by Holly Ford
She wanted to capture the essence of this magnificent place, the earth, the rock, the sun, the flinty air, the water trickling down from the snow, and — well, put it in a bottle. Not that she knew how to do it herself; as a contract grower, she was really just babysitting the grapes between the winery’s visits. She was learning, though. A year ago, all she’d known about pinot noir was how to drink it. Now she also knew how many thousands of dollars a hectare it cost to grow. The spraying, the pruning, the weeding, the mowing … Lizzie suppressed a shiver. But so what if she’d invested a little more of her capital than she should, and that so far everything had cost that little bit more than she’d forecast? It was too nice a day to worry. She just had to put her faith in a bumper first crop, that was all.
Lizzie walked the row, the sun climbing behind her left shoulder, warm on her back, her shadow running ahead of her in the neatly mown grass. She crossed the track and continued through the next planting, climbing gently towards the boundary, the few patches of snow on the mountains ahead now shining in full sun. At the end of the row, two baby rabbits hopped into view. Lizzie paused, watching them nibble the wide strip of neatly mown grass at the vineyard’s edge.
‘Fucking hell!’ Lizzie dropped her coffee in fright as a gunshot ripped across the vineyard. The rabbits fled as if they’d been — well, shot. At her feet, her very last Red Lion Productions mug hit a rock and broke into three pieces. ‘Fuck!’ repeated Lizzie.
Without thinking, she ran to the end of the row. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ she yelled, looking around for a target at which to aim her fury.
‘Jesus Christ,’ came an equally angry-sounding shout. ‘Get back! I could have shot you.’
For half a second, Lizzie was speechless. She’d never been so angry in her life. ‘Of course you could have shot me, you stupid prick! You could have shot bloody anyone. What the fuck do you think you’re doing, shooting on my land?’
‘Us both a favour.’ A tall, rangy figure strode up to the boundary fence, a rifle tipped back over his shoulder. Jesus, thought Lizzie through her rage, was this for real? She found herself looking up at a man in a weather-stained akubra hat, a torn checked shirt, and equally beaten-up jeans tucked into his dusty gumboots. His sleeves were rolled up over long-muscled brown arms and, all in all, he looked as though he’d stepped straight out of the sort of cigarette ad long-since banned in Western countries. ‘Carr Fergusson.’ His dark brown eyes locked onto hers. ‘You’re welcome, by the way.’
‘When I want my rabbits shooting,’ spat Lizzie, ‘I’ll fucking shoot them myself. Okay?’
‘Your rabbits?’ The eyes flicked over her contemptuously. ‘I didn’t see the ear-tags on them. I guess you won’t mind paying the grazing bill, then, when I catch them on my land?’
‘If I ever,’ said Lizzie, ‘catch you firing over my boundary again, I’ll report you to the police.’
A corner of his chiselled mouth turned down. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
They stared at each other. Lizzie counted to five. Fergusson showed no sign of leaving. She turned on her heel, marching back down the row of vines, trying not to think about that dark gaze boring into her shoulders. Ugh! Odious man. What the hell had happened to gun regulation in this country?
By the time she got back to the house, she was feeling a little shaky. Lizzie hated losing her temper. She kicked off her boots and sat on the top step, pulling her knees up under her chin. So that was Carrick Fergusson. Shit. So much for wooing the neighbours.
Chapter TWO
Blinking in the painfully bright sunlight on the tarmac, Ella rummaged in her oversized shoulder bag for the sunglasses she knew were in there somewhere.
‘Oop!’ One of her fellow passengers, bumping into her as she slowed, laid a quick hand of apology on her shoulder. ‘Scusami.’
‘Niente,’ Ella replied, returning his smile. He wasn’t the first Italian man to brush against her on public transport, but he was the cutest by far. She watched him stroll on towards the terminal building. Wow, that was quite an upper body he had — and that long-sleeved T-shirt he was wearing looked like it had been sprayed on.
‘Vito!’ called a voice behind her. ‘Aspetti, eh? Hold up!’
The vision in front of her turned, pushing his sunglasses up into his curly black hair and revealing a pair of luxuriantly lashed brown eyes. Ella stared as another six-foot-six Roman god breezed past her to throw a friendly arm around Vito’s shoulders. What the hell? Was the Italian rugby team in town or something? She shook her head. No, rugby players never looked that good. In fact, straight men never looked that good. They had to be a couple.
