‘What glory days?’
‘Love, romance.’
‘I can’t believe I’m discussing relationships with my dad,’ she grinned, enjoying the gentle teasing from her father. David Wyatt had been a fairly absent figure during her childhood; his job – heading up a collection of businesses including a paper mill and a food packaging company – meant that he left the house early and worked late. But when he was at Casa D’Or, his very presence warmed the house like a log fire.
‘So how’s work? The gallery?’
Jennifer did not want to have this discussion, not yet, and was grateful to hear the distracting sounds of a tray behind them. She looked up as Marion, their housekeeper, put an assortment of cold drinks, along with a plate of cookies and muffins, on the table.
‘I just pulled a few bits and pieces together,’ she said, smiling warmly.
‘Thanks. You didn’t need to,’ said Jennifer, enjoying the sound of Marion’s syrupy Southern accent. The sound of home.
Her eyes drifted across the lake to the house on the other shore. It was a smaller property than Casa D’Or, with a jetty and a boathouse that jutted out into the water. There were two types of homeowner in Savannah: families like the Wyatts who lived in the city all year round, and others for whom the area was just a temporary home, a pit stop to escape the winter months and cold, snowy weather of the north. The Lake House belonged to one of the latter, the Sittenfields, a New York family whom the locals referred to as the snow birds, on account of their seasonal migration.
‘Is someone staying at the Sittenfields’ house? I think there’s someone in the boathouse,’ she said, squinting through the heat shimmering over the water.
‘Old habits die hard,’ replied her father. When she was a kid, the neighbours used to give her a fistful of dollars for watching the house over the summer. She’d treated her responsibility very seriously and taken up her sentry point on the pontoon, with a good book and a soda for company.
‘Yes. Some family from England,’ he said as her mother appeared on the terrace.
Sylvia looked different from a few minutes earlier, as if she had brushed her hair and refastened the cream silk scarf that was tied around her neck.
‘Are we talking about the people in the Lake House?’ she said as she took a chair under the shade of the parasol.
‘Who are they?’ asked Jennifer, taking a welcome sip of iced tea.
‘You can find out later,’ replied David. ‘I met them yesterday and invited them round.’
‘Invited them round?’ asked Sylvia, looking alarmed. ‘When?’
‘Tonight. Just for drinks,’ said David casually. ‘He’s a writer, here with his wife. There’s a son, too, about your age, Jen.
’
‘It’s Jennifer’s first night home . . .’
‘I didn’t know that,’ snorted David.
‘You should have asked me before inviting strangers over.’ Sylvia was making her displeasure obvious.
‘Then why don’t we make it sociable? Get Connor to come too, his parents. Have a little drinks party. A welcome home for our daughter.’
Sylvia gave a sigh but looked mollified at the suggestion of expanding the event, although Jennifer could think of nothing worse. In fact she knew that the shit was going to hit the fan.
She went upstairs to her room at the back of the house. Nothing had changed in the three months since she had last visited home. The window seat was still lined with the assortment of cuddly toys from her childhood that she had never been able to throw out. A pile of books sat by her bed where she had left them; some loose revision notes were still on her desk, along with an exam timetable and a handful of pens stuffed into an old jam jar. She remembered how anxious she’d been, about to return to college for her final semester, but looking back, she couldn’t understand what she’d been so worried about. They’d been simpler times. Much simpler, she thought, unpacking her case and putting her clothes in neat piles on the candy-striped duvet: the smart black skirts, the silk blouses, the clear-lensed black-framed glasses. The art gallerist’s wardrobe she would no longer be needing.
She showered, dried her short brown hair and changed into her favourite gingham sundress, then picked up the phone to call Connor. There was no escaping the conversation, not when her mother had already called his parents and invited them round. She rehearsed some dialogue in her head as her hand cradled the receiver, disturbed only by a deep baritone, smooth, well-spoken, British, from the hall.
She frowned as the voice called again.
‘Hello. Is anyone there?’
She could not hear any footsteps coming to greet their caller, so she went downstairs and saw three people collected in the hall. An older but attractive man, notable by his sheer size – at least six foot three tall, and broad, extending his hand as Jennifer reached the bottom of the stairs.
‘Bryn Johnson. My wife Elizabeth and son James. Your father’s expecting us. The door was open.’
He had a bullish confidence, but he was the sort of man who could get away with it. Jennifer thought her mother would dislike him on sight.