The Inheritance: Racy, pacy and very funny!

She wants people to like her so badly, thought Laura, pityingly. This time two years ago, she had it all. And now look at her, a guest at her own house.

Unlike Gabe, Laura Baxter felt sorry for Tati. She didn’t blame her for fighting her father’s will. If I grew up in a house like Furlings, I’d fight like hell to keep it too, she thought, glancing over her shoulder at the Queen Anne mansion perched serenely at the top of the hill.

The house looked more gorgeous than ever today, dazzling in the May sunshine with its sash windows dripping in wisteria and its lawns criss-crossed by box hedges and winding gravel paths, dotted with elaborate topiary. How awful to think of it being lived in by strangers! And how hard for Tati to have to stay there now as a guest, even before her hated cousins had arrived. Secretly Laura was rather rooting for Tati to turf the interlopers out, although that was highly unlikely. The bylaw that Tatiana was hoping to invoke was properly ancient. As for convincing the naysayers in the village that she was suitable lady of the manor material? With her history, that was going to be a tall order. It would certainly take a lot more than a Julie Andrews dress and a hair ribbon.

‘It’s impossible,’ Tatiana complained good-naturedly to the woman standing next to her at the coconut shy. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t this hard when I was a girl. Are you sure it’s not rigged?’

‘Pretty sure,’ the woman laughed.

‘I reckon they’ve glued them onto the stands.’

‘Nonsense.’

A wildly attractive Latin-looking man whom Tati dimly recognized appeared at her elbow. ‘You just need the right technique.’

In chinos and a blue linen shirt that matched his eyes and perfectly offset his olive skin, the man was easily the best-looking specimen Tati had seen since her return to Fittlescombe. With the Cranleys due to arrive in a week, she would soon be kicked out of Furlings and have to find herself more modest accommodation in the village while she put together her legal case against her disinheritance. The prospect of months spent living in some dismal local hovel had been filling Tati’s heart with gloom for weeks now. As had the idea of begging for a job as a lowly teacher at the village primary school.

The real kicker in Rory’s will, the part that no one in the village even knew about yet, were the conditions the old man had placed on Tatiana’s trust fund. Not content with robbing her of Furlings, he’d effectively taken steps to cut her off from all family money unless she, as he put it, ‘got her life in order.’

With this in mind, the old man had stipulated that if Tati agreed to take a teaching job at St Hilda’s Primary School in the village, he would authorize the trust to release a ‘modest’ monthly stipend. Even then, the money would only ever be released to her in the form of regular income payments. At no point would Tatiana receive a large lump sum of money.

For Tati, this had been the final twist of the knife. She recalled the scene in her godfather’s London office as if it were yesterday.

‘You’re telling me I’m penniless?’ She’d glared at Edmund Ruck accusingly.

‘Hardly,’ London’s most eminent solicitor responded evenly. ‘You have the equivalent of a modest trust fund for the time being. As long as your life remains stable, the monthly payments will go up considerably every year. Any capital remaining at the end of your life will pass to your children.’

‘It’s a fucking pittance!’ spat Tatiana.

‘It’s more than most people earn in a lifetime, Tati.’

‘I don’t care what “most people” earn. I am not “most people”.’ Tati’s arrogance hid her fear and profound shock. ‘And I won’t get any money coming in at all till I’m thirty-five. Thirty-fucking-five! I might as well be dead.’

Edmund Ruck suppressed a wry smile. He’d known Tatiana all her life and was fond of her, but he understood why Rory had declined to trust her with the family fortune, still less with the magical historic seat at Furlings. Even so, leaving the estate to a distant cousin he’d never met had been a surprising move on the old man’s part. The will had raised Edmund Ruck’s eyebrows, so he could hardly expect it not to raise his goddaughter’s.

‘Some money can be released to you earlier,’ he explained, ‘as long as you comply with the conditions set out in your father’s letter of wishes.’

Tati let out a short, derisive laugh. ‘As long as I go back to Fittlescombe and become a schoolteacher, you mean? Don’t be ridiculous, Edmund.’

‘Why is that ridiculous?’

Tati looked at him witheringly, but Edmund pressed on.

‘You trained as a teacher, didn’t you?’

It was true that Tatiana had studied, abortively, for a teaching degree at Oxford Brookes, before dropping out. She’d always been incredibly bright, especially at maths, but had never worked hard at school, or cared about her grades. The world of yachts and private jets and wealthy lovers, of winters in Kitzbühel and St Barth’s and summers in St Tropez and Sardinia, had exerted an irresistible pull. Besides, why bother with university when one was never going to need to get a job?

