Pippa Douglas turned off the car’s engine and the brief view she’d had of golden stone walls and mullioned windows framing a farmhouse vanished in the darkness. She glanced at her daughter in the passenger seat, letting a long, weary breath escape. Finally they were here; she couldn’t remember when she’d last driven so far. London to Yorkshire was a journey she’d not made in many years, and she didn’t want to think of the last time, not now.
Harriet’s eyes were closed; her pale, oval face shadowed by darkness. Pippa reached across, tucking a long strand of sun-kissed brown hair behind Harriet’s ear, a maternal gesture often denied her now that her daughter was a teenager. How had that happened so soon? It seemed only moments since she’d been tiny, toddling from nursery into primary school and beyond.
‘Harriet? We’re here, sweetheart.’ Pippa was gentle, not wanting to jolt her from sleep too suddenly. ‘Time to wake up.’
‘Huh?’ Harriet grimaced as she rearranged herself on the seat and rubbed her neck. Her eyes automatically fell to the phone in her hand, the light from the screen when she touched it briefly brightening her confused expression. ‘Already?’
‘You’ve been out for the past two hours, since we set off after the services. You obviously needed the rest.’ Pippa held back a sigh as Harriet’s fingers darted over the screen, brightening it some more. ‘Come on, we may as well get on with it.’
‘Aren’t you even a little bit curious about the house?’
‘Are you?’
‘Stop trying to change the subject.’
Pippa’s hand was on the door, and she pushed it open, deciding to ignore the suggestion of sharpness in Harriet’s reply. ‘You know me too well.’
‘So that’s a no, then. Come on, Mum, it’ll be an adventure.’
‘I’m not looking for an adventure and the last thing I needed was your grandad dumping another of his problems in my lap right at the beginning of the summer holidays.’
Pippa had long been the unofficial head of her dad’s blended family, a role he was perfectly happy to let her occupy, and everyone automatically gravitated to her when a decision needed making or a problem smoothed out. As the eldest of his five children, she was the one who always remembered birthdays, arranged meet ups, sent flowers, checked in; somehow held them all together.
She didn’t resent the role she’d taken upon herself twenty-five years ago but there were occasions when she wished the family didn’t ping everything they wanted sorting out straight to her inbox. It wasn’t that their dad didn’t love them, but he led a life that wasn’t quite the usual one and family was something he fitted in alongside his career.
Jonny Jones was as famous for his Northern roots as he was for being the lead singer of legendary rock band Blue at Midnight. Pippa knew it was a given, that he wouldn’t be sliding quietly into old age and stop attracting headlines for his love life as well as the band’s long-awaited, supposedly final album. Currently on a seemingly never-ending world retirement tour, the dates of which only Pippa in the family had marked on her calendar, Jonny had recently escaped to Bali for a break and a bit of peace and quiet away from the occasional mayhem of his own life.
But then last week, just when Harriet’s summer term had ended, which immediately made Pippa suspicious because generally Jonny knew nothing about such things, he’d got in touch by email to say that a property he owned needed sorting out and she was the only one he trusted to take care of it. And seeing as she’d need to visit and have a proper look at the house, why didn’t she take Harriet along as well? Pippa, at the beginning of her own summer break from a career as a Fine Art lecturer at a London college, had tried to put Jonny off and suggested his business manager or the family solicitor instead, but he’d been absolutely insistent on Pippa being the only one he wanted to deal with the house.
She said no very firmly at first, firing off a couple of frustrated emails and pointing out she was busy with her own plans in reply to his increasingly pleading ones. But then he’d deployed his secret weapon and swerved right around her to Harriet, who, to Pippa’s utter astonishment, had been all for Jonny’s scheme, and so here they were. Parked in the dark outside a house she had never seen and couldn’t remember her dad visiting or barely ever mentioning either. She held back another sigh as she continued speaking.
‘So as far as I’m concerned, the sooner we’re in and out of here, the better. We still have plans for the summer and none of them include spending time in this backwater, wherever it actually is. I’ve forgotten.’
Pippa shoved the car door open, and Harriet followed her onto the drive with a degree of enthusiasm she’d almost forgotten her daughter possessed. Usually it was only the threat of her phone running out of charge that would send Harriet moving rapidly in search of the nearest source of power. Or playing wing attack in netball, at which she excelled.
‘Hartfell, Mum. The jewel in this unspoiled Yorkshire dale, to be precise.’ Harriet slammed her door, the noise reverberating through the night, and Pippa shuddered when an owl screeched somewhere in the trees leaning towards the house. Where was all the traffic and the ever-present background noise she was used to? The artificial lights, blotting out the stars? Gravel was crisp under their feet, the late evening air warm and still.
‘Who told you it was a jewel?’
‘Google.’
‘Ah. Right. Not your grandad, then?’ Pippa was surprised that Harriet had bothered to look up the location of their base for the next week or so. She was usually tied up with her friends and her own plans, which increasingly didn’t include her mother, other than as a glorified taxi driver and chef. No, scratch weeks plural, Pippa thought crossly. They were only staying for a very few days if she had anything to do with it.
‘No, haven’t spoken to him since he went to Bali with whatshername.’
‘Erica, Harriet. Your grandad’s partner is called Erica.’
‘She is this month.’
Pippa was rooting through her bag, feeling for the unfamiliar set of keys her dad’s solicitor had couriered round to her house yesterday. ‘That’s not entirely fair, they’ve only broken up and got back together twice as far as I know.’
‘Three times, Mum. Freddie told me. He doesn’t like her, he thinks they’ll be over by Christmas, for good this time.’
‘And what else has your uncle said to you about…?’ Pippa hesitated. She didn’t generally discuss her dad’s love life with her daughter, but these things did tend to crop up when you were the eldest child of a rock legend and online gossip was sometimes hard to ignore. Harriet was way savvier and more clued up about life than Pippa had been at that age, and she still thought it a very good thing that the internet had barely even been invented when Jonny’s band had been in its heyday back in the eighties.
As his much adored and only grandchild, despite the three daughters and two sons he had fathered, with Pippa refusing to think of that in terms of ‘so far,’ Harriet had access to Jonny that even Pippa couldn’t attain. He always picked up Harriet’s calls, possibly because they were actually so rare, and he checked in with her online every week, no matter where in the world he was.
‘About Grandad?’ Harriet hitched her tote bag over a shoulder. ‘Not much, Freddie was more interested in hearing about what we think of this place. Asked me to send him some images.’
The youngest of Jonny’s children and at eighteen, only four years older than Harriet, the two of them had always got on well and were more like cousins than uncle and niece.
‘Freddie did?’ Pippa halted on the drive, squinting at Harriet beneath the flicker of a security light which couldn’t seem to make up its mind if it should be on or off. No doubt something else that needed to go on her list of stuff to do. ‘Why?’
‘Dunno. Didn’t say.’ Harriet’s eyes were glued to her phone and Pippa didn’t expect to get much more from her. ‘Why?’
‘No reason,’ Pippa replied casually. She’d have to find out what her brother might be up to later. Property was something her dad had accumulated down the years and each of his offspring had been promised one each eventually. Maybe that was where Freddie’s interest in Hartfell lay.
© Suzanne Snow 2024
