Sowing Secrets
A Winter’s Tale
Wedding Tiers
Chocolate Wishes
Twelve Days of Christmas
The Magic of Christmas
Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues
Good Husband Material
Wish Upon a Star
Finding Mr Rochester
Every Woman for Herself
Creature Comforts
A Christmas Cracker
A Leap of Faith (previously published as The Urge to Jump)
The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
A Good Heart is Hard to Find (previously published as Singled Out)
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Trisha Ashley 2018
Cover illustration by Robyn Neild
Cover design by Beci Kelly/TW
Trisha Ashley has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
To Jen Fishler
Pure Gold
Mossby, 1914
To whoever finds this journal (presuming they do so before it crumbles into dust), some explanation is due.
Having recently, unbeknown to my dear son, Joshua, seen an eminent London doctor and had the verdict I suspected confirmed, it seems to me time to set my affairs in order.
I was in the forefront of women working in the field of stained-glass window making at the turn of the century, including the setting-up of my own workshop here at Mossby during my tragically short marriage. But my achievements in that craft are already well documented, particularly in Miss Cecilia McCrum’s recent excellent and exhaustively researched publication, A Brief History of Women Artists in Glass.
However, little has been written about my private life and this journal, which I kept at the time of my marriage, will go some considerable way to explaining my reticence until now in this matter.
Mossby has always held its secrets close, but it will be a relief to me to lay bare the Revell family skeletons at last, even if this book must then be secreted away.
At eighteen, I do not feel that Joshua is ready for the revelations I am about to make, particularly since his aunt Honoria, who dotes on him, has brought him up to idolize the memory of the father he never knew. But perhaps one day he will discover the secret of its hiding place for himself, in the same way I did …
Carey Revell lay on his hospital bed, propped in a semi-recumbent position by an efficient nurse and rendered temporarily speechless by the astonishing information his visitor had just imparted to him.
Though Mr Wilmslow was a country solicitor of a prosaic turn of mind and not usually given to flights of fancy, it suddenly occurred to him that with his large frame, gentian-blue eyes, thick, red-gold hair and the stubble burnishing his face, his new client resembled nothing so much as a fallen Viking warrior.
He had the typical Revell looks all right – there was no mistaking his heritage – though on a much larger and more resplendent scale.
Carey’s left leg, the flesh scarred, misshapen, patched by skin grafts, and also bearing the marks of the pins that had held it immobile in a metal cage while the shattered bones finally knitted, was mercifully hidden by loose tracksuit trousers. The nerves and muscles still twitched and jangled painfully from his earlier physiotherapy session, but the news his unexpected visitor had brought him had for once relegated this dismal symphony of discomfort to the background.
‘Do you have any questions? I know it’s a lot to take in at once,’ said Mr Wilmslow, breaking the silence.
‘Yes, it certainly is,’ agreed Carey rather numbly, wondering for an instant if he might be still under the influence of heavy painkillers and dreaming all this. His eyes dropped once more to the letter the solicitor had brought him and he read it through for the third time.
Mossby
April 2014
To Carey Revell,
I will not address you as ‘Dear Carey’ or ‘Dear Nephew’ since we have never met and nor have I ever wished to do so. I will not go into the circumstances that led to your father’s total estrangement from his family at such an early age, but suffice it to say that we were entirely disgusted when he continued to use our revered and respected family name throughout his stage career.
However, since you are the last of our branch of the Revells, and I suppose retribution for my brother’s sins need not be visited upon his son, I feel it only right that you should inherit Mossby in your turn. I am signing a will to this effect today, my ninety-first birthday. My solicitor, Mr Wilmslow, will give you this letter of explanation after my decease.
Do not think I am bequeathing you great wealth, a mansion and a vast estate, for Mossby is a modest country residence, much of it rebuilt in the Arts and Crafts style at the end of the nineteenth century. Besides which, it has not of late received the care and attention it merits, due to the steady decline of my investment income. In fact, I have recently been forced to live on my capital.
On to your shoulders now falls the burden of finding a way to make Mossby pay its own way, before the remaining money runs out. From what I have discovered, you seem to be a young man of some enterprise.
Ella Parry, my stepdaughter by my second marriage, has been pressing me to make a will for some time, assuming, I am sure, that it would be in her favour. Due to the rift with your father, she had no idea of your existence, so was sadly disappointed when I told her of my testamentary disposition. However, I have never considered her as my daughter and, since she and her husband have for many years received handsome salaries for acting as my housekeeper and gardener respectively, besides living rent free in the Lodge, she can have no real cause for complaint. I also paid for their daughter, Vicky’s, education.
I hope you will take a pride in your heritage. You will find the family papers in the secret chamber in the Elizabethan wing, which Mr Wilmslow will show you the secret of. I always meant to sort them and write a history of the Revells of Mossby, but never got round to it. Perhaps you will do so.
