Joss looked up.
‘About that. Are you going to make me an offer?’ he said, handing a glass to Voronov. He was trying to sound jokey, but it didn’t come off.
‘Yes, I am,’ said Voronov. ‘I will offer you double that.’
‘What?’ Joss put his own glass down. ‘Forty million?’
‘It could set you up nicely, I think.’
‘But this house,’ said Joss, looking back at it. ‘It’s been in my family since the fourteen-hundreds. I’ve said it before, I can’t be the one to end a six-hundred-year relationship. I just –’
‘You just need the money,’ said Voronov. ‘You can’t afford this place. You’ll be forced to sell within three years, and I’ll buy it for the market value, or less, if it goes at auction. Which, as we know, is possible. Or I could just find out who you owe money to, buy the debts off them and take your house in payment. What do you think of that? I like that idea, in fact.’
Joss’s jaw dropped. He cast wild eyes in my direction.
‘Take the money,’ I advised him. ‘Take the money and then we don’t need to have anything more to do with him.’
‘No, no,’ said Voronov. ‘If I give you my money, you stay away from my daughter. That will be in the contract.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Joss. ‘Losing this place and Lucy? That’s no bargain, however much you give me.’
‘Then keep the house. I don’t care. Keep it and I’ll pay off your debts. Just leave her alone.’
So many offers, falling like rain, and all of them unacceptable. We were all wasting our time and I couldn’t bear to listen to any more.
‘I won’t leave Joss,’ I said. ‘There is no price high enough. None.’
‘Not for you, perhaps,’ he said, still focused intently on Joss. ‘Come on, Lethbridge. You don’t want to lose your heritage. You can still be the lord, still have the house, find another woman, make her your Lady Lethbridge, have a dozen little lords and ladies of your own. Wouldn’t that be nice? A nice, comfortable life, no money worries?’
The silence almost killed me. I could feel my heart, jabbed, punctured, shrivelling. How could I compete with that?
‘Sir,’ said Joss quietly, and he managed to say the word without making it sound deferential, yet neither was it aggressive. ‘Some years ago, my father made me a very similar offer. Almost identical, in fact. Let Lucy go, and keep my inheritance. That tim
e, I took it. I was afraid to do otherwise, to be honest. I was a worm. And I regretted my decision every single day that followed. I had no opinion of myself. I fell into a pit of self-loathing and alcohol and debt that only the chance of getting Lucy back saved me from. Do you really – really – think I’ll do the same thing again?’
His voice, low and tightly controlled, threatened to break. I flew to his side, took his hand and pressed it with mine until my nails dug in.
‘You’ll have to kill us to split us up,’ I vowed. ‘And, judging from what I’ve heard about you, perhaps you will. But what kind of satisfaction would that give you? You would still lose.’
Voronov gave every appearance of being baffled. Perhaps nobody had ever resisted the easy passage of his will before.
‘You are my daughter,’ he said, and it sounded stupid, a non sequitur.
‘A collection of genes,’ I said. ‘Karen is my parent. She’s the one who brought me up. We’ve never had a relationship, so I won’t miss it, will I?’
‘I wanted to help her, bring her out of poverty,’ he said. ‘But now …’
‘Oh, don’t you dare. Don’t you dare try to find my weak spot and exploit it. You’ve done your worst. Give up.’
He shrugged, emptied the remainder of his whisky into the rose bush and walked away.
Epilogue
Joss, after an enormously long kerfuffle about the lease, involving lawyers and courts, put the house on the market within six months. It was bought by a chain of blue-chip hotels.
With the little that was left over after payment of his debts, he bought the caravan park off Mrs Wragg, who was planning to retire to a ‘Senior Living Complex’ in Benidorm.
Mum quit her flat in Tylney and came back to live in her old caravan. She kept on her market stall, though, and spends her days making friendship bracelets and painted glass gewgaws to sell there. She met a man who hired a caravan for a week’s angling holiday and never left. He’s called Bernie and they’re blissful.