Echoes of Love Read online

  Rosie Rushton lives in Northampton. She is a governor of the local Church of England secondary school, a licensed lay minister and passionate about all issues relating to young people. Her hobbies include learning Swahili, travelling, going to the theatre, reading, walking, being juvenile with her grandchildren and playing hopscotch when no one is looking. Her ambitions are to write the novel that has been pounding in her brain for years but never quite made it to the keyboard, to visit China and learn to sing in tune.

  Other 21st Century Austens, by Rosie Rushton:

  The Secrets of Love

  Summer of Secrets

  Secret Schemes and Daring Dreams

  Love, Lies and Lizzie

  First published in Great Britain in 2010

  by Piccadilly Press Ltd,

  5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR

  www.piccadillypress.co.uk

  Text copyright © Rosie Rushton, 2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any

  form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

  recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the

  copyright owner.

  The right of Rosie Rushton to be identified as Author of this

  work has been asserted by her in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  A catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library

  ISBN: 978 1 84812 054 9 (paperback)

  eBook ISBN: 978 1 84812 172 0

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Bookmarque

  Cover illustration by Susan Hellard

  Cover design by Simon Davis

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  ‘One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it . . .’

  ( Jane Austen, Persuasion)

  ANNA STARED AT THE NEWSPAPER HEADLINE, HER SHAKING hands making the type wobble in front of her eyes. This was all she needed – why today of all days, on top of everything else?

  She glanced down the hall towards the half-open sitting room door. She couldn’t let her father see this, at least not right now. She knew exactly what effect the photograph and article beneath it would have on her volatile parent; and considering the mood he had been in all morning, there was no way she was going to give him anything else to sound off about.

  She scanned the headline, the full force of the wording making her even more certain that she had to keep it from her father. If she hadn’t taken a break from practising for her Grade 8 saxophone exam and come into the kitchen to get a drink, she might never have spotted it until it was too late. She couldn’t just bin the paper – he would be sure to scour the house till he found it. Under normal circumstances, he’d have read it from cover to cover by now but the early arrival of Marina Russell, Anna’s godmother, and the ensuing argument that was still raging between them in the sitting room, had put paid to any kind of normal Saturday morning routine and the paper had been left on the kitchen table untouched.

  ‘Hi – we’re back!’ The front door slammed and Anna, torn between the overwhelming urge to throttle her two sisters and the determination to keep this latest development from her father, ripped out the offending page and stuffed it into the back pocket of her jeans. She tossed the paper to one side, just as her sisters, weighed down with a variety of brightly coloured, and very expensive-looking shopping bags, burst into the kitchen.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Anna shouted, all the tension and anxiety of the past hour exploding in a stream of words. ‘Not that I need to ask. You know what? You two are unbelievable!’

  ‘Calm down!’ Gaby, her older sister, protested, pushing past her and heading for the fridge. ‘You can’t complain – we did ask you to come and you said you wanted to practise your sax.’

  ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ Anna stormed, cutting her short. ‘This is important, and all you two can do is go shopping. Marina’s been here for ages and . . .’

  ‘Well, that’s one good reason for us not to be, then,’ Mallory, her younger sister by just thirteen months muttered, dumping her bags on the table and kicking off her sandals. ‘A morning spent in the company of the Voice of Doom or three hours’ retail therapy at Bicester? No contest!’

  ‘That’s the last place you should have been,’ Anna stressed. ‘We don’t have the cash any more.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Anna, chill out!’ Gaby sighed, slamming the fridge door shut and ramming a straw into a carton of blueberry smoothie. ‘We didn’t need cash. We put it all on my card. Dad said he’d clear it.’

  ‘Oh, and you listened to him, right?’ Anna retorted in exasperation. ‘What planet are you on? Dad hasn’t had any work all year, remember?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘He’s had to sell the racehorses, he’s got rid of the boat,’ Anna went on, ‘and Marina says he’ll have to —’

  ‘Marina says, Marina says,’ chanted Mallory, pulling a sparkly vest top from one of the bags and fingering it lovingly. ‘It’s none of her business. No way is she going to spoil my weekend!’

  ‘Anyway, what’s the problem?’ Gaby asked, running her fingers through her long dark hair. ‘Selling all that stuff must have fetched thousands – I guess that’s why Dad said we should get ourselves a load of new gear while we had the chance.’

  She cast a somewhat disparaging glance at Anna. ‘Look, I can hardly turn up at modelling agencies looking like last year’s has-been, can I?’ she added. As well as studying fashion design in London, Gaby had done a couple of low-key modelling assignments for a freebie newspaper and now had aspirations to become star of the catwalks as soon as possible. She glanced at Anna’s faded jeans and downtrodden pumps. ‘At least Dad understands how important it is to look good, even if you don’t.’

  ‘It might be more to the point,’ Anna muttered, ‘if he realised how important it was to stay solvent.’

  To her dismay she felt her eyes pricking with unshed tears as she wrenched open a drawer. ‘See this lot?’ she shouted, throwing a pile of envelopes on to the table. ‘Final demands, letters from solicitors and . . .’

