‘Oh, my dear girl.’ Lady Penelope stepped delicately around a pile of rubble, her heels clicking against the flagstones with the measured precision of a metronome. ‘Chase Lodge is just a little hunting lodge. A Tudor holiday home. Perfect for the three of you. You mustn’t settle for your little cottage. The Pembertons require something rather more ... substantial. As Banquo says in Macbeth:
“This castle hath a pleasant seat
the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
unto our gentle senses.”
Oh, sorry, you probably never read Macbeth at your school. Oxford drama society overcame me for a moment!’
Christina bit back the retort that the ‘pleasant seat’ Banquo was describing was to be the location of several murders. Instead, she forced herself to see the house through Penelope’s eyes. Just like Lady Flora, her friend measured worth in acres, and houses by the number of bedrooms.
‘I suppose you’re right,’ Christina said reluctantly.
‘Of course I am, darling. You must be bold, not flinch at a bit of restoration. I will guide you with all the important decisions – I’ve seen much worse than this.’ Lady Penelope moved closer, her voice dropping to a confidential level that somehow sounded both intimate and condescending. ‘You want to prove yourself worthy of the family, don’t you? Show them you’re not just some pretty little thing Hamish picked up at university? Then you need something that speaks their language.’
‘Restoration, yes that’s all it is, and the house is ... very atmospheric,’ Christina managed, eyeing a corner where the plaster had given up entirely and fallen to the floor in chunks.
‘Atmospheric! Yes, exactly!’ Lady Penelope beamed as though Christina had identified precisely the house’s best attribute. ‘Ahouse with soul.’
Soul, Christina thought, and possibly ghosts. Definitely mould.
Attempting enthusiasm she said, ‘The windows are very ... authentic.’
‘Aren’t they marvellous?’ Lady Penelope clasped her hands together. ‘Original Tudor glazing! You can’t buy that kind of heritage.’
No, Christina thought, peering through the narrow opening that let in approximately three rays of weak February sun. You certainly couldn’t. The room was so dark she could barely make out the far wall, and so cold her fingers were already numb.
‘And this space!’ Lady Penelope gestured broadly at the low-ceilinged chamber. ‘Just imagine it with a good fire going.’
Christina tried to imagine it. The chimney probably didn’t draw. ‘Cosy,’ she said weakly.
Penelope took the key from Christina’s hand and steered her toward the door. ‘As a Pemberton you must take your responsibilities seriously.’
‘But the cost ...’ Christina began.
‘Oh, money.’ Lady Penelope waved a dismissive hand. ‘One finds a way, doesn’t one? Hamish is a professor, why not suggest he writes a book, becomes the next historical sensation? Or borrow some money from the bank? Or from the family – after all, what’s the point of marrying into the Pembertons if one continues to live like a penniless romantic in a tiny cottage?’
As they walked back toward their cars, the house seemed to scowl behind them; Christina told herself it was glowing, not scowling. That its stone walls were weathered rather than shabby, its missing tiles marks of character rather than neglect. With Penelope’s help she could transform this place. Christina found herself calculating; she had a substantial deposit. She had saved up the money they weren’t paying on rent and supplemented that with her ‘Ernest’ earnings. They had about£50,000. She would speak to her financial adviser tomorrow and ask him how much they could borrow.
Yes, she thought, her pulse quickening with a mix of ambition and dread. A proper house would change everything. With the right address – the perfect backdrop for their life together – everything else would fall into place: Elspeth’s behaviour, Hamish’s attention, his family’s approval, her place in their world.
Eleven
The late afternoon light slanted weak and grey through the shed’s north-facing windows, too pale to work by. Sitting at her workbench, Christina wore a head lamp. As she bent over, the metallic tang of silver polish and the sharper bite of chemical compounds filled her nose – sulphur solutions that could age a piece by decades in minutes, if you knew what you were doing. And Christina knew exactly what she was doing.
She vowed to herself that in her new home, she would revert to making jewellery – truthful, meticulous, hers. She turned off her head lamp and her eyes drifted to the corner cupboard she rarely opened. Inside, her old jewellery tools lay in their velvet-lined case. Beneath them, a leather portfolio of sketches – intricate, elegant designs for rings, brooches, lockets. Pieces she’d once made that had won praise from tutors and been on display in a London gallery window.
She hadn’t touched her jewellery tools in years – not since that weekend shortly after Hamish proposed, when Christina spotted Lady Flora pursing her lips and muttering to Hamish, ‘I do hope she doesn’t plan to betrade. It simply won’t do for a daughter-in-law.’
Hamish gave a soft snort.‘Christina’s got talents you wouldn’t understand, Ma. Besides, she doesn’t need to prove herself that way.’
To Christina, it sounded like dismissal wrapped in praise, asthough her craft were a childish pastime he indulged, rather than something worth defending.
She caught her reflection in the darkening window – her carefully chosen blouse, her sensible skirt, her hair styled in the understated tidy way she’d copied from aCountry Lifepicture of a young woman posing on the sweeping steps of a country house as grand as Brambleton Manor. Nothing like the girl who’d first walked into that house twelve years ago. And in that instant, something about her reflection pulled her abruptly back into the past.
The first weekend she met his family still made her cringe. At the time, the young couple were living in a rented flat in South London – where Hamish was neck-deep in an obscure PhD on Tudor court masques, and she was working as a trainee silversmith. As they eased out of the city’s sprawl, he narrated the journey like a royal progress, quoting Tudor history with theatrical flair: ‘Here we pass through Greenwich, seat of Henry VIII’s sumptuous palace – imagine the pageantry!’ She smiled, indulging him, though she’d heard variations of the same speech before. He gestured grandly out of the windscreen as if King Henry himself were watching from a royal carriage.
She wore her favourite vintage dress: a bright turquoise number splashed with bold flowers – the kind that used to make Hamish’s eyes light up, back when they were unmarried and everything between them felt easy. Her own handmade silver pieces adorned her neck and wrists, subtle but striking twists of metal shaped like flowers.
