When She Was Bad... (12 page)

‘I was born here, and I grew up here. And, yes, I have been living here while you’ve been in America with Christina’s relatives.’

‘I know that,’ Becky said, giving her a warm smile. ‘And I really don’t see why you should move out. There’s plenty of room here. I’m only

one person …

Victoria held up a hand. ‘Thank you, Rebecca. Very kind,’ she said shortly, ‘but Uncle Henry and I have our own house. Tempting though

it is to be. offered guest rooms at Fairfield, I think we’ll stay there.’ ‘Sure. Whatever you want. You’re always welcome, though.’ ‘Very good of you,’ Uncle Henry said thinly.

Becky was silent. There was no avoiding it. They hated her. Everything she did pissed them off.

Well, she told herself, at least I tried. I can’t do any more than that.

She forked the chicken into her mouth quietly. Forget making conversation. Why should she bother?

Aunt Victoria led her back into the library after dinner. She had laid out a large stack of papers on a “walnut desk.

‘You must be tired, but if you could, please review and sign these when you get a chance. They are trust papers from the trustees. Now it has matured, you must sign off in order to claim your beneficiary status. I have included some maps of the house, names of the staff and other things of that sort to help you to settle in. Your uncle’s phone number is listed there - you may call us if you have questions, or need help. The result of the legal battle with Lord Lancaster, your second cousin, is listed in there, too.’

Ah, yes. Lord Lancaster, her second cousin Rnpert. He had tried, and

failed, to get Fairfield. Thank God.

‘Thank you. I’ll look at them.’

‘The address to which to post them is listed on your confact sheet. If you want anything, ring the bell for Mrs Morecambe. Her bedroom is just below yours on the first floor. You’ll need to tell her if you’re expecting breakfast, that sort of thing.’

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‘I will. Tharak you.’ Becky remembered what they had said. ‘Very very kind.’

‘And now,’ Aunt Victoria said briskly, taking her husband’s hand as though to tug him out like a dog on a leash, ‘Uncle Henry and I are going to our home. I hope you had a pleasant evening and you like Fairfield.’

‘Yes, thanks. And I love it. I love Fairfield.’

‘Well, of course you do,’ Aunt Victoria said, as though she were some kind of simpleton. ‘Rebecca. Everybody loves Fairfield. Goodnight.’

‘Night, Aunt Victoria, Uncle Henry,’ said Becky. She made no move to hug them. She was quite sure it wouldn’t be welcome.

She followed them out to the Hall, shook hands, and watched them climb into a stately 1Lolls-tkoyce and drive away. Her aunt did not turn around and wave goodbye.

‘Will you be wantlng anything else, Miss Becky?’

Becky turned to see Mrs Morecambe hovering by her elbow. ‘No, thank you.’ It felt awkward having a servant. Aunt Mindy had a maid come once a week, and that was about all. But that was this woman’s job. What was she going to do, fire her? ‘Let me help you clear up.’

‘Oh, no, miss.’ The older woman looked shocked. ‘I already did all that. Let me get you a hot chocolate at least. You’ve had a busy day.’

Suddenly Becky found she wanted to cry. It was the first kind thing

anybody had said to her since she landed. She swallowed.

‘Thanks, that’d be nice,’ she said. ‘

She closed the door behind her and glanced around. Now she was practically alone in this vast, old place, she expected it to be a little spooky. But it wasn’t, The portraits of her ancestors seemed warm and friendly. The grandfather clock was beautiful. She loved books, and the house was overflowing with them. Even the flagstone floors of the entryway seemed warm and comforting.

Maybe it was the ghost of her father. This was the home he had wanted her to have. The place she was born to. Aunt Victoria had been born to it, too, but it wasn’t hers. Becky understood how she must hate that. But if Victoria refused to share, she thought with an arrogant little toss of her head, she, Becky, wasn’t going to eat her heart out over it. And she wasn’t going to sell it to her either.

Fairfield’s mine, Becky told herself. And it’s going to stay that way.

Mrs Morecambe, smiling, brought her a large mug of warm, soothing hot chocolate.

‘Mr Morecambe takes care of the grounds, miss. He can lay a fire in here if you want.’

68

‘That’s OK, really. I’m not going to stay up long. And thanks so much for this,’ Becky said, smiling at her. ‘I don’t need anything else tonight.’

‘Goodnight, then, miss,’ Mrs Morecambe said, nodding and backing out.