‘Did my father seriously think, even for a moment, that I was going to agree to become a village school ma’am? That I would be content to live in some poxy cottage, while Furlings – my house, my bloody birthright – was occupied by some jumped-up bloody Australian and his family, the Cranfords?’

‘Cranleys,’ her godfather corrected, patiently.

‘Whatever.’

Tatiana had been full of fight that awful day in Edmund Ruck’s offices. And yet she had returned to Fittlescombe, just as her father had demanded. And she would take the job at the school, because she needed that money. But anyone who interpreted those things as her acceptance of Rory’s will would be making a grave mistake. Tatiana was here for one reason and one reason only: to fight for her real inheritance.

The Adonis standing next to her at the coconut shy might at least provide a welcome distraction while she did what had to be done.

‘You hold the ball like this.’ He slipped one arm confidently around Tati’s waist, placing the ball in her hand. ‘And throw overarm, aiming downwards. Like so.’

‘I see,’ said Tati, inhaling the delicious, lemony scent of his aftershave as she released the ball into the air. She looked on as it sailed skywards in a perfect arc before dipping to strike the coconut clean onto the ground.

‘That’s amazing,’ she said delightedly, spinning around to face her instructor. ‘Thank you. I’m Tatiana, by the way.’

The handsome man smiled and shook her hand.

‘I know who you are, Miss Flint-Hamilton. Santiago de la Cruz. A pleasure to meet you.’

De la Cruz. The cricketer. Of course! Santiago played for Sussex. Tati had heard he’d moved to the valley last year. After a week holed up at Furlings with nothing but Mrs Worsley’s scowling face for company, or trapped in deathly dull fete committee meetings with the church flowers brigade, it felt wonderful to be flirted with again. Tati tried to remember the last time she’d had enjoyable sex or even been on a date with an attractive man – she didn’t count this morning’s disastrous encounter with the semi-fossilized Minister for Trade and Industry – and drew a complete blank. It must have been before that awful day in Edmund Ruck’s office. Before the world stopped spinning and her life fell apart. She smiled at Santiago coquettishly, tossing back her long ponytail of honey-blonde hair. ‘Santiago,’ she purred. ‘What a glorious name.’

‘And this is my fiancée, Penny.’

A middle-aged woman wearing a hideous gypsy skirt and a T-shirt covered in paint splatters had appeared at Santiago’s side. Tati’s smile wilted. From the look of pride on Santiago’s face, you’d think he’d just introduced her to Gisele Bündchen. Talk about love being blind, thought Tati. Still, ever mindful of her charm offensive, she shook Penny’s hand warmly.

‘Lovely to meet you.’

‘We’ve met before,’ Penny Harwich reminded her, although it was said without reproach. ‘I’m Penny Harwich. Emma’s mother.’

Oh yes. Emma Harwich. The model. Tati vaguely remembered the family, although not particularly the ragamuffin of a mother.

‘Of course. How silly of me.’ Her smile didn’t waver. ‘Your fiancé just won me a coconut.’

‘Did you, darling? How sweet.’ Slipping her arms around Santiago’s neck and standing up on tiptoes, Penny Harwich kissed him blissfully. Tatiana felt the envy as a physical pain, like a cricket ball lodged in her chest. Not because she fancied Santiago. Although of course she did. But because she didn’t have anyone herself. She was alone, now more than ever. Other people’s happiness felt like a personal affront.

‘Is that the time?’ She glanced at her Patek Philippe watch, an eighteenth birthday present from her father. ‘You must excuse me. I think I’m wanted at the duck racing.’

Turning away, Tati walked towards the pond, nodding and smiling at villagers as she went till her jaw and neck both ached. There was old Frank Bannister, the church organist, and the Reverend Slaughter who’d been the vicar of St Hilda’s Church in Fittlescombe for as long as Tati could remember. There were new faces too, scores of them, whole families that Tati didn’t recognize. It was so long since she’d spent any time here, she thought, a trifle guiltily. Although really her father ought to bear some responsibility for that. In the last five years of his life, Rory had been so disapproving, so resolutely unwelcoming.

He practically drove me away. And now he wants to punish me for it from beyond the grave.

