The Angels' Share (18 page)

‘I only wanted to hire a dress, not buy one.’ I shrugged at Steph.

‘That
is
the price to hire the gown. If madam would prefer something from the budget rail…’ The woman gestured to the other side of the boutique before glancing at my muddy walking boots that peeped from beneath the gown.

‘We’ll take it,’ Steph interjected, pulling her purse from her pocket. ‘You go and change again, Ailey, while I find something for myself.’ It wouldn’t be until the night of the ball that I would discover Steph had picked out the most beautiful shimmering tiara for me to wear in my hair as well as a pair of impossibly high-heeled shoes.

*   *   *

‘I had no idea, really.’ Connor held my diary by his side, his strong fingers wrapped around the leather cover as if he would never let go of it. His expression was serious, the complete opposite of the frivolities contained within my journal. Was I to believe him? Sensing the tension between us, Steph had left the office muttering some reason why she needed to return to Connor’s cottage.

‘Then why is it in your desk drawer?’ I stood my ground, my feet planted wide and my gloved hands thrust deep into the pockets of my jacket. Connor didn’t reply. He sighed heavily and predictably poured two shots of Glen Broath. ‘I thought you were driving?’

‘My errands can wait.’ Connor perched on the corner of his desk and eyed me almost dolefully but also with a deep, serious appraisal, as someone might look at a thoroughbred horse they were thinking of buying.

‘I’m sorry. I just don’t believe you.’ I turned and walked to the far side of Connor’s office. I trailed my finger over his bookshelves, which were stacked with whisky-related volumes and numerous trophies he’d won for his finest malts.

When I turned, Connor had my journal in front of him and his thumbs between the pages, as if he was about to open it. It felt as if he was holding a gun to my head.

‘It’s personal,’ I said, trying to hold my voice level. ‘Steph had no right to take it and you certainly have no right to read it either.’ At that moment, I wished I’d never written the damn thing. I should have known better. I should have realised that such provocative writings, in the wrong hands, could change my life.
Had
changed my life.

‘What you said a few days ago at the beach cottage, about my thoughts becoming reality.’ I paused, giving him time to remember. ‘It’s true. Things that I’ve wondered about for years are beginning to happen, like I’m a simmering pan and my lid has finally been lifted.’ I was deliberately vague. How could I tell Connor, the man I wanted to impress most in the entire world, that I had indulged in kinky shenanigans with my nearest neighbours? Would telling Connor about my involvement with Dominic deter him from ever loving me? It was a risk I couldn’t take, even though I had jeopardised my future by muddling my life with these sexy risks. It wasn’t like me at all.

‘Then do you really want your diary back?’ Connor’s large hands, laced with precise veins and tipped with clean, trimmed nails, gripped my diary and held it in front of his chest like a prayer book.

He had a point. Did I want to continue simply writing down all my hopes and desires for the rest of my life or would I rather live my dreams? I took a long, warming sip of whisky and stared at the ceiling. A layer of tears skimmed my eyes and I begged for it not to burst free.

‘Have you read it?’ This time my voice definitely betrayed my emotion.

‘I told you. I didn’t even realise it was in my desk drawer. Steph must have put it there.’ Connor exhaled and shook his head. ‘You’d think she was at school still, the pranks that girl plays.’

I could imagine. Connor, Steph, pranks – and my diary fuelling their naughty games.

I was strangely convinced by the depth of honesty in his eyes, the way he approached me and placed a hand on my arm and then brushed his fingers against my cheek. If Connor had read my diary, he would know that I’d never forgotten about him, that I’d wondered what kind of man he’d grown into.

‘It’s up to you,’ he said. ‘But expect your life to change again if you keep your thoughts to yourself. Symbolically, you’ve already let go.’

‘Connor The Shrink.’ I laughed and wiped away a stray tear as it fought for release. I would never know if he was telling the truth, if he really hadn’t read my secrets. A part of me hoped that he had at least taken a peek at the bits that included him, the anticipation I had written about as I returned to the island. Perhaps that was why he leant forward and placed a kiss on my cheek.

‘Things are hotting up at Creg-ny-Varn.’ Connor gestured towards the house. ‘Caterers, florists and musicians have been coming and going all day.’

‘Any sign of Kinrade?’ I still wasn’t sure that he was even on the island let alone capable of organising such an event.

