For once, Angela had held her ground and refused to allow Brett to cut her off from her own child. It was bad enough that he had banned Jase from the house and cut him out of his will. (Not that Jason needed his father’s money any more.) But he wasn’t going to rob the boy of his mother as well. Both Angela and Logan saw Jason and Tati semi-regularly, although these meetings were always in London and never overtly discussed with Brett. He knew about them however, and resented them deeply, considering Angela’s continued closeness to their son a betrayal.
For her part Angela thought Brett’s grudge-holding was both childish and wildly unreasonable. The worst part was that he was hurting himself more than anybody. Angela could see how the distance ate away at Brett. How it made him feel abandoned and helpless, even though it was he who was perpetuating the rift. In the beginning she’d tried to comfort him and reason with him. But after a couple of years she abandoned the effort. Something had snapped in Brett the day that Jason married Tatiana. Whatever it was could not be repaired.
In the beginning Angela had spent a lot of time wondering about what would happen once Tati got pregnant. Would Brett acknowledge his own grandchild? And if he didn’t, where would that leave the family? Leave her and Brett as a couple? But as the years passed and no baby arrived – no baby was even talked about, Angela learned to stop fighting ghosts. Jason and Tati seemed to be making a go of their marriage. It was up to her and Brett to do the same, whatever their differences.
‘Can I get you anything else, Mrs C?’
Mrs Worsley appeared in the doorway with a fresh pot of tea on a tray. The housekeeper had aged in the last few years and was now a properly old woman who walked with a stoop and spoke with that permanent tremor unique to the elderly. Angela had grown very fond of Furlings’ housekeeper over the years. She dreaded to think how lonely she’d be without Mrs Worsley. There were days, weeks even, when she and Gringo, the arthritic basset hound, were the only living souls she spoke to. I really must get out more. Join some societies or something, she thought for the umpteenth time, relieving Mrs Worsley of the tea.
‘No thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ll have this and then I think I’ll take Gringo for a walk. It’s such a beautiful day.’
‘It is,’ the housekeeper nodded. ‘Set to be a scorcher, I reckon.’
She was right. By the time Angela and Gringo reached the village stores, it was already eighty degrees outside, without a breath of wind to take the edge off the heat. Not that Angela was complaining. Fittlescombe High Street looked glorious, with its flint cottages and shops bathed in the amber morning sunshine, and its rows of front gardens full of hollyhocks and lupins and foxgloves and roses, their colours a dazzling patchwork against the bright blue backdrop of the summer sky.
Mrs Preedy at the stores had thoughtfully left a bowl of cool water outside for her customers’ dogs. Gringo fell on it gratefully, his floppy ears swaying as he slurped away, while Angela went inside for a newspaper and an ice lolly.
‘A bit early for a Twister isn’t it?’
Penny de la Cruz, Seb Harwich’s mother and one of Angela’s few real friends locally, tapped her on the shoulder. In a scruffy, Indian-print dress with bells on the bottom of it that would have looked frightful on anybody else, and a fraying straw hat, Penny somehow managed to look eternally youthful and happy. Perhaps marriage to a younger love-God cricketer was the answer?
‘I’m Australian,’ said Angela. ‘It’s never too early for an ice cream in our book. Want one?’
‘Oh, go on then,’ said Penny. Angela paid for the lollies and they both went outside.
‘We haven’t seen you for ages,’ said Penny. ‘Logan’s been over quite a bit recently, but you’ve been hiding yourself away as usual. What’s going on?’
‘Oh, nothing much,’ said Angela. ‘Logie got a summer job.’
‘At the stables. I heard. And how’s Brett?’
The question was asked out of politeness rather than interest. Brett had made no effort to develop friendships with any of the locals, other than the occasional beer or game of pool with Gabe Baxter, who for some reason he’d taken a shine to. This was another factor in Angela’s isolation. If she’d been divorced or widowed, people could have invited her to dinner as a singleton. But no one knew what to do with a married woman whose husband never said yes to invitations, and who only entertained at home if he was throwing a party for hundreds.
‘He’s fine. Working,’ Angela said numbly.
‘You and I should get together.’ Penny squeezed her arm kindly. ‘Santiago’s playing almost every day at the moment, so I’m on my own a lot. Let’s have lunch.’
‘I’d like that,’ said Angela.