‘Is that Dad?’ Emma’s face lit up.
Penny passed her the phone and she pressed it to her ear like a magic talisman, disappearing upstairs without a backward glance, still less a word of apology.
‘Are you OK, Mum?’ Seb asked Penny.
‘I’m fine,’ said Penny, returning to her seat in the armchair. ‘The insurers called your father about the car. He was calling to make sure I was all right, that’s all.’
‘I didn’t mean about Dad. I meant about Emma,’ said Seb. ‘Why do you put up with it? Why do you let her be such a bitch to you all the time?’
‘She doesn’t mean it,’ Penny said wearily. ‘She misses your dad.’
‘So do I,’ said Seb. ‘That doesn’t mean I go through life being an epic dick.’
Penny smiled. She did love Seb’s turns of phrase. ‘No darling. I know it doesn’t.’
‘I tell you, all this bloody drama. Anyone would have thought it was Emma who was playing the most important match of her life tomorrow, not me. I’m supposed to be Zen-ing out tonight, you know. George said we all need rest and focus.’
He looked so serious when he said this, so adorably earnest, it was a real effort for Penny not to laugh. Instead, she bit her lip and said, ‘Well, off you go, then. Go and rest and focus in your room. I’ll do supper early so you can get a good night’s sleep. But try to stay out of your sister’s way, Seb.’
Seb gave a grunt that might have been agreement and sloped off upstairs.
‘And, when she’s off the phone, you must ring Piers back and apologize!’ Penny called after him.
Seb gave a second grunt, the meaning of which was more unequivocal.
*****
Later that night, after a scratch supper of ham, smoked salmon, salad and baked potatoes that Seb had inhaled and Emma had picked at in a desultory manner, Penny went out for a stroll.
Piers had been his usual kind, understanding self when she’d rung him back to apologize for Seb’s outburst earlier. But, embarrassingly, Penny realized when they spoke that she’d completely forgotten to let Piers know about the drama of her car accident after their dinner last night. Perhaps she’d imagined it, but he’d sounded distinctly peeved when she’d told him about it, and more concerned about Santiago de la Cruz driving her to Chichester Hospital and running her home afterwards than about what had actually happened.
‘I don’t trust that fellow, sniffing about,’ Piers had said crossly. ‘He’s got ulterior bloody motives.’
This, of course, was true. Clearly, Santiago was after Emma, although what exactly his motives were was becoming increasingly unclear to Penny. Something had happened between them when Emma had gone over to Wheelers Cottage the other day. That much was plain. And Santiago had shamelessly used Penny’s injuries yesterday as an excuse to get into Emma’s good books and ask her out on a date. But now he’d cancelled that date and seemed to be blowing hot and cold. Admittedly, it was the night before the big match. But instinct told Penny there was more to Santiago’s behaviour than a devotion to the Brockhurst team. It was part of some sort of strategy – playing hard to get, perhaps? She felt fearful for Emma, and for herself. The last thing Penny’s shattered family needed was to be messed around by another feckless man.
Pulling her thin grey pashmina shawl more tightly around her shoulders, she turned left and continued up the lane towards Brockhurst village. They’d reached that part of high summer when the evenings seemed endless, and twilight stretched into dawn with almost no true darkness in between. Beneath a pale moon, the lane and hedgerows were bathed in a magical blue light and the warmth of the day still clung to the earth. On either side of Penny, fields of tall grass still buzzed and teemed with life. A dragonfly swooping low overhead like a kamikaze pilot made her duck as it flew towards the river, while fat, inebriated bumble bees made their less graceful way alongside her, moving drunkenly from flower to flower, sated on nectar and the endless bounty of summer.
As she reached the outskirts of Brockhurst, past the first little row of farmworkers’ cottages with their pretty front gardens crammed with towering hollyhocks and tumbling dog roses, she heard the bells of St Hilda’s Church strike eight. Normally Penny loved the sound of church bells ringing, but tonight for some reason they reminded her of Paul. How many times had she and her husband listened to those bells together, strolling along this same lane, feeling blessed to live in such a beautiful place, blessed with their children, with their life? We were happy, thought Penny. Except, of course, Paul hadn’t been. All those years, all the time she’d felt so safe and secure and content, he’d been living another life. Miserable. Plotting his escape. Even now, more than a year since the bomb dropped, Penny still struggled to take in the enormity of what had happened. Did one ever truly get over something like that?
