Tilly Bagshawe - The Inheritance - Racy, pacy and very funny!

‘Oh, God. Really?’

‘Really. And I don’t think those are the assets he’s interested in, do you?’ She looked down at her boss’s wilting dick and grinned broadly.

‘I certainly hope not.’ Brett grinned back, feeling happier by the minute that he’d hired this girl. If they didn’t give him an ‘Investor in People’ award next year, there’d be no justice in the world. ‘Be an angel and hand me my clothes, would you? And call down and order a pot of tea for … what’s his name, the GSAM bloke?’

‘Kingham. Anthony Kingham. Will do.’

Brett had forgotten completely about the Goldman meeting. He must be tireder than he thought. He’d have liked to cancel, but it was too late now.

Never mind. The call to Angela and the kids would have to wait.

Max Bingley walked down Fittlescombe High Street with a spring in his step.

‘Good morning, Mrs Preedy!’

The village shopkeeper’s wife smiled and waved. She was wearing an old-fashioned apron with deep front pockets and had a wicker basket, filled incongruously with leeks, under one arm. She reminded Max of Mrs Honeyman, the village gossip from Camberwick Green , a 1960s children’s programme made with puppets that he and his younger brothers used to watch as kids. There was something wonderfully innocent and timeless about Fittlescombe that regularly took Max back to earlier, happier times. The Preedys’ shop was at the heart of it all, along with the excellent village pub, The Fox.

‘Enjoying the break, Mr Bingley?’

Mrs Preedy had unloaded her leeks into a crate of fresh vegetables outside the front door of the shop and was now polishing apples with the front of her apron.

‘I am indeed. Hard not to with such lovely weather.’

It was indeed a perfect day, blue-skied and warm for May, with the faintest hint of breeze carrying the scent of honeysuckle and early flowering jasmine on the air. Half-term had run late this year, and school wasn’t due to start again for another week, so the unexpected sunshine was an added boon. Max Bingley was thoroughly enjoying his new job as headmaster of St Hilda’s Primary School, and didn’t mind the idea of going back. But nothing could quite beat a week’s walking and fishing in the glorious Downs countryside. Not for the first time, Max said a silent prayer of thanks that he’d had the good sense to take the St Hilda’s job when it was offered to him.

When Harry Hotham, St Hilda’s headmaster of over twenty-five years, unexpectedly announced his retirement last year, and the governors approached Max about the position, he found himself on the receiving end of a relentless campaign by his daughters to accept the job. Max had been depressed since his wife, their mother, had died two years earlier.

‘You need a fresh start, Dad,’ said Rosie, now in her fourth year of medical school at Cambridge. ‘The Swell Valley is supposed to be ridiculously beautiful.’

‘You need a challenge, too,’ chipped in her sister May, already Dr Bingley and now studying for a second PhD in Medieval History in London. ‘Mum would hate to see you wasting away like this. You’re still young.’

‘I’m not young, darling,’ Max smiled, ‘but thank you for saying so.’

‘Well you’re not old,’ said Rosie. ‘More to the point, you’re a wonderful teacher. You have so much more to give professionally. And Fittlescombe’s a lovely village. I went there once for a wedding.’

‘I’m sure it is …’

‘We should at least go and take a look.’

All Max’s objections – he’d never taught in a state school, the pay was awful, he was a rotten administrator – were swatted aside by his daughters like so many pesky, insignificant flies.

‘You should have made head years ago, but you never pushed for it. And where better to make a difference than in a state school? Why should the wealthy kids get all the good teachers? Anyway, St Hilda’s is a charter school so there won’t be that much admin. The governors run it, and they obviously like you and your methods. You’ll have free rein.’

Little by little, Max had been worn down. Then he’d come to Fittlescombe, and walked into the cottage that May and Rosie had already found for him online. Half the size of his present house, Willow Cottage was utterly charming with its flagstone floors, open fires and enchanting sloping garden leading down to the river.

‘Private fishing rights, dad,’ May said with a wink. ‘And you wouldn’t need a mortgage.’

So Max took the job of headmaster at St Hilda’s, more because he lacked the energy to fight than for any positive reason. Now, nearly five months later, things were very different. He was very different. Revived and energized professionally in a way he wouldn’t have believed possible a year ago, he’d already had a profound impact at the school. Not everybody loved his old-fashioned methods – desks in rows, teacher at the front, blackboards and chalk and weekly tests on everything from spelling to times tables to French verbs. But the OFSTED report in March had given the school a glowing review, and if the current Year Six performed as well in their SATs as they had in the Easter mock exams, St Hilda’s had every chance of topping the West Sussex league tables. Quite an achievement for a four-room village primary school with a tiny budget and over thirty children to a class.

But it wasn’t only the school that had transformed Max Bingley. Day by day, week by week, the village of Fittlescombe had worked its magic on him, drawing him in and making him one of their own. The community was friendly, but it went far beyond that. It was the place itself, the solid stone walls of Willow Cottage, the church with its yew hedges and ancient tombs, the houses and shops squeezed together along the high street, like the last line of resistance against all that was ugly and vulgar and painful in this modern world. And then, of course, there were the Downs, surrounding Fittlescombe like protective giants, as vivid green as wet seaweed and as softly undulating as feather pillows. Max walked, and fished, and drank in the beauty of his new home like a humming bird gorging on nectar. And although his daughters despaired over the state of his cottage, and his utter lack of interest in painting a wall or hanging a picture, or even curtains, the truth was that the move to Fittlescombe had brought Max Bingley back to life.

At the end of the High Street he turned left, along the lane that led to the bottom of Furlings’ drive. Everybody in the village knew that a family of rich Australians had moved into the big house, the first non Flint-Hamiltons to live there in three centuries. Max Bingley had been surprised but delighted to learn that the new owners intended to send their daughter to the village school. Typically families with that sort of money sent their little darlings off to prestigious prep schools, like the one where Max had spent most of his career. Then again, Australians were supposed to be more down to earth and egalitarian by nature, weren’t they? Perhaps the Cranleys were champagne socialists? Either way, Max wasn’t above buttering up St Hilda’s new, mega-rich parents in the hope of a future donation to the school. He’d only been there a term and a half himself, but he already had a wish list for St Hilda’s as long as both his arms. More teaching assistants would be a start. And a central heating system that stood at least a fighting chance of seeing them through the next winter.

Straightening his tweed jacket, he headed purposefully up the long, bumpy drive.

‘Jason? Have you seen those cushions? They were in the big box. The one from the General Trading Company. Jason!’

Angela Cranley ran an exhausted hand through her hair. Brett was coming home tonight, for the first time. Home. It was funny how quickly Angela had come to think of Furlings in those terms. But nothing, nothing, was ready. The twin Knole sofas she’d ordered from Peter Jones had been the wrong colour and had had to go back. Her and Brett’s bed, shipped over from Sydney at Brett’s insistence because it was the most comfortable bed in the world, had been damaged in transit and now sat in the master suite with a huge crack in its antique mahogany headboard. The food order from Ocado had arrived, but the bloody people in Lewes had made a bunch of substitutions, including swapping out the seabass Angela had planned for Brett’s welcome-home supper with cod. Brett hated cod. And now the cushions – four large, down-stuffed squares of hand-embroidered Belgian lace, designed to cover the dreaded headboard crack – appeared to have gone missing in action.