Camilla sat on the bumper of the midnight-blue Land Rover used to transport everyone to the shoot and watched her father raise his Holland and Holland shotgun into the air. A deep bang rattled around the watery grey sky, followed by the flutter of a bird falling to the earth. Oswald turned and beamed at the party watching: Philip Watchorn, Nicholas Charlesworth, Maria Dante and three Japanese businessmen who Watchorn had brought along to sweeten a deal. Decked out in a dark-brown Huntsford tweed jacket, long tweed plus twos, a canary yellow jumper and a flat cap tipped at a slight angle, Oswald looked like an eighteenth-century poacher.
Her father was in his element during the shooting season, thought Camilla, keeping her distance from the party. More than anything, she wanted to go back to the house. She wasn’t particularly against shooting, unlike Cate and Venetia. She quite enjoyed the smell of cordite pinching at her nostrils, and the feeling of being warmed up by lashings of Earl Grey tea, whisky and thick-buttered scones that were always served at the post-shoot tea. But today she was tired and irritable, and the sight of Maria Dante in a pristine waxy Barbour and thick make-up, pawing at her father, made her feel uncomfortable. A herd of spaniels leapt and barked, scampering off to retrieve the birds.
‘Bloody hurt my shoulder,’ said Oswald, pacing over to his daughter, rubbing it with a stout hand. Despite his protestations, Camilla could tell he was having the time of his life. Oswald caught sight of Camilla’s long expression.
‘What’s the matter with you? You’ve been miserable all afternoon. Either join in or go back to the house. You just look bloody ungrateful, sulking here by the car.’
‘We won’t be too long though, will we?’ said Camilla, standing up to meet him eyeball to eyeball.
‘We’ll go when the shoot’s finished,’ replied Oswald curtly, ‘and not when you have reached your boredom threshold.’
Oswald turned to look across the long expanse of grassland to the edge of Huntsford Wood where the dogs were dashing around looking for pheasants. He folded his gun over his left arm and began to stamp some mud off his boots.
‘I’m disappointed you’ve failed to persuade Catherine to come down tonight,’ he said, not meeting Camilla’s gaze. ‘I did request that the whole family come home this evening, but clearly nobody pays a blind bit of notice to what I say.’
‘You know the situation there,’ said Camilla, zipping up her camel coat so the collar came above her chin. ‘Cate and Serena just don’t want to see one another.’
‘Pathetic!’ snapped Oswald, petulantly snapping his gun to fully cocked. ‘This isn’t still that argument over some boy, is it? You know I haven’t cared for some of Serena’s behaviour this year, but after the time she has had, Cate should allow her sister some happiness. When it comes to the opposite sex, Cate really can’t expect to compete with Serena, can she?’
Not wanting to get embroiled in that particular discussion, Camilla thought that the best course of action was to remain silent, hoping that her father would move on. Maria Dante had monopolized her father’s attention all day, so it was the first snatched five minutes she had shared with him. It was the first time they had spoken face to face since she had won the nomination to be Esher’s prospective parliamentary candidate. She had yet to bring it up with him; Camilla’s political ambitions still seemed to raise a prickliness in her father, so she had kept quiet in the hope that he would raise the issue or offer some crumb of congratulation. So far, nothing. At first she had thought that the news had somehow escaped him, despite the acres of local news and broadsheet coverage that her nomination had garnered but, as the silence rang between them, she realized that no acknowledgement of her achievement, no matter how small, would be forthcoming. She wondered why. She felt a knot of tension in her stomach as she thought of one reason, and quickly tried to rid it from her thoughts.
Sitting in Serena’s bedroom at Huntsford, Venetia looked out of the window and stared at the watercolour sky turning purple like a bruise. ‘They’re having a tea up at the shoot when it’s finished. Didn’t you want to go? You know how Daddy gets if we don’t make any effort.’
Serena lay back in her enormous four-poster bed, propped up by some pillows. She motioned her head towards the walnut bedside cabinet, on which sat a china teacup and a scone with a tiny bite taken out of it.
‘Don’t want to. Had some,’ said Serena sulkily, rubbing the sides of her bump with her hands. ‘Anyway, I’m with child.’
She motioned to a newspaper folded at the end of the bed. ‘Have you read that?’
