THE FARCREEK TRILOGY
1
LADY LUCK
CARO FRENCH
COPYRIGHT CATRIN COLLIER
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY SIMON & SCHUSTER 1988
Caro French only wrote 3 books. Lady Luck, Lady, Lay and Lady Chance, which together make up the FARCREEK TRILOGY. I will be eternally grateful to her. The year I was given the contract to write “raunch” as Caro French I wrote five books, One Catrin Collier, One Katherine John and the three Caro French. As a result I was able to resign my full time job and become a full time writer.
Perhaps the most imaginative paragraph concerning Caro French was the biography I constructed for her.
About the author
Caro French has always loved and lived within sight of the sea. A member of two yachting clubs, she has taught sailing in America, and has since developed a taste for sailing the warmer waters of the Aegean. She now divides her time between English and Turkish waters, which she sails with her third husband.
Believe it or not – I did once teach sailing in America. As for the rest . . . pure fiction.
Chapter One
The blinds were drawn, bathing the room in the soft golden glow of dawn. The atmosphere, redolent with heady, musky oriental fragrances was warm, sensual, and strangely at variance with the green and gilt French Empire decor that could have graced a room in Versailles.
‘Do that again. Just there ... mmm ... more ...’
‘Sometimes I think you’re insatiable.’ Roy Morris slid back the shoulders of the silk robe Mandy Manners was wearing and tossed it aside. It hissed softly into a pastel puddle at their feet. She turned to face him, blue eyes mischievous, improbably gold hair delectably tousled, pink lips sensually parted, and her luscious body encased in a black satin and lace basque that ended a few inches below her waist. Beneath the final frill, suspenders snaked down her thighs holding up open weave, fish-net stockings.
Wearing nothing more than her underwear and a liberal lacing of Jasmine, she looked pert and provocative, and knew it.
‘You’ll find out just how insatiable when we’re together - for always,’ she purred, tweaking at the buttons on his shirt with the points of fingernails varnished the same shade as her lips.
He gripped her hands and kissed her, his mouth travelling over her throat to the swell of her breasts frothing over the top of the basque. Fingering a strap, he snapped it. She shrieked as the elastic sprang back and stung her shoulder.
‘Quiet! You’re going to wake Philip,’ he growled.
‘He’s going to have to find out about us soon,’ she pouted, annoyed with Roy for reminding her that she had a husband.
‘Soon is not today.’
‘Why not? Esme . . . ’
‘Esme is in a position to take me to the cleaners. And I’m not prepared to hand over everything I own to a wife who’s never worked, in order to live in poverty with a . . . ‘
‘With a what, Roy?’ she interrupted coldly.
‘We don’t have to talk about this now.’ He reached out, but she slid from his grasp.
‘Yes, we do.’ She perched on the gold inlaid frame of the water bed and crossed her arms. ‘What am I, Roy? Your bit on the side?’
‘If you were, I’d hardly have put you up for the steward’s job in the yacht club so you could stay on in Farcreek.’
‘Throwing crumbs to the poor?’
‘The yacht club’s hardly a crumb.’ Sulky and aloof she still had the power to dissolve his exasperation into lust.
"Mandy,’ he crooned soothingly, moving towards her and caressing her breasts with his fingertips. ‘Please, darling, don’t let’s quarrel. You’re uptight. It’s understandable with the interview in a few hours. But, don’t you see, that’s all the more reason not to antagonize Philip right now.’
‘Nothing would antagonize Philip,’ she countered scathingly. ‘He hasn’t looked up from a bottle since we received the eviction notice.’
‘You’re going to have to keep him under control when you take over the stewardship.’ He caressed her ear with his tongue. It was the one touch he knew she couldn’t resist.
‘Don’t worry,’ she drew closer. ‘I can handle Philip and - anything you bring up.’
‘Ow! That hurt,’ he complained as she tugged at his flies.
‘A touch of sadism to stop you from flagging.’
‘I never flag.’
‘Let’s put that to the Mandy test, shall we?’ she pushed him on to the bed. He lay back and allowed her to pull down his trousers and mauve silk, boxer shorts.
Before the morning chill had time to bite, she was astride his thighs, bouncing him into the bed. Roy closed his eyes to the eighteenth-century stencilled decor of the best, and only hotel Farcreek had to offer - which, courtesy of the recession that had bankrupted Philip Manners among other, more illustrious names - was soon to be under new management. For a few glorious, passion-filled minutes, he forgot Philip sleeping down the hall, but try as he may, he couldn’t entirely forget his business, or rather the current lack of it. That was one problem that persisted in hanging over him like a personal, doom-laden cloud.
Management consultancy had cruel overheads. To attract the most lucrative contracts, it was necessary to work out of palatial offices, employ attractive as well as efficient staff, and run limitless expense and entertainment accounts. The combination didn’t come cheap. The Blair and Brown years had been the halcyon age. The Morris Psychological Company Audit, which could be tailored to any company’s needs, had resulted in firms queuing up to use Morris Management Services, or MMS, as he preferred to call his brainchild. At the three thousand pounds a day he invoiced for his own services and the fifteen hundred he billed for the consultant psychologists who worked for him, who were never entirely happy with the seventy he paid them, it had, been a licence to print money. But the recession had affected every aspect of enterprise. Even efficiency audits. As one of his ex-clients had bluntly told him when he’d canvassed for work last week, ‘Got no more bloody staff for you to fire, Roy.’
He desperately needed to broaden his field of operation, but original ideas were scarcer than contracts these days, and both his bank balances, business and private, could be healthier.
‘You’re not concentrating,’ Mandy complained; steaming in frustration as the bed lapped to a halt.
‘My batteries need recharging.’
‘How many others are being interviewed?’ she demanded as he stretched his arms above his head and took a deep breath.
‘Two besides you, but as one is a girl, not a steward with wife to assist, she doesn’t count.’ He checked the time on his Rolex. It was an hour before the interior designer was due to arrive at his home. Rolling over he nuzzled the back of Mandy’s neck. She had a beautiful swan neck; it never failed to turn him on.
‘Who’s the other one?’ she whispered as his hands plundered her body.
‘Stop worrying about the damned interview. You have better things to do.’ He pushed himself up on his elbow and fiddled with the hooks and eyes on the basque. All he succeeded in doing was releasing a .small button of pink flesh.
