The Inheritance

by Tilly Bagshawe

  Jason looked into the older man’s kind, understanding face with a gratitude that bordered on love. Perhaps he was drunker than he realized? Or George was. Or both. Just then, Madeleine Wilkes appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  ‘Do get a move on, George,’ she said briskly, like a mistress calling an errant dog back to heel. ‘I’m knackered and I want to go to bed. And poor Tatiana’s dead on her feet.’

  Eventually, after some cake-related negotiation, George was dragged out of his chair and led to the front door.

  ‘Thank you for everything, angel,’ he said to Tatiana, kissing her on the cheek. In a whisper he added. ‘Go easy on the boy, eh? I don’t think he meant it.’

  At last they were gone. Tatiana wearily closed the front door behind them.

  ‘Well,’ she said sourly to Jason. ‘Thanks for nothing.’

  Buoyed by George Wilkes’s kindness earlier, Jason took the rare step of defending himself.

  ‘Look, I’ve said I’m sorry and I am. But I was on the piano, and everyone in the pub loved it.’

  ‘The pub?’ Tati’s voice was rising. ‘You missed an important investor evening for our business because you were spending the afternoon in the pub?’

  ‘Important to whom?’ muttered Jason under his breath, instantly regretting it when he saw the white-lipped fury on Tatiana’s face.

  ‘Oh, I see. It’s like that, is it?’ she fumed.

  ‘No. Sorry. I didn’t mean …’

  ‘Do you know what time I got up this morning?’ Tati ranted on. ‘Five fucking o’clock. The same as I do every morning. I had a thousand fucking emails to deal with, then a full day in the office at school, then a site meeting in Clapham. I didn’t even eat lunch! Then back here to change and schmooze these people, our partners, who, by the way, we really, really need to keep sweet, especially now we’re expanding. And you can’t even be arsed to cut short your afternoon in the pub to help me.’

  ‘I said I’m sorry,’ Jason floundered.

  ‘Yeah. You say that a lot,’ Tati said bitterly. It wasn’t like her to let loose like this on Jason. But for whatever reason, tonight was the straw that had broken the camel’s back.

  ‘I’m tired, Jase,’ she said, with feeling. ‘I’m bone tired, all the time, and I’m tired of being tired, and of doing it all on my own.’

  ‘Then stop working all the time!’ Jason blurted. He was surprised to hear the words come out of his mouth, and even more surprised by the angry tone they came out in. ‘You know the irony is, you only started Hamilton Hall to try to prove something to my father.’

  Tati groaned. ‘Not this again.’

  ‘Yes, this again. You wanted to show Brett that you could make money and be a success and beat him at his own game. In business, if not in the courtroom.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ said Tati, although they both knew it was.

  ‘But instead you’ve turned into his clone,’ Jason pressed on, ignoring her. ‘You haven’t beaten him. You’ve become him. You and my dad are two peas in a self-centred, workaholic pod.’

  Tati drew back her hand and slapped Jason hard across the cheek. His skin was so pale, the livid red hand-print began to form immediately in an ugly tattoo of rage. For a few seconds the two of them stood in the hallway in stunned silence, staring at one another.

  Then Tati gasped.

  ‘Oh my God. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Jason. Moving forward, he hugged her tightly.

  ‘Yes, but … I hit you,’ Tati said in disbelief.

  ‘I shouldn’t have provoked you,’ Jason comforted her and himself. He didn’t know what he would do if he didn’t have Tati. Despite all their issues – his issues, really – he loved her so much. ‘I didn’t mean those things.’

  It was an awful moment, but it was real, and brutal, and in a strange way it was the closest they had been to each other in a long, long time. Unfortunately, the intimacy wasn’t to last.

  The front door shot open, almost knocking Tati flying.

  ‘What the hell …?’

  A heavy leather suitcase came hurtling through the door, landing with a thud on the marble floor. It was followed moments later by its owner, wearing a ripped denim miniskirt, Doc Marten boots and a T-shirt cheerfully emblazoned with the message ‘Kiss My Ass’. She was carrying a hospital-issued crutch, but she showed no signs of actually needing it.

  Logan looked at Jason, her big, baleful eyes red and swollen from crying.

