The Queen of New Beginnings (11 page)

Lost in the depths of his extraordinary blue eyes, and thinking that she could never love anyone else as much as she loved Rufus, she whispered, “OK.”

He smiled and she felt something well up inside her. Then her heart exploded. She had never seen him smile at her quite that way before. Was she imagining it, or was it possible that she’d got it wrong, that he could love her?

“Pork pie anyone?”

Alice started at Tasha’s voice. She’d forgotten that they weren’t alone. She’d forgotten everything, that they were miles from anywhere stuck in a freezing cold car, waiting for her father to return. She’d even forgotten all that had gone before. All that was important was the way Rufus had smiled at her.

And the way he was still smiling at her.

Money was a peculiar thing. Some people never referred to it, while others, like Tasha, were always going on about it.

George gave the impression of not having a bean to her name but the rumour was she was loaded. She had lived at Well House since time began and whenever something went wrong with the place, she fixed the problem herself. It was patched up like a ragged patchwork cushion and inside it was even untidier than Cuckoo House.

She grew most of what she ate, and occasionally kept pigs and sheep. For as long as Alice could remember, George had supplied her family with eggs and when she was home from school and the weather was fine, it had been Alice’s job to fetch them. When it rained George would make the delivery herself in her Morris Minor.

Tasha didn’t always go with Alice to fetch the eggs; she said she didn’t like the smell of George’s house. The chickens the old woman kept were given free rein to roam wherever they pleased and that included the house. It seemed perfectly normal to Alice to share a chair with a fluffy bantam but Tasha thought it was anything but normal. She also doubted that George had any money. “If she really was sitting on a pile of money, don’t you think she’d use it to do something about the hovel she lives in?” she argued. “Not to mention do something about her awful appearance.”

“Her priorities aren’t the same as other people’s,” Alice tried to explain. She rather liked the way George lived. The woman didn’t seem to give a damn about anything. She just quietly got on with enjoying her life. She never bothered anyone else and in return expected others not to bother her.

In contrast, Tasha had always given the impression that there was plenty of money in her family—there were aunts, uncles and grandparents who, in Tasha’s own words, were all amazingly well off. Alice had met a number of these relatives in the three years since her father had married Julia, and their lives did indeed appear quite glamorous compared to theirs; they regularly jetted off on exotic holidays to the Caribbean and the ski slopes of France and Switzerland. Sometimes they invited Julia and Tasha and Rufus to join them. One aunt had extended an invitation to include Alice but two days before they were due to go away, Alice had developed an ear infection and the doctor had banned her from flying for fear of her perforating her eardrum.

When Alice’s mother had been alive, family holidays had been non-existent. Her parents hadn’t cared for the concept; they were perfectly happy to stay at home. They had encouraged Alice to go on the various trips school offered but as far as they were concerned they already spent enough time away from Cuckoo House—her father travelling the world taking photographs and her mother travelling backwards and forwards to London every week. It was a way of life Alice had never once questioned. After all, she was quite happy with how things were. Tasha said she was too easygoing for her own good. Maybe she was. Maybe that was why she hadn’t questioned Tasha’s assertion that her mother was as wealthy as the rest of her family. Once or twice Rufus had even hinted that Alice’s father had married Julia for her money.

But yesterday afternoon, when Alice had overheard a conversation between Rufus and his mother, that assertion was proved wrong.

Home from university for the Easter holidays—he was now studying medicine in London—Rufus had been asking his mother for money to buy a car now that he’d passed his driving test. Alice hadn’t intended to listen in on the conversation but there was something in Julia’s tone that made her hover behind the slightly open door.

“I can’t, Rufus,” Alice had heard his mother say. “I simply don’t have the money to buy you a car.”

“What do you mean you don’t have the money? What about Dad’s money?”

“It really wasn’t that much, and what there was has gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Please don’t badger me. And you must promise not to tell Natasha anything about this. I don’t want her upset.”

“But Mum, you’re not seriously telling me there’s nothing of what Dad left us?”

“I’ve already told you, there wasn’t that much, what with death duties and—”

“To hell with death duties! Dad wouldn’t have done this to us. I know he wouldn’t.”

“Rufus, please, just leave things be.”