Not that Vito was really her type anyway. She preferred — well, that, actually. Finding her dark glasses at last, Ella, safe behind them, stole another look at the man she’d spotted sitting across the aisle from her on the flight down. Blond, a little older, a tiny bit rugged — the sort of man who looked like he knew how to change a tyre and wouldn’t fight you for the bathroom mirror every morning.
She sighed as his ravishing raven-haired wife slipped an arm through his — no one could miss a ring with a rock that size. Ella paused as they walked by. God, were they speaking Italian, too? She’d had no idea so many of them holidayed in Queenstown these days. So much for leaving European men behind.
Walking through the doors of the arrivals lounge, Ella glanced around. As always, it was easy enough to spot her mother in the crowd, her slight figure oozing all the elegant glamour of an expensive watch commercial into the mountain air.
‘Ella!’
‘Mum!’ Leaning back out of Lizzie’s hug, she touched a curl of the auburn hair bobbing at her mother’s shoulder. ‘You’ve had your hair cut.’
Lizzie widened her eyes. ‘What do you think?’
‘It looks great.’ It had looked great before, too — everything about Lizzie always looked great. But — Ella leaned to study the other side — yes, it really did suit her.
‘Come on, darling, let’s get your bags.’
‘Lizzie,’ said a voice behind them. ‘Hello.’
Ella turned. Good God. She made an effort to pick up her jaw. Where did her mother find these guys? That just had to be the most beautiful man she had ever seen, which, given her upbringing, was saying something.
‘Rob!’ said Lizzie. ‘Hello. Fancy meeting you here — we should have car-pooled.’
Before her mother had even had time to explain who Rob was, Ella’s appreciation of the way his blue eyes crinkled into a smile was unpleasantly interrupted.
‘Lizzie Harrington!’ An all-too-familiar mockney voice cut across the luggage belt. ‘As I live and breathe. What the fuck are you doing here?’
Oh no — Quentin Cooper.
‘I live here now, Quentin,’ her mother said, not missing a beat. ‘As you’d have known, if you ever listened to a word anyone else was saying.’
‘I’ve told you before, Liz, you’ll have to put those gorgeous tits away first if you want me to listen to you.’ Quentin flashed her a haggard, nicotine-stained grin. ‘Hello, Ella, love — all right?’
Ella stifled a yawn. ‘Fine, Quentin, thanks.’
Trust him to be here. Apart from being one of the hottest fashion photographers in the business, the infamously offensive Quentin Cooper was less an old family friend than an old nuisance — when he wasn’t working, that was. She had to admit the results he got with the camera were almost worth putting up with him for.
‘More to the point,’ cut in Lizzie, ‘what are you doing here, Quentin?’
‘Fratelli Sammartino shoot up the road.’ Leaning past them, Quentin retrieved a tripod from the luggage belt. ‘I’m there all week. Amy, love,’ he yelled at his assistant, ‘have you got that other lighting case?’
‘Here — I’ve got it.’
Ella stared as Mr Italian Blond from the plane deposited a silver box at Quentin’s feet. Right on cue, the ravishing wife arrived, draping one expensive-looking cashmere
-clad arm around him and the other around the sensational Rob. Ella tried not to hate her too much.
‘Flavia.’ Rob turned to give her a hug. ‘How was the flight from Milan?’
‘Long,’ sighed Flavia. ‘But it is worth it to see you.’ She smiled at Lizzie and Ella expectantly.
‘This is our new neighbour, Lizzie Harrington,’ Rob explained. ‘She’s bought Blackpeak Vines.’
‘Flavia Sammartino.’ Beaming, Flavia held out her hand. ‘Piacere.’
‘Lovely to meet you, too.’ Lizzie shook her hand. ‘This is my daughter, Ella …’
‘Ella, ciao!’
‘And this’ — Rob clapped his hand to the shoulder of Mr Italian Blond — ‘is Charlotte’s brother, Nick. They’ve come over to shoot the new catalogue.’
‘Nice to meet you, Lizzie … Ella …’ said Mr Italian Blond, revealing an unexpected Kiwi accent. ‘Nick Black.’
‘And you know Quentin?’ Flavia asked.
