Sometimes she found it exhausting, the daily battle to repair her husband’s self-esteem, on top of everything else on her plate. Tati hadn’t fully realized till she married Jason quite what a number Brett had pulled on his son. Not that compassion was Tati’s only reason for wanting her husband there tonight.
Hamilton Hall was very much a family school, a family brand, that brought old-fashioned values to everything they did, not only their approach to academics. Jason and Tatiana Cranley were a young couple and happily married, at least as far as the outside world was concerned. This was good. But, they were a young couple with no children, a fact that had raised a number of eyebrows, not only Angela Cranley’s.
For Tati, the no-kids thing was simple. The business took up all of her time. Even if it hadn’t, Jason was still little more than a kid himself. They weren’t ready and that was that.
But from a business perspective, being childless made it even more important that she and Jason should present a united front to everyone from parents to investors. Their marriage had to come across as rock solid.
The front doorbell rang.
‘Damn it,’ said Tati, smoothing down her vintage Ala?a skirt and scoop-necked cashmere sweater. The guests were here and bloody Jason wasn’t. After all the effort she made with Jason’s family. All those long lunches with Angela and stepping in as the ‘fun’ aunt with Logan whenever life with her parents at Furlings got too much. Not to mention being so understanding about Jase’s depression, sorting him out with a new therapist and all that crap. The least Jason could do was show her a bit of support in return. Didn’t he realize she was running herself ragged with this business? That it was the school he complained so much about that had paid for this house and the mocha velvet B & B Italia sofas he’d had imported specially from Milan, and the maids who ironed his shirts every morning and poured his favourite fresh-pressed orange juice at breakfast?
The butler showed the first visitors through to the drawing room.
‘David! Ilaria.’ Tati beamed, opening her arms wide to greet the hedge-fund founder and his Eurotrash wife.
‘Jason not here?’ David Morgenstein asked, immediately.
‘Not yet.’ Tati’s smile didn’t waver. ‘I’m so glad you could both make it. Champagne?’
By the time Jason rolled in at eight thirty, drinks were almost over. ‘Rolled’ was the operative word. One look at his glazed eyes told Tati he was tight as a tic, and no amount of crunched-up Polos could fully disguise the gin on his breath.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ he mumbled, not daring to meet Tatiana’s eye. ‘I got caught up. At, er, my club.’
‘Not to worry darling.’ Tati slipped an arm lovingly around his waist. ‘You missed a lovely party, though.’
Jason knew that this display of affection was purely for the guests’ benefit. She would let him have it later, once everyone had gone, and rightly so.
He’d been supposed to have another therapy session this afternoon, but had bottled it. Then, wandering aimlessly around Earls Court, he’d made the mistake of answering a phone call from his mother.
Angela was desperately worried about Logan. After last week’s fire at Gabriel Baxter’s farm, understandably the talk of Fittlescombe, she was lucky not to have been criminally prosecuted. If it hadn’t been for Brett’s friendship with Gabe, and Laura’s abject pleading on Logan’s behalf, Gabe would have shopped her in for sure. As it was, Brett had paid for all the damages out of his own pocket in a private deal with Gabe and Laura, to avoid insurance investigators, and Logan was officially off the hook. Behind the closed doors of Furlings, however, World War Three had broken out. Understandably furious, Brett had pulled Logan out of her expensive private school, grounded her, and spent hours of each day demanding to know what the hell his daughter had been thinking. Unfortunately Logan was too heartbroken about Gabe turning on her even to notice her father. Brett did not take well to not being noticed.
‘He literally yells at Logie from morning till night,’ Angela told Jason despairingly. ‘He can’t see how guilty she feels, how cut up about it all. And when I try to talk to him, of course he bites my head off.’