Chapter 20
The Cotswolds
A week had passed since they’d returned from Venice, and now it was meet-the-parents day.
‘You don’t have to worry,’ Leon told her. ‘It’s going to be fine. They’ll like you.’
‘OK.’ But the mere fact that he’d used the word like rather than love was making Fen nervous, along with Jamie’s cheerful ‘Good luck’ before he’d left for London on Wednesday evening.
She definitely felt as if she was going to need it.
Apart from anything else, their address was Hetherton Hall, Hetherton, for goodness’ sake.
It was giving out full-on Bridgerton vibes. What if they expected her to curtsey?
And now that they were on their way there, she felt as if she were bracing herself for the most important – and terrifying – job interview of her life.
Her head swivelled as Leon turned left instead of right. ‘Isn’t this the wrong direction?’
‘Don’t worry about it. I know the best route.’
Twenty minutes later, having left Bristol behind them and now winding their way along narrow country lanes, she still had no idea what was going on, until Leon pulled into a driveway.
The first thing Fen noticed was a couple of outbuildings and an orange windsock.
Then, finally revealing itself behind the buildings, she saw the blue and white helicopter on a helipad in the centre of the field.
‘You’re kidding.’ It was the one Leon part-owned; he’d shown her photos of it on his phone.
‘Thought we could arrive in style.’ He grinned sheepishly. ‘I wanted to impress you.’
‘You already impress me. We could turn up on a tractor and I’d be happy.’
‘I’m just showing off.’ Reaching sideways, he planted a kiss on her mouth. ‘Flying a helicopter is about the one thing I can do that Jamie can’t. So, are you up for it?’
She curled her hand behind his neck and returned the kiss. Did he honestly think she’d say no? ‘So long as you won’t be showing off in a loop-the-loop kind of way, because I might not be so keen on that.’
‘We’ll give it a miss this time,’ said Leon. ‘I promise.’
He greeted his friend and fellow pilot up in the control tower, completed the pre-flight checks and made sure Fen was comfortable and secure in the seat beside him.
Then they were off. Last week she’d taken a last, lingering look at Venice from the air as their plane had left Marco Polo airport and risen over the azure lagoon, and now she was enjoying another bird’s-eye view, this time of the Cotswolds in all its green and golden glory as they flew above woodland, fields and toy-sized villages on their way to Hetherton, a few miles from Wotton-under-Edge.
Over the roar of the engine and the hypnotic thud-thud-thud of the helicopter’s rotor blades, Leon spoke to her through his headset, pointing out the glistening lake where he and his friends had swum as teenagers, the escarpment he’d once tobogganed down in the snow, ending up smashing into the frozen stream at the bottom, and the llama farm where a llama had spat in his face, causing him to fall backwards off a wall and split his head open on a rock.
‘I had to have seven stitches.’ He tapped the back of his head.
‘So collecting injuries isn’t a new hobby.
You’re a liability.’ Fen laughed through her own headset, because he was still suffering from assorted aches and pains and knocking back painkillers for the damage his body had sustained in Venice.
But had he bothered to visit his GP and maybe considered getting sent for an X-ray?
No, of course he hadn’t. He wasn’t a complainer, preferring to play down his symptoms instead.
‘And there it is.’ He pointed into the distance as the house he’d grown up in came into view ahead of them, nestling in the bowl of a verdant valley and bathed in sunlight. ‘Home sweet home.’
It was certainly imposing. If only it could have been smaller. She held up her phone and took a series of photos as they approached and made their descent into a flat field at the bottom of the garden. Up on the terrace, his parents had now emerged to greet them.
Once again hearing Jamie’s voice in her head wishing her luck, she wished this would stop feeling like a school exam she hadn’t revised for.
Two hours later, she was wishing it could have been that, because at least an exam would have been over by now.
But here she was, still stuck and unable to escape a seemingly endless ordeal amid the knowledge that she absolutely wasn’t what Leon’s parents had had in mind for him when it came to girlfriends.
Oh, they were unfailingly polite on the surface, but that almost made it worse.
Afternoon tea had finally been served in the drawing room and the conversation was flowing like quick-setting cement.
Greville Spencer-Carr had spoken at length about arable farming and weather systems. His wife, Hilary, having asked Fen where her family was from, had been visibly disappointed not to have heard of them.
A further line of enquiry as to her favourite classical composers had come to a sticky end when, stupidly attempting to wing it, she’d pronounced the J in Janácˇek wrongly, only to see Greville wince and say, ‘Ah yes, we watched a fascin-ating documentary on Yanácˇek the other week.’
