She was right, of course, but Alastair couldn’t bring himself to admit that she was; it spoke too badly of his friends and he didn’t want to cast them in a poor light. ‘It’ll all be fine,’ he said. ‘In the end.’
Valentina had primed herself that she was not here to make enemies, but then neither was she here to be walked all over. She was here to fight for her man.
As she looked up at the impressive house before her, while Alastair lifted her luggage out from the boot of the car, she wondered if she would also have to fight this home of his, this beloved Linston End which she had heard so much about. He had told her fondly of his childhood holidays here with his eccentric bird-watching aunt, how he had then inherited the house, along with what he had admitted was a sizeable portfolio of stocks and shares, and which he had never known about, not until he’d been informed of the terms of his aunt’s will.
Still staring up at the house, Valentina did not underestimate how big a test of Alastair’s love for her it would be to sell Linston End. But give it up he would have to if they were going to make a new life together. She had compromised too much in the past; it was not something she would do again.
The house was quainter and more charming than she had imagined, its brickwork topped off with an attractive thatched roof that hung low and deep over the windows and made her think of old-fashioned fairy tales and the large dachas of the Russian elite. The green lawn in front of the house had been recently mown, the stripes – such an English obsession – clearly visible, as though ready for Wimbledon.
She fell into step beside Alastair, half expecting a devoted and stony-faced housekeeper to open the door to them. Oh yes, she had read Daphne du Maurier’sRebecca. She knew that by everybody here she would be compared to Alastair’s dead wife, that she could never live up to the wonderfully talented Orla, for whom they all still mourned.
But Valentina was not like that pathetic heroine from Rebecca; she was made of tough Russian stock and refused to be intimidated by a miserable housekeeper, or anyone else for that matter. Just let anyone try that and see where it got them! Besides, she knew things about Orla that they didn’t. Things that Alastair had never shared with anybody else, so he’d said.
Armed with a smile and everything Alastair had made known to her about his friends, she stepped over the threshold of Linston End fully prepared for the battle ahead.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘I’ll say this for your Uncle Al; he certainly knows how to pick ’em. He always did get the stunners.’
Callum cringed. ‘Dad,’ he said, ‘you might want to lower your voice.’
‘What?’ His father said, his face all mock innocence. ‘I meant it as a compliment.’
‘Sure you did.’
It wasn’t often his father got properly hammered, but on this occasion he was having a damned good crack at it. Odds on he’d been keeping the alcohol levels topped up since lunchtime, which was when he and Danny and Alastair had gone to Horning. Callum had seen them sitting outside the Swan Inn when he’d been passing in his dinghy on the way back to the boatyard; he’d given them a wave and they’d cheerily raised their beer glasses in return.
The much-anticipated arrival of Alastair’s new woman had certainly got everyone worked up. When Callum had got here a short while before Alastair returned from the station with Valentina, he had found the household in a near state of frenzied madness. In between shouting out orders to no one in particular, Mum had been hissing at Dad to stop helping himself to the jugs of Pimm’s and to do something useful, like get out of her way. Meanwhile Frankie had been fussing over the place settings on the table on the terrace, realising in alarm that she’d miscounted and laid one too few places – was that an omen? – and Rachel had been freaking out because she’d left her hair straighteners back in London.
Amidst all this, and seemingly at the sight of him when Callum had gone over to say hi, Jenna had tripped on the step leading out from the kitchen. Carrying a tray of cutlery, she had bumped into her father, who reached out to stop her falling, but in the process left dirty black marks on her dress from the barbecue coals he’d just been handling.
From the frenzied chaos of then, everyone now appeared to be alternating between tongue-tied awkwardness and sporadic bursts of inanity. Nobody was being their true self, not even Alastair who was clearly trying too hard to pretend that this was just a relaxed gathering of close friends.
Interestingly the only person who seemed to be behaving in a manner something akin to normal was the star of the show: Valentina. Of everyone here she would have been the one whom Callum would have expected to be most nervous; but no, she was as cool as the proverbial cucumber and, it had to be said, Dad was not wrong in describing her as a looker. But to be honest, Callum would have been more surprised if Alastair had fallen for anyone who didn’t fit that description. Old photographs of Orla in her twenties and thirties had revealed her to be a dark-haired version of Kate Moss, all haughty, smoky-eyed defiance. Orla had hated photographs of herself, but the few that had been on show here had disappeared almost immediately after her death. Had they been too painful a reminder for Alastair?
From his vantage point in front of the barbecue, which he’d been put in charge of, and as his father ambled over to talk to Danny, Callum watched his mother surreptitiously studying Valentina as Alastair poured her a glass of Pimm’s. Not for the first time Callum thought how difficult it was to read his mother’s expression. She had one of the best poker faces he knew, and right now he didn’t have a clue what she was thinking, or more precisely what she thought of Valentina.
‘She’s one of those effortlessly stylish women who make the rest of us look hideously drab, isn’t she?’ The remark came from his sister who had suddenly materialised at his side.
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ he answered her.
‘What would you say then?’ asked Jenna, joining him on his other side.
‘I’d prefer to keep my thoughts to myself if it’s all the same to you two.’
Rachel rolled her eyes. ‘You’re no fun. Isn’t that right, Jenna, he’s the most boring person we both have the misfortune to know.’
‘I can think of worse bores,’ Jenna said with a small smile.
‘Hah, talk about damned with faint praise!’ replied Callum, wishing that he could get Jenna alone and clear the air between them. Clearly she regretted kissing him, because whenever he said anything to her, he sensed her closing like a clam shell. He took up the barbecue tongs and fiddled unnecessarily with the lamb chops and burgers on the grill.
‘So,’ said Rachel, her voice lowered, ‘what’s the verdict? Do we like her?’
‘Nothing not to like so far,’ whispered Jenna.
‘Give it time,’ said Rachel ominously, ‘give it time.’
‘I feel sorry for her,’ said Callum.
