The Forever House: A feel-good summer page-turner

by Veronica Henry

  23

  1967

  Sally couldn’t believe it when she woke the day after the photo shoot and it was just after nine. She didn’t think she’d ever woken up so late, but it had been after three before she went to sleep. And it turned out that having your photograph taken was exhausting. Plus she had never slept in a double bed before and couldn’t get used to all the room. It was heaven.

  She ran to the window and looked out across the garden to the fields beyond. Today was a crisp and bright spring morning, though still very cold, and everything glittered with frost. The house almost seemed to be breathing itself, in tandem with its slumbering inhabitants. Sally could sense she was the first one awake. She dressed quickly, in an old pair of slacks, a polo-neck jumper and her plimsolls, because she was going to be on her feet all day. She tied her hair back in a ponytail and slapped on some Ponds cold cream, her only nod to a beauty regime.

  In the kitchen she put on the kettle to make a pot of tea, then began to cook, knowing there was nothing better than being woken by the smell of frying bacon.

  By half past nine she had made another list of things she needed and no one had appeared. She put the bacon in an enamel dish in the warming oven of the Aga – it would keep there quite nicely – and she could do the eggs when someone appeared. She gathered up dusters, sponges and a mop and went to tackle the hall.

  Before she started to clean, she dealt with the big pile of post on the table. It made her blood run cold to see all the unopened brown envelopes, with some of the postmarks dating back weeks. Some of them were stamped URGENT or FINAL DEMAND. She didn’t open any of them, but she could tell just by feeling them that they needed attending to. She could tell Margot had an instinct for invitations and just left everything else.

  She didn’t suppose Dai had attended to a piece of paperwork in his life or even stopped to look at what was on the table.

  She sorted the letters into piles, depending on who they had been addressed to.

  She looked up and saw Margot coming down the stairs, yawning. She was wearing men’s pyjamas with the sleeves and legs rolled up, her tangled hair falling down to her shoulders.

  ‘Morning!’ She beamed at Sally. ‘Can I smell bacon?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll come and do you an egg too.’

  ‘My goodness, it’s like being in a lovely hotel. Yes, please.’

  Sally held out Margot’s pile of officialdom.

  ‘I’ve sorted through all the post. You might like to have a look through these while you’re having breakfast.’

  Margot looked slightly puzzled. ‘Oh, I’d just throw the whole lot in the bin. If it’s important, they’ll write to me again.’

  ‘Don’t you think you should open them? Some of these are from the bank. And there are bills too. I think.’

  Margot flipped through them, just putting aside the ones marked Personal. ‘Oh dear. Yes. This is mostly my Christmas shopping. I suppose I should pay – it’s been a month or so.’

  ‘Over three months.’ Sally corrected her.

  Margot handed her back the pile.

  ‘Let’s just bin all of them and start again and I promise I will turn over a new leaf and open everything. I’ve got the fan mail. That’s all I need to worry about, really.’

  Sally looked at the remaining envelopes. She felt panic pool in her stomach. She knew the consequences of unpaid bills better than anyone. The fear had never left her.

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to open them? And pay them? You said there was a chequebook in the kitchen drawer. If you sign the cheques, I can settle all these accounts and then you’re square. Otherwise you might get into the most awful trouble . . .’

  To her huge relief, Margot smiled. ‘That’s not a bad idea. Yes, why not?’

  ‘I mean, you don’t want them to cut off the electricity or the telephone.’

  ‘Would they do that?’

  ‘Of course. If you don’t pay.’

  ‘Oh yes. That would be awful. You go ahead.’

  Sally took the envelopes back to the kitchen and put them on the table, then made Margot breakfast. Alexander and Phoebe appeared soon after, but not Dai, and they were so appreciative of her cooking it made her smile.

  ‘Oh my goodness – a butter dish and butter knife?’ said Phoebe in admiration.

  ‘And a jam spoon. We are total savages, you know that,’ said Alexander, carefully scooping out some marmalade on to his toast.