‘Oh, we go a long way, Liz and me.’ Quentin bent to check the contents of his case. ‘Though never quite as far as I’d like — eh, Lizzie, love?’
Lizzie rolled her eyes at Ella.
‘Oh!’ Flavia clapped her hands. ‘We must all have dinner, then, while Quentin is here.’ Over her head, Rob and Nick exchanged a worried look. ‘Yes, yes — it will be fun.’ She beamed at Ella. ‘And it will be very nice for Vito and Sandro to have some company.’
Vito? Ella blinked. It couldn’t be, could it? Her ‘couple’ from the plane? They were Quentin’s models? Vito and … what had Flavia said his name was?
‘Sandro.’ Vito’s runway friend held out his hand to Ella. ‘Ciao.’
Ella felt herself starting to giggle. If this was what life in the high country was going to be like, she might never leave.
‘So we’re all neighbours, are we? Good-oh.’ Quentin straightened up and gave Ella another grin. ‘You can give us a hand with the shoot, then, Ells. We could do with a runner.’
Ella looked at Lizzie, who shrugged. ‘If you’d like to, darling.’
Well, she could think of worse ways to spend the day — and she could certainly do with the money. She raised her eyebrows at Quentin. ‘Usual rate?’
‘Of course. You on your mobile? I’ll get Amy to text you the call-time.’
‘You won’t, I’m afraid,’ said Rob. ‘Not from Blackpeak. We don’t have cellphone coverage.’
‘We told you that,’ added Amy, Quentin’s long-suffering assistant, rolling her eyes at Flavia. ‘Remember?’
Quentin gave them all a look of horror. ‘Bloody hell. Where is this fucking place you’re taking me to?’ He rummaged in his bag, ripping a packet of cigarettes from a duty-free carton. ‘Oh well, if we’re off to sodding Mars, I’d better have a fag first. I’ll see you all outside.’
‘I hope you don’t mind, darling,’ said Lizzie, some minutes later, as she and Ella climbed into the Land Rover at last, ‘but I thought we could have some lunch in town. Jules and Seb are on the next flight.’
‘Sure.’ Ella nodded distractedly, her eyes on the spectacle, across the car park, of Rob and Nick trying to load six people’s luggage onto the roof-rack of a dusty four-wheel-drive while the Italians chatted and waved their hands and Quentin circled nervously, yelling instructions about his gear. She sighed appreciatively as Rob swung lithely up and down, doing manly things with bungy cords.
‘So,’ she said, as her mother pulled out of the park. ‘Tell me about him — Rob, I mean.’
Lizzie shot her a sympathetic glance. ‘Taken, I’m afraid.’
Bollocks. Ella sighed again. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure, darling. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met a man less single.’
Oh well. Ella shelved a pleasant fantasy involving hay bales and checked shirts. ‘So he’s with …’ She cast her mind back to the welter of introductions.
‘Charlotte,’ supplied her mother. ‘Charlotte Black. She and her brother, Nick, own the station next door to us, Blackpeak, where Quentin’s shooting.’
‘Right.’ Ella watched the willow-fringed lake go by outside the window. ‘But Rob isn’t married,’ she mused, recalling Rob’s strong, tanned, bare hand.
‘No. But darling …’
Smiling, Ella held up her own hands in surrender. ‘Okay, okay. I get it. Seriously not single.’
‘Vito and Sandro seemed very nice.’
Ella’s smile broadened. ‘I guess so. If you like that sort of thing.’
Her mother smiled back. ‘You know, I’m told some women do.’
By the end of lunch, Ella was flagging. Back at the airport, she ceded the front seat to the ever-energetic Jules and lounged in the back across from Seb, who looked equally shattered, drifting off as the sun-scorched Central Otago scenery rolled by and her mother’s Land Rover ate up the long miles to her new home.
Lizzie’s new home, that was — Ella could hardly lay claim to it. In fact, come to think of it, where was her home now? The house she’d grown up in, her mother’s house, was sold. The rather seedy flat she now shared in London certainly didn’t qualify, and her father’s Clerkenwell loft, while jolly handy on Saturday nights, didn’t hold much of a place in her affections.
