Chapter 27
I knew I was in danger of walking over to Theo who sat opposite me on an old-fashioned leather Chesterfield, one leg crossed over the other, glass in his left hand, but drinking very little from it as he continued to hold my eye.
Instead, I looked away, sipping at my tea and said, ‘So do bring me up to date on the past twenty years of your life.’
‘What is this? This Is Your Life?’
‘My mum’s never got over Eamonn Andrews not being on any more…’ Jesus, what was the matter with me, wittering on about a dead Irish TV presenter?
‘Anna, stop it. Talk to me.’
‘No, I really want to know. If you didn’t marry Susannah of the Mounties, who did you persuade to marry you and live on the estate?’
‘She didn’t need much persuading!’ Theo gave up a short bark of laughter. ‘So, I’m married to Honor and we have two boys, Angus and Miles. I utterly love my boys. They make my life worth living.’
‘Of course, why wouldn’t they?’
‘And I’ve fashioned a life for myself on the estate.
I do as much as I can on the farms – would much rather be outside than selling souvenirs in the gift shop – and I’m happy to be up in the north in my wellies, driving a tractor.
The estate and the hall are used a lot for filming – there’s always some sort of film crew around.
It helps keep the place standing and my wife loves having famous actors floating about, so I leave all that side of the business up to her. ’
‘Summerton,’ I said. ‘I watched it on TV.’
Theo nodded. ‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘Not really my thing,’ I lied. Oh, for heaven’s sake, why couldn’t I tell Theo I’d adored every minute of it, had been glued each Sunday evening to the TV, trying to work out which bits of the estate and the hall I’d been into myself?
I was convinced I’d recognised the bedroom I’d been allocated at the hunt ball, now masquerading as servants’ quarters in the drama.
‘And Mary? How’s Mary?’
‘She lives with us and helps out in the farm shop as much as she can. She loves having the film crews round as well. She’s happy, safe and loved.’
‘I liked Mary enormously.’
‘I know you did. She asked after you for many years.’
‘And why are you here now? In London?’
‘I’ve always loved coming down to Holland Park. I love the opera in the park here. Even like the squirrels.’ He smiled and then sighed. ‘There’s always some banker or tax inspector down here to appease.’
‘Appease?’
‘You know how it is.’
‘Not really.’
When Theo didn’t elaborate, I said, ‘And the Hunt Ball?’
Theo laughed. ‘Not every year, as Dad always insisted. We had one at the Millenium, but that was the last one.’
‘And Sir Hugh himself? Your dad? Still going strong?’
‘No, he died several years ago, but had been in a nursing home for many years before that. He’d been out hunting with the hounds. One young dog, over eager and not quite knowing the ropes, got in the way of the horse. He’d been drinking heavily apparently…’
‘What, the dog had?’
Theo tutted. ‘Dad. He was a fairly heavy drinker as I’m sure you realised.
Anyway, he sustained serious head injuries and never left the house after that.
A couple of years on, he had a severe stroke and had to go into a nursing home.
He was in a bad way, didn’t really seem to know any of us.
He died back in 1998. Mum lives in the cottage on the estate she moved into when my wife and I officially took on the running of the place. ’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘The Dower House? Don’t they call it that when the old retainers are turfed out to make way for the rightful heirs?’
‘Something like that… Anna, it’s us I need to talk about.’
‘Us? Theo, there is no us.’
‘I don’t love my wife. And I know for a fact she doesn’t love me.’
‘Oh, please, not the my wife doesn’t understand me line!’
Theo frowned. ‘Unfortunately, she understands me only too well. She knows I’ve never got over you.’
I stared. ‘You told her?’
‘I told her from the very start. She knows the whole story. I said I wouldn’t ever be able to commit 100 per cent to her.’
‘Well, the poor woman.’ I found myself indignant on Theo’s wife’s behalf. ‘Fancy being told that by the man you want to marry.’
‘I don’t think she ever really wanted me to be honest. Especially with this.
’ Theo held up his arm, and I noticed, for the first time, even under the sweater, how wasted it was compared to the other.
‘She’s always liked the idea of being lady of the manor.
And then she was pregnant with Angus and so we married. ’
‘Right.’
‘Anna, I’m not proud of marrying someone I didn’t love. But there was a child on the way…’
‘It happens.’
‘It does.’
‘So have you been happy?’
‘I’m eternally grateful that I am able to live a more than comfortable life and earn a living when so many in my position could not. And I love my boys. But I can never forgive myself for leaving you. For giving up on you when perhaps we could have worked it out.’
‘We could,’ I said furiously. ‘We would. I’d have made it work. You know I would.’
‘I know that now and I’m so, so sorry. Anna…?’ Theo put down his glass and walked towards me, taking my hand and, lifting me from the chair, pulled me into his arms. ‘Don’t leave me again,’ he breathed. ‘Now that I’ve found you.’
‘But Theo…’ I found myself melding into his neck, into his hair, taking in his unique Theo smell. He smelt just the same as if almost twenty years hadn’t passed. As if we were both young again. And I knew I’d never stopped loving this man. Would love him forever.
Theo lowered his head, forcing me to look at him, asking permission, as his beautiful brown eyes never left my own. His hand was on the small of my back and my whole body cleaved to his, melting into him as he lifted my hair in his other, bending his mouth to my face, to my neck, to my collarbone.
‘Stay, Anna,’ and this time it wasn’t a request to take off my coat. ‘Tell me to stop,’ Theo said, pushing me away slightly and holding my gaze once more. ‘If it’s not what you want… I know you’re with someone.’