‘Will we really be able to move into the yacht club this afternoon?’
Roy moved away, peeved because he hadn’t driven all thoughts other than carnal from her mind. ‘I’ve told you a hundred times,’ he barked brusquely. ‘I’m chairman of the selection committee. It’s my choice. And I’ve chosen you.’
‘Oh Roy, you’ve no idea how much being able to stay in Farcreek means to me.’ Her tears were genuine. The eviction notice Philip had received had been the second blow in a year. The first had fallen when her father had died leaving a trail of debts that had swallowed up his insurance policies and their home. Broke, homeless and shell-shocked, her saviour had arrived in the form of Philip Manners, her father’s best and oldest friend. He’d shown concern and offered practical advice along with a job in his hotel.
Sympathy and daily proximity had led to the blossoming of love in Philip’s heart - but if she’d been able to see into his future she wouldn’t have lavished such loving care on that particular blossom. Philip had proved to be a disaster of Titanic proportions- but Roy wasn’t. Roy was rich, successful, and owned the most modern and luxurious house in Farcreek. She’d done well to hook him and would continue to do well as long as she kept him coming back for more. But that meant keeping him happy.
Forcing back her tears, she knelt on the bed, yanked up the cups on the basque and unfastened the hooks and eye beneath them:
‘Here let me.’ Roy, reached across, and pulled at the next fastening. A ghost of a smile played around his lips as he prepared to allow himself to be mollified.
‘Roy, you know I’d do anything for you.’
Still slightly peeved, he flicked the roll of flesh below her breasts. ‘If you worked out now and again so you’d lose this?’
‘You wouldn’t like me if I was all muscle,’ she whispered as the basque joined the robe on the floor. ‘I wouldn’t be able to do this. Or this . . . or this . . . .’
He drowned.in warm, naked, perfumed, female flesh. ‘Remind me to give you a key to the cabin of the Earned Enough I,’ he croaked. It had been the Earned Enough until he’d bought a motor boat, which he’d christened, Earned Enough 11. At the time he’d dreamed of owning a fleet. A dream he’d had to temporarily shelve, along with buying his own restaurant;
‘I won’t need it for long.’
‘Why?’ He shuddered pleasurably as her blonde head burrowed between his thighs.
‘Because we’ll have to move into our own place when you leave Esme. Where will we live, Roy?’
‘The creek,’ he replied vaguely. ‘And in the meantime, you running the yacht club will make it so much easier. For both of us.’
Lisa Michaels clutched her dressing gown to her throat and tentatively opened the door of her bedsit. She left the lock on the chain, and glanced nervously through the gap to check if anyone was around. The day she’d moved into the house she’d discovered that no time was a good time to use the shared bathroom. Even now, at six o’clock in the morning, she ran the risk of running into one of her fellow lodgers needing to throw up after oozing in from a late-night party. But she hadn’t heard any movement on the stairs for over an hour, and she was hoping that for once, just this once, she could have a bath without an irate hammering on the door.
She held her breath. The student who had fallen over the rotting mats outside her room an hour ago was snoring down the hall. Stepping gingerly forward she dived into the bathroom and thrust home the large bolt she’d bought and screwed on to the mouldering woodwork herself.
She wrinkled her nose as she turned around. The smell was overpowering, nauseating. The bath was cracked and stained with revolting conglomerations that had lifted the enamel in places, exposing the rusted metal beneath. A toilet-roll lay limp and sodden in the centre of a pool of foul-smelling liquid that flooded the broken vinyl.
Tears started in her eyes at the thought of the apartment she’d left behind in the restaurant her parents had run successfully for twenty-five years before leaving it to her.
She remembered the designer en suite bathroom Colin had insisted on building on to the master bedroom; the clean fresh lines of the marble floor and wall tiles, the Jacuzzi, the shower cubicle -with its eighteen heads strategically placed to cover the whole body; the sunken corner bath, the gold-plated Edwardian taps on the shell-shaped twin washbasins . . .
Clenching her fists, she pushed the memory determinedly from mind. There was no point in remembering unless it was to recall how easy it had been for Colin to manipulate her into handing over the deeds to raise finance for his own business venture.
‘Just a little loan until I get us on our feet, darling. Once the money starts coming in you won’t have to work unless you want to. We’ll be able to employ people. Take some time out. Be alone. Just the two of us. Have a holiday –a world cruise. That would be nice wouldn’t it?’
She could even feel the warmth of his lips as they’d closed over her own.
She needed to remember everything - because whenever she pictured his face, suntanned and smiling; his figure long, lean and finely muscled beneath the smooth lines of the Armani suit he’d pined for until she’d capitulated and bought it for him, she was in danger of falling in love with him all over again. What a bloody fool she’d been.
To be taken in by a handsome face, a pair of gorgeous blue eyes and a mouthful of empty promises. And what a bloody fool she was being now, mooning over a man who’d cold-bloodedly fleeced her of every penny het parents had left her, while standing in a filthy shared bathroom, in a filthy old house she wouldn’t have even been able to rent a room in, if it hadn’t been for the kindly concern of a sympathetic man in the DSS who’d eaten in her restaurant when it had still been hers.
Tucking her towel and toilet bag beneath her arm, she tipped a generous mixture of cream cleanser and neat disinfectant into the sink. After a thorough scrubbing she laid her towel and bag next to the tap then set about the bath, the toilet and the floor, heaping the toilet-roll and filthy rags that lay in the corners of the room into a black plastic bag she’d pushed into her pocket for the purpose.
Twenty minutes later the room stank of disinfectant instead of musty, indeterminate filth, and she was, if not content, at least resigned.
She finally ran her bath, trying to ignore the scabs in the enamel that no amount of bleach, cleanser or scrubbing would lift. She bathed and washed her hair then glanced in the brown spotted mirror. Trying to ignore her pale, thin face she swept the dark mass of soft curls, first one way then another. Putting it up was definitely the best option.
