Damage (16 page)

She remembered when she first approached the Hall this evening her first impulse had been to leave before she had even joined the party. Perhaps that had been a wise premonition.

Her eyes had adjusted to the dark now, and to the wash of light over the grass coming from the Hall and the marquee. She spotted one shoe immediately, and then as she stooped to collect it she spotted the other.

She slipped them on, her feet now beginning to throb painfully.

“You walking?”

Ruby had followed her and now was waiting in the gap in the hedge.

Holly nodded. “I’m walking. You walking?”

Ruby nodded. She turned and then fell into step beside Holly. They kept to the side of the long driveway, as cars threaded past them. The ground here was uneven, the gravel looser and not compacted by wheels. In her heels and sore feet, Holly was slow; in her far higher heels and still-drunken state Ruby was confident and balanced.

They walked in silence and it felt strange, out here in the darkness with cars passing them. Events at the Hall seemed so long ago, all of a sudden.
Everything
did.

Holly glanced back. The Hall was still lit up at every window, people still milling about outside.

Such a strange, sad evening.

“You like him, don’t you? Despite all this.”

Holly nodded, then said, “Yes. Yes, I do.” She liked the man she saw in him, even as the man he had been tonight so easily broke her heart.

They walked on in silence, approaching the end of the driveway.

A low black car sped past, spraying gravel, and Ruby cursed the driver.

Hesitant, Holly said, “I haven’t seen him like this. It scares me, Ruby.”

In the darkness Ruby was nodding. “He has a reputation,” she said. “All the parties. The way he shuts himself away the rest of the time. The–” a darting sideways glance “–women.”

Holly shrugged. “You’re not telling me anything I haven’t heard before.” The only bit she hadn’t known about was Ruby herself.

“He used to be a good man,” Ruby went on. “When... when he was with his wife. They used to be all over the papers: young and ridiculously wealthy, living the high life but always giving back.” Holly remembered talking about Blunt with Ruby and their father: Ruby had said they’d been at a charity event on the night of the accident.

They reached the road and headed into the village, cottages looming to either side, the green straight ahead.

“He’s so changeable,” said Holly.

“I guess. I don’t really know him.”

Another darting glance. Ruby said she didn’t know him, but she’d still slept with him.

They came to the fork in the road and turned right. Funny that they’d just automatically headed in this direction, even though Ruby lived in town these days. She must have known people at the party who could have given her a lift, but that didn’t appear to have been an option: tonight she was coming home for the first time in forever.

“Hot chocolate?” asked Holly.

“Hell yes.” Then: “I think I might want to stay over. That okay?”

“Your room’s exactly where it’s always been.”

“That’s good. That’s very good.”

They sat in Holly’s room with big mugs of hot chocolate – Whittard’s, the kind they’d stocked in the food hall at Colcroft’s back when the store had still been in business. The room was lit only by the light from the landing and the moonlight coming in through the window. Holly took the window seat, Ruby the bed, sitting with her knees drawn up. She had the poise of a dancer; she’d always been told that.

Holly dragged her eyes away, hating that she was seeing her sister differently now, seeing her as a man might see her. As Blunt had seen her: graceful, long legs, big eyes, a real beauty.

Hating that it made her consider herself in comparison and wonder what he had seen in her.

“So,” said Holly, “how’s things?”

Ruby peered at her, as if expecting some kind of trap. Then it was as if she forced herself to relax, her shoulders visibly dropping. “Oh, they’ve been better,” she said. “Even apart from tonight.”

“You and Henry still–?”

Ruby shook her head. “That’s history.”

“Awkward.” Henry’s family owned the country house spa just outside Cheltenham where Ruby had risen to become one of the spa’s assistant managers.

“Oh, he’s been very good about it. We always kept our relationship separate from work, despite what some people said. Everything’s good there.”

Except it clearly wasn’t. Holly knew heartbreak when she saw it written across her sister’s face.

