CHAPTER 1
Cornwall
Annabel Penrose groaned as yet another tractor pulled out in front of her.
She eased off the accelerator, looked at her watch and sighed.
She couldn’t be late, not today. Sleeping through her alarm had made for a bad start to the day, but she’d been so exhausted after a week of marking her students’ dissertations that she had really needed the rest.
‘Don’t turn left. Please don’t turn left,’ she muttered as the tractor approached the next junction. A flicker of the indicator told her that it was going to do just that. Annabel groaned again, then followed in the wake of the giant machine as it turned off the main road and onto the narrow lane.
Her phone buzzed on the passenger seat and she stole a quick glance. Mum. For the third time.
Where are you? PLEASE don’t be late!
‘Doing my best, Mum!’ she said through gritted teeth.
The tractor slowed and indicated again. Sticking his head out of the cabin, the farmer gave her a cheerful wave and disappeared through a narrow gateway.
She managed a smile and returned the wave; she couldn’t really be cross with him.
With a clear road ahead, she put her foot down, eating up the last couple of miles in a style of which Lewis Hamilton would have been proud. She really mustn’t be late.
Annabel rounded the last bend and saw the black and white sign: Penrose Farm.
She relaxed and felt a warm, fuzzy feeling: she was coming home.
She drove between the stone pillars and followed the gravel drive through the trees.
The lush, green lawn was a neat tapestry woven with delicate primroses and on either side of the track daffodils danced in the breeze.
She had always loved this time of year in Cornwall.
With spring flowers emerging and lambs frolicking in the fresh, green fields, it filled her heart with a renewed sense of hope. And she was needing some of that today.
Penrose Farm had felt like home for as long as Annabel could remember.
Some of her earliest and fondest memories were here; rolling around on the lawn with her grandparents’ Collie dogs, bottle feeding baby lambs or climbing trees in the woods with her older brother, William.
She had never actually lived at the farmhouse full-time, but with her parents often posted overseas for her father’s work, most of her boarding school holidays and exeats had been spent here, with Granny Dotty, as she and William called her.
She had been their rock, Annabel mused, smiling to herself as she thought of their cheerful, white-haired grandmother.
At the front of the farmhouse was a sea of cars, lined up bumper to bumper, and it was a struggle to find a space.
After squeezing between her brother’s Audi and the farmer’s mud-splattered Land Rover, Annabel applied a quick slash of lipstick, grabbed her overnight bag from the back seat and made her way to the front door.
She ran a hand through her long, dark blonde hair in a bid to tame it and grinned at the gold helium balloons attached to the door handle. ‘Happy 100th birthday!’ they announced.
Her mother’s radar was clearly on high alert as the door opened right as Annabel reached for the handle.
‘Hi Mum! I’m—’
‘Darling, what on earth happened?’ Her mother cut her off. She kissed her cheek perfunctorily then continued with a furrowed brow, ‘You look tired! I messaged you, but you didn’t reply!’ She looked out towards the sea of cars and asked, ‘Where’s Luke?’
‘I was driving, Mum, I couldn’t reply. And if I’d stopped to reply, I’d have been even later. Luke’s not coming, he’s not feeling well.’
Annabel took a deep breath and tried to stay calm. It wasn’t exactly a lie; he wasn’t feeling well. At that very moment, he was probably sprawled on the sofa nursing his hangover after last night’s shenanigans. She groaned inwardly at the thought. Why hadn’t he just told her where he had been?
Jeanette Penrose was a trim woman in her early seventies, but in her smart turquoise shift dress and matching jacket, with her silvery blonde hair elegantly styled into soft waves, she looked at least a decade younger.
Retirement in the Algarve clearly agreed with her, and Annabel envied her year-round tan.
‘Oh, I see.’ she said. ‘Well that’s a shame, I hope he’s feeling better soon. Do send him my love.’
How did her mother do it? Annabel had been there for less than a minute and every single comment that she had uttered so far had irritated her. Her making of fuss of Luke annoyed her at the best of times, but today it felt like something of a betrayal after he’d been a complete shit to her.
Jeanette had put Luke on a pedestal when they first got together and Annabel couldn’t bear the way she fawned over him.
She seemed to view him as some sort of knight in shining armour, nobly rescuing her daughter from a future of spinsterhood and maiden aunt status.
What a hero. What an arse, more like. If only her mother knew the half of it.
‘Anyway – ’ Annabel forced a smile and followed her mother through the hallway and into the kitchen – ‘I’m here now. How’s the birthday girl?’
‘Oh she’s fine, you know Dotty; loving all the attention!’ Jeanette gave a dramatic eye roll and Annabel swallowed down an irritated reply. ‘She’s in the conservatory, surrounded by her adoring fans! Everyone’s been here since eleven, as per the invitation,’ she added tartly.
