It was almost tea time by the time Tati got back to Greystones. The walk had been long enough for her to calm her frazzled nerves, although the close shave with Brett and her unexpected salvation by Mrs Worsley, followed by the disconcerting confrontation in the dining room, had left her feeling physically drained.
Closing the front door behind her, she felt a comforting sense of safety and relief. For all its drawbacks, the rented farmhouse felt like home in a way that it hadn’t only a few short months ago. Somehow the whole place seemed more cheerful now that high summer had arrived. With no money to employ a gardener, Tati had let the long sloping lawn at the back of the house grow into a veritable forest of long grass and wild flowers. But the general eruption of flora had a joyous, riotous feel to it that she wouldn’t have traded for neatly trimmed borders or sedate rose beds, even if she did have the money. As for the house itself, that was still a mess too. But with every window open and the summer light and scents pouring in, and with some plain white bedspreads thrown over the ugliest pieces of the landlady’s furniture, it was not without a certain shabby-chic charm. A chipped jug sat on the kitchen table, rudely stuffed with peonies, and the fruit bowl on the sideboard overflowed with plums from the tree in the garden, which looked in danger of toppling to the ground any minute from the sheer mass of fruit weighing it down.
Making herself a glass of elderflower squash, Tati wandered out into the back garden. Dusting the cobwebs off a decrepit deckchair she found lurking in the shed, she sank down into it, enjoying the sensation of being completely hidden by the long grass. She remembered playing this game as a child. ‘Boats’, her father used to call it. Rory would sing her the song of the owl and the *cat, and she would imagine the grass as the tall sides of a ship and herself sailing away for a year and a day. She didn’t cry, but a wave of nostalgia overwhelmed her suddenly, bringing a lump to her throat.
It was hard to believe that it was still less than a year since Rory had died and Tati’s world had been turned inside out. Yet, at the same time, when she thought about the school or the endlessly long, boring afternoons she’d spent in Raymond Baines’s drab offices, it felt as if she’d been stuck in her present rut for a lifetime. Then, in the last few weeks, her mental landscape had suddenly shifted again. Brett Cranley’s taunts at the parents’ meeting had started it, sowing a seed of ambition in Tati that had never been there before. That very same night, as fate would have it, she’d met Marco, and the seed had been watered. Teaching was something she could do. Her father had believed that at any rate, and now Max Bingley believed it too.
Of course, Brett was right that she would never make a fortune on a teacher’s salary. But what if there were a way to combine education and business? Wouldn’t it be satisfying to prove Brett Cranley wrong, and with him every man who’d ever dismissed her as nothing more than a party girl with a pretty face? Marco could open doors for her, help to introduce her to the right people … Yes, it was a pipe dream. But it wasn’t impossible. After all, if Jason Cranley could quietly pursue his dreams, his talents, with his vile father breathing down his neck, why shouldn’t she do the same with nothing but her own fears holding her back?
The advantage of this particular pipe dream was that it was in Tatiana’s own hands. Unlike the court battle over her father’s will. Standing beside Brett’s filing cabinet today like a fool, waiting to be caught red-handed, she’d suddenly realized how desperate she’d become. She knew now what she’d been looking for in those files: a miracle. Because, without a miracle, she was going to lose in court in September. Brett Cranley knew it. The lawyers knew it. Deep down, Tatiana knew it too.
So why can’t I let it go? Cut my losses and walk away?
God knew she didn’t relish the humiliation of being defeated by Brett in court. But at the same time, she couldn’t bear him to see her as a quitter, or as someone he could bully into submission, the way he bullied poor Jason and so many others in his life. She had to see this through. As a child, everything Tati did was done to gain her father’s attention. She had no mother or siblings. Rory had been her sole audience, and she kept dancing for him, long after the dance had ceased to be fun for either of them. As much as she loathed him, as much as he revolted her, the truth was that Brett Cranley made her feel the same way. In some sick, twisted way, he had stepped into her father’s shoes. She yearned to impress him, like a lost dog yearning for home.
Closing her eyes and stretching out her legs, she tried to relax, focusing on the sunlight warming her skin and the soft hum of bees in the grass. An image of Marco’s handsome face floated into her mind and she held it there like a talisman, pushing out the other face: the face with the angry flashing eyes; the face intent on her destruction.
She fell into a deep, mercifully dreamless sleep.
Up at Furlings, Jason Cranley stared at his bedroom ceiling.