The lie hung in the air between them, ugly and obvious. Father and son looked at one another. Brett broke the silence first.
‘I love your mother,’ he said gruffly.
‘I never said you didn’t, Dad.’
‘I don’t want you ever to speak of this again. Not at home, not at work, not with anyone. Ever.’
‘Fine.’ Jason turned his head away to face the wall.
‘I’m serious, Jason.’
‘So am I. I said fine, didn’t I?’
Brett headed for the door. A torrent of emotions, none of them good, pressed heavily on his heart making it hard to breathe.
‘Maybe it’s best if I don’t come back to work,’ Jason called after him. ‘I’ll find another job, something local. We both know I’m not cut out for the real-estate business.’
‘No,’ said Brett dully.
‘Why not?’ Jason sounded close to tears.
‘Because I said so,’ said Brett. ‘Because we’re Cranleys. We don’t quit when the going gets tough. And because … you’re my son.’
He left, closing the bedroom door quietly behind him.
Only once the last of his footsteps had died away did Jason allow the tears to flow.
CHAPTER NINE
‘I’m not sure I quite understand what you’re saying.’
Max Bingley looked at Dylan Pritchard Jones suspiciously. St Hilda’s art teacher was one of the few members of staff whom he had never fully managed to get a handle on. On the one hand, there was no doubt whatsoever that Dylan was marvellous at his job. An accomplished artist in his own right – not always the case with art teachers, especially not at primary level – he was also a natural and instinctive teacher. Patient, committed, inspiring. Someone like Dylan could easily have found a job in a private school that paid many multiples of what he earned here. Max didn’t doubt that he’d been approached by rivals, and he was grateful that Pritchard Jones had decided to stay. Clearly Dylan felt the same way about St Hilda’s, and Fittlescombe, that Max did: that it was unique; somewhere that couldn’t be replicated, still less bettered.
And yet their common love of the school and of their profession had failed to create a bond between the two men. For all his positive qualities, his charm and affability and the staunch support he’d given to Max’s changes since he’d taken over from Harry Hotham, there was something ‘fishy’ about Dylan Pritchard Jones. Something that, despite himself, Max Bingley didn’t quite trust.
It was that something that Max saw in Dylan’s handsome, twinkling blue eyes this morning as he danced around the subject of Tatiana Flint-Hamilton.
‘Has something happened between you and Tatiana?’
‘No!’ Dylan laughed, tossing his curly head from side to side dismissively. ‘Nothing’s happened, headmaster. I felt I ought to come to you privately, that’s all, and talk off the record. Man to man, as it were. She’s very … young.’
He weighted this last word, implying some mysterious significance.
‘Yeeees,’ said Max. ‘And?’
‘And young girls can be prone to crushes.’ Dylan spoke smoothly. ‘They’re not always … how should I put this? Their behaviour isn’t always appropriate.’
‘I do beg you not to use that word,’ Max said tetchily. ‘It makes you sound like Bill Bloody Clinton. Appropriate. Whatever happened to right and wrong? Has Tatiana done something wrong, Dylan? Is that what you’re trying to say?’
‘No, no no.’ Dylan’s smile was starting to look rather forced.
‘I thought you two were friends?’
‘We are.’
‘Then why are you here?’
There was an awkward silence. Max Bingley was beginning to lose his patience.
‘Has she propositioned you, Dylan? Is that what you’re getting at? Because you’ll forgive me, but I’m afraid I find that rather hard to believe.’
‘I can’t think why.’ Dylan looked put out.
‘So she did proposition you?’
‘Not exactly.’
Dylan squirmed in his seat. The old fossil wasn’t making this as easy as he’d hoped. Dylan had always had Max Bingley pegged as an old-school sexist, a bit of a military martinet beneath the firm-but-fair exterior. He hadn’t expected Bingley to play this with such a relentlessly straight bat.
‘All right,’ he said eventually. ‘This weekend she did rather, you know, try it on. Nothing happened, but there was an awkward incident at my place, while I was helping her with some of the SATS paperwork.’
Max waited for him to elaborate.
‘I’d prefer not to go into details. I handled it, and I’m not making a formal complaint or anything. She’s a nice girl.’
‘But?’