  ‘No, darling – we’re just busy,’ said Margot. ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’

  Sally worried that Margot felt as if she was being got at for not being a good housewife. She had noticed moments of prickliness and reminded herself to be careful. The last thing she wanted was for Margot to feel threatened.

  When they had all disappeared off – Margot to her study, Phoebe to the dining room and Alexander goodness knows where – she sat down with a pen and made a note of every bill, then took the chequebook out of the drawer and wrote out seventeen cheques for the seventeen unpaid bills.

  Electricity. Telephone. The butcher in Peasebrook – not the one she had been to, she noticed. Harrods. Fortnum’s. Hatchards. Margot’s room service bill at Brown’s. Petrol from the local garage. It went on and on. It made Sally’s blood run cold, the thought that anyone could ignore the fact they owed money.

  But then she supposed the Willoughbys didn’t really understand the consequences of debt.

  She put the lid back on the pen. She wasn’t going to think about her father. This was her chance for a new adventure. She wasn’t going to live in the past, or let what had happened overshadow her.

  She put the cheques into a pile ready for Margot’s signature. She would have to go to the post office for envelopes and stamps – there was no point in looking for any here.

  She hadn’t opened Margot’s bank statements. That was going too far and they were really none of her business. She would find another way of getting her to give them her attention.

  Later that week, Margot reached out for her pile of post. Sally had taken to giving it to her each morning at breakfast. She tutted as she realised Sally had put two letters from the bank on the top. She was only interested in her fan mail, so she put those to one side and leafed through the rest.

  Letters from readers often cheered her up and reminded her why she wrote. People mostly wrote nice things, although they did love to point out mistakes and inaccuracies. She liked it best when a reader told her one of her books had got them through a particularly hard time: a bereavement or an illness. Those letters always made her feel as if what she was doing was truly worthwhile.

  Today there was one letter that particularly intrigued her, which had been sent on from Niggle. It was in a long white envelope with thick black writing: Margot Willoughby c/o The Rathbone Agency. She opened this one first, curious, because it looked interesting.

  She spread the letter, neatly folded in three, open. It was brief, but emphatic.

  Dear Miss Willoughby

  Following on from our meeting at the party, I took the liberty of reading one of your books today. I have to admit to finding it highly entertaining. I think I owe you an apology. I was rude and dismissive of your work, and I would like to take you out for lunch to make up for it. I don’t always behave terribly well when I’m nervous. My number is at the top of this letter. Please do telephone me next time you are in town.

  With my very best wishes

  Terence Miller.

  Margot stared at the letter in amazement. She read it over and over again, and as the words finally sank in, she found her heart was beating faster and faster, and a feeling washed through her. She finally managed to identify it. It was pleasure. Pleasure at his validation, and even greater pleasure at his invitation. Why? she wondered. He wasn’t handsome or charming. He’d been vile to her. Yet something drew her to him. Was she being perverse? Was it because he seemed to be the only man on the planet who didn’t find her attractive, and if Margot liked anythin
g it was a challenge?

  She felt flustered. She didn’t know what to do with her feelings, or his invitation. Of course, she didn’t have to answer it. He’d been so rude she was well within her rights to ignore his overture. She fished about in the drawer of her desk for her cigarettes, only to find the packet empty. She needed something to calm her nerves. Nerves? Why on earth did she feel nervous? She should chuck the letter in the bin and crack on with her book.

  But his sardonic tones, those pale grey eyes behind his thick glasses, wouldn’t leave her.

  At three o’clock, she drew on her cardigan, went out to find the Mini, then drove to the post office in the nearby village to buy cigarettes. She came out, lit up and stared at the phone box over the road as she inhaled the smoke. Something dark and potent pooled in her tummy. Something dangerous.

  She tossed her half-finished cigarette into the rubbish bin and walked over to the phone box. She tried to look casual but she probably looked anything but. She dug in her purse for the right coins, then picked up the receiver and dialled the number, listening to the whir of the dial as it spun round like a wheel of fortune. She pushed in a coin as she heard the pips.

