The minute hand on her Barbie alarm clock ticked to ten o’clock. The sheBay screen flashed red. The sale had closed. Gerald and Samantha Pettigrew of the Tall Trees orphanage in Wiltshire had won.
Things happened very quickly after that. Jeremy Bailey received a check in the mail and went straight to the bank to cash it while Jane Bailey packed her daughter’s bags and bought her a single rail ticket to Pewsey. Apparently Eastcott was too small to have a station of its own. A few days later—once the check had cleared—a taxi came to the house to take her to Paddington, where she would catch the train.
Her parents stood awkwardly by the front door.
“Well, good-bye, my dear,” her father said. “Don’t think too badly of us. We did try to be good parents.”
“We did everything we could,” Jane sobbed.
“Maybe things will go a bit better for us and one day we’ll be able to buy you back.”
“I don’t want to come back!” Jennifer cut in—and her voice was cold. “I don’t ever want to see you again and I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done.”
Her father went pale. Her mother began to cry all the harder.
“I’ll have a much happier life without you, if you want the honest truth,” Jennifer went on. “I always thought your garden business was stupid. And I hated living here. I’m really glad this has happened. I’d much rather be with the orphans than with you. I’m an orphan now myself. Good-bye!”
She got into the taxi and was swept away.
The journey to Pewsey took a little over an hour. Jennifer had brought a book with her, but she spent most of the time looking out of the window, watching as the grayness and graffiti of London was replaced by the lush green of the English countryside. She wondered if there might be any other orphans on the train, but although she went up and down the corridor a couple of times, she seemed to be the only child traveling alone.
Pewsey station was delightful with its two long platforms, a single footbridge and neatly arranged tubs of flowers. Gerald and Samantha Pettigrew were waiting for her outside the ticket office, and she liked them immediately. He was a short, round-shouldered man with a thick crop of untidy white hair, dressed in an old pinstripe suit missing some of its buttons. Samantha was taller than her husband, wearing a loose dress and Wellington boots. She had a rather long nose with a thin pair of spectacles balanced halfway down. They were both smiling, with a twinkle in their eyes, and they looked even sweeter and kinder than they had in their photograph. Jennifer was bursting with questions as they put her suitcases in the back of their car—a rather muddy Land Rover—and drove her through Pewsey and on toward Devizes.
“Is it far?”
“Not far now.”
“Is there a swing in the garden?”
“Under the chestnut tree!”
“Do the orphans know I’m coming?”
“Oh yes. They’re very excited.”
They reached Salisbury Plain, which sloped up, huge and empty, on their left. Ahead of them lay the village of Urchfont with its pretty duck pond and thatched cottages. The road twisted through open fields and centuries-old woodland with Eastcott ahead of them until at last they turned into the driveway of Tall Trees. And there it was, an old black-and-white manor house with oak beams and roses climbing up between the windows. The car pulled up. The Pettigrews got out.
“Shall I bring my luggage?” Jennifer asked.
“No. Come inside, dear,” Mrs. Pettigrew trilled. “We can see to all that later.”
Jennifer hurried through the front door. Several things struck her at the same time. The house had very little furniture inside. The walls and the floor were bare. There was a strange smell in the air. And she could hear something, a sort of deep grumbling, coming from somewhere farther inside.
“This way!” Mr. Pettigrew exclaimed. He threw open a set of double doors. The grumbling became louder. In fact, it was more like growling.
“What is . . . ?” Jennifer began.
But she had already seen what lay on the other side of the doors. There was a deep pit and, far below, a dozen animals were pacing back and forth, their vicious claws scratching against the straw-covered concrete, their eyes glowing hungrily, their bones rippling beneath their orange-and-black fur.
“Here they are!” Mrs. Pettigrew waved a hand over the pit. “Our family of orphans.”
“Orphans?” Jennifer quavered.