Connor shook his head. ‘I’ve told you. The man keeps himself to himself. It’s a wonder that he’s hosting this party. I expect he’s trying to ease himself into the island’s social scene.’

‘What about his mother? Will she be attending?’ I had a sudden urge to talk with the woman who was most likely the last person to see my father alive. That somehow made her special to me, even though she and her son had robbed me of what was mine.

‘I expect so, although she doesn’t live here any more. Ethan manages the estate himself.’ Connor sounded sympathetic, which made me pull away from his touch.

‘Such a burden,’ I remarked sourly. ‘Several million pounds worth of property. How does he cope?’ The Kinrades would get little sympathy from me. ‘Anyway, I shall find out more tomorrow when I go to work. I expect I’ll get caught up in the bustle of preparations.’ Connor appeared bemused and I knew what he was thinking. ‘It’s not like I
want
to be a cleaner,’ I added. ‘Don’t you understand?’ He had completely the wrong idea.

‘Ailey, my love, I don’t think I’ve ever understood you.’

And he approached me again, as if our differences had been bridged by the very fact that we were dissimilar, and delivered another kiss, although this time I closed my eyes and parted my lips because I knew it was aimed at my mouth. It never quite happened.

‘Ted’s got big problems!’ A draught of cold air wrapped around our ankles as Steph lunged into the office. ‘One of the machines is, well, broken.’ She shrugged but froze with her shoulders up around her ears as she realised what she had interrupted. ‘Oh God,’ she cried and ran out of the office with her hands over her face.

‘Great,’ Connor said and ran to the door. ‘Steph!’ But she was gone and nothing Connor could say would erase the brief swipe of his lips against mine that she had witnessed. ‘I’ll have to see what’s up with Ted. We were having problems with pressure in one of the tanks earlier. Coming?’ He replaced my diary in his desk drawer and left his office a troubled man, one incomplete kiss having produced immeasurable problems.

I nodded and followed Connor into the depths of the Glen Broath distillery, which was pungent with the special smells and the mystery it had held for me as a child. I was filled with admiration for Connor as I realised what a vast responsibility the business was for him. We found Ted crouched beside a series of copper pipes and gauges.

‘I’m not sure the cut didn’t come too late, Mr McBryde, or possibly there’s something wrong with the hydrometer.’ Ted, a weathered but healthy-looking man in his sixties, straightened up and stared at me. ‘You leave it with me, sir, and I’ll get it sorted.’ He grinned, displaying a row of crooked teeth. ‘I told that young Stephanie not to bother you but she seemed determined you’d want to know.’

‘I trust you entirely, Ted, and you’re right. There was no need for me to come.’ Connor turned to me and spoke as if he barely knew me, let alone had just tried to kiss me. ‘I’d better find Steph. Let’s go.’

When the girl couldn’t be located, Connor insisted on driving me back to the cliff top, but instead of offering to escort me across the dangerous beach, he supplied me with a torch and a pleasant but brief ‘goodnight’.

‘I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then, at the party.’

‘OK,’ he replied casually, dipping his headlights as another car passed. ‘See you tomorrow about eight.’

And that was that. The tail lights of Connor’s Land Rover disappeared into the thick sea fog that was blanketing the coast. The locals referred to such mists as
Manannan’s Cloak
, when the island’s ancient sea god swathed the shores in fog to protect the land from unwanted visitors. What it was doing now was preventing me from watching the last glimmers of Connor as he drove home to Steph, as well as making my passage to the beach cottage even more treacherous than usual. To make matters worse, tears cut hot grooves down my cold cheeks.

As I stumbled down the track to the shore and made my way across the precarious rocks by torchlight, I thought about tomorrow night. In a little over twenty-four hours, I would have asserted my claim on Creg-ny-Varn and made public just what a scoundrel Ethan Kinrade was, in front of the very people he wished to impress. I would look stunning, I promised myself as I hurled my body against the jammed front door of the cottage, in my hired gown that was safely stored in Steph’s room at Connor’s house, although I wondered now if she might cut it to shreds. The arrangement had been for me to pick it up after I had finished work in the morning, but preparing myself for such a social event without running water worried me somewhat, not to mention the trek across the beach in my multilayered skirt. I daren’t think of the cost if I damaged the dress.