‘No,’ said Venetia.
‘Tom has been nominated for a Golden Globe.’
Venetia wasn’t sure how to respond. ‘That’s good news, isn’t it?’
Serena looked crestfallen. She hadn’t needed a newspaper to tell her about Tom’s nomination. At least five people had called her to tell her as soon as nominations were announced, and every conversation had torn her up with a peculiar emotion she was unable to recognize. But she wasn’t going to let Venetia know that.
‘Of course it’s good news in a year that my own movie has bombed and I have had to put my entire career on hold,’ she said, trying to sound sarcastic. But her voice just came out in a small squeak.
Venetia was sure that Serena was going to cry. She looked at her sister with uncharacteristic concern, glad to distract herself from the weight of her own problems. In twenty-seven years, Venetia had never once been worried about Serena. Not seriously worried, anyway. Yes, as a child Serena had been a constant headache after their mother’s death, and Venetia had adopted the mother role in the family. She’d been concerned when Serena had stayed out late at night, when she got expelled from school, when she was caught stealing sweets from the local village store. But Venetia always had this innate feeling that Serena was going to be just fine, no matter what life threw at her or what she brought on herself. Her youngest sister didn’t have the inner strength of, say, Camilla, but she did have a sort of golden protective glow, as if some angel was watching over her to give her a blessed existence.
But this afternoon Camilla was less sure. Serena’s skin was still perfect, like the curve of an alabaster sculpture, but there was no light coming from her: neither the famous pregnancy glow nor the legendary star quality that she usually radiated. She was sulky, truculent, quiet. She looked beautiful, but it was a ‘so-fragile-she-might-break’ beauty. She looked thin, her collarbone sticking out, and her bump protruded awkwardly, as if it did not belong to her body. Venetia was sure her sister was depressed. During the time that Venetia had desperately wanted a baby herself, when she had wondered frantically what was wrong with her body, Venetia had read thousands of words in books and on the Internet about pregnancy and considered herself quite an expert. Prenatal depression was much rarer than postnatal depression, but she was convinced that her youngest sister had it.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Serena petulantly, looking at her sister’s concerned expression.
‘The truth? I think you’re depressed,’ said Venetia flatly.
‘I’m not depressed,’ sighed Serena wearily. ‘I’m just very tired.’
Venetia wasn’t convinced. ‘You know what you need to do?’ she persisted.
‘What?’ replied Serena angrily.
‘Make up with Cate.’
Serena lifted herself up against the headboard, deliberately avoiding her gaze. ‘Can you pass me the tea?’ She took a sip and turned back to her sister.
‘Who do you think Tom is going to take to the Globes?’
It was a Balcon tradition that, on the Saturday night of the shoot, Oswald would hold a black-tie supper to feast on the game they had bagged, starting with drinks in the Great Hall, gathered around the staircase. The gentlemen, welcoming the opportunity to change out of damp, scratchy tweeds, put on DJs and patent-leather opera shoes, while for the ladies it was a perfect chance to slip into a fine cocktail dress, which always looked good against the grand backdrop of Huntsford.
Even though she didn’t feel like socializing, Serena had made an effort to outshine everybody, particularly with Maria in situ. A silver-grey sheer vintage Ossie Clark kaftan hid all traces of pregnancy, and her hair was swept up into a chic ballerina’s bun. She knew she looked like a beautiful society hostess from another age. In fact, as the girls had descended the stairs and gathered in the Great Hall, Camilla had remarked how much Serena resembled her mother, Margaret Balcon, at the height of her beauty. But the compliment dissolved almost instantly as they watched Maria Dante sweep down the staircase, looking for all the world as if she owned the place. Serena thought she looked like a pantomime dame taking centre stage for the big finale. Yes, she was a beautiful woman, she thought begrudgingly, but it was a dated, overblown beauty, her scarlet velvet gown too long and heavy, her raven hair scraped back too severely.
Serena had always assumed that her father would one day find another partner, but she had never for one moment believed that another woman would replace her in Oswald’s affections quite as much as Maria had. She wondered whether it was any coincidence that her own relationship with her father had cooled ever since Maria had come on the scene. He was undoubtedly disappointed with her pregnancy, but over the last twenty-seven years, Oswald had allowed Serena to get away with anything: being expelled, dating the sheikh, becoming an actress – he never turned a hair. Serena had always been spared the fierce disapproval, the crushing rejection, the patent indifference her sisters had had to endure – until now. She could almost taste the rejection on her tongue, like metal. She hated it. She didn’t want it. She wouldn’t stand for it.