Your uncle,
Francis Revell
‘Secret chamber in the Elizabethan wing?’ Carey muttered incredulously, feeling as if he’d strayed into an Enid Blyton mystery. Then he became aware that Mr Wilmslow, who was a slight, be-suited and altogether unremarkable personage to be the bearer of such astounding news, was stuffing papers back into his briefcase as a prelude to departure.
‘Among the papers I’ve given you is a copy of the will. Probate should be granted before the New Year, though you can take up residence at Mossby before that, should you wish to … Health permitting, of course,’ he added delicately.
‘I’ll be out of here before Christmas and intended staying with a friend while I decided where I wanted to live. I’ve put my old flat on the market because carrying things up four flights of stairs is going to be out of the question for quite a while,’ Carey said. ‘I’ve lost my job, too – I’ve been replaced. You know I presented The Complete Country Cottage TV series?’
He’d not only presented it, it had been his own idea … and being credited in the new series with ‘From an original concept by Carey Revell’ was not going to be much consolation. He ought to have read the fine print in his contracts more carefully – and so should his agent.
Mr Wilmslow nodded. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, but you may find Mossby just the place to convalesce, while deciding what to do next,’ he suggested, snapping the lock of the briefcase closed with some finality. ‘In the meantime, you have my card, so do contact me if anything occurs to you that you’d like to ask.’
Carey said uneasily, ‘This stepdaughter he – my uncle – mentions …’
‘Ella Parry. Her husband, Clem, is an excellent gardener. Your uncle always thought it worth putting up with Ella Parry’s cross-grained ways because he kept up the grounds almost single-handedly. She was the residuary legatee, by the way. Had you been killed in that accident just before your uncle’s death, she would have inherited all.’
‘Right,’ Carey said, thinking Ella Parry didn’t sound the most delightful person to have around the house, especially if she was bearing a grudge. But then, as his uncle’s stepdaughter, it did seem a little harsh that she had been left with nothing.
When he said so, Mr Wilmslow reassured him.
‘Your uncle was more than generous to them in his lifetime, but the situation will become clearer to you when you have taken up your residence at Mossby. It’s in the Parrys’ own interests to make themselves pleasant to you if they wish to continue their employment.’ Then he added, after a moment, ‘By the way, have you made a will of your own?’
‘Oddly enough, yes, because after the accident I lost my feeling of invincibility,’ Carey said with a wry smile. ‘I sent a friend out for one of those will forms and a couple of nurses witnessed it.’
Mr Wilmslow winced: standard template will forms such as were available at newsagents were obviously beyond the pale. ‘Well, those forms are perfectly legal, of course, but you may wish me to draw up a new one in the light of your inheritance.’
‘Yes, and in the meantime, I suppose I could add a thingummy, making Ella Parry the residuary legatee to the house, like my uncle did?’
‘A codicil? You could do so, of course, though given that Ella is now about sixty and you a young man in your thirties, we would hope you would survive her.’
‘You never know what fate has in store for you,’ Carey said darkly, then ran a distracted hand through already dishevelled thick, red-gold hair. ‘It’s all a bit sudden, to be honest. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up.’
‘I’m sorry it took me so long to track you down. It was unfortunate that you weren’t in a position to answer any of my communications once I’d found your address.’
‘Yes, wasn’t it?’ Carey said drily.
‘And my attempts to contact you via your TV series also failed. I expect it was lost among the fan mail.’
‘They’ve also managed to lose the fan mail itself, now they’ve replaced me,’ Carey said. ‘No direct contact at all since telling me they weren’t offering me a contract for a new series.’
‘Dear me, the world of TV seems remarkably ruthless.’ The solicitor’s brown eyes showed mild surprise. ‘Still, once I’d travelled down and talked to the delightful elderly lady in the flat below yours, all became clear. I hear the driver who knocked you off your bicycle didn’t stop and they haven’t found him or her?’
‘No, and just my luck it was the one square inch of Dulwich Village without any CCTV surveillance! I’d had a minor run-in with another car only a few days before and meant to get one of those helmet cameras, but hadn’t got round to it.’
Mr Wilmslow shook his head and made a sympathetic tutting noise. ‘I hope you’ll make a full recovery.’
‘My left leg is never going to look quite the same again, but it was touch and go whether they’d have to amputate it at first, so I’m lucky it’s still there. Or what’s left of it, because I lost a few chunks here and there and they had to do grafts.’
Mr Wilmslow got up to go. ‘I had better get off to catch my train, unless you have any further questions?’
‘Not at the moment, though I’m sure I will, once it’s all sunk in. If the Parrys could continue to keep an eye on the place, then I should be fit to travel up there soon after Christmas.’
‘I’ll keep in touch,’ promised Mr Wilmslow, shrugging his slight frame into an ancient Burberry and winding a dark, wine-coloured woollen scarf around his neck.
As he left, he nimbly skipped aside to avoid being bowled over in the doorway by the tempestuous entrance of Carey’s friend, Nick Crane.
‘Who was that?’ Nick demanded as Mr Wilmslow disappeared, carelessly tossing an armful of mail on to the bed, narrowly missing Carey’s damaged leg. ‘Finally remembered to bring all your letters. Sorry,’ he added, as Carey winced. ‘Leg hurting?’