  ‘Three-five-eight-eight,’ growled Terence Miller. She would recognise his voice anywhere.

  ‘Hello. Mr Miller? It’s Margot Willoughby.’ She sounded far more self-assured than she felt.

  He didn’t reply for a second, then his reply held a mixture of surprise and amusement. ‘Oh.’

  ‘I got your letter. Thank you.’

  Again, he was slow to reply. She wondered if he was embarrassed. Perhaps he’d been drunk when he wrote it, and was now regretting it.

  ‘Good,’ he said.

  She ploughed on.

  ‘I’ve a morning meeting in London on the seventeenth,’ she lied. ‘I wondered if you were free for lunch afterwards?’

  Again, a few seconds’ silence. Did he do it to unnerve people, or was he genuinely slow to react? Margot wound the thick telephone cord around her fingers while she waited for his reply, biting her tongue despite the urge to babble, wondering why on earth she had phoned him. Was she mad?

  ‘That’s fine,’ he said, sounding as if it was the most boring proposition he’d ever had. ‘One o’clock at Mirabelle.’

  And he rang off.

  Margot put the phone down and leaned her forehead against the cool of the glass. She could see the children leaving the school playground, skipping around, laughing, pushing each other. Her heart was beating and there was blood in her veins and she felt as if she had done something for herself for the first time in a long time. She felt exhausted and frustrated and daunted, and she wanted to speak to someone who understood how it felt to stare at a blank page day after day, and she thought that Terence Miller, for all his posturing, probably did.

  It took a fortnight for Sally to get the full measure of the Willoughbys.

  There had been no structure, no discipline, no routine at Hunter’s Moon, but what pleased her was how they responded to her attempts to organise them. They started to come down to breakfast before nine, because she had told them she wasn’t going to cook after that. And she found that if she asked them to do things, they would help. Phoebe happily pegged out the first wash of the day. Alexander fed the cat and kept its bowls clean and cleaned out the parrot. Margot remembered to bring all her cups and plates over from the coach house. Dai was a shadowy figure who hadn’t quite engaged with the new status quo. He stood apart from the rest of the family, awkward and possibly even a little shy. It was as if he didn’t quite belong.

  And when Annie came home at the weekend, she was eager to help with the cooking. Sally taught her how to make scones and Victoria sponge and pastry.

  ‘The cookery teacher at school is rubbish. She’s got awful BO,’ Annie informed her, rubbing butter and lard together into a mound of flour. ‘Why are you such a brilliant cook?’

  ‘I’m not. I’m nothing like as good as my mum. I learnt everything from her, really.’

  Sally had stood on the stool in the kitchen next to her mother from a very young age, watching her deft fingers knead bread or roll out biscuit dough. She felt a momentary pang of guilt. She’d been away long enough. It was time to go home soon, just to see how everyone was. She couldn’t stay away forever.

  Not yet, though.

  One of the first things Sally wanted to do at Hunter’s Moon was reinstate the drawing room. It was such a waste for it to be sitting there unused. She could understand why no one wanted to go in there, because it was so cold and unwelcoming. It might look stunning in the pages of a magazine, but it wasn’t conducive to socialising or relaxation.

  She started by taking off all the plastic covers on the sofas and chairs – they were still on there from when they had been delivered – then rearranged them into a less rigid setting. She decluttered the mantelpiece of all the fussy china ornaments the designer had placed there. Flowers, photographs, cushions – that was what the room needed, not awful china figurines, a sense of family rather than formality.

  People, too – that was what it needed and a few scuff marks and creases. It needed to feel lived in.

  A real fire. That would bring it to life.

  She went to find Dai, who was sitting at the kitchen table. She wasn’t sure if he was dressed or if he had slept in what he was wearing. Sally was used to boys. She had seen how her mother had handled her brothers: quietly and firmly. They needed to be told what was expected of them and to be given a time frame. There was no point in expecting them to guess. Men were not mind readers. They needed clear instructions.

