Chapter Two

Late February, Present Day

The weather wasn’t the best for taking the motorbike out, but it hadn’t had a good run for what seemed like months. Aidan Edwards decided just to go for it. He needed to feel alive again after the winter, so he would follow the road and just see where it took him.

It took him to a little village called Hartsford, and he stopped at a car park near the Folk Museum and walked up towards something he’d seen on his ride. And there it was – Hartsford Hall, an amazing old stately home. As he rounded the corner, he spotted the entrance, but the gates were locked today. Winter opening hours were in force, apparently, but he could see, at the end of what was originally a carriage drive, the Hall itself. It was a bit of a mish-mash of architecture. Amused, he scanned the walls and the turrets and the sash windows. Nothing really matched, but it looked like a great place. Friendly. The house had caught his attention and he had guessed the building styles would be varied. He was pleased to see he hadn’t been wrong.

Just walking past the main door was a girl, perhaps in her early twenties. He thought it was a very odd time of year for her to be carrying a squash racquet, then he saw a man come around the corner to meet her. She ran towards the man and they disappeared behind the Hall.

Aidan grinned and suspected they had their own indoor court – lots of these big old houses still had them – and he retraced his steps, deciding to continue along the road and into Hartsford itself. He was sure a village like this, with a Folk Museum and a stately home, must have at least one tea shop, and really, he could murder a cup of something hot. He flexed his fingers, stiff beneath his leather gloves and thought about the Hall. And he thought about his Great-Great-Uncle Robert – he would have known somewhere just like this place.

Aidan looked up into the leaden sky and smiled as an aircraft flew through the clouds on its way to sunnier climes. Yes. Robert would have felt at home in a place like this, he imagined. Aidan had read some of his great-great-uncle’s musings on the subject of stately homes – perhaps not this one in particular, but definitely a similar house – and the descriptions of the kind of life enjoyed in such places were etched into his mind. It had sounded heavenly – luxurious, extravagant, a never-ending whirl of pleasurable activities.

Robert had been brought up in Suffolk, not far from here. His father, the son of an Essex merchant, had been killed in an accident, and his mother, the only child of a wealthy Norfolk landowner, had died a few years later. Robert and his brother, Jack, had inherited the fortunes from each side, and had, by all accounts, enjoyed a fairly carefree life, mixing happily with all the local gentry. They appeared to have moved in exalted circles, despite their somewhat middle-class background.

Or, at least they had, until World War Two came along and changed their lives forever.

Aidan couldn’t even imagine how Robert must have felt when war broke out, presumably plunging him into a harsh reality he had no wish to embrace. How did one cope with something like that? Because the people living back then had had no choice but to deal with it. He shivered as he entered the coffee shop, suddenly very grateful to be surrounded by twenty-first century everyday life.

His own problems were extremely trivial in comparison.

Cassie thought about the Living History event for a couple of weeks, drawing colourful charts and making lists and daydreaming. She didn’t really want to bother Elodie with the little things she was noting about the weekend, so instead, she decided to mention it all to her friend Kate, who worked at the Hartsford Folk Museum.

Kate had the audacity to laugh when Cassie told her exactly what she’d sorted out and what she had shelved to ask Elodie about.

‘Kate! You’re my best friend. How can you even laugh at me?’

The girls were in The Green Dragon, Hartsford’s old coaching inn, enjoying a glass of wine and sharing a plate of chips between them.

‘I can laugh at you because you’re funny.’ Kate grinned and flicked her red hair over her shoulder. ‘I wonder if you put those two lists side by side, whether you’d have a bigger “done” list or a bigger “to-do” list.’