‘Of course it’s bloody hurting! It hasn’t stopped hurting since some nameless bastard decided to swipe me off my bike – and the physiotherapist is a sadist.’
‘She’s a very attractive sadist,’ Nick said, with a grin. ‘She can torture me any time she likes, you ungrateful sod! But I’m sure they’re sick of the sight of you now and need to get rid of you so someone else can have your bed.’
‘And I want to get out of here too, God knows.’
The fact that he would be leaving on his own two feet was, he acknowledged, largely due to the fact that his actress mother had flown back from America immediately the news of the accident had reached her and set about charming and bullying the surgeons into renewed attempts to save the mangled and broken thing that was his left leg.
As if he’d read Carey’s mind, Nick said, ‘Daisy should have had the same trust in the surgeons that your mother had, not dropped you like a hot potato the moment she got the news.’
‘She did go to all the trouble of writing to explain she had a phobia of hospitals and illness … and how she’d been meaning to tell me she was moving out of the flat anyway, because she felt our relationship just wasn’t working,’ Carey said, though at the time his girlfriend’s abrupt severance of their relationship had hurt him deeply.
‘Lying cow! And I told you she’s already shacked up with your replacement on the series, didn’t I?’
Carey shrugged. ‘Director’s assistant perks? And everyone’s told me, though I can’t say I care any more. How did you get on at the flat?’
Nick had been organizing the packing and storage of Carey’s belongings before the sale of the flat was finalized, and Daisy had arranged to meet him there that day to collect a few things she’d left behind and hand over her set of keys.
Nick, who had flung his lanky frame into the armchair, his Converse-shod feet dangling over the arm, suddenly sat upright. ‘There was something I meant to tell you the minute I got here and I completely forgot!’ he exclaimed. ‘Daisy’d already been to the flat and she’d left you this note.’
He pulled a crumpled bit of paper out of his pocket and handed it over.
There was no greeting, or polite wishes for his continued recovery, it simply read:
I can’t cope with Tiny any more. Circumstances have changed and anyway, he’s become quite impossible. You bought him, so it’s up to you to decide what to do with him.
It wasn’t signed.
‘Terse – and what does Daisy think I can do with a dog till I get out of here?’ commented Carey, looking up with a frown. Daisy had coaxed him into buying the tiny Chihuahua puppy from a friend of hers, though his novelty had worn off even before he’d begun to show his true nature: no male legs were safe from those needle-sharp teeth. He’d also quickly outgrown the designer dog-carrier she’d bought for him, so it looked increasingly likely that his father hadn’t been a Chihuahua at all …
They’d been sold a pup.
‘She’s too self-absorbed to even think of that one,’ Nick said, then rolled up his jeans to exhibit a fresh set of pinpoint marks. ‘Tiny was shut in the kitchen and when I opened the door, the little bastard got me again.’
Carey stared at him. ‘You mean … she’s dumped him there and gone?’
‘Yep. And since I couldn’t leave him there on his own and there was a plastic pet crate in the hall, I shoved him in that and he’s in the car now. I’ve left the windows down a bit, so he should be OK till I get back. What do you want me to do with him?’
‘I suppose I’ll have to find him a good home. You couldn’t keep him till I get out of here, I suppose, Nick?’ Carey added hopefully.
‘Apart from not wanting my legs to look like I stick pins in them for fun, I’m out all the time, so it wouldn’t be fair.’
‘True,’ conceded Carey. ‘Look, if I give you the address of the kennels we used when we went on holiday, could you take him there? It won’t be strange to him and I’ll work something permanent out as soon as I can.’
‘Yeah, good idea,’ agreed Nick, looking relieved. ‘They’re letting you out of here soon anyway, so we’ll think of something while you’re staying at mine over Christmas.’
It was lucky Nick had a ground-floor flat. Carey still didn’t know if he’d ever be able to walk without limping, but he was determined he was leaving the hospital without crutches and would dispose of even a walking stick as soon as he could.
‘Thanks, Nick. And I’ll be staying with you only till just after Christmas. Then I’m off up to Lancashire. That visitor you so nearly knocked flat when you arrived was the bearer of some surprising news.’
‘Did he want you to makeover a cottage for him?’ Nick asked hopefully. ‘As long as you delegate all the physical stuff to other people, you could take commissions to renovate cottages again, couldn’t you?’
‘No, it was nothing like that. He was a solicitor and he’d been trying to track me down for ages. In fact, a couple of those letters you’ve brought me are probably from him. He came down himself in the end and one of the neighbours told him what had happened and where I was.’
‘Not an ambulance chaser, is he? They can’t sue anyone if they don’t know who the hit-and-run driver was, surely? Unless you’ve remembered any more details about the car that hit you.’
Carey frowned. ‘Sometimes I get a sort of flash and think I can see a big silver four-by-four … but that might be totally unrelated to the accident. Concussion can have weird side effects.’
‘So, not an ambulance chaser?’