  ‘Can you pay my taxi?’ she sniffed. ‘It’s fifty-something pounds and I’ve only got, like … four.’

  ‘Fifty pounds?’ said Tati, shooting Jason a what’s she doing here? look. ‘Where have you come from, the moon?’

  ‘Sort of.’ Logan wiped away a tear. ‘Lewisham. A horrible train man threw me off for not having a ticket. Can you believe it? He wouldn’t even let me stay on till Victoria and pay at the end.’

  Tatiana dashed outside to pay the cabbie while Jason took Logan into the kitchen and put the kettle on. ‘What are you doing here, Logie?’ he asked her, not unkindly. ‘Have you had another fight with Dad?’

  ‘It’s more than a fight.’ She shook her head and the tears started to flow in earnest. ‘He hates me and I don’t blame him. I hate myself.’

  ‘Dad doesn’t hate you,’ said Jason, laying a comforting hand on his sister’s heaving shoulders. ‘He’s angry, that’s all. It’ll pass.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ sobbed Logan. ‘I’ve left home and I’m not going back. I can’t stay in Fittlescombe anymore, Jase. Not after what I’ve done. Everyone in the village knows. It’s awful! Poor Laura.’ Her face twisted into the very image of misery as she told him about the fire. ‘Her baby could have died because of me.’

  ‘Yes, but it didn’t,’ said Jason, stroking her hair. ‘Nobody died. You made a mistake. A bad one. But running away doesn’t solve anything.’

  ‘You did,’ said Logan. ‘You ran away.’

  ‘That was different,’ said Jason, frowning.

  ‘Who’s running away?’ Tati appeared in the kitchen doorway. She was extremely fond of Logan, and of course knew everything about the fire. A small, childish part of her was glad that Gabriel Baxter had been made to suffer. He’d done everything he could to keep her from getting Furlings back all those years ago, when she’d tried to challenge her father’s will. To this day she was sure Gabe had bought those lower fields from Brett purely to spite her. Tatiana Flint-Hamilton never forgot a slight. However, even she could see that what Logan had done: getting drunk and passing out, leaving a lighted joint burning in a barn full of dry hay, was reckless and unforgivable. By all accounts Laura Baxter had saved her life, risking her own and her unborn child’s in the process.

  ‘I am,’ said Logan. ‘I’ve left home and I’m moving in with you.’

  Jason and Tati exchanged alarmed glances. Jason spoke first.

  ‘Logan sweetie, you can’t live here.’

  ‘Why not? I won’t be any trouble.’

  Tatiana couldn’t help but grin. That was like a sex addict turning up at a nunnery and promising the mother superior that they ‘wouldn’t be any trouble.’ Logan Cranley was nothing but trouble. She couldn’t seem to help it. It was part of her genetic make-up, just as it had been part of Tati’s at sixteen.

  ‘You can stay for the time being,’ said Tati, earning herself a look of frank incredulity from Jason.

  ‘Really?’ Logan’s eyes lit up. Getting up from the table, she threw herself into Tatiana’s arms like a grateful puppy.

  ‘We’ll see how it goes.’ Tati looked at Jason and smiled.

  She’s trying to make it up to me, he thought, smiling back. Although somewhere in his chest the anxiety was already starting to gnaw away at him, like a dog with a bone. Logan living under their roof could only mean one thing: more drama.

  As if they didn’t have enough already.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Tatiana Cranley sat back in the red leather armcha
ir and flicked through the property particulars for a third time.

  ‘Jasmine Farm, immaculate Grade II-listed retreat in the heart of the Swell Valley. £3.25 million.’

  Too small, thought Tati, slipping the wisteria-clad, six-bedroomed farmhouse to the bottom of the pile. Completely secluded within its own land and almost eight miles from Fittlescombe, Jasmine Farm wasn’t in the heart of anywhere. One of the many perfect things about Furlings was that it boasted both privacy and grandeur, whilst remaining part of the village. Isolated splendour was overrated, in Tati’s opinion.

  ‘Wesley House, lovingly refurbished former manse overlooking Fittlescombe village green.’

  The Shenleys’ old house? Far too small. This was going to the opposite extreme. I’d be able to see Furlings from the bedroom windows. No thank you.

