Welcome Me to Willoughby Close (Return to Willoughby Close Book 2) Read online

  “And how are you finding living here together?” Emily asked. “Are you used to the quiet?”

  “Oh, yes. It still feels as if we’re rattling around in here, though. We only use a couple of rooms.”

  “We’ll fill them up soon enough,” Henry said with a significant look.

  “You’ll be using the manor for the holidays, I suppose?” Emily surmised, and Alice blushed. Oh. So he hadn’t been talking about the holidays.

  “That, as well,” Henry answered with a chuckle. “But we’re keen to start a family of our own.”

  “When the time’s right,” Alice said quickly, and rose from the table to refill the water pitcher. Emily detected an undercurrent but she couldn’t figure out what it was. She certainly wasn’t about to ask.

  “Anyway, Emily,” Henry resumed, “I promise I won’t work you too hard. I want you to be able to explore the Cotswolds, and all Wychwood-on-Lea has to offer.” He smiled encouragingly. “It’s important, in organising the fundraiser, that you’re able to take part in the community life of the village. Get to know all the shopkeepers and local businesses. Be a face in the village.”

  “So in one breath you tell her that you won’t work her too hard,” Alice teased as she sat back down at the table, “and in the next you say it’s all work!”

  Henry grinned, unabashed. “I’m afraid that’s how I operate. But Emily knows that?” He raised his eyebrows in query, and Emily nodded back, although her stomach was churning.

  Yes, she’d known that. Back in London Henry had regularly pulled fourteen-hour days, and Emily had often worked through her lunch breaks and into the evenings. But her boss seemed to be asking for something rather alarmingly different here—involving herself in the community life of the village? Getting to know all the small businesses?

  Did Henry know her at all?

  Perhaps he did, because he favoured her with a smile that seemed just a bit too knowingly compassionate as he said, “I think this move to Wychwood-on-Lea will be very good for you, Emily.”

  Right.

  The conversation moved on, and Emily nibbled at her shepherd’s pie—delicious—as she half-listened to Alice and Henry debate which room to renovate next, and then describe the village’s spring fete, complete with an egg hunt and Easter bonnet competition.

  It sounded rather idyllic, and yet somehow, combined with the loveliness in the room, from the pie to the wine to the cat in the corner, it was all having the unfortunate effect of making her feel a bit melancholy. Everything about this was outside of her experience, which should have been fine, but for some reason tonight it wasn’t.

  From the age of seven, Emily had grown up avoiding adults, attention, conversation, or care. Her life had revolved around her mother and keeping them both safe, and while that had had its own rewards, it hadn’t been anything like this. She didn’t like feeling the lack; in London she never had. Or maybe she just hadn’t let herself.

  In any case, it was ridiculous to want something like this, or to feel like she’d missed out on something. She knew she’d missed out on the stereotypically normal childhood. That much had always been obvious all along, but she hadn’t minded.

  Besides, most children didn’t grow up in a manor house, with a kitchen the size of a skating rink, in a village that, if Alice and Henry were to be believed, was like something out of Midsomer Murders but without the crime. None of it had to make her feel as if she’d somehow been deprived.

  “So are you all unpacked?” Alice asked as she brought a sherry trifle to the table, along with custard and pouring cream.

  “Mostly. I didn’t have that much to begin with, anyway.” She’d tried to speak lightly, but Alice was giving her that funny smile again, an uncomfortable mix of puzzlement and pity, as if Emily had just said something normal people didn’t. Surely not everyone was a hoarder, Emily thought with a touch of irritation. “You’ll have to tell me the best place to buy groceries and things,” she said a bit over-brightly, and Alice nodded, and launched into a discussion about the new deli that had opened up on the high street, along with the Tesco on the other side of the village.

  The conversation remained thankfully innocuous as they had their coffees, liberally laced with liqueur, and when Henry insisted on showing her the office before she started work tomorrow, Emily tottered on her feet. She hadn’t had so much alcohol in a long while, if ever.

