The Inheritance (33 page)

How on earth was she going to be able to wait another week?

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Jason Cranley sat on the therapist’s couch, staring at the botanical prints on the wall. He didn’t want to be here. But he’d promised Tatiana he would go. And the truth was, he had nowhere else to be this afternoon. Or any afternoon, for that matter.

‘What have you got to lose, darling?’ Tati had asked, in her usual confident, breezy, can-do voice as she rushed out of the door to work. It was the voice of someone who’d never been depressed, who’d never faced a challenge that she couldn’t overcome. ‘I mean, you’re not happy. Are you?’

‘No,’ Jason agreed.

He wasn’t happy.

‘And the pills alone aren’t working?’

‘No.’

‘So why not try something else?’

Because it won’t work. Because I’m tired. Because I can’t explain to a stranger how I feel when I don’t know myself.

‘I guess.’

‘Give it a whirl.’ The forced cheerfulness in Tati’s voice was the aural equivalent of having blinding light shone directly in your eyes. Jason winced.

‘You have to take responsibility for your own life you know, darling. Let me know how it goes.’ And with a slam of the door, she was gone.

So now Jason was here, on a stranger’s couch.

The therapist looked at him kindly. ‘Where would you like to start?’

She was in her fifties, slim and blonde and attractive, with an open, compassionate face that reminded him of his mother. Instantly, embarrassingly, Jason felt his eyes welling up with tears. He pressed his fingers against his eyelids to stop them from flowing.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well,’ she said, confidently but with none of Tatiana’s briskness. ‘Perhaps we should start with your childhood? Family history, that sort of thing. Where did you grow up?’

‘Australia,’ said Jason.
About as far away from here as it’s possible to be.
Sometimes he wished he could blame his current malaise on homesickness. He did feel it sometimes, that primal longing for sunshine and blue skies and the open, outdoorsy life he remembered from his childhood in Sydney. London could be so relentlessly rainy and grey. But then he reminded himself that he’d brought his sadness with him when his family relocated to England. Whatever was wrong with him had been wrong with him for a long, long time.

The truth was – and this was one of the hardest parts to understand – that his life now, with Tatiana, was everything he’d always wanted. At least on paper. Jason and Tati lived in a beautiful townhouse just off Eaton Gate, which Jason had renovated and decorated exactly as he pleased, with no arguments from his wife. Tatiana was too busy building up her business: a prep school called Hamilton Hall that had become an overnight success, both academically and as a money-making machine.

Tucked away behind Sloane Square, in a converted hotel, Hamilton Hall charged fifty per cent higher fees than all of its smart London rivals. For this astronomical yearly sum, it scooped up all of the wealthy London families whose offspring had been rejected by the traditional top-tier schools, often for such trifling reasons as low academic ability. Tatiana threw Oxbridge-educated teachers and a rigorously old-fashioned teaching style at the problem – she had basically copied Max Bingley’s approach to the letter – and spat the children out at the other end with the top eleven-plus exam results in the country. Indeed, in the four years since Hamilton Hall had first opened its doors, it had leapfrogged to the top of the independent schools rankings with a speed that had astonished and horrified its competition in equal measure. What was Tatiana Flint-Hamilton
doing
with these kids? How could a non-selective school possibly achieve such consistently excellent results?

Tatiana was coy in her answers to these questions in the apparently endless series of profiles written about her and Hamilton Hall by the national press.
The Sunday Times
,
Vogue
,
Londoner Magazine
and even
Vanity Fair
had all featured Hamilton Hall’s beautiful headmistress and her handsome, elusive young husband in their hallowed pages. The
Vanity Fair
article in particular had done wonders for the school’s reputation abroad. When asked how long the Hamilton Hall waiting list was by the magazine’s reporter, Tatiana had responded robustly:

‘We don’t do waiting lists. Never have, never will. We’ll take anyone prepared to pay our fees.’

‘But surely you’ll run out of space at some point?’ the reporter countered.

‘Hopefully,’ said Tatiana. ‘And when we do, we’ll expand.’

