “They’re fakes.”

“Worthless?” asked Muffy. She was determined not to look disappointed or shocked. He needed her to be strong, whatever happened.

“Not worthless. But certainly not worth enough. Not even close.” He ran his hands through his graying curls and forced himself to keep talking before he lost his nerve. “That money was our last hope, Muff. Without it, we can’t pay the back interest on the loans. It’s as simple as that. So I went to see Nick this evening.”

She didn’t say anything but nodded for him to go on.

“I said we’d think about putting the farm on the market next week.” He scanned her face anxiously for a reaction, but her mask of calm didn’t slip.

“I see,” she said, reaching out and laying a hand gently on his shoulder.

He pulled out another chair and gestured for her to sit beside him. “There is another option,” he said.

This time there was no concealing her emotion. A snapshot of desperate hope flashed across her features at this possibility of a reprieve. Perhaps they wouldn’t have to sell after all? “What? What other option?”

Henry took both her hands between his own and began fiddling with her worn wedding band.

“It was Nick’s suggestion, actually,” he said. “But I put in a call to Gary Ellis from his office.”

“Why?” Muffy looked shocked. “I thought we’d agreed, no golf course—”

“We have, we have,” he held up his hand to stop her. “Hear me out. The fact is, as Nick pointed out to me, if we put the place on the open market and sell to someone else, there’s nothing to stop Ellis from approaching
them
with a fat check and developing the land anyway. If he wants it badly enough, that’s exactly what he’ll do, and then the only difference will be that the money’s in someone else’s pockets rather than ours.”

“Yes, but
does
he still want it that badly?” said Muff. “He’s gone and ruined Swanbrook now. Does he really want
two
golf courses?”

Henry shrugged. “He might. Look, when I called him from Nick’s, he made me another offer. I think we should consider it.” Muffy opened her mouth to protest. “Not to buy the place,” Henry continued, heading her off at the pass. “This time he’s talking about a lease agreement.”

“What sort of lease agreement?” she asked warily.

He took a deep breath. “We would remain the nominal owners of the whole property, with ongoing rights to live in the house, and we could leave those rights to the children. We wouldn’t have to sell.”

“I see.” She frowned. “And what’s in it for the ghastly Gary then?”

“Well.” Henry hesitated. “He’d be able to build a golf course and run it without interference for the full term of the lease.”

“Which is?”

Henry winced. “He’s talking about a hundred years.”

“A hundred years?” Muffy laughed, but it wasn’t funny. She got up and started pacing back and forth in front of the Aga. “For heaven’s sake, Henry. Even the kids will be dead by then!”

“I know, I know. But he’d give us enough to clear all our debts up front, plus a chunk left over. We could still live in the house, and so could the children in due course.”

“But they could never sell the house?” asked Muffy, horrified. “It wouldn’t be really
theirs
?”

“Not until the end of the lease agreement, no,” Henry admitted. “But after that, ownership would revert to the family. Whether that’s Charlie’s children or what have you I don’t know, we’d have to sort the details out. They may have to pay some sort of release payment to Ellis’s company at that point, it’s a bit complicated.”

“Surely you aren’t considering saying
yes
to this?” she asked, finally stopping pacing and coming to rest with her back against the warm metal of the oven.

Henry sighed. “Look, darling, I hate that bastard as much as you do, but he’s throwing us a lifeline here. The alternative is that we sell the whole lot to someone else for a shitty price, pay off the fucking debts, and buy ourselves a nice little semi in Swindon with what’s left over.”

“Oh, come on. Surely it wouldn’t be
that
bad?”

“After we’ve paid everyone off? I’m afraid it would be,” said Henry. “At least this way the manor stays in the family. We wouldn’t have to move.”

“Yes, but it would be a golf course!” she exclaimed in agony. “You’ve seen Ellis’s developments. The whole valley would be ruined, completely ruined. I mean, isn’t Batcombe supposed to be an area of outstanding natural beauty? How does he think he’s going to get planning permission?”

Henry rubbed his fingers together to indicate a bribe. “The man’s bent as a nine-bob note,” he told her. “He told me and Nick today that he already has preliminary approval for the golf course
and,
if you can believe it, to build a fucking great clubhouse and ‘leisure complex’ right next to the old barns.”

“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” said Muffy.