Oh, but gosh … Ella caught her breath as the Land Rover turned, at last, into her mother’s drive, and the vineyard stretched around her, improbably green against the dry and rocky hills, the snow glinting high above it. The photographs she’d seen, stunning as they were, had failed to do the place justice. They hadn’t captured the vastness of the hills — the sky — the power of those mountains. The way the house seemed to hover, slim and graceful as a hawk’s wing, above the tussock land at the edge of the vines. Tired as she was, Ella itched to get her own camera out. The sun was just dipping below the ridge, and the evening light was perfect.
As a kid, she’d often wondered, driving through country like this with her mother on their yearly New Zealand holidays, what it might be like to live in these hills. Well, she was about to find out.
‘Ella!’
As she slid from the car and stood on the broad sweep of lawn, staring around her, Richard wandered down from the house, arms outstretched. Barefoot, in battered Levis and cream linen shirt, he looked a picture of rugged elegance, his handsome figure the perfect counterpoint to the landscape. In fact — Ella smiled to herself — he looked like he’d been planted there by a stylist. A very good one.
‘Richard!’ She hugged him tightly as he folded her into his arms. ‘It’s so good to see you.’
‘And you, sweetheart. It’s been too long.’ He held her away from him, looking her up and down. ‘You’re looking ravishing, as always.’
Ella beamed up at him gratefully. Lovely Richard. Of all Lizzie’s collection of gorgeous-but-ageing roués, he was her favourite by far. Always the perfect gentleman. He’d made a fuss of her even when she was a child — unlike some she could name, whose interest had only begun after her eighteenth birthday.
Arm in arm, they turned back to the others.
‘Hello, Jules. Hello, Seb.’ Ella watched Richard’s gaze sweep past them. ‘Hello, Lizzie, my love.’
Anyway, how could she not love a man so devoted to her mother?
Chapter THREE
Watching Ella and Richard walk towards her, Lizzie felt her heart lift. They were so beautiful together — Ella only a few inches shorter than Richard, now, and leggy as a gazelle. Even after twenty-six hours on a plane, her skin looked dewy, her long honey-blonde ponytail hung glossy and straight, and her eyes shone clear and blue as this magical evening sky. Much as Lizzie hated to say it, there were times when it did seem almost a waste for her daughter to devote her life to the other side of the lens.
Lizzie smiled. She had only herself to blame, she supposed, for Ella’s total lack of interest in the pursuit of fame. The last celebrity to impress Ella had been Barney the Dinosaur. And the truth was, Lizzie couldn’t be prouder of her daughter: how many eighteen-year-olds would turn
down a modelling contract for an arts school scholarship? No, if Ella were ever to make a name for herself — and Lizzie thought she just might — it would be for reasons that lasted longer than the freshness of her face.
‘This place is amazing, Lizzie.’ Jules cast an arm around Lizzie’s shoulder. ‘Just stunning.’
‘Oh, no you don’t,’ said Lizzie, noting the glint in Jules’s eye. ‘Don’t even think about it.’
‘Too late,’ groaned Seb. ‘Look at her — she’s already pitching titles for the show.’
‘Gone Wild,’ intoned Jules, tracing the line of an imaginary title graphic across the hills.
‘Yes, darling, very wild,’ laughed Lizzie. ‘Come on, I’ll show you to your rooms and then we can have a glass of wine. I thought we’d try the 2010. It’s drinking very well.’
Having left Seb and Jules admiring their view, Lizzie proceeded down the long hall to the end room she’d prepared for Ella. ‘I hope you like it,’ she said, a little nervously, throwing open the double doors.
‘Oh, Mum,’ breathed Ella, stepping inside. ‘Look what you’ve done … Thank you so much. It’s perfect.’
‘I shipped over some of your old things. I know you said to throw them out, but … well, it didn’t seem right.’
Lizzie watched her daughter move to the corner, taking in the glorious panorama of mountains and hills through the floor-to-ceiling windows that wrapped around both sides of the room.
‘It feels just like camping,’ Ella smiled. Noticing the door, she poked her head into the ensuite. ‘Only so much nicer.’
Lizzie grinned. She felt just the same way. The whole house was like a beautiful big tin tent — that was what she loved about it.
‘Oh!’ At last, Ella got to the prints on the wall. ‘They’re mine!’
Lizzie’s grin widened. ‘Your Soho series.’
