‘You do know I’d never hurt you.’ He cleared his throat.
‘Why did you just post these through the letterbox? We could have spoken about them then.’
‘I didn’t drop them off,’ he admitted. ‘I had to go to a meeting, so asked someone else to do it. Did you hear what I said? I don’t want you to think I’m trying to hurt you in any way.’
She pictured his secretary with her usual sneer being asked to deliver letters to someone of whom she obviously disapproved. ‘I don’t really know what else to say.’
She waited for his reply, but was greeted only by silence. Paige listened to his breathing, so steady and light.
‘Best of luck then,’ he said, his voice back to its usual tone. ‘I’ll see you at De Greys.’
Paige went to reply, but he cut her off. She listened to the dial tone on her phone for a moment before clicking it off. Not sure quite what to think, she took a large drink from her glass. How did he always manage to cause her emotions to free-fall without any effort at all? It occurred to her that Jeremy had never affected her in that way. She leant back into her sofa staring blindly at the screen. Bugger Sebastian Fielding and her decision to go alone to Sorrento.
Chapter Nineteen
Despite her initial misgivings, Paige viewed both properties later that week. ‘It’s been more fun than I’d anticipated,’ she told Clem as they walked down by the harbour on their way to buy an ice cream. ‘The first one had been run as a shoe shop until recently. Apart from painting the walls to freshen the place up, I could move in fairly quickly with little outlay and fuss.’
‘Sounds promising, so far.’ Clem waved away a determined seagull.
‘The small two-bedroomed flat above could be useful for storage, or if the lease allows, I can sublet to bring in an additional income. Sebastian tipped me off in his letter that the landlord was willing to be reasonable when discussing the rent. Apparently, he was losing money since the previous tenant had moved out. The building has been empty for months.’
‘So, far from this move having to be the end of the world, you already have two options open to you,’ Clem smiled.
‘True.’ Paige wasn’t ready to admit to her sister how much more positive she was already feeling about the change in her circumstances. ‘I prefer the second place. It’s closer to Sand Street car park, as well as offering one parking space, but it’s also more expensive and has less storage. It’s being used as an accessory shop at the moment,’ she told Clem. ‘It’ll cost more to adapt, and I’ll have to wait two months before I can move in. I’ll also have to arrange for the display shelves to be made, so it’s just too expensive and inconvenient.’
‘It sounds pretty perfect other than that,’ Clem said. ‘It’s such a shame.’
‘It’s a shame I have to move at all.’ Paige said forgetting she’d promised not to dwell on her misfortune. ‘I already have a bank loan to consider, and I’ll have to hope I can keep the clientele I’ve built up when I do move. I really don’t need this right now.’
‘Olly will help, and don’t forget he wants to get your updated site up and running as soon as possible. I’m here now, so you can leave the running of the shop to me when you need to. You must stop fretting, Sis,’ Clem insisted. ‘It won’t help in any way.’
‘You’re a fine one to talk.’ Paige nudged her sister and thought about the crumpled-up pieces of paper with all her calculations written down in columns that she’d left behind in the cottage. It wouldn’t take much to ruin everything she had worked so hard for.
‘Have you thought you could be playing right into his grasping hands?’ Olly asked, when she told him about the viewings and Sebastian’s part in it all the following morning.
‘No, I hadn’t,’ Paige couldn’t help feeling a little sick at the suggestion. ‘Thanks for making me feel even more miserable.’
‘Let’s face it, Paige, with you gone from De Greys, that’s one less tenant to worry about. It could suit him very well.’
‘It wasn’t quite like that. He’s not as callous as you think, Ol,’ she insisted, though not quite sure she was right. ‘He did say that I would still get the compensation, if I agreed to leave.’
‘And you believed him, of course.’
Despite what she was telling Olly, she did wonder at her judgment in men, which she knew fell very short of being on the clever side.
‘Hey, don’t listen to me,’ Olly said, taking several biscuits from Paige’s cream enamelled tin. ‘I’m being selfish.’
‘How?’
‘Because if you move elsewhere I wouldn’t be upstairs from you, and couldn’t keep popping down to see you, could I?’ He raised his eyebrows.
‘True, I hadn’t thought of that,’ she said, taking a moment from counting her takings to watch him, wondering if his bad mood might have something to do with what had happened between him and Clem.
‘You also need me to help with the new website,’ Olly added. ‘especially if you want to establish your brand properly. Eventually you might even be able to forget about having to run a shop at all, then you wouldn’t have to think about forking out for rent.’
She rubbed her temples wearily. ‘I know, you’re right and I can’t wait to re-launch the site.’
