They spent the rest of the short journey in silence. But after she had got out, Cass felt something weird had happened to her, more than just a short drive up a bumpy, stony track.
‘I won’t come in,’ said Ranulph. ‘If it’s all right, I’ll just drop you off here.’
A few steps from the parking place and Cass was at the door of the house, where her father was waiting for her. With him was a woman – Eleanor, presumably. Howard came towards her and took her bag, then dropped it so he could give Cass a long hug.
It was lovely to have her father’s arms around her again, smell his expensive aftershave and feel like the favourite daughter she knew she was. It had been far too long since she’d seen him, she realised. Although he had invited her for a special reason, she remembered. There was something he wanted her to do.
‘This is Eleanor,’ he said. ‘She owns the house.’
Eleanor’s smile was diffident. ‘Hello, Cass. Lovely to meet you at last. I’ve heard so much about you. All of it good!’
‘Hello,’ said Cass. She regarded her thoughtfully. Eleanor was so unlike any of her father’s previous women. She was an appropriate age for a man in his seventies, for a start, nearer her mother’s age than Cass’s. And she wasn’t overly tanned and was only wearing a bit of make-up. Her hair, an attractive dark grey, was done in a messy bun at the nape of her neck. She wore an interesting necklace of silver and sea glass and a loose linen dress. She was, Cass realised with a shock, someone her mother could easily be friends with. Maybe her assumption that she and Howard were together was wrong.
‘Now I’m going to leave you and Howard to have some father and daughter time. I know it’s long overdue.’
‘Eleanor,’ said Howard, as if to stop her leaving. ‘You don’t need to go—’
‘I do. I have a lot to do and you two haven’t seen each other in far too long. I’m off! But I’ll be back to cook dinner.’
Then she hoisted a straw basket on to her arm. ‘Oh – Cass probably needs some tea. There’s homemade shortbread in the tin.’ Then she set off down the drive towards the cars.
‘Does Eleanor live here?’ Cass asked.
‘She owns the house, but yes.’ He didn’t say any more which told Cass what she needed to know. He and Eleanor were together but she was being tactful and giving Cass a chance to get used to the idea.
She put her arm through his. ‘Let’s go in, shall we? I’m longing to see where you live.’
‘And I’m longing to show it to you.’
Cass was also keen to find out why she had been invited. It was more than just a casual visit, she knew.
‘Would you like tea or the tour first?’ Howard asked.
‘The tour, but tea quite quickly afterwards.’
Her father laughed. ‘I’ll put the kettle on. It’s not a big house.’
But it was luxurious, not the ‘but and ben’ – dark and stony, full of draughts, possibly lit by sooty hurricane lamps – of her imagination. Although she should have remembered her father was someone who always fell on his feet. If he was going to rent a house so he could finish the book he had been writing for years to go with the photographs he’d taken in the Galapagos, it would be a good house, far better than anyone else would end up with. And he’d get some sort of deal. Maybe Eleanor was part of the deal, Cass thought.
When her father had telephoned, asking for Cass to come and stay, she’d been on her mobile, on a bus. Apparently, he needed her help. Cass found this hard to get her head round. Why was he asking her for help? She was the youngest and least educated of the family. He could easily have asked his stepchildren, older, cleverer, with strings of letters after their names. What could little Cass, the baby of the family and Howard’s only biological child, possibly do for him?
Her mother, divorced from her father for many years, already knew about this request. As parents, they got on well, and had discussed the matter. Besides, having left the squat she’d shared with her now very ex-boyfriend, the alternative to the Scottish idyllwould have been going back to her mother’s house. Cass loved her mother very much and they got on well up to a point, but she did not want to live with her. The remote Scottish island seemed a much better bet. Besides, although Howard had been a fairly absent parent, she had always spent time with him over the summer.
And so Cass had decided to go. Howard had put money into her account for the journey, her mother had driven her to a bed and breakfast the night before the flight, where being driven to the airport before dawn in a battered van, along with other travellers, was part of the package. Once on the plane, Cass’s long journey north had begun.
Now, Cass followed Howard as he showed her his current home.
The house had been designed by an architect and made the most of the stunning if rugged views of the sea and a couple of other islands. Pale wood floors matched the pale wood walls and made the house full of light. There were huge glass lamps in case the power went off but there was no soot. The kitchen had granite surfaces and a coffee machine that would probably play music in the hands of the right barista.
The tweed-covered sofas looked inviting and hand-woven blankets were laid over every furniture arm in case a stray draught managed to penetrate the huge, triple-glazed windows. Cushions, pouffes and footstools abounded. It was the height of tasteful luxury.
‘Eleanor has put a lot of time into making sure all her properties are absolutely perfect,’ Howard said.‘The beds have sheets with very high thread counts, which I gather is to be desired, and the pillows and duvets are like clouds. Hungarian goose down is the key, apparently.’
Cass wondered how long she was expected to stay. A summer here would be no hardship. She could wander off into the hills and draw, maybe make a study of the wildflowers of the area. Possibly the birds too, if she could draw moving targets. Then, after a summer of comfort and fulfilment, she could go back to her mother’s house in the Cotswolds and do the teaching course she had signed up for as a last resort.
What she really wanted to tell her father was that she didn’t love photography as much as he did but far preferred to draw and paint. And she didn’t want to be a teacher, either.
Cass hadn’t been to university. She’d done well enough in school, but her family felt (and her thoughts went along with their opinions in this instance) that there was no point in racking up thousands of pounds’ worth of debt studying something she would never use in real life when she could probably learn just as much getting jobs, working in the real world.
