The Inheritance (43 page)

His own wife, inviting that little witch to Furlings, after everything she’d done to try to hurt them and destroy their family! Wasn’t it enough that Tatiana had brainwashed and married Jason? That she’d now enticed Logan to live under her roof as well? That she made no secret of her desire to get Furlings back eventually, by fair means or foul?

If Angela really loved him, she would never have done it. It was an insult, designed to wound him. And it had wounded him. Deeply. All Brett had ever wanted, deep down, was a family. A place where he could be safe, where he could feel like a true insider for once in his life. He’d worked like a dog to create that, and to provide for his family. And now here he was on the outside, looking in. It was hard not to feel bitter.

Brett re-read his itinerary gloomily. He left London in three days. What the hell was he going to do until then? He’d have liked to work, but the real-estate market was dead as a doornail now and would be until after the New Year. Everybody else, apparently, had families to go home to or Christmas parties to attend. Not that Brett was short of invitations. What he lacked was desire or enthusiasm or even physical energy. Ever since he heard the news about Tati, he’d felt desperately tired. He felt like a champion boxer, hotly tipped to win, suddenly collapsing against the ropes in the tenth round through sheer fatigue.

Tatiana Flint-Hamilton was beating him, against all the odds.

She was wearing him down.

There was only one thing Brett Cranley wanted for Christmas. And neither his Serbian secretary, nor anyone else, could give it to him.

Logan Cranley ran up Furlings’ drive with flushed cheeks, as delighted as a child on its birthday. It had snowed last night: not just a pale, half-hearted dusting, like icing sugar on a waffle, but a fully fledged dump of thick, heavy snow, like the frosting on a wedding cake. She and Tom had rushed out onto the lawn as soon as they’d woken up and made snowmen. Logan had given Tom’s an enormous erection, which they’d both thought screamingly funny, especially when it kept falling off. Tom had been more successful moulding a pair of tits onto Logan’s effort, complete with holly-berry nipples. Snow brought out the kid in everyone. It was impossible not to feel happy and Christmassy and excited on a day like today, and Logan was indulging her inner child with shameless delight.

The village also looked utterly magical, like a ravishing Christmas bride. Its snowy rooftops, punctured only by smoking chimneys and St Hilda’s stone spire, topped cottages cheerfully decked out with wreaths and berries and brightly twinkling strings of lights. Children sledged on the Downs, their shrieks mingling with the beautiful sound of the church bells pealing. And on the snowy green, an enormous Christmas tree hung with baubles of every size and colour sparkled enticingly, a cheerful reminder of the celebrations and feasting to come.

Logan had forgotten how much she loved it here. Or rather, how much she used to love it, before the fire at Wraggsbottom Farm and the humiliation that followed. But this Christmas, for the first time, she felt better. Laura Baxter’s kindness, inviting her down to meet Felix and forgiving her for everything, had been a huge step forward, relieving Logan of part of her guilt. Then, yesterday, she’d run into Gabe in the village stores. He was buying tinsel and, after a moment’s hesitation, had smiled broadly when he saw her and given her a hug.

‘Hello you,’ he grinned. ‘How’s London?’

‘Erm, nice.’ Logan blushed, but it was out of awkwardness rather than desire. In dirty jeans and a thick fisherman’s sweater, Gabe looked as craggily handsome as ever. But he no longer had the mesmeric hold on her that had consumed her through her early teens. ‘It’s lovely to be back, though. Fittlescombe’s so perfect at Christmas.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Gabe agreed. ‘I hear you brought a boyfriend down.’

My goodness
, thought Logan. She’d forgotten quite how fast gossip travelled in this village.

‘You should bring him over to the farm some time. See what we’ve done with the place. Everything’s been rebuilt since the fire, courtesy of your pa.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Logan blushed again.

‘Don’t be,’ said Gabe. ‘All’s well that ends well. You should see the stables now. They’re so state of the art, they look like something out of
Buck Rogers
.’

‘Who’s Buck Rogers?’ asked Logan.

‘Never mind,’ Gabe laughed. ‘I’m old. Good to see you anyway, kiddo. Merry Christmas.’

Logan had stood and watched him dart out into the cold with the last of Mrs Preedy’s tinsel under his arm and felt a profound sense of relief. Gabe didn’t hold a grudge. And she didn’t fancy him. Well, not much anyway. It was the best Christmas present she could have wished for.

