An Autumn Affair Read online

  Faye shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Why not,’ she said, deciding she had nothing to lose. Unlike Leo, who’d immediately become ‘Mr Popular’ at the grammar school, Faye didn’t have a queue of people battering down the door wanting to be her friend at the moment. And if Josie turned out to be a nerd, she could easily dump her. Besides, it was worth a few hours of listening to anyone wittering on, if the end result was a look around the gorgeous Buttersley Hall.

  Fortunately, Faye didn’t have long to wait.

  ‘Would you like to come over tonight?’ Josie asked a few days later. ‘We could have a swim, then order in pizza or something.’

  Faye’s eyes grew wide. ‘Have a swim? As in a swim at your house?’

  Josie looked embarrassed. ‘I know it’s a bit flash having a pool, but as it’s there, it seems daft not to use it.’

  ‘Of course it would be daft,’ Faye agreed. ‘And I’d love to come over. What time?’

  ‘My tennis lesson finishes at six, so come over any time after that.’

  ‘Great,’ said Faye, scarcely able to believe her luck. ‘See you then.’

  Floating up Buttersley Hall’s long gravelled drive a few hours later, Faye almost had to pinch herself. The house resembled something off the telly: one of those Georgian piles on Sunday night period dramas. She didn’t understand what Josie’s dad did – something to do with a drinks company, Josie had attempted to explain. But whatever it was, he obviously made a mint. Josie had attended a school with fees three times those of Faye’s, but had left to do her A-levels at college so she’d have more time to play tennis – the great love of Josie’s life, much to Faye’s bewilderment. Voluntary engagement in any kind of physical exercise remained an alien concept to Faye. She’d concocted all kinds of excuses – some of them particularly inventive – over the years to avoid PE, but Josie, for some inexplicable reason, seemed nuts about tennis. She hoped to take some exams and qualify as a coach, which Faye couldn’t get her head around at all. Just as she couldn’t get her head around the fact that Josie had zero interest in make-up and hadn’t even heard of the Kardashians. Still, though, despite all of the above, Faye was beginning to think Josie was all right.

  She marched up to the front door, three times the size of the door at Primrose Cottage, and rang the brass bell, excitement fizzing in her stomach.

  A minute later, the door was whipped open by a woman. A very beautiful woman. With waves of lustrous, long, jet-black hair. Swathed in a multi-coloured sarong, she put Faye in mind of an Amazonian Miss World contestant. Looking slightly on edge, she regarded Faye with dark, perfectly made-up eyes and glossy red lips that showed no hint of a smile.

  ‘Yes?’

  Faye balked. When she’d left home, she’d thought she looked pretty cool in her cut-off denims and halter-neck top. Now, though, she felt like a blustering, blushing school kid.

  ‘Er, hi,’ she blustered. ‘I’m Josie’s friend, Faye. Josie invited me over for …’

  ‘Oh. Right. Just a minute.’ The woman didn’t wait for Faye to finish. She spun around on four-inch gold heels, and stalked across the black and white tiled floor of the hall, coming to a standstill at the bottom of a winding marble staircase.

  ‘Josie,’ she hollered up the stairs. ‘Someone to see you.’

  Still hovering in the open doorway, Faye watched, entranced, as the woman then turned to a full-length gilded mirror, inspected her lipstick, and whisked off down a corridor.

  Josie appeared a few seconds later, wearing shorts and a bikini top.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Sorry about that. Mum’s in a bit of a bad …’

  Faye’s eyes grew wide. ‘That was your mum?’

  ‘Ah ha. Should we go straight down to the pool?’

  Despite having been dying to see the pool all day, Faye had no desire to go there now. She wanted to stay in the house. And observe the vision that was Josie’s mum.

  ‘It’s the perfect place to escape from Mum,’ said Josie, as if somehow reading Faye’s mind. ‘I don’t know what’s up with her. She’s been in a foul mood for days so I’m trying to keep out of her way. You ready for a swim?’

  ‘Can’t wait,’ Faye heard herself replying.

  The swimming pool at Buttersley Hall was every bit as impressive as Faye had imagined. Yet, despite its imposing proportions, and the fabulous setting of lush lawns, two professional-looking tennis courts, and the gloriously warm September evening, it was still Josie’s mother who held Faye’s interest.

