Storms Over Blackpeak

by Holly Ford

  ‘Yeah, well I’m pretty sure no one else will see it that way.’ Luke shook his head. ‘The irony is, I came here to get away from girls like Valentina.’

  Jesus. There was more than one?

  ‘I don’t see,’ Cally said slowly, ‘why anyone else has to know.’

  Luke stared at her. ‘You mean, you’re not going to tell anyone?’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell.’ She paused. ‘Not about you, anyway.’ There were some things Ash should hear about, maybe — but not from her. And besides, he could hardly complain. She was starting to think that he and Valentina deserved each other.

  Luke looked away. There was a long silence. ‘Thank you,’ he said at last, in a very odd voice.

  She shook her head. ‘I haven’t done anything.’ As Luke continued to stare out the window, Cally retreated to the door. ‘Excuse me. I have to go book a bus ticket for tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Where are you off to?’ He turned to face her.

  ‘Christchurch.’

  Luke’s eyebrows rose.

  ‘I’m going to spend a few days with my mum,’ she explained. That sounded perfectly reasonable, didn’t it?

  ‘Why don’t you come up with me? I’m heading back now.’

  He was? ‘I thought you were staying until Sunday.’

  ‘Yeah. I’m pretty sure that when I check my email I’m going to find something urgent’s come up.’

  Cally stared at him, puzzled.

  ‘You think I should stick around,’ he asked, with a wry look, ‘for dinner with Ash and Valentina?’

  Oh. No, probably not a great idea. In fact, she wouldn’t mind skipping that one herself.

  ‘Exactly,’ Luke said, his grin returning. ‘So. Want a lift?’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Cally checked his face.

  Luke’s grin broadened. ‘I did say we should go for a drive.’

  Having cleared her departure with Lizzie and Carr, Cally threw her clothes into her bag as quickly as she could. Was it really possible she might escape without having to face up to Ash? It seemed almost too good to be true.

  Kneeling on the bag, she wrestled the zipper closed. Even given how much of her wardrobe she was leaving behind, she seemed to have more than she had arrived with. Getting up, she put her hand to the cuff of her favourite checked shirt. She’d be back for it in less than a week. Wouldn’t she? With one last long look around her room, Cally shouldered her bag and walked out into the hall.

  Shit. Ash was coming up the stairs. He looked exhausted. She tensed in preparation for the scene she had so been dreading.

  Seeing her, Ash’s shoulders dropped. ‘You’re okay,’ he said softly.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she snapped.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you.’ Reaching the landing, he rubbed his forehead. ‘All day.’ He broke off, his brow furrowing as he took in the bag she was holding. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Christchurch.’ Cally saw no need to elaborate.

  ‘You can’t.’ Ash checked his watch. ‘Not now. It’s too late.’

  ‘Ash?’ Valentina’s door opened. ‘May I—’ Her lovely voice caught. She sounded as though she’d been crying. ‘May we speak now?’

  For a second, Ash closed his eyes. Opening them again, he sought out Cally’s. ‘Look,’ he said, in a low voice, moving his hand briefly towards her before seeming to think better of it, ‘I’ll drive you to the bus tomorrow, okay?’

  ‘No need.’ Stalking down the hall, Luke took the bag from her hand. ‘Cally’s coming with me.’

  Chapter FOURTEEN

  Standing in Carr’s bedroom the night before, Lizzie surveyed the new-look Cally. Her bare shoulders could do with a little bronzer, perhaps? Lizzie pulled the compact out of her handbag.

  ‘Here,’ she said, brushing it over Cally’s collarbones. ‘Now you’re perfect.’

  She was really rather proud of her handiwork. It was always awkward putting makeup on somebody else, and she hadn’t attempted a smoky eye for about a decade or so, but it had all turned out very well. Cally’s usual laid-back glow had become a genuine smoulder. Lizzie had toned down the Valentina look to something more like Ella would wear, but in her own way — well, Lizzie’s own way really, now, she supposed — Cally looked every bit as glamorous as Valentina did. And as lovely. As long as she stayed still, anyway.

  Having seen Cally back to her own bedroom, Lizzie left her practising in her high heels and went off to find Carr and tell him that they were cooking dinner. She discovered him stoking the range in the kitchen.

