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Authors: Anna Jacobs

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BOOK: Saving Willowbrook
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‘
We
shall find out.'
He smiled. She was definitely getting better.
Twenty
Rose woke early but Oliver was already awake, lying smiling at her.
‘How soon can we get married?' he asked.
‘As soon as your future is settled.'
‘O ye of little faith!' He pulled her closer, scattering kisses on her hair and forehead indiscriminately. ‘I have an interview for a part-time lecturing job at Bristol University. If I get it, things will be perfect. The rest of the time, I'll work in the practice with Dad.'
‘But that's taking you right out of A and E work.' She felt him go tense.
‘I don't think I want to go back.'
She knew then there was more to it than the brief outline he'd given her of the incident. ‘Tell me the full story, Oliver, every last detail of what happened to you.'
She listened in growing horror as she heard how he'd been taken prisoner by a man high on a cocktail of drugs, and locked in a chiller cabinet too small for a man his height. Of how he'd been trapped there for many hours before the negotiator had managed to talk his captor down. He'd recovered from the hypothermia but the psychological damage had been much more serious.
‘I think I'll go mad if I'm ever shut into such a cramped space again. Even small rooms like the consulting room at the surgery can be troublesome. I don't like cities, either, have to steel myself to enter them. They tell me it'll improve, but at the moment, Chawton and the Wiltshire countryside suit me down to the ground. I feel I can breathe here.'
‘Oh, Oliver.'
‘The nightmares don't come when I'm with you,' he finished. ‘I'm getting good sleep for the first time in months.'
She lay quietly, body against body, one hand laced in his.
‘I've never told anyone the full details without breaking down before,' he confessed.
‘I feel honoured. But Oliver, you worked so hard. That man's destroyed your future.'
‘Only partly. I'll still be lecturing in A and E organization and methodology. And I'll still be in medicine. And actually, general practice is more interesting than I'd thought, so I'll get myself properly qualified in that.'
‘Will that be enough?'
‘I don't know. If it isn't, we'll work something else out. I've been forced to move on, so I'll make a new life with you, here. In that sense, that man did me a favour because he sent me back to you.'
‘
Worry about things you can change and accept those you can't with good heart
,' she said softly.
He chuckled. ‘My psychiatrist says the same thing – but in much fancier words and he charges me a fortune to say it.'
As they drove back to Chawton after a leisurely buffet breakfast, they were both quiet again, but it was the silence of happiness, of two people in tune with one another.
Oliver braked abruptly as the surgery came in sight. They couldn't drive behind it to park, because there were crime scene tapes outside it and across the side entrance. A police car was parked there and an officer was on guard duty.
‘What the hell's happened?'
As they got out of the car and hurried towards the surgery, the officer came towards them. ‘Do you have business here, sir?'
‘I live here, above the surgery,' Rose said. ‘What's happened?'
‘I'm afraid there's been a break-in.'
She felt the world spin around her and terror choke her throat. ‘My trunk!'
By mid-morning, it was clear that the fire in the barn had been deliberately lit. Expert investigators came in and moved carefully through the building, sifting the ash, sniffing. They too could smell paraffin.
‘We don't need the sniffer dogs this time,' the officer in charge told Ella. ‘It's rather an amateur crime.'
‘Are there any clues as to who may have done it?'
He pointed to the ground. ‘There are footprints in the dust. Good thing you didn't tread on them. They're fragile things, easily wiped out. But we've got photographs of them now. Good thing you couldn't open the outside doors, too, or you'd have fanned the blaze.'
Ella looked at Cameron. ‘That's where the Lady stopped us walking.'
He was shaking his head, muttering, ‘I don't believe this. I don't.'
‘I do.' She looked round the barn. ‘How much damage is there, do you think?'