  ‘I’ve got a job for you,’ she said brightly. ‘I need some logs. I want to start using the fire in the drawing room and there are loads of fallen branches around the place. I wondered if you would collect them up for me? Maybe chop them up and put them into a nice pile somewhere dry?’

  Dai stared at her. He frowned, and for a moment Sally was afraid she had gone too far too soon. Her mother never gave her brothers an opportunity to say no when she asked them to do something, so she was trying to employ the same tactic. She wasn’t sure that Dai quite had the same respect for her that her brothers had for her mum.

  It took him a moment to reply. He seemed to be turning her proposition round in his mind. Then he smiled. ‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘I reckon there’s an axe lying around somewhere. Nothing like a proper fire.’

  ‘Exactly. But fires are very hungry things, so I’ll need a good supply.’ She felt a rush of jubilance.

  He swilled the rest of his tea back, put his cup down on the table, and stood up.

  He nodded at her.

  ‘It’s nice to feel wanted,’ he told her.

  She watched him amble out of the kitchen, scratching his head as he went, obviously slightly bemused by the exchange.

  *

  At supper that night, Dai was absent.

  ‘Oh, he’ll be off wrapping hedgehogs in clay with one of his shadowy friends,’ said Margot. ‘He’s part gypsy these days.’

  Sally worried that he was cross she had asked him to do the logs, and this was his way of showing his annoyance. Had she overstepped the mark? She felt sure he’d seemed quite happy to do it. He’d said it was good to feel needed! Was he being sarcastic? Some men didn’t like being told what to do by a woman. Dai certainly seemed to do what he pleased with little regard for anyone else, but she didn’t think he was a chauvinist. Oh dear. It was very difficult to work out the balance of power in this house.

  But just as they were all finishing the queen of puddings she had made – she thought she better start using up that raspberry jam – he walked back in.

  He chucked an envelope on the table. It was bulging.

  ‘That’s for you,’ he said to Sally. ‘With a bit extra for compensation, shall we call it?’

  She opened it. There was nearly a hundred pounds in there, and a piece of headed notepaper.

  ‘You went to the Kitten Club!’

  Dai laughed
, and she thought how handsome he was when he smiled. If only he would smile more often.

  ‘Bunch of lily-livers. Didn’t take much to get it out of them. They’re all talk. What a horrible place.’

  Sally could imagine him towering over them all. She imagined Morag, panicked and flustering. She felt a thrill run through her. Dai had been all the way up to London to get her wages for her. She turned to Margot.

  ‘Well, I need to pay you back. For the rent you gave me to give Barbara.’

  Margot waved her hand. ‘Oh, don’t be silly. It’s very important for a girl to have a bit of a nest egg. You keep it.’

  ‘For clothes!’ said Phoebe. ‘Imagine what you could get.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sally to Dai, who gave a shrug.

  He sat down. He looked at their empty plates. ‘Don’t tell me there’s no food left. I’ve been looking forward to this all day.’

  ‘There’s loads,’ said Sally. ‘I saved you some and I made two puddings.’

  Dai looked pleased and smiled for the second time.

  ‘Goodness me,’ said Margot. ‘You really are a marvel.’ She looked at Sally through slightly narrowed eyes as she blew the last of the smoke out of her cigarette and stubbed it out on her pudding plate.

  24

  1967

  Margot had never been to Mirabelle.

  She had thought of nothing but her lunch with Terence since the day she had made the arrangement, which had done nothing for the progress of her book. She told herself that she would be able to concentrate once she’d seen him again.

  She took the train up from the tiny station at Peasebrook to Paddington. She felt a little self-conscious standing on the platform as she stood out from everyone else in their drab workaday clothing. Phoebe had worked her magic again. She’d made her a little suit in pale pink with gilt buttons that was so demure it would make Jackie Kennedy look like Diana Dors. Some men found demure sexy, and Margot had a feeling that Terence Miller was one of those men. On top of it she wore her fox coat. April was a fickle madam. You never knew where you were with the weather.