‘Tatiana!’ Harry Hotham, Tati’s old headmaster at St Hilda’s Primary School and a lifelong friend of her father’s, waved from the gate that linked Furlings’ lower meadow to the village green. It was less than two years since Tati had last seen Harry, at the same Hunt Ball where she’d infamously run off with Laura Tiverton’s boyfriend, but he’d aged two decades in that short time. Stooped and frail, leaning on a walking stick, his remaining wisps of hair now totally white and blowing in the breeze like tufts of dandelion seeds, he tottered towards her.

‘How marvellous to see you. And how divine you look, my dear. Yellow is definitely your colour. I’d heard you were back in the village. Do tell me you’re staying?’

Harry’s enthusiasm, like his smile, was utterly genuine. Tati was touched.

‘That rather depends,’ she said, kissing him warmly on both cheeks. ‘You heard about Daddy’s will?’

‘Yes.’ Harry nodded gravely. ‘Bad business, that.’

‘Well I’m not giving up,’ said Tati, jutting her chin forward defiantly. Harry Hotham remembered the look well from Tatiana’s days as his pupil, a tearaway even then but charming with it, at least in Harry’s eyes. ‘I’m contesting it.’

Harry frowned. ‘Yes. I heard that too. Are you sure that’s wise, Tatiana?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Only that, knowing your father as I did, I imagine he took very thorough legal advice. I’d hate to see you ripped off by some ghastly lawyer.’

Tati waved a hand dismissively. ‘Every lawyer has a different opinion. And I’m already being ripped off. I don’t see that it can get much worse.’

‘That’s because you’re young, my dear,’ said Harry, patting her hand affectionately. ‘It can. Believe me.’

‘Well, it’s early days yet but I need funds to pursue my case,’ Tati went on, ignoring Harry Hotham’s warnings. ‘A war chest, if you will. I wanted to talk to you about that actually.’

‘My dear Tatiana, I’d happily give you my last farthing, but I’m afraid you are looking at a very poor man,’ Harry said matter-of-factly. ‘There’s no money in teaching, you see. Not a bean.’

‘Oh, no!’ Tati laughed, embarrassed. ‘I wasn’t asking you for money. It’s a bit of an odd request, but I … I was hoping for a job.’

‘A job?’

‘Yes. Did Daddy not say anything to you before he died?’

‘Say something?’ Harry looked confused.

‘It would just be for a few months, while I sort out my legal situation,’ said Tati. She explained about her trust fund, and the codicil in Rory’s will that would release money to her but only on the condition that she move back to Fittlescombe and work as a teacher at St Hilda’s.

‘Dad always had a ridiculous fantasy about me settling down and teaching one day. Ever since I did that awful course at Oxford Brookes.’ Misinterpreting Harry Hotham’s pained face, she added, ‘Look, I know it’s madness. But you’d be doing me a huge favour. When I get my inheritance restored to me, I promise to fund a new school building and anything else you want.’

‘It’s not that my dear,’ said Harry. ‘The job would be yours if it were mine to give. But I’m afraid I retired.’

‘What?’ Tati frowned. ‘When?’

‘At Christmas. I had a fall and I … well, I realized I wasn’t up to snuff any more. Physically, I mean. I recovered and all that. But I still need this blasted thing.’ He shook his walking stick reproachfully. ‘Running a school is a younger man’s game.’

‘Oh, Harry. I’m so sorry,’ said Tati, truthfully. ‘I can’t imagine St Hilda’s without you.’

‘Yes, well, things move on. And the new chap’s terribly good,’ said Harry, graciously. ‘Bingley, his name is. He’s a widower and rather a dish, so I’m told. All the yummy mummies are after him. He could probably use one of these himself,’ he waved his walking stick laughingly, ‘to beat them all off with!’

Tati forced a smile, but this was not good news. Working at St Hilda’s would always have been tough, a desperate measure for desperate times. But at least with Harry Hotham she’d have known where she stood. They’d have worked out some arrangement to satisfy her trustees – a few hours volunteering in the library or helping the girls play netball – and no one would have been any the wiser.

But this new fellow, Bingley, was an unknown entity. No doubt he’d already heard all kinds of bad things about her from village gossip, if not from the Daily Mail’s society pages.

‘Cheer up,’ said Harry Hotham, taking her arm. ‘You look like you’ve lost a shilling and found sixpence.’

