Chapter Two
‘Could you possibly, if it’s not too much trouble, call off your wretched dog?’ Pippa was practically hopping from foot to foot in her short pyjamas to avoid it and this wasn’t generally how she liked to present herself to strangers. This one, despite the lingering scowl, seemed faintly amused by her predicament as she flashed him a glance. She didn’t mind animals, and lovely though the dog was, she really didn’t want those sharp claws making contact with her bare skin.
‘Lola, come here,’ he said sharply. The dog hesitated, giving him a look as she pondered which of the two options she preferred. With a final lick on Pippa’s bare thigh, making her squirm again, Lola ambled back to the bed and jumped on it. ‘And for the record, she’s not wretched, she’s delightful.’
‘Debatable,’ Pippa muttered. And on the bed too. Urgh.
She hated being caught unawares, and barefoot in pyjamas with bed hair was far from ideal for having this conversation. But she couldn’t return to her room and change, that would make it seem like she minded her appearance. Because she didn’t, even if she was wondering whether translucent orange blended with yellow, red and a touch of phthalo blue would create exactly the right shade of watercolours to capture the darker lights in his hair.
‘What are you doing in my room?’ The words were delivered in a lazy Yorkshire drawl as he rested a gentle hand on the dog’s head.
‘Your room?’ Pippa’s eyes were racing around it, taking in the view of a brass-framed bed matching hers, more dark furniture, and blue-and-white striped wallpaper. Harriet! Where was she? Pippa took what she hoped was a menacing step forward, jamming hands on her hips. Right now she wouldn’t have minded borrowing that lance downstairs as well. ‘Who the hell are you? And where exactly is my daughter?’
‘Let’s deal with the second question first. Your daughter isn’t in here, obviously. And who the hell am I?’ He glared back from red-rimmed and shadowed eyes. It was scant consolation that he looked as drained as she did, if the sight of her face in the triple mirror before was anything to go by. A phone beside the bed was flashing and he leaned over to pick it up, peering at the screen. ‘I’m Gil. Or at least I think I am after two hours’ sleep, thanks to you barging into my room. I was hoping for a minimum of four.’
‘Barging in! I came to check on my daughter! How was I supposed to know there was a strange man…’ Pippa was glad she’d managed strange, because she was thinking gorgeous, if rather dishevelled and bad tempered. The dark blond streaks were shot through with lighter ones and a suntan let her know he lived a life outdoors. His eyes – a blue that was dazzlingly bright against his skin – were still crinkled into a scowl, deepening the lines carved beside them.
‘I’ve been called a few names in my time but never strange.’ He put the phone down and sank back against the pillows, a faint curl lifting the corners of his lips.
‘But who are you?’ She closed her mouth lest he thought she was gaping.
‘I thought we’d established that. I’m Gil. Haworth, if you want the rest. My middle name’s Pilkington. Don’t ask.’
‘I heard you the first time,’ she replied shortly. ‘But I’m afraid none of your names explain why you’re in my house.’
‘Your house?’ Even his brows managed to be sardonic. ‘Doesn’t it belong to your father, Pippa Douglas?’
‘How do you know who I am and what are you doing here? And how the hell do you know my father?’ Pippa took a deep breath, trying to disguise her shock and quell her rising anger with both Gil and her dad. If it took her all day, she was going to track Jonny down and…
‘Again, let’s start with the second question; I live here. Now, back to your first. I know your name because it was in an email I received from your father’s solicitor. And how the hell do I know Jonny? He’s my landlord, unfortunately. Although we’ve never actually met. No plans to change that, incidentally. If you were wondering.’
‘I wasn’t and he’s told me nothing about you,’ she shot back, forcing herself to stand still and ignore the goosebumps quivering on her skin. She put that firmly down to the chill and not the sight of this man half naked in bed.
And what was her dad up to? He was as sharp as a tack, except when it came to women, and as he hadn’t told her about this man, then the only reason Jonny had avoided passing on the information was because he knew it would make her unhappy. Because it did. She was. She couldn’t be bumping into Gil on the landing every morning and sharing a bathroom for however long she and Harriet were marooned in this blasted house on one of her dad’s bloody whims.
‘Well, we can’t both stay here. At the same time.’ She glared at Gil, determined not to look down. Although every time his hand moved on the dog’s head, she caught another unplanned glimpse of that chest. Suntanned as well, but not quite as much as his face. Damn.