Angrily, she pressed her shawl to her eyes, wiping away the tears. They weren’t only for Paul, but for Emma and Sebby and all that was lost. Stopping by the side of the road to collect herself, she was surprised to find she’d already walked as far as Wheelers Cottage, Santiago de la Cruz’s beautiful rented house. With its thatched roof, leaded windows and wisteria-covered façade, it was an iconic property in the village and indeed throughout the valley, prominently featured on postcards and tourist brochures advertising the idyllic Sussex Downs.
Penny saw that a light was on downstairs. Curious to see what the place was like inside, and knowing Santiago was out with the Brockhurst team, she crossed the lane to peer through the sitting-room window. She was only a few feet away when she suddenly jumped out of her skin. Unaware he was being watched, Santiago walked right past the window. Having stooped down to change the DVD in the machine, he walked back over to the sofa. Slumping back down into his seat, he settled back with a bottle of beer and packet of crisps to enjoy his movie.
So there was no team dinner! thought Penny, watching him from the safety of the shadows. He lied. Cancelled on poor Emma for no reason.
She tried to feel angry on Emma’s behalf, but instead found herself feeling curious. Why had Santiago stood Emma up? Why bother to go to the trouble of asking her out only to let her down at the last moment? Clearly, he was arrogant and vain and well known for keeping a string of women at his beck and call. Was this just part of his modus operandi as a playboy? Possibly. And yet the man who had pulled Penny out of her car yesterday and shown such concern for her at the hospital hadn’t seemed cruel or spiteful. Piers had talked about his having an ulterior motive. No doubt that was true. But there was also something decent, something kind about Santiago, beneath all the bullshit.
At least, Penny thought there was.
Then again, for twenty years, Penny had thought she was married to a straight man who loved her. What did she know?
Feeling tired suddenly, she turned away from Wheelers Cottage window and began the slow walk home.
SATURDAY
Will Nutley opened his eyes and looked at the numbers glowing red on his bedside clock: 5:05 a.m. Closing his eyes again, he slumped back against the pillow and put his hand to his lips. He could still taste Emma’s kiss there, still feel the passion and desire with which her body had responded to him. Her words yesterday had told him not to hope. But her lips had conveyed a different message. Will clung to it this morning, like a drowning man grasping a buoy in choppy seas.
He would stick to his original plan. He would play like a god today and annihilate Santiago de la Cruz. He would be a hero to the whole village, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Emma, swept up in the euphoria of the moment, would forget her head and listen to her heart.
In her heart, she loves me, Will told himself.
The first ball would be bowled in less than five hours’ time.
*****
Less than half a mile away from the modest cottage where Fittlescombe’s star batsman was waking up, Rory Flint-Hamilton was already up and looking out of his bedroom window with a pair of binoculars, gazing across the village green with more than a hint o
f nostalgia. This would almost certainly be his last Swell Valley cricket match. His doctors had given him up to a year to live, but Rory could feel in his bones that the end was nearer than that. He wouldn’t see another summer in this most idyllic of villages, his home of the last seventy years.
A practical man, not given to sentimentality, Rory Flint-Hamilton was not especially afraid of death. Indeed the prospect of joining Vicky, his darling wife whom he’d missed so terribly these past fifteen years, was altogether an appealing one. The anxiety weighing on his chest this morning was all focused on his wayward daughter, Tatiana, and the future of Furlings, the Flint-Hamilton family estate that Rory felt it his sworn duty to protect and preserve. What on earth was going to happen to the place, and to his daughter, when he was gone?
Outside, a soft grey mist rolled gently across the village green and the cricket pitch beyond. Rory watched as old Stan Driscoll, Fittlescombe’s arthritic groundsman, emerged from the pavilion and began pacing the ground, searching for any bumps or irregularities in the immaculately manicured grass. It wasn’t yet six in the morning, but Stan was taking no chances. The local bookies had all written off Fittlescombe’s chances of victory since the contentious addition of Santiago de la Cruz to Brockhurst’s First XI. But, win or lose, no one would be able to cast aspersions on the home team’s perfectly prepared pitch. Stan’s honour, and the reputation of the entire village, depended on their hosting a flawless event.
