Sebastian and Viola met at the folly the next morning. The sun was still low in the sky and the light was golden as Viola walked across the dewy grass. She smelled his cigarette before she saw him.
‘You should give up,’ she said as she climbed the steps towards him, sitting down next to him.
‘I know. I keep telling myself I’ll do it next month.’
‘I used those patches,’ Viola replied. ‘They really work.’
He nodded.
‘I’m sorry I cut your date short last night,’ he said. ‘I wanted to surprise you.’
‘It wasn’t a date. I told you that last night.’ Viola was trying for that same teasing tone that came so easily to her brother, but it just sounded a little bit whiney. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you arrived but I’m really glad you’re here.’
‘Quite the coup for you getting me for the Shakespeare Festival.’ He beamed. But Viola still wondered why he was here and why he had taken so little persuading this year.
‘That’s not the only reason I’m pleased to see you.’ She sat down on the step next to him and he draped an arm around her.
‘So tell me everything,’ she said. ‘Where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing.’
He could have told her everything the night before but unlike her brother Viola was not a night owl.
‘You’re tired, aren’t you,’ Sebastian had said, after he’d teased her about her date for a little while. ‘We can do this again in the morning if you’d prefer?’
‘And will you be awake in time?’ she’d asked, remembering all the times when, as children, she’d had to drag him out of bed in time to get the school bus.
‘I promise,’ he’d said.
And for once he had been awake in time.
‘I’ve been back to Kiama,’ he said now as they sat together, turning to face her.
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘When?’
‘Last month, just for a couple of weeks.’ He paused, looked away. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.’
‘Was that the first time since…’
‘Since I went to America? Yes.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘Still exactly the same. The house is still standing and the blowhole is still there.’
Viola smiled in spite of herself. Kiama was a sleepy sort of seaside town, beautiful and popular with holidaymakers from Sydney and beyond who filled the caravan and campsites every summer, but there was never a huge amount going on if you lived there all year around. Except for the blowhole of course. Formed in the rocks on the sea’s edge over two hundred million years ago, and named Khanterinte, the blowhole sprays gallons of water up to twenty-five metres into the air. It was pretty impressive, and pretty dangerous. The local council’s warning signs were always being ignored, as people wanted to stand right on the edge to have their photographs taken.
Remembering the blowhole made Viola smile, but thinking about the house just made her sad. They’d grown up on a smallholding on the edge of Kiama, the smallholding that had made Sebastian want to be a farmer until he changed course to acting. But a year after Sebastian and Viola had seen Twelfth Night, their parents lost a lot of money – neither Sebastian nor Viola were quite sure how, other than it had something to do with pensions – and the house and land had had to be sold. That was when their father left, moving further north to start again. Their mother’s idea of starting again was to live apart from their father, and the twins became children of a broken home, like so many of their peers.
They moved into a smaller house in the centre of Kiama, nearer to where their mother worked. They saw their father once a year if they were lucky. But the upside of that was Viola’s relationship with her mother. They’d grown closer as Viola grew up – unlike many of her friends who seemed to find themselves arguing with their mothers more as they got older. By the time she was sixteen, Viola felt her mother was her best friend – clichéd as that sounded – and together they were Sebastian’s biggest fans, always there at every play he was in, however small, supporting him from the sidelines in any way they could. The three of them became, after their father left, a little triangle that they thought could never be broken.
And then, just months before Viola and Sebastian turned eighteen, their mother died – her car hit by a drunk driver as she drove along the coast road. She was dead before the ambulance got to her.
The twins had been left alone, the house had become theirs and their father moved back to Kiama for a little while, just long enough to convince social services that his children were being looked after. Then he left again, leaving them to fend for themselves.
‘You’ll be eighteen soon enough,’ he’d said as he’d gone.
Viola wouldn’t have got through those months without her brother. He’d done everything for her back then. She was almost embarrassed about how badly she’d coped – both in Kiama and, later, in Oxford.
‘What made you go back?’ she asked. ‘After all this time?’
‘I…’ He hesitated just long enough for Viola to realise that he was avoiding the truth. ‘It just felt right,’ he said.
She was about to question him further, find out what was really going on and whether it was connected to the sadness in his voice and the furrow in his brow, when she heard his name being called across the grounds from the direction of the house. Surely it was too early to start work just yet?
