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Jessica has become so familiar with the faces on the screen that she has to pretend to be taken aback by their beauty afresh.
“Wow,” she says. “Gorgeous kids.”
“Yes. They are quite striking. They take after my mother.”
“Oh, not their mother, then?” Jessica asks, feeling strangely defensive about this man stealing his children’s superior genetic makeup from Amber’s side of the family.
“Their mother is a very attractive woman. But these kids are in another league.”
She ignores the backhanded slight against her client as best she can. “So sixteen-year-olds who are used to the bright lights of the city, they must have found it challenging out here in the sticks. How did you entertain them?”
“Oh, they found ways to entertain themselves. It was a glorious summer, warm and dry every day. And they made local friends.”
“In the village?”
“Well, not really in the village, the village is, er…”
She waits for him to find words that won’t cause offense.
“Not really their kind of people, you know. And there’s probably only about ten kids here. But luckily there was a friend down the lane, a short walk away, and they hung out with her most days.”
“Oh yes? Who was that?”
“A girl called Belle.”
Bam! There it is.
“She lives in a place up the lane called the Old Farmhouse.”
“What was she like?”
“Oh, I didn’t get to meet her. The kids told me she was, er, agoraphobic, you know, never leaves the house. Kids these days and all their neuroses. Mad. Why can’t they just enjoy being young, like we did?”
“Ha,” Jessica says dryly, thinking of her own horribly fractured childhood. “Yeah.”
“Anyway.” He hits her with one of his charming idiot smiles. “How do you fancy a tour of the place? For your research?”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. I’d love to show you around. But you will have to forgive the state of parts of it. It really is still very much a work in progress. Here”—he holds out his hand for her still-full mug, and she passes it to him—“follow me.”
Jessica has been inside some remarkable houses in her time, but she quickly realizes never one quite so sprawling and ornate as this. She is awed by the existence of not one but two libraries, one of which is lined with linenfold carved mahogany panels and contains a secret door into the other, which, Sebastian tells her, was built simply to home the original owner’s first editions. There’s a huge kitchen overlooking the gardens that Sebastian tells her is about to be ripped out and replaced because the units are brown, and brown kitchens are a thing of the past.
“Teal,” he says thoughtfully, as they stand at the doorway. “Or perhaps a vivid sage.”
“You’re kinda nifty with color,” she says playfully.
“Oh, no,” he says, slightly apologetically. “Not me. My girlfriend. She’s into interiors.”
The secret girlfriend! Jessica hides her excitement. “Ah,” says Jessica. “I see. The woman’s touch. I thought I spotted it. Have you been together long?”
“Oh, no, just a few months. I mean, to be honest, I haven’t even told my ex about her yet. It feels a bit early, you know? Still quite fresh. Don’t want to, er…upset any applecarts.”
Jessica spies a set of spiral stairs leading down from a corner of the kitchen. “What’s down there?”
“A cellar, so I’ve been told,” he says, “but I’m too scared to go down.”
She eyes him, questioningly.