  She followed him down a dark, rather dreary hallway, lined with more heavy oil paintings of frowning ancestors and muddy country scenes, before he threw open two wood-panelled doors and flicked on the lights of what had once been the morning room.

  “Sorry about the mess,” he said rather unrepentantly as Emily blinked. There were piles of papers everywhere, along with teetering stacks of books, frames six deep stacked against the walls, and boxes of unidentifiable items scattered around. Someone had cleared a narrow path between all the mess to get to the other side of the room, but that was it. It was her worst nightmare come to life. The stacks of papers, crumpled and disordered…the dust…

  “How on earth am I supposed to work?” Emily asked faintly, and Henry clapped a friendly hand on her shoulder.

  “Alice said the same thing, but you’re brilliant at organising, Emily, and I thought since this is mainly your office, you ought to have charge of how it’s set up. Order whatever you like, and anything you don’t want in here we can put up in the attics.”

  Anything she didn’t want? How about two-thirds of the room’s contents?

  “The papers need to stay,” Henry said, as if reading her mind. “And be sorted. Obviously. I’ve ordered a few filing cabinets, but I thought you’d want to pick out your own desk and other bits. As for the rest…well, I’m afraid this room became a bit of a dumping ground as we started to renovate a few others, but I know you’ll have it in hand in no time.”

  And organise a massive fundraiser in the next three months, as well? And get to know an entire village’s worth of people when she was just about the world’s most antisocial person?

  “You have a lot of confidence in my abilities,” Emily finally said, and Henry nodded in firm agreement.

  “Absolutely. I thought you’d relish this kind of challenge.”

  Emily suspected Henry just hadn’t wanted to bother with the mess, but as she said her goodbyes a short while later, she realised she didn’t actually mind as much as she might have. She’d been afraid this position wouldn’t provide her with the activity and stimulation her work at Ellis Investments had, but if the mess of the room and the promise of the fundraiser were anything to go by, her fears were entirely unfounded. She looked forward to being busy, starting with a massive clear-out of her office.

  As she put on her coat, Henry offered to walk her back to Willoughby Close, but Emily insisted she could do it on her own. She did most things on her own, after all, and she was looking forward to a quiet walk in the darkness to clear her head.

  “Numbers two and three are currently vacant,” Alice called as she headed down the drive. “But Olivia is in number four. Do pop in and say hello. She’ll be thrilled to have a neighbour.”

  It was something Emily couldn’t see herself doing, and yet she felt that unsettling mix of excitement and melancholy as she walked down the sweeping drive, illuminated only by a pearly, luminous half-moon, back to Willoughby Close. This was certainly a far better commute than thirty minutes on a crowded, smelly train where she was compelled to spritz sanitiser on her hands half a dozen times. And the quiet, which had felt so eerie at first, now seemed rather peaceful.

  And yet…Emily knew she wasn’t ready for nosy neighbours, well-meaning employers, or working closely with a woman who seemed to be hoping to be her BFF. After years of deliberate self-isolation, hiding in crowds, keeping herself apart, the empty space around her felt alarming. Exposing. But right now, with the darkness so soft, the air possessing a chill but also a hint of spring, Emily felt…not quite hopeful, not happy either, but…something. That was as
much as she knew.

  Willoughby Close was cloaked in darkness as she walked across the courtyard to number one. Number four, residence of the unknown Olivia, was dark and silent.

  Emily let herself into the cottage, breathing in the unfamiliar scent of the place—even the cleaning spray Alice had lent her had a different smell than the one she normally used. It wasn’t home, not yet, and she wasn’t sure if it ever would be, if she even knew what home was anymore.

  She slipped her mobile out of her pocket to check if her mother had called, even though she knew she hadn’t. Worry nibbled at the edges of her mind, but she’d had too much wine to let it take over, and she was desperately tired after the day of moving and then the evening up at the manor. She’d think about her mother tomorrow…and she’d certainly ring.

  Leaving her phone on the table, Emily headed upstairs to bed.

  Chapter Three

  Emily woke early to an unfamiliar dawn chorus of birds and bright sunlight slanting through her curtain-less windows. She’d forgotten to draw the blind before flopping into bed last night, most unlike her.