She hadn’t been able to afford a visit to her hairdresser since the repossession ten weeks ago; But, to look on the bright side, she still had one good outfit that she hadn’t sold on to the discreet upstairs rooms of Betsy Crawford’s boutique. Conran, charcoal cashmere, she’d bought as part of her trousseau. The waist on the skirt was four inches too large, but she could remedy that with a belt. All of her good jewellery had gone, pawned for a ‘few weeks’ by Colin before the world had finally caved in on both of them, but she’d hung on to a bottle of Chanel and her make-up. It would last her if she was careful, six months if she didn’t go out much. She only hoped it wouldn’t take that long to find a job. She had to get out of this place! She simply: had to. If she didn’t get this job, then . . . then what? The next?
The hard, unpalatable truth was she didn’t have anything else lined up. It had taken two months of application forms and letters just to get this single interview. She screwed her sponge into ball and clenched her fists.
‘Please, please, let it be this one,’ she prayed fervently. After ten weeks of living in squalor she simply couldn’t bear the thought of another day. Not one, more single day.
Adam Cullen fumbled warily towards wakefulness. Even before he opened his eyes he was aware of a disgusting taste in his mouth and a booming pulse in his head that spoke of hangover. He was also aware of a body lying next to his own, warm, with smooth skin covering soft, rounded contours. He turned on his side and moved his hand upwards, encountering long strands of hair. Opening one eye he squinted at the colour. Blonde! Had to be one of the Morris twins, the question was, which? He’d never been able to tell Davina and Lucinda apart.
He had vague memories of dancing with one or the other in the Blue Parrot, of getting into their car, of driving to Farcreek yacht club - he opened his other eye and registered the wooden bulkheads and Spartan decor - he was on board his yacht, Lady Luck. The only wonder was that they hadn’t fallen into the creek when they’d boarded it.
‘Why is Davina getting preferential treatment, Adam?’
He rolled over. Identical blonde hair spilled over the pillow on the other side.
‘Both of you,’ he groaned. ‘No wonder I feel so foul.’
‘That’s not what you said last night.’ Davina sat up. The duvet fell back exposing more of her than he could cope with at that time in the morning. ‘
‘I don’t remember much about last night.’
‘Pity, you missed quite an experience.’ Davina looked over Adam’s head to her sister. ‘He performed quite well, all things considered, didn’t he?’
‘On a scale of one to ten, five.’
‘Five!’ Adam exclaimed.
‘That’s not bad, considering what you downed in the yacht club.’
‘We drank in the club?’
‘Bloody Marys.’
‘I remember being in the Blue Parrot . . . ‘
‘And when they threw us out, you said, "Let’s go back to the club.’’’
An ear-splitting burst of heavy metal blasted into the cabin. Both girls ducked beneath the covers. Climbing over the twin on his right, Adam stepped out of bed and reached for the remote control. Obviously he’ hadn’t been too drunk to set the alarm on his mobile. Silencing it, he padded naked into the stainless-steel bathroom. Switching on the shower he stepped inside the cramped cubicle and stood under water jets he’d adjusted to his exact body temperature. An angry little man was playing bongo drums inside his head, if ten minutes of this didn’t work, he’d have to resort to aspirin.
‘Playtime.’ Davina opened the door and slid her fingers between his thighs; tickling his testicles.
‘Not this morning, sunshine.’
‘Come on, Adam, hair of the dog and all that,’ Lucinda sidestepped past her sister and joined him under the jets.
‘I don’t like playing this kind of squash. Please . . . ‘
‘When you said that last night, that’s just what we did.’
‘Not this morning. I have things to do.’
‘They can wait.’ The girls closed in on him, one in the front, one in the back, their hands busy.
‘Damn you,’ he snarled, losing control.
‘My turn.’ Davina pushed past her sister. ‘You had the last ounce of fun from him last night.’
Adam opened the door, and pushed the girl nearest to it out.
‘Adam!’
‘I prefer my private moments to be just that.’ He slammed the door in her face and turned to her sister.
‘Davina and 1 always share everything.’
‘Not me.’ He ran his hands over Lucinda’s slim, wet flanks.
‘You didn’t mind last night.’
‘If I’d been conscious, I might have.’ He took a sponge from the shelf, squirted shower gel on it and rubbed it over her breasts, rousing her nipples to hard, crinkled peaks.
‘You’re conscious now, and there’s just me. What are you waiting for?’ Lifting her arms, she gripped the shower-head with both hands and levered herself upwards, clamping her legs around his waist.
‘I didn’t know you were this good at gymnastics,’ he wheezed as she squeezed the breath from his body.
‘For this sport you need to keep in shape.’ She wriggled downwards, teasing his erection with delicate touches of the soft skin on the inside of her thighs. Unable to hold back a moment longer, he thrust forward and upwards.
She moaned as he entered her, wrapping her arms around his neck as he crushed her fiercely against the wall.
Outside the cubicle Davina listened to the thuds and banging and stared at the cubicle wall, wishing it was made of glass.
Frustrated, she pressed the lever that sealed the bath plug, surveying the sink-sized tub critically as she poured half a bottle of Adam’s bath oil into the water. Consoling herself with the optimistic thought that Adam was bound to have some energy left, she decided it might be as well he was squeamish when it came to troilism. It was going to be a tight squeeze to get two into a space that size as it was.
Lisa Michaels climbed into the battered Volkswagen she’ bought from her ex-barman with the one hundred pounds the receivers had allowed her to keep. It had four bald tyres and no seats in the back, but it represented transport and more importantly, independence. The worse thing she’d found about being declared bankrupt was being on the receiving end of people’s kindness.
She took the road that led out of Traceport to Farcreek.
She could have driven along it blindfolded. Her grandparents had been tenant farmers on the Farcreek estate and some of her happiest childhood memories were centred around the Home Farm her grandfather had managed for Farcreek Manor.
She stopped the car on the brow of the hill above the creek. The site afforded the best view of the gently sloping, wooded hills at the mouth of the creek, and the creek itself, with all its hidden branches and inlets, so the council had flattened the grove of beech trees that had stood on the spot since Tudor times, replacing it with a solid, eminently serviceable and ugly layby. It was glaring white concrete, litterbins, picnic tables and benches and as a final imaginative touch, a snack shop shaped like a giant apple which was mercifully only opened at the height of the season. But for all of their planning, they hadn’t been able to destroy the view.
Leaving the car she walked to the edge of the concrete apron, stepped over the safety fence and breathed in deeply, feasting her eyes on the living map spread before her.
