The Inheritance (24 page)

Tati found herself feeling angry, with Brett for bullying his son, but also with Jason for not standing up to his father. ‘You are over age, you know,’ she told him, holding on to a low branch for support as she hopped over a ditch, then waiting while Jason did the same. ‘You can do what you like.’

‘You don’t know my father,’ Jason said, matter-of-factly. ‘He doesn’t care how old I am. He can make my life hell if he wants to. Besides, this is really not the time to piss him off. It’s my twenty-first birthday in May,’ he confided. ‘If I keep sweet with my father till then, I’ll come into my trust fund. That should buy me some independence, at least on paper.’

Tati stifled an unworthy pang of envy.
Her
trust was tied up so tightly, she’d be lucky to get her hands on any capital before she turned fifty. And here was this boy, not only living in her home, but with talent and freedom and – soon – unlimited funds, but too frightened to take advantage of any of it. If Jason weren’t such a sweetheart, it would be easy to dislike him.

‘What were you doing in Bar Piccata anyway?’ he asked, changing the subject. ‘I didn’t have you pegged as a jazz and salsa fan.’

‘That’s because I’m un-peggable,’ Tati laughed. ‘Actually, I was on a date. This guy I’m seeing took me there. It’s a great place.’

Now it was Jason’s turn to feel jealous. Ridiculously, as of course Tatiana had boyfriends, probably an army of them; and even if she didn’t, she was hardly likely to want to date a shy, nerdy, mildly depressed, social incompetent like him. But he flattered himself Tati was his friend. And Furlings linked them forever. That alone gave him a feeling of ownership, of entitlement, whether it was rational or not.

‘Is he your boyfriend?’ he heard himself asking.

Tati frowned. ‘No. Not yet. I’m not sure if I have room for a boyfriend in my life right now. Not with this court case hanging over me. Plus, he works in London. I can spend time there now, while St Hilda’s are on holiday, but once school starts again I’m stuck here.’

‘There are worse places to be stuck,’ said Jason, looking around them.

‘Yes,’ Tati sighed.

They’d reached a clearing in the woods. It was a place Tati knew well from her childhood, a rabbit warren of at least thirty years’ standing. The ground was mossy, a virulent green carpet studded with hundreds of brown burrows. Birch and pine had given way to oaks and sycamores, their sturdy trunks and broad, shady branches providing a thick canopy, through which dappled rays of sunlight chinked their way to the forest floor. There were bright red toadstools underfoot and crunchy acorns and the scent of some sweet, cloying flower – honeysuckle perhaps – hanging heavy in the warm air. It was a magical place, a place to come with a lover, to lie down on a blanket and gaze up at the clouds as they drifted softly across the blue summer sky.

‘Gringo!’

An exhausted but delighted-looking basset hound bounded out from behind a tree, in cumbersome pursuit of a rabbit that he had about as much chance of catching as Jason had of becoming the next Olympic hundred-metres champion. Sliding to a halt, his tail wagging stupidly as the rabbit shot down the nearest hole, the dog allowed Jason to clip the lead onto his collar. He was panting madly, his enormous, drooling pink tongue hanging out of his mouth like a wet sheet on a washing line.

‘I knew he’d be here,’ said Tati. ‘We should get him home and give him a drink. He must be terribly overheated in this weather.’

Back at Furlings, Mrs Worsley was on her hands and knees, polishing the parquet floor in the drawing room, when she heard voices. Darting out into the hall, she couldn’t hide her displeasure at seeing Tatiana arm in arm with young Jason Cranley, wandering into the kitchen as if she owned the place.

‘Hello, Mrs Worsley,’ Tati said brightly, filling Gringo’s bowl from the tap above the Belfast sink and setting it down on the stone floor. As she bent over, the curve of her bottom was clearly visible below her very short shorts. Jason Cranley couldn’t take his eyes off her. It was a close-run thing as to who was drooling more obviously, Jason or the dog.

‘Long time no see. How are you enjoying the summer so far?’

‘I’m keeping busy, thank you, Tatiana,’ the housekeeper said frostily. ‘What brings you to Furlings this morning? Do you not have anywhere you need to be?’

‘Tati very kindly helped me find Gringo,’ Jason explained. ‘He ran off. We had a hell of a time catching him. It’s so damn hot out there.’