  Usually her bedtime routine was carefully orchestrated—slippers lined up by the bed, blind drawn, door closed, clothes put away, outfit for the next day selected and hanging neatly on the wardrobe door.

  Last night she’d had the presence of mind—or rather the necessary compulsion—to put her clothes away, although she hadn’t bothered picking something out to wear today, for her first day of work. It was Monday, so she always wore a white blouse and navy pencil skirt. At least she had at Ellis Investments.

  But what was the dress code for working alone at Willoughby Manor, in a space that looked more like the local tip than an office? Henry certainly didn’t seem bothered by formalities any longer, although he’d once been such a stickler for them, but even so Emily didn’t like the thought of going to work in jeans, not that she even owned any. She was strictly a power suit type of girl, or at the least a smart skirt and blouse.

  Feeling a bit groggy from last night’s unaccustomed indulgences, she reached for her dressing gown and belted it tightly around her waist before thrusting her feet into slippers. Her flatmate in uni had joked she had the soul of a middle-aged man, and Emily supposed there was some truth to that friendly aspersion. She certainly liked her dressing gown and slippers.

  Downstairs, sunlight spilled through the French windows, bathing the room in gold. Outside a thrush hopped in the dew-spangled grass and a skylark sang sweetly. It was all so perfectly pastoral, it was hard not to stop and savour the moment, as unfamiliar as it was.

  From the courtyard Emily heard a car start, and she inched up the blind to see a battered-looking sedan reversing out of the parking space in front of number four. The mysterious Olivia got up early, it seemed. It wasn’t quite half six.

  Emily moved back to the kitchen and began to make her coffee—two perfectly heaped teaspoonfuls of Illy coffee, never any other brand—in the little cafetière, and then plunged and poured the liquid into her usual white ceramic mug with a pleasingly chunky handle. The normality of the routine soothed her, despite the strangeness of the kitchen, the birdsong outside, the lack of traffic noise and sodium streetlights casting an eerie glow.

  It was so quiet.

  She took her coffee to the utilitarian table for two the movers had left by the French windows. Her mother still hadn’t been in touch, a fact that Emily was trying not to let make her feel anxious. It was early still; she’d ring Fiona again before she walked to work.

  It was surprisingly peaceful to sit and sip her coffee, gazing out at the untidy little garden. She watched, entranced, as a robin plucked a fat, wriggling worm from the grass and hopped away delightedly. She’d have to mow the lawn, of course, and she didn’t have a lawn mower. Perhaps she could borrow one.

  Perhaps she’d even plant some flowers, or get a couple of those terracotta planters to put by the French windows. The possibility made something unfurl in Emily, a fragile tendril taking root and starting to grow. This cottage could become far more of a home than her boxy flat in Earl’s Court ever had been. More of a home than she’d ever had before, moving from bedsit to rental and back again, all through her childhood.

  Nearly half an hour had passed with Emily simply staring into space, and, realising the time with a flash of discomfiture, she sprang into action. It wasn’t at all like her to sit and daydream.

  In any case, she had plenty of time to get ready, thanks to the lack of a forty-minute commute, and by half past eight she’d eaten, exercised, showered and dressed. She tried to reach her mother again, trying to tamp down on her instinctive panic when Fiona’s phone just kept ringing. They were probably both asleep. She’d try again at lunch.

  The morning was still fresh and dewy as Emily started walking back up the drive to Willoughby Manor, her navy court shoes clicking on the pavement. She suspected she was overdressed in her silk blouse and skirt, but this was what she always wore on Mondays, and despite the cleaning work she knew the office needed, she really wasn’t a casual clothes kind of girl.

  “Hi!” Alice greeted her with her usual easy enthusiasm after Emily lifted the big brass lion’s head knocker and let it reverberate through the house. “You don’t have to knock. I’ll give you a key in any case, but feel free to just come in and get started.” Her gaze swept down Emily’s outfit but she said nothing. Alice was, Emily noticed, wearing jeans and a jumper that had a ragged hem. Both she and Henry looked as if they were now dressing from a charity shop, but Emily liked her tailored clothes, many with designer labels she’d worked hard for. A glossy hairstyle and a pair of heels felt like armour.