  She lingered a little longer over the third set of particulars. The picture showed a stunning, small stately home, its ancient stone walls half covered with ivy. The cover page read:

  ‘Brockhurst Abbey. Idyllic country estate of medieval origins, complete with moat and maze. £5 million.’

  That was more like it. A country house to be proud of. A statement house, historic, beautiful and on a suitably grand scale. Tatiana remembered Brockhurst Abbey from her childhood, back when elderly nuns still lived there. The estate was famous for its orchards, the apples from which produced a popular and very strong local cider called Abbey Dry, a rival to nearby Merrydown. Tati and her friends used to get horribly drunk on it in their early teens, before the more sophisticated pleasures of London beckoned. But as a small child, she remembered how the nuns used to terrify her. With hindsight she could see that they were perfectly sweet, harmless old women. But at the time, something about their grey habits and the silent, shuffling way they moved, crunching along the gravel paths, had caught Tatiana’s childish imagination and given her the creeps. She had an irrational fear of becoming one of them, locked up forever in a lonely world of prayer, without conversation or life or company or fun. Even as a child, a life without fun had been the worst thing Tati could imagine.

  How much fun am I having now? she wondered idly.

  There were aspects of her grown-up, married life that she loved. Having money was good. Being successful and, in her own small way, famous, was gratifying. But happiness, true happiness, was as elusive for her now as it had ever been.

  Sitting in the first-class Virgin Airways lounge at Heathrow, alone, waiting for her plane to New York, she tried to think about the positives. Despite Jason’s late and drunken arrival at their recent drinks party, Hamilton Hall’s board and investors were happy with her performance as CEO. That allowed her a lot of freedom, to develop the business as she saw fit – but there were still battles to be fought and won. Most of the board, and in particular Arabella Boscombe, still baulked at the idea of further overseas expansion, at least until the second London school was up and running at a profit. But Tatiana wanted to move now, while US interest rates were still low and the New York real-estate market had yet to fully recover from recession. She’d booked today’s trip with her own, private money, and was excited at the prospect of scouting out possible locations for a Hamilton Hall NYC. It was a first step forward towards realizing a long-held dream. So was buying a country house back in the Swell Valley with Jason. Yet for some reason, Tati seemed incapable of feeling happy about any of it.

  I don’t want to live at Brockhurst Abbey, she thought moodily, flipping through page after page of glossy photographs showing stunning wood-panelled rooms and formal gardens. I want to live at Furlings. It didn’t matter how much money she accumulated. Tati knew that it would be a cold day in hell before Brett sold that house, to anyone. As for selling it to her, she doubted her father-in-law would make that trade for a billion dollars. That was true power. What Brett Cranley had: control over something that other people wanted and that you would never, ever give up.

  When she’d first married Jason, Tati had harboured vague, unformed hopes of somehow, in time, being accepted into the Cranley family. Perhaps she would have Jason’s child, and perhaps that child would one day inherit Furlings? Then Tati could live out her old age there at least. But if anything her marriage to Jason had pushed her childhood home even further out of her reach. It had enraged Brett, as Tati knew it would. Hamilton Hall’s success had only compounded that rage, which was gratifying in a way – irritating Brett Cranley had become one of the more constant pleasures in Tatiana’s life – but it also meant that her banishment from Furlings was total and permanent. Proving Brett wrong by becoming a wealthy businesswoman in her own right was a victory, but a small one. In Tati’s mind it was overshadowed utterly by Brett’s triumph over her in the battle for Furlings.

  According to Jason, unsurprisingly, Brett had gone ballistic about Logan’s defection to Eaton Gate, accusing Jason and Tati of enticing her to come and live with them.

  ‘That woman will stop at nothing to break up this family!’ he’d raged at Angela. ‘First Jason. Now Logie. And yet you still insist on treating her like one of us. It makes me sick.’

  It pleased Tati to think of Brett Cranley feeling powerless, although she regretted the knock-on effect it must be having on Angela. On the other hand, she couldn’t help but feel that Angela Cranley should stick up for herself a bit more. The more Tati got to know her mother-in-law, the clearer it became where Jason had got his passive nature from. Brett bullied them both because they let him.

