She was followed at a distance by a tired-looking Edward, who slumped into the seat opposite me. Caroline, on the other hand, clambered immediately into the heavy wooden seat on my right: Nathaniel’s chair.
“I was wondering where you’d got to,” I said, tucking her hair behind her ear.
Caro rolled her eyes. “We had to go and get me a dress for the party, even though I said I wanted to wear one from the cottage, and it took ages. Then we were late back, because Dad insisted on going to the supermarket, once he knew you were here, and then you’d gone somewhere, and I didn’t want to miss the fairy wedding in the wood, so I had to throw on my dress and tiara and run down to the toadstool ring.” She pulled a small foot out from under the table to show me her incongruous white trainers. “I didn’t even have time to change my shoes,” she said, mournfully.
I thought that I’d remembered everything about Rosewood and my family, looking back over long nights in Perth. But I’d either forgotten, or never known, that Caroline had such an imagination. I’d certainly never realised before that she was so like me. A fairy wedding in the woods sounded like just the sort of thing I’d have ruined a vintage dress for.
Dad reappeared from the kitchen, a covered casserole dish in his oven-gloved hands, which he deposited in the centre of the table. “Ta-da. Grub’s up.”
It didn’t escape my notice that he’d made Chicken Provençal with thick pasta ribbons and crusty bread – my favourite. Ellie never took to it, mostly because of her irrational fear of olives.
As we all tucked in, conversation was restricted to appreciative noises and requests for condiments. Next to me, Caroline was very carefully removing every single olive from her serving and placing them on the edge of her plate. Edward, almost unconsciously it appeared, was helping himself to the abandoned items and popping them in his mouth in between forkfuls of his own food. I wondered if this was an everyday occurrence between them. Perhaps Edward had actually been hired as a babysitter. It certainly made more sense to me than the idea of him as Nathaniel’s assistant.
“It’s so nice to have all my girls back home together,” Dad said, pouring himself another glass of wine. “It’s been too long.” Ellie didn’t think so, given the nervous way her eyes were flicking between me and Greg. “So, Ellie, Kia, what have you got planned for tomorrow?”
Mum glared at him, and I realised that Dad knew exactly what he was doing: trying to forcibly cram a bridge between Ellie and me.
“I’ve got lots to do for the party,” Ellie said, her voice sweet, and achingly familiar. “It’s going to be a busy day.”
And there, I realised, was my chance to get close to Ellie and start the reconciliation. “I’ll help!”
Ellie looked up with unwelcome surprise, but I kept the smile on my face regardless. Across the table, my mother put down her knife and fork and looked up, smiling equally brightly. “So, Kia, tell us about Scotland!”
I toyed with the last bit of pasta on my plate. “Well, it rains even more than it does here. Other than that…”
“What about work?” Mum pressed. “How’s the newspaper going?”
“It’s fine,” I said, shrugging. It was fine. Predictable, unchallenging and fine. “Busy. You know.”
“You’ve got a new editor,” Therese said helpfully. “Let’s hear some more about him.” She was giving me an opening, I realised. A chance to show everyone – especially Ellie and Greg – that I’d moved on, that I had a new life. But I wasn’t sure telling my family I was having sex with my boss on a regular basis was actually the best way to prove I’d grown up.
“Duncan Fields,” I supplied. “He just moved up from Edinburgh.”
“Brought in from the big city, eh?” Dad said, reaching across Therese for another piece of bread. “Shaking the place up a bit, is he?”
I glanced up at the ceiling. Mostly, Duncan had been shaking cocktails at the bar after work then, later, my bed frame, but I didn’t think that was quite what Dad meant. “Something like that.”
“Well, that could be good for you, I suppose,” Mum said. I resisted the urge to tell Mum that yes, it was very good for me indeed, thank you. “An office shake-up could mean a promotion for you, after all. Next step on the ladder to the nationals.”
“Mmm, maybe,” I said, in a way I hoped conveyed, ‘but probably not,’ without adding, ‘because Duncan would probably get fired for giving his girlfriend preferential treatment.’ Besides, I wasn’t entirely certain I wanted that London career any more. Some days I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be a reporter.
“Never mind about work,” Isabelle said, pouring herself another glass of wine. “I’m much more interested in your social life. Is there anything at all to do in Perth?”
Since Isabelle had spent most of her life living in the middle of nowhere, Cheshire, I’m not quite sure where she got the idea that outside Rosewood, London and possibly Paris, the world was a social wasteland.