He stood up. ‘Early morning read-through,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. We can meet after lunch?’
‘I’ve got a house tour after lunch and then…’ She hesitated.
‘What is it?’
‘Well, I’m meeting someone at four. It shouldn’t take too long. I should be free after a couple of hours and we can…’
‘Meeting who?’ Sebastian asked, the teasing glint back in his eyes.
Viola looked away. ‘Chase Matthews,’ she said quietly.
‘The guy from last night.’ Sebastian laughed. ‘I thought you said it wasn’t a date.’
‘I… well… look I’m sorry. I can cancel. I’ll call him…’
‘That’s OK.’ Sebastian smiled as he started to walk away towards his read-through. ‘I’m here all summer. I don’t mind coming second place to the mysterious Chase Matthews just this once.’
*
‘So tell me about you,’ Viola said. ‘I feel like all we did last night was talk about Haverford and me and Sebastian.’
Chase smiled. After her last tour of the day Viola had met up with him and taken him down to the old boathouse, away from the tourists, the actors and everybody else who was crowding out Haverford on this beautiful June afternoon. It was quiet here, and so beautiful by the lake. A gentle breeze rippled the surface of the water, cooling the heat of the sun.
‘Sorry if I talked about your brother too much,’ Chase replied sheepishly.
Viola shook her head. ‘Don’t worry, everyone does when they find out who he is.’
‘My life is rather boring I’m afraid. No film-star relatives or anything.’
‘But you live in New York,’ Viola prompted. ‘That must be exciting!’
‘It can be,’ Chase admitted. ‘There’s always so much going on – theatre, art, music and so on. But I’ve lived there my whole life and all I seem to do is work. This is the first real break I’ve had in years.’
Viola wondered how old he was. She’d assumed, when she’d first met him that he must be the same age as her but she wondered today, as she noticed the creases around his eyes, if he was older.
‘So you grew up and went to school in New York?’ she asked.
‘I grew up there but I went to boarding school upstate. After school I studied at Brown on Rhode Island, which I loved, and majored in economics, which I didn’t love so much. After graduation I had my Oxford year.’
‘When was that?
‘I started in the October of ’91.’
‘We were there at the same…’ Viola began, the words escaping before she had a chance to stop them. She’d had no intention of telling him about her own time at Oxford.
‘You were at Oxford too?’ Chase seemed surprised and she didn’t blame him. She didn’t exactly have Oxbridge graduate written all over her.
‘For a while,’ she admitted. ‘I won a scholarship at St John’s to study English but… well… I was a long way from home and I missed my brother and my mum had passed away the year before.’ She stopped, blinked. She’d told him too much already. ‘Let’s just say things didn’t work out and I never graduated.’
Chase didn’t say anything. He didn’t ask the series of awkward questions that Robin had asked when she’d told him the longer, more complicated version of this story – such as where her father was or what she’d done after she was sent down – and she was grateful for that. He just placed his hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. It felt comforting and she leaned into him a little.
‘So what did you study at Oxford? Economics still?’ she asked after a moment.
‘PPE,’ he replied. ‘Politics, Philosophy and Economics although I have to admit that I felt very much out of my depth – British political systems are very different to ours in America.’
‘That’s the degree to study if you want to be prime minister in the UK,’ Viola said and laughed. ‘Is that what you had in mind?’
‘No,’ Chase said. ‘And if it had been I would have been terrible at it!’
‘And what did you do after Oxford?’
‘I went back to New York and worked for my father and I’ve been there ever since.’
‘And there’s nobody special waiting for you back there?’
Chase turned his head to her and she looked up at him. ‘I wouldn’t have invited you for dinner if there were,’ he said. He held her gaze for a moment, just as he had the night before. And just like the night before Viola looked away first.
‘It is so beautiful up here,’ Chase said, walking away from her a little towards the edge of the lake. ‘And you say nobody comes up here?’
‘It’s not exactly closed to the public but we don’t encourage it,’ Viola replied, walking over to stand next to him. ‘The boathouse is pretty dilapidated.’ She explained its history to him.
‘So it’s been shut up since 1919?’ he asked.
‘It was always well maintained though – in memory of Daniel Montagu. Or at least that’s what my boss tells me. It’s only in recent years that things have fallen into disrepair.’
‘And why is that?’