  As she curled into the armchair beside him, he looked her over, the muscle beside his mouth twitching. ‘What have you been up to?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ she protested innocently. ‘Why?’

  ‘You’re looking very pleased with yourself.’

  ‘Am I?’ Lizzie put her arms around his neck as he leaned over her chair. ‘Actually, I did do something. I told Cally to take the night off and enjoy herself. Is that okay?’

  ‘It’s fine.’ He frowned. ‘I’m not sure how much she’s going to enjoy herself though. She might be better off in here.’

  Well, yes. He did have a point. ‘Things might be a bit different tonight,’ Lizzie suggested, hopefully. ‘And at least there’s Luke to talk to.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Carr’s frown deepened.

  Lizzie waited for the inevitable crack about Luke.

  ‘It’s been good for her,’ Carr said. ‘Luke being here.’

  Really? Her eyes widened in surprise.

  ‘I’ve been watching him,’ he went on gruffly. ‘The way he is with Cally.’

  She waited patiently.

  ‘You know what?’ Carr’s mouth twitched again. ‘He’s all right.’

  Lizzie smiled. ‘Who’d have thought?’ she said mildly.

  ‘He’s all right,’ he added, ‘now.’

  ‘We all make mistakes.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Carr’s glower returned. ‘We do.’ He stood up. ‘So what are you and I making for dinner, then?’

  ‘I think Cally’s defrosted a roast of beef.’ Getting up, Lizzie opened the door of the oven, where Cally had hidden their dinner from Doug. Pulling the roast out, she inspected it thoughtfully.

  ‘Too simple for you?’ Carr suggested wryly.

  ‘I’ll just make some Yorkshire puddings.’

  Lizzie was reaching the flour out of the cupboard when the kitchen door flew open.

  ‘What have you done to Cally?’ Ash demanded, glaring at her.

  ‘I haven’t done anything to her,’ she said, caught offguard by the force of his question.

  ‘Yes, you have. Who else would it be? She looks just like you—’

  ‘Hey,’ growled Carr, a note of anger she’d never heard before in his voice, as he arrived at her side. ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘There are thousands of girls who look like that,’ Ash raged on.

  Lizzie held up a restraining hand as Carr’s eyes blazed. In her long career, she had been yelled at by much scarier people than Ash. And besides, this was fascinating. She wanted to hear where it went.

  ‘There’s only one Cally,’ he finished, shaking his head as if to clear it. ‘She should never, ever, think she has to do that — to be that—’

  ‘And that’s everyone’s fault but yours, is it, Ash?’ Carr broke in. ‘If you stopped treating that girl like a huntaway pup you’re trying to train, maybe she wouldn’t think she had to work to get your attention.’

  Ash transferred the full force of his glare to his father. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘What,’ Carr said, with controlled fury, ‘is Valentina doing here?’

  There was a moment’s silence. ‘I don’t know,’ Ash scowled, dropping Carr’s gaze.

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I guess — I guess I invited her.’ He ran an angry hand through his hair. ‘When I was leaving their place. I didn’t think she’d actually come.’

  Lizzie stole a glance at Carr, who was givin
g Ash the sort of look that would make a lion want to crawl under a stone. Before anyone could say anything else, the unmistakeable ring of high heels echoed down the hall.

  ‘Ash?’ Valentina stuck her impeccable head around the kitchen door.

  ‘What?’ His voice softened halfway through the snap.

  ‘Are we going to play? Shall I set up the board?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Avoiding his father’s eyes, Ash turned. ‘I’ll be right there.’ Following Valentina back up the hall, he closed the door behind him.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Carr snarled. Striding across the kitchen, he flung open the fridge and extracted a bottle of wine before turning to Lizzie with a glare every bit as furious as his son’s. ‘What the hell is wrong with him?’

  ‘He’s being kind,’ she suggested gently.

  ‘Kind? You think what he’s doing to those two girls is kind?’

  ‘I think he means it to be.’ Lizzie sighed. ‘Your son—’

  Carr banged the wine bottle down on the table. ‘My son needs to grow a pair.’

  ‘You should talk to him.’

  ‘I just did.’

  ‘Calmly, I mean.’

  ‘Ash isn’t interested in anything I’ve got to say.’