‘It is,’ Mrs Worsley conceded, through pursed lips. ‘
Very kindly’, my Aunt Fanny
, she thought
. Tatiana’s up to something, and she’s using that poor boy as a pawn.
Mrs Worsley looked up at the girl she had as good as raised, with intense suspicion written all over her face.

If she looked any more sour, she’d turn into a lemon
,
thought Tati.
Silly old witch.

‘I wonder,’ said Jason, ‘do you think you could find us a spot of lunch? I’m starving after all that traipsing around and I’m sure Tatiana is too, aren’t you?’

‘Famished,’ grinned Tati, who was really starting to enjoy herself. Mrs Worsley’s face was a picture.

‘Just a salad or something would be great,’ Jason said innocently, adding insult to injury. ‘We’ll be in the dining room when you’re ready.’

Tati would have enjoyed the smoked salmon salad and fresh baked bread more had she not been wondering whether or not Mrs Worsley had spat in her helping. Certainly her father’s former housekeeper maintained the pained expression of a cat chewing a wasp throughout the meal, making it hard to focus completely on conversation.

Despite the tension of having a self-appointed conscience spying on her every move, Tatiana enjoyed talking to Jason. She particularly enjoyed watching his shyness gradually fall away as they spent more time together in the dining room where Tati had eaten countless meals in the first twenty years of her life. Jason was clearly lonely, a state of mind Tati understood only too well. When he spoke about his mother and sister being away in France, it was clear that he missed them, even though their return would also mean the unwelcome return of his father and an end to his moonlighting as a pianist, at least for now.

Tati let him talk for a good hour before excusing herself to go to the loo. Mrs Worsley finally seemed to have made herself scarce, and Tati was able quickly and quietly to slip up the kitchen stairs to the first floor. Brett had turned the old servants’ rooms into a set of adjoining offices. It was as good a place to start as any. Darting inside, Tati pulled open a filing cabinet at random and began riffling through papers. She didn’t know what she was looking for specifically. Just anything that might help Raymond Baines to strengthen her claim on the estate. It didn’t help that her heart was pounding against her ribs like a jackhammer and her palms were so sweaty she could barely separate one document from the next.
I’d make a useless cat burglar
, she thought, glancing anxiously at her watch. She couldn’t be too long or that old dragon Worsley would smell a rat and come looking for her.

But it was no use. There was nothing here except old tax returns, at least six years’ worth, together with carefully photocopied receipts and correspondence with the Australian tax office. Replacing the last of the documents, Tati was just about to close the drawer when she froze.

Footsteps.

They were faint at first. Tati hovered and listened, hoping to hear them recede. But instead they came closer. Was it Mrs Worsley, snooping around looking for her? No. The tread was a man’s, heavy and purposeful. It must be Jason.

Glancing round the room, she searched in vain for somewhere to hide. The office was little more than an eight-foot-square box. It didn’t even have curtains. There was a desk she could crawl under, but anyone who stepped more than a couple of feet into the room would see her there, crouching like a naughty child. She was still standing helplessly, like a deer in the headlights, when the footsteps stopped outside the door. The handle began to turn. Tati felt her stomach slide into her shoes. What excuse could she possibly give Jason? She could hardly say she was lost, in her own house. That she wandered into the office by mistake.
Oh God.

Mrs Worsley’s voice rang out like a siren.

‘Mr Cranley! My goodness, whatever are you doing here? When I heard noises I thought it was an intruder.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Brett’s growling, Australian baritone rumbled through the door. Tati would not have been surprised to see her heart leap out of her chest and start jumping up and down on the desk. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you. I had to come home on business for a few days. It was a last-minute thing or I would have called.’

‘No need to apologize to me,’ said the housekeeper. ‘It’s your house. But do let me make you something to eat and unpack your things. Jason’s downstairs. With a … visitor.’

Tati waited for Mrs Worsley to elaborate, or for Brett to quiz her, but neither of them did. Instead, miraculously, Brett let go of the door handle and agreed to go down to join his son. Tati waited until she heard both sets of footsteps disappear down the kitchen stairs. Then she slammed closed the filing cabinet, bolted out into the corridor and ran as fast as she could to the front of the house, flying down the main staircase and into the loo off the entrance hall. Sixty seconds later, having washed her hands and face and regained her composure, she walked as casually as she could back into the dining room.