It was the arson officer who answered. ‘Surprisingly little. You've been lucky, caught it in time.' He pointed up. ‘There's smoke blackening round that area, of course, but not much actual damage, as far as I can see. The blaze was contained in this area, probably for lack of fuel. Fires are chancy things. Seem to have a will of their own sometimes.'
‘That's the more modern part of the barn, the part which matters least. It's being heritage listed at the moment, because those parts—' she pointed to them ‘—are medieval.'
He whistled. ‘You don't say! Got any idea of who might have done it?'
‘No.'
‘We'll bring the police in, then.'
‘Would you like a cup of coffee?'
‘Perhaps later? I've got things to do.'
He got into his vehicle and they saw him make a phone call then sit writing busily on some papers on a clipboard.
As Cameron and Ella walked back to the house, she said quietly, ‘Is it possible the Lady was watching over us, preserving those footprints?'
‘Until I came here, I'd have laughed at the mere idea. I didn't even believe in ghosts. Now . . . I don't know what I believe. Only, I did see something in the barn last night, we both did. And I can't explain what it was. It didn't look like a woman to me, just a shimmer of light.'
Ella gave a rueful smile. ‘I didn't think it worth mentioning our ghost to the arson investigator. He'd have thought I was crazy.' She reached out to open the house door, then stopped, giving Cameron a brilliant smile, looking fully alive again. He felt himself relaxing. Whatever had made her ill seemed to be passing.
‘I think you're meant to be here, to stay, to be part of our family, Cameron.'
‘I hope so.' He kissed her quickly on the cheek and followed her inside. If that meant living with ghosts, then that's what he'd do.
But who had set the barn on fire? He didn't want to live with the fear of a recurrence.
If it wasn't DevRaCom or Miles, the only person he could think of from his limited acquaintance with Ella was Brett Harding. Why would that fellow suddenly come back here? From what he'd heard, Brett was off to rehab on Monday. And anyway, with court cases pending against him, he'd surely not risk committing another offence? No one could be that stupid.
Miles drove up the track to the farm, braking at the sight of the fire investigator's marked vehicle. So those guys he'd had drinks with last night hadn't just been boasting. Someone really had tried to play a nasty trick on Ella.
A quick glance round showed the house intact, and the activity focused on the barn. Pity. He'd have been in a much better position if the house had burned down.
He got out of the car and walked towards the kitchen, knocking on the door. No one seemed to have noticed his arrival, so he knocked again and entered.
His mother turned round from where she was clearing up. ‘Miles! I'd forgotten you were coming.'
‘You always were a loving mother. What's been going on here?'
‘We had a fire in the barn – deliberately lit, they think.'
‘Did it do much damage?'
‘No.'
‘What a pity!'
She glared at him.
He spread his arms wide. ‘I'm not going to lie and say I care about this dump.'
‘No. You only lie when it suits you. Well, thanks to the fire, we're a bit behind, so I'm not ready yet to go out with you and neither is Amy.'
‘I can wait. How about a coffee? The freebie stuff in my hotel tasted like dishwater.'
‘I'll put the percolator on.'
Footsteps on the stairs made him turn to see Cameron come into the room.
Miles scowled. ‘You're beginning to seem like a permanent fixture.'
‘He is a permanent fixture, don't forget,' Stephanie said with relish. ‘He and Ella are engaged.'
‘I thought you might have reconsidered it. You'll regret it, you know. She's married to this house and you'll come way second to it.'
‘We both love Willowbrook. It's a magnificent old place.'
Stephanie broke the awkward silence that followed. ‘The coffee will be ready in a few minutes. I'll find Amy and get her ready.'
Miles sauntered across and took a chair, sitting astride it leaning his arms on the chair back to watch Cameron, who had started to put away the breakfast pans Stephanie had been washing.
‘So what's with this fire?' Miles asked after a while.
‘It was arson and you'll be one of the suspects.'
‘
Me?
Why me?'
‘Because you'll benefit financially if this house can't be listed. But don't worry. You're not the only suspect. DevRaCom's in the frame too.'