  Lizzie shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’

  A glass of wine later, Lizzie left Carr peeling vegetables and, with a deep breath, went to check on Cally.

  Looking into the sitting room, Lizzie smiled to herself. Cally seemed to be doing okay. Perched on the sofa next to Luke, she was certainly fulfilling her orders to look decorative. Scotch glasses in hand, the two of them appeared to be deep in an animated discussion of things she could do with her maths degree. Pressing her hand to her mouth, Cally laughed.

  At the table across the room, Valentina laughed, too. ‘You are too easy to beat tonight,’ she said, removing Ash’s last chequer from the board. ‘That is three games to me. Do we need to raise the stakes?’

  ‘How is it in there?’ asked Carr, as Lizzie re-entered the kitchen.

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Go see for yourself.’

  Carr walked out. ‘Serves him right,’ he said, returning moments later. He kissed her neck. ‘Cally looks great, by the way.’

  ‘You think she looks better?’

  ‘I don’t know about better,’ Carr shrugged. ‘But she’s got to be tougher to ignore.’

  When Lizzie went back to call everyone in for dinner an hour later, Luke offered Cally his arm with just the right degree of comedy.

  ‘May I?’

  ‘Why, thank you,’ Cally giggled.

  Lizzie watched Luke manoeuvre Cally into the dining room, his hand beneath her elbow. Trust him to have understood the difficulty she was having with her shoes.

  ‘Ash and I started to ride up the river today,’ Valentina said, once dinner was served. ‘The Windscleugh — is that how it is said? But we did not get very far before the storm came.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Lizzie politely.

  ‘The rivers in New Zealand,’ Valentina smiled, ‘are not like the rivers I know.’

  Under the table, Lizzie nudged Carr’s foot. ‘Is that right?’ he managed.

  ‘When my great-great-grandfather arrived in Argentina, he sailed up the Rio de la Plata,’ Valentina went on. ‘The widest river in the world. For over a century, my family travelled to and from the estancia by boat. We still keep a mooring at the yacht club in Buenos Aires.’

  ‘An America’s Cup tactician.’ Luke nudged Cally’s elbow. ‘That’s what you could be. You can’t say that would be boring.’

  Cally laughed. ‘I think I preferred your idea of international cardsharp.’

  ‘What about engineering?’ Luke suggested. ‘Have you thought about that?’

  After dinner, Ash escaped the sitting room as soon as — indeed, some might say sooner than — was polite. Valentina followed him upstairs shortly afterwards.

  Cally eyed the door, looking suddenly miserable. ‘I should probably head up, too.’

  ‘Don’t go yet,’ Luke said gently. ‘Stay here for a while.’

  ‘It’s early,’ Carr agreed. ‘Let’s all have another drink.’ He moved to the sideboard. ‘What would you like? Another glass of wine?’

  Cally dragged her gaze from the door at last. ‘Do you think I could have a scotch, please?’

  Catching Lizzie’s eye, Luke grinned.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Lizzie told Carr, in response to his look of alarm as Luke walked Cally up the stairs to her room an hour later. ‘There’s a reason.’

  Late the next morning, Lizzie threw open the windows of the sitting room to the low winter sun pouring in under the verandah.

  ‘It’s not too cold, is it?’ she asked Luke.

  ‘No.’ Looking up from his laptop, he squinted into the heavy gold light. ‘Not at all. In fact’ — he pulled his jumper off — ‘it’s a bit the reverse.’

  ‘Not for long,’ she warned him, settling back on the sofa with her magazine. ‘The sun’ll be back behind a hill in about another minute.’

  The ring of the phone echoed through the house. Turning her page, Lizzie waited. After two rings, it was picked up. Carr must be out of the shower, then. Ash had gone riding with Valentina over an hour ago, and Cally had vanished somewhere — Lizzie hadn’t seen her all morning.

  Outside, footsteps crunched up the path to the front door and mounted the steps to the verandah. Ash and Valentina? For such a lovely day, they were back very early. Lizzie looked up as Valentina’s voice drifted through the open window.

  ‘If she were my maid,’ Valentina said, her tone icy, ‘she would be fired.’

  Lizzie shot a glance at Luke. He was looking at the window, too.

  ‘Cally isn’t a maid,’ Ash said, sounding equally out of humour.

  ‘What is she, then?’ Valentina demanded, suspiciously.

