The Last Days of Summer: The best feel-good summer read for 2017

Since Isabelle had spent most of her life living in the middle of nowhere, Cheshire, I’m not quite sure where she got the idea that outside Rosewood, London and possibly Paris, the world was a social wasteland.

“Plenty,” I said, racking my brain for an example. Lately, most of my evenings were spent in bed with Duncan. “We go out for drinks with the guys from the office most Thursdays. And Sundays my friend Claire and I tend to meet for lunch.” It sounded phenomenally boring, put like that.

“We?” Isabelle asked, suddenly looking a lot more interested in the conversation. “Who’s we?”

Across the table, Edward rolled his eyes at me, as if to say, ‘Well, really. What did you think she was going to pay most attention to?’ I wasn’t sure I liked the way that Edward had slotted so easily into my family’s life.

“Ah… Duncan and I…” I stopped, unsure as to how to continue. As it happened, I needn’t have worried.

“Darling, how lovely!” Mum said, obviously not grasping the implications of ‘he’s my boss’ as quickly as I’d have expected. “I didn’t know you were seeing anybody!”

“You should have invited him to the party,” Isabelle put in, obviously so annoyed to have been deprived of the opportunity to cross-examine a potential new family member, that she’d forgotten she hadn’t actually invited me.

“Well, it’s all still rather new…” I said, wishing I couldn’t feel Greg staring at me. I wanted to explain that it wasn’t serious, that nobody needed to buy a hat or anything. But they all seemed so pleased that I’d found someone, I just couldn’t.

“Does this mean you won’t be home for Christmas again?” Caroline sounded put out. It was nice to know that someone would miss me this year.

“Of course she won’t,” Isabelle said, in a definite manner. “She’ll want to be with Duncan.” Which was a much better reason than, ‘She wouldn’t dare upset her sister by visiting twice in one year.’

“You’ll understand when you have a boyfriend,” Mum said to Caro, and sighed. “Which will probably be in about a fortnight, the rate you’re growing. It’s such a shame they grow up so fast. Christmas isn’t the same without little children around.” She stared wistfully across the table towards Ellie. “It would be so nice to have a baby at Rosewood for Christmas.”

Ellie flinched, and Greg reached for her full wine glass, taking a large gulp. I grabbed my cutlery just a little harder, and was wondering when I’d be able to escape back to the purely aesthetic horrors of the Yellow Room rather than the emotional horror of family dinner, when my grandfather’s deep, dark voice rang out through the room.

“Oh, good God, no. I like my Christmas morning lie-ins, thank you.” Everyone’s attention snapped to the doorway where Nathaniel’s broad form was filling the frame, his familiar orange fisherman’s jumper clashing with the elegant cream and gold of the dining room.

Nathaniel Drury. Literary legend, imposing intellect, household name and always, always, Granddad.

He’d been twenty-one when he published his first novel, and become a literary sensation almost overnight. There are photos of him as a young man on the wall of every fashionable artists’ haunt in London, New York and Paris, and he drank everyone under the table in all of them. He was notorious as a womaniser, and a drunk. Which is why the national presses were so astounded when, a year later, he disappeared from London society for two weeks, only to return with a wife in tow. One Isabelle Yates, local beauty and daughter of the richest man in his home town in North Wales. They bought Rosewood the next year and, well, the rest became our family history.

“What’s for tea?” Nathaniel asked, leaning on the back of Edward’s chair and smiling at me like no one else in the room mattered.

“If you’d come down to dinner at a reasonable time, and wearing appropriate clothes, like the rest of the family, you’d have been able to find out.” Isabelle didn’t look at her husband as she spoke, instead apparently choosing to glare at me. I blinked, and tried to figure out how, exactly, this was my fault. Ellie’s sad eyes at the dinner table and sulky refusal to talk all evening? Absolutely my fault. Nathaniel’s bizarre writerly habits? They’d been around far longer than me.

“We had Chicken Provençal,” Caro told him, oblivious to Isabelle’s temper. “But we’ve eaten it all. It’s Saskia’s favourite, you know.”

“I remember,” Nathaniel said, grinning at me again.

“There might be some leftovers coincidentally keeping warm in the oven,” Dad said, looking up at the ceiling to avoid the moment Isabelle’s glare swung his way. “And some bread in the bread bin.”

“I’ll go and grab it for you,” Edward said, presumably more out of a desire to escape the dining room for a while than because he was trying to expand his servant repertoire from carrying cases. “Anyone else want anything? I’ll bring more wine.” Without waiting for a response, he disappeared through the door and across the hallway to the kitchen.

