A Year at Meadowbrook Manor: Escape to the countryside this year with this perfect feel-good romance read in 2018

‘And also, Gus,’ their father continued, ‘I never let you be who you wanted to be. That is my biggest failing. One I wish to rectify now, but more of that later.

‘Right, Freddie, well you are the most infuriating of my children, all that party, club stuff, but I wish I had reached out to you and made sure that you were all right and not doing drugs or having sex with women in nightclub toilets all the time.’ Harriet glanced at Freddie, she was pretty sure that was exactly what his job entailed. ‘Freddie, you might be a party boy, and the only of my children who asked for money on more than one occasion …’ Now they all looked at Freddie who blushed. ‘But I should have tried to get you to settle down, and I feel that I might have failed you in that. If so, I am sorry. You have such potential and if you want to do your parties then that’s fine, but you need to grow up I’m afraid, we all do at some point, and perhaps I should have helped you more with that.’ Freddie wiped a tear away.

‘Finally, my little Pipsqueak, well I saw more of you than the others, but still I worry about you. I don’t feel that you are as happy as you deserve to be. I’m not sure if it’s Mark – I think it is him – but you didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask. I think I should have asked more about all of you and I feel if I had been there for you all, then you all would have been closer to each other.’ He looked and sounded as if he was choking up. Harriet had never seen her father cry but this was close. ‘I love you all, so so very much.’ There was another pause where they saw their father pick up a glass of whisky and take a drink.

‘This is surreal,’ Freddie said. ‘I mean, wow, really? Are you sure we can’t have a drink?’

‘Shush,’ Gus told him as their father began to speak again. Harriet felt the familiar voice stirring her emotions. It hurt her, slicing through her. Grief. Finally this was the pain that she wanted to feel, to prove that she was alive and that she loved her father. He was like a god to her. That wasn’t in dispute. But now, apart from on the screen where he was slightly left of centre, she would never see him again.

‘I will miss each and every one of you, please believe that. And I want to put things right for all of you, so that is why the following might come as a shock to you. My actual will will be read a year from today. David will take care of that. Have I already said that, Gwen?’

‘Yes, Andrew, I told you you should have written a script.’

‘No, it’s all here, I don’t need a script.’ He tapped his head. ‘And until then, I need you to fulfil my last, dying wish. Or dead wish because I am dead of course. Ha!’ He paused and stared straight at the camera.

‘We are sure he’s dead?’ Gus asked. ‘Because this is madness, and I have the feeling he’s going to jump out at any time and say this has all been a ruse to get us home.’

‘He’s dead, Gus,’ Harriet almost whispered.

‘And I am dead, so this isn’t some kind of sick joke. You know I didn’t joke enough when you were young. I was so driven, so busy making money. I should have had more fun, but now is not the time for that. So, you will all be here a year from now to hear what happens to my considerable fortune and the house. But I will tell you this, Gwen is taken care of, as is Connor, and Fleur, but you guys will get the rest of my estate, the money and the house. All equally split of course. I know you always thought I had favourites, but I really didn’t.’

‘Well now we know that, why do we have to wait a year?’ Harriet asked. ‘This makes no sense.’

‘Why do you have to wait a year in that case?’ Andrew continued. ‘Well, you see there are conditions to the money. You four will equally divide the bulk of everything; the money, the house, art, et cetera, anything that isn’t specifically bequeathed to anyone else. But before you get anything, you have to agree to my conditions. Firstly, you must all live together in Meadowbrook Manor for a year.’

‘What?’ Freddie yelped, making Harriet jump.

‘Yes, I repeat, you will live here, all of you together. It’s time you were a family again and this is the only way I can make it happen. And I know you are all going to say that it’s impossible because of your jobs and, Pippa, of course you’re married to Mark, but actually you can all take a year off. I have looked into it and given it a great deal of thought. Here’s how I suggest it will work.

‘Harriet, you’ve been working since you graduated, you never take holidays, you don’t seem to have a personal life, or if you do it’s not one I would approve of, so for you to take a sabbatical wouldn’t be difficult, plenty of people do. You say you have to sort out your father’s estate, which is true. But I think the break from the city, from the rat race and New York, will do you good and give you a chance to reconnect with your siblings.’

Harriet sank back into the sofa. Her father was clearly mad and this was impossible, she couldn’t even conceive such a ridiculous idea.

‘Gus, I know you hate your life. You don’t like your job, your wife left you for another man.’

‘I’d forgotten that,’ Freddie interrupted as David sighed and pressed pause. ‘I mean that your wife went off with another man.’

‘My squash partner,’ Gus said, sadly.

‘I didn’t know people played squash these days,’ Freddie replied, looking confused.

Harriet rolled her eyes. ‘David, can we get back to this?’ she asked.

David nodded and resumed the video.