“Why didn’t I know about any of this?” Perhaps it explained why Ruby had been so ready to come home rather than head back to town. As far as Holly knew, her sister hadn’t been officially living with Henry, but it hadn’t been far short of that.

“I don’t know,” said Ruby. “I guess...”

“It’s not as if we don’t talk.” There had been a time when they’d barely spoken, when Ruby had first left home and pretty much cut off ties with her old life, but these days: all those late night calls. “I guess there were just things we didn’t talk about.”

“There are some things that are just too hard to share,” said Ruby.

“Like men?”

Ruby looked up, met Holly’s eye. There was a painfully tense pause and then they laughed at that, the first spoken-aloud acknowledgement of what had come between them.

It was a first step, at least. Even if just saying it aloud stirred everything up in Holly’s head.

She stood, stretched, and said, “I think I need my bed.”

Ruby climbed to her feet. For a moment Holly thought her sister was moving in for a hug and she didn’t know how she would react, then Ruby turned away, paused in the doorway, and said, “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“Oh, you know. Just thanks.”

§

Holly hadn’t expected to see Ruby up and about so early the next morning but then she was rapidly coming to the conclusion that there was a lot she didn’t know about her sister.

When Holly came down, Ruby was already sitting at the kitchen table, her old fleecy dressing gown wrapped tight around her and a mug of tea cradled in both hands. Their father was at the kitchen sink and the air was full of the smell of cooking bacon.

He turned as Holly came in and said, “Well, this is a lovely surprise, isn’t it? When was the last time we all got together like this? It’s been far too long, hasn’t it?”

Holly smiled. He always came alive when Ruby was around. “It has,” she said, and meant it. “Far too long.”

“Ruby tells me she’s doing really well at work. She– But she can tell you all that herself, can’t she?”

“We had a chat last night,” said Holly.

“Girly catch-up, eh?”

“Something like that.”

“Good, good. Bacon sarnie?”

§

They walked up to the Hall a short time later.

It was a beautiful, crisp morning, dew heavy on the grass again and a low mist clinging to the contours of the fields. Holly had given her sister a change of clothing. Although Ruby was taller, they were pretty much the same size; Holly’s jeans just looked like capri pants on her sister’s long legs.

“You want to talk to him?” asked Ruby.

Holly didn’t know. What do you say after a night like that? Blunt had been so angry, and she was worried for him, but also there was that guilty thing: the resentment that everything always came back to his late wife.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I think we need some cooling off time.”

“I think
he
does.”

Vans occupied the graveled area at the front of the Hall now, where guests’ cars had been the night before. The marquee was down already, its frame dismantled and stacked while the crew folded and rolled the canvas. Was this the usual smooth cleaning up operation, or had Blunt demanded that they remove everything immediately? She recalled that it had been a Monday when she’d seen them clearing up after the last party, so the clear-up team were here a day early.

“You want to see that he’s okay?”

She did. Now that she was here, approaching along the long drive, everything felt so much more immediate once again. She remembered the intensity of his rage, the pain in his eyes. “Maybe I’ll ask someone,” she said.

Before she had the opportunity, though, she spotted him. Way across on the far side of the Deer Park with Alfie romping around him in tight circles. “Looks okay to me,” she said.

“You want to go after him?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t tell his mood at this distance, but it seemed wrong to disturb him now. She’d never really been a dog person, but she could see that there was something special in the relationship between Alfie and his master. The red setter’s unquestioning loyalty and constant high spirits would lift anyone.

She needed to think, in any case, not just rush straight in. She’d seen things last night. Felt things. She needed to understand what this relationship was and how that made her feel.

She didn’t know if she was ready. If she could
ever
be ready for something so intense and full of conflicts.

“You okay?”

Since when had her sister discovered sensitive?

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess.”

They reached the head of the driveway, where there was a clear view across the grounds as they spread out before the Hall.

“Where is it?”

Holly could see the flattened stretch of box hedge and the muddy wheel marks making a wide, sweeping curve across the grass. The ruts vanished where the Mini must have found better purchase and stopped chewing the ground, then they started again right in front of a wide-trunked oak tree. That must have been the tree Ruby hit, but there was no sign of the car, only more chewed-up ground around the oak.