Leaning against the window in his tattered old Turnbull & Asser dressing gown, Rory Flint-Hamilton smiled as he watched Stan Driscoll shuffle about his work. At a time when the old ways of life seemed under threat from all sides, days like today, the annual village cricket match, provided a much-needed sense of continuity and comfort. Of course, Brockhurst were doing their best to lower the tone, as usual. Their new captain, Charlie Kingham, was a thoroughly disreputable little oik, who seemed hell-bent on turning the Swell Valley match into some sort of commercial, moneymaking circus. Even so, Rory felt confident that there were enough locals prepared to protect the old ways, and preserve the spirit of the great event, even after he was gone.
Rory’s one regret was that he couldn’t umpire this year, or give out the coveted Swell Valley CC cup. His health was so fragile, with collapses liable to occur suddenly and unexpectedly, and he would be mortified to be the cause of any disruption or embarrassment. Even so, it was a blow to have to hand over the reins to that twit Piers Renton-Chambers. Rory Flint-Hamilton was not a fan of his local MP, or of politicians in general. Even worse, Renton-Chambers was a Brockhurst man. And a horrible rumour had gone around a few months ago that he’d been spotted in The Fox wearing a pair of grey shoes. Grey shoes!
Rory shuddered. Piers had better not think of making such an epic faux pas today.
Rory Flint-Hamilton had made his peace with dying of cancer, but not with dying of shame.
*****
By nine thirty, Fittlescombe village looked like Wimbledon on Men’s Final day. Every street, lane, car park and available field was jammed with cars, and the media had descended on the valley like locusts. To Sky Sports’ fury, and the profound disappointment of Charlie Kingham, Brockhurst’s captain, who had hoped to profit from brokering a deal between the network and the local council, they had not been awarded exclusive television rights. As a result, the match was a media free-for-all, with both television and radio stations, corporate sponsors and private individual cricket fans all fighting one another for the best vantage points. Enterprising villagers with houses overlooking the cricket field had rented out rooms to rich Londoners willing to pay good money for a front-row seat. With a third of the stands reserved for locals, and another, woefully inadequate third cordoned off for the television camera crews and assorted sporting and social press covering the event, seating at the ground itself was at a premium.
Two sloping fields adjoining the cricket pitch and green and providing an excellent view of both – both owned by Rory Flint-Hamilton – now sported a variety of marquees, including two beer tents and a makeshift hospitality centre serving sandwiches, ice creams, homemade cakes and the like, as well as a long row of portaloos. Fittlescombe Village Council had vehemently opposed any sort of corporate sponsorship, but Brockhurst, keen to keep the money flowing, had ‘partnered’ unofficially with a number of London companies, whose names and logos could be seen on everything from mugs to paper plates to the bottom of the strawberry punnets supplied by an enterprising Brockhurst farmer.
‘Anyone would think it was the Cartier bloody Polo,’ grumbled Gabe Baxter. Many ordinary villagers, from Brockhurst as well as Fittlescombe, agreed with him. The country had taken this ancient village match to its heart because it was exactly that – a village match, a treasured remnant of a way of life that was all but dead in modern England. No one, least of all the locals, wanted it to lose that old-world charm. But with each passing year, especially as more and more glamorous media types moved to the valley, it was getting harder – as Seb Harwich and his friends would have put it – to ‘keep it real’. There was no doubt that Santiago de la Cruz’s inclusion in this year’s line-up, combined with the Brockhurst captain’s mercenary tendencies, had made it even harder.
Even some of the press were complaining. Graham Yates, the local BBC Radio Sussex cricket commentator, and as mild-mannered a man as one could hope to meet in broadcasting, had had to fight off two ITV crews and a deeply irritating woman from Hello! magazine in order to secure his usual pitch beside the pavilion. Broadcasting from the back of a sound van, Graham did his best to convey the heady buzz of the pre-match atmosphere.
‘Of course, the name on everybody’s lips this morning in the glorious surroundings of this South Downs village is that of Sussex star Santiago de la Cruz.’ Yates’s deep, mellow tones rang out live over the airways. ‘Players from both villages are milling around the dressing rooms here, mingling with the local crowds. But there’s been no sign so far of de la Cruz. It could be that he’s keeping his distance. No doubt he’s well aware of some of the bad feeling his selection has caused locally. Plenty of people here, especially in Fittlescombe, feel that professional players shouldn’t be allowed at an amateur match like this one. Of course, Brockhurst have argued that the match rules go back for well over a century and make no such stipulation. Players have to be local, and de la Cruz is local. But talking to locals I— Oh, here he is! Santiago de la Cruz is making his way to the pavilion.’