Just weeks after that interview was published, Tatiana sold eighty per cent of the Hamilton Hall ‘brand’ to an investment consortium, mostly made up of American hedge-fund and real-estate entrepreneurs, with a smattering of aristocratic Brits thrown in at board level for good measure. The money from the sale had bought the Eaton Gate house, with a comfortable cushion of cash to spare. Tati and Jason retained a twenty per cent stake in the business and a lucrative three-year contract for Tati as CEO. She no longer had time for any teaching, still less to run the Sloane Square school as a headmistress, so she poached Drew O’Donnell, the brilliant headmaster of Colet Court to take her place – yet another, much-talked-about coup.

New premises on Clapham Common were already under construction, a twenty-million-pound venture that was taking up immense amounts of Tatiana’s time. In addition she was scouting opportunities for growth of the Hamilton Hall model abroad, everywhere from the US to Asia. The school had become so successful, so quickly, it was tempting to look back on its foundation as a sure thing, some sort of fait accompli. In reality, however, starting Hamilton Hall had been a huge risk, one which Tatiana and Jason had taken together. She’d sunk her own modest savings into the first, flagship school. But it was Jason who had put the real money at risk. Every penny of his sizable trust fund had gone into the business, despite Brett’s best efforts to claw the cash back.

‘Hamilton Hall is your business as much as mine, you know. Your success as much as mine,’ Tati reminded Jason constantly. She was always very generous and inclusive in this regard. ‘Without your trust fund, and your belief in me, this could never have happened. You believed in me when no-one else would.’

It was true. Yet to Jason, it always felt like a technicality. Hamilton Hall, both the school and the brand, had been Tatiana’s baby from the beginning She’d worked herself into the ground building and running a business that was, quite rightly, synonymous with its foundress. All Jason had done was write a cheque. A cheque he hadn’t even had to work for. As a result, their beautiful home, and his expensive clothes, and the free time he had on his hands, all felt as if they rightfully belonged to someone else. To Tatiana, in fact. Jason Cranley was a passenger in his own life again, just as he had been when he lived at home with his parents. The fact that the ship he was now sailing on was a super-yacht, and that his was the presidential suite, didn’t make him feel any better.

‘What about your parents?’ the therapist prodded gently. ‘Are you close?’

‘I’m close to my mother,’ said Jason. ‘My father …’

The word hung in the air, like an unfinished road to nowhere. How to sum up his relationship – non-relationship – with Brett in a single sentence?

‘My father doesn’t approve of my marriage. That makes things difficult.’

‘I’m sure.’ The therapist nodded understandingly. ‘Your loyalties are with your wife.’

‘Yes,’ Jason said thoughtfully, surprised as he said it by how true this was.

His loyalties
were
with Tatiana. And hers, he still believed, were with him. And yet there could be no denying that their marriage was not, and never had been, what a marriage should be. For one thing their sex life was close to nonexistent. Neither of them it seemed had the will or the energy to try to change this. Tatiana was consumed with the school, her expanding educational empire. And Jason?
I have my music.
The thought was so pathetic it made him laugh out loud.

‘Is something funny?’ the therapist asked.

‘Not really.’

Thanks to Hamilton Hall’s huge success, Jason now had more than enough money never to have to work again. He was free to focus on his piano, to follow his dreams, just as he’d always longed to. In the beginning he’d given it his all, practising for hours each day, eventually working up the courage to put himself out there as a professional jazz pianist, looking for work. And he’d found it, sporadically, in third-rate bars and restaurants. But none of the jobs lasted. Put simply, Jason had learned the hard way that his father had been right all along: he simply wasn’t good enough, talented enough, to make it as a professional musician.

If there was one single cause at the root of his current depression, Jason suspected this was it. He was a failure. Creatively. Professionally. Maritally. Meanwhile his wife, whom he loved despite their sexless marriage, his wife was a roaring success, the toast of London.

Jason’s mother had visited him and Tati at the Eaton Gate house a couple of weeks ago and unwittingly brought all his negative feelings to a head. Normally Jason enjoyed Angela’s visits, especially when she brought Logan along with her. Something about his sister’s energy was infectious, and pushed all thoughts of the absent elephant in the room – Brett – from Jason’s mind. Logan loved Tati too, which helped, and the feeling was mutual. Whenever his kid sister was around, Jason felt as if his two worlds, his two selves had collided. That made him happy.

But this last time his mother had come alone. And one afternoon, quite out of the blue, she’d asked Jason about children.

