by Lorna Peel
“But there are fifteen bedrooms in the house?” Sophia frowned. “And it’s the middle of May.”
“I know but I just…oh, I don’t know…I suppose I want some independence while I sort myself out but want people I know close by, too. I had to crawl downstairs to the phone when Simon…I knew that even if I screamed, no-one would come.”
“I’m sorry.”
Stephanie shrugged. “Nobody wants to get involved these days. They don’t want to have to go to court and all that. I just hope that Simon doesn’t turn up here. Thomas would kill him. I’m not exaggerating, he’d kill him. How secure are these flats?”
“Well, the outside door and the door, there,” she pointed, “at the top of the stairs are pretty sturdy.”
“Yes. Sorry. I’m just a bit paranoid. I don’t usually talk so much crap.”
“It’s all right, it’s understandable…I mean…sorry, I didn’t mean that you—”
Stephanie roared with laughter and she laughed in relief.
“It doesn’t matter.” Stephanie squeezed her arm. “You got a boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Sore point?”
Sophia shook her head. “No. My ex was from Leeds. We met at university there, and I was stupid enough to follow him to London even though I knew that the relationship wasn’t going anywhere. Anyway, I had to come back up here because of my parents.”
“And now?”
“Dad’s in sheltered accommodation,” she explained. “He’s happy there, and I’m happy here.”
“What are the tours like? I mean, are people really interested?”
She nodded. “They seem to be.”
“Mother used to take people around who asked.”
“Lady Heaton took me on one of her tours then I took her on mine then Lord, um, Thomas came on a tour.”
“Thomas did?” Stephanie looked and sounded incredulous. “I thought he was dead against it?”
She shrugged. “Well, he came, anyway.”
“Poor Thomas,” Stephanie mused. “He’s got no life at all, really. I know I tease him about it but I thought he would have done something about it by now.”
“I suppose you get into a routine and habits?” she suggested.
“Yes. I must try and bring him out of himself while I’m here. Will you help?”
“Me?” She fought to control a blush. “Well, yes, if you think it will help.”
“Thank you.” Stephanie got up. “I’d better go. Thanks for letting us invade this evening.”
“I enjoyed it.”
“Good. We’ll do it again.”
She closed the door after Stephanie then brought the wine glasses over to the sink. She washed them out then heard a knock at the outside door. She went downstairs and found Heaton on the step.
“I think my phone fell out of my pocket.”
“Oh. Come up.”
“Thank you.” He followed her up the stairs and went to the armchair. “It’s here.” Retrieving it, he put it in his jacket’s inside pocket. “I’m sorry about Stephanie. She can be a little overbearing.”
“I enjoyed the evening. Didn’t you?”
“Yes. I thought the film was interesting.”
“What were you drawing?” she asked as casually as she could. “Stephanie told me you were quite good.”
“Quite good? That is a compliment. I draw…the house…people…anything that interests me.”
“Can I see some? If you show them to strangers, that is?”
He smiled. “You’re hardly a stranger. Yes, I’ll dig some out for you.”
“Thank you. I wish I could draw but I can’t draw a straight line. I did a photography course a couple of years ago, that’s about it for me on the visually creative front.”
“Photography?” His face brightened. “Do you have any photographs I could see?”
“I have a portfolio somewhere. I haven’t looked at it since London. I think I know where I put it.” She went to a box in the small bedroom and returned with the portfolio. “Some of them are a bit pretentious.”
“They’re good.” He halted at one of Lee. “Your ex-boyfriend?”
“Yes. I was going to do some more in black and white but it never happened.” She flushed as he came to some of her. “We had to do some self-portraits…talk about being self-conscious.”
“They’re very good, don’t put yourself down. I do like black and white photography myself. There was an art exhibition on in Leeds a few years ago that I went to and across the road there was a photography exhibition which I enjoyed more.”
“Faces and Features?”
He stared at her in horror. “You were there?”
She nodded. “Some of them were very interesting. I think my tutor would have thrown me out of the class if I had tried some like that, though. He wasn’t very broad-minded, to put it mildly.”
“Just portraits, poses and places?”
“Very demure portraits, poses and places. You’ve never been photographed or painted properly?” she asked.
“Good God, no.” He laughed. “My father had it done – the portrait – when he turned fifty. I have a bit of time yet.”
“It’s just that people have been asking about you,” she explained. “There are photographs in the drawing room but the one of you looks like it was taken while you were still at school. If there was another, more recent one, to go with the ones of Lady Heaton and your sister?”
“You want to photograph me?” he asked doubtfully.
“Unless you’d like to draw a self-portrait?”
Again, he looked horrified. “I don’t know.”
“Think about it.”
He nodded. “I’ve decided to agree to the interview and feature on the estate for the tourism brochure.”
“Good.”
“I don’t know about that but Stephanie said once that any publicity is good publicity, or something, can’t quite remember exactly… Not sure that I agree with her now, though.”
“Why don’t you ask her for a few tips?” she suggested. “I take it that you haven’t told her about it?”