“Orphaned Bengal tigers,” Mr. Pettigrew explained. “Babies and young adults. It’s terrible how they’ve been neglected. They would die if they were left on their own. But we look after them, Samantha and me. We let them roam on the grounds. We watch over them. And sometimes, as a special treat, we even get them fresh meat.”
“But . . . but . . . but . . . ,” Jennifer began.
The Pettigrews grabbed hold of her. They were surprisingly strong. She felt herself being lifted off the ground.
“Feeding time!” Mrs. Pettigrew exclaimed.
A moment later, Jennifer was hurtling through the air, diving headfirst toward the waiting pack below.
ARE YOU SITTING COMFORTABLY?
I never liked Dennis Taylor, not from the start. I didn’t like the way he dressed with his blue blazer and silk cravat. I didn’t like his mustache. I didn’t like the way he laughed at his own jokes. But the very worst thing about him, the thing that made me squirm and wonder how I was going to survive the next ten years, was the fact that he was about to become my stepdad. How could Mum do this to me? Had she gone completely mad?
I had never known my father. He’d left home when I was very young and I didn’t find out why. I’m sure my mum would have told me if I’d asked, but I never did. You may think that strange, but the truth is that the two of us were happy together. The life I had was the only one I knew. So why go digging up the past when all it will give you is dust in the eye?
We lived in a small house in Orford, which is right on the coast in Suffolk. There were only two bedrooms, but we didn’t need any more as I didn’t have any brothers or sisters—just a load of cats that came and went as they pleased. Mum worked part-time in a local hotel. She’d been left quite a bit of money by an eccentric aunt years ago and she’d put it all in the bank for when she needed it. So although we weren’t exactly rich, we weren’t hard up either.
Mum was actually working at the hotel when she met Dennis. He was looking for a house in Orford . . . he planned to move up from London. Well, one drink led to a chat, a chat led to lunch and soon they were seeing each other on a regular basis.
They got married at St. Bartholemew’s Church, which was much too big and drafty for the little congregation that turned up. I was there with my best friend, Matt, and a handful of villagers. Mum’s parents were still alive, but they lived in Scotland and she didn’t invite them because she was afraid that the journey would be too much for them. Dennis hadn’t been married before. He produced a sister who was plain and sulky and a best man who apparently sold shares in the city. That was what Dennis did, by the way. Stocks and shares. He described himself as an entrepreneur. He liked sprinkling his language with French words.
After the service, they flew to Barbados for their honeymoon. Mum would have been happy just going to Cornwall or the Lake District. But Dennis convinced her that they should do something more special. He also persuaded her—he was short of cash—to pay. I watched them leave, their car almost crashing into a white van that turned the corner, coming the other way. At the time, I wondered if there was an omen in that. And in a way, as you will see, I was right.
I stayed with Matt and his parents while they were away, and when they got back I was a little ashamed of myself for being so mean about it all. I was against Dennis. I didn’t want Mum to get married. I hadn’t wanted them to go to Barbados. But here was Mum, suntanned and as happy as I’d ever remembered her. She’d bought me lots of presents, including earrings, a straw hat, a wrap, a carved wooden tortoise and all sorts of other stuff. She’d also taken hu
ndreds of photos on a camera that Dennis had bought her at duty-free. Seeing her like that, I made a resolution. I wasn’t going to complain. I was going to adapt. I had a stepfather now. I was going to make him feel welcome.
It wasn’t easy. Dennis didn’t buy a house as he had planned. He simply moved into ours, which made sense because selling and buying would have been so expensive, and anyway the market was pretty dead. I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t as if I was going to have to move out of my room or anything like that. But from that moment, everything changed.