A vision in perfectly crisp cricket whites, which made his smooth olive skin look even darker, and accentuated the perfect, arrogant, predatory lines of his face, Santiago strode across the pitch like a god. Without exception, every female eye turned to gaze at him, with varying degrees of longing. Despite herself, Emma Harwich felt a lurch in the pit of her stomach. She wished she didn’t want him so much, but how could one not?
‘And there’s de la Cruz, shaking hands with George Blythe,’ Graham Yates continued. ‘Blythe is of course the captain of the Fittlescombe team this year … And it looks like … yes, they’re about to have the toss.’
Slumped in a fold-out chair at the bottom of one of the fields, just a few feet from the boundary behind the scoreboards, Emma Harwich listened grumpily to Yates’s commentary on her mother’s Roberts radio. Penny had secured a brilliant spot from which to watch Sebby, and support Piers, who was now confirmed as the giver of the cup. She’d been too tired to make a picnic last night, so the wicker basket wedged between Emma’s chair and her own was stuffed with ready-made Waitrose pies and sandwiches, plus a few plums from the garden and what was left of the Victoria sponge Penny had made last weekend to celebrate Emma’s homecoming. At the last minute she’d thought to grab a screw-top bottle of white wine out of the fridge, along with a clutch of plastic glasses. These were intended for lunch, but she was alarmed to see that Emma had already poured herself a large glass. Play hadn’t even started yet. Emma’s bad mood of yesterday seemed to have intensified this morning into a full-scale sulk. Penny
had half expected her to stay at home and boycott the match, perhaps to ‘punish’ Santiago for cancelling on her last night. But at the last minute she’d wafted downstairs looking utterly ravishing in a diaphanous, pale-green Stella McCartney tea dress, the look spoiled only by the ugly scowl she wore etched on her perfectly made-up face.
‘Oh, that’s bad luck,’ said Penny, her eyes glued to the pitch as the BBC commentator rambled on. ‘Brockhurst won the toss. They’re going to bat first.’
‘I’m not deaf,’ snapped Emma.
‘That won’t do much for poor Will’s nerves, having to wait forty overs before he faces Santiago.’
Emma’s scowl deepened. She did not want to think about ‘poor Will’, who managed to make her feel guilty just by existing, or Santiago, who’d looked preposterously handsome this morning, weaving his way through the parked Ferraris and Bentleys before strutting onto the pitch in his gleaming whites. Catching sight of Emma as he approached the pavilion, the bastard had had the temerity to smile and wave at her as if nothing were wrong. As if it were OK to leave her in the lurch for some stupid team powwow. Emma hated herself for feeling so angry and impotent, and for wanting him so much.
‘Oh, my goodness, look!’ gasped Penny, as the teams spread out over the pitch and the fielders took up their positions. ‘George has put Sebby in to bowl first.’
‘Who cares?’ Emma yawned.
This was too much for Penny. ‘I care,’ she said crossly. ‘And so should you. This is a huge deal for your brother.’
Emma rolled her eyes.
‘He’s only fourteen,’ said Penny, ignoring her. ‘The youngest ever player for Fittlescombe, and he’s going to bowl the first ball. He’s bound to get his picture in the papers after this. He might even get talent-spotted,’ she added, excitedly.
‘Whoop-de-do,’ said Emma, getting to her feet. ‘I’m going for a walk.’
The moment she stood up, half the cameras pitch-side swivelled to look at her. One of the few strokes of good luck Emma had had in recent days was the news that Tatiana Flint-Hamilton, her only real rival for top billing as ‘most photographable girl’ at today’s event had decided to swan off to Sardinia instead, leaving the limelight entirely to Emma. Ignoring the groans and catcalls of ‘sit down’ from spectators around her, she made no effort to speed up her walk as she sauntered sexily towards the hospitality tent, revelling in the attention. In all the high emotion of the past week, with Will and Santiago and her increasingly fraught relations with her mother, Emma had almost forgotten why she’d come home in the first place. If Sebby did make the papers as opening bowler, he wasn’t going to be the only member of the Harwich family to do so.
One Christmas Morning & One Summer's Afternoon Page 15