“No, I haven’t…I don’t know…She helped with the website and I ended up sounding like I should be put in a museum.” Sophia flushed. “I’ll ask her but whether I’ll take her advice, I don’t know. Are you still going walking tomorrow?”
“Yes, and you’re still welcome to come.”
“Thank you. And thank you for showing me these.”
“You’re welcome. Look, I know it’s late but shall we finally make a start on the O’Haras while you’re here?” He nodded. “Good. I’ll get my laptop.” They sat at the table as the laptop booted up and she opened a new family file. “Right. We’ll start with Danielle. She was born in 1950. What year was your father born?”
“1935.”
“Okay.” She typed it in. “I have no idea how to describe the relationship between Danielle and your father, so…” She scratched her head. “I’ll put ‘other’. When was Stephanie born?”
“Second of May 1975. I was born on the twelfth of May 1976.” He watched as she typed in both Stephanie’s and his own details. “Right. Danielle O’Hara married Don Armstrong in Leeds. I don’t know the year but Michelle was born in September 1983 and Peter was born in November 1980. He isn’t married but Michelle married Tony Giles in March 2009. Cathy was born in August 2010.”
He smiled. “How can you remember all this?”
“Michelle’s my best friend,” she told him “I was her bridesmaid and I’m Cathy’s godmother. Now, Danielle’s mother was called Helen. She died in 2005.”
“What about her father?”
“He’s dead, too. His name was Thomas O’Hara.”
Heaton paled. “Must be a coincidence. When did he die?”
“I can’t remember the exact year but it was in the mid-1990s.”
He nodded. “O’Hara…was there an Irish connection?”
“Way back somewhere, yes. Are you okay?”
she asked gently.
He gave her a little smile. “It’s just all a bit strange.”
“I’m afraid that that’s all I remember off the top of my head. We’ll have to go back to St Mary’s sometime. Maybe at six in the morning or ten o’clock at night. With a bit of luck, the gravestone inscriptions will give us an age at which they died and from that, we can get an approximate date of birth. Then, we hit the internet and the record offices.”
“Right. Okay.”
“If you don’t want to go on, all you have to do is say.”
He nodded. “It’s strange. I don’t know and never knew any of these people. They’re just names to me and yet they are my family.”
“We’ll try and flesh things out, find out what they did for a living, try and find a photograph somewhere. Other than that…” She tailed off.
“It’s difficult, I know. Thank you for this.”
“No problem.” She smiled as they got up. They went to the door and she opened it. “Goodnight.”
“See you tomorrow.”
She closed the door and returned to the portfolio. She looked at the photographs of Lee again and put them to the very back, before closing the portfolio and returning it to the box. She couldn’t help but smile. If ‘Faces and Features’ had been a film, it would have been a Certificate 18 at the very least. Even Michelle had been embarrassed at some of the pictures. She shut down the laptop and went to bed.
Chapter Six
Stephanie met her the following morning as she was preparing to go and see her father.
“Thomas has just told me that he’s asked if he could go walking with you this afternoon. Any room for one more?”
Her heart sank but she smiled. “Of course.”
“Good. I bet Thomas is as fit as a tortoise.”
“We won’t go too far,” she replied instead of answering.
“How far is not too far?”
“Five kilometres.”
“Oh.” Stephanie gave her a relieved grin. “Not too bad.”
Sophia watched Heaton’s face as he saw both Stephanie and herself waiting at the Land Rover at two o’clock that afternoon. A flicker of irritation crossed his face then he grimaced.
“I’m not going to regret this, am I?” he asked.
“We’ll break you in gently,” Stephanie told him, climbing into the back.
“You’d better.”
Sophia gave him a little smile as they got in and was thrilled to see him return one.
“Nice to see you out of a suit, by the way.” Stephanie laughed. “You look quite good in combats.”
“Thank you,” he replied dryly and started the engine.
“I’m impressed,” Stephanie proclaimed as they reached the stone circle forty-five minutes later. “You’re not as unfit as I thought, Thomas.”
Sophia stepped into the stone circle and stared at where she and Heaton had been sitting when she had received the phone call about her mother’s death. Would she always think of her mother up here now?
“I haven’t been up here for years.” Stephanie was still speaking. “Do you do this every week?”
Sophia turned. “Yes.”
“Good for you. You wouldn’t mind Thomas tagging along, even if I wasn’t able to come?”
Sophia looked at him, he was eyeing her solemnly, clearly knowing why she was standing where she was. “No, I wouldn’t mind.”
“Good. It’s lovely up here, isn’t it? Cold, but…”
“Christ, Steph,” Heaton roared and they both jumped. “Do you ever shut up?”
Stephanie stared down at her hands and for an awful moment, Sophia thought she was going to cry.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Heaton closed his eyes for a couple of seconds. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to shout.”
“No? I was only trying to make conversation. What the hell must Sophia think of you?”
He looked at her and Sophia pulled an apologetic face.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it. Shall we start back?”