Just for once, why couldn’t her mother be nice to Dotty, today of all days?
Annabel wondered. Maybe it was just the usual tension between daughters- and mothers-in-law, but it had always been this way and it was tedious; Jeanette playing the role of the perfect daughter-in-law, whilst making sneaky, barbed jibes behind the scenes.
Dotty, for her part, always seemed to rise above it as far as Annabel could tell, which doubtless rankled Jeanette.
‘It’s been a busy morning, getting everything ready,’ she continued.
‘A helping hand wouldn’t have gone amiss.
Thankfully, William and Sarah got here before everyone else and helped finish setting up.
They stayed with her sister near Exeter last night, so they didn’t have far to come.
She’s so artistic; wait till you see the conservatory, she’s done it beautifully! ’
Annabel refused to rise to the bait. She forced a smile and agreed how fortunate it was that they’d been around to help put up the decorations. She loved her brother and sister-in-law dearly, but the Golden Couple treatment that they always got from their mother never failed to grind her gears.
The usually neat farmhouse kitchen had been invaded by multiple food containers and boxes from the local caterers.
Two middle-aged ladies in matching company polo shirts looked up from the chaos with cheerful smiles as Jeanette and Annabel came in.
Annabel tried to compensate for her mother completely ignoring them by greeting them warmly and thanking them for their efforts.
Jeanette was on a mission: she made straight for the kettle, filled it, switched it on and glanced at her watch.
‘Right, you have exactly twenty-three minutes to have a coffee and a shower, and get yourself ready.’ Jeanette looked her daughter up and down, and wrinkled her brow at her T-shirt and jeans. ‘Please tell me you’ve brought something to change into?’
Be nice . . . Be nice. It’s Dotty’s day, don’t let her spoil it, Annabel told herself.
She swallowed her frustration and managed an affirmative nod.
She was thirty-five years old and a history lecturer at a university.
She had a PhD, for goodness’ sake, yet her mother still had a way of making her feel like a hopeless child.
She took a deep breath and bent down to make a fuss of Monty, her granny’s faithful old black Labrador, who was observing proceedings from the safety of his dog bed by the back door.
‘The Lord Lieutenant’s arriving at midday,’ Jeanette continued, taking a mug from the cupboard and opening the jar of Nescafé.
‘And he’ll do the presentation first. That man from the press is here, it’s going to be in the local papers, would you believe!
Then we’ll have the speeches; the Lord Lieut first, then your dad’s going to say a few words. ’
As if on cue, the tall figure of Noel Penrose appeared in the kitchen doorway.
He was dressed smartly in a navy-blue suit.
In his mid-seventies, he was still a handsome man with his dark features and year-round golfing tan, and the salt-and-pepper flecks in his black hair lent him a distinguished look.
‘Annie, my darling girl!’ he called, opening his arms to his daughter with a wide smile. Annabel grinned and rushed over to him, letting herself dissolve into his safe, pine-scented embrace.
Annabel and Dotty often joked that the phrase ‘opposites attract’ had been coined when Noel and Jeanette first met, back in the seventies. Whereas Jeanette was a bundle of highly strung energy, determination and drive, Noel was Mr Easy-Going, with a laid-back charm and relaxed sense of humour.
‘I’m so glad you made it,’ he said, rubbing her back as he hugged her close, ‘How was the traffic?’
‘Bloody awful! The motorway was bad, but the A30 was even worse! I’m so sorry I’m late, Dad,’ she began. ‘It’s been the morning from hell!’
‘Oh, bad luck!’ He made a sympathetic face. ‘No Luke?’
Annabel sighed and shook her head. ‘I’ll tell you later.’
Noel’s blue eyes filled with concern for a moment, then brightened. ‘Well lucky us, I say; we get you all to ourselves!’ He gave her an encouraging wink, then lowered himself onto a stool at the breakfast bar with a grimace.
‘You alright, Dad? Hip still giving you trouble?’
‘Yes, damned thing! It was probably sitting cramped up in the plane that did it, plus the drive down from Heathrow. It just gets a bit stiff, I need to keep it moving. I’m booked in for the surgery, did Mum tell you?
Getting it done in a couple of weeks, so that’s a relief.
Hopefully I’ll be able to get back out on the golf course again soon! ’
‘Enough chit-chat, there’ll be plenty of time for catching up later, you two!’ Jeanette cut them off as she handed the coffee mug to her daughter. ‘Noel, you need to practise your speech, and Annabel’ – she glanced at her watch again – ‘twenty-one minutes and counting!’