‘You remind me of myself, Anna. Tough, smart, ambitious. Let’s talk again soon, okay?’
Anna nodded and dashed off, hoping to find a taxi sandwiched between the Bentleys.
Anna didn’t think about the job offer at all the next day; there simply wasn’t time. After a late-night meeting with the client, she’d worked far into the night. By ten a.m. she was instructing a barrister in a coffee shop in Pimlico; two hours later they had cornered a judge, and thirty minutes after that they were in possession of a gagging order preventing all major news outlets from running a juicy exposé about Anna’s client, a Premiership footballer who had made the moral slip – as Nick Kimble had put it – of getting his mistress pregnant.
It was five o’clock by the time Anna was finally on the road, driving towards her parents’ Dorset cottage, physically exhausted and emotionally drained from a heated verbal exchange she’d had with the News of the World’s legal manager. She wasn’t yet thirty, but today she felt about twenty years older. She slid down the window and let the warm air ruffle her hair. It was actually a perfect time to be driving out of the city; traffic was quiet, and the late-afternoon sun cast long green shadows across the fields as she passed. But she still couldn’t relax. Two days earlier, her mother Sue had called her to say they had something to discuss with her. She had refused to talk about it on the phone, and Anna had immediately imagined illness or financial problems with the business. Her parents Sue and Brian owned the Dorset Nurseries, a beautiful garden centre in the heart of Thomas Hardy country. It was a wonderful place, curated under her mother’s tasteful, elegant eye. Wheelbarrows of plump dahlias and clematis surrounded luscious lawns, cabbage white butterflies fluttered around terracotta pots crammed with poppies and foxgloves. Five years ago, they’d added a quaint restaurant in a previously abandoned conservatory and had an immediate hit. On an evening like this, there was nowhere finer to sit and sip Darjeeling or sample some of Brian Kennedy’s tarts and salads.
Anna’s dad had learned to cook in the army and had always been exceptional in the kitchen; he had thrown himself into his new role with gusto. Which was why Anna was worried: they’d had money worries before – what business didn’t these days? – and she knew it would kill him to have to give it up.
At last she turned her Mini into the driveway. The family home was a large thatched cottage that backed on to the perimeter wall of the nursery.
‘Here she is . . .’ cried her father, striding out to meet her, his arms open.
He was still wearing his chef’s whites, complete with spots and smears from the dish of the day. ‘Come on through to the kitchen,’ he said, squeezing her. ‘I bet you could do with a big glass of wine, eh?’
Her mother was sitting at the long oak table, writing in a ledger.
‘You both look bushed,’ Anna said as she walked over to kiss her mother.
‘My elder daughter. She always says the sweetest things,’ said Brian good-naturedly.
‘I’m worried about you,’ said Anna with a frown. ‘You’re working too hard. Both of you.’
Sue closed her book with a thump, looking less pleased than her husband.
‘Actually, I couldn’t be feeling better. You know we’re taking three months’ booking in advance for Saturday and Sunday now, so perhaps it’s all paying off at last.’
‘Fantastic,’ Anna replied with a broad smile that belied her nerves. If the discussion wasn’t about business, she wondered if it was something even more ominous. For a moment, her eyes met her mother’s, but almost immediately Sue looked away.
‘So how’s work?’ she said briskly.
‘Busy. We settled our libel case on Wednesday. My client threw a big party, so my head’s a little fuzzy.’
‘Hair of the dog will sort that out,’ said Brian, ushering her through the cottage.
The front room was cluttered and homely, with low beams, a wide brick fireplace and higgledy-piggledy pictures of her father’s time in the army, her parents’ wedding day, even a few framed squiggles from when she and her sister were kids. It was the sort of place where you could just curl up with a book and forg
et about the world, if it wasn’t for the framed photograph, a new addition on the wall.
Anna flinched, then forced herself to look at it.
Her sister Sophie, clutching her National Television Award for ‘Best Factual Show: A Dorset Kitchen’. She was looking even more beautiful than usual, her pouty mouth painted scarlet, her long raven bob teased into Veronica Lake waves; her slim, curvy body poured into a form-fitting dress made her look more fifties starlet than celebrity chef.
Her mother was watching her.
‘Did you see the Awards?’
Anna shook her head.
‘You know me. No time for telly.’
‘We went to the ceremony. It was wonderful.’
The atmosphere prickled. Her father softened it by handing Anna a large glass of wine. ‘Lovely Sauvignon, this one.’
‘And I have something for you,’ she said. She bent to rifle through her bag and pulled out a gift-wrapped box, handing it to her father.
‘For me?’ said Brian, his eyes twinkling.