Chapter 4
OWEN – WINTERHILL, THE PRESENT
On the first floor of Winterhill Hall, Owen Power watched the woman in the padded jacket and brightly coloured scarf pace across the grass-covered ruins of the priory.
She wore a bright blue bobble hat that matched one of the strands in the scarf and beneath it her long red-gold hair stirred in the wind.
She was definitely pacing rather than simply walking.
If he screwed up his eyes, he could imagine that he saw her lips moving as she counted her steps…
Twenty-nine, thirty… She disappeared behind a pillar into what had once been the lady chapel.
It was the first interesting thing that had happened that morning.
The manor library somehow managed to be both cold and stuffy at the same time.
There was one inadequate radiator that was presumably churning out a minimal amount of heat – he couldn’t tell as he was at the opposite end of the room – and around the table the various members of the Winterhill Priory Archaeology Project were arguing about the priorities for the dig, which was already running behind time and over budget because of weather-related delays.
He’d stopped listening a while ago. He’d already had enough of archaeology to last a lifetime because his parents had dragged him and his sister Rachel around the world with them on endless excavations from the age of six months to sixteen.
Rachel had emerged from the experience with a passion for the subject that had rivalled their own, whilst he had hated it with an equal passion, deliberately choosing to study maths and economics instead, before going into a career in finance.
It was something of an irony that he was sitting here now as the main investor behind the Winterhill Priory excavation.
Rachel had twisted his arm; she was the chief executive of their parents’ educational foundation these days and Owen felt that the least he could do was support her in continuing their work, even if he wasn’t particularly engaged with it himself.
Rachel caught his eye and mimed the words ‘pay attention’ at him. Owen realised that he must be looking as bored as he felt and tried to rearrange his face into a semblance of interest.
‘What do you think, Owen?’ Peter Cox, chief curator at the foundation and treasurer for the archaeological project, appealed to him. ‘Would you be prepared to authorise the next tranche of money a couple of weeks early, as discussed?’
Owen flailed. From the expression on Rachel’s face, it was clear she knew he hadn’t been listening at all.
‘That seems a reasonable request, Peter,’ she said, giving Owen a meaningful nod.
‘I’m happy to agree to that,’ Owen said.
He trusted Rachel’s judgement and the money involved in the project was a relatively small sum compared to the amounts he generally dealt with on a day-to-day basis.
The identical looks of relief on the faces of the team members reminded him of how important this project was to them.
He just hoped he hadn’t promised 50,000 with no strings attached.
There was a general lightening of the mood around the table and they whisked through the rest of the business before the meeting broke up.
Owen stood up and stretched. Through the mullioned window he caught sight of the woman with the scarf again, emerging from the priory ruins.
She was dusting grass and soil from her gloves.
She cast a furtive look around and then headed towards the exit with a purposeful step.
Owen watched her walk away. There was tension in the lines of her body and when she reached the gateway into the courtyard, she glanced up at the CCTV camera on the arch, which he found curious.
Then she took out her phone and started to talk with animation.
Rachel touched his arm, pulling his attention away. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘You’re a good guy, Owen.’ A smile lit her eyes with mischief. ‘Even if you have no clue how much you just signed up for, or what it’s going to be spent on.’
Owen rubbed his eyes. ‘It was that obvious, huh?’
‘You looked distracted,’ his sister said, carefully. She gestured to the flasks and slightly stale-looking biscuits that languished on a battered wooden table at the side of the room. ‘Do you need a coffee? We should have a quick chat, I think.’
Rachel was his senior by a couple of weeks short of a year, their mother having once proclaimed that she had wanted to get the issue of childbearing over as quickly and efficiently as possible.
He suspected that she would have been even happier had they been twins but not even Athena Swan, famed archaeologist and force of nature, had been able to command fate to that extent.
As it was, she had largely ignored the inconvenience of having children, treating them like so much spare baggage.
It would have been easy to feel excluded by the intense bond between their parents and even more so by their shared love of archaeology, but it had drawn Owen and Rachel closer.