But I was shaking my head and Theo’s breath was deepening and his hands were on my back once more, now gently lifting the hem of my sweater, now moving slowly upwards, tantalisingly slowly, drawing lazy arcs as he went.
‘Oh, Jesus, Theo.’
He pulled back once more. ‘You want me to stop?’
I shook my head once more.
And then there was no going back.
I stayed every night that week with Theo in the house in Holland Park.
I’d go to work, go back home to shower and change and then drive myself back over to him.
We’d cook together, eat together, enough just to be in each other’s company, learning more and more about each other’s lives in all the years we’d been apart.
He made me laugh, spoke with love about his boys and his sister Mary, cried when he told me of the death of his sister, Georgina – the one who he’d told me I reminded him of – in a traffic accident in New York.
He said very little about Vivienne and Araminta, except to say they had little to do, these days, with the running of the estate.
I told him about the cases I’d dealt with over the years; the truly dreadful things some women had put up with because they were either too afraid to leave the relationship or because they’d found themselves held to account for offending against family and cultural mores and punished because of it.
‘So, do you think you took to this work because of what happened to Fliss all those years ago?’ Theo asked one evening as we shared a bottle of port and a delicious blue cheese.
‘I think it spurred me on, certainly,’ I said, considering the question. ‘Mind you, we don’t really know what actually did happen to her. What on earth she was doing wandering around at six in the morning; why she ended up in the canal.’
‘Two questions,’ Theo then said, draining his glass. ‘Do you still think I had anything to do with Fliss’s death? And does it not put you off men? You know, when you’re dealing with this stuff all day, every day?’
I took Theo’s hand – I always made sure I took his injured one – and smiled.
‘Of course not. I mean, I suppose Fliss implied she was with you when really she was selling her body – because at the end of the day that’s what she was doing, Theo – because she didn’t want me and the girls to know what she was really up to.
’ I paused and smiled then. ‘And does it put me off men? Only the horrid ones. Men like you, Theo Mandeville, I could never get enough of.’
On the last evening before Theo was due to drive back north, he’d been particularly quiet all evening. He turned to me after we’d made love and kissed the top of my head, his fingers twirling a lock of hair around his good fingers. ‘We have to talk. How are we going to sort all this out?’
‘Theo,’ I said, ‘you have a wife and two little boys.’
‘They’re really not that little any more. Angus is sixteen, Miles just eighteen months younger. They’ll be off to university in a few years. And, you know,’ he went on when I didn’t respond, ‘half the kids in their class have parents who are no longer together. Anna, I can’t lose you again.’
‘I just needed to know,’ I said. ‘Needed to know if I still loved you.’
‘And?’
‘I love you more now than I ever did.’
Theo smiled and I saw relief cross his face.
‘We can sort this out.’
‘How?’ I shook my head and, although I was close to tears, I knew I had to be strong about this.
Theo wasn’t mine. He belonged to someone else.
‘Your home and your work and your family – all you’ve ever known – are on the estate.
Your wife isn’t going to uproot herself and your boys from there.
And I wouldn’t want you to put them through that. It would be too cruel.’
‘I’ll tell her,’ Theo said calmly. ‘I’ll move down here and live in London permanently… It’s not as if the pair of us don’t have two homes down here between us. It will be a little unconventional, I grant you, but…’
‘And what would you do? For work? For money? All day when I’m out at work?’
‘I have investments that need looking after and I can still do the admin work of running the estate from here. That always takes at least a couple of days a week. I’ll be semi-retired.’
‘And I’d be your mistress?’
‘And I yours.’ Theo laughed and I tutted.
‘I don’t think it quite works like that.’
‘I’ll ask Honor for a divorce. She can stay on the estate. It’s a business as much as a home. I’ll go between the two.’
‘Oh, Theo, I can’t be the author of someone else’s unhappiness.’
‘Anna, I don’t know what else to suggest. I can’t lose you again. I need to tell Honor and the boys.’
‘The boys will hate you. They’ll turn against you.
Please, just leave it a while. Promise me you won’t say anything just yet.
And you do realise we’ve not said anything about Michael.
He and I have been together almost a year.
In fact…’ I turned to Theo, holding his eye, ‘…he asked me to marry him, on my birthday. Quite a night as it turns out.’
Theo stared. ‘Oh, Anna. I’m sorry. I just got the impression you two…’
‘We two what? We’re both in our forties and were just rubbing along together nicely until something better came along? Is that it?’
Theo shook his head miserably. ‘You need to sort out what you want, Anna. If you have a future with Michael Wrathmell then I promise I won’t try and come between you.
But, the thing is, even if you hadn’t come back into my life, I truly believe I’d have left Honor.
We have absolutely nothing in common. She’s a lady that lunches and, to be honest, is always glad when the boys go back to school so she can get on with her own life. ’
‘You’re going to tell me you have separate rooms next.’
‘We have actually.’ Theo looked rueful. ‘Although we’ll have yet another row about absolutely nothing and then, to keep the peace, I’ll always try and make it up. I’m not very good with confrontation.’
‘I remember!’
‘I think the first thing for me to do is move out of the apartment at the hall – that’s really all we’re left with now, the rest is given over to the Trust. I’ll move into one of the estate cottages – there’s one coming free very soon.’
I took Theo’s face in my two hands, kissing his eyes, his nose, his mouth. ‘You are everything to me, Theo Mandeville. We’ll sort it somehow.’