  ‘What does your mum do?’ she asked, when Josie surfaced for air after swimming two full lengths under water.

  ‘Nothing,’ Josie replied, wiggling a finger in her ear. ‘She used to work as cabin crew for one of the big airlines before she met Dad and had me.’

  ‘She looks really … young,’ Faye said. Silently adding a stream of other adjectives, including gorgeous, stunning, amazing …

  ‘She’s thirty-seven. She had me when she was twenty. What does your mum do?’

  Faye rolled her eyes. ‘Panders to my hideous brother’s every need. And nags me about stupid, boring things like I haven’t eaten any vegetables, and I should be doing my homework.’

  Josie giggled. ‘She sounds nice. I’d like to meet her.’

  Over my dead body, Faye resisted saying. How could she possibly take Josie back to Primrose Cottage when she lived in this demi-palace with a supermodel for a mother? Honestly. Life just totally wasn’t fair.

  ‘I’m starving,’ she announced. ‘Should we go and order some pizzas?’

  ‘Okay,’ agreed Josie.

  Sitting at the island in the enormous kitchen at Buttersley Hall a few minutes later, swathed in a fluffy black towel, Faye eyed her surroundings approvingly. The sleek white units were enhanced with every in-built shiny, chrome appliance ever invented. Even the tap was uber-trendy, with several other gadgets hanging off it. This was the kind of kitchen Faye would love, not the washed-out green-oak effort at Primrose Cottage.

  ‘This kitchen is awesome,’ she said to Josie, who was sitting at the opposite side of the island, slicing strawberries for their smoothies.

  ‘It’s a total waste,’ huffed Josie, shaking her head. ‘It only ever gets used when Dad’s at home now. And that’s like never.’

  ‘Doesn’t your mum cook?’

  ‘Not these days,’ replied Josie. ‘She used to make some great stuff when I was younger but now she’s hardly ever home.’

  Faye’s eyes grew wide. She couldn’t imagine life without her mother trying to ram some ghastly healthy concoction down her throat every evening. Josie really didn’t know how lucky she was. ‘So you can eat whatever you like?’ she asked enviously.

  Josie nodded. ‘Which suits me fine, actually. I need loads of carbs for tennis and, since Mum became paranoid about her weight, she wouldn’t touch a carb if her life depended on it.’

  ‘Unreal,’ sighed Faye, wondering what she must’ve done in a previous life to deserve her miserable fate. Josie seemed to have it made here.

  ‘Josie, I’m just popping out.’

  Faye’s head whipped around to find Josie’s mother standing in the doorway, now wearing tight white jeans and a glittering turquoise vest top.

  ‘Okay,’ said Josie, tossing the strawberries into the blender. ‘Oh, by the way, Mum. This is Faye Blakelaw. She just moved to the village a few weeks ago. Faye, this is my mum, Miranda.’

  Two perfectly made-up, huge brown eyes regarded Faye again. ‘Hi,’ she said, with a fleeting smile this time.

  ‘Hi,’ gasped Faye, wondering how anyone could look so glamorous when they were just ‘popping out’. And what a gorgeous name. It was so … so … Sex and the City.

  ‘Oh. And Eduardo said to tell you that he’ll pop by tomorrow to sort out payment for my next block of lessons,’ Josie added.

  Miranda’s shiny silver clutch bag fell to the floor.

  ‘Er, right,’ she muttered, bending down to retrieve it. ‘Well, I’d, um, better be off. I’ll see you
later.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Josie. ‘Have a good time.’

  ‘Where’s she going?’ Faye asked, as Miranda disappeared in a cloud of expensive perfume.

  Josie shrugged. ‘No idea. We used to be really close not so long ago. But now she does her thing, and I do mine.’

  And that was the way, Faye discovered, that life operated at Buttersley Hall. Josie did whatever she wanted – and while the things Josie did were not necessarily the things Faye would have done, it all was still mind-blowingly awesome. Meanwhile, Miranda swanned about in fabulous clothes, looking fabulous and no doubt doing fabulous things. And all from their fabulous house with its fabulous pool. It was a gazillion light years away from Faye’s dreary life at Primrose Cottage, where her mother wouldn’t know Prada from Primark, and completely freaked if Faye happened to mention something as mundane as missing a class at college. But, of the two worlds, Faye knew which one she belonged to. Or should belong to. Which was why, ever since that first meeting with Miranda, she’d spent every possible minute at Buttersley Hall, feeding her obsession with the woman. An obsession of a purely educational nature. Miranda was Faye’s ideal role model. And Faye suspected that whatever she learned from her, however covertly, would stand her in much better stead than anything they could teach her at Harrogate Further Education College.