Cassie scowled. Kate ran the Folk Museum like a well-oiled machine. Everything would have been sorted and triple-checked by now if Kate was in charge of the weekend. Lucky Kate in her museum – Cassie would have loved a job like that. She had studied history and museum curatorship at university, before moving onto business, but she knew her life was tied up at Hartsford Hall, at least for the foreseeable future. She didn’t think business was her bag, really, but she had swapped courses when her father died, with a view to helping Alex out. Her brother had been angry and bitter about coming back to sort out the old Earl’s ‘messes’ as he called them, and he’d needed Cassie’s help.

‘I’ve done loads. The catering is practically sorted. I’ve done the project chart and I’ve almost chosen what outfit to wear.’ Cassie was emphatic.

‘All very important. But have you acted on the project chart at all? Done a risk assessment?’ Kate shrugged and dipped the final chip in mayonnaise. ‘Not that I know much. I’m just thinking of what I’d do. And when you say the catering is practically sorted, is it ordered?’

‘Not exactly. I’ve just worked out what I think I’ll need.’

‘Oh.’

‘What do you mean, “oh”?’

‘I mean “oh, I think you’ve still got quite a bit of work to do”.’ Kate drained her glass of wine and shrugged her coat on. She grinned at Cassie. ‘Sorry I can’t stay for another. I’ve got to Skype with my brother. Shall I tell him you’re asking after him?’

‘You can do.’ It was Cassie’s turn to shrug. She’d had a very brief relationship with Tom a while ago. It hadn’t lasted long. Tom’s relationships never did, yet there was never any animosity between him and his numerous ex-girlfriends. It had been fun while it lasted, exactly what Cassie had needed, and they’d parted as friends. ‘Kate, do you think I’ve taken on too much?’

‘Only you can decide that. What I would suggest, though, is that you try to pull in some help.’

‘I can’t ask Elodie. She can barely make it through the day at the minute.’

‘No, not Elodie. But how about Margaret or Delilah? I’m sure they’ll be sensible. I’m almost certain they’ll have been involved with the other events. And you can always ask me if you need anything museum-ish. I’ll see what I can rustle up for you if you think of anything.’

‘Thank you, lovely Kate.’ Cassie smiled weakly at her friend. ‘I shall take you up on that offer perhaps.’

She really thought that she would. And Margaret – one of the estate volunteers – and Delilah, who owned Hartsford village’s only café, were always willing to help. Calling them in seemed like a very excellent idea.

The two ladies looked surprised to see Cassie greet them with her iPad.

‘As you probably know, I’m trying to help Elodie out with the Living History weekend in August,’ Cassie told them. ‘Elodie will most likely deal with everything when she gets back to it all, but I’m standing in for now so I’m going to dash off a few emails and get the ball rolling. It all seems simple enough and I’ve still got ages yet, but I was hoping I could ask you two for some advice.’

‘Dash off some emails?’ Delilah looked puzzled.

‘Yes.’ Cassie brandished the iPad. ‘But I was hoping you would tell me what I needed to do. You know, what I need to do urgently and what’s not so urgent.’

She wondered why they both looked at the table top and avoided her eyes.

‘What? What’s the problem?’

‘Uhm,’ said Margaret, ‘you do realise you only have six months or so to get this done now, don’t you? And you’re not very experienced at it. I think maybe it’s best if you shelve this one? We’ll all do a lovely one at Christmas instead. And you can help out with that one.’

‘Christmas?’ Cassie was stunned. ‘But that’s months away.’

‘Exactly,’ added Delilah. ‘There’s a lot of work to do, you know. It doesn’t just happen.’

‘But as you say, we’ve got six months to get it all sorted. I can’t see any reason why we need to shelve anything.’ Cassie flashed up a document on her iPad. ‘I’ve already made a start.’ She cast a glance over the words and read them out. ‘Bunting. Strawberries. Champagne – possibly.’ She looked up. ‘We have to be a little cautious with the champagne. Some people might not want to drink. Maybe we need to include non-alcoholic beverages.’ She typed some words into the document and nodded. ‘Okay. Ice-cream van – or even an ice-cream bicycle.’ She looked at the others again. ‘They started manufacturing those bikes in the twenties, but during the war they stopped making so much ice-cream and the military requisitioned the bikes. I think it’s quite appropriate. I’ll have a chat with Kate about that. Anyway … And extra scones. Extra cake. Possibly sandwiches in the Gypsy Tea Caravan. I know we don’t sell sandwiches out of it at the moment but it’s something we have to consider. Extra biscuits. Extra tea. Extra—’

‘Cassie, darling.’ This time it was Margaret. ‘There’s an awful lot of food-related things there.’