‘Technically, we can because I’m allowed to live here and you’re an invited guest. Just not by me.’ Gil’s phone was flashing again, and he checked it, typed a quick response, lips quirking when the dog nudged his hand, and he returned it to her head. ‘But you’re right, we can’t stay here together. I was planning to move out the moment you arrived, and I would’ve already done it if I’d known exactly when you were going to turn up. The solicitor wasn’t very clear about that.’
‘So you’ll move out today, then? Because I wasn’t aware of… you.’ Pippa tailed off. She hadn’t been expecting him to agree so easily and her shoulders loosened a fraction. She wasn’t too sure how complicated selling the house with a tenant in place would be, but if Gil was planning to go of his own accord, then that would help enormously.
‘This minute, if you prefer. But perhaps you’d like to give me some privacy.’ He raised the duvet enough to reveal a lower leg just as distracting as the rest of him. Her glance raced to the heap of clothes on the floor. Faded jeans, socks, a grey T-shirt. And a pair of shorts, green, sitting on top of everything else. Her pulse skipped a beat, and she took a hurried step backwards.
‘Urgh Mum, watch it! You nearly knocked me over.’
Pippa whirled around to find Harriet right behind her, staring blearily and clutching her ever-present phone. Long hair was fastened in a careless ponytail and her gold-flecked hazel eyes still had the power to stop Pippa in her tracks to marvel at her daughter’s emerging beauty.
‘Harriet! Sorry, did I wake you?’
‘Well, you weren’t exactly being quiet. Do you actually know how early it is?’ She peered around Pippa and gave Gil a grin, which he quickly returned as he pulled the duvet up. ‘Hi, I’m Harriet. I love your dog.’
‘Hey Harriet, I’m Gil. Nice to meet you. And thanks, I’m sure Lola will love you too.’ His cool gaze returned to Pippa, and she glowered back, noting she hadn’t received as warm an introduction. Nice to meet him wasn’t a phrase she’d use either and she really wasn’t sure about the dog yet.
‘Mum didn’t tell me you were here.’
‘That’s because I didn’t know.’ Pippa backed onto the landing with as much dignity as she could muster covered in dried dog slobber and golden fur scattered around her feet. ‘Gil is moving out as soon as he gets up.’
‘Oh? That’s a shame. Are you taking Lola with you?’ Harriet was looking longingly at the dog and Gil’s smile was polite.
‘I’m afraid I’ll have to, sorry. She goes pretty much everywhere with me. Besides, I don’t think your mum would want me to leave Lola behind. I’m not sure they’re going to be good friends.’
Harriet shot Pippa a look she really didn’t think she deserved. When had Harriet seriously been interested in pets, other than that time she’d wanted a hamster and Pippa had refused, imagining it escaping behind the skirting boards and dying a horrible death trapped in some dark corner? Of course Harriet had pleaded for a puppy on occasion, like most children, but Pippa had successfully fended off those demands as well.
‘We’ll leave you to collect your things, then.’ Pippa leaned forward to grab the handle and closed the door none too gently, causing the landing window to rattle alarmingly.
‘What’s going on, Mum? Who is he?’ Harriet was staring at her phone again, having long ago perfected the art of conversing without making eye contact. ‘And why do you look all hot but not in a good way?’
‘Coffee,’ Pippa replied casually. ‘You know I’m hopeless until I’ve had the first. Let’s talk at breakfast and make a proper plan.’
‘Wi-Fi? You find the network yet?’
‘No, Harriet.’ Pippa resisted a groan. ‘There really are more important things to deal with first.’ Like Gil Haworth, who was probably getting dressed right now behind that door.
‘Yeah? Like what?’ Harriet flashed her a rare smile as she backed into her own room and Pippa knew she wouldn’t get another the minute her daughter found out the unwelcome news about the Wi-Fi.
‘Something to eat, for a start. I’m hungry and I’m sure you must be too.’ Pippa retreated to her own room and yanked her phone off the dressing table. This time, that ugly mirror revealed three flushed versions of herself, with darkened pupils and wild blonde hair falling to her shoulders. Another glance failed to conceal two undone buttons on her grey silk pyjamas. The rest were thankfully fastened but not quite in the right order. She really had been tired last night, and she was going to have to work hard to regain some dignity in front of Gil after that introduction. She fired off a furious message to her dad, who would probably chuckle and ignore it.