  In fact, come to think of it, hadn’t Josie invited her over later that evening if she had nothing on? Faye reached for her mobile and scrolled down until she found Josie’s number. That she might smudge her nail varnish in the process didn’t matter one jot.

  Chapter Two

  Miranda Cutler pressed hard on the accelerator of her BMW convertible as she sped along Buttersley’s narrow country lanes. With the roof down, the cool October evening air whistled through her hair. She closed her eyes, wishing it would whip away all thoughts from her head. When she opened them again, she found the car hurtling towards a high stone wall. Miranda jammed on the brakes and pulled over onto the grass verge, her heart thundering. What the hell was she doing? She could have killed herself. Not that anyone would have cared. Herself included. An impromptu death would at least offer one escape route from the hideous predicament she found herself in. A hideous predicament entirely of her own making. She ran a hand through her hair and heaved an almighty sigh. How could she have been so stupid? She was thirty-seven, for God’s sake, not seventeen. She’d been around the block enough times to know how these things worked. And having unprotected sex with her daughter’s tennis coach, who also happened to be her best friend Lydia’s toy-boy lover, was definitely not on the list. But six pregnancy tests could not be wrong. So, the burning question now was what to do about it. The answer required minimal consideration. She had only one option. A termination. But where? She couldn’t go to her GP in Buttersley. She’d have to go private. Somewhere she could be completely anonymous. Somewhere like … London. And she wouldn’t tell a soul. She’d make out it was a shopping trip – a totally spontaneous one to avoid Lydia inviting herself along.

  Miranda leaned forward and rested her head on the leather steering wheel. God. Just concocting the plan exhausted her, never mind actually implementing it. And, despite intending to keep the whole sorry business to herself, there remained the ordeal of facing Eduardo and Lydia, and, more importantly, her own husband, Doug, while pretending everything was perfectly fine.

  Just thinking about Doug caused Miranda’s heart to sink. Not that theirs was a conventional marriage. Nor was Miranda’s a conventional life. And certainly not a straightforward one. From a young age, things had been complicated and, even after all this time, she could still recall, as if it were yesterday, the precise day the complications began …

  ‘Well, I never,’ declared her dad one morning, bowling into the kitchen in his bus driver’s uniform.

  ‘What’s the matter, love?’ asked Miranda’s mum, frying sausages on the gas cooker.

  Her dad wafted the letter in his hand. ‘Apparently I’ve been left an inheritance.’

  At the kitchen table, in the navy-blue skirt and sweater which compiled the uninspiring uniform of Jarrow Comp, thirteen-year-old Miranda whipped up her head from her teen magazine. ‘An inheritance, Dad? But we don’t know anyone who’s died.’

  Her father plumped down on the chair opposite hers, his kind, round face flushed. ‘Well, actually I do. Vaguely. It’s my Aunt Maud – your grandad’s youngest sister. She emigrated to Australia in the 1960s. I remember Dad organised a leaving party for her and Maud turned up in a dress with kangaroos printed all over it. She was a funny old soul. Always wore bright orange lipstick. Never married. Probably as a result of the lipstick. But, according to this letter, she passed away last month and, as her only surviving relative, she’s left everything to me.’

  ‘Goodness,’ gasped Miranda’s mother, momentarily neglecting the sausages. ‘Does it say how much “everything” is?’

  Her father shook his head. ‘No. I have to make an appointment with the solicitor to “be furnished with full details”. I’m on an early finish today so I’ll see if they can fit me in this afternoon.’

  Miranda couldn’t concentrate at school that day. Not a particularly unusual occurrence. Her ambition stretching no further than a two-mile radius of her home town, she could see no point in equations, essays and experiments, her only interest in the scholarly world being purely of a social nature.