It was while Hilary was talking about soil drainage and the impossibility of finding decent gardeners who knew what they were doing that Fen’s knife slipped.
In her hurry to catch it, the plate balanced on her knees tipped sideways and the two halves of the scone she’d been doing battle with dropped onto the antique Persian rug.
‘Sorry!’ Crumbs scattered everywhere. This was so much worse than a school exam. Hurriedly picking up the halves spread with butter and greengage jam, Fen managed to knock the edge of her teacup and sent tea slopping into the saucer.
‘Don’t worry about it, really. Accidents happen. I’ll go and find a cloth.’ Hilary smiled, nodded and swiftly rose to her feet.
Of course it had to happen while Leon was in the bathroom. After thirty seconds of clutching the dropped knife and scone-halves in awkward silence, Fen said to Greville, ‘I’ll just take these through to the kitchen.’
Before she could reach it, she heard Hilary in there, on the phone.
‘. . . pretty girl, and of course Leon’s besotted, but no, she just won’t do.
’ There was a pause, followed by a quiet trill of laughter.
‘It’ll pass, I’m sure. Remember when he was five and completely obsessed with those Teletubby creatures?
For a couple of months they were his whole world, then one morning the housekeeper found them kicked under the bed because he’d discovered Spider-Man.
I can’t imagine we’ll be seeing this one again; he’s only known her for a fortnight.
And you understand what I’m saying, don’t you?
She might be a nice enough girl in her own way, but she isn’t one of us. ’
Frozen in the corridor, it occurred to Fen that since she could hardly return to the drawing room with the dropped and crumbling scone-halves, she didn’t have much choice.
Pushing open the door to the kitchen, she flashed a sunny smile at Leon’s mother, tipped the pieces of scone into the bin and said cheerfully, ‘Sorry to interrupt, I’ll use tissues to clear up the spill, shall I? You carry on with your call.’
Hilary murmured, ‘I have to go, Annabel,’ and switched off the phone. Regarding Fen across the kitchen, she said, ‘Sorry. Obviously you weren’t meant to hear that.’
‘Obviously.’
‘I had no idea you were hiding behind the door, listening.’
‘Trust me, it wasn’t planned.’
Leon’s mother shrugged. ‘Nevertheless, you heard. But you have to understand, I’m simply being realistic. We have all this to protect.’ She gestured around. ‘Plenty of young women can be unscrupulous where men and money are concerned.’
‘You mean me?’
‘I don’t know you. But potentially, yes.’
‘The answer’s no, you’re wrong. But OK.’
‘We also want to protect our son, of course, from being targeted for the wrong reasons and ending up suffering heartbreak. Anyway, I’m glad you understand.’ Hilary’s smile was perfunctory. ‘By the way, probably better not to mention this conversation to Leon. It would only upset him.’
‘I imagine it would.’ Fen nodded in agreement. ‘But it’s not going to put me off.’ There was a roll of kitchen paper on one of the counter tops and she tore off a few sheets. ‘I’ll go and clear up the mess.’
The visit may have lasted under three hours, but it had felt more like thirty.
As they took off from the field, Leon said, ‘That went pretty well, then,’ and Fen’s spirits dropped, because he actually meant it.
He went on, ‘Sometimes they can be a bit funny about girlfriends, but not this time. They seemed to like you.’
She couldn’t tell him; it would be too cruel. And now she understood why he chose to use the word like rather than love. But wow, if he thought his parents liked her, how had they treated previous girlfriends who’d had to endure turning up and being introduced to Hilary and Greville?
Whose grandfather, by the way, had made lavatories for a living.
‘I liked them too.’ It was the first lie she’d ever told him.
‘Good, I’m glad.’ Peering below them as they gained height, Leon leaned across and pointed down.
‘See that wood, to the right of the lake? When I was eleven, I had my first kiss in there. Her name was Josephine Barber and her mum worked behind the bar at our local pub. She always gave us free crisps.’
Was poor Josephine warned off by Hilary too?
‘How was the kiss? Was it mind-blowing?’
‘Totally. Until ten minutes later, when I climbed an oak tree and fell out of it. Broke my collarbone.’
‘Showing off again.’ Fen smiled, but she’d noticed the fleeting grimace as he’d been reaching across to show her the wood. ‘And your back still isn’t better either. You really are going to have to get it looked at.’
‘It’ll sort itself out. These things always do. Hey, look at that hay barn down to the left.’ He pointed again as they flew over it. ‘That’s where—’
‘Nooo, don’t tell me,’ Fen interrupted, laughing. ‘I really don’t want to know what you got up to in there.’