‘Great. I wish you’d listen to me more often, instead of some jumped-up bloke with a smart haircut who you’ve barely known for five minutes. You’re wasting valuable time by not getting on with it.’
Paige puffed up a cushion to get more comfortable, not bothering to argue. ‘Fine, put a few ideas together and we’ll go through them.’
‘Shit!’ shouted Olly, grabbing the remote control. He turned the volume up to eardrum bursting level.
‘What’s the matter now?’ She stopped sorting the bank notes to see what was so interesting.
‘Look,’ he shouted his face the picture of shock. ‘There’s a picture of Sir Edmund Blake on the news.’
She looked up as the picture disappeared, to be replaced by Sebastian surrounded by journalists and camera crews as he tried to walk along the road, his expression set hard. She strained her ears to try and find out what was going on.
‘What’s happened? Did you see?’ She couldn’t make out what the news alert was about, but there seemed to be much jostling and shouting going on, and whatever it was, it must be important to warrant so much press attention.
He shook his head. ‘It’s on the main BBC news, so it must be something big.’
‘I wonder what he’s involved with now?’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Balls, they’ve gone on to something else. Let’s look at Sky News.’ Olly hurriedly changed the channel once more, before Paige had a chance to disagree. ‘Yes. Look, it says on the breaking news ticker tape thing under the presenter. Oh my God, Paige, Sir Edmund Blake is dead.’
They looked at each other in stunned silence for a second, before turning their attention back to the news. ‘Do you think we won’t have to worry about a takeover now?’ Olly asked, in hushed tones.
Paige shrugged. ‘No idea,’ she said. Catching a glimpse of a picture of Sebastian on the screen, she went cold. ‘Olly, look,’ she whispered.
He followed her gaze, reading the caption under Sebastian’s photo. ‘Well, none of us saw that one coming, did we? He wasn’t just Sir Edmund’s hatchet man at all,’ he laughed, clapping his hands together with glee.
No,’ said Paige, sickened with shock. ‘I had initially suspected he could be the uncle Sebastian spoke about, but he always referred to Sir Edmond Blake in quite a formal way and I assumed I’d been mistaken. So, he is his nephew. Blimey, Ol, I thought Sebastian worked for him, I didn’t realise the uncle he talked about in Sorrento was Sir Edmund Blake.’
‘How the hell did we miss this nugget of information?’
Paige shook her head. ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said wondering why she’d never connected the two men before.
‘Then again,’ said Olly, the excitement in his voice obvious. ‘Why would we co
nnect Sebastian Fielding to Sir Edmund Blake? They have different last names and it’s not as if any of us mix in the same circles.’
Paige shook her head, only half listening to what he was saying. She stared at the composed, but grief-stricken face displayed in all its glory on her 32-inch television screen. Her recent disappointment in him seemed ridiculous now. Gazing at his image, she wanted more than anything to protect him from the bellowing crowds of cameramen and television crews, as they shouted a constant flow of unintelligible questions at him. Only he wasn’t hers to comfort, was he?
Chapter Twenty
‘Sebastian. Over here.’ Click. ‘Oi, Fielding.’
‘Sebastian.’ A microphone was thrust in front of his face, narrowly missing his mouth. Sebastian pushed it and another three like it away. ‘Sebastian, I’m Jeff Spires from Channel 104. Can you tell us if your uncle had suffered from a heart condition before this fatal attack?’
‘What’s going to happen to his empire now? You’re the obvious one to take over from him. Sebastian.’
He held a hand up in a vain effort to stem the flow of questions being shouted at him as he resolutely made his way from the car to his London office. Someone pushed into his back. He ignored them, thankful for his strength which prevented him from being dragged forward with the baying crowd.
He reached the steps of the glass-fronted building and turned around to face the horde. ‘I’ll be giving an official statement shortly. I’m sure you can understand that my uncle’s death has come as a terrible shock to everyone close to him and we need a little time to gather our thoughts.’
‘Sebastian!’
He heard his name being shouted out; he was unsurprised that no one was giving him the time to come to terms with what had happened the previous night. Well they’d just have to wait. He turned and waited as his driver opened the front door, closing it quickly behind them.
‘Thanks, Joseph,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if you want to wait in here, and maybe have a coffee while I go to my office for a bit?’
‘No, sir, I’ll return to the car. I think I should go and take it round the back away from those bloody vultures out there.’ He opened eyes wide. ‘Um, I’m sorry, sir, I shouldn’t have sworn.’
Sebastian patted the older man on his shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Joseph. We’ve both been through a bit of a rough time this morning. Once you’ve parked the car, come to Reception and I’m sure they’ll make you a coffee. I shouldn’t be too long.’