She hadn’t realised how starved of beauty she’d been since she’d left Farcreek for Traceport. She looked for, and found the roof of her restaurant across the yacht-spattered, sun-kissed expanse of water. It was set low on the opposite slope, nestling amongst the trees that obscured the narrow, winding road that horse-shoed the creek. Deliberately turning her back so she couldn’t see its boarded windows and black and white SOLD sign, she looked out to sea, catching a glimpse of Traceport’s new Marina that had spilled out over the foot of the headland.
So many changes in so few years. A veritable city of yachts berthed in neat, tidy rows set alongside gangplanks instead of being raggedly attached to buoys in the bay.
And inland, row upon row of red-bricked, slate-roofed, ‘desirable Marina properties’ constructed to the same specifications as all the other waterfront properties that had been built up and down the country during the past few years.
The sight depressed her, so she turned half-circle to look up the valley, and over the woods that swept down to the water’s edge. Thank God for the Commander. He would never allow Farcreek land to be developed as long as he drew breath.
Houses in Farcreek were few and far between, and to use estate agent’s terms, exclusive and sought after. So exclusive not one of the half a dozen houses that bordered the creek had been sold on the open market for more than fifty years. Simply because would-be buyers always outnumbered sellers.
But to her, Farcreek would always be the manor, although it was not as splendid as some of the modern mansions, especially Roy Morris’s which the local MP, Tom Cullen had christened, ‘Crass Creek’.
Long, low, built out of grey stone, Farcreek Manor had been tucked into the hollow beneath the hills and above the water-line since the first Farcreek had built it with gains from Henry Tudor’s dissolution of the monasteries. Five centuries later the builder would still recognize his work.
Little changed by succeeding generations, it looked more like a run-down farm than a manor. Smoke curled from only one of its twelve chimneys, and more windows were shuttered and grimy than open and polished.
Walking on a swathe of sea-grass that rolled down to the creek was the Commander himself, immaculately turned out in the Guards officer’s civilian uniform of blue blazer with highly polished brass buttons, grey trousers, open-necked shirt and red cravat. Despite his years, his bearing was still erect, the only concession to age was the stick he leaned on from time to time as he strolled ahead of two immense Dobermans.
Her father, in a teasing mood, had once told her that Commander Farcreek had been a pirate. She’d believed him. It had .taken very little imagination to picture a youthful Commander climbing the rigging with a cutlass between his teeth. And later, when she’d seen a television documentary detailing his wartime exploits, she’d discovered that her early impressions hadn’t been so very wrong.
He shaded his eyes, looked up towards her and waved.
She glanced at her watch. It wasn’t yet eight and the interview wasn’t until ten-thirty. Why not? Two minutes later she was back in her car, chugging down the narrow lane towards the track that led to the manor.
‘No short skirts. You don’t want to antagonize the women on the committee. And make sure Philip is sober.’
‘You told me the job is ours,’ Mandy brushed a fleck from Roy’s white sailing jacket.
‘And so it is, but from what you’ve said Philip is capable of blowing anything in his present state.’
‘Not this time. I’ve locked up the brandy.’
‘In a hotel?’
‘The stocks are run down.’ She kissed Roy goodbye; slipping her hand inside his trousers one last time before he went out through the side door. He backed out hastily, fighting the urge to retrace his steps as he walked down the jetty towards his motorboat. What was it about Mandy that never failed to arouse him? She wasn’t as attractive, or as imaginative as some of his previous mistresses. It was - what?
An indefinable something he couldn’t get enough’ of. Like his first encounter with fine wine, the more he tasted, the more he wanted, and just like his predilection for wine, he often wondered if he’d ever entirely be free from desire for her.
He checked the time. The interior designer would have arrived by now. He revved the boat engine hard. Perhaps he ought to consider French Empire style for his own bedroom? He never trusted Esme to make decisions on decor. She had absolutely no imagination when it came to the important things in life.
‘Thought it was you I saw up on the bluff.’ The Commander greeted Lisa when she pulled up in the cobbled courtyard at the back of the manor. ‘Haven’t seen you since you left the restaurant. Bad business, but then that’s what you get for marrying a scoundrel.’
‘I suppose it is.’ The smile on her face grew more strained.
‘What you doing with yourself now?’
‘Cooking you breakfast, if you’ll let me.’
‘Now that’s an idea. Don’t think Susie came back last night from her carousing in Traceport, not that it would make much difference if she did, at least not to my breakfast.’
Lisa took the arm the Commander, with old-world courtesy, offered her. It was a complete mystery to her and everyone else in Farcreek just why he employed Susie Trent as his housekeeper, when Susie on her own admission was anything but domesticated, and judging by the hospitality she offered the Commander’s guests, quite .possibly the worst cook in the county.
He unlatched a door and they walked into an immense farmhouse kitchen. Stone flagged, furnished with an enormous wooden table and giant-sized chairs that looked as though the house had been built around them; even they were dwarfed by the vast cooking range that belted out heat into the spring atmosphere.
‘Susie keeps the bacon and eggs in the pantry.’ The Commander took possession of the chair closest to the range.
Lisa knew her godfather too well to expect him to help.
Tying Susie’s apron over her skirt, she removed her jacket and walked into a larder that was larger than most modem kitchens. Hanging above a marble slab was a flitch of bacon and next to it a wicker basket of eggs. She carried both to the table.
‘Eggs fried or scrambled?’
‘Scrambled, and toast with real butter, none of that damned whale oil substitute Susie’s been buying lately.’
‘She’s watching what you eat?’
‘Only because she insists on listening to that fool of a doctor who thinks he knows everything, when he knows nothing.’
Lisa tried and failed to suppress a smile at the notion of anyone trying to change the Commander’s ways.
‘You still haven’t told me what you’re doing up and about this early in the morning,’ he fished.
‘Checking nothing’s changed in the creek.’
‘As if I’d let it.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Aren’t you dressed a bit smart for a ramble around the woods?’
‘I was hoping I’d run into you.’
‘You could have come here after you were evicted from your place. Sent Susie up to tell you so.’
‘I know, I saw her. She was kind. Everyone was.’
‘So that’s why you had to get away?’
Lisa dropped the rashers she’d Cut into a pan. ‘You understand?’
‘Wouldn’t have taken any charity myself if it had happened to me. What have you done with that worthless man you married?’