‘No, he’s a family solicitor – in fact, I suppose he’s my family solicitor now. It appears that my father had an older brother and now he’s died and left me everything, because I’m the last of the Revells … or the last of that branch of them in Lancashire, anyway.’
‘You’re an heir!’ exclaimed Nick, his deep-set black eyes suddenly burning like coals with excitement. ‘You’re rich beyond your wildest dreams and can invest lots of lovely lolly in Raising Crane Productions! We’ll make a TV documentary series that will blast The Complete Country Cottage right out of the water!’
Nick’s small production company, in which Carey had an investment, was doing well, but still looking for that big, elusive hit.
‘Don’t get too excited, we’re not talking millions here,’ said Carey, damping down his enthusiasm. ‘There’s a run-down house and not much money. Plus, there’s a resentful stepdaughter and her husband living in the Lodge, who expected to scoop the lot.’
‘Well, tough,’ said Nick unsympathetically. ‘How come you didn’t know you had an uncle?’
‘There was a big family falling-out and Dad ran off to be on the stage when he was still in his teens and never went back.’
The rest was history: Harry Revell, progressing via ENSA on to the post-war stage, had become one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of his generation. He’d married very late and died when Carey was eight.
‘Dad never told me anything about his family and if Mum knew, she didn’t mention it. I’ll have to ask her.’
His mother had been a young aspiring actress when she’d married Harry, and she’d returned to the stage after he died. Eventually she’d gone to America and made her name in the hit series The Little Crimes of Lisa Strange. She played a terribly English spinster who travelled round the country solving mysteries, assisted by her sarky female black American driver. It had been going for years and showed no signs of ever stopping.
Carey looked Mossby up on his smartphone, though there were few pictures and little information. It was a white stucco Arts and Crafts house, linked by an old square tower to part of the original Elizabethan building at the back. It was situated on a sort of bluff with terraces leading down to a lake and woodland.
‘It’s a stately home, all right!’ said Nick.
‘It’s not huge, but it’s a little bigger than I thought it would be. The Arts and Crafts houses were mostly built by the wealthy middle classes, and were more like overgrown cottages than anything.’
‘Well, it should be right up your street, anyway. And did you say it needed renovating?’
‘It sounds as if it’s been neglected lately,’ agreed Carey, and they looked at each other in sudden mutual understanding.
‘This could be just the fresh start you need – and a major opportunity for both of us,’ enthused Nick. ‘Carey Revell’s Mansion Makeover – a Raising Crane Production!’
‘It’s not a mansion,’ Carey objected, but his friend had the bit between his teeth now.
‘I can make a pilot – see who’s interested in a series – and I think there’ll be a lot of interest, because there’s the dual angle of you recovering from a serious accident and the whole unexpected inheritance thing … and then all the usual ups and downs of restoration, only on a huge scale.’ His dark eyes glowed again. ‘It could run to more than one series and it’ll give us both the break we need!’
‘I haven’t even seen the place yet,’ Carey cautioned him. ‘Hold on a bit!’
‘Doesn’t Angelique live somewhere quite near to this Mossby place?’ Nick continued, carried away on a tide of optimism. ‘If there are any windows to be repaired or replaced, that’ll be really handy!’
‘Yeah, I expect she’ll think just the same way you do,’ Carey said sarcastically. Angel – or Angelique, to give her her full and slightly ridiculous name – was his oldest friend. As students he, Nick, Angel and a couple of others had shared a house together.
‘My old gran used to say that as one door closed, another opened,’ Nick said, getting up. ‘She was right.’
Then he went off to deliver Tiny to Pooches Paradise, after Carey had rung and pleaded with them to house the dog, because last time Tiny had made himself unpopular by biting a staff member. They were going to charge double, and triple over the actual Christmas period.
He couldn’t tell them how long they’d have to have him after that. He assumed Daisy had already offered Tiny to all her friends and acquaintances before she’d dumped him, and he didn’t rate Tiny’s chances of being re-homed if he went to a dog rescue centre.
Carey decided to worry about that later. He got the photos of Mossby up on his phone again and an innate feeling that this was his place – somewhere he truly belonged to – tugged at his heart, taking him totally by surprise.
It was ridiculous to feel that way, seeing as he’d never even heard of Mossby till that morning!
Or had he? Now he came to think of it, the name did stir up some very distant recollection …
His eye fell on the heap of mail Nick had dumped on the bed and he spotted a letter addressed in Angelique’s familiar scrawl and sent via his friend’s address, as all her letters had been since the accident. At least Nick had always remembered to bring those.
He ripped it open, skimming the enquiries after his rehab progress and smiling at the small caricatures she’d drawn in the margins: himself wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy and one of old Ivan, who worked in Julian Seddon’s stained-glass studio, hobbling about with a slopping mug of tea in each hand.
She wrote that she was off to Antigua in a few days to stay with her mother and stepfather, who kept a superyacht in Falmouth Harbour, as well as having a nearby villa. Angel had always spent two weeks with them just before Christmas – he’d gone with her himself a couple of times, when they were students – but last year she hadn’t, because her partner, Julian, had been recovering from a stroke.
