Kristen Ashley - Sommersgate House

Lizzie threw her pencil down and slinked to the phone. She cast a brief glance in Julia’s direction as she took the phone from her brother and said, “Hello, Grandmother.”

Julia tried not to grimace.

Grandmother.

Patricia wouldn’t like that one bit. Monique was called “grandmother”. Patricia was Grammy, Gramma or just plain old Gram.

Julia watched Lizzie talking on the phone. The girl’s dark, normally lustrous, thick hair was lank and needed a wash. Her face was pale and lifeless.

Her dark blue eyes were dead.

Julia knew from her own conversations with the children over the last few months, not to mention the last several hours, that Ruby was taking the loss of her parents in stride. The child had always been a little strange. However, as Julia never had any children or been around any who had suffered such a tragedy, she couldn’t really imagine how a four year old would react.

Willie, on the other hand, was bearing up as any good Midwestern boy would, even though he’d been born and raised in England. He looked and acted exactly like Gavin at ten years old. Tall, straight, blond and blue-eyed, he was a handsome young man and it broke Julia’s heart to look at him, he so reminded her of her brother. Perhaps he had his dark moments but he never let either sister see, just like Gav would do. It was all teasing and light and any intense moments were saved for his own company.

Lizzie was remarkably different from both her brother and sister, not only in colouring, she being so dark (like Tamsin and Douglas) to their fair, but also in temperament.

The girl was not bearing up nearly as well. She was not like Gavin, Tamsin or Ruby. She was sensitive, stubborn and dramatic, quite like Julia herself. Normally quick-witted (and equally quick-tempered), smart and brimming with affection, the loss of her mother, who she adored, but perhaps most especially her father, who she was beloved by and loved herself (to distraction) had been a terrible blow. The twelve year old was having troubles and she had nothing familiar around her, her school and old school friends were gone and so was her home… and her parents.

She chatted to her grandmother for a bit, her heart obviously not in it, and then said, “She wants to talk to you again, Auntie Jewel.”

While taking the receiver Julia made certain to give her a loud, lip-smacking kiss on the top of her head in the hopes of gaining a familiar giggle but Lizzie just scuttled out from under the embrace and went back to her studies.

“Hi Mom,” Julia greeted.

Patty immediately went on the offensive. “All right, that’s it. His Lord and Master doesn’t even show up to dinner on your first night and she’s off on a yacht somewhere –”

Julia cut in. “Mom –”

Patty was having none of it and interrupted in return, “That’s simply not good manners. Forget it. Find out how to get those kids back home.” By “home” Patty meant their little farm town, fifteen miles west of Indianapolis, this topic being a recurring theme of their conversations these last months. “We’ll take care of them, you and me. We’ll give them a loving, happy home with big Christmases and pink frosting on their birthday cakes. Those two obviously have no interest.”

Julia had inherited the drama gene from her mother but never had quite eclipsed Patricia’s flair for it. Her mother was right, of course, but the kids had been through enough without throwing an ugly custody battle at them. Julia had to find some way to make this impossible situation work.

And impossible it was. With over a decade of the not-very-nice (to say the least) Monique Ashton yawning in front of her, without any family or friends of her own nearby and with everything familiar to her so far away, it was not only impossible, it was inconceivable.

And that was without taking Douglas into consideration.

Julia walked out to the doorway of the room and whispered, “I’ve been here a few hours, please give me time, let me see how it goes.”

“I’m coming for Thanksgiving. I can’t wait until spring term or whatever they call it. I want to see my babies,” Patty returned.

Julia’s mother wanted to be close to her baby’s babies. Gavin had been her pride and joy. She was using her drama to cover her grief and Julia was glad of it. This kind of Patricia she could handle, grand statements, dire threats she never intended to carry out, Julia was used to that. If her mother gave way to the mourning she was covering, Julia would lose it herself and she couldn’t, not now. She had to be strong.

“We stick with the plan, Mom. I need a chance to settle in here and the kids need it too. No more upheavals. No more drama. Please, please, let me handle it.”

Patricia hesitated for a moment and then sighed extravagantly. “Thank God you have Mrs. K, she at least, even through that English reserve, has got a heart in her chest. Okay, call me tomorrow. Love you, miss you already my Doll Baby.” And she hung up, not letting Julia say her own good-byes.

Julia walked back into the room and replaced the phone. She took a moment to study the kids; Willie and Lizzie doing their homework and Ruby playing some game by herself.

Julia was tired. No, not tired, exhausted. And she knew it wasn’t jetlag. Since the phone rang in the deep of the night five months ago, she hadn’t had a full night’s sleep. That same, awful night, she and her mother had rushed to the airport and then spent the next two weeks dealing with their own grief and the grief of the three children.

A car accident.

Gavin, Julia knew, drove too fast. It was raining. They were coming home from having dinner together at some country pub on one of England’s dangerously winding roads. It was dark. Gavin might have driven fast but the driver of the other car was driving faster, he’d lost control and gone over the centre line on a curve. Gavin had died at the scene, so had the other driver. Tamsin had lived for three days and thirteen hours but never woke from her coma.

She just quietly slipped away.

One summer, many years ago, while Julia was in England for a visit, they were in the garden, drinking Pimm’s and lemonade and watching Lizzie and Willie run through the hose that Gavin was pointing at them. It was then that they had asked her to be guardian to the kids if anything ever happened to them.

She’d said, “Of course!” In the way someone says when they’re honoured but they know they’re answering a question that pertains to an event that will never, in any darkest imaginings, ever happen. Ruby hadn’t even been born yet and Julia was still married to Sean.

Of course, she thought now as she watched the kids.

She hadn’t known that she’d be sharing custody with Douglas but they had told her they wanted her to move to England and she’d agreed to that as well. It wouldn’t happen anyway, so why should she worry?

Sean, as usual, had been angry. “It’s fucking cold there. I’m not moving there,” he’d ranted (even though it was colder in Indiana than it was in Somerset).

“It’s not going to happen so there’s no need to get angry about it,” Julia responded, as always, trying to soothe his foul temper (and, as always, failing miserably).

Now, Sean was gone, which was one less worry but perhaps the reason for another.

Why on earth had Tamsin and Gavin given joint custody to Douglas? Why had they asked Julia to move into this enormous, ghastly house with their kids and share that responsibility with a brother who was responsible to no one?

Julia knew Tamsin loved her brother and saw the best in him.

But Julia didn’t see it.

And how on earth did Tammy convince Gav?

A tremor went up Julia’s spine just thinking about Douglas Ashton.