  ‘That is absolutely, downright ridiculous!’ Anna’s words were drowned out by the sound of her father’s voice booming from the sitting room. ‘Do you honestly expect me to even consider such an outrageous suggestion?’

  Anna’s stomach lurched. She hated confrontation and she knew full well that the biggest one ever was about to take place.

  ‘Walter, just let me finish.’ Even at a distance, Anna could detect a note of impatience under the softer tones of Marina, the woman who had attempted to inject a modicum of common sense into the Eliot household since the death of the girls’ mother three years earlier. ‘And before I say any more, I really do think that the girls should be in on this.’

  ‘There’s nothing for them to be “in” on,’ she heard her father stress. ‘I’ve said my piece.’

  ‘Well, I disagree. Girls!’ The sitting room door flew open and seconds later Marina, ignoring his protests, came striding into the ki
tchen. She was a tall, imposing woman, with silver-grey hair swept up in a chignon. Her obvious affection for the Eliot family had caused close friends to speculate that she might marry the widowed Walter. This was never going to happen, partly because Marina was firmly of the view that men were all very useful in their place but that one wouldn’t want one under one’s feet all the time; and partly because she was far too sensible to tie herself to a man who was not only a spendthrift, but too devoted to his own needs to have much time left for anyone else. She was, however, a frequent visitor to Hampton House, and even had her own ensuite bedroom on the second floor – a leftover from when she had helped nurse their mother; and, as Walter was prone to grumble on a regular basis, she treated the place – and the girls – as her own.

  ‘Ah, you’re back – at last!’ she commented, eyeballing Gaby, who turned away with a barely disguised look of contempt.

  ‘Now look,’ Marina went on, taking a deep breath and perching on a stool, ‘we need to chat. Your father and I have had a long talk about the sale of this house and . . .’

  Gaby exploded. ‘No way would Dad sell this house, now or ever! He promised.’

  ‘Gabriella, your father is in the habit of making promises he can’t keep – that’s half the trouble,’ Marina replied acerbically. ‘There’s no getting away from the fact that he is deeply in debt and something has to be done. If Walter does what I suggest —’

  ‘He can do whatever he likes – it’s none of your business!’ Gaby snapped, her face reddening.

  ‘Gaby, of course it’s her business,’ Anna burst out. ‘You know Mummy asked her to look out for us, and anyway, she’s only trying to help. God knows, we need all the help we can get.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Gaby muttered, picking up the newspaper to immerse herself in the horoscope page. ‘Hey, what’s happened to the paper? It’s a total mess.’

  ‘Now, as I was about to say,’ Marina continued, talking over her and tucking an escaping strand of hair back into place, ‘I have managed to come up with a solution which might – just might – suit everyone and mean that Hampton House can remain in the family.’

  ‘So we don’t have to move?’ Mallory said hopefully.

  ‘Well, it’s not quite as straightforward as that,’ Marina admitted, avoiding her gaze. ‘Anna dear, why don’t you make a pot of coffee and then we can all sit down with your father and talk this thing through like adults?’

  It occurred to Anna, as her sisters stomped moodily out of the kitchen behind Marina and her dad, that making coffee was the easy part. Expecting adult behaviour from anyone else in her family showed a faith that was as touching as it was naive.

  Anna pulled the newspaper cutting from her back pocket, smoothed out the creases and, casting an anxious glance over her left shoulder to ensure that her father was still occupied in the other room, scrutinised the photograph – the photograph of Cassandra Wentworth. Anna couldn’t look at her without being reminded of Felix. If it hadn’t been for her, she thought, I’d still be with Felix.

  She crumpled the paper and shoved it back into her pocket. What was the point of even thinking about it? It only made her miserable – miserable and angry in equal parts. And not just with Cassandra, but with her dad and Marina; and with herself for the way in which she had allowed them both to manipulate her.

  ‘I know I can never replace your darling mummy,’ her godmother had said repeatedly at the time, ‘but she was my dearest friend, and I want to try to do what she would have done had she still been with us. And she would have been saying just what your father and I are saying, believe me.’

  And I did believe her, Anna thought, breathing in the aroma of percolating coffee. I was taken in by all that stuff about how Mum always took Dad’s side, bolstered his image no matter what, and I should do the same, and show loyalty . . . Oh yes, Marina had done a great job. Right down to that gentle, but often repeated phrase, ‘Just imagine what your mummy would be saying right now.’

  Those words had been enough to make her do just what she was told. But now, she wondered whether in fact her mother really would have meant her to give in so easily. Alice Eliot had been a sensible woman who kept both feet firmly on the ground. She was no quitter, and she had always been the one to calm her husband down when his over-inflated opinion of himself threatened to cause trouble yet again.

  ‘Give it six months and you’ll have forgotten all about this,’ Marina had told Anna every time she found her sobbing in a corner. ‘This is just puppy love – it’ll pass.’

  But Anna hadn’t forgotten and it hadn’t passed. There wasn’t a single day when she didn’t think about those magical few months before she messed everything up and lost the most perfect guy in the world.