Carey thought Julian must be making a good recovery if Angel was leaving him to his own devices. Or maybe he had insisted, realizing she needed the break? When she’d been to see him in hospital last time she’d been in London on business, he’d been troubled by how worried and strained she’d seemed.
His conscience suddenly twinged: maybe he should have visited them when Julian first had the stroke, or even rung her more often since? But then, everything had been wiped from his mind by the accident, except recovering and getting out of hospital as soon as he could, preferably on two feet.
He smiled, wryly. Angel always joked that he only remembered her existence when he wanted her to work for free, making or repairing stained glass for one of the cottages featured on his programmes, but that was far from the truth.
Since she fell in love with Julian Seddon the summer after she graduated and moved to Lancashire to live and work with him, she might have left the centre stage of his life, but Carey was always conscious of her there in the wings. And he was quite certain she felt the same way about him.
Perhaps I should explain the events that led up to my first, unlikely meeting with Ralph Revell, which took place in my father’s glass manufactory in London, in early 1894 …
My mother had died early and though my aunt Barbara, who came to take charge of the household, did her utmost to turn me into a young lady, not even her best endeavours could keep me away from the workshop or stop my fascination with the whole art and craft of stained-glass window making.
My father was an intelligent man with a great interest in the arts and well acquainted with William Morris and his circle. Under their influence he had turned away from the modern trend of merely painting pictures on to ever larger pieces of glass, giving a dull, flat effect, and instead enthusiastically embraced the return to the purer artistry of earlier times. Smaller pieces of glass, made in the Antique way, uneven in thickness and containing irregularities, gave life, sparkle and depth to a window. The dark lines of the leading formed part of the design and there was need for only minimal overpainting.
I shared his enthusiasm and it became both my lifelong passion and my profession. My marriage turned out to be a brief, mistaken digression along the way, although in saying this, I realize I will be thought very unnatural. But so it was.
Eighteen months ago, before Julian had his stroke and our lives changed for ever, he was the owl who stayed up late into the night in his office/studio downstairs, while I was the lark, winging off in the early hours of the morning to the stained-glass workshop at the end of the garden. We were Yin and Yang, two sides of the same coin, and our lives were perfectly balanced and happy.
But all that had changed, literally at a stroke.
Now Julian slept so badly that he was often up before me and, on this particular morning, since I’d found the previous day extra exhausting, it was after eight before I groggily surfaced.
It wasn’t yet properly light and looked likely to be another gloomy, cold, grey December day, but Julian’s side of the bed was empty. I switched on the lamp and saw that his stick was gone from where it usually hung on the back of a chair within easy reach.
Bathroom? I wondered.
But when I slid a hand between the sheets there was no warmth where he had lain and the house was silent, except for the ticking of the grandfather clock downstairs and the occasional creak of wooden floors adjusting to the fluctuating central heating.
I felt the familiar scrunch of fear in the pit of my stomach.
Was he lying in a heap somewhere in the house? Or had he risen early and made his way to the workshop like he’d done the previous day, so that I’d finally had to fetch the wheelchair to bring him back, totally exhausted, frustrated and angry.
And could I really leave him for over a week to fly off to Antigua, even though, apart from the frustrated anger when his body refused to do what he wanted, his health now seemed quite stable?
He was so keen for me to go that I suspected he longed to escape my anxious eyes as much as the confines of his condition.
When I got up my second guess proved to be right. There was no sign of him in the cottage, but his coat and set of workshop keys were gone and the back door unlocked. When I opened it and looked out, he wasn’t lying on the path, and over the hedge I could see the glimmer of light in the large Victorian building that housed the famous Julian Seddon Architectural Glass Studio.
Of course, he could still be lying in a crumpled heap on the floor of the studio, but his condition had been so stable for ages that I didn’t really think so. In which case, it would be a repeat of yesterday’s scene: I’d found him attempting to use his almost useless left hand to hold down a piece of deliciously reamy yellow glass over the white paper cutline he’d laid on top of a light-box, while he ran the wheel over it with his right. But glass slides easily, and you need to exert firm pressure while you’re cutting …
The scrunch of the wheel incising a firm line across the surface of the glass, then the sharp tap underneath with the heavy grozing pliers, so that the break forms cleanly – these are some of the delights of the craft we both loved so much and took for granted.
His assistant, Grant, or old Ivan, who was officially retired but haunting the studio almost as much as when he was employed there, could have expertly cut the piece for him. As could I, of course, but I knew that wasn’t the point. He had begun producing his brilliant designs again, but he wanted to be part of the whole process – the cutting, the painting and silver-staining, the leading-up of the calmes with the smooth caps of solder on every joint … even scrubbing the soft, oily black glazing cement into the finished panels, and then polishing the surface with powdered whitening till glass and lead alike were shiny and clean.
He wanted to be part of the whole act of creation, not just the spark that ignited it.