‘Nothing. I don’t even know where he is.’
‘If I’d been a year or two younger I’d have gone after him. Not that it would have done much good other than give me satisfaction. Police don’t look too kindly on the revenge business these days, more’s the pity. World would be a lot sounder if a few scoundrels were horsewhipped or hung,’ drawn and quartered from time to time.’
Lisa took down a plate and removed a knife and fork from the table drawer. ‘Would you like to eat in here?’
‘What do you think I am? A bloody invalid? I’m not ready for the knacker’s yard yet, girl. I’ll eat at the table, or not at all. You’re not joining me?’
‘I will in a coffee.’
‘You’re too thin,’ he declared tactlessly. He leaned on his stick and walked to his chair. ‘Way too thin.’ Feeding up is what you need. Now if you move in here with me and Susie . . . ‘
‘I have my own place.’
The Commander didn’t push it. All the Michaels had been stubborn. He’d tried to get her grandfather to retire without success; the old man had dropped dead in harness, still working in the fields at eighty. Who was to say that wasn’t the best way? If he’d .gone ten years ago along with his wife, he wouldn’t be marking time now.
‘For pity’s sake stop primping woman!’
Mandy looked up from the tenth coat of glossy lipstick she’d applied to her bow-shaped mouth with the aid of the rear-view mirror and scowled at her husband. ‘I have to look good.’
‘What for? I don’t want this bloody job. I don’t even want to stay in Farcreek.’
‘Where else are we going to go? There isn’t much call for bankrupt hoteliers that I’ve seen,’ she
retorted acidly.
‘We could start again somewhere else.’ It sounded lame, even to his own ears. Every morning he woke to the grim realization that life, not sleep, was the nightmare; that he’d really lost his money, his hotel, his yacht and been declared bankrupt. And Mandy Wright, the sweet young girl he’d married had been transformed into a mercenary, hard, demanding bitch.
How much worse could things get? He looked out of the car window, saw the yacht club, tried to imagine walking into it as a steward, not a member, and started to laugh. A grim sound he saw had set Mandy’s teeth on edge. He reached into the inside pocket of his suit and removed a flask.
‘Oh no you don’t!’
Evading Mandy’s restraining hands; he unscrewed the top and drank. The brandy tasted bitter but he forced it down, unable to bear the thought of facing a day sober.
‘Just don’t say or do anything that will lose me this chance,’ she warned furiously. ‘As soon as the job’s ours, you can go to hell for all I care.’
‘I believe I’m already there.’
Choosing to ignore the remark, Mandy wound down the fluted gold case on her lipstick, slipped it into her Gucci handbag and led the way out of the car and into the club.
Lisa Michaels shifted uneasily on the hard vinyl seat and looked across at the two couples sitting opposite her. Both women smiled vacuously. Smiles she didn’t return. Life was so damned unfair, she reflected sourly. She needed, really needed this job, much more than either of them.
She knew both couples, it would have been hard not to in a place the size of Traceport. Twenty-year-old Mandy Wright had set tongues wagging when she’d married fifty-five-year-old Philip Manners less than four weeks after her father died. Everyone had assumed she’d been after his bank book and the Anchor Inn which, by dint of hard work and imaginative management, he’d turned into a thriving oasis of luxurious living and good food.
She’d heard rumours that Philip had taken to drinking since his marriage, and looking at him now, head down, slumped on the seat next to Mandy, she could believe them, but she’d heard nothing to indicate that the hotel was in trouble. Perhaps he just wanted to cash in his assets?
Though why anyone would willingly give up a business like the Anchor Inn escaped her.
As for Barry and Patricia Horton, everyone knew Barry’s father had built a conservatory for Jeremy Walsh last month. Jeremy was on the appointment committee. Had he paid for the conservatory? Or was he paying for it in kind now? The Hortons’ helped her parents run a pub in Traceport. They were making a living, or so she judged by the suit Patricia was wearing. Valentino, from the designer’s most recent collection. No sneaking upstairs to buy, let alone sell, in Betsy’s Boutique for Mrs Horton.
Lisa looked at the closed door, read the black and white ‘Committee Room’ label for the hundredth time, hid her hands in her skirt and crossed her fingers: If she’d had the courage to take off her shoes she would have crossed her toes as well. But she knew it was useless. Who would vote for a single woman when they had the pick of two experienced couples to choose from?
Chapter Two
‘We’re all friends here.’ Roy Morris sat back in one of the exorbitantly expensive, leather chairs he’d bought for the committee room with club funds, the contract going to the same firm who were re-fitting his office - at a generous discount.
‘Speak for yourself,’ Tom Cullen barked abruptly.
‘I was Tom.’ Roy used the soft, deceptively sleepy voice he’d cultivated over twenty years of developing and delivering psychological profiles. ‘I’ve nothing against the girl personally, and I agree the menu in her restaurant showed signs of flair. She may even have been a proficient manager up to a point. However, she is separated from her husband.’
‘So’s half the county,’ Tony Cullen, Tom’s third, and from a female point of view, heart-breakingly good-looking son interrupted.
‘Yes. But what I’d like you all to take on board is . . . ‘
‘We’re not bloody trains!’ Thirty years in business, ten of them ‘coming up the hard way, and fifteen years on the parliamentary back benches, had given Tom a deep suspicion of consultants and the jargon they employed.
‘I would have thought that the lack of a man in Lisa Michaels’ life would be an advantage given the predatory nature of most of the males in this club,’ Anna Cullen, Tom’s long-time ex-wife, sniped.
‘None of you are hearing what I’m saying.’ Roy’s patience was wearing thin. If Mandy didn’t get this post, she had only a few days left in Farcreek and in his present financial state he couldn’t afford to set her up in an apartment. ‘The appointment is steward and partner to assist,’ he stressed. ‘Lisa Michaels has no one to help her with the heavy work.’
‘The appointment is steward and person to assist,’ Tony Cullen corrected. ‘Being in management consultancy, I would have thought you’d have been aware of the Equal Opportunities Act.’
‘She doesn’t even have a person!’ Roy exclaimed in exasperation.
‘I can’t see there’s a problem. We’ve got that half- Chinese lad working here part time.’
‘The Chink?’ Roy snorted disapprovingly at Tom.