‘Simple,’ Viola replied. ‘Like so many minor estates across the country we’re running out of money. In fact the Montagu family have been talking about selling up, which would mean I’d lose my job and…’ She stopped. She was telling him too much again.
‘And you’d hate that,’ Chase finished for her. He was looking at her strangely, as though he was trying to figure something out.
‘I love it here,’ she replied simply.
The silence between them, which up to this point had been so comfortable, felt suddenly awkward and Viola wondered what had changed. Had she shared too much?
‘We should get back,’ she said. ‘I’m supposed to be having dinner with my brother. If you’re lucky we might even bump into him.’
*
The awkwardness lifted as they walked back towards the house and Chase’s car.
‘I really am sorry about your job and the house,’ he said as they walked.
‘I shouldn’t have landed all that on you. It was supposed to be a nice summer stroll, not an afternoon of sad confessions.’
‘That’s OK. I’ve enjoyed getting to know you…’
Before either of them could say any more, Viola heard her name being called and a figure was running towards them.
‘Viola, there you are!’ It was Libby who ran the tearoom. She was out of breath and still had her cream apron on.
‘His Lordship’s here…’ Libby stopped, hesitated. ‘I mean Mr Montagu.’ David hated his title and being called ‘my lord’ even more than he hated the Haverford estate.
‘What’s he doing here? He’s not due this week. Does Lady Seraphina know?’
Libby nodded. ‘Someone’s gone to the dower house to fetch her. But the earl isn’t alone either,’ Libby went on. ‘He’s brought someone with him and…’ She hesitated again. ‘Well, you’d better just come and see.’
Viola turned to Chase. ‘Listen, I should go. Shall I…’
When she looked at him, Chase had gone very pale. ‘I think I’d better come inside with you. There’s something you need to know.’
Before Viola could question this, Libby anxiously led the way around the front of the house where, unusually, the huge double doors had been thrown open – nobody, not even the guests, used this entrance. It was too difficult to lock and unlock those magnificent doors each day. Neither Libby nor Viola had ever walked up the steps and through these front doors before, and Viola found herself wondering what it would have been like to be one of the Montagu family before the First World War, before everything changed, when all the staff would be waiting on the steps to greet you.
What a strange world it must have been, she thought.
David Montagu stood in the hallway pointing up at the stairs. His voice was loud, as so many ex-public school boys’ voices are, and it carried through the house, easily overheard. Ranting about the house was his favourite subject.
‘Of course you might find that Montgomery Hotels want to keep a lot of the original features – the staircase for example, even if you would be installing a bank of lifts. And the ballroom ceiling is something to behold – you could turn it into a function room I suppose. Weddings, parties, stuff like that.’ David hadn’t noticed Viola arriving and he waved his hand vaguely as though he didn’t give a jot what happened to Haverford House as long as it was money in his pocket. Viola knew that even Seraphina had given up on preserving the house but she hadn’t expected David to jump in Haverford’s grave quite so soon. He was clearly talking to a developer, but who was it? Whoever it was had their back to her.
‘Good morning, Mr Montagu,’ she said. ‘Is there anything I can help with?’
‘Ah, Viola,’ he boomed at her. ‘Just the person – you’ll be much better at this than me. You can…’ He stopped, spotting Chase standing next to her. ‘Oh you’ve already met Mr Montgomery then. Well, that will make all of this less awkward.’
‘Mr Montgomery?’ she asked, looking at Chase, but David’s attention had turned to someone else who had strolled in the front door like he owned the place.
‘Seb,’ Viola whispered loudly. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Who are you?’ David asked rudely.
‘I’m Viola’s brother…’ Sebastian began.
‘He’s one of the actors in the festival,’ Viola explained. ‘Seb McKay.’ She saw Chase turn his head, as though to catch a glimpse of the famous actor.
‘I’ve never heard of you,’ David said, losing interest in Sebastian. Viola hid her smile. Her brother secretly hated it when people hadn’t heard of him.
‘Anyway, you say I’ve met a Mr Montgomery,’ Viola said, stepping away from her brother. ‘Is this him?’ She pointed to the man standing next to David.
‘Of course not.’ David goggled at her. ‘Have you run mad? This is Mr Montgomery’s assistant.’ He turned to the man standing next to him blankly, clearly having forgotten his name.
‘Evan Jenkins,’ the man said.