She was amazed. The young lady had manners, very nice manners. Mrs Morecambe liked to see it. She was well disposed to like her. anyway for upsetting that old witch Mrs Whitlock, who never thanked you properly for anything and was always ringing the bloody bell late at night. Imagine, a Lancaster offering to help clear the table! It was a wonder, that was what it was. Mrs Morecambe felt a pang of pity as she laboriously made her way up the stairs. Mrs Whitlock was already drowning the young lady in papers. No doubt she’d soon give up and move out. Nobody resisted Mrs Whitlock for long.

Becky curled back into the burgundy leather armchair, luxuriating in its softness. She picked up the piles of papers and began to sift through them, one at a time. Trusts … maturation … Fairfield … And then the business, Lancaster Holdings … The small print all started to blur. She would finish it another time. More important were the maps of the house. She saw there was a conservatory, a drawing room, a reading room, many bathrooms … She would have a party, and use all those dusty bedrooms and bathrooms. What was the point of having space you didn’t use?

There was a billiards room. Billiards … that was a fancy word for pool. She was good at eight-ball, played it in bars for two-dollar bets sometimes. She saw markings for two fountains, a pantry, servants’ quarters, a wine cellar and a secoad library on the first floor. It really was heaven, Becky told herself. Now she just had to find somebody to share it with.

69

‘What do you think?’ Becky asked.

She turned to Sharon Jenkins, smoothing the dress down around her waist. Sharon was twenty, and Becky, lonely and homesick during her first month in England, had happened to meet her in the village pub one night. Sharon had been a lifesaver for her. She was attending Oxford University, one of the women’s colleges, Somerville, reading English. She wore hip-hugging, bellbottomed jeans with funky little bead fringes, and tight Tshirts made for nine-year-old gifts. None of Becky’s American friends had English relatives or acquaintances outside London, and she hadn’t come to Fairfield to drive all the way down south whenever she needed some company. When she found Sharon, Sharon was blind drunk and needed scooping up and pouring into a cab. Becky struggled to lift her into the car because Sharon had a healthy, strapping, Nordic-milkmaid kind of body. The important thing, though, was that she got Sharon’s phone number. She’d called the next day, in the afternoon, to give the hangover a chance to vear off, and they went out for dinner. Finally, Becky had a friend.

‘What the hell …? You own this?’ Sharon asked, amazed, when Becky finally had the guts to invite her up to Fairfield.

‘I do. I know it’s kind of far out,’ Becky said, blushing.

‘Fuck that. Let’s hang out here all the time. It beats the hell out of our shitty little council flat,’ Sharon said robustly.

Becky had had great pleasure in introducing Sharon to her aunt when Victoria made one of her rare forays to Fairfield for dinner, with Henry trotting obediently behind her. Becky gave up trying to win her aunt’s affection after the first week - Victoria wasn’t interested in anything more than propriety. She saw her niece twice a month, no more and no less. There were no telephone calls; business was conducted through the lawyers. Becky figured she just didn’t want people to be able to say she’d abandoned her.

And then, of course, there was Fairfield. Victoria wanted her to be lonely and unhappy. That way she might give up, sell out and go back to America. They had made it very clear that that was ‘for the best’.

7°

That it was best for them went without saying. Becky knew she’d get just the minimum of human contact from her father’s sister. It had been that way throughout her childhood. Her only error had been in expecting that to change now.

‘Aunt Victoria, this is Sharon, a friend of mine. Sharon, this is Mrs Whitlock.’

‘How do you do.’ Victoria peered down her nose at Sharon, as though amazed that Becky should have a guest in the house. It was amazing. Where had she picked up this … young woman? ‘Your name is Sharon, is it? What do your people do?’

‘My dad has a butcher’s shop in Hawsham,’ Sharon said, smiling. Victoria paled, and Becky hid a small grin in her soup spoon. Sharon wasn’t fazed by Victoria. She was smart and cultured, but she also drank and smoked and loved to dance in the seedy third-rate nightclubs in the local town. Plus, she had friends. Lots of them. Guys and girls. Some of them were dweeby, some were jocks, some wanted to be politicians. Becky didn’t have that much in common with most of them, but at least she now had company. Sometimes all you wanted was a pint of cider and a plate of bangers in the pub with your ‘mates’, as Sharon called them. It made her day-to-day work in the castle bearable.

