The Daughters Of Red Hill Hall: A gripping novel of family, secrets and murder. Kathleen McGurl
to tell Nat was Gemma’s first thought the following morning. She wasn’t working but sadly Ben was, so although he’d spent the night at her flat he’d had to get up early to go to work. Gemma got up at the same time, then spent a couple of hours mooching around the flat, waiting until it was a decent enough time to call Nat on a Saturday morning. She knew her friend loved her weekend lie-ins, followed by long bubble-filled baths. She waited till nine-thirty then couldn’t stand to wait a moment longer.
The sound of gentle splashing warned her she’d called too soon and Nat was still in the bath, hopefully gripping the phone tightly so she didn’t drop it in the water.
‘Nat, hey, good morning!’
‘Hey, Gemma. Bit early, isn’t it?’
‘Sorry. I was just desperate to talk to you. You’ll never guess…’
‘We’re meeting up later, aren’t we? To start the hunt for outfits for Anna and Jake’s wedding. We’ll be talking all day, Gemma.’ Nat sounded weary. Possibly hung-over.
‘Yes, sorry. Did you have a heavy night?’
There was a huge sigh and the sound of gentle splashing, as though Nat had shifted position in the bath, before she answered. ‘Yeah. Met a hot bloke in a nightclub, tried to pull him, but he went off with another fella in the end, who was equally hot. So I drowned my sorrows in vodka.’
‘Oh, Nat. You don’t half pick ’em.’ Gemma suppressed a giggle. That was the trouble with the phone – if they were together in a coffee shop or something she’d be able to judge whether to laugh or not by Nat’s body language. But on the phone she didn’t dare. If Nat was still feeling fragile and rejected she wouldn’t appreciate Gemma having a laugh at her expense.
‘I do, don’t I?’ Nat replied, and Gemma was relieved to hear a note of humour in her voice. ‘Thing is, Gemma, I need to find a bloke. My invitation from Anna and Jake was for “Natalie plus one”. I need to find that plus one. It’s bad enough they had to write that on the invite – I hate being the single friend everyone’s trying to pair off – but it’ll be even worse if I end up going to the wedding on my own. I need a man and I need one now – one who’ll last at least till after the wedding. Come clubbing with me, Gem? Then if you pull and I don’t, you can shove him in my direction.’
Gemma couldn’t help herself but laugh this time. The idea of her pulling a bloke when Nat couldn’t was crazy. And the last time she’d been clubbing was years ago. In fact she couldn’t remember if she’d been at all since she got together with Ben. Before then, she and Nat had gone to nightclubs every couple of weeks – when it was Nat’s turn to choose the night out. When it was Gemma’s turn they’d usually spent the evening chatting in the Men At Arms.
‘Well, it’s all very fine for you to laugh, Gem. You’ve got Ben; you’re all smugly coupled up. But a bit of sympathy wouldn’t go amiss. I’m getting on. I’ll be thirty soon – and no boyfriend.’
‘Ah, Nat. Thirty’s no age. I’ll be thirty before you in any case. And you’ll find the right person eventually. I know you will.’ Gemma mentally ran through her male friends, trying to think if any were single and worth introducing to Nat. But she could only think of shy, sweet Roger, and Nat would have him for breakfast.
‘Yeah, right. When I’m old and shrivelled. Anyway, what did you ring me for? We’re still meeting at twelve in the usual café, aren’t we? You’re not going to let me down are you?’
‘No, still on to meet you there.’ Gemma grimaced. After the way this conversation had gone so far, how could she tell Nat she and Ben had got engaged? But if she didn’t say anything now, Nat would be furious that she hadn’t told her at the earliest opportunity. She was kicking herself for having made the phone call. But if she had waited to meet Nat to tell her, she’d have been in trouble for not phoning. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place.
She took a deep breath. ‘Right, the thing I couldn’t wait to tell you about is that, well, Ben popped the question last night and I accepted.’ There. It was out.
There was silence at the other end. ‘You still there, Nat? I’m over the moon – been longing for him to propose for the last six years! And finally – squeee! – he has!’
‘Erm, wow, yeah, that’s great. Really pleased for you, mate. So, erm, see you later, right? Fuck.’
Gemma was left staring at her phone. Nat had hung up. She wondered whether she’d heard that last word properly. It really hadn’t been the kind of reaction to her news she’d expected from Nat. Well, she’d timed her call wrongly, and it seemed Nat’d had a disastrous night out, so maybe it was all because of that. When they met later in town she was sure Nat would be delighted for her. She hoped so – otherwise, well, otherwise she had no idea what was going on.
November 1834
‘I am so bored,’ Sarah grumbled. ‘I wish something would happen. Anything. Or at least if it stopped raining we could go out riding.’
Rebecca gazed out of the window. They were each sitting on a window seat in their old schoolroom, on the second floor of Red Hill Hall. Their governess Miss Albarn had been dismissed a couple of months previously – now that they had both turned fifteen the girls were deemed to have learned all that she could teach them. They now used the old schoolroom as a kind of sitting room. Rebecca didn’t mind the rain as much as Sarah. Sarah always seemed to become stressed and fretful if she had to stay indoors, whereas Rebecca was quite happy to sit with a book or in front of the piano, for hours on end. In fact a rainy day was sometimes a good thing, as it meant they were expected to stay quietly indoors and Sarah could not drag her outside on some crazy scheme.
Last week, against her better judgement, she’d allowed Sarah to persuade her to ride their ponies out of the estate, through the woods and across farmland. They weren’t supposed to leave the estate without a groom accompanying them, but Sarah had insisted, and had said she would go alone if Rebecca didn’t go with her. Rebecca had had no choice. She’d followed Sarah galloping across the fields, but her pony had shied at a jump and she’d fallen. She was still bruised.
‘I don’t know that I shall ever want to go riding again, after last time,’ Rebecca said.
‘Spoilsport. Who will I go out riding with, then? If only the grooms were more handsome, I shouldn’t mind having them as companions. If only they were more like that handsome farm labourer, Jed Arthur. He smiled at me last time. And winked. I believe he thinks I am beautiful.’ She paced around the room and sighed, dramatically. ‘Oh, being cooped up in here is so tedious. If only there was something to do.’
With Sarah in this mood Rebecca realised she would not progress with reading her novel. She stood, and held out her hand. ‘Come on, then. Let’s go and find something to do.’ Although Sarah’s plans sometimes went wrong, as Rebecca’s bruised shoulder could testify, Rebecca knew that her life would be far more boring without Sarah around. She loved Sarah for the excitement she brought to what would otherwise be too quiet a life.
They went downstairs, and visited the kitchens where Cook gave them each a finger of shortbread before making it clear to them that they were in the way. When they were younger they’d been allowed to linger in the kitchen, sitting by the fire toasting bread or marshmallows, but now they were supposed to behave like ladies, and ladies shouldn’t be in the kitchens.
‘What now?’ said Rebecca, as she followed Sarah out of the kitchen and back into the main hallway of the house. Sarah stopped in front of a glass-fronted cabinet, which stood opposite the foot of the stairs. It housed two ceremonial swords and a mahogany display case containing a pair of pistols.
‘Those.’ Sarah pointed to the pistols. ‘Papa brought them home last week. I should like a closer look at them.’
Rebecca