“Look.” He got up to join her by the Aga, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. “If you don’t want to go ahead, you don’t have to. This is your decision as much as mine, and if you’d rather sell to someone else, we can. But the reality is, he’s going to build his bloody golf course anyway, eventually, whatever we decide. At least this way, one day, we may have a chance to put things right.”

“You’re right,” she said sadly. “I know you’re right. A lease has to be better than an outright sale. I just can’t bear the thought of that man, that
awful,
lecherous, predatory man setting foot on the place.”

“Believe me, darling.” Henry hugged her tightly. “Neither can I. Neither can I.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

The next few months were a time of both great happiness and great sadness for Max.

Professionally, things were going better than he could ever remember. Not only had
Dark Hearts
proved so successful that they had had to extend their Stratford run, and were even contemplating taking the play on tour to Bristol and London, but one of the short films he’d directed in L.A. had been nominated for three awards at the Chicago Film Festival and looked set for even bigger success at Sundance next year. Thanks to the involvement of the big Hollywood star, it had received a disproportionate amount of press. Ironically, his profile in the States was bigger now than it had been in all the years he’d lived there.

Not that things were remotely slow in England. The name Max De Seville was finally becoming well known in theater circles, and offers had started to come in from all over the country for Max to direct everything from musicals to “nihilist Shakespeare,” whatever that might be.

Personally, his life had also become more contented, thanks in no small part to his burgeoning relationship with Freddie. After a brief, halfhearted attempt to keep their affair secret, Max had finally decided to be honest about it with Henry and Muffy, as well as with himself.

“I can’t imagine why you thought we’d disapprove,” Muff told him, after he’d rather nervously admitted what she had long suspected anyway. “God knows you deserve a bit of fun, Max. I mean, why not?”

He’d realized that his sister-in-law was right. He’d been fighting his feelings for Freddie because he knew that deep down, he was still in love with Siena, and probably always would be. But Siena was gone, and there was no point in sitting around moping. Freddie was here, and she wanted to make him happy.

Why not?

But set against all these good things was the terrible, ongoing nightmare of life at Manor Farm. Having finally signed the hated lease agreement with Ellis, they were all waiting with a growing sense of despair for the construction work to begin. Awareness that these might be the last days of the estate as a working farm and a tranquil family home made it impossible to enjoy the time they had left together. Henry hung about the yard and the office like a bear with a sore head, snapping at anyone foolish enough to try to talk to him or commiserate about the golf course.

Meanwhile, Muffy tried to maintain some semblance of normality and cheerfulness for the sake of the children, who already had to cope with settling in at the local school and making new friends and were soon to have their home life turned upside down as well. Max could see that the effort of this pretense was a huge strain for her.

He did his best to keep everyone’s spirits up, forcing a reluctant and exhausted Muffy to spend a day at the health spa in Cheltenham, and taking the children on endless exciting outings with Freddie, to such heady destinations as the haunted Minster Lovell and Burford Zoo. Mercifully, Bertie and Maddie were too young to understand the implications of what was about to happen at home, and thought the prospect of construction and activity at the farm was marvelously exciting. But Charlie, who, as well as being older, was naturally more sensitive to others’ feelings, in particular his mother’s, knew that the way of life he had grown up with was going to be destroyed forever and that his parents blamed themselves.

Max spent a lot of time with his nephew, helping him talk through his feelings of sadness, powerlessness, and loss. After all he’d been through in the last year, he felt he was fully equipped to offer advice on all three.

On his way into Stratford one morning, Max stopped off at the village shop for a paper and a ten-pack of Marlboro Lights—he was halfheartedly smoking again, thanks to all the late nights at the theater—when he ran into Caroline Wellesley.

Unlike the rest of his family, Max was not a fan of Hunter’s mother and was relieved when, despite living within a few miles of her and Christopher, he found that he rarely crossed paths with her socially.

This morning, however, there could be no escape. The shop was far too small for him to pretend not to have seen her.

“Hello, Max,” she said brightly, marching toward him armed with a little green metal basket containing nothing but six packets of chocolate cookies, Christopher’s only real post-alcoholic weakness. She was dressed in an old pair of canvas gardening trousers and a man’s white shirt and was almost unrecognizable as the designer-clad nymphet he remembered from his childhood. But decades later, standing in Batcombe Stores dressed like a scarecrow, she
still
had something about her. Caroline had the sort of sex appeal and lust for life that barely seemed to dim at all with age. Grudgingly, Max acknowledged what so many men saw in her physically.