He forced a smile at his secretary and nodded when she offered him a coffee, then closed his office door with relief and sat down. Mrs Hutton had left a message an hour earlier.
‘Mrs H, how are you?’ he asked, when she answered his house phone.
‘I’m fine, Sebastian. It’s you I’m worried about.’
‘Any reporters at the house yet?’
‘A few, but I’ve told them you’re not going to be back here for the foreseeable future. I don’t think they believed me though, because they’re still camped outside. Poor Harley has had to make do with the garden today. I thought about taking him for a walk. Didn’t get as far as the front gate without them shouting at me.’
‘I’ll be back as soon as I can, and I’ll take him out somewhere by car. Are you OK apart from that though?’ He hated to think of the paps shouting at Mrs Hutton.
‘Yes, don’t worry yourself about us. Harley growls at the door and goes mad every time one of them dares to call through the letterbox. I think they’ve decided to watch us from a distance.’ He heard her patting the dog’s head. ‘You’re a good boy for Mrs H, aren’t you, Harley?’
‘He is. Now remember the list I pinned up for you in the kitchen, Mrs H, the one with the names and emergency numbers on? If you have any problem at all and can’t get hold of me, you must call these. I’ve listed them in order of importance, so start at the top.’
‘You’ve told me this before. Now stop fretting about us, we’re fine. Your lawyer chap told me that they’re sending a policeman to stand outside the front door.’
‘Good. I’m relieved. I don’t want you being pestered.’
‘The only person I’m worrying about is you. Now, you get along and speak to those paparazzi stalking your office. They made me mad watching them pushing and shoving you like they did. No manners, some of those journalists.’
‘Thanks, Mrs H. I’ll call you later.’
Sebastian turned off his phone, relieved to have been reassured that his housekeeper and dog were fine. There was a knock on the door. ‘Come in, Caroline.’ He watched as his secretary placed his cup of coffee on his desk. ‘Has Linda called from the Jersey office yet?’
‘Yes, Sebastian. She said she’d emailed you the public statement from the PR company. They’re waiting for you to approve it and then they can send it out to the newspapers.’
‘Give them a call. I’ll go through their draft now, but I don’t want them to release any statements until I’ve spoken to the reporters waiting outside here. They’ll pretty much say the same thing anyway, but I want to give the statement first, so it can be televised.’
‘Of course.’ She smiled at him, before turning and leaving his office.
Her gentle smile reminded him of Paige. Had she heard the news, he wondered. There was already too much emotional distance between them. Would discovering his connection with Sir Edmund make matters worse? Probably. She already thought they were too unalike to stand a chance of making any relationship work. Sebastian dropped two lumps of sugar into his drink and stirred. Who was he trying to kid? It was their professional differences that were causing them such insurmountable differences, not their social circles.
‘Olly, hurry up. Sebastian’s come back out to speak to the reporters.’ Paige’s heart contracted to see Sebastian looking so alone, as the reporters screamed questions at him. Each trying to shout louder than the next and not caring how much pain he was going through.
Olly came back in and handed her a mug of coffee, holding out an open packet of chocolate Hobnobs. ‘Here, take one of these.’
‘No thanks,’ she said, waving them away. ‘Doesn’t life really stink sometimes?’
‘You’re not wrong there. That lucky bastard has it all. I thought I disliked him before, now I loathe him.’
‘Olly.’ Paige was horrified to hear him say something so callous. ‘How can you say that? His uncle has just died. He’s being hounded whenever he steps outside and is obviously going through hell.’
‘Well, I’m bloody jealous of him. I don’t mind admitting it, and I hope this means he doesn’t come back to Jersey. We’ll all be well rid of him and his board of directors.’
Paige tried to think of Sebastian from Olly’s point of view. ‘I doubt Sir Edmund’s death will make any difference with the reorganisation plans. I think Sebastian will simply carry on with the takeover and the rest of businesses now.’
‘You’re probably right.’ He took another biscuit from the packet, dunking it in his drink before popping it into his mouth, dropping some of it onto his lap. ‘Bollocks.’
‘He’ll have funeral arrangements to make too, no doubt,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Surely, we should show just a little generosity of spirit, don’t you think? Just this once,’ she added as Olly raised his eyebrows in defiance.
‘I bet you wouldn’t be so forgiving if you didn’t fancy him,’ he said, after a little contemplation. ‘After all, Paige, my job is safe, you’re the one who should be finding him a threat, not me.’
‘True,’ she said, not bothering to deny her feelings and wondering when Sebastian would return to the island.
The Jersey Scene series box set Page 48
