Kit: How’s your gran? Did the op go OK? Please let me know when you can. Love you x
Amy felt a rush of affection for him. Plenty of people assumed that Kit was as trivial and self-obsessed as he sometimes pretended to be– but that couldn’t be less true. He was thoughtful, honest and loyal. As best friends went, he was a worthy successor to Hari. She smiled as she wondered how well they might have got on, then typed her reply.
Amy: There was a slight delay getting her down to theatre so she’s still in. I’ve popped back home to take Bertie out. Ken’s there in case she wakes up.
Kit: Ken? As in your old teacher?
Amy: I know right?
However, it seems they’re, like … in love???
Kit: Yes!
WRINKLY ROMANCE!!!
Totally here for it.
Text me later?
Amy: Promise x
It came as no surprise to her that Kit was fully on board with the idea of Grace having a boyfriend. Since meeting his latest squeeze at Queer Karaoke some weeks ago– the slender, shy, bespectacled economist he’d been lusting after for months– he’d been the most infatuated and soppy that Amy had ever known him.
She climbed out of the car, locked it and made her way to the front door of the cottage, which was practically buried beneath a burst of blowsy peach roses. It was another blisteringly hot day, but the air was thick– heady and syrupy, suggestive of imminent rain.
Once inside, she fastened Bertie into his harness and lead, then closed the door on the house and strode in the direction of the bridge.Without consciously deciding to, she wandered across it, then up Old Rowton high street.
No fewer than five separate people stopped her to say hello as they passed her on the pavement, and all of them asked after Grace. Living here wasn’t necessarilybetterthan being in London, Amy thought– but it wasn’t worse, either. Idly, she wondered where she’d be this time next year– though Ken’s recent revelations seemed to confirm that her cohabitation with Grace would come to a natural end once her grandmother was back on her feet.
Amy had reached the edge of the village, right up to the boundary of the Rowton Hall grounds. The estate’s little wood beckoned, shaded and cool. Bertie pulled on the lead, straining to head in the direction he was most used to. For some reason, Amy was reluctant to head in there today. She felt fragile and edgy, but the sweat gathering at the small of her back and speckling her temples won out– being out of the hot sun for a while would be blissful.
She let the little dog direct her, but before they were fully through the gate that led into the copse, Amy jumped at the sudden sound of a car engine. A glossy, deep blue BMW with the top lowered was making its way down the main drive, away from the mansion and onto the road Amy and Bertie had just crossed. At the wheel was Tilly, smiling and sun-kissed. The sight of her here, halfway through the day and sporting a casual, strappy sundress, removed all doubt from Amy’s mind: she and Sam must have patched up whatever had previously gone wrong between them. They were seeing one another again.
When Tilly spotted Amy, she grinned and waved. ‘Hey! CUTE dog!’ she cried as the car glided by. ‘See you soon!’
See you soon?
Urgh. Amy didn’twantto ‘see her soon’. Or ever again, in fact.
This was irrational and completely unfair, given Tilly seemed perfectly lovely and had done nothing to deserve Amy’s dislike. Bertie was whining, desperate to escape the glare of the sun and scamper around in the sheltered undergrowth of the wood. She stomped after him, cursing herself. CursingSam. This bitter, uncomfortable feeling was his fault, she was certain– though if she’d been asked, A level English-style, to find evidence for this opinion, she knew she’d have struggled to locate any.
Beneath the canopy of trees, the muggy air was only marginally less oppressive than it had been on the high street. Amy let Bertie’s lead out to its full length, allowing him to explore a little. She decided they’d do one short circuit in here and then she’d head back to the hospital. With any luck, Grace might even be awake by the time she got there. Her phone was in her pocket, the ringer turned up high so she could be reached the moment her gran came out of surgery.
When Amy and Bertie got to the far side of the wood where the trees thinned, she heard voices. One of them was Sam’s. She edged closer to the low murmur of conversation, peering between gnarled old trunks and trying– for no reason she could think of– not to be seen.
‘As I’ve been arguing from the very beginning,’ Sam was saying, ‘thisis what’s going to secure our family’s place at the Hall, now and in years to come: events on our terms, but which bring in significant profits.’
He was talking about RomFest, Amy had no doubt. But she was shocked at the phrase ‘secure our family’s place at the Hall’. Sam sounded exactly like his father: committed to staying in their crumbling stately pile at any cost.
‘We’ll see,’ his father drawled. So itwasRoger he was talking to. ‘I still think it’s folly– a lot of fuss on our private land that will doubtless lead to damage. You’ve always been fatally naive– stupid and idealistic from as far back as I can remember.’
Stupid?Ouch. Amy felt an odd stab of something like protectiveness, then repressed it– but not before she could think that while Sam Ainsworth was many things, stupid wasn’t one of them.
‘Wewillsee,’ Sam told him, somehow keeping hold of his audibly frayed temper. ‘You agreed to this on the basis that I might prove a case for commercial use of the grounds– so long as I did all the donkey work and dealt with the money. Current projections are promising. You may yet be able to instruct the renovators to deal with the mess in the old card room.’
What thefuck?The oldcard room?!In the context of people being forced out of their homes, the very idea of refurbishing a space whose original purpose was to host Regency-era games of whist was objectively disgusting. Suddenly, Amy felt sick.
‘I rue the day I ever let you anywhere near the estate accounts,’ Roger grumbled. ‘It isn’t often I question my own judgement, but appointing you to manage things was a colossal error.’
