‘I bet you’ve got a live-in gardener and everything.’
‘Phil and his wife Sue live in a cottage near the stables.’
‘Stables!’ laughed Rachel. ‘Do you have a sexy groom in tight jodhpurs?’
‘Depends on your point of view, and anyway, Jessica only works part-time.’
They almost giggled, a trace of their old good-humoured banter poking its head above the parapet. As the car pulled up at the front door, Mrs Bills stepped out. A formal dresser, she was wearing her usual pale grey skirt and blouse.
‘A female butler?’ whispered Rachel as they got out, crunching on to the gravel.
‘Mrs Bills is the housekeeper,’ said Diana. ‘Her husband David has been kind enough to drive us from the airport,’ she said, smiling towards the front seat.
‘It’s like bloody Downton Abbey.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Miss Rachel,’ said the woman, taking their bags. ‘I’ve put you in the Lake House. Would you like me to show you the way?’
‘The Lake House?’ said Rachel, turning to Diana. ‘Aren’t I staying here?’ There was disappointment on her face, not just because she was being sidelined to an outbuilding, but because of what it really meant: she was back, but she wasn’t being welcomed back.
‘I thought it would be a better place for you to work,’ said Diana, feeling suddenly guilty. She found herself wanting to justify her very deliberate decision to keep Rachel away from the main house. ‘It’s much quieter and tucked away. Julian used to go out there when he needed a clear head.’
Rachel nodded, but was clearly unconvinced. ‘That sounds good.’
‘Let’s go inside first,’ said Diana. ‘I’ll show you around quickly.’
Diana would have been lying if she’d said she wasn’t enjoying the open-mouthed wonder on her sister’s face as they walked into the grand entrance hall, through the drawing rooms and around the gallery and library on the ground floor. Much of the Georgian grandeur was still in evidence in the tall windows and roof mouldings – Diana was particularly fond of the plaster eagles swooping from the ceiling rose in the ballroom – but she had worked hard with an interior designer to make the place feel softer, more welcoming, by adding more modern furniture and deep cream carpets underfoot.
‘It’s mental,’ smiled Rachel, flopping down on to a leather chesterfield in the living room. ‘It’s a long way from Charleville Street,’ she said, referring to their old Ilfracombe home. ‘It’s like the Queen has just left the room.’ There was no sense that she was mocking; just delight and excitement at the size and luxuriousness of the surroundings. Perhaps people really can change, thought Diana, reaching over to the walnut coffee table, where Mrs Bills had left a steaming cafetière, two porcelain mugs and a plate stacked high with home-made biscuits. ‘Seriously, Di, this house is beautiful. I prefer it to Julian’s parents’ place. It’s grand but still a home. How the hell did you find it?’
Diana paused before answering. She wasn’t sure she wanted to get into all this right now, but she supposed the time had come for complete honesty.
‘An agent found it for us. We bought it after the scandal, because we couldn’t stay in London. We needed to get away from that social scene, partly because the party invitations dried up overnight – people in our circle really don’t want your misfortune rubbing off on them. And partly because, well, I wanted Julian out of temptation’s way.’
She watched her sister lower her head in shame. She wasn’t sorry that she was making her feel awkward.
‘The fallout from the story was difficult. Photographers following us for months, sly gossip in the press, the fact that Julian’s name became synonymous with sleazy businessmen.’
‘You’ve made your point,’ said Rachel with quiet defiance. ‘But it wasn’t all down to me. Julian had the affair. With an eighteen-year-old girl. You can’t do things like that and expect there not to be consequences.’
Diana looked away, conceding the truth in what Rachel had just said. She had imagined this confrontation over the years, imagined making her sister feel sorry, really desperately sorry and ashamed for what she had done, but she felt no victory now the moment was here. Both Rachel and Julian, the two people she had loved most in the world, had been wrong. It didn’t make her triumphant to dredge it all up – it just made her sad.
‘Are we ever going to get over this, or am I just wasting my time being here?’
‘Is that why you’re here?’ replied Diana. ‘To make amends? To make yourself feel better?’
‘Partly,’ she admitted.
‘I should show you to the Lake House,’ she said, wanting to change the subject.
Rachel picked up her rucksack and they went out of the main door of the house, Diana leading her left down a gravel path, past the swimming pool, gleaming like polished tanzanite in the darkening day.
They turned a corner and the lake was in front of them. When a land agent had been commissioned to find the Denvers the perfect country house within commuting distance of London, they had been inundated with dozens of beautiful properties, but Somerfold had stood out from the start. A contrite Julian had allowed Diana to choose the property, and it was the lake that had swung it for her. Diana had always loved the water. Not in the way that Rachel did – Rachel the water baby, the superb swimmer – but she found it soothing. After her parents’ divorce, when they had moved to Ilfracombe to be near her mother’s sister, she had taken long walks along the cliffs and it had helped her deal with her new
life, just as she knew that the lake would help her adjust to life in the countryside.
A building on stilts jutted out into the water.
‘Wow,’ whispered Rachel, pausing to admire the view.