Collecting a Campari and soda from Collins’s silver tray, Venetia was biding her time. It was never a good time to broach anything difficult with her father, but post-shoot and in polite company, his mood slightly brightened by whisky, it was as good a time as any. She caught him off-guard, just as he was breaking off conversation with Nicholas Charlesworth and was looking around for Collins to bring him another aperitif.
‘How’s your shoulder?’ said Venetia. ‘Camilla said you hurt it on the shoot.’
‘Oh, nothing to worry about,’ scoffed Oswald, waving a hand in the air. ‘Anyway, why weren’t you at the shoot? I know you have a ridiculous objection to shooting, but you could have come along for the tea.’
‘I’m trying to have a relatively quiet weekend,’ said Venetia. ‘I’m getting back to London early tomorrow morning. I’ve got lots of work to get out of the way because, as you know, I’m flying to New York at the end of the week.’
‘No, I did not know,’ said Oswald coldly, the good mood seeming to seep from his features. ‘Why are you going? To spend more of Jonathon’s legacy, I assume?’
She smarted. ‘You know why I’m going to New York. I’ve told you at least half a dozen times.’
He swilled his drink around his crystal tumbler. ‘This defiance is really getting you nowhere. There will be no expansion into New York; not without the board’s approval. Your ridiculous desire to keep pursuing this is exactly the reason why Jonathon gave me power of attorney in the first place – to protect his interests.’
Aware that she had to keep her voice down, Venetia’s words came out in a stern whisper. ‘I just can’t understand your objections to the New York expansion. We have found a fantastic retail site, our orders at the Bergdorf concession have never been higher and, after the US Vogue profile, our office has been flooded with enquiries –’
‘As I explained fully in the board meeting last week,’ interrupted Oswald, ‘the company needs a special resolution to get your New York plans through and I am going to use my voting power to stop it. I am not being difficult. I simply believe the business needs to expand slowly. American expansion will cost more than the business can currently afford.’
Venetia shook her head vehemently. She had been through the financials with a fine-tooth comb and the business could indeed afford it. She was convinced her father had another agenda, and that no amount of reasoning or pleading was going to change his mind. So in desperation she had tried to take matters into her own hands and acquire Jonathon’s shareholdings herself. She’d been devastated weeks earlier when Jonathon’s will had been read and she’d discovered that, while he had left the house and a considerable amount of money to his wife, his forty-five per cent shareholding in Venetia Balcon Ltd had gone to his brother Stefan in Austria.
Jonathon had been a difficult bastard, and now he was trying to stifle her from beyond the grave. Giving his shares to Stefan was the worst thing Jonathon could have done; he knew that Venetia and Stefan von Bismarck did not get on. In Venetia’s mind he was a callow misogynist who had none of Jonathon’s work ethic, but all of his expectant arrogance. So when she’d flown to Vienna to try to persuade him to sell the shares to her, it wasn’t with much hope. As she had expected, Stefan had revelled in her desperation; he had spent their entire meeting dangling a carrot in front of her that she knew she would never be able to reach.
‘I could sell them to you for a good price,’ he had told her in his stern Teutonic tones from the family’s schloss just outside the Austrian capital. ‘But that would not be in accordance with Jonathon’s wishes.’
She returned home with nothing except a body tense with anger and a bag of stollen she’d picked up at the airport that she had no intention of ever eating. Now, without Oswald’s cooperation, the company was in stalemate and her father was clearly in no mood to find a compromise tonight.
Oswald drifted off and Venetia listened absently to the chatter in the Great Hall. The Japanese party had now left, so Philip Watchorn was in a more relaxed mood. While Collins began to move through the crowd, topping up their champagne flutes with the pale yellow nectar, there was a sudden tinging sound as Oswald tapped on his crystal glass with a spoon.
‘I’d like to make a little announcement before dinner,’ he said, his voice cutting through the buzz of conversation. He was standing on the second step of the great staircase, and Maria Dante now moved to join him at his side, hanging onto his arm possessively.
