The Inheritance: Racy, pacy and very funny!

The kettle switched itself off with a click, the steam from its spout fogging up the kitchen window. Tatiana wiped the glass clean with her sleeve and looked out into the garden. It was a stunning day, blue-skied and clear, like the summers of her childhood. Greystones Farm was really little more than a cottage on the outskirts of Fittlescombe, but its garden was enormous, its various sections – rose garden, orchard, vegetable patch and lawn – tumbling into one another willy-nilly, as each exploded and overflowed with colour and scent and fruit and life. There must have been a planting plan once, a design. Tatiana could see where the crumbling walls and overgrown beech hedges had once delineated and organized more than an acre of space. But now, untended, other than a weekly lawn-mowing by old Mr Dryer from the village, the garden was a joyously jumbled eruption of blossoms and greenery. Gazing out at it, watching a rabbit skip about in the white carpet of fallen apple blossom, even Tatiana’s spirits lifted a little. Making herself a cup of Earl Grey and two slices of toast and honey, she pushed open the back door and wandered outside.

Could I be happy here? She wondered, savouring the deliciously sweet, buttery toast as she strolled through a towering row of hollyhocks. Tati hadn’t lived in the countryside, or spent more than a week at a stretch here, since her childhood. And those weeks had always been spent at Furlings, riding her beloved horse, Flint.

There were times when Tati thought she missed Flint even more than she missed her father. The grey stallion was a former racehorse, and had been a wildly extravagant tenth birthday present from Rory Flint-Hamilton to his daughter. Mrs Worsley had disapproved from the start, but Tatiana would never forget that magical day. Rory leading her, blindfold, around to the stable yard and telling her to open her eyes as Flint pranced majestically out of his horsebox.

‘For you, my darling. What do you think?’

‘Oh, Daddy!’ Tati had gasped, fighting back tears of joy. ‘He’s beautiful. He’s so beautiful! Is he really mine?’

‘All yours, my angel. You deserve him.’

Memories of that day still brought Tati to tears. Perhaps because it represented a time before it all went wrong? A time when her father adored her unconditionally. A time before she’d disappointed him. Before she grew up.

Six years later, Flint had also been the cause of one of their worst-ever rows, a terrible turning point in their relationship. Blind drunk after breaking into Furlings’ wine cellar and stealing Rory’s Pierre Ferrand 1972 Vintage Cognac, Tati had ridden Flint bareback up to the main A27 road. Terrified by a passing lorry, the stallion had bolted into a nearby field, badly injuring his right foreleg.

‘How could you be so irresponsible!’ Rory had chastised her the next day. The vet was still not sure whether or not Flint would be permanently lame.

Tati, severely hungover and secretly riddled with guilt, had lashed out defiantly, refusing to apologize. ‘He’s my horse. I can do what I want with him.’

‘He could have been killed, Tatiana. You both could have been killed.’

‘So? It’s my life. I can do what I want with that as well,’ Tati snarled at her father before throwing up violently all over the tack-room floor.

Looking back now she couldn’t for the life of her remember what she had been so angry about. She only remembered that she was angry, and out of control, and that somewhere deep down, even back then, she knew it.

Standing in the garden at Greystones Farm, she wondered whether that episode with Flint had been the turning point. The horse had recovered and been sold, and Tatiana pretended not to care. But losing Flint had marked the end of an era.

And now I’ve lost Furlings, too.

It was Furlings that had brought her back to Fittlescombe. The house itself had always been the draw. It was the house that kept calling to her, through all the later dramas and distractions of her adult life.

Now, banished from Furlings, and with her former London party life gone up in ashes and smoke behind her, she found she was noticing Fittlescombe village and its glorious surroundings almost for the first time. This garden, for example: humble and gone to seed, a far cry from the formal grandeur of Furlings, was equally idyllic in its own way. So were the rolling chalk giants behind it, and the lane leading down from Greystone’s front gate to Fittlescombe High Street with its shops and church and green and wisteria-covered pubs. It was all beautiful. A wonderland, really. Tati couldn’t imagine what had prevented her from seeing it before.

But as time passed and she meandered through Greystones’ garden, Tati’s heart began to harden. Wonderland indeed. Get a grip. You’re not some tourist on a sodding walking holiday, she told herself sternly. You’re here to get Furlings back. If she lost sight of that purpose, that goal, there would be nothing left at all. No point to her life. No identity. No future. No hold on the past.