‘Racist as well as sexist?’ Tony reproached.
‘You don’t like John Chin? I thought you agreed with the rest of us that he should be given a bonus for bringing the Smiths’ fiddling to our attention?’
‘John Chin’s hardly what you call the reliable sort.’ Jeremy Walsh, Traceport and Farcreek’s estate agent and self-appointed property developer, picked up Roy’s cudgel
‘I agree with Jeremy.’ Roy toyed with a pencil. ‘What do we know about him? Only that he sailed in here six weeks ago in an exorbitantly expensive boat.’
‘He’s proved himself indispensable in the bar,’ contributed Betsy Crawford, an attractive, forty-something divorcee who owned several businesses including a modelling and. employment agency and the town’s most exclusive - and expensive boutique.
‘Apparently not only in the bar,’ Roy observed nastily.
‘Ladies, gentlemen, we are digressing,’ Anna steered the meeting vigorously back on course. ‘The tide will turn in half an hour. If the race is to go ahead as planned, we need to vote.’
‘Before you do, I would like to remind you all of Lisa Michaels background. After Mat Michaels died she ran his restaurant . . . ‘
‘Into the ground and bankruptcy.’
‘Her husband Colin, your cousin I believe, Roy, did that for her.’ Tom stared Roy coolly in the eye. ‘Worked for you at one time, didn’t he?’
‘I’ve employed a lot of consultants over the years,’ Roy countered.
‘Is that what you call them, now?’ Tony interposed.
While the wrangling continued, Tom did a quick count around the table. Anna rarely saw eye to eye with him but both she and Tony felt as sorry for Lisa Michaels as he did, and having eaten frequently in her restaurant were keen to get Lisa to take over the catering in the club out of pure stomach- and self-interest. Her father had been a past captain and a well-liked, respected member before a delivery van had crashed into his car on the creek road two years ago, killing him and his wife. The only mistake the girl had made was naivety in her choice of husband. Hardly a sin she was likely to repeat to the club’s detriment.
His accountant, and incidentally Lisa’s, had told him she was a first-rate manager. If she hadn’t allowed Colin Morris to use her assets as collateral, she’d be sitting pretty right now, but in the meantime all she could be sure of was three votes.
It wasn’t enough. Roy Morris and his inordinately quiet-son, Piers, the town’s vet, were obviously going to plump for Mandy and Philip Manners.
Tom felt sorry for the Manners, but not sorry enough to put the club in their hands when he’d heard from more than one reliable source that Philip had hit the bottle and hit it hard. Tom wondered if Roy was screwing Mandy, then decided he wasn’t interested enough to waste time considering the matter.
Jeremy Walsh was the proud owner of a new conservatory, not that he’d boasted about it, but Tom heard everything that was worth hearing in the town and he knew exactly who’d paid the lion’s share of the cost. Pa Horton, just as he’d forked out for other members of the committee’s home improvements.
That made three votes for the Hortons', three for Lisa Michaels, two for Mandy Manners and four floating.
‘Sorry I’m late.’ The door slammed back violently on its hinges. An upright, moustached old man, with a shock of grey hair and piercing blue eyes hobbled in. Wielding his walking stick like a cudgel, he swung it alarmingly over the committee’s heads before settling into a carved wooden throne at the end of the table.
‘Commander Farcreek,’ Ray smiled condescendingly.
‘We were just discussing . . . ‘
‘Know what you were discussing. Came to vote.’
‘You’re not on the interview panel,’ Roy murmured patiently, as though addressing a wayward child.
‘Don’t need to be. Saw the Michaels girl in nappies. Come to that; saw her father in them too. Eaten at her place. Good food. She’s got my vote.’
‘Given the bloody awful messes his housekeeper dishes up, I’m surprised he recognizes good cooking when he sees it,’ Jeremy Walsh whispered to his neighbour.
‘You spoke nephew?’ The Commander glared at Walsh, who lowered his head and contemplated his plump navel.
‘Commander, I must protest, this is most unorthodox!’ Colour rose alarmingly in Roy’s face’ as his temper simmered close to eruption point.
For the first time since the meeting had begun Tom Cullen saw a glimmer of hope. If the Commander wanted Lisa Michaels, most of the- committee would go along with him, including Betsy Crawford, who, notwithstanding the thirty-year age gap, had been after the post of Mrs Farcreek since the last incumbent had vacated it for the cemetery.
‘All those in favour of the Manners?’ Roy held up his hand. He stared in disbelief as all the others remained resolutely down. He glowered at his son. Piers to no avail.
‘The Hortons?’
Jeremy Walsh and the other two committee members, who’d had home improvements made recently, looked around in dismay. Three votes were not going to carry their candidate. The same thought crossed all three minds simultaneously. Would they have to pay more to Horton senior for the additions to their homes?
Tom beamed. ‘All those in favour of Lisa Michaels?’ he called. To his amazement Piers Morris’s hand rose alongside those of his wife’s, his son’s, the Commander’s and the rest of the committee.
‘Good!’ the Commander looked around the table. ‘No stupid abstentions. That’s what 1 like to see.’
‘I protest!’ Roy Morris lost his composure along with his reason. ‘President can’t vote at committee meetings.’
‘Makes no damned difference. Cullen’s candidate won even without my hand, and for the record,’ the Commander’s bushy grey eyebrows beetled together, ‘captain can’t vote any more than the president at interview committee. But seeing as how your candidate only got one vote, we’ll let it stand this once. Well, we going to race, or hang around here all day? See you at the finishing line.’ He-stormed out, creating more havoc than he had coming in.
‘Tony, Anna, boat.’ Adam Cullen, who’d finally managed to extricate himself from the clutches of the Morris twins, shouted to his mother and brother through the open door. He nodded briefly to Lisa before leaving for the jetty. He sympathized with her predicament but not enough to break the ten-year silence between them.
‘I’ll see you back here after the .race, Piers?’ Roy addressed his son.
‘Won’t be here. Expecting a calving up at Noakes’ farm.’
The door had been left open, and through the melee of people carrying wetsuits and oilskins Tom saw the two couples and Lisa Michaels sitting, waiting. Lisa on the edge of her seat, pale-faced, tense with strain; the others relaxed and confident.
