Starting Over

CHAPTER TWO (#udd589076-be3b-5fa8-977d-4a764c8b9ab4)

HASLEWICH.

Sara Lanyon still didn’t know what she was doing here. She had certainly not intended to turn off the motorway en route home to Brighton from her visit to her old university friend, so some unknown power must surely be responsible for her being here.

Haslewich … Crighton land …

Crighton land. Her mouth with its deliciously full upper lip curled into a line of angry contempt.

She had heard all about the Crightons from her stepgrandmamma, poor Tania.

She had been so very damaged and fragile when her grandfather had rescued her, gently building up her confidence and her life for her.

‘There are always two sides to a situation like this, Sara,’ her father had cautioned her when once she had exploded with anger against the Crightons for what they had done to Tania.

‘But, Dad, she’s so vulnerable, so helpless … there can’t be any excuse for the way they abandoned her. It was heartless … cruel….’

Her dark-green eyes had filled with tears and her father had shaken his head ruefully.

She had been eighteen at the time then and perhaps a little inclined to judge everything in black or white. She was older now and more able to apply a little of Richard Lanyon’s admirable dispassion to her judgements, but deep down inside she still was reluctant to give up her antipathy towards the Crightons. Over-emotional of her—illogical. She shook her head. No, they were plainly an insensitive brutish lot, motivated only by preserving their own interests and sticking together in a clannish fashion.

‘The Crightons practically are Haslewich,’ Tania had once told her in her soft pretty girlish voice. ‘Locally everyone admires them and looks up to them, but …’ She had stopped and shivered. ‘They used to make me feel so … so intimidated and … and unwanted. Even my own children …’

As her eyes had filled with tears so had Sara’s and now, here she was, her car parked just off the town’s main square as she walked curiously across it.

It was almost lunch time and she was hungry—very hungry. She looked uncertainly round the square and then decided to investigate the possibility of a narrow, interesting-looking lane that ran off it.

A signpost at the top of the street read To the River.

The river. Sara loved water. Her father was a keen sailor and Sara had crewed for him as a girl.

She was halfway down the street when she saw the restaurant. A quick glance inside showed that it was busy and the smells wafting from the kitchen were certainly enticing.

Making up her mind Sara pushed open the door and then stopped in bemusement as a harassed-looking middle-aged woman pounced on her asking anxiously, ‘Sara …?’

‘Er, yes,’ she replied automatically, frantically wondering how on earth the woman could possibly know her.

‘Oh, thank goodness for that,’ the older woman exclaimed. ‘The agency have let us down so many times but they promised me this time … It’s this way,’ she added beckoning to Sara to follow her as she wound her way through the busy tables.

Feeling rather as though she had stepped straight into a page from Alice Through the Looking Glass, Sara followed in her wake.

Once they had reached the rear of the restaurant the woman pushed open the door telling Sara as she indicated for her to precede her into the room it led into, ‘I must apologise for the mess. We’ve been so hectic. I’ve tried to keep up to date with the paperwork, but it just hasn’t been possible. Still, now that you’re here … Oh, and the computer’s working again, thank goodness. I think the news that we’d got our Michelin threw it into as much of a state of excitement as it did us. Of course, now we’re being inundated with requests for tables which is marvellous. Or at least it would be if we weren’t committed for the next three Saturdays to weddings. Not that we don’t want them, we do … but …’ As she paused for breath Sara looked round the small cluttered office.

Rather oddly it had French windows that gave onto an attractive little town garden and when the woman saw her looking at it she smiled.

‘We only moved into these premises a little while ago. It was originally a café and we bought the house next door. The office was the house’s back parlour and we decided we’d leave the French windows….’

‘It’s very pretty.’ Sara smiled.

‘Well, yes, and hopefully next summer we shall be able to make better use of it. I’m Frances Sorter, by the way,’ she introduced herself. ‘I expect the agency will have told you that my husband and I own the restaurant. Our chef is so keen on organic produce my husband grows as much as he can himself.

‘Now, I don’t know whether or not the agency discussed terms with you.’

‘Er, no, they haven’t,’ Sara replied truthfully.

Now was the time to tell Frances Sorter that there had been a mistake and that she wasn’t the person the woman thought she was but for some reason Sara discovered instead that she was actually listening whilst she was told the surprisingly generous terms of her ‘employment.’

‘It will only be for a few months, of course,’ she was told a shade anxiously. ‘You do know that, don’t you? Only Mary, our regular office manageress, is having a baby and she says she will want to come back, but …’

A few months … Sara started to frown. She had decided to move on from the school where she had been working as a supply teacher at the end of the previous school year. She had several options she was considering, including working abroad and her father had even suggested she could have her old university holiday job back with him working as his assistant if she wished. There was really no earthly reason why she should want to come and work here in ‘Crightonville.’ In fact, there was every reason why she shouldn’t. So why was she nodding her head and assuring Frances Sorter that yes, the salary they were paying was fine?

