Anything but Vanilla(53)

Distant, detached, uninvolved...

Her instinct was to throw her arms around him and give him a hug. It was what her mother would have done. It was what Ria would have done, but her own emotional response had been in lockdown for so long that she didn’t know how to break through the body-language barrier he’d thrown up to ward off any expression of pity.

‘You’re a travelling family,’ she said, because she had to say something.

‘We travel. We were never a family.’ He shook his head once, as if to clear away the memory. ‘Shall we go?’ he asked, abruptly. ‘I’ll follow you.’

‘Right.’

Heart sinking at having triggered bad memories, she walked to her van. By the time she’d backed out he was waiting for her to take the lead, and as she drew alongside him she lowered the window and said, ‘If we get separated by traffic head for Longbourne.’

She half expected him to suggest she’d be better off having tea with her financial advisor, which was undoubtedly true. The only danger Graeme represented was his prejudice against anything to do with Ria.

‘Longbourne?’ he repeated. No excuses, just surprise. ‘I thought you lived at Haughton Manor.’

‘That’s my big sister. Sean is the estate manager and Scoop! rents an office in a converted stable block. No concessions for family,’ she added. And then it hit her. ‘It was your father who had the affair with Ria?’

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

‘That’s why you feel responsible. Was she the woman on the boat?’

He shook his head. ‘It happened years ago, when my parents were still married. She was an intern working at WPG. Young, lovely, full of life, I imagine, and, from everything I know about him, exactly the kind of girl to catch my father’s eye.’

‘He married her?’ she asked, stunned.

‘Oh, no. She wasn’t a keeper. She was too young, too innocent, too besotted to play that game.’

Too young for it to end well, obviously.

‘What happened?’

‘It’s Ria’s story. You’ll have to ask her.’ He was rescued by a toot from an impatient guest. ‘We’re blocking the car park.’

She glanced over her shoulder, raised a hand in apology and then said, ‘If we get separated, drive straight through the village, past the common and you’ll find Gable End about a hundred yards past the village pond on the right hand side.’ Then, since the name was faded almost out of sight, ‘White trim. Pink roses round the door.’

‘It sounds idyllic,’ he said, clearly wishing he’d let her walk away with Graeme.

‘No comment, but if we’re lucky there’ll be a beer in the fridge.’

* * *

Alexander followed Sorrel through the posts of a gate that sagged drunkenly against the overgrown bushes crowding the entrance.

Blousy pink roses rambled over a porch, scattering petals like confetti and lending a certain fairy-tale quality to the scene, but closer inspection revealed that the paintwork was peeling on the pie-crust trim. If this really were a fairy tale, the faded sign on the gate would read ‘Beware all ye who enter here...’

He’d do well to heed it. He should never have gone to Cranbrook Park. Except that he’d enjoyed being part of it, enjoyed being with Sorrel, watching her at work, teasing her a little. Being close to her.

She’d touched something deep inside him, releasing memories, a private hurt that he’d locked away. There was only one other person he’d talked to so openly about his parents, but then Ria knew his history, shared his pain.

This was different. A dangerous pleasure.

Beware...

Sorrel drove around the side of the house. Here the modern world had touched what must have once been stables; the door opened electronically as she approached and she parked beside the ice-cream van he’d seen on the website. He pulled up in the yard and went to take a closer look.

‘This is Rosie? She’s in great condition.’

‘She gets a lot of love and attention,’ she said, smiling as she ran a hand over the van’s bonnet, the same loving gesture with which she stroked the Aston’s bonnet and then, as if aware that she was being sentimental, she looked back at him. ‘You might think ice cream is frivolous, not worth bothering about, but her arrival changed our lives.’

‘That sounds like quite a story,’ he said, hoping to steer her away from what had happened to Ria.