  ‘She’s … she’s part of the family.’

  ‘Part of the furniture, more like it,’ whispered Luke.

  ‘Shhh.’ Lizzie held up her hand.

  ‘You do things very differently here,’ Valentina said.

  ‘Yeah. We do.’ There was a long pause. ‘Look, Tina, a lot of things are different here.’

  Luke looked at Lizzie. ‘Here it comes.’

  ‘We should really say something,’ she whispered.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Luke whispered back. ‘You want to miss this?’

  ‘What is it,’ Valentina asked slowly, ‘you are saying?’

  ‘What you — what happened last night — that can’t happen again, okay? You and I, we’re not … Well, it isn’t going to be the same as it was in Argentina.’

  ‘You are breaking up’ — Valentina’s voice held a mixture of incredulity and fury — ‘with me?’

  ‘First time’s always the hardest,’ Luke whispered, with a grin.

  ‘Breaking up what?’ Ash said, in a kinder voice. ‘We were never serious, you said so yourself.’

  ‘What were we, then?’

  Luke winced. ‘Don’t answer that one.’

  ‘You told me …’ Ash paused. ‘You always said we were just having fun.’

  ‘And now,’ Valentina asked, in a tone that could liquefy hydrogen, ‘you wish to have fun with someone else?’

  ‘No. It’s not like that.’ Ash made a noise of frustration. ‘Look, I can’t do this now. We’ll talk about it later, okay? I have to go.’

  ‘To look for her.’

  ‘To look for Cally, yes.’ His boots moved down the steps and back onto the path.

  ‘You know,’ Valentina called after him, ‘you are not the only one who knows how to have fun!’

  If Ash could still hear her, he made no reply. Lizzie jumped as the front door slammed and Valentina’s furious steps rang up the hall.

  ‘Phew.’ Luke looked at Lizzie.

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘What do you think she meant by that?’

  ‘I have a nasty feeling Ash is going to find out.’

/>   ‘Well,’ taking her feet off the sofa, Lizzie put her magazine down, ‘I promised you an entertaining weekend. Aren’t you glad you stayed?’

  ‘It’s been a blast so far,’ Luke agreed. ‘I can’t see how it could get any better.’

  The door opened. Lizzie breathed a sigh of relief as Carr stuck his head into the room.

  ‘That was Dave Clark on the phone,’ he announced. ‘He’s got a heading pup he thinks I might want to take a look at. You feel like a run into town?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, getting up.

  Carr paused. ‘Want to come along?’ he asked Luke. ‘We could stop in for a drink at the pub on the way back.’

  Good God. Lizzie hoped she’d managed to hide her surprise as well as Luke had.

  ‘Thanks,’ Luke said, with admirable nonchalance. ‘I would, but I’d better stay here and get this report done. I promised yesterday that I’d have it to Dad by the time he woke up on Saturday morning.’

  Carr nodded. ‘Help yourself to anything you need.’ He looked at Lizzie. ‘You ready to go?’

  ‘I’ll just grab my coat.’ She paused in the doorway, looking back at Luke. He was pretending to concentrate on his laptop screen, but she could see how pleased he was.

  ‘That was very nice,’ she told Carr, in the cab of the Hilux, ‘what you did back there.’

  She saw his dark eyes gleam. ‘He’s earned himself a beer.’

  Four hours later, Lizzie and Carr arrived back to an ominously silent house. Apart from Luke’s car parked in the drive, it was almost like the old days. Ash’s ute wasn’t there, and he and Cally were nowhere to be seen. Was that a good sign? Lizzie wondered. Perhaps Cally wouldn’t be needing a little break from Glencairn after all. Lizzie had decided against telling Carr what she’d overheard between Ash and Valentina. She shouldn’t have been listening anyway, and Ash certainly didn’t need her to announce his decisions to his father. God knew she didn’t want to put herself in the middle of those two any more than she already had. Everything would become clear in due course. Until then, Lizzie planned to keep her mouth shut.

  Leaving Carr in his office, she walked down the hall. The door to the sitting room was closed. Was Luke still in there? Lizzie put her hand to the door. Hearing Valentina’s voice inside, she withdrew it quickly and, with only the slightest guilt at her cowardice, beat a retreat upstairs.