‘Do I, Harry?’ Tati laughed. Somehow being around Harry Hotham reminded her of all the good things about her father and the past. Harry was part of her history, of Furlings, of all the things she was fighting for. ‘I’m off to judge the duck races. Would you like to come with me?’

‘Dearest Tatiana,’ enthused the old man. ‘I’m sure I can think of nothing I would like more.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘Wow.’

Angela Cranley gasped as she drove her Range Rover over the crest of the hill.

‘Wow.’

‘Stop saying “wow”, Mum. You sound like a dork.’

Logan Cranley, Angela’s ten-year-old daughter, rolled her eyes in the back seat. After the long flight from Sydney, Logan was tired and grumpy. She hadn’t wanted to leave her old school, or her friends, and couldn’t understand what had possessed her parents to uproot themselves overnight and move to the other side of the world, just because some old guy had died and left them a house. Even at ten, Logan understood that her family were extremely wealthy. Her father, Brett, was a real-estate developer and one of the richest men in Sydney. The Cranleys already had a bunch of houses, including a grand apartment in London. What was so special about this one?

Secretly though, she too was impressed by the stunning scenery that surrounded them as they got nearer to their new home. Narrow ancient lanes flanked by high hedgerows guided them through the rolling chalk hills of the Downs; they passed a Tudor pub, The Coach and Horses, that looked exactly like Logan’s dolls’ house back home in her playroom in Australia, all white wattle walls and criss-crossing black beams, with mullioned windows. There were meadows full of buttercups, picture-postcard villages made up of clusters of flint cottages, medieval churches and the occasional grand Georgian manor house. Queen Anne’s lace, grown wild and as tall as the top of the car, reached over from the grass verges and brushed the windscreen as they passed, like delicate white-gloved fingers waving an ecstatic welcome. And everywhere the late spring sunshine, light, bright and clear, bathed the countryside in a glorious, magical glow.

In the front passenger seat, Logan’s older brother gazed vacantly out at the patchwork of hills and fields. At just turned twenty, Jason Cranley was painfully withdrawn. Tall and thin, with a pale, freckly complexion and sad, amber eyes, it was hard to believe that he was genetically related either to Logan, or to their father, Brett. Both Jason’s little sister and his father were dark-haired, olive-skinned and bewitching, like gypsies, or members of some exotic tribe of Portuguese pirates. Jason took more closely after his mother. Angela was blonde and fair-skinned, the sort of colouring that could easily have gone to red and that had zero tolerance for sun. Jason glanced across at her now, smiling, enchanted by this new world unfolding before her.

She’s so brave, he thought. So optimistic. After everything that’s happened, she still believes in fresh starts.

How he wished that he did, too.

‘This is it. Fittlescombe. We’re here!’

Angela Cranley squeezed her son’s leg excitedly as they passed the sign for the village. The Range Rover had descended a steep escarpment, then forked sharp right at the valley floor. The village was completely hidden from the main road above, folded into the downs like a baby joey enveloped in its mother’s pouch. It made it feel like a secret place, a hidden jewel only to be discovered by the chosen few. Despite herself, Angela felt her excitement building and her hopes start to blossom like the first buds of spring. This, surely, was a place where people were happy. Where the miseries and betrayals of the past could be left behind.

The most recent betrayal, in the form of Brett’s mistress Tricia Hong, a pushy young news reporter for SBS who had done everything in her power to destroy Angela’s marriage, was now a satisfying ten thousand miles away. Brett had been unfaithful before, of course – countless times. But Tricia had been a threat of a different order: intelligent, ruthlessly ambitious and utterly without scruple. Perhaps it was no surprise that she and Brett had been drawn to one another. They were so very alike. Still, in the end, even Brett had been taken aback by the beautiful young Asian’s tenacity. He, too, had begun to feel under siege. Rory Flint-Hamilton’s surprise bequest could not have come at a more opportune time. Nor could it have brought them to a more idyllic spot.

‘Oh my God, look at the post office! Isn’t that the cutest, with the roses round the door? And the school. Look, Logan. St Hilda’s. That’s where you’ll be going. What do you think?’

Logan made a noncommittal, grunting noise. She refused to get excited about her new school, however idyllic it might look. She still hoped there was a chance her father would change his mind and that they could all go home to Sydney and reality and forget this whole thing. Her mum kept telling her that she and Rachel and Angelica would stay friends, that they could Skype. But it wasn’t the same. She was going to miss Wellesley Park Elementary’s summer fair. She was going to miss everything. Rachel and Angelica would become best friends and wear the best friend necklaces, the ones with two pieces of a heart that fit together perfectly. She, Logan, would be forgotten. Erased. She’d probably start speaking with an English accent, God forbid.