  Shuffling along to their first class, Miranda related news of the inheritance to her best friend, Tina.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Tina gushed. ‘What if it’s millions? You could buy one of those really posh houses on the new estate. They’ve got bidets and everything. And you could go abroad for your holidays. America. That’s where I’d go. On Concorde.’

  Miranda giggled. She hadn’t really thought about moving before. She liked their house. It was only a semi on the council estate, but it was lovely and cosy. And as for going abroad for their holidays, she’d never given that much consideration either, always looking forward to their annual family jaunt to Skegness. But she decided to play along with Tina just the same. ‘If it is millions, I promise I’ll take you to America on Concorde,’ she said.

  Tina’s heavily made-up eyes grew wide, her mind evidently awhirl with possibilities. ‘And you know what else we could do? Go and see Duran Duran. They might even let us backstage if we tell them you’re a millionaire.’

  Hmm. Now that was something that did appeal to Miranda. Very much. Excitement began fizzing in her stomach. And so the day continued, maths, biology and history completely passing them by as she and Tina concocted increasingly elaborate schemes of how to spend the inheritance – which grew larger with every passing hour. By the time Miranda arrived home later that afternoon, she thought she might burst with anticipation.

  ‘Well?’ she asked breathlessly, dumping her school bag on the floor. ‘What did the solicitor say?’

  ‘You’re not going to believe it, sweetheart,’ gushed her mum. ‘I still can’t take it in.’

  ‘Is it millions?’ pressed Miranda. ‘Can we go to America on Concorde and take Tina?’

  ‘Woah!’ said her dad, chuckling. ‘Come and sit here beside me, love.’

  Miranda joined her father on the worn brown sofa.

  ‘It’s not millions,’ he informed her. ‘And there’ll be no jetting about on aeroplanes. Given that it’s money we wouldn’t have otherwise had, your mum and I have decided not to waste it on anything frivolous, but to spend it on you. To invest in your future.’

  Sensing, by her dad’s earnest tone, that this ‘investing’ would also not include tickets to Duran Duran, panic began nibbling Miranda’s innards.

  ‘We’re going to use the money to send you to a better school.’

  Miranda’s heart skipped a beat. Her mouth grew dry and for a few seconds she thought she might pass out. But perhaps she hadn’t heard properly. ‘A … a better school?’

  ‘That’s right, love.’

  Miranda shook her he
ad in an attempt to clear it. This was becoming surreal. Were they really having this conversation? ‘B … but what’s wrong with the Comp?’

  ‘Far too much, in our opinion,’ huffed her mum. ‘That school’s been going downhill for years. And now we have the money to get you out of there, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We want to give you the best start in life we can, sweetheart. Send you somewhere that will bring out your potential. You’re a clever girl and I don’t want to see you wasting your life working in the factory like me.’

  ‘We obviously need to do a lot more research,’ her dad ploughed on. ‘But the solicitor has recommended the school his own daughters went to. It’s called Briardene in Derbyshire.’

  Miranda spotted a glimmer of hope. ‘Derbyshire? But I can’t travel to and from there every day.’

  ‘You won’t have to,’ said her mum smugly. ‘It’s a boarding school, so you’ll be living there. It’ll be a fantastic experience. Just like something out of Enid Blyton.’

  But Briardene, Miranda soon discovered, was as far away from the world of Enid Blyton as Jarrow was from Jamaica. From the moment she stepped into the marbled foyer of what had obviously once been a spectacular stately home, she felt as though she were on another planet. Her crimson uniform might be the same as those of the other girls, but there endeth any similarity. Her fellow incumbents’ rosy cheeks hinted at hours outdoors riding their ponies; their glossy hair reeked of expensive products; and their plummy accents wouldn’t have sounded out of place in Buckingham Palace. Plus they all exuded a confidence that wafted about only the truly moneyed.

  Miranda wished Tina could see them – flicking locks; kissing cheeks; clunking hockey sticks, lacrosse sticks and tennis racquets. She’d find the whole thing hilarious.

  ‘Lady Bloody Mucks,’ she’d call them. Or words to that effect.

  But Tina wasn’t there. She was at the Comp. Probably sporting an outrageous pair of earrings that would be confiscated within the first ten minutes, before being ordered to the toilets to wash off her eye make-up. Miranda had never been one of the Comp’s biggest fans, but at that moment she’d never wanted to be anywhere more in her entire life.