“No! No I won’t! Tell me exactly where the money has gone. Oh my God, you’re not saying that fool of a man you married, the man who has as much financial acumen as a racoon, has taken it from you, are you? Because if that’s the case, I’ll bloody well—”

“Calm down, Rufus. Bruce hasn’t done anything. But darling, these things are complicated. Why can’t you just accept that our life is very different from how it used to be?”

“Please don’t patronize me, Mum. Just tell me the truth.”

There was a sigh, a rustle, and then: “Rufus, the truth of the matter is, your father left us barely any money at all. I’m sorry, but he just wasn’t the successful businessman you thought he was. In fact, he should never have gone into business; he really wasn’t suited to it. He was too quick to think well of people and in turn, sadly those people were only too quick to take advantage of his good will.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Because you adored your father and I didn’t want you to think badly of him.”

There was a long pause and then Rufus said, “Why did you marry Bruce?”

“Why do you think? I wanted a secure future for you and Natasha.”

“But your family…Dad’s family, they would have helped us. Surely, you only had to ask and they would have—”

“I didn’t want them to know the truth,” Julia interrupted. “I don’t want them treating us as the poor branch of the family. Can you honestly say you would have welcomed them looking down on us?”

“So what you’re saying is that you married a raving lunatic to save face?”

“Yes.”

“In that case, I’ll ask Bruce to buy me a car.”

Rufus’s voice was flat.

At the sound of a long silence and then crying—Julia crying—Alice had crept silently away to her bedroom. She had lain on the bed, her hands clasped behind her head as she stared up at the ceiling. Had her father any inkling of what he’d got himself into?

• • •

It was the first warm and sunny day of April, and Alice and Tasha were walking to Well House to fetch some eggs for Mrs. Randall, who had promised to make Alice her favourite lemon drizzle cake. Having kept what she knew to herself for two whole days, Alice was bursting with the need to tell Tasha what she’d overheard. But on a sudden whim to accompany her, Tasha was talking nineteen to the dozen and there wasn’t a hope of getting a word in edgeways. Perhaps it was just as well. Better to let Tasha believe in a lie than know the truth. Besides, they had more important things to think about.

When she and Natasha returned to school after the Easter break they would have their GCSEs to get through. If all went to plan, they were planning on taking the same A-level subjects and then going onto university together to study English Literature. After they graduated they would then get a place at drama school in London—Guildhall was their first choice. They had sent off for all the relevant information and whenever Alice looked at the prospectus for Guildhall, she experienced a shivery thrill.

Tasha had been all for skipping university and going straight to drama school, but Rufus had stepped in and advised against it. “What if you don’t make it in the acting world?” he’d asked. “What then? A degree will be a great fallback option.”

Alice suspected that the reason Tasha had suggested what she had was because exams didn’t come easily to her. “I’m not like you,” she often grumbled to Alice. “You have a photographic memory.”

This wasn’t strictly true. Yes, Alice had a good memory, but the way she learned things was by reading them to herself in a voice inside her head other than her own. For maths she had her father’s megaphone voice booming inside her head; for biology and chemistry it was Rufus’s voice, and for all the remaining subjects she mimicked her teachers’ voices.

Her skill for mimicry was better than ever and Rufus loved her impersonations. She could do a great Princess of Wales and her Margaret Thatcher always made him laugh. As a joke, and at Tasha’s suggestion, she had once phoned him when he was away at university and pretended to be his mother. She had totally fooled him and it was only when he heard Tasha giggling in the background that he had realized he’d been set up. He’d seen the funny side of it, thank goodness.

She loved being able to make him laugh. When that happened, for that brief moment, it was as if she was at the centre of his world. When she acted in one of the school productions, in her mind she was acting solely for him. It wasn’t always possible for him to get away from London to come and see her and Tasha perform, but when he did, he was always generous with his praise and encouragement. He still attracted a huge amount of interest when he showed up at their school and Tasha teased him mercilessly for it. She also teased him because he didn’t have a girlfriend. He’d retaliated once by saying, “Of course I have a girlfriend; Alice is my girlfriend, isn’t that right, Alice?”

She had known that he was joking, but blushing from head to toe, she hadn’t been able to answer him. Tasha had pulled a face. “
Ee-uw
, that’s sick! Alice can’t be your girlfriend, she’s your stepsister.”

“We’re not blood related so there’s nothing sick about it,” he’d said, putting his arm around Alice and holding her tight.

