When he reached the hotel in Bordeaux, about thirty-six hours after getting on the plane in Perth on Tuesday night, Seth booked a wake-up call at reception for an hour’s time and kicked off his shoes, sprawling fully clothed on the quilt. As flights went, the long haul from Singapore to Paris hadn’t been bad but it was always madness at Charles de Gaulle. He’d had forty minutes to clear customs and make the regional flight to Bordeaux. About an hour in the air, half an hour to disembark, a taxi-ride and check-in later he’d finally been able to get horizontal.
Every time he’d tried to sleep on the plane, he’d thought about Remy, in his office. He’d hear himself telling her to stand against the wall, and she’d give that little moan.
None of which made getting any sleep particularly easy. Finally, his body succumbed to the long flight.
When the wake-up call came, he woke fast.
Throwing off the covers, he rubbed his hand through his hair, yawned, stretched, and was looking for a fresh shirt in his travel bag when the phone rang again, his mobile this time. He felt a jolt run through him, a hope that it might be Remy.
He tried not to feel disappointed at the name on the caller ID. ‘Hey. I thought you gave up checking in on my flights years ago?’
‘You never stop being a mother, darling. How was the flight?’ The connection was perfect. Ailsa could have been next door, not half the world away.
‘Fine. Long. I’m about to head downstairs for dinner. What’s up?’
She laughed: a stretched, synthetic sound, like tearing one of those old vinyl Elvis records she loved. ‘I think you could safely say we’ve seen better days, darling.’
‘What’s up?’ Seth said again, sharper this time.
‘That Hanley girl sprayed the cabernet block with something called,’ Ailsa paused over the unfamiliar word, ‘oxfluorofen this morning. It’s some kind of herbicide—’
‘I know what it is,’ Seth interrupted. ‘But how?’
‘From what we’ve been able to gather she mixed the wrong chemical in the spray tank. She said she had a brain-fade. I’m not so sure about that but anyway, it hardly matters after the event.’
‘Shit.’ The back of his thighs hit the mattress with a whump. ‘Greg discovered it in time?’
‘Rina was coming back from Margaret River about lunchtime, our time, thank God. She saw there was something wrong and she raised the alarm.’
‘Shit,’ he said again, struggling through the fog of jet lag. ‘She wasn’t feeling well when I left. If she wasn’t concentrating, that might explain it.’
Ailsa made a sound in her throat. ‘She’s the only one who knows what happened. She’s saying it was an error—I hope so, Seth. I hope it was human error because I’d hate to think she’d done it on purpose.’
‘Well that makes zero bloody sense. She’d never mean to do it.’ He thought about Remy’s love of growing things; the way she could spot orchids from twenty paces in the bush; and how she’d eyeballed him when his big feet had come too close to squashing one of those lady donkey cowslips.
‘She was upset last night in your office … I thought—’
‘She wasn’t well and she probably should have stayed home. Remy must feel terrible.’ He wished he was there to tell her it would all be okay. ‘What’s Greg doing about the vines? Did he call the WA Ag Department? There’ll be a precedent for this sort of thing. They could tell him what to do.’
‘Greg seems confident he has it under control. Only time will tell.’
Seth grunted. ‘I’ll email Pops Trimble, but can you get Rina to tell him I want a report every day on how the vines are responding. I want to be kept in the loop.’
It was a fuck-up, and as employee fuck-ups went it was up there, but it sounded like they’d found it early enough, sounded like Pops had it under control. ‘Lucky vines are tough. It might set them back a few weeks but it shouldn’t kill them, if Rina saw it fast enough. I’ll call Remy.’
‘There’s not much point doing that.’
‘Why not?’
‘She doesn’t have her phone anymore.’
He was getting damn tired of asking all the questions. ‘Why not?’
‘I took it off her.’
‘Mother?’ A question and a warning. He’d been in planes and airports for almost forty hours. His patience was thin.
‘I asked for her resignation, Seth. She gave it to me.’