‘Stop.’

Jason’s voice rang out, startling his mother. He hadn’t said a word since they pulled out of Heathrow. Having watched him go through a series of depressions, Angela wasn’t surprised by his silence. She had learned to sit with her son’s sadness, to stop trying to snap him out of it. But she still found it hard.

‘That was it. Furlings. There’s a sign at the bottom of the drive.’

Angela reversed. Sure enough, there it was. Damp and faded, and partially covered by overhanging trees, a simple wooden sign: ‘Furlings – Private Property’.

The driveway had seen better days. The four-wheel drive bounced and juddered over potholes, rattling its occupants like cubes of ice in a cocktail shaker. But after about a hundred yards of winding their way up the hill that overlooked the village, the private track widened into a grand, gravelled forecourt with a stone fountain at its centre. The house stood back from the gravel and was set slightly above it, atop a flight of six wide stone steps. A grand, square central section was flanked by two, lower symmetrical wings, all in the same red brick typical of Queen Anne architecture. Elegant sash windows peeked out shyly beneath thick fringes of wisteria, and the formal gardens at the front of the house gave way to stunning, oak-dotted parkland below, the green hills rolling all the way down to the village green.

It was quite the most exquisite house Angela Cranley had ever seen, combining elegance with an undeniable grandeur. It was also, to Angela’s way of thinking, enormous. If this was a small stately home, she struggled to imagine what a large one might look like.

‘It’s a palace!’ Logan squealed delightedly, forgetting all her heartfelt objections in the joy of the moment as she tumbled out of the car and ran towards the steps. ‘Oh, Mum, isn’t it gorgeous?’

Angela also got out of the car, stretching her aching legs. ‘It is, darling. It is gorgeous.’ She craned her neck and stepped back, trying to get a sense of the scale of it. ‘What do you think, Jase?’

‘Yeah. It’s very nice.’

Jason pulled the two heavy trunks out of the boot, wishing that Furlings’ beauty could affect him the way it ought to. Wishing that anything could. The cases thudded onto the ground with a crunch. Most of the family’s furniture and effects were arriving by separate plane in the coming days, but they’d brought a few ‘essentials’ with them. Jason’s father was supposed to come down to see the new house in a week. Brett had business in London, and preferred to stay in town than to deal with the hassle of moving in. ‘Your mother can do that. Women love all that nesting crap.’

‘It’s a lot of work, Dad,’ Jason had protested. Unusually for him. Jason Cranley was afraid to provoke his father. Everybody was afraid to provoke Brett Cranley.

‘Rubbish,’ said Brett. ‘There’ll be a housekeeper there to help her. Mrs Worsley. Old man Flint-Hamilton asked me to keep her on. And you can pitch in, can’t you? God knows you’ve got nothing else to do.’

Ever since Jason had dropped out of college, his father had been berating him for laziness, for failing to get a job and a life. Brett Cranley did not believe in depression. ‘We’ve all got our shit to go through,’ he told the family therapist at the one and only session Angela had convinced him to attend. ‘Wallowing in it doesn’t help. The problem with Jason is that he doesn’t realize how damn good he’s got it.’

Logan had already raced up the steps and run inside, darting in and out of the house like an over-excited puppy. Behind her, a smiling, soberly dressed woman in her mid-sixties appeared in the front doorway, plainly amused by the little girl’s high spirits.

Angela climbed the steps, her hand extended. ‘Mrs Worsley?’

‘Mrs Cranley. Welcome. You must be shattered after such a long journey.’

The older woman’s hand was cold and her grip firm, her Scottish accent clipped and efficient. She had grey hair, swept up into a neatly pinned bun, and wore no make-up, but her bright eyes and warm smile stopped her from appearing severe.

‘I suspect I’ll be tired later,’ Angela smiled back. ‘To be honest I think we’re all a bit too excited now. Excited and overwhelmed. What a house!’

‘Indeed.’ Mrs Worsley beamed with pride, as if she’d built Furlings herself, brick by brick. ‘Everyone in the village is so excited about your arrival,’ she lied. ‘It’ll be wonderful to have a family here again. Mr Flint-Hamilton was on his own for such a terribly long time.’