And it was work. Becky seemed to have the phone glued to her ear constantly. Untangling her rights and, more importantly, her money seemed to take for ever. She was still living on the allowance she’d been paid at her aunt’s house in the States, because nobody could work out just how much she was due. Becky found it totally frustrating. She owned Fairfield, and the raft of UK companies that was Lancaster Holdings. But they all had trustes, and debts, and shares outstanding, and she wasn’t all that sure of anything.

The lawyers told her to stop worrying her pretty little head about things.

‘Mr Henry Whitlock and Mr William Lancaster are doing a splendid job of running your interests. Simmons & Simmons are arranging for more dividend cheques to be placed in your personal account, Miss Lancaster. Why trouble yourself further?’

Mr Alexander Simmons, grey-haired and wearing a neat, worsted suit, steepled his fingers and looked at his young client expectantly.

It was unusual to have such a peach sitting in his office. He admired the tight-fitting dress with the swirly print; it was silk,-and it showed off those endless legs and the outline of a small bra. He imagined it as lacy and snapping off easily under his hand. Pale pink or strawberry red on top of those firm little breasts? And was that blonde natural? He’d love to find out.

71

Becky felt a sudden surge of annoyance.

‘I’m troubling myself because I want to take control of my own

companies,’ she said flatly. ‘But that’s ridiculous.’ Becky blinked. ‘Excuse me?’

Mr Simmons snapped back to earth, recognizing his mistake. ‘I didn’t mean ridiculous, Miss Lancaster. A natural desire, of course.’ His face showed that he thought it was anything but. ‘But … forgive me … unless you know a lot about shipping and exports, I fail to see why you

would want to run Lancaster Holdings. It is a pretty complex business.’ Becky paused.

‘You’re right, of course,’ she said. ‘I’ll research it, and get back to you.’

‘You do that,’ he said blandly.

Meanwhile, she had another aim in mind. Nobody wanted to acknowledge her, or take her seriously. But Becky could change their minds about that. She was here, and she was twenty-one, she had come into her trust. She had to show the Lancasters… Victoria, William, the lawyers, the corporate executives … that she was in control. Even

though they all just wanted her to go away, it wasn’t going to happen. Fighting words. But she had no idea how to do it. Sharon had come to the rescue yet again.

‘Throw a ball,’ she said one day when they were sitting in the drawing room, watching the BBC announce the latest round of power outages.

‘Throw what?’

‘A ball. A dance. You got the dance floor, you got a perfect place to set up a marquee … all the toffs do it. Sixteen, eighteen, twenty-one, hunt balls, any excuse really.’ Sharon scrutinized her friend, imagining the cool East Coast babe in a posh ballgown. ‘ou’d be a big hit. And you’d be the hostess. They’d all have to come. After that, they’d all have to write you thank-you letters. My sister in Cheltenham’s a caterer. It’d be a great party, and afterwards, you could hang out with some of your own kind of people.’

‘You’re my kind of people.’

‘In one way,’ Sharon said, without malice, ‘not in another.’ Becky was quiet, because she knew it was true. ‘Could you help me with that?’

‘Absolutely. And,’ said Sharon, who always refused to accept a penny from Becky, ‘you can get me a dress.’

‘You’re going to wear a ballgown?’

72

‘Maybe,’ Sharon admitted.

Becky looked sceptically at Sharon’s orange and blue eyeshadow. ‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’

But she was excited. A ball. How very limey that was. And Sharon was one hundred per cent tight - all her stiff-necked relatives would have to attend. They’d see she was here to stay. And if Becky was honest, a tiny little voice in the back of her mind said that Sharon was right about something else, too. She did want to mix with her own people. Maybe that made her a snob. Maybe she was as bad as Aunt Victoria. But she couldn’t help it. Part of her wanted to see the world her father had been born into, to force those people to notice her. Accept her.

‘Let’s do it,’ she said.

It took two months to organize. Becky travelled down to London on a rickety BI, train and took a cab to Smythson’s, in Bond Street, to get just the right heavy, creamy paper for her invitations. She went to Dabett’s for the party decorations, and personally selected each paper lantern, floating candle and sparkling web of fairy lights. Zeile’s handled the flowers, Sharon’s sister had charge of the food, and that just left the dress. Becky had gone everywhere from Chanel to Harrods before finding a perfect creation in a vintage-costume shop off the King’s load.