The Inheritance

  ‘Hold on Logan,’ she shouted. Just the effort of breathing was painful. ‘I’m coming!’

  It took Gabe about four minutes to realize he’d been a complete tool, and another twenty minutes to swallow his pride sufficiently to pack a bag, call a taxi and follow his wife back to Fittlescombe. Boarding school! He didn’t even care about bloody boarding school. He wasn’t one of ‘those’ dads, the kind who live vicariously through their sons. And he certainly didn’t believe that boys needed to be sent away to be toughened up, or any of that nonsense that he may or may not have said to Laura, in the heat of the moment and after the better part of a bottle of Newton unfiltered Merlot.

  As the cab made its irritatingly slow way through the deserted Sussex countryside, Gabe tried to understand what it was that made him pick these stupid fights with Laura. He loved her. He’d always loved her, and needed her, now more than ever. But it was a love tinged with fear. The truth was, Laura was the only woman that Gabe Baxter had ever truly loved. Deep down he still couldn’t quite believe that she’d chosen him. As a result, he lived his inner life on a constant state of alert, watching and waiting for Laura to leave him, to trade him in for someone more worthy. Now that she was pregnant with his child, the stakes had got even higher. Angry at himself for needing her so desperately, and determined not to show his weakness, he ended up drinking too much and lashing out, pushing away the very person that he was most terrified of losing.

  It was a crappy pattern, one he knew he had to knock on the head before the baby was born. All the flirting with other women – it was all a front, but it hurt Laura sometimes and he knew it. If he were honest with himself, Gabe even enjoyed Logan Cranley’s obvious adulation. He still thought of her as a kid in most ways, but there was no doubt that physically Logan was all woman. And a seriously sexy woman at that. Her desire for him made Gabe feel comforted on some level. Relaxed. It made him feel as if he had options.

  Options for what? he asked himself angrily, as they crested the top of the Downs and the Swell Valley spread out below them beneath a blanket of stars. You’re a sad bastard, Gabe Baxter, and you need to get a fucking grip. He was in danger of turning into Dylan Pritchard Jones at this rate, and that was a fate worse than death.

  ‘Something’s going on down there,’ observed the taxi driver. ‘Look at all those lights. And the smoke. Must be a big fire.’

  The hairs on the back of Gabe’s neck pricked up. He knew he was being irrational, but he needed to get to Laura, now. To hold her in his arms and tell her he was sorry. To make sure she was safe.

  ‘Can you go a bit faster?’ he asked.

  Laura found Logan just a few feet back from the barn door. She could barely make out her features through the thick smoke, but she felt the panic as Logan gripped her forearm, her nails digging in so deeply they drew blood.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Laura. ‘Let’s get you out of here.’

  ‘I can’t move!’ Logan sobbed. ‘My leg. Something fell on my leg.’

  Reaching down, Laura felt around in the darkness. Some sort of timber, perhaps a beam from the collapsing roof, covered Logan’s left leg near the ankle. One pull told her instantly it was too heavy to lift. But perhaps they could roll it off?

  ‘Lean towards me. I’m going to try to push it forwards. You try too, on the count of three.’

  ‘I can’t!’ Logan was hysterical. ‘I tried! It won’t budge!’

  ‘Yes it will,’ said Laura, with a confidence she was far from feeling. Where the fuck were those firemen? The heat was so intense it was hard to speak. Above them, the roof seemed alive with flames. If they didn’t get out of here soon, it would collapse.

  ‘All your strength now.’ She squeezed Logan’s hand. ‘One. Two. THREE!’

  Without thinking she closed her eyes and focused every shred of energy and strength on the beam. At first nothing happened. But then very suddenly, like a well of oil erupting from the ground, the heavy wood rolled forwards, releasing Logan and coming to rest a few feet away, between the women and the door.

  ‘Come on!’ Laura pulled Logan, who let out a hideous cry of pain. Her lower left leg was clearly badly injured. There was no way she could stand.

  ‘Crawl!’ commanded Laura, who was too weak to pull her out alone. ‘I can pull you under the shoulders but you have to help me.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Logan wailed. She obviously meant it. She was trying to move, her face contorted with pain, but nothing happened.

