‘She said the “f” word!’ Did you hear her, Jase? She said the “f” word!’
Belatedly, Tati caught the Australian accent. Looking up she saw that the ‘father’ she had bumped into was not a father at all but Jason Cranley, the mute, freckled guy she’d met up at Furlings a few days ago. The little girl must be the daughter, Logan.
‘She’s got cigarettes in her bag!’ Logan squealed accusingly, picking up a half-empty packet of Marlboro reds and shaking them in Tati’s direction. ‘Don’t you know smoking is the most dumbest thing you can ever do? You can die! And you can get wrinkles.’
For some reason this last rejoinder made Tati laugh.
‘Wrinkles? My goodness. That sounds very serious.’
‘It is.’ Logan’s huge, dark eyes widened beneath her long lashes. She really was an extraordinarily pretty child, although it struck Tati that she looked nothing like either her mother or brother. ‘I’ll throw them in the bin for you if you like.’
Jason, who’d watched silently until now, finally found his voice. ‘You can’t throw other people’s property in the bin, Logan.’ Taking the cigarettes from his little sister, he handed them back to Tatiana.
‘No. But you can steal it from under their noses, apparently,’ Tati shot back waspishly, ‘by conning a dying man into leaving you his home.’
Jason blushed. ‘I’m n-n-not the enemy, you know,’ he stammered. ‘None of this will business has anything to do with me.’
‘No, well. I suppose not,’ Tati conceded grudgingly, appraising him more closely than she had done at Furlings a few days ago. He wasn’t bad-looking. But he was very much a boy rather than a man. There was a fragility about Jason Cranley, one might even say an innocence, that made one want to protect and mother him. Perhaps it was the freckles? Tati couldn’t imagine him having sex, although it was clear from the way he blushed and avoided eye contact that he was attracted to her.
‘I’d like it if we could be friends,’ he mumbled.
Tati considered this. She had no problem with Jason Cranley. Only with his greedy, conniving, inheritance-pilfering father. Besides, it might turn out to be useful to have a Cranley family member on her side. She may lack experience as a teacher, but when it came to pulling a young man’s heart strings, or fanning his sexual obsession, Tatiana Flint-Hamilton was very much an old hand. Jason could be her ‘man on the inside’ at Furlings. If she were going to win this legal battle over the will, she would need all the help – and inside information – she could get.
‘Me too,’ she smiled. ‘I had a shitty day, that’s all. Of course we can be friends.’
Reaching out, she touched his arm in a conciliatory gesture and was gratified when Jason blushed as if he were on fire.
‘What was so shitty?’ Jason asked. In her sexy, expensive clothes, exuding glamour like a movie star or a royal princess, it was hard to imagine Tatiana’s days being anything other than gilded and wonderful.
‘Oh nothing.’ She waved a hand dismissively in the direction of the school buildings. ‘The new headmaster doesn’t think I’m capable of ascending to the dizzy heights of village schoolteacher. He wants me to audition to be some PGCE nark’s assistant. An “unpaid trial”, that’s what he offered me. Can you believe the nerve?’
Jason Cranley couldn’t. From his limited first impressions, Tatiana Flint-Hamilton seemed capable of absolutely anything. He certainly wouldn’t have the balls to cross her.
‘Anyway,’ Tati smiled, pulling a cigarette out of her packet ‘I’ll definitely be needing one of these to calm my nerves.’
‘No!’ Logan, who’d been watching this exchange between her brother and the very beautiful lady with interest, shook her finger up at Tati disapprovingly. ‘Wrinkles, remember?’
Tati shook her finger back and lit up. ‘Wrinkles Schminkles.’
To Jason Cranley’s delight, and the other parents’ slack-jawed astonishment, she winked at him as she sashayed out of the playground.
Back at Furlings, Brett Cranley was in the kitchen. Sitting at the table with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his arms folded, he was listening intently to his new neighbour, Gabriel Baxter.
‘They can’t be developed,’ Gabe was saying. ‘The whole valley’s an area of outstanding natural beauty. The only thing they’re good for is farming. And your yields – the estate’s yields – over the last ten years have been dismal.’