‘I am delighted to tell you all, my family and closest friends, that I have asked Maria to marry me and I am amazed to say that she has accepted.’
There was a round of applause, even a loud cheer from Philip.
Portia Charlesworth put a hand on Serena’s shoulder. ‘You must be so delighted!’ she purred.
Serena was so staggered, she could barely draw breath.
‘Delighted is not the word,’ she managed after a second, smiling glassily, her teeth bared.
She darted across the hallway to Venetia, whose mouth was still gaping.
‘So we have finally acquired a wicked stepmother. What a fairy-tale ending to the story.’
Venetia shook her head, trying to force a smile.
‘If it keeps him out of our hair, then it can only be a good thing.’ She wasn’t even convincing herself.
‘Are you not going to congratulate your father, then?’ said Oswald, appearing at their side and stretching out a maroon velvet arm.
Serena didn’t proffer a cheek and instead grabbed his arm awkwardly. ‘So when’s the happy day going to be?’
‘As soon in the New Year as we can make it,’ Oswald replied. ‘The reception will be at the house, of course, and we will marry in the church in the village.’
Both girls thought the same thing: the very same church in the grounds of which their mother was buried.
‘Congratulations, Daddy,’ said Venetia coolly, pressing the side of her cheek to his. ‘It’s something of a surprise, but we’re obviously all pleased. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go and say the same to Maria.’
Maria was still at the bottom of the stairs, smoothing the collar of her dress like a peacock. As she saw Venetia approach, she took several steps towards her, coming so close that Venetia felt off balance, as if Maria was invading her personal space. She could see the large pores on Maria’s nose and the fine red veins in the whites of her eyes.
‘Welcome to the family,’ said Venetia, trying to sound genuine.
‘Oh, it means so much to me to hear you say that,’ smiled Maria, kissing her on both cheeks and squeezing the tops of her arms tightly.
Suddenly, Maria’s voice acquired the most subtle edge. ‘It must be such a relief for you. You have been the lady of the house for so long now without actually being Lady Balcon. You must feel rather liberated.’
‘I wouldn’t exactly say that,’ said Venetia, immediately putting up her guard.
‘Well, I would like to say thank you,’ said Maria, grabbing Venetia’s hands with her red-tipped fingers. ‘You have done an excellent job of feathering the nest for me. There’s so much to do to the house, of course,’ she whispered conspiratorially. ‘I have persuaded Oswald of the need to renovate the whole place. I have a friend in Paris, one of Europe’s top interior designers, who just can’t wait to get started.’ The curve of Maria’s smile was superior. ‘Perhaps we could all get together to have lunch. I’m sure you’ll have lots in common.’
Venetia felt shell-shocked. She had spent the last ten years trying to persuade her father that Huntsford needed a sympathetic overhaul and surely she was the person to do it. She had such an intimate knowledge of the house and its history and her whole design style was exactly right for this sort of project. She felt like she’d been kicked.
‘I think it’s important I take full charge of the project though, don’t you? Stamp my taste on the place,’ continued Maria in a stage-like whisper. ‘After all, I am considerably younger than Oswald.’
At first, Venetia couldn’t quite understand what she was implying, but Maria was quick to fill in the blanks. ‘The day will come when it will just be me rattling around this place, so I need it exactly how I want it.’
‘Just you?’ queried Venetia.
‘As Lady Balcon, I’ll have a life tenancy of Huntsford in the event of my husband’s death. In fact, Oswald is already making provisions in his will to that effect.’ Her voice dripped with superiority and she exhaled dramatically. ‘Of course, I hardly want to think about life without Oswald, but you have to be practical and I need to love living here. It is a little, well, fusty at the moment.’
Venetia was frozen to the spot, unable to process all this information.
‘It’s a family home,’ stressed Venetia, still feeling dazed. ‘I’m not sure Huntsford should be redesigned in one person’s vision.’
Maria snorted. ‘That’s a little naïve, isn’t it, darling?’ she cooed. ‘I’m hardly going to call a family meeting every time I want to choose new curtains.’
Collins approached and offered Venetia a top-up of champagne. She nodded and gulped it down. The status quo of her family, her home, her roots – everything she had known for nearly forty years – was about to change violently. And she felt absolutely powerless to stop it.