  “Come on through,” Alice said as she led her back to the morning room Emily had surveyed last night. Now the heavy velvet curtains had been drawn back to let in all the light, and the room seemed enormous, with its high ceiling and huge windows. It was also chock full of junk.

  “I’m sorry we haven’t tidied it up,” Alice said with a grimace of apology. “But Henry was insistent. He said you’d want to be in charge of your own domain.”

  Emily couldn’t help but smile at that. It was true, even if she wouldn’t have minded a few less bits and pieces filling up the room.

  “Where is Henry?” she asked as she put her handbag down on the only available surface, a bookshelf by the door.

  “He has a meeting with a potential donor in Reading. He travels so much now. I think I see him less than I did when he worked in London.” Alice gave a little laugh, but Emily saw the flicker of unhappiness in her eyes. Not quite a fairy tale, then.

  “That’s understandable, at this stage. I’m sure he’ll scale back once the foundation is up and running properly.”

  “I hope so.” Alice brightened hopefully. “Would you like a coffee? I’ve just put the kettle on.”

  Emily pictured it for a moment—the two of them at that big kitchen table, the Aga and the cat, cups of coffee and maybe even some freshly baked scones or muffins. Alice seemed like that type of person. The sunshine would be streaming through the windows, and it would all be so very homely.

  “I really should get on,” she said, trying to make her tone an apology. “But perhaps later, for elevenses?”

  “All right.” Alice gave her one of her rallying smiles. “I’ll come back then and liberate you from all this mess.”

  After Alice had left, Emily let out a breath and surveyed the room. It really was a mess, and her fingers were practically twitching in her desperation to start cleaning. She hated a messy room. Hated it with a passion that she knew bordered on compulsion. She couldn’t wait to get everything sorted and spritzed.

  The hours passed surprisingly quickly as Emily began to go through the room, sorting papers, piling books, and heaving boxes of junk out into the hall for someone named Jace to deal with, or so Alice had assured her when Emily had asked what to do with all the stuff.

  “Wow, you’ve done so much already,” Alice exclaimed as she came up at eleven. �
��It already looks so much better.”

  “Yes, it does, doesn’t it?” Emily wiped a strand of hair from her cheek. She was feeling a bit dusty and dirty, but at least the room had been emptied. She’d finish wiping down all the surfaces after her coffee.

  “Do you want to come to the kitchen?” Alice asked shyly. “The kettle’s on and I’ve made some muffins…”

  Just as Emily had suspected. “That would be lovely, thank you.” She wasn’t particularly looking forward to a heart-to-heart with Alice, but she was desperate for a coffee, and she couldn’t bear disappointing her yet again. It felt too mean.

  The kitchen was just as Emily remembered, cosy and warm and filled with sunlight. The cat was curled up in the armchair, and Emily wondered if it had moved at all since yesterday evening.

  “How are you finding everything?” Alice asked as she poured them both mugs of coffee. “Do you miss London and all your friends?”

  What friends? “I do miss London,” Emily said as she sat down at the kitchen table. “I’ve lived there for a long time.”

  “You grew up there?”

  Briefly Emily thought of the semi-detached house in Reading she’d called home for six years, and then the parade of places she’d rested her head since. “I spent a lot of time there,” she said. She had absolutely no desire to go into her complicated childhood with Alice. She didn’t go into it with anyone. Which reminded her…she still needed to call her mum.

  “What about you?” she asked Alice. “Where did you grow up?”

  “Oh, around Oxford, mostly.” Alice let out an uncertain laugh. “I was in care for most of my childhood, so I bounced around a bit.”

  “Oh.” Emily stared at her in surprise. She’d assumed somehow, as she realised she always assumed, that Alice had had the sort of normal, stable upbringing most people seemed to have and Emily hadn’t. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realise. That must have been difficult.”