They walked back to the Land Rover and travelled back to the abbey more or less in silence. At the stable yard, Stephanie stomped off into the house while Heaton swore under his breath. Sophia turned to go back to the flat.
“Ms Nelson?”
She glanced back. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry about all that.”
“It doesn’t matter. Really.”
“I’ve only had five cigarettes today,” he explained. “I don’t know if…well, it is probably why I’m so…I don’t know…”
She smiled. “Coffee?”
He gave her a wry smile in return. “I would love a coffee, thank you.”
“Come up, then, but I must warn you that caffeine is an addictive substance, too.”
He laughed and followed her up the stairs. “It’s not quite as harmful, though.”
“That’s true.”
“I was thinking about the photographs,” he added.
“Oh?” she asked, opening the door to the flat.
“Well, if you’re sure that it wouldn’t be too much trouble?”
“No, not at all,” they went in and she shrugged her jacket off. “When?”
“Oh…whenever it suits you.”
She nodded and hung the jacket over the back of a chair. “I know you wanted me to have a quiet moment at the stone circle. Thank you.”
“For completely ruining it by shouting at Stephanie?”
She shook her head. “Blame the cigarettes or lack of.”
“Thank you.”
She felt him watch her make the coffee. “Black and white or colour?” she asked.
“Sorry?”
“The photographs?”
“Oh. Oh, whatever you think…you mentioned black and white…and it’ll go with the other snaps in the drawing room.”
Snaps? They were portraits. “Black and white it is.” She passed him a mug. “This evening? Or tomorrow sometime?”
“Oh, well, as it’s such a good day, perhaps this evening?”
“The weather doesn’t really matter, I can rig up some lights.”
“Lights?” He frowned at her. “I thought it was going to be a few snaps of me at the front door?”
“And I thought it was going to be a decent studio portrait to go with the others in the drawing room?”
“A studio?”
“Well, I thought the flat next door?” she suggested.
“Oh…yes, of course. But a portrait?” He looked sceptical.
“It’s up to you?”
He took a sip of coffee. “No, you’re right, a portrait to go with the others. I just hope that I’m not putting you to a lot of trouble?”
She shook her head. “I need the practice. I’ll dig out the camera and some film.”
“Film?”
“Yes, the camera I’ll be using isn’t a digital camera. Could you open the flat, please, so I can have a go at the lights?”
“Yes, of course.”
She spent an hour after dinner fiddling with the lighting in the flat. Luckily, it also had directional lights and she brought a couple of her own lamps in and set them up. Returning with her camera and tripod, she saw him cross the stable yard and heard him climb the stairs to the flat. He watched as she set them up.
“Where would you like me to stand?” he asked.
“A little to the left so I can check the lights…there. Thank you. Now.” She went to him and brushed imaginary fluff from the shoulders of his black suit, feeling him tense. She smiled up at him. “You’re not in front of a firing squad.”
“Sorry, I…”
“Just try and relax a little?” She returned to the camera. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
She laughed. “Okay.” She took some full-length then a few head and shoulders pictures. “There. Done.”
He almost slumped. “Is the film full?”
“No, there are a few left. Why, do
you want me to take some more?”
“No, I was just wondering if you could show me how to take a proper photograph?”
She smiled. “I’ll show you.”
His eyes almost glazed over as she explained about f-stops and shutter speeds. “Is there no automatic switch?”
She pressed it. “There. Have a look now.”
He peered into the viewfinder. “I can’t see a thing. Could you stand there?”
“I’d rather not.”
“Please?” he asked again and she went and stood in front of the camera, watching him peer through the lens. “I’ll never be David Bailey.”
She smiled then heard a click. “You took one?” she cried. “I look a complete mess.”
“Nonsense. Just one more?”
“Of me? Oh, no.”
“Just one?”
“What’s all this?” someone asked and Sophia jumped. Stephanie was standing at the door.
Heaton straightened up. “Ms Nelson was kind enough to offer to take a photograph of me to go with the others in the drawing room.”
“But you hate having your photograph taken.”
“It didn’t take very long.”
“Nice camera.” Stephanie walked to the camera and began to examine it. “Was he a good subject?”
“I’ve had worse.”
“Can I see the photographs in the camera?” Stephanie asked. “Is it possible with this one?”
“No, sorry, it’s not digital and rather ancient.”
“How many pictures are left on the film?”
“Four,” Sophia told her.
“Hmm, well, if I know Thomas, he would have stood completely to attention. Back over there, please.”
“What?” he cried. “No.”
“The stiff ones can go in the drawing room but it’s Mother’s birthday in a couple of weeks; how about one of you looking almost normal?”
He glared at her. “Normal?”
“Natural, then. Over you go.” Reluctantly, he went back. “And take the tie off.” He did as he was told and Stephanie took it from him. “Hmm, undo a couple of buttons. Come on, it won’t kill you.” He undid the buttons then flinched as she began to run her fingers through his hair. “Better,” she proclaimed, standing back from him. “Isn’t it, Sophia?”