  ‘Anna? What’s taking you so long?’ The sound of her godmother’s voice snapped her thoughts back to the current crisis. (Was there ever, she wondered, going to be a time when her family would lead a normal, mundane life?) She dumped the coffee jug on to a tray, tipped the contents of the biscuit barrel on to a plate, took a deep breath, and prepared for the next major upheaval in the Eliot family saga.

  As she slid the tray on to the glass coffee table in the sitting room, it struck Anna that it wouldn’t be difficult, even for a total stranger, to form a pretty accurate picture of the Eliot family dynamics from a quick glance round the room that morning.

  Her father, immaculate as ever in cream linen trousers and a handmade lilac shirt, was frowning into the ornate mirror suspended above the marble fireplace and pulling fiercely at a stray grey hair. Throughout his colourful and somewhat chequered life, her father had had several passions – racehorses, classic cars, yachts, and yes, Anna’s mum – but none was as over-riding as his love of himself. Years earlier, when the girls were younger and he was still one of the country’s most popular chat show presenters, he had delighted in scouring the internet for reviews of his shows, and far from dodging the paparazzi when out with his family, he had positively encouraged them. His extravagant lifestyle and willingness to share his views on any subject under the sun made him perfect tabloid fodder; his tendency to lose his temper on live TV boosted the ratings – and just as his deep gravelly voice had brought him plenty of work in voice-overs, so his rugged good looks were in demand notably, for a short while at least, as the Face of Pinnacle – ‘the cosmetics range for the man mature enough to care for his skin.’ It was, Anna thought now, as she poured the coffee, a pity that he hadn’t had the maturity to care for his finances while he had still had a job. Several unfortunate outbursts on air just before his wife’s death had cost him his job with the BBC, and the disclosure that he was heard to have said that he considered Pinnacle products to be over-priced rubbish but he’d promote them as long as they paid him mega bucks, meant that a new Face of Pinnacle had long since graced the pages of the upmarket magazines.

  He had had hopes of a great comeback with his two shows, Walt on Wednesday and Walt at the Weekend, on ITV3 and for a while it seemed as if his star might once again be in the ascendant. Such hopes had been abruptly dashed after what the press had delighted in calling ‘The Walter-gate affair’ – something for which Anna knew deep down he still blamed her. She loved her father dearly, but knew that, as Marina was heard to mutter on more than one occasion, he was a media has-been; the only person who seemed oblivious to this fact was Walter himself.

  Not that he was the only member of the family who had an inflated opinion of their own importance. Gabriella, three months short of her twentieth birthday, and home from university for a long weekend, was her father’s favourite and always referred to as ‘the pretty one’. In fact, she was more than pretty; she was stunningly beautiful and knew it. Tall and willowy with a bosom to die for, long dark hair and eyes the colour of cocoa beans, she was at that moment sprawled on the larger of the two white leather sofas, alternately buffing her nails and flicking through the latest edition of Vogue, muttering ‘That would look so much better on me’ or ‘gorgeous’ at every fashion
advert. Gaby had innate style, bags of confidence, and a total lack of sensitivity to the needs of others.

  Mallory, at seventeen the youngest of the three and home from boarding school for the weekend, was ‘the fragile one’ and the only one of the girls to take after their dead mother, in looks if not in character. She was slender, with azure-blue eyes that filled with tears on demand, ash-blond hair that fought against her straighteners on a daily basis, and pale skin that now, in the middle of summer, was dotted with freckles. But while Alice Eliot had been feisty to the end, never once complaining or asking ‘Why me?’ as she battled the cancer that was to kill her, Mallory was permanently imagining the worst possible outcome from every scenario and looking to other people to rescue her from any situation that she found even mildly challenging. Despite the fact that she could be hugely irritating on a regular basis, Anna felt very protective towards her; since Gabriella didn’t have a maternal bone in her body, it had been Anna who had effectively taken her mother’s place and cared for Mallory when she was younger and it was a role that she still felt duty-bound to continue, even though she was well aware that Mallory milked it for all it was worth.

  Watching her sister now, perched on the window seat with her bright pink mobile phone clamped to her ear, it was easy to guess that she was engaged in the activity she was best at: twisting other people round her little finger. In this case, it was Charlie Musgrove, her boyfriend; Anna worked that out, firstly from the forced coyness in her sister’s voice and then by the sudden switch to a pleading ‘but you promised me’, when there appeared to be a chance that she wasn’t going to get to dictate what they did that evening.

  And then there’s me, thought Anna, catching sight of her reflection in the ornate mirror over the fireplace as she passed her godmother a mug of coffee and a chocolate ginger biscuit. Oval face, dimpled chin, deep-set grey-green eyes and hair the colour of wet straw that was a throwback to her grandmother, from whom she had also inherited her talent for music. Her godmother always referred to her as ‘the sensible, clever one’ which Anna knew she meant as a compliment but that right now seemed merely a reminder of how boring she was. Her sisters, both of whom she loved dearly, but neither of whom could be called reliable, had more fun than she did; even Mallory didn’t lie awake at night worrying about exams, the future, or whether anyone would ever love her again. And neither of them would dream of beating themselves up for every little mistake they made the way she did over the whole wretched Cassandra business. Stop it, she told herself. You messed up. You blew it. Get over it.