How to Find Love in a Book Shop(22)

He was right, though. The folly did need attention. It was on the outer edge of the estate, high on a hill behind a patch of woodland. An octagon made of crumbling ginger stone, it was straight out of a fairy tale, smothered in ivy and cobwebs. It had been neglected for years. Inside, the plaster was falling off the walls, the floorboards were rotten and the glass doors were coming off their hinges. There was just an old sofa, steeped in damp and mildew. Sarah could smell it now, its comforting mustiness mixed with the scent of his skin. She’d never minded the insalubrious surroundings. To her, it could have easily been the George V or the Savoy.

She didn’t want anyone else going in there.

‘Let’s just shut off the path to the folly for the time being,’ she told Dillon.

She thought of all the times she had been along it, the tiny woodland path that led up the hill to their meeting place. He would park his car in the gateway on the back road, behind a tumbledown shed. The road was barely used except by the odd farmer, so with luck no one had ever noticed. Although sometimes drunk drivers used it as a rat run from the pub, and it only took one person to put two and two together …

She couldn’t worry about it. It was almost irrelevant now, and certainly no one could prove anything. She tried to put it out of her mind and concentrate on the wedding instead. As the mother of the bride, it should be her priority. But it seemed to be organising itself. There didn’t seem to be the usual hysteria that accompanied most weddings. They had plenty of experience, after all: Peasebrook Manor had had a wedding licence for some years, and it was one of the things that had filled the gaping coffers, so when it came to organising a wedding for one of their own, they were well prepared. And Alice wasn’t a highly strung, demanding bride-to-be. Far from it. As far as Alice was concerned, as long as everyone she loved was there, and there was enough champagne and cake, it would be a perfect day.

‘I don’t want fuss and wedding favours, Mum. You know I hate all that. It’s perfect to be getting married at home, with everyone here. What can go wrong? We can do this with our eyes shut.’

Alice. The apple of her eye. Alice, who treated life like one long Pony Club camp, but with cocktails. Alice, whose sparkle drew everyone to her and whose smile never seemed to fade. Sarah could not have been more proud of her daughter, and her need to protect her was primal. Though Alice was quite able to look after herself. She was charmed. She strode through life, plumply luscious, in her uniform of too-tight polo shirt, jeans and Dubarrys, her flaxen hair loose and wild, face free from make-up, always slightly pink in her rush to get from one thing to the next.

There had been a couple of years of worry (as if she’d needed more worry!), when Alice had gone off to agricultural college to do estate management – she was, after all, the heir to Peasebrook Manor, so it seemed logical, but she failed, spectacularly, two years running. She had never been academic, and the course seemed beyond her. Of course there was too much partying going on, but the other students seemed to manage.

So Alice came home, and was put to work, and it suddenly became abundantly clear that running Peasebrook Manor was what she had been put on earth to do. She had vision and energy and a gut feeling for what would work and what the public wanted. Somehow the locals felt included in Peasebrook Manor, as if it were theirs. She had been the mastermind behind converting the coach house in the middle of the stable yard into a gift shop selling beautiful things you didn’t need but somehow desperately wanted, and a tea room which sold legendary fruit scones the size of your fist. And she was brilliant at orchestrating events. In the last year there’d been open-air opera, Easter Egg hunts, and a posh car boot sale. She was thinking of running children’s camps the following year: Glastonbury meets Enid Blyton.

And the most exciting upcoming event, of course, was Alice’s own wedding, to be held at the end of November. She couldn’t have a summer wedding, because they were too busy holding them for other people.

‘Anyway,’ said Alice, with typical optimism. ‘I’d much prefer a winter wedding. Everything all frosty and glittery. Lots of ivy and lots of candles.’

She was to marry Hugh Pettifer, a handsome hedge fund manager who set hearts a-flutter when he raced through the lanes in his white supercharged sports car, bounding from polo match to point-to-point.

If Sarah had her doubts about Hugh, she never voiced them. He was perfect on paper. And utterly charming. She supposed it was her maternal need to protect Alice that made her wary. She had no evidence that Hugh was anything other than devoted. His manners were faultless, he mucked in at family events, he was thoughtful, and if he partied hard, then all Alice’s crowd did. They were young and beautiful and wealthy – why shouldn’t they have fun? And Hugh worked hard. He earned good money. He wasn’t a freeloader. And anyway, if he was looking for a meal ticket, he wouldn’t get one from the Basildons. They were classic asset rich/cash poor. If anything, they needed him more than he needed them.

So Sarah kept any doubts about Hugh to herself. She had to learn to let go. It was time to hand Alice over. She would still be very much part of life at Peasebrook Manor – it would fall apart without her – but she was a woman in her own right. And Sarah wasn’t gold-digging on Alice’s behalf. It would be nice for her to have a husband who could support her when the time came for her to have children. Sarah was in no doubt of her daughter’s capabilities, but she knew how deep the pressures dug. And nobody could deny that money didn’t make things easier, especially when it came to motherhood.