Damage (7 page)

“Maybe you should do that. You’re a lot like her. You’re always prepared to take on a cause. You’re always looking out for other people.”

Holly looked at her sister, surprised. No one had ever told her she was like her mother before.

“Maybe you should stop doing that, though,” Ruby went on. “Maybe you should think about what
you
want for a change. Not what Dad wants, or what Mum would have wanted. Not what Robert wants, or Karen. Or Tommy. What do
you
want, Holly? Do you even know?”

§

She dwelled on her sister’s words throughout the journey home, as the bus wound its way through narrow, twisting Cotswold roads, passing between high hedgerows and honey-stoned picture-book cottages.

There was a double edge to what Ruby had said, she realized now. So Holly always tried to do what other people wanted, always looking out for others; that was good, but did it also mean she interfered too much? Was Ruby having a dig, or simply advising her to look out for her own interests, too?

She felt guilty about her sister, and she’d never really raised that subject with her. When their mother’s illness had become worse their father had wanted to shield Ruby. She was too young to have to deal with all that, he had insisted. Holly had gone along with him, looking after her mother and, increasingly, her father, while at the same time sheltering Ruby from the seriousness of the situation.

When their mother had passed away, Ruby went off the rails completely, moving out and getting into a world of drink and drugs and brushes with the police.

Just how much of that had been a reaction to Holly and her father distancing her from her dying mother?

Some, at least, she was sure.

And so, she spent that journey home worrying about her sister, confirming Ruby’s point that she spent far too long thinking about what was best for other people, and not enough time looking out for herself.

What
did
she want?

At one time, the answer would have been easy: a family, a career in the arts, a sense of being part of a community. But now? It seemed like such a long time since she had thought in those terms. Instead, she had focused, moved forward, and dealt with the shit one step at a time.

§

Back at home, her father was in his usual chair in the front room, his paper opened at the crossword on his knee. For a moment she thought he was talking to himself, then, as she paused in the doorway she saw
him
there, perched on the edge of the sofa, his knees drawn up as he leaned forward to listen.

Him
: Nicholas Blunt.

He looked up, and his only change in expression was a slight lift of the eyebrows. Surprise? Or was that a hint of challenge in the look? A ‘what are you going to do about it’ questioning?

She’d never known anyone as guarded and difficult to read as Nicholas Blunt.

She stood there, said nothing, and for a moment she wondered who was going to break first. Then her father noticed her and stopped mid-sentence. Smiling, he said, “And there she is. My Holly. Holly: have you met Nicholas Blunt? He’s from the Estate, from the Hall.”

“I thought we had thirty days?”

“He was just explaining – weren’t you Nicholas? That was all a mistake. Crossed wires in the Estate office. It’s a new management team up there, and they were just being a bit – how did you put it, Nicholas? – over-zealous. That’s it. Over-zealous.”

Holly turned her look on Blunt, but he was still giving nothing away. Had it really just been an administrative error, or was this some kind of elaborate game he was playing?

“I was right, Holly,” her father went on. “Remember when we were talking? I recognized the name. The Blunts used to come down here on holiday. Used to come into the shop. I knew Nicholas’s father quite well, as it turns out. Nice man. Nice family. It’s been... well, it’s been lovely catching up.”

She couldn’t remember the last time her father had been this animated, and now she started to wonder if she was being too hostile. That thing again, the thing she had got from her mother: being too protective of those she loved.

“Can I get some fresh tea?” she said. Her father had an empty cup; Blunt’s was still full of milky-white tea, untouched, the cup discreetly pushed to one side on the low coffee table.

“No,” said Blunt, hands raised. “I really must be going. I didn’t mean to stay so long. I only meant to come and explain. And apologize.”

He stood now, and Holly stepped aside for him to pass.

She followed him along the dark passageway to the front door, then stopped on the step. Halfway down the short path to the lane, Blunt paused and turned. “The rent,” he said. “I meant it. It really was a misunderstanding. I felt awful as soon as I realized what had happened. I had no idea they were doing that – particularly to you... to your father. I told him we’d write off the bad debt as a goodwill gesture. Start afresh.”