‘You shouldn’t do that without referring it to me.’
‘I’m a director of this company—’
He cut her off. ‘I want to speak with Remy, Mum. I’ll talk to her. Bring her back.’
‘Don’t you dare,’ Ailsa spat, getting so worked up, Seth thought she might have a stroke on the other end of the line. ‘You can’t see it, can you? She’s a disruptive influence and after today Rina and I shouldn’t have to tell you she’s also damn well incompetent. What type of message does that send to the other staff if you bring her back?’
‘If she’s incompetent, Pops would have told me. This is an accident. Shit happens.’ He stared around the room. He’d drawn the heavy drape earlier. He opened it now, looking out the window at the Bordeaux lights. ‘I’ll get the first flight home.’
‘Don’t do that.’ Ailsa let out a sigh. ‘Look, darling. That’s not all.’
‘What do you mean that’s not all? What the hell else can go wrong?’
‘I didn’t want to have to tell you this over the phone, but there’s more. Darling, I hope you’re sitting down.’
‘Spit it out.’
‘Seth, Remy accused you of sexual harassment.’
Seth dropped the drape. The Bordeaux lights winked out. ‘She what?’
***
Ailsa Lasrey hung up the phone on her eldest son and permitted herself a tight smile. She’d done the best she could. She’d bought herself a few weeks.
She’d convinced Seth that if he came home now, he’d look guilty. ‘Finish your trip, darling. Stick to your schedule. She’s not going anywhere. We can thrash it all out when you get home.’
Seth might try to phone Remy sooner, Ailsa didn’t doubt that. Her son would want answers and he’d want those from the source. That’s just the way Seth was.
Ailsa knew Seth didn’t believe her. Not quite—amazing how hard he’d fallen for Remy, and so fast. But when he got home and Remy was gone, and Ailsa told him about the cheque she’d taken … Cheques. That would change things. She was banking on it.
Money talked.
Remy wouldn’t be easy to find. Ailsa had taken her work phone and the Hanley’s didn’t have a home number. Not one Ailsa had been able to trace. With luck, in a week Remy and her mother would be interstate and out of reach.
Blake had been the immediate problem. Blake would never believe Remy deliberately poisoned those vines. Blake would want Remy given the benefit of the doubt.
Ailsa had called Blake before she’d spoken with Seth. She told him to take some time off to think about his surfing plans and work out what it was he really wanted. She’d even transferred $500 into his account. ‘Petrol money, darling,’ she’d told him.
By six o’clock the next morning, she knew Blake would be cruising past Perth with his surfboards strapped on the roof-rack and his music up loud, on his way north to the Bluff. The telephone reception up there was third world at best and Blake would be incommunicado for a fortnight. When he heard what had happened, it would be too late. Remy would be gone.
The girl had been an unfortunate blip. An expensive one as it turned out, but Ailsa could afford it. Seth had made her more money in his four years at the helm of Lasrey than Joseph had cobbled together in two decades. Seth would take the Lasrey name and brand far, she could feel it in her bones.
Without Remy around to distract him, everything would be fine.
Then her sense of elation cooled. Just because she’d got out of it easy this time, it didn’t mean another girl might not try to trap Seth in the future. He was like his father; that hot-blooded Italian heritage turned him into a fool for a pretty face. She’d have to think of a way to protect him, protect herself, from gold-digging females who might try to split the family, split the business.
Ailsa mused. Rina had proven herself a loyal employee, possibly even director material. With just Seth, Blake and herself, it was too easy for the boys to vote her down. A fourth director would even things up. A vote Ailsa could control on the board would be useful.
Plus Rina was in love with Seth. If she played her cards right, that was knowledge Ailsa could use.
She sat in her office for a long time that night, permitting herself a brandy in the small hours, slowly allowing herself to gloat over what she’d achieved.
Now she and Seth would have years to build the Lasrey Estate brand together.
Starting tomorrow. And the next week. And the month after that.