Alice had no idea if Rufus knew how she felt about him, but she was determined not to reveal her feelings until she was at least eighteen. If she did it now, he’d dismiss her love out of hand. He would accuse her of childish infatuation. There were several girls in their year at school who had boyfriends three years older than they were, but as they said themselves, they were hardly serious about the relationships they were involved in. It was just a bit of fun, they said, easy come, easy go.

But Alice wanted more than that. So much more. She wanted Rufus to love her. A long time ago she had sneaked into his room while he’d been away in London and had helped herself to one of his T-shirts. She slept with it every night, breathing in the musky scent of him.

It was a two-mile walk across the fields to Well House and after a long and dreary winter, the land was showing signs of slowly coming to life. All along the hillside, gorse bushes were pinpricked with yellow and gold and in the distance newborn lambs bleated and gambolled in the sunshine.

When they reached their destination they found George at the front of the house at the top of a ladder painting a window frame. “Be with you in a tick,” she shouted down to them. “Why don’t you go inside and make yourself at home. Oh, and put the kettle on while you’re about it.”

Standing in the kitchen where haphazard piles of books, tools, pots of paint and crockery vied for space, Tasha wrinkled her nose. “How does she put up with the stink? It can’t be healthy.”

“It’s not that bad,” Alice said absently from the sink where she was filling the kettle. Through the open window, a hen that was perched on the sill outside poked its head in. “Hello,” Alice said. “And what’s your name?”

Tasha tutted. “You’re as crazy as she is.”

“Crazy as who?” asked George, coming into the kitchen. She was wearing a pair of mud-caked wellington boots and tucked into them were the baggy legs of scruffy workman’s overalls. Her short, mannish hair was partially covered by a scarf tied around her head. This was standard attire for her and it reminded Alice of those Land Girls she had seen in a history book at school. It was always possible that George had actually been a Land Girl. A very small one, at that. The top of her head was on a level with Alice’s shoulder.

“As nuts as a girl in our class at school,” Alice ad-libbed diplomatically.

George put the paintbrush she’d been using into a jam jar of murky-coloured liquid on the kitchen table. “You’re the least crazy person I know, Alice,” she said. “I’d go so far as to say you’re sanest person I know. How’s that father of yours? Home or away?”

“Just back from a trip of Iceland.”

“Be sure to give him my regards. Now then, who’s for a cup of coffee? I have some shortbread knocking around somewhere.”

“We can’t really stop for long,” Tasha said. “We just came for the eggs.”

George swivelled round to look at Tasha, as if she had only just noticed she was in the room. “In that case, don’t let me keep you. The eggs are in the box in the usual place.”

“I’m sure we could stay for a few minutes,” Alice placated. She was fond of George. She had the uneasy feeling, though, that George didn’t care for Tasha too much.

“All right,” Tasha conceded grudgingly and thew Alice one of her looks—the look that said,
What on earth were you thinking?
“But we can’t stay too long; we’ve got revision to do.”

George muttered something Alice didn’t catch and went over to the kettle that was now boiling.

• • •

Tasha was in a tetchy mood when they left to go home. “There’s no excuse for that woman allowing herself to live in such squalor. The crime of it is, that house could actually be turned into something half decent. If it was mine, I’d spend a fortune on it and make it really special.”

“It’s her house,” Alice said quietly. “She can live how she wants to.”

“I could understand it if she really was poor,” Tasha carried on. “But you said yourself, she’s got money. Lots of it.”

“What? Like your family?”

Tasha turned her head sharply. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothing’s up with me.”

“Yes there is. You’re in a foul mood.”

“No I’m not. I just don’t like you criticising George. What harm has she ever done to you?”

“Well, if that’s how you feel, I shan’t bother to come with you again. To be honest, it will be a massive relief. Mum’s never been happy about me going inside that house. She reckons it has more germs than a public lavatory.”

“But she’s happy enough to eat George’s eggs,” Alice muttered.

“What’s got into you? You’re being a right bitch!”

On the verge of saying something she knew she would regret, Alice clamped her lips tightly shut and walked on fast. Until now she hadn’t realized just how angry Julia and Rufus’s conversation had made her feel. Her father was being used. He was nothing but a source of money to Julia. OK, he had his faults, Alice would be the first to admit that, but did he deserve to be conned?