Chapter 4
FOUR
I returned to Marilise’s room, where I made the bed and tidied up.
As I stepped out and pulled the door shut behind me, a whirlwind of a woman came tearing down the corridor towards me.
She was tall, with curly light-brown hair escaping from the combs that caught it up above her temples.
She was wearing a floor-length, flowing silk skirt in melding browns and ambers, and a dark green cardigan knitted from the chunkiest wool I had ever seen.
She seemed to be trailing several scarves, tied to her hair and wrapped around her neck, and the whole effect was of some beautiful autumnal wood nymph that had been blown in by the wind.
‘Are you Nurse Wilde?’ she asked breathlessly, seizing my elbow.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Is everything all right?’
Judging by her wild-eyed look, I was worried that something had happened to Marilise.
‘Oh yes, unless you count my appalling manners in not being here to greet you,’ she said.
Her dark blue eyes widened as she gazed at me imploringly.
‘I’m awfully sorry, but Victoria has just rung and announced that she’s sending Sofia to stay tomorrow…
’ She trailed off as I frowned, trying to remember who everyone was.
‘Oh dear, oh dear, of course you haven’t the faintest idea who I’m talking about. ’
But nursing, like teaching, makes you good with names and I smiled.
‘Isn’t Victoria Nick’s sister, and Sofia her daughter?’
‘Thank God!’ she exclaimed, making me jump. ‘I knew Angela would find somebody competent, and here you are. I’m Astrid, by the way – Nick’s not terribly wicked stepmother.’
I had suspected as much.
‘I’ve met India,’ I said. ‘She’s your daughter, isn’t she?’
‘That’s right. Was she riding a horse?’
‘She was the first time, yes.’
‘There you go, always down at the stables or fiddling around with something equine. I suppose I’ll have to drag her back up to the house to help.’
‘What needs doing?’ I asked. ‘Marilise doesn’t need me right now, so maybe I can help?’
Her eyes widened again, as if I had suggested sprouting wings and flying.
‘Would you? I need to get Sofia’s room ready, do the bed and so on.
Poor girl, I do so want to make her feel welcome.
’ She started marching off and I followed quickly as she turned into another bedroom.
This one was smaller and much simpler than Marilise’s, but still twice the size of the master bedroom in my own house.
It had a pale pink carpet, walls papered in a pretty pattern of little green sprigs, and smart walnut furniture.
Astrid opened a wardrobe and started pulling out bedlinen.
‘Bloody Victoria, sending poor Sofia here on a moment’s notice for the whole of Christmas, because she wants to swan off to some Caribbean island with her second husband, who runs the hedge fund for the billionaire who owns the damn island and who doesn’t want to have his stepdaughter hanging round. ’
My head was sent into a spin by all this information about a world I had no concept of.
I had no idea what a hedge fund was, and I could barely imagine an island-owning billionaire, other than Richard Branson.
Maybe it was Richard Branson? Given the culture shocks I had already endured, it wouldn’t surprise me.
So I asked the only question I could come up with.
‘How old’s Sofia?’
Astrid flung the sheets – now hopelessly tangled – onto the bed and turned to me, her face red.
‘Eight! Just eight years old, poor little mite.’
I picked up the sheets and started shaking them out.
‘That is young to be left by her mum, but at least she’s with family.’
‘Family,’ chuntered Astrid, seizing a pillow.
‘We barely know the child. Ah well.’ She suddenly threw the pillow down and turned to me, her face breaking into a smile that made my spine tingle with its sweetness and warmth.
‘Don’t mind me, love. I get fired up sometimes.
Truth is, I’m glad to have Sofia coming.
You probably already know that we never spend Christmas at Lyonscroft, and rarely so many of us together, so having a child here might buck us all up into making it a proper Christmas.
And, of course, it’ll probably be my last one here. ’
‘You’re getting married, aren’t you?’ I asked, taking the other corner of the duvet she was trying to stuff into its cover. She stopped briefly, glanced at me, then continued.
‘Yes, that’s right. My fiancé, Philip, is from Texas, so that’s where we’ll go in the New Year. Amazing for India – so many horses.’
I detected a certain strain in her voice – would it be quite so amazing for her as for her daughter?
‘Do you like horses, too?’ I asked.
‘Not really,’ she replied. ‘I like gardening. I’ll probably have to build some raised beds out there to get anything to grow…
’ She trailed off, then continued brightly.
‘We’ll see – all an adventure, I expect!