  For the first time, Laura felt a creeping panic. The barn could collapse at any moment. They may only have seconds. Glancing behind her, the flames that she thought she had put out around the doorway seemed to have fought back somehow. She could still see the way out, but only barely. She knew she had to get out now, but she couldn’t leave Logan.

  ‘Try again,’ said Laura. But all her earlier confidence and surety had gone. ‘Please.’

  And then it happened. Like a miracle, Laura felt powerful male arms around her. She was being pulled backwards, out through the heat and flames and smoke, out into air that felt cold and strange and wonderful. She closed her eyes. Somewhere along the way she lost her grip on Logan’s hand. But when she opened her eyes outside, she saw Logan’s haggard face lying next to her. She was aware of a deep, wonderful, almost orgasmic sense of relief.

  Then she closed her eyes again, and all was white and peace.

  By the time Gabe arrived, the yard was swarming with firemen. The main fire in the barn was already out. Only a shell was left; a black, charred skeleton of the building that had once been. The flames in the stables and outbuildings – what was left of them – were being brought under control. A small crowd of villagers huddled together in horrified silence, watching the crews at work.

  ‘My wife!’ Gabe pushed his way through the crowd like so many skittles. ‘My wife was here. Is she OK?’

  ‘You’re the owner? This is your farm?’ The foreman of the fire crew came over, removing his hat and wiping the sweat off his brow with his arm.

  ‘WHERE’S MY WIFE?’ Gabe was shrieking like a madman. He looked ready to punch the guy’s lights out.

  ‘Is your wife pregnant? The foreman asked.

  Gabe nodded.

  ‘She’s been taken into hospital.’

  Gabe’s knees literally buckled under him. Lunging forward, the fireman grabbed him under the shoulders and heaved him back up to his feet.

  ‘She’s all right, sir. She’s fine. They’re treating her for smoke inhalation. When we got here she was trying to rescue the other young lady who was trapped in the hay barn. Your wife was phenomenally brave.’

  ‘The other lady?’

  The fireman gestured towards a white stretcher, where paramedics were bent over Logan Cranley. Evidently they were doing something to her leg before loading her up into a waiting ambulance. Logan herself was conscious but clearly drugged up to her eyeballs. When she saw Gabe, she gave him a morphine-laden smile, with tears streaming down her cheeks.

  He ran over, his face a picture of concern. ‘What the fuck happened?’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Logan sobbed. ‘It was an accident.’

  Bending low so as to hear her, Gabe instantly smelled the alcohol on her breath.

  ‘Were you drunk?’

  Logan nodded miserably.

  ‘I’m sorry. It was just a small party. The others left. I … I must have passed out. When I woke up …’

  Gabe put a finger to her lips. The gesture was slow, almost gentle. Logan exhaled, waiting for him to say something comforting. That it didn’t matter. That all that mattered was that she was safe.

  Instead he looked at her with those piercing blue eyes of his swimming with hatred.

  ‘If anything’s happened to Laura, or our baby, I will never forgive you. I will fucking destroy you. Do you understand? You stupid, selfish, useless bitch?’

  Logan nodded. She opened her mouth to say something but Gabe had already gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

/>   Tatiana Cranley looked at the gold Cartier watch on her wrist and frowned. Seven o’clock. The first guests would be arriving within a few minutes and there was still no sign of Jason.

  Where the bloody hell is he?

  Pacing the drawing room of their stunning Belgravia townhouse, immaculately decorated and styled by her husband (interior design bored Tati to tears, but Jason had a real flair for it), she tried not to feel irritated. She knew Jason was feeling low at the moment, and that he dreaded these sorts of social occasions. ‘Not quite business, not quite pleasure,’ he called them, and he was spot on. Tonight’s soirée was a small affair, with only twelve guests, for drinks not dinner. It would, Tati fervently hoped, be over by nine. But all twelve of the guests were important, either current board members or potential new investors, carefully cultivated contacts with the wherewithal to take Hamilton Hall schools to the next level. Tati talked a lot about ‘the next level’ and always had an eye to the future. But she was sensitive enough to see that poor, sweet Jason found the present more than taxing enough.