Pippa threw her case on the bed in search of clothes, musing over her dad’s reasons for wanting her in Hartfell. Both her parents had grown up in Yorkshire, meeting when Jonny was twenty-two and her mum just eighteen. Her mum’s family had owned a furniture-making business in town and one day Jonny had turned up in search of a job. He’d got it and come away with a girlfriend too, and Pippa had been born when her mum was twenty. Her brother Raf arrived eleven months later, and his birth was followed by a wedding.
Jonny had founded the band, Blue at Midnight, with three mates, and he always said they’d been in the right place at the right time when they were noticed by a scout and then signed by a label. Back in the Eighties, that was how things were done. There were no social channels, no opportunities to release music online to find a following. It was down to hard graft, night after night on the road, playing clubs no one had heard of, and sometimes luck as well. And after that first runaway hit, even more work to keep at it; to keep producing, performing, selling.
Life on the road was a given for Jonny when Pippa and Raf were little, and time spent with the family at home grounded him back in the real world. The band was soon onto their second album with a US tour booked, and the family followed Jonny south, settling in a house in north London.
Pippa had never forgotten those days and it still hurt to think too far back. Life had been normal for them then; she and Raf didn’t know any different, and without the internet they were mostly untroubled by their dad’s growing fame. Their mum, Stella, was content to raise her family and remain in the background while Jonny performed around the world. But he always came home, and a baby sister, Tilly, joined them five years after Raf.
But those days ended, as all days do, and it was her mum’s illness when Pippa turned thirteen and then her death a year later, that totally transformed their lives. Not fame, number one albums, or sold-out stadiums. Lost, stricken with grief, Jonny took time away from the band and the whole family struggled to find a way forward. Fun and loving though he was, he didn’t have any real idea of what it meant to be an ordinary parent day by day. Homework was missed, schooldays skipped, and routine flew out of the window and took their contentment with it.
Pippa couldn’t get used to the house without her mum; no longer was it a proper home. Raf showed up for school but that was pretty much all he did when it came to education. Tilly had seemed to cope best, too little to remember everything or even fully understand the magnitude of what she’d lost with their mum’s passing.
Jonny bought a holiday house in Majorca where they could hide away and avoid school, family, news – anything he thought might upset them. He carted them off to Disneyland and hired a yacht to sail around the Caribbean. Finally he admitted defeat at home and employed a housekeeper to bring order to the chaos, escaping onto a long-planned tour and leaving his younger sister in charge. The children were left behind, trying to lead the lives they’d had before but without the anchor that had held them steady.
Pippa liked the housekeeper who came in daily because she was kind, and it meant that chores were done, lunches made, and uniforms ironed. She craved order after all the turmoil and hated that her mum wasn’t there to cheer them on or track down their dad when they wanted to share something with him, though Jonny tried his best, even from a distance. Whenever Pippa caught sight of his face on a newspaper or on the television, it seemed like a stranger was staring right back at her. Her dad, far away; her mum, gone. And with it the life she’d known.
The only way she could find comfort and strength for herself was to reach out to her brother and sister, and try somehow to make their world better. Art had always been her go-to, her passion and now it became her therapy. She drew and painted in every spare moment, tucking away beautiful sketches and watercolours that filled page after page. She encouraged Raf to study before it was too late and she read with Tilly at night before bed, both sisters escaping the real world to process their grief in another.
It was to Pippa that Raf turned when a first girlfriend dumped him, to Pippa her siblings gravitated when they wanted support or merely a hug. She made herself available for them always, tried her best to step into her mum’s shoes and become what they needed, watching, loving, mothering, from the sidelines of her own life.
When Jonny came home, he never quite fitted back in. Somehow, they’d made a way to manage without him, and as money became more plentiful, he filled the emotional void with stuff. Walkmans, albums, clothes, trips, even another holiday cottage in Scotland. But he wasn’t always there, and their mum never would be again. Stuff didn’t hold them when they were sad, or wipe away tears after a breakup. Stuff didn’t sit by the phone and comfort a bereft sister when the boy she wanted to call never did.
Once, Jonny brought up the possibility of returning to live in Yorkshire and Pippa was aghast. She made him promise that he would never sell their home and drag them back north to distant relatives that had fallen away over time. Fame did that, she’d found. Only those people who’d stuck close knew who this fractured family really were. Their lives were rooted in London, and she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving behind all she knew.