I knew, because I did, too. We recognized that desire in each other almost the instant our eyes met for the first time in a mutual, consuming passion. We’d always been as much in love with that complete act of creation as with each other.
That day was Sunday and we always used to like having the workshop to ourselves at weekends. There was a magic to it, as if Santa’s elves had gone home and we’d sneaked in to play. I’d go down and potter about very early, checking on the kiln, if it had been fired, or working on ideas in the studio. Julian would appear later, bearing cheese toasties and I’d make coffee by the sink in the corner, before we settled in amicable silence to our work.
How distant that idyllic life seemed now! I felt weary that morning and found myself hugely reluctant to face whatever the day intended throwing at me. Or whatever Julian threw at me – I’d taken him warm pain au chocolat the previous day and that hadn’t gone down well.
So I had a cup of coffee, spread a thick layer of my own home-made raspberry jam over a doorstep of fresh wholemeal bread, and ate it slowly. I figured I might need the sugar for energy.
My friend Molly, the wife of Grant, who worked in the studio, had made the soft and delicious bread, while the jam tasted of warm summer days. Happier days.
I washed up and hung my mug back on the dresser. Mine had a picture of the Five Sisters windows at York Minster on the side, while Julian’s sported a Chartres Cathedral roundel like a brightly-hued kaleidoscope.
Then, finally, I shrugged into my quilted coat of many colours and let myself out into the dove-grey day.
The big workroom was lit but empty and I went through the half-glazed door at the end and found Julian sitting at his desk in the studio, writing.
His right side, his good one, was turned to me, and tugged my heartstrings with familiarity. Julian … his long, sensitive face had always reminded me of a dreamy knight from King Arthur’s round table. He was slender, quietly handsome, his dark brown hair silvered now, but his hazel eyes still shaded by long black lashes …
He was more than twenty years my senior, but we’d fallen in love at first sight. Age had never been a factor …
The love was still there, though recently I’d come to accept that the nature of that emotion had changed. It had happened subconsciously over many months, until the knowledge finally presented itself as a fact. Until then, it had been better not to think, just to scramble through each day, looking after Julian, while keeping the business going as best I could.
As our relationship had changed from that of lovers to reluctant dependant and carer, I knew Julian had found the situation just as hard as I had – more so, for he was such a private person and resented each indignity of illness. And it brought anger – I’d never seen him angry in all our time together, until one day frustration welled up like a volcano and he shouted at me. Just for a brief moment his eyes had held the hard gaze of a bitter stranger. Since then, I’d learned to dread that look.
But there had been some physical improvement in the first months after the stroke. He could walk to the workshop, supervise Grant and old Ivan, design a window or glass installation, take on more of the running of Julian Seddon Architectural Glass again.
But he wanted to be the man he had been and by now he must have realized as well as I that things would never be the same again.
The role of nurse and then carer had not come easily to me and in the first months I’d been thankful for Molly’s help. She’d previously been a nurse, though she now made her living filling the freezers of select clients with healthy home-cooked meals, and Julian seemed to find her brisk, impersonal no-nonsense assistance more acceptable than mine.
But I was sure that love in some form still existed between us and would eventually settle into a new pattern – and if it that was more a thing of shared interests and long association, then that was the way most marriages probably went …
Though actually, we hadn’t married because I’d never wanted to, even though after ten years Julian had teased me about my having become a common-law wife, whether I liked it or not. I suppose I might have changed my mind if there’d been a child to consider, but we had been so happy and fulfilled together that we’d kept putting off starting a family …
I must have made some small noise, for Julian lifted his head and, to my relief, gave me a slight, lop-sided smile.
‘Hi, Angel. I’m making notes for my will.’
I could feel the answering smile freezing on my lips and my heart began to thump. ‘Your will? Are you feeling—’
‘Don’t panic,’ he interrupted impatiently. ‘I’m not doing it because I’m feeling worse. It’s just that I’ve been putting it off because it always seemed like tempting Fate, but now I think Fate already knows where I live, so I might as well sort things out.’
He gave another slightly twisted smile. ‘Anyway, I heard something on the radio the other day that set me thinking. It appears that if you die without making a will, it can lead to all kinds of problems and delays.’
‘But you’re so much better now that you really don’t need to think about that kind of thing—’ I began.
‘Yes, and I’m also twenty years older than you are, so the chances are I’ll die first, one way or the other, aren’t they?’
This seemed to be a rhetorical question, so I didn’t point out that life was a lottery and you never knew when your number would be up. The Grim Reaper had his random moments.
‘I want to make some provision for you, but to be fair to Nat as well.’
I have a tendency to live in the moment so I’d never given the future a lot of thought until recently, but I’d vaguely assumed that Julian’s only son by his long-ago marriage would inherit everything at some nebulous future date. I’d been building up a little nest egg from my wages and the occasional prize or commission, but it had stayed little because I so often broke into it to add to my magpie’s shiny store of Antique glass that was stashed away in one of the outbuildings.