‘You’ve been together five years now,’ Angela probed gently. ‘Tatiana’s thirty. You must have thought about it.’

Well, they hadn’t thought about it. The subject had never come up between them. Not obliquely. Not in a jokey way. Not at all.

Never.

Because we both know there’s something missing.

Something wrong.

This realization – prompted by his mother’s innocent question – had pushed Jason over some sort of mental edge into his darkest mood of many years. After Angela left he felt exhausted and tearful and defeated, unable or unwilling to get out of bed. All the old demons were back. Concerned, Tati had pushed him back to therapy. But he really wasn’t sure he had the strength for it.

‘Tell me a bit about your marriage,’ said the therapist. ‘How do you feel about your wife?’

Jason looked up at the clock like a condemned man waiting for the guillotine. Had he really only been in this room for fifteen minutes? The thought of another forty-five minutes of questions filled him with something akin to panic.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, standing up suddenly. ‘I’m afraid I … I have somewhere I need to be. I forgot. I’ll pay you. Goodbye.’

He bolted out of the door and down the corridor as if the room were on fire.

Poor thing
, thought the therapist, who’d seen it all before. So much for the Cranleys’ glittering life and perfect marriage. That boy was proof, if one ever needed it, that money and fame could not buy one happiness.

She wondered if she would see Jason Cranley again.

Seb Harwich watched Logan Cranley’s perfect body gyrating to the music. He wished he weren’t so mesmerized by her. But the way her hair swung around her shoulders, and her back arched as she moved each long, lithe leg to the beat of the godawful German dance track she was playing had a totally hypnotic effect on him.

They were in the barn at Wraggsbottom Farm, where Logan had decided to throw an impromptu party. ‘They’ included a gaggle of Logan’s spoilt, sixteen-year-old boarding school friends, Seb, and a smattering of locals, mostly boys in their teens, who buzzed around the St Xavier’s girls like horny bees around a honey-pot. At almost twenty-two, Seb was not only the oldest person present, but by far the most mature. He’d tried to convince Logan not to invite friends over.

‘Someone’s bound to get drunk and break something or have an accident. Gabe and Laura would hit the roof if they knew.’

But Logan had pooh-poohed him, in her usual headstrong, thoughtless fashion. ‘Yes, but they don’t know, do they? And there’s no reason why they should. As long as
someone
doesn’t rat us out.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Seb frowned. ‘I’m not going to say anything. I just don’t think it’s a good idea, that’s all. Laura and Gabe put a lot of trust in you.’

‘
Gabe
put a lot of trust in me,’ Logan corrected him sharply. ‘Laura still thinks I’m an irresponsible kid. I know she tried to talk him out of letting me house-sit. She doesn’t want him to see me as an adult.’

That’s because you aren’t an adult
,
thought Seb, watching Logan topple backwards onto a pile of hay bales, burst into a fit of giggles and pour herself another half mugful of Gabe and Laura’s Grey Goose. Seb knew Logan was a child, and a spoiled one at that. He also knew that she had the hots for Gabe Baxter and was only using him to try to make Gabe jealous. But he couldn’t seem to help himself. She was so gorgeous, and, when she wasn’t drunk or high or banging on about Gabe, such fun to be around. It was like asking a starving lion to walk away from a juicy gazelle that was practically throwing itself into his jaws.

‘Light another joint for me, would you angel?’ Logan blew him a kiss from the hay bales. ‘I’m so hyper right now.’

‘You’re not hyper, you’re drunk,’ said Seb. ‘And none of you should be smoking in here. One stray spark and this whole place would go up like a box of fireworks.’

‘Oh, give it a rest, Granddad.’ Liam Docherty, the new gardener’s boy up at Furlings, sidled up to Logan with a fat, ready-rolled joint in his hand. Lighting it for her, he inhaled once deeply himself before handing it over. ‘Who invited this killjoy anyway?’

Like most of the boys in the village, Liam fancied the pants off his boss’s daughter. Unlike most of them, he had daily opportunity to get close to Logan, and hadn’t given up hope of eventually charming her into bed. Liam was eighteen but looked younger, thanks to a pale complexion and freckles that gave him the look of a naughty schoolboy. But all Logan’s friends agreed there was something sexy about him, a certain cocksure Irish confidence.