“I haven’t seen you for ages,” she smiled up at him. “How are things at Manor Farm?”

He looked at her coldly. “Bad,” he said flatly. “Things are very bad, I’m afraid. But then I expect your friend Gary Ellis will already have told you all about it.”

“Hey, now hang on a minute,” said Caroline, putting down her basket and squaring up to him, all five foot four of her coiled for battle against Max’s giant six-and-a-half-foot bulk. He took a step back and nearly toppled over a display case stacked full with miniature jars of Marmite. “That’s not fair. He isn’t a friend of mine at all. I think it’s awful what he’s doing to that beautiful valley, everybody does.”

“Really?” said Max, steadying the swaying case behind him before turning to face her again. “And I thought it was you who introduced him to my brother in the first place and put the whole idea about buying the farm into his head? You invited him for dinner, when he was letching all over Muffy. Apparently, there’s nothing of Henry’s that the shit doesn’t want to get his swindling little hands on.”

“Well, that’s hardly my fault, is it?” said Caroline reasonably. “That dinner was years and years ago, when he first moved here. None of us really knew him then. Muff knows I felt awful about the way Gary behaved toward her that night, but it’s all water under the bridge now. We haven’t had him back to Thatchers since. Christopher can’t abide him.”

“Good for Christopher,” said Max.

He knew it was childish to lash out at Caroline. The nightmare at home had nothing to do with her, and anyway, as Henry had pointed out, if it hadn’t been for Ellis’s offer, they would have lost Manor Farm completely. Who knew, perhaps it was the developer’s admiration for Muffy that had kept him coming back for more, even after Henry had walked away from his first offer. Maybe that awful dinner at Caroline’s had actually done them all a favor?

“Look, sorry.” He tried to change the subject. “How is Christopher, anyway? Is he well?”

Caroline smiled. “Very, thank you. Fighting fit.” It was funny to watch Max trying to be so formal and awkwardly polite toward her. She still remembered him at age nine, chasing Hunter around the house with two stuck-together kitchen towel tubes, pretending to be Darth Vader. Looking at him now, all broken nose and wounded masculine pride, she thought she wouldn’t have minded being chased around the house by him one little bit, and managed to suppress a wistful sigh.

“I spoke to Hunter a few weeks ago,” she said, bringing up the one subject she hoped they still had in common. “He seemed very happy, very settled with Thingummy Bob.” She always had been appalling with names.

“Tiffany,” said Max sternly. “Yes, he is, very happy. I spoke to him myself, as a matter of fact. Yesterday.”

It was a pointed enough remark that even Caroline was forced to take the hint: Max spoke to Hunter more frequently than to his own mother.

“You think I was a lousy mother, don’t you?” she said quietly.

He sighed. He hadn’t wanted to get into all this, and he was late for rehearsals as it was. But he supposed he’d brought it on himself.

“You weren’t there,” he said, softening his tone to match hers. “You didn’t see how bad things got for him. I did. Even before Duke died, you were never there for Hunter.”

She looked at him thoughtfully and gave an imperceptible nod, silent and awkward between the cereal boxes and the breakfast spreads. Then she said cheerfully: “We might pop in and see Muffy and Henry later. Would you mention it to them if you see them?”

The Hunter subject had apparently been closed.

“Of course,” he said, hastily grabbing a paper and throwing it into his own basket. “But you’ll probably see them before me. I’m expecting to be in Stratford all day working.”

They moved together toward the cash register, Max with his
Times
and his cigarettes, Caroline with her cookies, neither of them speaking until they emerged onto the narrow lane that passed for Batcombe’s High Street.

“He’s happy now, though, you say?” asked Caroline, seemingly out of nowhere.

“Hunter?” Max was surprised. He hadn’t thought she’d bring the subject up again. “Absolutely. He’s blessed.”

“Good,” said Caroline. “Everything turned out all right in the end then, didn’t it? Even with a
terrible
mother like me?”

And with that, she scurried into Christopher’s old Range Rover before Max could think of anything else to say to her.

Later that same night, Max sat in his brown leather director’s chair, a present from Henry, and ran his hands through his hair in exhaustion.

It was past nine-thirty and he was still at the theater, going through a couple of scenes with Rhys Bamber, the charming and very hardworking young Welsh actor who played the lead role of Jaspar. But they were both very tired and weren’t getting anywhere fast.