I didn’t have a lot of outgoings, because the cottage was Julian’s, as was the business. I was still an employee, though I took design commissions of my own sometimes, too, if they were to be made elsewhere.
‘You’ve always been fair to me, Julian,’ I assured him. ‘But Nat is your only son, so naturally he should inherit everything.’
Nat had followed in his father’s footsteps and worked with him in the studio, until my arrival on the scene had led to an estrangement between them. I felt guilty about that and over the years I’d done my best to heal the rift.
Julian had overheard Nat accusing me of being a gold-digger, muscling my way into the workshop by sleeping with the boss, and he’d told Nat that if he couldn’t accept the situation in a civilized manner, he’d have to go elsewhere. The upshot had been that he’d found Nat a job in London in a friend’s stained-glass workshop and he’d made his life down there ever since.
I don’t think the problem was ever really about my relationship with his father, who’d been a widower for several years when we met, it was Nat’s realization that although he was a great craftsman, he hadn’t got a spark of originality when it came to designing windows and installations … and I had.
‘You haven’t thought it through,’ Julian told me, recalling my wandering mind. ‘The cottage has been your home for years and the business is becoming as much about you now, as me.’
That was a slight exaggeration, but I was beginning to make a name for myself and there was a whole Angelique Arrowsmith section on the Julian Seddon website. I’d won a major competition a couple of years previously, too.
‘Besides, the cottage and business really go together, so I’m leaving both to you,’ he continued, not waiting for any comment. ‘Everything else – and there’s quite a lot of money invested – goes to Nat.’
I knew Julian had inherited money from his mother’s family, not to mention what he earned himself – and his work was still as much in demand as it was when he blazed on to the scene with his first major commission, the spectacular Tidesbury Abbey west window.
‘But … if you must leave me something, couldn’t it simply be a small amount of money, enough to buy a tiny cottage with?’ I suggested. ‘And everything else to Nat. I’m sure that’s what he’d expect.’
‘He seems to have made a life for himself in London, but my investments would give him enough money to set up his own workshop, if he wanted to,’ Julian said. ‘I want you to carry on the business here, which is what you’ve been doing since the stroke anyway. In fact, we’ll change the name to Julian Seddon and Angelique Arrowsmith Architectural Glass as soon as you get back from Antigua, and I’ll make you an equal partner. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.’
‘I’m perfectly happy with things the way they are,’ I protested. ‘And we’re going to live to a ripe old age together, working and having fun like we used to. Look how much better you are now.’
‘I hope we do, darling, though let’s face it, I’m never going to be the man I was,’ he said. ‘I want you to have security if anything should happen to me, because there’s a whole bright future ahead of you, while my glory days are all in the past.’
‘From someone who’s just designed a spectacular rose window for Gladchester Chapel, that’s a bit rich,’ I said, and he laughed, like an echo of the old Julian.
‘Do change your mind about this will business,’ I coaxed him.
‘I know what I want – and what’s fair,’ he insisted. ‘I’ll get Mr Barley to draw up the will and then bring it over to be signed.’
I was still deeply troubled, but he had that stubborn expression and I didn’t want to provoke him. I made some coffee and got out the biscuit tin, then changed tack.
‘Julian, I really don’t think I should have let you persuade me to go off to Antigua, leaving you alone,’ I began. ‘What if—’
‘We’ve already had this conversation, Angel,’ he broke in impatiently. ‘A break will do me as much good as it will you.’
A break from me, he meant, since he hated hot countries and had never been to Antigua with me. I felt hurt. We were both private people, but we’d lived and worked together in perfect harmony. In fact, my annual December visits to Mum and my stepfather had been the longest periods we’d ever spent apart.
‘Don’t tell me you haven’t already asked Molly to check on me every five minutes while you’re gone, because I won’t believe you,’ he added, with just enough of the ghost of his old, familiar smile to reassure me.
And of course I had done just that, though it still seemed wrong that I should leave him.
‘Julian, why don’t I cancel the flights and have a break nearer home?’ I said impulsively. ‘Or we could both have a little holiday in a hotel somewhere lovely, like Cornwall or—’
The smile vanished and I caught a glimpse of the alien, slightly dangerous fire of anger that the stroke had somehow lit inside his mind.
‘No, and we’re not discussing it any more,’ he snapped, and I turned away.
The only consolation was that this time I’d only be absent for a mere nine days, not the usual fortnight. What could possibly go wrong in so short a time? Especially with Molly, Grant and old Ivan watching over him for me.
When making a window, any details that needed to be painted on to the glass were applied in a vitreous enamel that fused with the surface when fired in a kiln. As I had some skill with the paintbrush, this became one of my earliest tasks.
At this time, the men Father employed tended to specialize in certain areas of the glassmaker’s craft, rather than having experience of the whole process, but this was not what I wanted. I was consumed by the desire to learn everything there was to know, from start to finish … Or as much of the process as Father would allow: for though he frequently forgot I was a mere female, he did draw the line at letting me attempt to blow molten glass into a cylinder that could be cut and flattened into a sheet, or spin great discs of it.
