The prospect terrified her. Tatiana Flint-Hamilton had never worked a day in her life. As for teaching, she wished she shared her godfather’s faith in her abilities. Or her father’s, for that matter. The simple truth was that she no more knew how to control a class full of children than she knew how to mill flour or discover a cure for cancer.
She’d hoped that going back to Furlings today and seeing the new owners installed there might revive her fighting spirit and boost her courage. Remind her that the fight was worth it. In fact, all it had done was make her desperately sad. The fact that the Cranley family seemed so nice and friendly, and so ensconced already, only made Tati feel worse. Mrs Worsley was already firmly on their side, defending their right to be there like the wretched dragon that she was. It didn’t seem to bother her in the least that Furlings might end up in the hands of a boy named Jason with a sister who, if local gossip was correct, appeared to have been named after a berry. Granny Flint-Hamilton would be rolling in her grave! As for Gabe Baxter, he was little more than a jumped-up farmhand himself. It was hardly any wonder that he was pro-the Cranleys, already hanging around Furlings like a bad smell. People like Gabe ran on envy the same way a car runs on petrol.
Shit-stirring little Bolshevik. I wonder what he’s after, exactly?
Getting up from the sofa, Tati wandered into the kitchen and put the kettle on, more for something to do than anything else. It was a long time since she’d felt so profoundly alone. Greystones, the farmhouse she’d rented, was simply furnished, almost to the point of sparseness, and Tati had brought nothing with her from London, beyond some bed sheets and a preposterously expensive couture wardrobe, wholly unsuitable for country life. Her shoe collection alone, more than fifty pairs of Jonathan Kelsey, Manolo Blahnik and Emma Hope stilettos in a rainbow of gleaming, candy colours, would have been enough for a deposit on a house like this one, if only she’d spent her money a little more wisely. Then again, she’d assumed she would always be rich. And why wouldn’t she? How was she supposed to know that her vengeful bloody father had been plotting to disinherit her all along, in some sort of macabre, sick joke from beyond the grave?
Having never put roots down anywhere other than Furlings, it had never occurred to Tati to acquire furniture or clocks or books or favourite cushions, the things that would have helped to turn a house like this into a home. She hated the poo-brown sofas, and the incongruously modern, sixties-style Ikea plastic chairs around the dining-room table. As for her landlady’s rugs, they were so vile – swirly affairs in orange and lime green and other colours that had no place in a beautiful, Grade II-listed Sussex hall house – that Tati had rolled them all up on the day she’d arrived and stacked them en masse in the back of the garage. The original flagstones and wide-beamed oak floors beneath were infinitely preferable. But without a single rug of her own to warm the place up a bit, the overall effect was one of bareness. Stark and barren, like a tree stripped of its leaves after a storm.
The kettle switched itself off with a click, the steam from its spout fogging up the kitchen window. Tatiana wiped the glass clean with her sleeve and looked out into the garden. It was a stunning day, blue-skied and clear, like the summers of her childhood. Greystones Farm was really little more than a cottage on the outskirts of Fittlescombe, but its garden was enormous, its various sections – rose garden, orchard, vegetable patch and lawn – tumbling into one another willy-nilly, as each exploded and overflowed with colour and scent and fruit and life. There must have been a planting plan once, a design. Tatiana could see where the crumbling walls and overgrown beech hedges had once delineated and organized more than an acre of space. But now, untended, other than a weekly lawn-mowing by old Mr Dryer from the village, the garden was a joyously jumbled eruption of blossoms and greenery. Gazing out at it, watching a rabbit skip about in the white carpet of fallen apple blossom, even Tatiana’s spirits lifted a little. Making herself a cup of Earl Grey and two slices of toast and honey, she pushed open the back door and wandered outside.
Could I be happy here? She wondered, savouring the deliciously sweet, buttery toast as she strolled through a towering row of hollyhocks. Tati hadn’t lived in the countryside, or spent more than a week at a stretch here, since her childhood. And those weeks had always been spent at Furlings, riding her beloved horse, Flint.
There were times when Tati thought she missed Flint even more than she missed her father. The grey stallion was a former racehorse, and had been a wildly extravagant tenth birthday present from Rory Flint-Hamilton to his daughter. Mrs Worsley had disapproved from the start, but Tatiana would never forget that magical day. Rory leading her, blindfold, around to the stable yard and telling her to open her eyes as Flint pranced majestically out of his horsebox.
‘For you, my darling. What do you think?’
‘Oh, Daddy!’ Tati had gasped, fighting back tears of joy. ‘He’s beautiful. He’s so beautiful! Is he really mine?’