Or perhaps it was the second best. What she really wanted, deep down, was to have her father back. Not that she necessarily wanted to move back home permanently – she loved her life in London, loved MPW, and most of all loved Tom. But she wished she could wave a magic wand and heal the rift between herself and Brett, along with her parents’ foundering marriage. That she could come down to Furlings at weekends and holidays and that everything would be back to normal. Everyone was glossing over it, but Logan wasn’t stupid. Brett not coming home for Christmas was a big deal, the biggest. It had to be the beginning of the end.

Finally reaching the house, she burst in through the kitchen door, red faced and panting.

‘What on earth’s the matter?’ said Angela. Wearing a reindeer apron, and with her hands and arms elbow-deep in flour, so thick that she looked as if she were wearing white gloves, Angela was rolling out the pastry for another batch of mince pies. Yesterday’s attempt had been, as Tom rather tactlessly put it, ‘a bit cement-y’. Not that this had prevented him from eating an entire bowlful.

‘Gossip!’ Logan breathed heavily. ‘You’ll never guess.’

‘Gringo’s got the vicar’s bitch pregnant and he’s suing your dad for damages,’ suggested Tom, who up till that point had been deep in last week’s
Sunday Times
Sudoku at the kitchen table.

‘Wrong,’ beamed Logan. ‘Besides, anyone would be ecstatic if their dog had Gringo’s puppies. He’s a legend.’

The legend farted quietly from his basket by the Aga.

‘Terrorists have moved into Fittlescombe and are turning the village hall into a jihadi training camp.’

‘No, stop being silly,’ said Logan. Turning to her mother she announced, ‘Mr Bingley’s got engaged!’

Angela tightened her grip on the pastry cutter she was using for the mince-pie lids. ‘Who told you that?’

‘He did!’ said Logan. ‘He was at the WI stall buying parsnips or swedes or something horrid – I think she’s vegan, his fiancée – and he said hello and then he just told me. I mean really, at his age! What’s the point?’

‘He’s not that old,’ mumbled Angela.

‘Oh
Mum.
’ Logan laughed. ‘He’s ancient.’

‘Who’s Mr Bingley?’ asked Tom, not looking up from his puzzle.

‘My old headmaster,’ said Logan. ‘He’s nice but he’s terribly strict and sort of, stiff. You can’t imagine him getting married. Can you, Mum?’

‘Well, I … yes, I can imagine it,’ said Angela. She was surprised by how thrown-off she was by Logan’s news. ‘I’m a little surprised. He and Stella have been together for years. I suppose I thought, assumed, that they were happy as they were.’

‘Living in sin, you mean?’ said Logan. ‘I can’t imagine old Bingley doing that either.’

‘Must you talk like a tabloid reporter, darling?’ chided Angela. ‘Damn it!’

She looked down. Blood was gushing from her finger where she’d sliced it on the pastry cutter, staining the pastry pink.

‘Quick, put it under the tap,’ said Tom, leaping up and thrusting Angela’s hand over the sink while he turned on the icy water.

‘I’ll get you a plaster,’ said Logan, opening the drawer next to the fridge where the first-aid supplies, such as they were, were kept. Angela watched as the blood trickled onto the white porcelain and swirled down the drain. ‘What happened?’

‘I don’t know. My hand slipped I suppose. I’m fine. It’s nothing, really.’ Drying her hand on a tea towel, she applied the proffered plaster and returned to her mince pies. She’d have to start again now, she thought with a sigh. All of a sudden, her heart wasn’t in it.

‘They’ll be at the Live Crib on Christmas Eve anyway,’ said Logan, returning to her gossip like a dog to an unfinished bone, now that the mini-drama was over. ‘I said we’d see them there. Tati and Jason will be here too by then, so we can all ogle the engagement ring. Do you think he gave her a big one?’

‘Nightly, I suspect,’ Tom couldn’t resist. Giggling, Logan came over and sat on his lap.

Everyone’s happy
, thought Angela wistfully.
Max and Stella, Logan and Tom. Even Jason and Tatiana seem to have settled down.
She thought about herself and Brett, and what they’d both somehow managed to lose. She missed him, or at least, she missed what they had once had together. Live Crib, Fittlescombe’s annual Christmas celebration of the Nativity, complete with local farm animals, was truly a time for family.

Please God
,
she found herself praying, as she poured yet more flour into the mixing bowl.
Make me happy again. Show me the way.

Outside the kitchen window, snow began to fall.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Reverend Slaughter looked happily around his packed church and wondered if the BBC South East television crew would have a sufficiently good view of his new crimson robes when he gave the opening address.