  ‘Do I really have to be there tonight?’ he’d asked Tatiana this morning over breakfast. ‘I feel like Denis Thatcher at these things. I’m a total spare part.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Tati said kindly, reaching across the table and squeezing his hand. ‘You’re an important part of the business and the Hamilton Hall brand. More than that, you’re important to me.’

  Sometimes she found it exhausting, the daily battle to repair her husband’s self-esteem, on top of everything else on her plate. Tati hadn’t fully realized till she married Jason quite what a number Brett had pulled on his son. Not that compassion was Tati’s only reason for wanting her husband there tonight.

  Hamilton Hall was very much a family school, a family brand, that brought old-fashioned values to everything they did, not only their approach to academics. Jason and Tatiana Cranley were a young couple and happily married, at least as far as the outside world was concerned. This was good. But, they were a young couple with no children, a fact that had raised a number of eyebrows, not only Angela Cranley’s.

  For Tati, the no-kids thing was simple. The business took up all of her time. Even if it hadn’t, Jason was still little more than a kid himself. They weren’t ready and that was that.

  But from a business perspective, being childless made it even more important that she and Jason should present a united front to everyone from parents to investors. Their marriage had to come across as rock solid.

  The front doorbell rang.

  ‘Damn it,’ said Tati, smoothing down her vintage Alaïa skirt and scoop-necked cashmere sweater. The guests were here and bloody Jason wasn’t. After all the effort she made with Jason’s family. All those long lunches with Angela and stepping in as the ‘fun’ aunt with Logan whenever life with her parents at Furlings got too much. Not to mention being so understanding about Jase’s depression, sorting him out with a new therapist and all that crap. The least Jason could do was show her a bit of support in return. Didn’t he realize she was running herself ragged with this business? That it was the school he complained so much about that had paid for this house and the mocha velvet B & B Italia sofas he’d had imported specially from Milan, and the maids who ironed his shirts every morning and poured his favourite fresh-pressed orange juice at breakfast?

  The butler showed the first visitors through to the drawing room.

  ‘David! Ilaria.’ Tati beamed, opening her arms wide to greet the hedge-fund founder and his Eurotrash wife.

  ‘Jason not here?’ David Morgenstein asked, immediately.

  ‘Not yet.’ Tati’s smile didn’t waver. ‘I’m so glad you could both make it. Champagne?’

  By the time Jason rolled in at eight thirty, drinks were almost over. ‘Rolled’ was the operative word. One look at his glazed eyes told Tati he was tight as a tic, and no amount of crunched-up Polos could fully disguise the gin on his breath.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he mumbled, not daring to meet Tatiana’s eye. ‘I got caught up. At, er, my club.’

  ‘Not to worry darling.’ Tati slipped an arm lovingly around his waist. ‘You missed a lovely party, though.’

  Jason knew that this display of affection was purely for the guests’ benefit. She would let him have it later, once everyone had gone, and rightly so.

  He’d been supposed to have another therapy session this afternoon, but had bottled it. Then, wandering aimlessly around Earls Court, he’d made the mistake of answering a phone call from his mother.

  Angela was desperately worried about Logan. After last week’s fire at Gabriel Baxter’s farm, understandably the talk of Fittlescombe, she was lucky not to have been criminally prosecuted. If it hadn’t been for Brett’s friendship with Gabe, and Laura’s abject pleading on Logan’s behalf, Gabe would have shopped her in for sure. As it was, Brett had paid for all the damages out of his own pocket in a private deal with Gabe and Laura, to avoid insurance investigators, and Logan was officially off the hook. Behind the closed doors of Furlings, however, World War Three had broken out. Understandably furious, Brett had pulled Logan out of her expensive private school, grounded her, and spent hours of each day demanding to know what the hell his daughter had been thinking. Unfortunately Logan was too heartbroken about Gabe turning on her even to notice her father. Brett did not take well to not being noticed.

  ‘He literally yells at Logie from morning till night,’ Angela told Jason despairingly. ‘He can’t see how guilty she feels, how cut up about it all. And when I try to talk to him, of course he bites my head off.’