She shivered. It was cold, and getting dark. How long had she been out here, walking and thinking? Too long, clearly.

Inside the house she turned on the central heating and all the lights, forgetting the expense for once in her dire need for some cheer. What else did she want? Noise. Something mindless. She turned on the television and flipped channels, settling for Kelly Osbourne on Fashion Police poking fun at celebrities’ outfits. It didn’t get any shallower or more distracting than that. Finally, she opened the larder cupboard and pulled out a packet of Pringles and a bottle of cheap red wine, liberally filling glass after glass as she ate and watched, watched and ate, pushing all deeper considerations out of her head.

By the time she thought she heard the doorbell ring, Tati was in a warm, alcohol-induced glow. The process of deciding definitively that the bell had – indeed – rung, standing up, brushing the Pringles crumbs off her jeans and weaving her way unsteadily to the door took another few minutes, by which time the caller had gone. Leaning on the porch step in the darkness, however, was a tightly bubble-wrapped package.

Pulling it inside, Tati closed the door and ran to the kitchen for scissors. With drunken abandon she sliced away at the plastic wrapping, finally wrenching the contents free with her hands. It was a set of miniatures, tiny, intricately painted portraits of Tati’s grandmother Peg and her three siblings. Of course! She’d completely forgotten that her father had left her these too. Perhaps because, unlike the large Sutherland portrait of Peg, they weren’t particularly valuable. Not that Tati had any intention of selling any of them.

Tati turned each of the miniatures over in her hands. Granny, Uncle John and the two older sisters, Maud and Helen, whom she never knew. For a moment she thought it might be Mrs Worsley who had sent them in a moment of forgiveness. But the note was from Angela Cranley, who realized she’d forgotten them and had them sent over. Even Tati had to admit that that was kind and thoughtful. She tried not to resent it as she propped each of the tiny pictures up along the kitchen countertop. Picking up the large painting, she set it beside them, studying it closely for the first time.

There was her grandmother Peg, a young girl of twenty-one in the portrait but with the same sharp, knowing eyes she’d had as an old woman, and that Tati remembered so vividly from her own early childhood, in the years when her mother had still been alive. Peggy was Tati’s mother’s mother, but the two women hadn’t been remotely physically alike. Tatiana’s own mother, Vicky, was all softness and curves, a round, gentle loving woman, as welcoming as a feather bed or a favourite cushion. Peggy, by contrast, was intelligent and cynical, a tall, slender person of angular proportions and gimlet stares, rarely seen without a strong French cigarette in one hand and a tumbler of whisky in the other. Much more like me, thought Tati.

Sinking down into one of the ugly plastic dining chairs, Tati gazed at the painting for a long, long time. Her grandmother would have been horrified to see a family of Australians installed at Furlings, of that Tati felt sure. She was less sure as to whom Granny Peggy would have blamed for the situation: Rory, for changing his will? Or her, Tati, for driving him to it?

It doesn’t matter anyway. She’s dead. They’re all dead except for me. Peggy and her siblings. Mum and Dad. I’m the last. I’m the living. It’s what I think that matters.

She didn’t realize until hours later, when she got up to go to bed, that her face was wet with tears.

CHAPTER FOUR

Angela Cranley tied the silk belt of her kimono robe loosely around her waist and smiled down at her husband.

‘Come back to bed,’ growled Brett, reaching for her hand and pulling her towards him.

‘I can’t. You know I can’t,’ giggled Angela. ‘It’s Logan’s first day at school this morning.’

As always after they’d made love there was a glow about her. Brett loved his wife the most like this, with her tousled hair and flushed cheeks and that smile that said more about her love for him than words ever could. Thank God he’d left Sydney and that bitch Tricia! He didn’t know what he would do if he ever lost Ange.