I bundled myself into bed, although not without a glimpse through the binoculars at Liz and Lewis’s cottage, and retired, disappointed, with another large dose of Glen Broath to help me sleep.

I dreamed of Connor and gowns and feathered masks and the sea mist and whips and handcuffs and woke to a screeching seagull and the brush of Connor’s faint kiss still on my lips.

*   *   *

‘Over there!’ Dominic barked at several young men who were wheeling stacks of velvet upholstered chairs through the echoing hallway of Creg-ny-Varn. ‘Do you need instructions too?’ He turned to me, his harassed face descending into a shade of deep burgundy.

Until he snapped at me, I was beginning to feel sorry for him. Kinrade had evidently left most of the ball preparations up to him, which was asking rather a lot of a gardener.

‘No, I don’t. I shall clean the Grand Hall until it’s sparkling. Is Mr Kinrade here?’ It wasn’t that I wanted to see him yet, I was just curious.

Dominic halted midway through firing instructions at the florists, his pupils dilating and his breath quickening. ‘Yes, he is here but he’s not available until later.’ The stammer was barely noticeable.

‘I can wait.’ And we exchanged glances that meant something more than I could put into words. Perhaps it was because we both remembered our last meeting.

‘Is Mr Kinrade’s bedroom still ship-shape?’ I asked, alluding to our encounter. I felt like Steph with my cheeky grin and confrontational tone.

‘Of course,’ he snapped. ‘The man’s not been home so how could it need cleaning so soon?’

‘Speak to me like that again and I’ll see to it that you don’t sit down for a week.’ I flicked Dominic’s shoulder, buried somewhere beneath his dark green jacket, with my feather duster – the only implement I had for immediate punishment – and gave him a look that suggested if he was at a loose end…

‘I’ll hold you to that,’ he said and strode off down the tiled floor to admonish someone who, judging by Dominic’s roar, was doing something very wrong.

The Grand Hall had been used regularly when I was a child. Virtually every month, my parents would treat the island’s social set to an evening of gourmet food and entertainment. I remember my mother assigning a theme to every event and the meticulousness with which she chose the menu was verging on obsessive. The spring dining table would be laden with young minted lamb and tender new vegetables from our own garden and the Grand Hall would be decorated with spring flowers. Everyone was told to wear a certain coloured outfit, perhaps yellow or forget-me-not blue. Autumn was my favourite and I still recall the smell of roast pheasant and chestnuts with candied orange and baked plum pie waiting in the kitchen. Many times I had sneaked downstairs and spied on the dozens of adults in their garish costumes and listened to grown-up talk that I didn’t understand. I would virtually jump out of my skin at the shockwaves of laughter that exploded from the party, usually led by my father when he’d drunk too much Glen Broath. Wild games and dancing would follow the meal and often I would wake in the early hours and the frivolities would still be in full swing.

Then there was the time, mid-winter, with the Grand Hall decked for Christmas and the food at its most sumptuous, when I woke to the shrieks of my mother. The house, eerily silent apart from her wails, had been cleared of guests and no one knew that I crouched in the gallery and watched as my mother, dressed only in her underwear, sobbed her life away.

Words that meant nothing to me then – big, venomous words, full of pain – floated around my head that cold, empty night. My mother and I left the island the next day. The memory of my home slipping into dots of light on the horizon, coupled with my mother’s shame and anger, manifested in many ways but never directed at me, marked a turning point in my life. Everything familiar was gone. Everything new was an adventure ripe for exploration. And I recorded it all in my secret diary.

The Grand Hall, many years on from those outrageous parties, had taken on a strangely familiar air. When I had searched around the house several days earlier during my first cleaning morning at Creg-ny-Varn, I had discovered nothing untoward in the vast room; no incriminating evidence to support my claim against Kinrade. It remained a cold, lifeless, shrouded space with much of the ornate antique furniture stacked and covered with dust sheets. But on the day of the ball, with caterers and florists and technicians and porters coming and going, the room was gradually beginning to wake and warm and prepare itself for another major event. Only when I saw the size of the buffet table and the vast number of wine glasses that were being polished and set out did I realise the scale of the party. Kinrade was certainly sparing no expense and by the end of the morning, with a little magic from my polish and duster as well as the dozens of professionals who scurried tirelessly to finish their work, the Grand Hall was beginning to resemble the final scene from Cinderella. I looked down at my grubby clothes and laughed.