  Too depleted himself to deal with other people’s problems, Jason hung up after twenty minutes and ducked in to The Prince of Teck pub for a quick drink. As so often these days, he ended up staying for several. There was a filthy old upright piano in the bar. Jason, his inhibitions loosened and his emotions suitably numbed, sat down to play a few numbers. He was good, and the customers liked it. As a result, the landlord kept plying him with free drinks and, before Jason knew it, it was eight o’clock at night and he was in no fit state to make small talk with Tati’s potential Hamilton Hall investors.

  ‘Lovely to see you,’ Tati was saying, escorting an elderly earl and his young consort to the front door, admiring the girl’s mink as they said their goodbyes. Soon there was only one couple left, George and Madeleine Wilkes. Already parents at the school, Madeleine was a vastly wealthy sugar heiress and George a Mayfair gallery owner and renowned raconteur. Unlike tonight’s other guests, the Wilkes’s were actually friends. Even so, Tati was ready to call it a night, and she could see Madeleine Wilkes yawning in the drawing room and sneaking furtive glances at the grandfather clock.

  ‘George is in the kitchen,’ Tati hissed at Jason, pulling him to one side in the hallway. ‘Make yourself useful for once and go and find him. Mads wants to leave.’

  ‘OK,’ Jason said sheepishly. ‘I’m sorry I missed the party.’

  ‘Are you?’ snapped Tati. ‘Somehow I doubt that.’

  ‘Really. It wasn’t deliberate. I lost track of time. I …’

  ‘We’ll discuss it later. Just pull George out of the drinks cabinet and send him on his way.’

  George Wilkes was in his early fifties, a gentle, funny, softly spoken man with the sort of mellifluous Irish accent that made women want to sleep with him and men want to buy art from him. He was one of the very few Hamilton Hall ‘contacts’ whom Jason considered a friend. Despite their difference in ages, and despite the fact that George was a successful self-made man while Jason was more of a lost boy, George Wilkes never treated Jason Cranley like an appendage of his glamorous, successful wife. Instead he talked to him about art and music, and the limitless possibilities of the future.

  ‘You’re young, Jason,’ George Wilkes would tell him. ‘You don’t have to have it all planned out yet. Relax. Try new things. Life is long.’

  A conversation with George Wilkes almost always left Jason feeling happier and more optimistic. He
’d often wondered how different life might have been if he’d had George for a father instead of Brett.

  ‘Ah! Jason. The prodigal husband returns. In the doghouse, are you? Come to hide out in the kitchen with me?’

  From his ruddy cheeks, dishevelled hair and slurred speech, it was clear that George was even drunker than he was. Jason gently prised the bottle of Laphroaig out of his hand.

  ‘Actually, I’ve been sent to summon you.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘The girls are tired. Mads wants to go home and Tatiana wants to begin the long process of slicing off my scrotum with a rusty penknife.’

  ‘Ouch.’ George winced. Helping himself to a slice of chocolate cake from the leftovers on the kitchen island, he sank down into an armchair with the air of a man who had no intention of going anywhere. ‘So come on then. What’s your excuse this time? Where were you?’

  Jason told him the story, such as it was.

  ‘I should have been here. For Tati. I promised,’ he finished, contritely.

  ‘Sure, well, it’s important to keep promises,’ George agreed. ‘But you had to talk to your mother.’

  ‘That’s not why I was late,’ smiled Jason.

  ‘No, well, you were late because you were at the piano, weren’t you? You’re a musician, boy! An artist. Tatiana knew that when she married you. Artists get carried away sometimes.’

  The way George put it made Jason feel wonderful. Not like he’d got drunk in a pub and ended up banging out a few tunes on an old upright. But as if he were part of an elite group. As if he were ‘other’. Special. Tatiana did her best to support him, but she never made him feel like that. Not the way George did.

  Just thinking about Tatiana now brought Jason down to earth with a bang.

  ‘Yes, well. It was hardly the Royal Albert Hall,’ he mumbled.

  George Wilkes looked at him, his head cocked curiously to one side. ‘You see, why do you do that? Put yourself down all the time?’

  Jason laughed nervously.

  ‘It doesn’t matter if it’s the Albert Hall or the room over your mum and dad’s garage,’ said George. ‘It’s what you’re doing that matters, not where you’re doing it. And what you were doing was making music. Music that people enjoyed. You’ve got so much going for you, Jason. Open your eyes, boy.’