Right, well, that looks more welcoming.’ We surveyed the bed which did, indeed, look cosy now with its fat duvet and two plump pillows.
‘Angela’s already done a dust round, so I think I’ll go and cut some greenery for a little display on the dresser. Thank you for your help, Laura.’
‘My pleasure.’
She swept off down the stairs as I went back to my room.
I picked up my bags and pushed open the door.
Immediately, I could see why Marilise’s sister had considered this the best room in the house, although it was more a suite than a room, with two distinct sections.
On one side, making full use of a deep bay window, was a sitting area, with inviting armchairs, a coffee table and two low bookcases.
On the other side stood the bed, a high four-poster with an open top and elegant drapes and opposite that was a fireplace with a marble surround and wide mantelpiece upon which stood an ornate clock and two pretty vases, both stuffed with tall evergreen branches.
I supposed that this thoughtful touch had been provided by Astrid.
The colour scheme was of the palest duck egg blue and ivory and, after my busy morning, had an immediately restful effect that was very welcome, even if I couldn’t help thinking back to the hospital wards I had worked on for so many years, and how they could benefit from even a fraction of the money it must have taken to decorate this gorgeous room.
I quickly unpacked my clothes into the large wardrobe and set out my toiletries on the glass-topped dresser, wishing I had decanted them into elegant bottles, as the plastic packaging from a local pharmacy seemed to be letting the side down.
Opening a door in the corner of the room, I found a bathroom, not as large as the one downstairs, but still three times the size of mine in the house I had shared with Paulo.
We hadn’t been short of money, or wanted for anything, but our lifestyle – if you could call it that – was distinctly modest, funded as it was by the salaries of a nurse and an electrician.
But we had been so content with our cosy home, our ‘staycation’ holidays and our ancient car that felt like it only kept going out of good will.
Our bathroom had been on the elderly side but perfectly fit for purpose.
The fittings in this one were clearly modern, and pristine, but were in keeping with the age and style of the house, including a free-standing rolltop bath with high ends that curved gently down towards the middle.
There was a separate shower and two sinks, side by side, as well as floor-to-ceiling fitted wooden cupboards.
Suffice to say, these were not my normal nurse’s quarters, and it was as if I had wandered into some sort of Cinderella story, or period drama, as I went back into the bedroom and gazed out of the windows.
They overlooked the front of the house and allowed me to appreciate the perfect symmetry of the front gardens, although the sight of the woods to one side made me shudder as I remembered my inelegant crawl to ‘rescue’ Steve.
A knock at the door brought me back to the present.
‘Come in!’
‘Hello again,’ said Nick. ‘Angela, who seems to think that my job is so pointless that I can be sent on errands at any given moment, asked me to let you know that lunch will be ready in about fifteen minutes.’
‘Oh, thank you. Sorry you were disturbed – I’ll learn the household routines quickly.’
He shrugged.
‘She’s got a point. She and Greg manage this entire house, Astrid has the greenest fingers this side of Kermit the frog, you’re a nurse…
Designing apps does feel kind of pointless next to all that talent and dedication, but then there are upsides to being totally dispensable.
Beyond errands, no one asks much of you. ’
Yet another side to this complicated man: self-deprecating to an extreme that made me a little uncomfortable.
‘What sort of apps do you design?’ I asked, hoping to find something there to bolster him.
‘Anything I’m asked to,’ he replied with another shrug. ‘The current one is for an online pet food shop; the one before that was a wheel spin game for a soft drinks company so you can win free stuff when you use their app rather than going to the website.’
‘I see,’ I said, trying not to look as though I agreed that his job might seem, well, unfulfilling, if not exactly pointless. ‘Did you always want to do it?’
He snorted with laughter, and I felt embarrassed. I was like a maiden aunt asking polite questions about which I knew nothing.
‘Funnily enough, I didn’t dream of it as a child, but then I wasn’t allowed to dream of anything other than taking over this place and managing the family properties.
As soon as my father died, I handed all that over to other people and led an even more pointless existence until I realised that I was reasonably good at this and that people would hire me.
What do you think, that I should start having ambitions to be a firefighter, or an astronaut? ’
His sarcastic tone riled me; I was only trying to be polite, after all, and I did have an important job to do, an important job that this conversation was keeping me from.
‘Why don’t you join the Foreign Legion?’ I suggested, rather more tartly than I had meant to. ‘You’d look rather good riding into the distance on a camel.’
And before he could reply, I slipped past him and hurried downstairs to find Marilise.