‘So, I feel as if that is my failing too,’ their father scratched his head, ‘oh, not your wife leaving you, I’m not going to take responsibility for everything, but the job. You loved painting, do you remember, just like your mother, and you showed talent but I said painting was only for vagabonds who wanted to cut parts of their body off. In retrospect, that was possibly a bit harsh, but I’m not an art expert and I only really know the story of Van Gogh, so I kind of tarnished them all with the same paintbrush. Ha! Anyway, the truth was that your mother loved to paint and we built the summer house as her studio. After she died, I turned it into a den for you and I couldn’t bear to be reminded of her in the early days so I dissuaded you from painting.’

‘Dissuaded? He banned me from painting.’ Harriet squeezed Gus’s hand. Gosh, she’d forgotten that Gus had the artistic gene, inherited from their mother, but it had been knocked well and truly out of him. He looked about as much like an artist as any insurance salesman did.

‘Of course,’ Andrew continued, ‘if I knew that would send you to work in insurance I probably wouldn’t have stopped you. I mean, insurance! Come on, Gus! You got married young, and wanted to be the man you thought I wanted you to be, and that was my mistake. I want you now to be the man you want to be. So take a year off work, I know your company is in good hands. Take time off and paint for God’s sake.’ They all jumped as he slammed his hand down on the desk. ‘Ow. Sorry, but, Gus, if you go to the attic you’ll find all your mother’s paints still there. Take them. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, son.’

Both her father’s eyes and Gus’s were full of tears now.

‘I don’t know if I can bear this?’ Pippa said.

‘Freddie, oh my boy. You could always charm the birds out of the trees. But you like the finer things in life and you seem to have a misguided way of getting them. This party, or clubbing business, well it’s not fulfilling you, I can tell. It’s time for you to settle down, grow up and do something which satisfies you, but not just in a hedonistic, superficial way.’

‘How well he thinks he knows me,’ Freddie quipped, but he looked downcast.

‘And finally, my Pippa. You are so like your mother in many ways, not with the art, you were always totally rubbish at that, but in other ways. Not least your looks. And I want you to be happy. I didn’t care that you didn’t have the ambition of your siblings, I didn’t care that you didn’t want to work, but I did care that when I gave Mark permission to marry you that I may have made a huge mistake. In the last year I’ve seen a change in you and I don’t know what’s caused it. So, anyway, I know if you live here with your siblings for a while you’ll have some distance from him at least. I’m not saying leave him, but I am saying if you do as I ask, you’ll have options and maybe some space to think.’

‘God, Pip, I had no idea your marriage wasn’t great,’ Harriet said.

‘It is great. Dad’s wrong, our marriage is good, and I really don’t know what he’s talking about,’ Pippa shot back.

‘And if you want to stay with him then that’s your decision and I will respect that from my grave. Although if I can figure out how to haunt people he’ll definitely be on my list.’ Andrew laughed so hard he had a coughing fit.

David Castle pressed pause. He looked slightly uncomfortable. ‘Are we all all right up to now?’ he asked.

‘I’m a little confused.’ Harriet took charge as she always did. ‘I mean, he really expects us to live here for a year, and only then will the proper will be read? Is that correct?’

‘It’s bloody insane,’ Gus blustered.

‘What about Mark?’ Pippa added.

‘Are you sure I can’t have a drink?’ Freddie pleaded.

‘Right, well, of course, as his solicitor I am privy to the exact terms, and I’ll hand them out to each of you when the video is over. But now I’ll try to make it clear thus far. Your father indeed expects you all to live in the house together for a year. It’s the first condition. It’s not the only one.’

‘And if we refuse?’ Harriet asked. Her life was in New York. She owned her apartment, she had a job, a highly paid, important job. She had a group of friends that she went for cocktails with at least once a week. She had a personal trainer. How could she leave all that? She couldn’t. It was impossible.

‘Then the estate will be disposed of as per your father’s instructions. He was serious about this – if you don’t live here, then you don’t get a penny.’

‘Well how about if one of us agrees or two of us and the others don’t?’ Freddie asked.

‘That won’t work. Either all four of you live here or none of you. There are no variables.’

‘And what are the other conditions?’ Harriet asked. This was ridiculous. She loved Meadowbrook, but she didn’t need the money, so she could walk away. But, on the other hand, what about the others? And what about the fact her father wanted them to do this. She’d be defying him, letting her family down. Her head started aching, it was all so confusing.

‘You’re about to find out.’ David pressed play and their father’s voice rang out in the room once more.

‘I hope you all living here in Meadowbrook Manor for a year will redefine your relationship with each other. As children you were all so close, but well, I know when I sent Harry to boarding school it started to change. I do take responsibility for that but I can’t turn the clock back. I am sorry. I want you all to find your way back to being a family and this is the only way I could think of to do that. Now, you guys know about my animals.’ David pressed pause again.

Harriet had never seen the sanctuary, but she’d heard plenty about it from her dad. Harriet had to admit she had only shown a very cursory polite interest in it. She had sort of put it down to him going slightly mad with loneliness, if she was honest. Rescuing animals in order to rescue himself. But she never said that.

‘I visited Daddy’s animals all the time,’ Pippa said. Pippa probably encouraged him to get more as well, she was so soft.

‘Fleur loved going with Dad to see them too,’ Gus added sadly. ‘She helped out at the sanctuary quite a lot.’