It was three days since Brett had first arrived in Fittlescombe and walked through the front door of the house that was to be his home for the foreseeable future. All Angela’s anxieties about Furlings not being ready had been for nothing. Brett had instantly seen past the teething problems of the move and fallen almost as deeply in love with the house as he was with his wife and children. (Well, one of them, anyway. Jason still seemed miserable and distracted, but then that was becoming a permanent state of affairs with him.) Brett had seen numerous images of Furlings online, of course, so he’d already known the house was a beauty. But this was one of those rare cases where reality had trounced anticipation. Brett Cranley had grown used to having lovely things, to buying whatever he wanted and designing his life to order. Despite this, ever since he’d learned of Rory Flint-Hamilton’s will and seen those first pictures, Furlings had seduced him. It was a bit like having an arranged marriage and then discovering your bride was a supermodel.

He noticed that Angela had been nervous at dinner that first night, but he put it down to the house call she’d received earlier in the day from old man Flint-Hamilton’s daughter. Apparently Tatiana was threatening to challenge the will.

‘She seemed awfully determined about it,’ Angela said, refilling Brett’s wine glass and re-folding his napkin like an over-attentive Geisha. ‘She’s clearly heartbroken about losing the house.’

‘I don’t give a shit,’ Brett said brutally. ‘She had no right turning up here unannounced and worrying you like that.’

Angela didn’t say that her only real worry had been how Brett would take the news. Her husband doled out law suits the way that other people sent out Christmas cards. She couldn’t face beginning their new life in this idyllic village under a cloud of conflict and rancour.

‘She lost the house because of her own shitty behaviour. Rory’s letter of wishes made that very clear. She’s no one to blame but herself. As for challenging the will,’ he drained his wineglass, throwing the burgundy liquid down his throat angrily, like a man trying to put out a fire, ‘she hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell. Forget her.’

In her relief that Brett was happy, and that they were going to stay here, Angela had forgotten Tati. She’d sleep-walked through the last two days in a blind stupor of contentment, helping Mrs Worsley sew name tapes into Logan’s uniform and ordering expensive lingerie online to surprise Brett, who was always trying to get her into negligees and stockings, usually with no success.

‘Jason can take Logan to school,’ Brett said now, refusing to release Angela. Slipping one hand beneath her kimono he cupped her left breast, simultaneously kissing her ear and neck as he dragged her back beneath the covers.

‘He can’t,’ Angela protested half-heartedly, her lips finding her husband’s as she kissed him back. ‘Not on the first day. She’ll be nervous.’

‘Logan?’ laughed Brett. ‘Nervous? Please. She’ll be eating those poor teachers alive. That kid’s got more confidence than Muhammad Ali on steroids.’

It was true. Logan took after her father in that regard, as in every other.

‘I have to take her, darling.’ Angela smiled. ‘Jase can pick her up this afternoon. The school’s only down the lane, I’ll be back by nine.’

‘Just make sure you are,’ said Brett, his voice thick with desire as he reluctantly released her. ‘I don’t like being kept waiting.’

‘I don’t like being kept waiting.’

Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s cut-glass voice ricocheted off the walls of St Hilda’s school office like a shower of diamond-tipped bullets. It was three o’clock in the afternoon on the first day back after half-term. With only half an hour until the bell went, the school office was calm and quiet for the first time all day. Or rather it was until Tati walked in.

‘How long is he going to be?’

‘Mr Bingley’s exceptionally busy this afternoon,’ said the school secretary tersely. It had been a long and trying day. The last thing she needed was attitude from Fittlescombe’s self-appointed Lady Muck.

‘Yes, well so am I,’ lied Tati.

She realized she was being obnoxious and that her rudeness wasn’t helping matters. But her nerves were out of control. It had taken all of her reserves of courage to steel herself to come here today in the first place, to swallow her pride and ask for the job that her father had arranged for her before he died.

But Rory had been dealing with Harry Hotham. Harry had known Tati all her life. He’d taught her as a child and flirted with her gently but incorrigibly as she blossomed into womanhood. Harry would have adored the tight-fitting Gucci skirt suit and vertiginous Jimmy Choo heels she’d chosen for today’s interview. But suddenly Tati felt nervous that the new man, Bingley, might not be so appreciative. With her long hair cascading down her back like a river of honey and her wide, pale pink lips glistening with Mac gloss like two delicious strips of candy, her look did not scream ‘village schoolmistress’.

Not that it mattered what she wore if the new headmaster couldn’t even be bothered to see her.

‘This is ridiculous.’ Snatching up her Chanel quilted handbag, Tati headed for the door. If she hurried she’d miss the first of the parents arriving to collect their little darlings and be spared the embarrassment of being seen loitering around a primary school as if dressed for a Vogue cover shoot. ‘Tell Mr Bingley I’ll call to reschedule.’