‘Biting the hand that feeds you with a vengeance now, are you?'
‘I was only ever a consultant, and DevRaCom wasn't my biggest client by a long chalk. I don't condone crime, whoever commits it.'
‘You seemed pally enough with Ray Deare when I saw you.'
‘If it's any business of yours, I've known Ray since I was a lad because he's a friend of my father's.'
Amy's voice floated down the stairs. ‘I don't
want
to go out with him!'
Miles saw the other man fail to hide a smile and felt his irritation ratchet up a notch. ‘Where's Ella?'
‘Cleaning out the chalets.'
‘I'll go and speak to her.'
‘You leave her alone. She's upset about the barn. She doesn't need upsetting further.'
Before Miles could speak, his mother came down, followed by a sulky Amy, clutching the scruffy teddy bear.
‘I'm not having that filthy old thing in my car,' he said at once.
‘You always were petty,' his mother said. ‘We'll be quite happy to stay at home.'
‘Oh, bring the damned thing, then. Why don't you bring the kitchen rubbish bin while you're at it.' Not his usual standard of wit, he decided, but the headache was still lingering. He led the way out, settled them in the car and drove off.
The restaurant he'd decided on the day before was large, furnished in garish plastics and full of families with small children. He didn't usually go to places like this, but he wasn't wasting more money than he had to on the brat. ‘What do you want to eat?'
Amy folded her arms. ‘Nothing.'
He looked at his mother. ‘What shall I order for her?'
‘Nothing. We can't make the child eat if she doesn't want to.'
‘She can watch me eat, then. I'm ravenous.' He ordered a large meal and consumed every mouthful of it, while his mother toyed with a salad and Amy sat looking more and more miserable, clutching that scruffy teddy to her narrow chest. Clearly the child had been spoiled rotten because of her disability. It'd do her good to face the consequences of her rudeness and go hungry today.
He tried to chat to his mother, but though he prided himself on keeping up with current affairs, she was almost monosyllabic and showed no interest in any topic he raised.
In the end he took the pair of them back early.
Clutching Oliver's hand, Rose went up to her flat, stared for a moment or two at the devastation she found in the living room, then went straight along to the spare bedroom.
Her tin trunk was missing.
She could neither speak nor move for a few moments.
She heard Oliver cursing fluently beside her, and felt his arm go round her waist. Closing her eyes, she let him explain to the police officer what was missing and exactly why it was so precious to her, not opening her eyes again till the man addressed her directly.
‘I'm sorry, Ms Marwood. We'll do our very best to get it back for you. What about the rest of your things?'
‘They don't matter.' She felt as if her whole life had been ripped apart by this theft. And when the burglars found nothing they could sell inside the trunk, they'd probably destroy it. Her life's work for the past few years! The work for which she'd given up the man she loved.
‘Please, Ms Marwood. Try to think.'
She couldn't hold back the tears. ‘I don't care about anything else. But I have nothing of value, no jewellery, nothing except that trunk.' She turned to Oliver. ‘Take me out to Willowbrook. I can't stay here.'
Looking anxiously at her white face, at all the signs of severe shock, he did as she asked, settling her in the car seat as if she was an octogenarian and driving out of the village at a steady pace, not trying to talk, watching her carefully every time he could take his eyes off the road safely.
Ray arrived at the farm just after lunch, as arranged. ‘Go slowly up the drive,' he instructed the chauffeur.
‘It's pretty countryside, even nicer than in the photos,' he commented to Sonia. ‘What could be better for our purpose? Absolutely unspoiled.'
‘Somewhere zoned for development would be better for a start.'
‘That can be fixed. We have a supporter on the local planning committee who's willing to help us. Someone who seems hostile towards our Ms Turner, for reasons he won't specify. And anyway, the government's encouraging more rural development these days. You know they are.'
BOOK: Saving Willowbrook
12.45Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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