  ‘Flight VS 26 to New York is ready for boarding.’

  The announcer’s voice broke Tati’s reverie. Putting aside her untouched gin and tonic, she stuffed the particulars back into her new Smythson briefcase and pulled out her boarding card and passport.

  I’ll feel better when I get there, she told herself. A change of scene, and some time out from the tension at home with Jason, would do her good. Ironically, Logan’s impromptu invasion of Eaton Gate had made things easier between them at home. Her intense teenage emotions – she really did feel terrible about what had happened at Wraggsbottom Farm, and spent hours pouring her heart out to Tati about Gabe, Laura, Seb Harwich and all the people she’d let down – had put Tati and Jason’s own emotions into perspective. Or at least thrown them into a more rational, adult relief.

  Even so, the idea of some space and distance was appealing. And Tati had always adored Manhattan.

  ‘Don’t you just adore Manhattan? The life. The pulse. The energy. Where else can you find that, man?’

  Brett Cranley smiled indulgently at Wilson Rainey. Rainey, a J. P. Morgan private banker from an old Boston family, had worked closely with Cranley Estates for the last five or six years and had become a personal friend. Not that the blue-blooded Wilson, with his impeccable manners and buttoned-down shirts and library full of first edition Mark Twains had much in common with a ruthless, ambitious street fighter like Brett, who never read anything other than the FT and Wall Street Journal. But sitting on the back seat of the limousine together now, on their way back to Brett’s hotel after a successful meeting, Brett marvelled again at Wilson’s positivity. The man was literally never unhappy. Never moody, or tired, or dissatisfied with his lot. Wilson Rainey had lived in New York for the last twenty years, yet he still spoke about the city with all the awe and wonder and adoration of a young man talking about a new and exciting lover. It was contagious.

  ‘It’s not Manhattan, Wilson. It’s you,’ said Brett. ‘I don’t know how you do it.’

  He looked out of the window at the frazzled commuters, heading home after a long day toiling away on Wall Street. It was six o’clock, still relatively early, and the air outside was unpleasantly hot and muggy, like soup. This wave of workers were either secretaries and support staff, or traders and salespeople, all of whom would have been at their desks since five this morning and who got to clock off when the markets closed. The M&A guys started later and would work till midnight or beyond. ‘The meeting went well though, didn’t it?’

  ‘The meeting w
ent awesome.’ Awesome was a word that Wilson Rainey used a lot. He might read like a professor and sit on the boards of God knows how many museums and art galleries and cultural institutions, but when Wilson got enthusiastic about something, his vocabulary was pure high-school jock. ‘You totally owned them, man. They loved you. They wanna do it, for sure.’

  ‘They didn’t say that,’ Brett cautioned.

  Wilson was having none of it. ‘Didn’t have to, man. You could see it in their eyes. I’m telling you, it was a slam-dunk. You ruled.’

  By the time they reached the Trump International Hotel, where Brett was booked into one of the Executive Park View suites, Brett got out of the car feeling uplifted and confident once again. He had two more days in New York, but today’s meeting had been the most important, and Wilson was right: it had gone well.

  Walking into his palatial suite, he kicked off his shoes, dropped his briefcase on the floor and loosened his tie. The floor-to-ceiling windows offered spectacular views of the city and the furniture, all velvet and leather in various shades of cream, coffee and chocolate, was masculine and luxuriously impersonal, exactly to Brett’s taste. Flipping the television on to CNN, more out of force of habit than for any desire to catch up on the day’s news, he flopped back on the bed, opened his laptop and began skimming through emails.

  His mind kept wandering back to Furlings, and to Angela, rattling around the house on her own, or with only Mrs Worsley and the useless Gringo for company. Things were worse than usual between them at the moment. Ange clearly blamed him for ‘driving Logan away’, as she put it. It drove Brett wild with frustration, as if he were living with a Martian. Their daughter had just burned down the neighbours’ property, for God’s sake! If that didn’t entitle him to be angry, to punish her and shout at her and demand explanations, what did? Angela seemed to expect him to tread on eggshells, tiptoeing around Logan’s feelings. As if Logan were the victim here! Good grief.