She shook her head. “No. Thank you, but no. We’ll pay our way.” Then: “But if we could work out a repayment plan...?”

Blunt shrugged. “We’ll talk,” he said. “We’ll work something out. I really am sorry for all this.”

And then she was watching his back as he walked down the lane and across the green, wondering what he’d meant by
particularly to you... to your father
, and only then realizing that this was probably the first time she’d had an encounter with him when he hadn’t tried anything on.

She made tea. She needed a moment to think.

Nicholas Blunt. One minute aggressive, a boorish bully of a man. A man who had an undeniable magnetism that could sweep over any resistance like a force of nature, and yet who hid himself behind layer upon layer of defenses. A man who dismissed any woman who got close to him as one of his ‘tarts’, and yet a man with the patience and sensitivity to sit and listen to her father – for how much of the afternoon had he been there? – and bring out the man he had not been for so long now.

A man for whom she had so many contradictory feelings, but undeniably one of the most powerful was an intense fascination.

A man who was a puzzle she felt compelled to solve.

§

“So what was all that about then?” she asked. She placed a fresh pot of tea on the low table and took a seat on the sofa that still bore the imprint of Nicholas Blunt’s weight, as if to emphasize how long he had spent listening to her father this afternoon.

“Oh, old times,” her father said. She wasn’t accustomed to seeing him smiling like this, and she liked it. “They used to come down to Stow every summer for a week in a caravan. I knew his old man from Durham. David Blunt. Good man, David. They used to come to the store. Janice and little Nicholas would have cream tea in the restaurant and Davey and I would slip round the corner for a quick one in the Brewer’s Arms. He remembered it all, Nicholas. Sometimes kids forget so easily, but some memories stick in every tiny detail.”

Holly remembered the cafe, the big cheese scones and Danish pastries. She might even have been there when Nicholas and his parents were, she supposed.

“He says I helped Davey when things got bad. Helped him set up in business. Says his own company comes directly from his father’s business, and he wouldn’t be where he is now if it weren’t for me.”

“And did you?”

He shrugged and smiled. “I really don’t remember. I suppose I probably did if he remembers it so well.”

Back when Colcroft’s had been going strong, Holly’s father had probably loaned money to half the struggling small businesses this end of the Cotswolds and invested in the rest of them. It was hardly surprising that he would have helped out an old university friend in times of need, too.

“He was asking after you. Young Nicholas.”

“Oh?”

“Said he’d made a bit of a fool of himself with you. Is that right?”

“Maybe,” she said, but the detail of her brief employment at the Hall didn’t seem appropriate now that she was softening towards Blunt. “A bit of a misunderstanding, that’s all.”

“Good, good. I’m not a big fan of bad blood, you know.” That was a statement which pretty much summed him up: Holly’s dad was
nice
.

She liked that. Liked being a part of it.

“I remember the cafe,” she said, clasping her cup of tea in both hands as if to warm them. “Lizzie Porter was always good for a scone when you’re the boss’s daughter. Did you know she did that? And then there was...”

§

He called her that evening, just as she was getting changed before heading out.

“Holly? It’s me, Nicholas Blunt.”

She stood there, black skinnies unbuttoned, bare feet, black bra, and said, “Hi. And thank you. For this afternoon. I haven’t seen Dad so animated in ages. He enjoyed talking. It was very good of you. And the whole not evicting us thing. That was good of you, too.”

“Oh... Like I say. I felt bad. It was a cock-up in the office. I’ve banged heads.”

There was a silence then, and Holly wondered if she was meant to say something, anything, to fill it. He must have called her for a reason.

“So...” she prompted.

“Oh. Yes,” he said. “Sorry. I was... Remember that drink we didn’t have because I asked and you said ‘no’? I was just wondering if it was still a possibility?”

“That must be the most roundabout way of turning a ‘no’ into a ‘yes’ I’ve ever come across.”

“So it worked?”

She hadn’t meant that, but he’d caught her in his trap.

“The Bull, in ten minutes,” she said. “You’re paying. I’m serving.”