Watching his long legs stride across the tiled floor, I found myself wondering if his legs really were that long, or if he was just so skinny that he looked taller. Perhaps more slender, than skinny… Skinny implied unattractive, which he wasn’t. At all. More… graceful, I supposed.

Strange. He was nothing even close to my type – I went more for darker, more brooding good looks. Like Duncan. And Greg, come to think of it. Edward was all golds and creams, like Isabelle’s decorating scheme. Like sunshine.

And for some reason, I couldn’t help but watch him.

“Now, to business,” Nathaniel said, leaning on the back of Edward’s vacated chair. “If I’m going to eat, I’ll need a place to sit. Now, which chair do I normally sit in, I wonder?”

Curled up on the base of Nathaniel’s seat, Caroline giggled.

He leant further across the chair back, angling his upper body to stare at Caro. “Well, I’m head of the family, so it makes sense that I’d normally sit… at the head of the table!” He lurched across and grabbed at Caroline’s legs, and she squealed. “But who’s this sitting in m-yyy chair?”

“It’s me, it’s me!” Caro squawked, as he started to tickle her. “And I’m not moving!”

“Is that right?” In one deft movement, and surprisingly fast for a man of his age, Nathaniel hefted his youngest granddaughter out of the chair, swung his body round to take the seat, and dumped Caro on his lap. “Hah!” he said, reaching for the unused wine glass above Caroline’s plate. “I am victorious. Servants, bring me wine!”

I couldn’t not laugh, no matter how hard Isabelle was rolling her eyes. Dad was openly grinning, and even Greg was looking amused.

Therese passed the red wine down the table towards me, and I filled up Nathaniel’s glass, just as Edward reappeared and replaced Caroline’s plate with a new, heaped one, before reclaiming his seat.

“How was the journey?” my grandfather asked me, ignoring the food and taking a gulp of wine instead.

I shrugged. “Not so bad. I got here about four.”

“I’m afraid I was shackled to my desk,” he said, with an exaggerated sigh. “Or I would have been here to greet you.”

“Since you were the only one who knew she was coming,” Isabelle said pointedly, “it was really very rude not to offer to meet her at the station.”

“If only she’d received an invitation.” Therese sighed and looked innocently around her. “She could have RSVPed and avoided all this confusion.”

“What story are you writing?” Caro asked, bouncing enough in Nathaniel’s lap to spill a few drops of his wine onto his plate as he lifted his glass. “Is it about people telling lies and secrets and death and stuff? My friend Alicia’s mum says that’s all you ever write.”

Nathaniel muttered something under his breath that I couldn’t quite hear, but could probably guess at. Edward obviously heard, though, as he choked on his mouthful of wine.

“My stories,” Nathaniel said, loud enough for us all to hear, “are every one of them different and new and utterly unlike anything I have written before. This one more than ever.”

Across the table from me, Edward put down his wine glass, too hard, and stared at his empty plate, apparently not even noticing as a few drops of wine sloshed onto his hand.

“But what’s it about?” Caro pressed. Nathaniel shook his head. “You’ll all just have to wait to read it. You, longer than most,” he added, patting Caroline’s shoulder, “as not all sections are suitable for such a young lady.”

Except for Edward, I realised. Edward, as my grandfather’s assistant, would know exactly what he was working on, how it was going and whether he really was writing at all, or just avoiding Isabelle.

Is that why he’s looking so nervous? I wondered. If Nathaniel wasn’t writing, it might explain why Edward was so keen to make himself invaluable elsewhere in the household. A writer who didn’t write wouldn’t have much need for an assistant, after all.

“But I want to hear a story,” Caroline said, twisting in Nathaniel’s lap.

“Ah, but that is a different matter entirely,” Nathaniel said. “I may not be able to tell you about the book I’m writing now, but far be it for me to deprive a young girl of a chilling tale of betrayal and murder when she wants to hear one!”

“That’s quite enough, Nathaniel,” Isabelle said, standing abruptly. “Now, who wants to help me clear the table?”

Caroline shook her head. “Not me, Grandma. I’m listening to the story.”

At the end of the table, Ellie got to her feet with her usual grace, before the vein throbbing at Isabelle’s temple burst. “I’ll help,” she said, and began systematically gathering up plates, clanking them together loudly.

Fifty years of marriage had obviously instilled some sense of self-preservation in my grandfather, because he waited until Isabelle had carried the first load of plates out of the room before he began to tell his story. Greg had apparently learned the same in less time – he was already taking the plates from Ellie’s arms and whispering something to her. They left the room together, and I couldn’t help but watch them go.

“Now,” Nathaniel said, his eyes on Isabelle as she disappeared into the kitchen. “This story is a special story.”