“Oh God,” said Ruby. “I really wrote it off, didn’t I? They’ve towed it for scrap already. What am I going to do?”

“Nobody would just take it away,” said Holly. She stepped over the low hedge, her sturdy boots far more stable on the soft ground than the heels she’d worn the night before.

That was definitely the right tree. She remembered standing here, looking across and seeing the headlights pointing askew. That slow progression from understanding that the car had stopped moving, to seeing the lights like that, to realizing the car was badly damaged and then, finally, to
Oh my God what about
Ruby
!

She glanced back up towards the Hall. Then: “It’s okay,” she said. She pointed. The Mini had been moved up to the far end of the parking area, mostly hidden behind the gathered vans. Had someone driven it up there, or had it been towed out?

“God, Holls,” said Ruby. “Do you think he’ll be mad?”

“About the damage? I don’t think he’ll even be aware, to tell the truth. Given the state of this place after these parties, a flattened hedge and some churned up grass are nothing.” She didn’t add that the real damage was what it had done to Blunt himself when Ruby crashed the car, what the incident had taken him back to.

They walked across to the Mini. The windshield was crazed, and someone had knocked the broken glass away on the driver’s side so they could see out when they moved the car. The front bumper and grille were crumpled in and the hood was pushed up on itself like a rucked carpet.

“Bit of a mess, eh?”

Holly turned. The comment had come from a young guy in joggers and a puffer jacket.

He grinned now that he had their attention. “Some crazy bint wrapped it round a tree last night,” he said. “Took a tractor to haul it clear.”

“That right?” said Holly. Then she nodded towards the big white Transit to the man’s left. “That your van? You might want to move it. My sister’s not the most careful of drivers. Ruby: shall we go?”

Ruby already had the driver’s door. As Holly climbed in, the engine roared to life.

“Well that’s good,” said Holly. “How embarrassing would it have been if it hadn’t even started? Do you think it’ll move, though?”

Ruby shifted into gear, turned the wheel full lock and pulled away, wheels spinning and gravel flying.

The guy was still standing there. He glanced at his van, then made the sensible choice and darted away, out of danger.

The Mini lurched out of the tight space it had occupied and through the narrow gap between van and hedge. Something squealed, and there was a deep grinding sound whenever she steered hard, but at least the car worked.

“You’re really going to have to get this to the garage,” said Holly.

“You think?” asked Ruby, glancing across at her sister as she knocked more glass free in front of her. They came to the end of the driveway and turned left into the village, cold air rushing in through the broken windshield.

“You coming home?” asked Ruby. “Or shall I drop you off at work?”

§

Lunchtime at The Bull, Holly worked the floor while Robert and Sally served behind the bar. The place was packed, as Sunday lunchtimes always were, and for a time Holly was able to lose herself in the endless repetition of clearing tables and ferrying food out from Magda in the kitchen.

But then she started to tune in and pick up on the things that were being said by Donald Dwyer and his pals, by Ellen and her gaggle of friends, by people she barely knew.

“Did you hear about the party at the Hall?”

“That Blunt’s an odd one. They say he completely lost it. Starting attacking people and throwing them out.”

“They say there were a load of gatecrashers, gangs of kids who’d heard about the party on Facebook and came along to cause trouble.”

“Some idiot trashed half a dozen cars. Bugattis, Daimlers, Mercs.”

“That Blunt... More money than sense.”

“Blunt? I heard he’d kicked everyone out and then left straight away afterwards. Millie works in the Estate office, says he’s gone and likely won’t be back.”

Gone? No, that couldn’t be right. Holly had seen him only this morning, out in the Deer Park with Alfie. But now that the seeds of doubt had been sown, was she really sure? That distant figure walking the red setter... Had it been a little taller? Had there been any sign of Blunt’s limp? It could have been anyone walking the dog.

She should call. Send him a text message, at least.
Something
.