You see, a house has a rhythm. The way people move around in it . . . it’s a bit like the workings of a clock. Suddenly, when I wanted to take a shower, Dennis would be there ahead of me. I couldn’t wander around the kitchen in my underwear and T-shirt anymore—I had to get dressed for breakfast. I felt uncomfortable watching TV in the evening. If Dennis and Mum were together in the living room, I felt almost like an intruder. And then there were the unfamiliar smells and sounds. Dennis’s aftershave. Classic FM blaring out of the radio every morning and Jeremy Paxman, religiously, every night. The dirty clothes that he never put in the laundry bin. Curled-up cigarette ends (yes—he smoked) in the ashtrays.
I’ll get used to it, I told myself. I tried to get used to it. Over the next few months I never complained. Christmas came and we had a pleasant enough time together. I had my finals to think about. Mum still seemed happy, although I noticed she was working longer hours at the hotel. Apart from that, Dennis seemed to be looking after her okay.
I forget exactly when I began to realize that things were going wrong. I suppose money was the start of the slide downhill. Isn’t it always? Dennis had sold his house in London, but after he’d paid off the mortgage he hardly got anything out of it. Also, his business wasn’t going very well. I know that Mum had lent him money from her savings—she’d mentioned it to me—but of course the stock market had taken a dive and all of it was gone. I noticed that bills weren’t being paid. There was a pile of them stuck in a corner of the kitchen. Some of them were printed in red ink. Final demands.
At the same time, Dennis was spending more and more. He’d bought himself a new car, a BMW, which was parked on the street outside. There had also been other brief vacations—weekend breaks in Paris and Rome, staying in five-star hotels. I’m not saying my mum hadn’t enjoyed these trips. But there was always the question of who was going to pay, and it followed her around like a cloud.
The biggest expense of all was Dennis’s study. He needed somewhere to work, he said, so he had an ugly conservatory constructed at the back of the house and used it as an office. It completely spoiled the garden, it cost thousands, and worse still, there was a problem with the construction (he’d used builders who had been recommended by one of his friends), and so we had to spend thousands more putting it right.
My mum was paying for everything. She’d never even been paid back for Barbados. I knew because one morning they had an argument over the breakfast table. It came as quite a shock to hear their voices raised, and it made me wonder if there hadn’t been other arguments when I was at school or, in whispers, when I was asleep.
Mum had just opened a bill from a company that supplied fine wine. That was another of Dennis’s extravagances. He loved expensive clarets. Some of the bottles cost thirty or forty dollars.
“We can’t pay this!” my mother exclaimed. She was staring at the bill, completely shocked.
“How much is it?” Dennis glanced at the total and raised an eyebrow.
“I really don’t think you should have bought so much, Dennis. Not in the current climate. We’ll have to send the wine back.”
“We can’t send it back.”
“Why not?”
“It would make me look ridiculous. Anyway, I’ve already opened some of the bottles.”
“But we can’t afford it!”
Dennis scowled. “You really have no understanding of money, do you, Helen,” he said. “It’s true we’re going through a bad patch. But I’m chasing one or two very interesting deals and everything will sort itself out in time. We just have to keep our nerve, that’s all.”
“But we’ve got dozens of bills . . .”
“Don’t you trust me?” Dennis looked offended, but at the same time there was something else in his face, something I hadn’t seen before. He looked threatening. “I’ve told you about this share opportunity in London. If it works out—”
“But what if it doesn’t?” My mother sat down and for a moment she looked close to tears. “We’ve gone through nearly all my savings in less than a year! I’m working extra hours.”
“I’m working too!”
“I know, dear. But sometimes I wish you’d work a little less. Your work is actually bankrupting us.”
That evening, Dennis took us all out to dinner at the Golden Keys to cheer us up. This was a smart pub in Snape, about five miles away. He ordered champagne and a nine-inch cigar. But when the bill came, I noticed he slid it over to my mum.
“Left my credit card behind,” he explained. “You get this, Helen. I’ll pay you back.”
He had to smoke the cigar outside on the terrace, and while he was gone, I asked my mum if things really were as bad as they seemed.
“I don’t know, Lucy,” she said with a sigh.