“Plenty,” I said, racking my brain for an example. Lately, most of my evenings were spent in bed with Duncan. “We go out for drinks with the guys from the office most Thursdays. And Sundays my friend Claire and I tend to meet for lunch.” It sounded phenomenally boring, put like that.
“We?” Isabelle asked, suddenly looking a lot more interested in the conversation. “Who’s we?”
Across the table, Edward rolled his eyes at me, as if to say, ‘Well, really. What did you think she was going to pay most attention to?’ I wasn’t sure I liked the way that Edward had slotted so easily into my family’s life.
“Ah…Duncan and I…” I stopped, unsure as to how to continue. As it happened, I needn’t have worried.
“Darling, how lovely!” Mum said, obviously not grasping the implications of ‘he’s my boss’ as quickly as I’d have expected. “I didn’t know you were seeing anybody!”
“You should have invited him to the party,” Isabelle put in, obviously so annoyed to have been deprived of the opportunity to cross-examine a potential new family member, that she’d forgotten she hadn’t actually invited me.
“Well, it’s all still rather new…” I said, wishing I couldn’t feel Greg staring at me. I wanted to explain that it wasn’t serious, that nobody needed to buy a hat or anything. But they all seemed so pleased that I’d found someone, I just couldn’t.
“Does this mean you won’t be home for Christmas again?” Caroline sounded put out. It was nice to know that someone would miss me this year.
“Of course she won’t,” Isabelle said, in a definite manner. “She’ll want to be with Duncan.” Which was a much better reason than ‘she wouldn’t dare upset her sister by visiting twice in one year.’
“You’ll understand when you have a boyfriend,” Mum said to Caro, and sighed. “Which will probably be in about a fortnight, the rate you’re growing. It’s such a shame they grow up so fast. Christmas isn’t the same without little children around.” She stared wistfully across the table towards Ellie. “It would be so nice to have a baby at Rosewood for Christmas.”
Ellie flinched, and Greg reached for her full wine glass, taking a large gulp. I grabbed my cutlery just a little harder, and was wondering when I’d be able to escape back to the purely aesthetic horrors of the Yellow Room rather than the emotional horror of family dinner, when my grandfather’s deep, dark voice rang out through the room.
“Oh, good God, no. I like my Christmas morning lie ins, thank you.” Everyone’s attention snapped to the doorway where Nathaniel’s broad form was filling the frame, his familiar orange fisherman’s jump
er clashing with the elegant cream and gold of the dining room.
Nathaniel Drury. Literary legend, imposing intellect, household name and always, always, Granddad.
He’d been twenty-one when he published his first novel, and become a literary sensation almost overnight. There are photos of him as a young man on the wall of every fashionable artist haunt in London, New York and Paris, and he drank everyone under the table in all of them. He was notorious as a womaniser, and a drunk. Which is why the national presses were so astounded when, a year later, he disappeared from London society for two weeks, only to return with a wife in tow. One Isabelle Yates, local beauty and daughter of the richest man in his home town in North Wales. They bought Rosewood the next year and, well, the rest became our family history.
“What’s for tea?” Nathaniel asked, leaning on the back of Edward’s chair and smiling at me like no one else in the room mattered.
“If you’d come down to dinner at a reasonable time, and wearing appropriate clothes, like the rest of the family, you’d have been able to find out.” Isabelle didn’t look at her husband as she spoke, instead apparently choosing to glare at me. I blinked, and tried to figure out how, exactly, this was my fault. Ellie’s sad eyes at the dinner table and sulky refusal to talk all evening? Absolutely my fault. Nathaniel’s bizarre writerly habits? They’d been around far longer than me.
“We had Chicken Provençal,” Caro told him, oblivious to Isabelle’s temper. “But we’ve eaten it all. It’s Saskia’s favourite, you know.”
“I remember,” Nathaniel said, grinning at me again.
“There might be some leftovers coincidentally keeping warm in the oven,” Dad said, looking up at the ceiling to avoid the moment Isabelle’s glare swung his way. “And some bread in the bread bin.”
“I’ll go and grab it for you,” Edward said, presumably more out of a desire to escape the dining room for a while than because he was trying to expand his servant repertoire from carrying cases. “Anyone else want anything? I’ll bring more wine.” Without waiting for a response, he disappeared through the door and across the hallway to the kitchen.