“Sounds perfect.”

§

The Bull was crowded for a Wednesday evening, and for a time Holly was too busy to do more than greet Blunt and get him a Diet Coke, ice, no lemon.

It gave her an opportunity to study him surreptitiously. You don’t often get a chance to do that. Always, up until now, she’d been busy or caught up in an argument with him, or kissing him, or...

He sat on a tall stool at one end of the bar, as if he’d deliberately chosen to put himself on the fringes. Black jeans, black leather jacket open to reveal a dark t-shirt with a scribbly abstract design on the chest. Dark chestnut hair, clean-shaven, and those piercing, pale gray eyes that kept flashing around the bar and then alighting, briefly, on Holly before moving on.

He was an odd bundle of contradictions. He’d always come across as crass and yet this afternoon he’d been so sensitive with her father. He was a powerful man, head of a successful company with offices and factories across Europe and yet now... he was a wild animal, caught out of its natural environment.

Was he a hard man with vulnerabilities, or a vulnerable man who hid behind a front of bravado?

He saw her looking and all of a sudden Holly felt self-conscious, as if she’d been caught out.

She smiled, a nervous reaction – why did he make her feel like this? She realized then that one of his contradictions was the response he provoked in her: that fascination with him when she knew she should run a mile.

“I enjoyed myself this afternoon,” he said, when she finally had a moment to pause at the bar with him. “Your father. He’s just how I remember him from when I was a kid. Nice guy. A proper gentleman.”

“He is,” said Holly. “Always has been. Even now, when life’s knocked the stuffing out of him, that hasn’t changed.”

“We talked about your mother.”

Holly gave him a brief, sharp look before glancing away. Her father never talked about Holly’s mother. Too painful, still.

“And the old days, when he had the department store. It was like a magical world to me when I was a kid. It had everything. I remember exploring it when I was little. Just when you thought you knew where you were you’d turn another corner and there’d be a whole new department to explore. You can keep your theme parks: Colcroft’s was enough for me. Shame it’s gone.”

§

“So who else do you know here? How long have you been at the Hall?” It was later now, another lull after a rush of customers.

He shrugged. “Six months, give or take. One thing I’ve learned is that when you own the Estate you’re either the boss or the landlord, and nobody really wants to get too close.” He snorted. “Exactly what I was trying to get away from at BI.” Blunt Instruments, his company, she remembered. “Look at them all. Everyone knows who I am. The new guy up at the Hall. But they treat me like a wounded animal that you’d never want to approach. The Beast of the Hall.”

That dark, bitter streak was never far from the surface with Nicholas Blunt.

Holly broke away to pour a fresh pint for Donald Dwyer, then came back to pick up the conversation with Blunt again.

“You really think they don’t want to cozy up to you? I’d have expected the opposite.”

Another shrug. “Maybe it’s just an excuse,” he said. “Maybe it’s me keeping
them
all at a distance... Sorry. I didn’t come here to get all maudlin again. It’s hard to break the pattern, though, you know?”

That’s when she realized something else about him. Nicholas Blunt, owner of the Hall, host to weekend parties, always another ‘tart’ in his bed, or so it seemed... He wasn’t any of these things when he was with her, though. She could easily imagine him switching to smooth-talking seductive mode at one of his parties, the perfect, charming host – he could switch that charm on at will – but there was no act with her.

“Is that what you do? Keep people at a distance? Even when you let them close?”

He looked away. “Maybe I do. I lost my wife, you know.”

She nodded.

“I should have known that would get around. Even now I have horrible black spells where I don’t want... well,
anything
. And then there are times when I just want to haul myself back into real life. Like now. Talking to your father. That meant a lot. Sometimes you forget how important it is to connect like that.”

“He’s the same. Dad is. Since Mum passed it’s as if he’s forgotten how to connect to the real world. Somehow... I don’t know... somehow you brought him back out. It was lovely to see.”

More drinks to pour, their conversation interrupted again. This had to be the most stilted, awkward way to talk about important things, but maybe that helped, the interruptions forming an irregular punctuation to the tension between them.