‘Yes that’s right,’ David said. ‘Jenkins. But, Viola, Mr Montgomery is standing right next to you. You just walked in with him.’
‘What?’ Viola turned to Chase who was deliberately not looking at her. Sebastian meanwhile had leaned against the wall and folded his arms in front of him, clearly settling in to watch the floor show. She felt her stomach drop and she pressed her lips together, willing herself not to cry, not here, not in front of everyone.
‘Yes, his father owns Montgomery Hotels. You’ve heard of them I suppose? Well, they’re considering buying Haverford now Mother’s finally come to her senses.’
Viola swallowed. She knew exactly who Montgomery Hotels were. The group had wanted to redevelop an old Victorian building in Chiswick but the council had refused to give them the go-ahead. They were a huge American chain and were not known for keeping original features.
And Chase was Charles Montgomery, heir to the whole fortune.
What the hell?
He had been lying to her from the start, pretending to want to take her out so he could pick her brains about Haverford House and its suitability for one of his father’s clinical hotels. And she had fallen for it, hook, line and sinker. She’d thought he was genuine, that he was really interested in her. He hadn’t even been too overexcited when he’d found out who her brother was. He’d played his role very well – Viola would give him that.
But now the truth was out, unravelling here right in front of the Earl of Haverford and her brother. Viola wanted to run upstairs to her flat, get into bed and pull the duvet over her head. Alternatively if the ground would like to open up and swallow her that would be fine too.
‘So will you do it?’ she heard David say through the noise of the thoughts swirling in her head. ‘Show Charles around.’
Viola took another breath. She would not cry.
She turned back to Chase and poked him hard in the arm with her index finger. ‘You’re Charles Montgomery of Montgomery Hotels?’ she asked, poking him again.
‘Well yes I…’
‘And you didn’t think at any point during dinner last night or our walk this afternoon to tell me that?’
‘Well, this is awkward,’ David said, to nobody in particular. ‘But at least you know each other and that’s all that matters.’ He seemed oblivious to Viola’s anger and quite used to situations like this where everybody had met everybody else at some sort of event or other – Henley or Cheltenham. It didn’t seem to occur to him that the son of a billionaire hotelier and one of his own employees probably wouldn’t have had many opportunities to meet. Which meant, of course, that David had no idea that Chase, or Charles Montgomery, or whoever he was had been poking around Haverford for the last few days.
Chase Matthews then was the son of Reese Montgomery who’d inherited the famous hotel chain from his own father – Chase’s grandfather – back in the 1950s and turned it into the famous institution it was today. It explained at least where Chase had disappeared to when Viola was showing everyone else the dollhouses the previous day.
‘Of course, Charles,’ David bellowed, stopping Viola from asking any questions, ‘as Viola shows you around you’ll see a lot of old junk. Mother has been trying to preserve the place as it was in the 1930s when that bloody servant girl went missing, but you have to ignore that nonsense. It’s time we all forgot about it and moved on.’
Viola heard Libby gasp next to her and could sense her stare. Of course Libby would have questions – she had plenty of those herself – but neither of them ever got much of a chance to ask anything because at that moment Seraphina walked into the hallway.
‘What on earth is going on?’ she said, her voice carrying across the space almost as much as David’s, her tone clipped.
‘Ah, Mummy, there you are,’ David replied. He smiled but he also went very pale. It became clear that David had not told his mother anything about Montgomery Hotels. ‘I’m glad you’re here. This is Charles Montgomery and he’s come to…’
‘We’ve met,’ his mother said, her voice cold. ‘He’s been poking around here for the last couple of days calling himself Chase Matthews.’ She stopped and looked over at Viola but mercifully didn’t mention anything more.
A look of confusion swept briefly over David’s face. ‘He has?’ he said. His bravado was slipping now his mother had arrived. ‘Well, I suppose he wanted to check the place out incognito as it were, eh Charles?’
Chase or Charles smiled his very white smile and held up his hands, looking sheepish. ‘You got me,’ he said. He still didn’t look at Viola, clearly not wanting to have to explain himself in front of everyone.
‘Anyway Charles is here to…’
‘I know who he is, David,’ Seraphina interrupted with such authority that everyone, even Sebastian and Chase, turned towards her like troublesome children. ‘And I know exactly what he is here to do. And I am here to tell you that Haverford House will be turned into an American hotel over my dead body.’