But just as she pushed open the double doors, Max Bingley emerged from his office. ‘Miss Flint-Hamilton? Do come in. I’ve only got a few minutes but I can see you now if it’s quick.’

Tati hesitated, wildly unsure of herself and feeling particularly foolish in her teetery heels. Max Bingley was younger than Harry Hotham but he had far more gravitas, and none of Harry’s playful twinkle in his eye. With his military bearing and craggy but handsome face, he radiated authority like a star radiates heat. In one sentence he had successfully asserted his dominance over Tati and taken complete control of the situation, a state of affairs that Tati was neither used to, nor enjoyed.

‘I … erm … all right,’ she stammered, following him back into his room and sitting meekly in the chair that he indicated.

‘How can I help?’ Max asked. His tone was friendly but brisk.

‘I … well. It’s about the job,’ Tati began uncertainly.

Max raised an eyebrow. ‘What job?’

‘Well, my father … you see, he and Harry Hotham …’ Tati blushed. What on earth was she doing here? The last thing she wanted to do was get into the ins-and-outs of her father’s will with this complete stranger, some second-rate schoolteacher from who knows where. She took a deep breath.

‘Harry Hotham was a friend of my family,’ she blurted. ‘My father and he were keen that I should teach at the school. But then I learned Harry had retired.’

Max Bingley frowned. ‘I see. Are you a qualified teacher?’ He looked Tati up and down with what she took to be a combination of curiosity and distaste.

‘Well, no. Not exactly. I’m a …’ Tati searched for a word to describe herself. ‘Socialite’ made her sound vacuous. ‘Heiress’, sadly, was no longer accurate. She cleared her throat. ‘I did train as a teacher.’

‘But you never qualified?’

‘No.’

‘Have you ever worked in a school?’

‘Not until now.’

Tati smiled and flicked her hair alluringly.

Max Bingley’s frown deepened. ‘So let me get this straight. You have no experience or qualifications. But my predecessor offered you a teaching position here?’

‘Yes,’ Tati said defiantly. ‘With respect, Mr Bingley, I hardly think that teaching a few five-year-olds is beyond me. We’re talking about the village primary school, not a fellowship at Oxford!’

She laughed, earning herself a withering glare from across the desk. The interview wasn’t going at all the way she’d hoped.

‘Look, it wasn’t a formal offer or anything,’ she backtracked hastily. ‘I don’t have a letter. Harry didn’t operate like that.’

‘Didn’t he indeed?’ muttered Max Bingley.

‘My father was keen I should use my training,’ Tati ploughed on. ‘Now due to … family circumstances, I find myself back in Fittlescombe for a while. So I thought, you know, why not?’

She leaned back languorously in her chair and re-crossed her legs, giving St Hilda’s new headmaster a front-row view of her perfectly toned upper thighs. He wasn’t so easily manipulated, but realizing the game she was trying to play, for a split second it was Max Bingley’s turn to feel flustered and unsure of himself. But he quickly regained his composure.

‘I’m afraid I can think of a number of reasons why not, Miss Flint-Hamilton, the main one being that the children of this village, of this school, deserve a decent education. I can’t parachute in a completely inexperienced teacher on the back of some vague offer that may or may not have been made to you by my predecessor! The very idea’s ridiculous.’

Tati got to her feet, stung. ‘There’s no “may or may not” about it,’ she said hotly. ‘Harry Hotham promised me a job. Do you think I’d be here otherwise?’

She looked so terribly upset that for a moment Max Bingley relented. He had two daughters of about the same age as Tatiana and flattered himself that he understood young women. Behind the cocky façade, Max realized, this girl was terrified. Terrified and embarrassed in equal measure.

‘Sit down,’ he said kindly. ‘I’m not doubting your word. I’m merely saying that it wouldn’t be right for me to give you a job as a teacher here, even if I had a position available. Which, as it happens, I don’t. Without experience, you wouldn’t succeed at it, Miss Flint-Hamilton. The children would suffer and so would you.’