Brett and Jason were both standing, glaring at one another. As soon as Tati walked in, it was clear what their confrontation had been about.

‘Speak of the devil,’ said Brett, without humour. ‘Thought you’d sniff around the place did you, while I was gone?’

‘Exactly,’ Tati replied mockingly. ‘It was all part of some dastardly plan.’

‘Dad,
please
,’ Jason blushed. ‘Tatiana was just—’

‘I know what she was just doing,’ said Brett. ‘And now she’s just leaving. Aren’t you?’

Tati turned to Jason, bestowing him with her warmest smile. ‘Thank you for a lovely lunch. We must do it again some time.’

‘You stay away from my son!’ thundered Brett as she walked away.

‘Or what?’ Tati called defiantly over her shoulder as she left the room. ‘You’ll put me over your knee?’

‘Don’t tempt me,’ growled Brett, his eyes flashing dangerously.

Tati met his gaze for a split second, then turned and hurried away.

That had been far too close for comfort.

It was almost tea time by the time Tati got back to Greystones. The walk had been long enough for her to calm her frazzled nerves, although the close shave with Brett and her unexpected salvation by Mrs Worsley, followed by the disconcerting confrontation in the dining room, had left her feeling physically drained.

Closing the front door behind her, she felt a comforting sense of safety and relief. For all its drawbacks, the rented farmhouse felt like home in a way that it hadn’t only a few short months ago. Somehow the whole place seemed more cheerful now that high summer had arrived. With no money to employ a gardener, Tati had let the long sloping lawn at the back of the house grow into a veritable forest of long grass and wild flowers. But the general eruption of flora had a joyous, riotous feel to it that she wouldn’t have traded for neatly trimmed borders or sedate rose beds, even if she did have the money. As for the house itself, that was still a mess too. But with every window open and the summer light and scents pouring in, and with some plain white bedspreads thrown over the ugliest pieces of the landlady’s furniture, it was not without a certain shabby-chic charm. A chipped jug sat on the kitchen table, rudely stuffed with peonies, and the fruit bowl on the sideboard overflowed with plums from the tree in the garden, which looked in danger of toppling to the ground any minute from the sheer mass of fruit weighing it down.

Making herself a glass of elderflower squash, Tati wandered out into the back garden. Dusting the cobwebs off a decrepit deckchair she found lurking in the shed, she sank down into it, enjoying the sensation of being completely hidden by the long grass. She remembered playing this game as a child. ‘Boats’, her father used to call it. Rory would sing her the song of the owl and the pussycat, and she would imagine the grass as the tall sides of a ship and herself sailing away for a year and a day. She didn’t cry, but a wave of nostalgia overwhelmed her suddenly, bringing a lump to her throat.

It was hard to believe that it was still less than a year since Rory had died and Tati’s world had been turned inside out. Yet, at the same time, when she thought about the school or the endlessly long, boring afternoons she’d spent in Raymond Baines’s drab offices, it felt as if she’d been stuck in her present rut for a lifetime. Then, in the last few weeks, her mental landscape had suddenly shifted again. Brett Cranley’s taunts at the parents’ meeting had started it, sowing a seed of ambition in Tati that had never been there before. That very same night, as fate would have it, she’d met Marco, and the seed had been watered. Teaching was something she could do. Her father had believed that at any rate, and now Max Bingley believed it too.

Of course, Brett was right that she would never make a fortune on a teacher’s salary. But what if there were a way to combine education and business? Wouldn’t it be satisfying to prove Brett Cranley wrong, and with him every man who’d ever dismissed her as nothing more than a party girl with a pretty face? Marco could open doors for her, help to introduce her to the right people … Yes, it was a pipe dream. But it wasn’t impossible. After all, if Jason Cranley could quietly pursue his dreams, his talents, with his vile father breathing down his neck, why shouldn’t she do the same with nothing but her own fears holding her back?

The advantage of
this
particular pipe dream was that it was in Tatiana’s own hands. Unlike the court battle over her father’s will. Standing beside Brett’s filing cabinet today like a fool, waiting to be caught red-handed, she’d suddenly realized how desperate she’d become. She knew now what she’d been looking for in those files: a miracle. Because, without a miracle, she was going to lose in court in September. Brett Cranley knew it. The lawyers knew it. Deep down, Tatiana knew it too.