Not that Live Crib was about him, of course. Like all St Hilda’s services and celebrations, its purpose was to honour The Lord. Fittlescombe’s famous Nativity-service-cum-carol-concert was also very much about the children, many of whom had already huddled excitedly around the altar-side pen that housed the goats, the sheep and Wilbur, Gabe Baxter’s decrepit but ever-popular donkey. Even so, knowing that the event would almost certainly make the local news, Reverend Slaughter had splashed out on a new set of Christmas cassocks in crimson, magenta and gold that he flattered himself lent an air of pomp and ceremony to proceedings. Even if they couldn’t quite match the glamour of some of the village’s more famous parishioners, all of whom had turned out in force on this beautiful, snowy Christmas Eve.

Emma Harwich, a local beauty turned supermodel, currently gracing the front page of
Vogue
in an outfit that left little to the imagination, other than leaving readers to wonder how quickly its wearer might contract hypothermia, had turned up in a demure floor-length belted coat, to the vicar’s immense relief. Admittedly she had teamed this with sky-high stiletto boots and sunglasses, no doubt to block out the glare of the softly flickering candlelight. Either that or so she didn’t have to watch the very obvious public display of affection between her mother, Penny, and her second husband, the local cricketing heart-throb Santiago de la Cruz. Emma herself was hand in hand with a preposterously good-looking boy, a Hollywood actor apparently, although Reverend Slaughter had never heard of him. Axel something or other. In any event, he was rumoured to be the star of the new Gucci campaign and Emma’s latest love interest, both of which facts drew him any number of lustful and/or envious stares.

A few rows behind the Harwiches sat the Drummonds, a famous British theatrical dynasty with an exquisite medieval mill house on the Swell just outside Fittlescombe. Reverend Slaughter couldn’t quite see from the pulpit, but one of their Christmas house guests looked awfully like Dame Judi Dench, muffled up in red Jaeger coat. If it were Dame Judi, he absolutely must get her autograph.

Opposite the Drummonds, to the left of the nave, sat the local MP, Piers Renton-Chambers and his new young wife, a horsey-looking heiress from Hampshire called Jane Drew. In a floor-length mink that must have cost a not-so-small fortune, Jane was drawing plenty of attention, as were the other local soon-to-be-newlyweds, Max Bingley and Stella Goye, who sat beside them.

In the nearly seven years since Max had taken over as headmaster at St Hilda’s Primary School, the village had taken him to its collective heart. Harry Hotham, the old headmaster, had been a tough act to follow. But Max had worked wonders with the tiny village school, transforming it into the highest-ranked state primary in Sussex. Property prices in the St Hilda’s catchment area, already high, had skyrocketed, earning Max still more friends among the locals. It seemed funny now to think that Max Bingley had been a grieving widower when he’d arrived in Fittlescombe. He looked deeply content this evening. Little by little, local potter Stella Goye had brought Max back to life. Many people thought them an odd couple, with Max so straight-laced and conservative and Stella so hippyish and free-spirited. But clearly the relationship worked, and now their surprise engagement was the talk of the village.

Or at least, it had been, until Fittlescombe’s own prodigal daughter had decided to return to the village fold, just in time for Christmas.

Looking at Tatiana Cranley, as she was now, throwing her head back and laughing in the front pew, dripping in diamonds like the Queen of Sheba, Reverend Slaughter tried not to think uncharitable thoughts. Everyone in Fittlescombe had adored Tatiana’s father, Rory Flint-Hamilton. There were many who would never forgive or forget what Tatiana put the old man through in his declining years. The drugs, the sex, the scandals – all played out in excruciating detail by a salivating tabloid press.

Of course, that
was
a long time ago now. During her brief tenure as a teacher at the village school under Max Bingley, Tatiana had begun to win back the respect of the locals, only to blow everything up again by running off with the impressionable young Cranley boy on the very day he came into his trust fund.

Reverend Slaughter observed the two of them, Jason and Tatiana, leaning into one another, sharing a joke with Jason’s younger sister Logan in the front row. He had to admit, five years in, the marriage did seem to be working, against all the odds. Much like Tatiana’s schools empire – Hamilton Hall was rarely out of the papers these days. If things carried on at this rate, the younger Cranleys would soon be as wealthy as their parents. The vicar had already planned to approach them later this evening about a donation to the church roof fund, suspending his disapproval of Tatiana for the greater good of the parish, as a village vicar so often must.