‘Is the Chair going to inform the successful candidate of the outcome of the committee’s deliberations?’ Tom asked as the room emptied.
‘Chair of the Social Committee’s prerogative.’ Roy brushed past Tom on the way out.
Tom gazed at the two couples and Lisa through the open door. ‘Mr and Mrs Horton, if you’d like to come in?’
The door closed behind them.
Mandy Manners smirked. ‘They have to let them down lightly.’
Lisa Michaels rose to her feet. There was a dull pain in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t want to see Tom Cullen. Both she and her parents had dined in. his vast house overlooking the creek. He’d be kind, and right now, she’d had all the kindness she could bear. There was nothing else for it. She had to go - not home – but back to that disgusting little bedsit to think out her next move. She picked up her handbag and walked towards the stairs.
‘Aren’t you going to wait?’
‘No.’ She suppressed the urge to lash out and wipe the smug grin off Mandy Manners’ face.
‘Then I’ll pass on your goodbyes for you, shall I?’
‘You do just that.’ She turned her back and walked away.
John Chin, the part-time barman who’d been press-ganged into working extra hours until the committee could resolve the steward crisis, was clearing the bar of glasses when Lisa Michaels descended the staircase. One look at her face was enough to tell him how she’d fared. He felt sorry for her, but most of his sorrow was reserved for himself. He’d met Lisa once, liked what he’d seen, and had learned enough about her since from Tom Cullen’s canvassing to know that he could have worked with her. Which was more than he could say for the other candidates. Particularly Patricia Horton, whom he knew both by sight and reputation.
‘Buy you a drink, Miss Michaels?’ he offered as she paused outside the door that led to the open deck overhanging the creek.
‘I don’t think so.’ She reached inside her handbag for a tissue. ‘But thank you for asking.’
‘It would give me a chance to reciprocate. You bought me one three months ago - remember?’
She looked at him in surprise. ‘I remember, you came into the restaurant and asked for a job.’
‘You said you had nothing, but to try again in a month. You’ve no idea how that boosted my ego after eighteen, "you’ll be lucky mates".’
‘You were luckier than you thought. If I’d taken you on, you’d be drawing dole now. The restaurant’s boarded up and sold, No one even knows who the buyer is, or what they intend doing with it.’ She had to restrain herself from saying more. She’d pleaded with the bank manager to allow her to continue running the place until it was sold.
It made sense when half of Traceport’s businesses were on the market chasing non-existent buyers: But he had been adamant. His hands were tied. It was head office who set policy not him, and the bank was in the foreclosing, not restaurant business. Two days later he’d rung to tell her the bank had accepted an offer of a hundred and twenty thousand pounds for the place, the exact size of the mortgage Colin had taken out to effect his ‘improvements’, although the restaurant had been valued ~t half a million at the height of the boom.
She was left owing the bank charges and the conviction that she’d been stitched up.
‘Lots of people talk about your place in here. I think it’s sorely missed.’ John hoped he’d said the right thing. Even Roy Morris, who never praised lightly, had commented that Lisa Michaels was such a good cook she’d get a job anywhere. But then, what did Roy Morris know about job hunting? He couldn’t have been in the Traceport Job Centre lately, or read the ‘Situations Vacant’ column in the Traceport News: two lines asking for party planners and another wanting telephone canvassers for Horton’s Double Glazing, both jobs ‘commission only’. ‘
‘Do you like working here?’ Lisa stuffed the tissue back into her bag. She found herself strangely reluctant to leave. This was the first conversation she’d had outside of the Benefit Office or Job Centre in over a month. It was her own fault.
Ashamed at being put out on the street, she’d cut herself off from all her friends.
‘Can’t complain it’s not lively enough.’ John walked behind the bar. ‘What will it be?’
She hesitated, but only for a moment. She had nowhere to go except the bedsit, and the club was empty. ‘Gin and tonic, please.’ She pulled a stool up to the bar. ‘You didn’t apply for the steward’s job?’
‘I’ve little enough experience in bar work let alone catering. Besides, although I’m only part time it is permanent and I didn’t want to give the committee the idea I was looking for something better.’
‘I know what you mean. I’d sell my soul for- half a week’s regular work and wage.’
‘Ice and lemon?’
‘Thank you.’ She glanced over her shoulder. The Hortons were noisily pushing their way out through the front door.
‘Goodbye,’ John called after them.
‘I’m sorry,’ Lisa apologised, ‘if I knew your name I’ve forgotten it.’
‘John Chin.’
‘Well, John, it looks like you’ve a very sexy new boss.’
‘Lisa.’ She turned to see Tom Cullen at her elbow. ‘You didn’t wait?’
‘I didn’t think there was much point, Mr Cullen.’
‘Then you’re no longer interested in the position?’ he enquired testily.
‘Of course . . . ’ she stammered, ‘but I thought . . . ‘
‘The only question is how soon can you start? You did say "straight away" when we interviewed you. You know the predicament we’re in?’
‘Yes.’ The gin stood untouched on the counter. She could hear Mandy Manners’ voice raised in anger behind her.
‘It’ll be as the job description outlined. Salary paid for a steward and wife to assist, in your case you get the double salary but you’ll have to pay someone to assist you. Naturally the committee will want to approve your choice. John will be here, part time,’ he nodded towards the kitchen where John had retreated. ‘Twenty-five hours. If you want to change them you can, as long as you work it out with him beforehand. We pay his wages and all your living expenses on top of your salary. That’s rent, gas and electricity for the two-bedroomed furnished flat upstairs. You can see it in a moment. Plus of course all the catering profits. The Smiths cleared forty thousand a year, or at least that’s what they told the taxman. If your menu is anything like the menu you had on offer at your place, you’ll make more. You have a completely free hand when it comes to the catering. You want the job, or not?’
‘I can move in this afternoon.’ She was having trouble comprehending what he was saying. Didn’t she even have to sleep in that bedsit one more night? --’
‘Just one thing, Lisa, I think you should take a tip from your father’s book.’
‘What’s that Mr Cullen?’
‘He never mixed drink and work.’ He gazed at the gin and tonic John had poured her. ‘That’s a sure road to ruin for a steward. I’ll go to the office to get the keys of the flat. When you’re ready I’ll show you around.’
Lisa rose from her stool and downed her gin. ‘Congratulations very sexy new boss,’ John winked at her from the kitchen doorway.
