Diana Hamilton - The Faithful Wife

Bella shrugged, flexing her stiff body, pushing her long black hair away from her face with the back of a gloved hand. It seemed sensible, but... ‘How long will you be?’ She hadn’t noticed any sign of human habitation for what seemed like ages, and the weather forecasters had got it wrong again. Suddenly the sky was heavy with cloud, pressing against the mountain flanks, the short winter day drawing to a premature close.

‘Half an hour?’ Evie was releasing the handbrake. ‘Get inside before you freeze.’ And she was gone, circling the car on the sweep of short winter grass, narrowly missing the sturdy wooden picnic table that wouldn’t see any use until families came here in the warm summer weather.

Bella smiled wryly, watching the little red car disappear over the brow of the hill. Trust Evie to forget the perishables, drive right past the place where she was supposed to pick them up! At twenty-five, three years younger than Bella, and holding down a responsible job, Evie still hadn’t outgrown her occasional periods of scattiness, or the impulsiveness that was such an endearing part of her nature.

Bella shivered, glancing worriedly up at the sky. Snow was beginning to fall, shrouding the tops of the mountains. But if Evie had said she’d be back in half an hour then the farm couldn’t be far away. Funny—she’d seen no sign of one herself...

Jake Fox pulled the hired Range Rover to the side of the track and consulted Kitty’s scrawled instructions. For a schoolteacher his kid sister had appalling handwriting. And an unfortunate taste in men-friends if the current cry for help was anything to go on.

His brows drew together, making a forbidding, dark line above the bridge of his thin, arrogant nose. The UK was the last place he wanted to be over the festive season. He didn’t need reminders of the events of a year ago.

He was in the middle of a series of successful business meetings in Geneva and had intended to fly out to Sydney, book into a hotel and settle down to paperwork, readying himself for the raft of meetings scheduled for the New Year. No stranger to concentrated work, he now embraced it with what he himself could recognise as something amounting to obsession.

He thrust the underlying reasons for that out of his head, his frown deepening as he scanned the suddenly darkening sky, the thick, suspiciously storm-like shrouds hiding the tops of the mountains. If it hadn’t been for Kitty’s stricken desire for his time and attention he would have been heading for the sun...

But he’d been looking out for his sister ever since his father had brought the family to ruin, his addiction to gambling on the stockmarket losing them everything—the family-run business, the four-bedroomed house in the prosperous suburbs, the lot.

Even though Kitty was now twenty-six years old he still thought of her as the wild and troubled twelve-year-old he had held in his arms and tried to comfort when their father had taken his own life. Eight years her senior, he’d felt his responsibility keenly—especially when their mother, worn out with grief and worry, had succumbed to pneumonia six months after the shock of the death of her adored husband.

He’d never thought of himself as having a protective streak, he thought wryly. But perhaps he did, to have agreed to cancel flights, hotel rooms and drop everything when she’d put that call through to Geneva, catching him at his hotel before he left for one of his most important meetings.

‘I need you, Jake. Spend Christmas with me? I’ve got to have someone to talk to; there’s no one else I can turn to! And, yes, before you ask, it’s Harry.’

The panic in her voice caught his attention. He said heavily, ‘I thought you and he were settled.’ Of all the men Kitty had dated—and to his knowledge they came and went like the flowers in springtime—Harry had become a permanent fixture.

Jake liked Harry, and had guardedly learned to trust him. Steady, good-humoured, also a member of the teaching profession, his influence on Jake’s volatile sister had been gratifying. They’d set up home together two months ago. Kitty’s letters and phone calls had been full of joy, and he’d planned to pay off the mortgage on their roomy Victorian house as soon as the banns were called.

‘What went wrong?’ he asked.

‘I can’t talk about it over the phone. But it’s trouble with a capital T.’ Her normally bubbly tones were absent; she sounded at the end of her tether. ‘Look, a couple I know offered me the use of their holiday home in Wales. I need to get away and think, and talk everything over with you. Please say you’ll come, Jake, just for a day or two? Please?’

He mentally jettisoned his plans for a quiet working holiday in the sun. The thought of a cottage in the Principality, in the dead of winter, wasn’t going to make him expire from over-excitement, but it was far enough away from London. He rarely made more than flying visits to head office now. Since he had sold the Docklands apartment.

So Wales it would be, and at least he could do his best to sort out Kitty’s problems—something he seemed to remember having to do all through her teens and early twenties.

And she was saying, taking his silence for tacit consent, ‘I knew you wouldn’t let me down, bruv. Look, I’ll post directions through to your London office. Drive up on the twenty-third. I’ll try and make sure I’m there ahead of you, but, in case I’m not, there’s a spare key in the woodshed at the back.’

And now, the final details of her written instructions committed to memory, he restarted the engine and drove on.

The whole package must have cost Evie a small fortune, Bella decided at the end of her tour of inspection. Two bedrooms were tucked under the eaves, small but cosy, with flowery wallpaper and high brass beds spread with top-of-the-range down duvets and patchwork covers. There was a sparklingly clean bathroom and farmhouse kitchen—pine and copper, with colourful rag rugs—complete with a real Christmas tree in a tub and a box of baubles waiting to be hung. The large living room was furnished with antique pine plus squashy chairs and a huge inglenook fireplace that promised long, cosy, relaxing evenings...

And, thinking of fires, it was time she got moving. It was the least she could do to have the place warm by the time Evie got back. And the best she could do was to forget her own unhappiness and put on a festive face, she told herself toughly as she wrapped the full-length, softly padded coat around her too-slender five feet nine inches and ran across the yard to the shed to look for fuel.

Ten minutes later she was squatting back on her heels, holding out her long-fingered hands to the dancing flames curling around the tinder-dry logs in the hearth, her ears straining for the sound of an engine that would let her know Evie was back.

She’d been gone over an hour now. A good half an hour longer than she’d predicted. Standing up, Bella switched off one of the table lamps and walked to the small-paned window, peering out into the near darkness. No need to worry. She forced her tight shoulder muscles to relax. Knowing Evie, she’d probably got into conversation with the farmer’s wife, accepted a welcome cup of tea and then another, oblivious to the passing of time. But it was snowing heavily now...

It was snowing heavily now, the wipers squeaking as they cleared the windscreen. Jake gritted his teeth in a humourless grin. Kitty had said she wanted peace and quiet, time to think. Well, she’d sure as hell get it, stuck out here. And if the snow fell at this rate for a couple of hours there’d be no getting away; she’d have more time than she’d bargained for.

If it didn’t stop in the next thirty minutes, he’d insist on driving her out. They could get to Abergavenny, find a hotel. He made his mind up quickly, with typical decisiveness, the deed as good as done. Then thanked his own foresight in hiring the sturdy four-wheel drive.