Chapter 3
He drove her up there anyway, to where it had once been and now no longer was. No gingerbread-style Cotswold-stone cottage with diamond-leaded windows, no immaculately tended front garden and no sizeable vegetable patch complete with greenhouse and wooden shed at the back.
In its place was a tennis court, a hot tub and an outdoor swimming pool, set within the grounds of a vast property the size of a supermarket.
There wasn’t just the one property either. Altogether, there were four.
Nella gazed at the houses in silence. It was as if her grandpa and the cottage he’d lived in for almost his whole life had never existed, and the shocking abruptness of the discovery felt like a punch to the stomach.
‘But it was a tied cottage. It was part of the Starbourne estate and he worked for them.’
‘The family sold off a parcel of land,’ said Nick. ‘Four years ago.’
‘A heck of a parcel.’
‘Twenty acres. They’d already put in a planning application, which was granted. The land went to auction with planning consent for . . . all this.’ He indicated the site and she saw a flicker of something like guilt in his eyes.
‘You wouldn’t do too well as a spy,’ Nella told him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your face. That look. Dead giveaway. You had something to do with this, didn’t you? Are you a builder?’
‘I wasn’t the one who built it.’ He paused, then said carefully, ‘But I did arrange for it to be built.’
In the ladies’ loo at the Angel Inn, Nella studied her reflection in the mirror above the sink. She slicked back her snow-dampened hair with a comb and gently patted foundation over the purple bruise so as not to scare the locals out in the bar.
It wasn’t Nick Callaghan’s fault that her grandpa’s home had been razed to the ground; he hadn’t done it out of spite. And it wasn’t as if Vernon had been turfed out of the cottage by the evil developers, forced to go and live in a terrible bedsit instead. He’d died ten years ago, long before the land had even been sold off by the Peverell family, the local landed gentry who lived on the outskirts of the village in Starbourne Manor and owned the Starbourne estate. They may have shaved twenty acres off one side of it, but there were still several hundred acres left to keep them going.
Plus, if the newly built houses were monstrosities, it would be easier to dislike them. But they weren’t; they’d been sympathetically designed and were easy on the eye. At first sight, Nick had done an excellent job.
A dash of lipstick and she was done. He was waiting for her at a table by one of the windows.
‘OK?’ he said when Nella joined him.
She nodded. ‘Yes, thanks. It was just a shock, that’s all.’
‘Bound to be. I’m sorry.’
More apologies. ‘Not your fault.’
Their drinks arrived at the table, alcohol-free because he was driving her to the station later and she didn’t want to fall asleep on the train back to Manchester.
Nick said, ‘It must feel . . . I can’t imagine how it feels.’
‘It was a lovely place to live. But I wasn’t really here for that long.’ Since there was no need to go into details, she said, ‘I moved up to Edinburgh at eighteen, took a live-in job as a nanny, looking after the twin boys of a couple of lawyers. After two years of that, I worked in hotels around the country and abroad, and ended up as assistant manager at Colworth Manor, not far from Bath. It’s owned by Hector McLean, who wrote those Dennis the Dashing Dachshund books, and run by his daughter, Daisy.’
‘I know that place.’ Nick nodded, remembering. ‘Went to a wedding there once. Hector played the bagpipes.’
‘When he dies, he wants to be buried with them.’ Nella smiled. ‘He’s a character. Well, they both are. I loved working there.’
‘So why did you leave?’
‘A guy called Tommy Kessler came to stay at the hotel.’
‘I’ve heard of him too.’
‘Everyone has.’ Tommy Kessler had grown up in the rough part of Edinburgh and done his fair share of dodgy deals as a teenager before becoming a nightclub DJ, then a music promoter in London and Manchester. A mercurial Jack-the-lad character, he wasn’t afraid to voice his opinion on any subject under the sun but did so with wit and a wicked smile. As his fame grew, he made friends with the bands he loved and enemies of those he couldn’t stand, and the power of his naughty-boy charisma led to him opening his own chain of nightclubs.
‘You had a thing with Tommy Kessler?’ Nick’s expression was a mixture of astounded and impressed.
‘I did not,’ Nella said firmly. Tommy had offered at the time and she had declined, what with seduction being his default mode – he would happily flirt with anything from a traffic warden to a pot plant. ‘He caused a bit of havoc in the hotel and a couple of the other guests complained, but I managed to calm them down. He was there for a fortnight and every day something else would happen that needed sorting out. He was a complete nightmare, but I took care of everything because that was my job. Then on the last day he told me he’d been doing it all on purpose, to test me and see how good I was at handling problems.’
Nick nodded. ‘And you passed with flying colours.’
‘I did. Then he said he wanted me to go and work for him, because what he needed was someone like me. A fixer, to keep his life running smoothly. Well, as smoothly as it ever can when Tommy’s the one causing the chaos.’
‘Of course you said yes.’
‘I said no. So he upped the salary. Then upped it again.’ She took a sip of her drink. ‘That was when I said yes.’
‘Wow. And . . . any regrets?’
‘None. Looking after Tommy is like trying to keep control of a houseful of monkeys, but it’s never boring. And the pay is excellent. Ah, here comes our waitress. We need to order.’
As they ate their food – bouillabaisse, soufflé Suisse and triple-fried chips – a group of snow-dusted forty-somethings came into the pub, greeted Nick from across the room and bought a round of drinks at the bar.
‘Friends of yours?’ said Nella.
‘Clients. They’re renting one of the houses this week. That’s how we run the business,’ he explained. ‘Short-term lets for larger groups of people. Luxury accommodation at a luxury price, like a five-star hotel but without the annoyance of having to put up with other residents. We’ve been going for three months now, and it’s working well so far.’
‘Oh, right. I thought you were selling them and was wondering who to, what with them being so huge.’ Interested, Nella said, ‘And are you very hands-on with the clients?’
He shrugged. ‘I may drop by to say hello and check everything’s fine, but otherwise we just leave them to get on with it. Any problems, they can call an office in London and someone there will arrange to get the matter sorted. Other than that, they’re on their own. When they leave, the cleaning team go in and get the place ready for the next lot.’
‘That all sounds very efficient. And what do you do?’
‘I set up the company three years ago, with the backing of investors. I deal with the financial side, find potential properties to renovate or build from scratch. I’m project-managing a new one outside Cirencester at the moment, as well as working to recruit more investors.’ Amused, he said, ‘Don’t worry, I keep myself busy.’
Nella nodded, spearing another chip with her fork and glancing across at the group over by the bar, who were now all glued to their phones. You could tell just by looking at them that they were city types dressed up in country clothes, their green Barbour jackets pristine, their expensive jeans and corduroy trousers mud-free.
‘Nope,’ said a smart-looking woman with an irritated shake of her head. ‘Nothing.’
‘This one still isn’t picking up,’ said her friend.
A portly man in red corduroys heaved a sigh of annoyance. ‘He’s just said I could try again in a couple of hours. Unbelievable. What’s the matter with these people?’
‘We’ll have to call The Dove and cancel,’ said the other man. ‘We’re never going to get there in time.’
‘You could drive us there,’ said the woman who was probably his wife.
‘It’s my birthday! I want to be able to have a drink and enjoy myself. This isn’t how the weekend was supposed to go.’
‘I can’t believe they don’t even have Uber out here,’ the second woman wailed. ‘This is hopeless .’
Nella said in an undertone, ‘You should drive them.’