“Why don’t you come down to the White Hart and have a drink with me?” Max suggested, yawning as he put down the script. “I could use a pint or two, even if you can’t.”

“All right then,” said Rhys. He was sick of the bloody scene anyway. “You’ve twisted my arm. Just a quick one.”

Every female head turned when, fifteen minutes later, the two of them walked into the pub on the High Street, but neither Max nor Rhys seemed aware of what an attractive duo they were. Max was looking unusually brown after a series of weekends spent in the baking sunshine at Batcombe. Rhys was smaller, slighter, and darker, very good-looking in a chiseled, almost Hollywood way, but with the added secret weapon of a divinely lyrical Welsh accent. Girls would walk across broken glass just to hear Rhys say hello. He was Ivor the Engine with sex appeal.

“Thanks for this.” He raised his pint to Max and took a long, refreshing gulp of lager. “I feel better already.”

“Good,” said Max. “To be honest, I was glad you had time for a drink. It’s a bit sad, really, but I’m rather dreading going home.”

He briefly explained the current situation at Batcombe and the strain it was putting on everybody. Rhys listened and nodded sympathetically.

“That’s terrible,” he said when Max had finished. “I know what it’s like to lose a farm. My uncle Tommy, back in Wales, had to sell up a few years ago, after mad cow and all that. It really broke him up. Happened to a lot of the poorer farmers in Wales.”

“And the richer ones in the Cotswolds, I’m afraid,” said Max. “At least in our case, the family gets to stay on living there.”

“With their foxy French au pair,” added Rhys with a naughty wink. “I think she’s lovely, your girlfriend. I love French girls.” He grinned broadly.

Max imagined that French girls probably loved Rhys right back.

“She is,” said Max. “She is lovely.” He forced a smile.

But inside he felt a creeping unhappiness that he couldn’t quite define.

It was still lurking somewhere in his chest as he drove home an hour later in the rather souped-up Beetle that the play’s producers had loaned him for the duration of his stay in England.

He turned on the local radio station, the embarrassingly monikered Bard-FM, to try to distract himself from his unwanted depression. After a couple of dreary songs by Dido, Max was relieved to be told it was time for the eleven o’clock news.

“Today in Parliament, the prime minister announced that the government has no plans to make any changes to the proposed bill on hunting in response to the massive demonstrations by pro-hunt supporters and other countryside pressure groups last weekend.”

“Twat!” Max shouted at the radio, comforting himself with another square of chocolate from the half-eaten bar on the passenger seat.

More news followed, a whole series of deathly dull items about the findings of the latest rail inquiry and an overhyped piece about a possible link between alcoholism and colon cancer. He was about to switch over to something more soothing on Classic-FM, when he heard the West Country presenter say something that made his heart stop.

“And in the entertainment world tonight,” she burred, “rumors are rife that the producer Randall Stein and his girlfriend, the model and actress Siena McMahon, are soon to be tying the knot.”

Fighting to steady his breathing, Max slowed down and pulled over on the grass verge at the side of the lane. The presenter went on.

“A spokesman for Miss McMahon, who once went to boarding school in England and is the daughter of producer Pete McMahon and granddaughter of Hollywood legend Duke McMahon, has denied there is any truth in the rumors. But Siena was spotted today leaving the set of
1941,
Stein’s upcoming World War Two blockbuster, wearing a huge diamond-and-ruby ring on her engagement finger and smiling broadly at the waiting press. Miss McMahon and Mr. Stein have been living together in Los Angeles for the past year.”

Max turned off the radio and sat for a moment in silence, too shocked to move.

Marrying him! She was marrying that lecherous, twisted old monster? Somehow, even in his most tortured nightmares, he had never considered this horrible possibility. He’d always believed that one day Siena would outgrow Randall. Even if only for reasons of ambition, he thought she would eventually grow up and move on, out from under the old man’s wing. But
marry
him?

The thought was too hideous to contemplate.

Perhaps, he began to comfort himself, it wasn’t true? Her publicist had denied it, after all. Knowing Siena, it was just as likely to be some stunt designed to whip up more interest in their movie, like the shenanigans she pulled with Hunter last year, dragging him to that baseball game to try and make some capital out of Minnie McMahon’s death. Even Max, who avoided information about Siena like the plague, knew that
1941
was running into trouble and could have done with some extra press.