Tati sat down, deflated. She was hardly in a position to argue with any of the above. On the other hand, if she were going to stay and fight for Furlings, she needed the money from her trust fund. And if she were going to eat, never mind buy any furniture for Greystones, she needed a salary. She needed this job.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, picking up her handbag. ‘I’ve clearly wasted both of our time.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Max. ‘If you’re seriously interested in teaching and would like to gain some experience, I might consider taking you on as a classroom assistant.’

Tati brightened. Classroom assistant. Would the trustees go for that?

‘You’d have to do a three-month trial first, so I could assess your suitability for the job.’

‘A trial?’ Tati frowned.

‘Yes. Unpaid, although we’d cover your basic expenses.’

‘Unpaid?’ There was no disguising her outrage now. ‘Thank you, Mr Bingley, but if I’d wanted to volunteer my time I’d have gone directly to Oxfam. No doubt I’ll see you around the village.’ And with that she stormed out, slamming Max Bingley’s office door shut, the smell of burning olive branches lingering in the air behind her.

The bell must have rung while she and Max were talking. Outside the playground was thronged with overexcited children and weary mothers, rolling their eyes at one another as lunchboxes, backpacks and discarded items of uniform were thrust into their outstretched arms.

Blinded with rage, at herself as much as anyone, and desperate to get out of there, Tati stumbled in her high-heeled shoes and careered into one of the fathers. Dropping her Chanel bag onto the asphalt she looked on in horror as its contents spilled everywhere.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ she hissed through gritted teeth.

A stunningly pretty ten-year-old girl, resplendent in what looked like a brand-new St Hilda’s summer uniform of red and white gingham dress, white ankle socks and straw boater with a red ribbon, gasped.

‘She said the “f” word!’ Did you hear her, Jase? She said the “f” word!’

Belatedly, Tati caught the Australian accent. Looking up she saw that the ‘father’ she had bumped into was not a father at all but Jason Cranley, the mute, freckled guy she’d met up at Furlings a few days ago. The little girl must be the daughter, Logan.

‘She’s got cigarettes in her bag!’ Logan squealed accusingly, picking up a half-empty packet of Marlboro reds and shaking them in Tati’s direction. ‘Don’t you know smoking is the most dumbest thing you can ever do? You can die! And you can get wrinkles.’

For some reason this last rejoinder made Tati laugh.

‘Wrinkles? My goodness. That sounds very serious.’

‘It is.’ Logan’s huge, dark eyes widened beneath her long lashes. She really was an extraordinarily pretty child, although it struck Tati that she looked nothing like either her mother or brother. ‘I’ll throw them in the bin for you if you like.’

Jason, who’d watched silently until now, finally found his voice. ‘You can’t throw other people’s property in the bin, Logan.’ Taking the cigarettes from his little sister, he handed them back to Tatiana.

‘No. But you can steal it from under their noses, apparently,’ Tati shot back waspishly, ‘by conning a dying man into leaving you his home.’

Jason blushed. ‘I’m n-n-not the enemy, you know,’ he stammered. ‘None of this will business has anything to do with me.’

‘No, well. I suppose not,’ Tati conceded grudgingly, appraising him more closely than she had done at Furlings a few days ago. He wasn’t bad-looking. But he was very much a boy rather than a man. There was a fragility about Jason Cranley, one might even say an innocence, that made one want to protect and mother him. Perhaps it was the freckles? Tati couldn’t imagine him having sex, although it was clear from the way he blushed and avoided eye contact that he was attracted to her.

‘I’d like it if we could be friends,’ he mumbled.

Tati considered this. She had no problem with Jason Cranley. Only with his greedy, conniving, inheritance-pilfering father. Besides, it might turn out to be useful to have a Cranley family member on her side. She may lack experience as a teacher, but when it came to pulling a young man’s heart strings, or fanning his sexual obsession, Tatiana Flint-Hamilton was very much an old hand. Jason could be her ‘man on the inside’ at Furlings. If she were going to win this legal battle over the will, she would need all the help – and inside information – she could get.

‘Me too,’ she smiled. ‘I had a shitty day, that’s all. Of course we can be friends.’

Reaching out, she touched his arm in a conciliatory gesture and was gratified when Jason blushed as if he were on fire.

‘What was so shitty?’ Jason asked. In her sexy, expensive clothes, exuding glamour like a movie star or a royal princess, it was hard to imagine Tatiana’s days being anything other than gilded and wonderful.