That affection had remained into their adult lives, particularly after they had lost their parents in a horrific car accident when they had been in their teens.
Today Rachel was dressed conservatively in a business suit, her dark brown hair pulled back into a loose knot at the nape of her neck. She looked every inch the chief executive of the Swan Power Archaeology Trust. Rachel, Owen thought, had been training for this job since before she was born.
‘I’ll wait for a proper coffee at the café,’ Owen said, eyeing the flask with disfavour. He’d already sampled one cup of grey dishcloth-tasting beverage that morning. ‘But yes, let’s chat.’ He smiled at her. ‘We should get together for a meal sometime. With Hugh and Humph as well, I mean.’
Rachel’s smile lit her eyes at the mention of her husband and three-year-old son. ‘Come for lunch on Saturday,’ she said immediately. ‘We’d all love that.’ She paused delicately. ‘Is there anyone you’d like to bring?’
Owen laughed at her circuitous way of trying to discover if he was seeing anyone at the moment. ‘No. Thanks, though.’
Rachel looked disappointed. ‘Okay. Well, what I wanted to say—’ She wrapped her arms about her midriff and Owen was immediately aware of the change in her and the rise in tension in the room.
‘I just wanted to check that you were okay with being here,’ Rachel said in a rush.
‘At Winterhill Hall, I mean. I know you don’t like the house and that it reminds you of the horrible time after Mum and Dad died.
’ She looked at him with vulnerability in her eyes.
‘We can always meet somewhere else in future if it’s an issue for you. You only need to say—’
‘Rach.’ Owen stopped her gently. ‘It’s fine.
I’m sorry I seemed distracted. It was business, nothing to do with being here.
’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Winterhill Hall is the headquarters of the Swan Power Trust now. I don’t see it as a place where I was unhappy, I see it as the perfect place for you to carry on our parents’ legacy.
And besides.’ He smiled. ‘You love it. That’s the most important thing. ’
Rachel smiled too. ‘I do. I love this place so much—’ Her tone, her whole demeanour softened as she gestured to the shabby surroundings of the manor.
‘I know it’s inextricably mixed up with tragedy, but it’s also the place that anchors me to the past, somehow.
’ She squared her shoulders. ‘It helps me remember Mum and Dad in a positive manner.’
‘That’s great,’ Owen said. ‘I’m glad.’ He thought ruefully that she had run towards the past for reassurance whilst he had run away from it.
‘Please don’t worry about me,’ he added.
‘If I’m looking blank it’s probably because I don’t know the difference between a trowel and a mattock – and I don’t really care. ’
Rachel gave him an exasperated look, but she seemed persuaded, and started to talk about Hugh making Owen’s favourite moussaka for lunch at the weekend.
His brother-in-law was a chef and Owen always thought it was unfair that the man had to cook in his family time as well, but Rachel swore he liked it.
‘Shouldn’t you check with Hugh first before you commit him to feeding me?’ he joked, but Rachel simply shook her head again.
‘You’ll be paying us in full through keeping Humphrey entertained all day,’ she pointed out. ‘By the evening you’ll need a lie down.’
It was true, Owen thought. His nephew was a small human dynamo.
‘Excuse me.’ Peter Cox was hovering at his elbow, looking awkward. ‘If you could…’ He was brandishing a sheet of accounts for Owen to sign.
‘You set me up,’ Owen said mildly to his sister as he scrawled his name. ‘You had this all prepared ahead of the meeting.’
Rachel gave him a wry smile in return. ‘The project is sound,’ she said.
‘We’re already doing a brilliant job of involving the community and local school in the research and pre-investigation phase of the excavation.
’ There was the minutest hesitation before she added: ‘That’s what Swan Power is all about, after all. ’
‘Of course it is.’ Owen gave her arm a small squeeze.
He knew that Rachel, for all that she loved her job, also felt the pressure of administering their parents’ legacy.
That was how she reeled him in every time, he reflected.
He was a non-executive director of the Foundation as well as an investor in this dig project, and he always backed Rachel’s work to show his support for her personally. They stuck together.