Unaware just how much he’d helped her, Lisa stared after Tom. ‘Chauvinistic old bugger!’ she whispered to John as her heart turned somersaults. ‘Anyone can see that he didn’t want a single woman running this place.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Mandy shouted at John Chin as though he were deaf. ‘I have to see Mr Morris, now, this minute.’
‘Our esteemed captain’s just about to cast off.’ Betsy Crawford walked in from the deck and gave Mandy a smile of commiseration laced with pure malice. ‘If it’s club business perhaps I can help. As you’ve just seen, I’m on the committee.’ She bestowed a pitying glance on Philip who staggered past with his flask.
‘It’s nothing, really.’ Too late, Mandy realized she’d made a fool of herself.
‘Roy let you down?’ When Mandy didn’t answer, Betsy smiled. ‘It takes a wronged woman to know one, darling.’ She pushed a five-pound note over the counter; ‘Gin and tonic and brandy and soda please, John. The brandy’s for you,’ she turned to Mandy and eyed her up and down. ‘You look as though you need it. I ‘know I did when Roy ran out on me after promising to leave Esme. He never will of course. He’d be mad to. Esme’s the perfect wife. Well bred, trained, refined, a marvellous hostess and putty in his hands, if he ordered her to sleep in the dog basket she would. And, while Esme continues to turn a blind eye to Roy’s little romps, Roy will continue to make empty promises to his playmate of the month.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Mandy retorted stiffly.
‘Of course you do,’ Betsy contradicted flatly. ‘Roy can’t resist pushing things just one step too far, then when he gets found out he moves on. If he promised you the steward’s job, he overstepped the mark. It’s the committee’s not the captain’s to give, and the committee always take great delight in crossing the captain – whoever he is. It’s not the first time Ray’s ended up with egg on his face, He called an emergency committee meeting to try and keep Joy Smith on after her husband was caught fiddling. You see, he hates unnecessary change in his sleeping partners. Basically he’s too lazy to enjoy the hunt.’ She picked up her gin. ‘Cheers.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Mandy insisted vehemently, deciding that Betsy had guessed too much for her to start denying her affair with Roy now. Besides, the more people who knew the better. If word got back to Esme she might well throw Roy out and then’ he’d have no reason not to live openly with her. ‘He loves me. The minute he’s sorted out his affairs he’s going to start divorce proceedings,’ she asserted forcefully, not caring that Philip was standing outside on the veranda and could hear every word she was saying.
‘Affairs!’ Betsy chuckled throatily as she pointed out to sea. ‘You could be in for a long wait, darling.’
Mandy looked and saw Roy on board the Earned Enough. Next to him was the slim upright figure of a girl with long brown hair.
‘Her name’s Carol Cook. She’s just returned to Traceport after two years in the States. There’s talk that he wants her to work for MMS. And if she does, I’ll stake a month’s takings from the boutique that you’ll be history. There’s nothing like an ambitious graduate out to please the boss.’
The girl took the tiller and Roy put his arm out to steady her hand. Mandy picked up her brandy. When she returned the glass to the bar less than a minute later, it was empty.
Lisa left the club by the outside steps that led from the veranda to the car park. She paused to breathe in the clean, spring scent of the woods and the sea.
She had a sudden mad impulse to dive through the sun beams that danced on the water, and might have, if there hadn’t been so many people milling around, dumping life-jackets into dinghies and rowing and phutting out towards the yachts moored in deeper waters.
‘You moving in now?’ Anna Cullen strode across the car park, her stick-insect figure swathed in layers of bright orange oilskins.
‘Yes.’
‘If you don’t mind me saying so, that car of yours looks downright dangerous.’ Anna pursed her lips as she examined the tattered, rusty old Volkswagen.
‘It probably is,’ Lisa agreed.
‘If you’ve a lot of stuff that needs moving, go down to the farm and get Peter to help you. He should be in the chandlery stores.’
‘I couldn’t possibly . . . ‘
‘Rubbish. I’m not doing you a kindness. I hate cooking. None of the boys have eaten properly since your place closed, and the frozen chips and cardboard pies the committee have been buying in since the Smiths left aren’t a substitute for food. If Peter brings you back via the cash and carry on the way back, you should have time to cook something decent tonight. But make sure it’s hot and warming. None of your pretty little crumbs on black plates. Need something substantial after a race.’
‘I’ll do my best.’ Lisa blanched at the -thought ‘Of the cash and carry. Her restaurant hadn’t paid the last bill, or come to that the last six. They wouldn’t be too keen on extending her credit and all she had was five pounds left from her benefit.
‘Tell them it’s on the yacht club account,’ Anna shouted back, as though she’d read Lisa’s thoughts.
‘I’ll do that, thank you.’
Anna watched as she drove away. ‘Tom,’ she hailed her ex-husband as he left the clubhouse. ‘Telephone Perkins and Ash, tell them I’ll underwrite any account Lisa Michaels opens.’
‘Already done it against my name.’ He climbed into his BMW and drove away.
Tom stopped his car on the road that wound above Farcreek and watched Anna take the tiller of the yacht she’d named Deceived after she’d caught him drunk on board a French cruiser with a very attractive and naked French model. Fifteen years later, and more short-lived affairs than he cared to remember, he still couldn’t stop snapping at the woman as he’d done when they’d lived together.
‘I’m leaving you, Philip.’ Mandy stalked out on to the veranda of the yacht club and confronted her husband who, drink in hand, was leaning against the balustrade and contemplating the depths of the creek.
‘Would you like me to applaud?’ he slurred.
‘I’d like you to get into the car so I can drive you home,’ she asserted forcefully.
‘Home!’ he sneered.
‘For one more day.’
‘Enjoy it while you can, Mandy. I suggest you invite Roy Morris over to share your last hours there.’
She glanced over her shoulder. They had the veranda to themselves, but there were still people in the bar. ‘You’re making a spectacle of yourself,’ she commented acidly.
‘Quite possibly. But not as big a one as I did when I married you.’
‘I’m leaving, Philip,’ she repeated testily. ‘Right now.’
‘Goodbye’
‘Is that all you can say?’
‘What else would you like to hear? I enjoyed sharing you with Roy Morris? A reminder that you promised for better and for worse?’