“Has he really used all your savings?”
“I’m afraid so. He says you have to spend money to make money, but I don’t think . . .” She broke off. “Don’t worry about this,” she continued. She sounded completely worn-out. “I’m sure it’ll work out in the end.”
“Are you still glad you married him?” I hadn’t meant to be so direct, but the words just slipped out.
“Of course!” she replied instantly, but I wasn’t convinced.
“You could always divorce him,” I said.
Mum’s eyes widened. I turned around. Dennis had come back into the dining room. He was standing right behind me and he must have heard what I had just said.
“Where’s the cigar?” Mum asked. She looked really frightened. She was wondering if he had heard what we were saying.
“It made me feel sick,” Dennis said. He reached for the car keys, which were lying on the table. “Let’s go home.”
None of us spoke on the way back. As soon as Dennis had parked his BMW, I hurried into the house and up to my room. I just wanted the evening to be over. But it wasn’t yet. Not by a long shot.
I’d just gotten into my pajamas when my door opened and Dennis came in. I was quite startled to see him. He never usually came into my bedroom. He must have seen the expression on my face, because he smiled at me in that lazy way of his and said, “I just came in to say good night.”
“Good night, Dennis,” I said. I’d never called him Dad.
But he didn’t leave. He sat down on the bed. “You know, I couldn’t help overhearing what you said to your mum back in the restaurant,” he drawled. “I’d hate to think you were turning her against me.”
“I’m not,” I replied.
“That’s not how it sounded to me.” He looked me straight in the eye. “In fact, young lady, I’d say you were more or less against me from the start.”
It’s funny how things can change in an instant, like the wind blowing out a candle or a door swinging open to show something horrible on the other side. That was how it was for me then. Dennis hadn’t done anything or said anything unpleasant. He was still sitting there in his smart blazer and gray trousers with one leg over his knee. But he was suddenly a completely different man, and I realized two things at the same moment. I was scared of him. And he knew I was scared . . . it was what he wanted.
“I have to say . . . ,” he went on, reasonably. “It would make life very difficult if you were my enemy. I’d have to think about separating you . . . sending you away to a boarding school.”
“You can’t afford boarding school,” I said. I regretted the words as soon as I’d spoken them.
“We can sell this house. Ge
t something smaller in Woodbridge or Leiston. Just your mother and me. Helen does what I tell her. You may have noticed that. You talk to her about me, she’ll tell me—and you’ll suffer the consequences.”
He stood up. I flinched. For a moment I thought he was going to hit me. That was the power he had, a sort of animal quality. He had the upper hand and he knew it. He took one last look at me, then walked out of the room. I stayed where I was. I was trembling. That was the effect he’d had on me. And that was when I began to wonder. Was Mum afraid of him too?
In the next few weeks, Dennis’s business affairs didn’t get any better, but he didn’t seem to care. By now we had mortgaged the house again. A home in Orford, even a tiny one like ours, was worth a lot of money. But the question was—how would we ever pay it back? As far as he was concerned, Mum was a virtually bottomless well and he could continue drawing on her until she was sucked dry. And then, just when I thought he couldn’t be any greedier or any more demanding, up came the massage chair.
Dennis had seen it advertised in a magazine: the Silver City ProElite Massage System Deluxe. In the picture, it looked like something you might find at an upmarket dentist—a series of padded leather cushions on a swiveling steel frame with headphones for the built-in MP3 player and two remote controls, one for massages, one for music. According to the advertisement, the SCPMSD came with state-of-the-art roller and air bag technology, a powerful (but silent) tri-point hydraulic system, a choice of fifteen different programs as well as a unique Body Memory feature that automatically took your weight and measurements and selected the massage to suit your needs. Other bonuses included a super-strong air pressure option, a full-color LCD, economy standby mode and automatic shutoff. The SCPMSD was being offered at a special once-only price of $3,950 plus tax.