She had always been inclined to be impulsive, a trait which had got her into plenty of trouble as a girl but even she was surprised to hear herself accepting the job whilst saying, ‘There’s one problem though. I … er … don’t actually have anywhere to live locally as yet and—’

‘Oh, that’s no problem.’ Frances Sorter beamed. ‘There’s a flat upstairs that you could have rent free. In fact, if you did you would be solving another of our problems. The insurance company are insisting that the flat is tenanted. Apparently they consider that an empty property is more at risk from thieves and vandals. It’s only small but the previous owners had it completely refurbished since they lived “over the shop” and, well, let me take you up and you can see for yourself.’

Well, Sara reflected ruefully half an hour after she said goodbye to Frances. This morning as she left her friend the last thing on her mind had been coming to Haslewich, never mind accepting a job here, and yet here she was … Sara was a firm believer in fate and in taking the kind of chances other people more cautious and less imaginative would give very wary distance to. Life was an adventure—or at least it should be. Her eyes began to sparkle. Who knew, she might even get the opportunity to even the score a bit for her sweet vulnerable little stepgrandmamma and put some of those powerful lordly Crightons in their place. Now that was a challenge she would accept with relish!

Nick Crighton stifled a small sigh. It had been very kind of his brother Saul and his wife Tullah to offer him a room in their home to recuperate in following the injuries he had sustained whilst visiting one of his clients who was incarcerated in a Thai jail.

Another inmate had attacked Nick’s client in a drug-crazed frenzy and when Nick had gone to help him, he had ended up being knifed.

Luckily the knife had missed all his major internal organs, even if his recovery was taking longer than expected thanks to an infection that had developed in the site of the wound. That had cleared up now but he had been told by his doctor to take things easy until the wound had completely healed.

Yes, it was kind of Saul and Tullah to insist that he stay with them, but the truth was that he was beginning to get rather bored by all the cosseting he was receiving.

He was a grown man, after all, a man used to spending his spare time on the outdoor pursuits he enjoyed: rock climbing and sailing, white water rafting … anything with just that little touch of exhilaration and excitement about it—not that he ever took foolhardy or dangerous risks…. Well, not often!

The last time he had had a medical check-up he had tried to persuade his doctor that he was well enough to return to work. After all, as a lawyer he was hardly likely to be overtaxing himself physically he had suggested slyly to his GP.

‘Mmm … I take your point,’ the other man had agreed. ‘Sitting at an office desk or even standing in court certainly aren’t going to do you too much harm now that the wound has actually started to heal….’

‘Great! So I can go back to work then?’ he had pounced eagerly.

‘Don’t be so ridiculous, Nick,’ the doctor had refused affably. ‘You may be a lawyer but I happen to know that your job is very much a hands-on affair. You run a business that involves taking the kinds of risks that no sane man with a healthy respect for his own physical safety would ever take.’

Nick had shrugged, knowing that there was nothing he could say. His work as a negotiator for people caught up in the legal systems of other countries often took him into situations that were physically dangerous. It hadn’t been unknown for him when dealing with a particularly corrupt government to bribe his ‘client’ out of gaol and then have to make a quick and sometimes dangerous getaway over the border with him or her.

As a newly qualified solicitor he had volunteered to help the parents of a university friend to make an application to a far Eastern government for their daughter to be released from prison where she was being held on drug smuggling charges.

After he had successfully won the case he had been besieged by other parents requesting his help with similar cases.

It appalled Nick that even now when surely the most naive of travellers must be aware of the dangers, young people, especially young girls, fell into the trap of allowing themselves to be used—sometimes knowingly but more often than not as mules—by drug traffickers.

He did other work, of course, as a locum which allowed him plenty of time to travel. Work to Nick was a means to an end, not an end in itself.

‘I’ve booked us a table at the Sorters’ new restaurant for tonight,’ Tullah had announced this morning over breakfast. ‘They’ve got their Michelin now and I must say I’m looking forward to sampling their latest menu. You’ll enjoy it, Nick.’

Well, yes, he would enjoy it, but … but what he was hankering after right now was something a little bit more adventurous than domesticity of the type enjoyed by his brother Saul and his wife and family. It was all very well … all very cosy, but it was not for him … not yet. This mating, nesting instinct that seemed to have affected so many members of his generation of Crighton males was not one he shared. Not that he was against commitment or marriage per se … he wasn’t; he just didn’t want it for himself—not now—not ever! He valued and needed his freedom far too much.