‘Going by previous events,’ Cassie swiped another document open on her iPad and consulted it, ‘we can expect to treble the number of daily visitors. Treble it.’ She looked at them, from one to the other and smiled. ‘I’ve done the stats.’

‘Well done.’ Margaret’s voice was rather faint.

‘I’ve included bunting, remember,’ Cassie reiterated. ‘It’s not all food. I just know that last time we needed more clotted cream as the cream tea demand went through the roof. I’m trying to anticipate all that. Oh, and I’ve already mentioned the squash courts and the tennis courts to Elodie. You know.’ She waved her hand around expansively. ‘Last year when we started planning this.’

‘Those old courts are a little on the hazardous side at the moment, don’t you think?’ Delilah commented. ‘And I don’t think anybody ever started planning this properly, because the wedding happened and Elodie was planning that instead. So this is all still quite – unplanned. As I understand.’

‘The courts and the Spa area are all in my risk assessment, or it will be, once I’ve organised it.’ Cassie was quietly hoping that Elodie would be back in good time to sort that out. Cakes and bunting she could deal with. The rest seemed a bit scary. ‘Oh! But that’s something I’ve done,’ she said suddenly, tapping the screen. ‘I’ve already arranged the publicity material. I figured that was important to distribute early on. We’ve got leaflets going out to the motorway service stations and the local tourist information offices. They should be there next week. We should get quite a lot of footfall, thanks to them.’

‘So you’re advertising the event, but we haven’t really got anything ready to advertise yet?’ Margaret raised her eyebrows.

‘I suppose so.’ Cassie smiled widely at Margaret. ‘But like I say, we’ve got months yet.’

There wasn’t much left of Aidan’s great-great-uncle’s possessions in a physical sense. It was more the idea of what was missing that had always bothered Aidan. It had been bothering him a little more since his visit to Hartsford, and he’d started to think about Robert’s life.

It was a damn shame that Robert had chosen to join the RAF when he did. He’d been twenty-five when he was listed as Missing in Action, during World War Two. If he’d waited, he might have missed that air battle over France. If he’d waited, though, he might have been killed outright; one month, two months, three years down the line. There had never really been a good time to be in the RAF during the war.

Aidan looked at the black and white photograph of the young man in an RAF uniform, his hat at a jaunty angle, a gung-ho smile on his young, clean-shaven face. There was, however, a haunted look in his eyes – as if he was simply pasting on that smile and there was something else burning behind it. Then Aidan picked up the other photograph, an informal shot, taken, one assumed, at Cambridge, before the war.

Robert had been good-looking, that was for sure. Aidan studied the floppy, side-parted hair – much longer and more untidy than it was in the RAF shot – and looked at the crumpled tweedy-looking suit and open-necked shirt. That was definitely a young man who’d had a good time – and recently. Aidan smiled.

He turned the photograph over and read the inscription on the back for what seemed like the millionth time. Reach for the Star. Dance until we die. And for what also seemed like the millionth time, Aidan frowned and shook his head.

Robert had been a poet and a playwright and an author, and that only served to make it even more annoying that he had written ‘Star’ singular, instead of the usual ‘Stars’.

For a man who used each and every word perfectly and correctly, and could make images burst into life with the smallest tweak of a phrase, it had bugged Aidan ridiculously over the years that Robert had never written that quote down properly.

Why the hell hadn’t he?