Nor would he let me help heat and mould lead to be milled into the long H-shaped strips called calmes that held the pieces of window glass together. Even then, though, I was unfortunately of small stature and slight in build, so perhaps he had a point.
So there I was en route to Antigua a few days later, luxuriating in business class and with a glass of bubbly clasped in a hand somewhat battered, scarred and workmanlike from years of making stained-glass windows for a living. I don’t think I quite realized how emotionally and physically stretched and exhausted I was until I settled into my seat: it was if I were a puppet and someone had cut my strings.
My stepfather, Jim Dacre, was totally loaded, so he always insisted on paying for my flights. I suspected he was trying to make up for having married and removed Mum to the other side of the Atlantic when I was ten, after first depositing me in boarding school, like left luggage you might want to reclaim at some future point.
Since I’d already lost my childhood friend Carey the previous year, when his actress mother had taken him back to live in London after her husband died, the last vestiges of my happy childhood ended right there.
Up till then, we’d lived in a small Bedfordshire village and Mum taught art in a nearby grammar school. She took a casual attitude to motherhood, had a circle of bohemian friends, a busy social life and a succession of boyfriends. (My father died before I was old enough to remember him.) I thrived on a diet of casual affection and neglect, growing up to be self-reliant, happy and consumed by painting and drawing the world around me.
I suppose I might have felt lonely if Carey, who was almost exactly the same age as me, hadn’t lived next door. Mum said when Carey’s parents bought the pretty thatched cottage as a weekend retreat, it was the most exciting thing to hit Little Buddington since the Black Death. For although Carey’s mum was merely an aspiring young actress, his father was Harry Revell, the great Shakespearean actor. He was very much older than his wife and late fatherhood can’t have agreed with him, because Lila and Carey were soon living permanently in the cottage with Harry an increasingly rare visitor.
Carey and I were both artistic, fiery Aries characters and often struck sparks off one another; but at bottom, we were best friends right through infants and junior school. Mum and Lila had become friends, too, and the first time Mum visited her in London after the move – having parked me with the postmistress – she somehow hooked herself a rich, early-retired millionaire at a party and life as I’d known it totally ended.
It wasn’t that I disliked Jim when I met him, but he’d been married before and had handed his business over to grown-up sons. He wanted to carry Mum off to the Caribbean where he was now based and I was surplus to requirements.
So, I ended up in boarding school among strangers, my home was sold and, apart from a couple of weeks a year when I flew out to Antigua, I spent my school holidays with Granny in Lancashire, where she had a neat semi-detached council house in Formby.
Mum never came back, not even for Granny’s funeral. She had a fear of flying, though never in the Erica Jong sense, and, having got out there, stayed put.
Life based between a superyacht and a villa on a Caribbean island seemed to suit her perfectly … and the responsibilities of motherhood had never weighed heavily on her shoulders anyway.
I became withdrawn and solitary at my new school, for after losing Carey it seemed safer not to make new friends. Instead, I spent all my free time in my own little world, drawing and painting.
Then, with miraculous serendipity, Carey and I chose the same university and met on the first day of term. He was scanning the accommodation notices on the board and though the boy I remembered had turned into a tall, well-built man, the set of his shoulders and the blaze of his red-gold hair were unmistakable.
‘Of all the universities in all the world, you had to choose this one,’ I’d said slightly huskily.
He’d turned quickly, his gentian-blue eyes blazing with surprised delight.
‘Shrimp!’ he’d shouted, then swept me off my feet and swung me round and round until we were both laughing and dizzy. The lonely, unhappy years between nine and eighteen had dissolved in a tide of happiness …
‘Ice cream and cookies?’ suggested the stewardess brightly, breaking into my reverie. She seemed to have been programmed to offer the passengers something to eat or drink about every fifteen minutes and if I accepted everything I’d be so fat by the time we landed I’d have to be prised out of my seat with a crowbar. I closed my eyes, hoping she’d stop tempting me if she thought I was asleep.
And sleep I did, drifting off to the thought of Carey, always there at the back of my mind like a six-foot-four comfort blanket, spun from soft red-gold fleece. His leg was healing well and he’d be out of rehab any minute, so perhaps he could come and stay with us in the New Year. Julian liked him, even though they were chalk and cheese, and the company would perk him up no end.
The knot of tension and anxiety that had inhabited my stomach for so long was quickly unravelling, taking with it some of the guilt and relief about leaving Julian. Slowly I sank into a deeper sleep, only barely conscious of the stewardess’s voice suggesting, hopefully, ‘Pretzels?’
I rang Julian that evening, sitting in a rattan chair on the shaded decking of Jim’s villa, which overlooked Falmouth Harbour. Nearby was a telescope permanently focused on his pride and joy – his vast and glossy superyacht. It might not be quite as super as some of the other floating palaces moored there, but to me it was still impressively enormous.
I had the remains of a rum punch in my other hand and I wasn’t sure if I was suffering from jet lag, or Jim had ignored my request to go easy on the rum, but I felt limp and spaced out.