Pippa pushed away thoughts of the past and went to freshen up in the bathroom. She decided to leave a shower for later, when Gil was safely out of the way. Downstairs, she glanced in at the sitting and dining rooms, decorated in the same style as the first floor of the house. The final door in the hall led into a kitchen, a pantry off that with grimy yellow walls lined with empty, dusty shelves. The fuse box looked as though it had been installed when the house had been built and she resolved that she and Harriet would go nowhere near it. The state of the electrics would probably knock another few thousand pounds off the price of this place when she got it on the market.
Given everything she’d seen of the house so far, Pippa’s expectations of the kitchen were suitably low, and she wasn’t disappointed. Smaller than contemporary living now required, three walls were covered in plain beige cupboards with metal handles, the space between the wall-mounted units and the lower ones filled with pale yellow tiles, a dark blue range jammed between them.
She was ready to weep as she thought of the clean and bright kitchen back in her beloved London home. A mullioned window framed in stone let in some light, but it was up against it with all these clashing colours. She noticed another door and window to her left; a glance through the glass revealed a terrace and large garden with a path leading towards a farmyard.
Two dog bowls were near the back door and a Formica table with pale, spindly legs had one flap raised, the other hanging down, with four cheap plastic chairs set haphazardly around it. If Gil really did live here, then he hadn’t made the place much of a home and she wondered why not. And it certainly didn’t look as though he shared the house with anyone else. Who would put up with such a state?
She checked inside the old white fridge. A small door at the top revealed an empty, iced up freezer tray and the shelves beneath it held cheese, bacon, mushrooms, milk and butter. Not the yoghurt she had hoped for, or even a scrap of fruit, and she jabbed the door shut again. A few provisions left ready , the solicitor had mentioned in the email. At least there was milk for coffee. Pippa was desperate for that caffeine hit now and one cupboard revealed coffee, a box of cornflakes, a few tins, packets of dried pasta, quite a bit of chocolate, chopped tomatoes, a jar of crushed chillies and a half-empty bottle of olive oil.
Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t this, and now she had yet another decision to make. Did she spend time trying to make the house look like a home before inviting an estate agent in to value it? Or did she laugh away the state of the place and declare it the perfect project and price it accordingly? It was going to take a lot more than fresh bread rising in the oven and the aroma of coffee in the kitchen to make this house a home.
But right now they were questions too complicated to answer and she was grateful for small mercies when she ran the tap and the bowl in the sink began to fill with hot water. Not for anything was she going to make even a single cup of coffee without washing the mugs first.
Once everything was dripping dry on the draining board, Pippa switched on the kettle, staring through the window as she waited for it to boil. It really was the most glorious view and Harriet had been right, she should have googled the house and Hartfell before they’d arrived. She’d employed her usual tactic of avoiding anything she didn’t want to think about. It had always been her default since her mum had died; focus on the good and deal with the bad only when necessary.
The sun was climbing higher in a blue sky, patches of dappled light falling between trees and overgrown shrubs in the garden. The grass was too long to be a lawn and there was an abundant and natural beauty to the deep borders blazing with summer colours, delphiniums and verbena tall and stately amongst clumps of lavender geraniums and pink achillea.
Wooden furniture sat on the stone terrace, green with moss and tatty from neglect. Over the hawthorn hedge bordering the garden on the right, Pippa saw the farmyard, a converted stone barn between two more outbuildings, windows set below the eaves. The driveway where she had left her car last night continued on to the yard, an area next to a small paddock set aside for more parking.
Beyond the barns, fields bordered by mature trees sloped up to a fell, shaded by moorland and dotted with grazing sheep. Her long-ago visits to Yorkshire had been to the small town where her mum had grown up. That last time, staying with family after Stella’s death, Pippa had been too blurred by grief to notice anything other than the people around her. But this view was exceptional, and her artist’s eye was noting details she was surprised to realise she’d love to capture later if time allowed.
Behind her, the kettle was making a very strange noise, and she hastily switched it off before it exploded; she didn’t want to knock out what power they had. No Wi-Fi for Harriet was one thing, no phone at all quite another. Pippa made herself a cup of coffee from the jar of instant and returned to the window to ponder some more, cradling the warm mug between her hands.
‘I see you’ve found my coffee.’