Wickham Hall, Part 3 Read online

  About the Book

  Autumn is unfurling at Wickham Hall and everyone is excited about the upcoming bonfire night event – set to be the biggest and brightest ever in the hall’s history. Romance is definitely flickering between Holly and Ben too, as Holly’s life at home finally settles down.

  But as one fire is put out another bursts into life, and the whole team at Wickham Hall find themselves under pressure. Will the majestic firework display end in tragedy?

  Wickham Hall is an utterly feel-good story told in four parts – following Holly Swift’s attempt at organising her own happy-ever-after, one catastrophe at a time. Sparks Fly is part three.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Previously in Wickham Hall

  Sparks Fly

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Next at Wickham Hall . . .

  About the Author

  Also by Cathy Bramley

  Irresistible recipes inspired by Wickham Hall

  Copyright

  WICKHAM HALL

  Part Three - Sparks Fly

  Cathy Bramley

  Previously in Wickham Hall: Summer Secrets . . .

  Wickham Hall is starting to feel like a home away from home for Holly. The Summer Festival was a rave success, and things had certainly started hotting up between Ben and Holly too . . . But at a crucial moment Ben revealed a key connection between Lord Fortescue and Holly’s mum. He couldn’t possibly be Holly’s father . . . could he?

  Holly has to find out the truth from her mother once and for all – only then can she truly know her past and imagine her future. With Bonfire Night plans already underway, will her and Ben’s budding romance ignite – or go up in smoke?

  Read Wickham Hall: Sparks Fly to find out!

  Sparks Fly

  Chapter 1

  The tiny cottage I shared with my mum was a mere fifteen-minute walk from Wickham Hall, along a narrow side street at the far end of the village. But this afternoon it felt like the longest journey I’d ever made, every step taking me nearer to the truth about my father but further from Wickham Hall and further still from Ben and his mischievous brown eyes and cheeky smile.

  I still felt wobbly from my fainting spell earlier at the summer festival and wondered briefly whether the sun was making me a bit delirious but as I walked through Wickham village I forced myself to concentrate on the facts.

  I’d asked Mum about that bracelet recently and she’d said it had been given to her as a present just before she’d had me. I was born in April 1985. Who would have given my mother, a seventeen-year-old girl, a diamond and pearl bracelet if not a wealthy lord?

  I walked along Wickham High Street playing genetic snap with His Lordship. Brown eyes: snap; fair hair: snap, OK his was silver, but it had been blond: I’d seen photographs . . . And now that I thought about it, I even bore a slight resemblance to his daughter Zara.

  And Benedict. I rubbed the palm of my hand over my forehead. For a moment back there in the sunken gardens, I thought we might have been right at the start of something special. Especially when he’d said that thing about me bringing out the best in him. My imagination had run riot, fantasizing that his family might welcome me into their home like a daughter . . . but not that I would actually be another daughter.

  Oh God. I paused momentarily and leaned against a red postbox as a wave of nausea took hold.

  Whatever happened next, I resolved, turning into Mill Lane, I had no intention of causing trouble for the Fortescue family. If my worst fears were realized, I’d resign from my job at Wickham Hall and disappear – simply start again, setting all dangerous feelings for Ben aside. Eventually, I suppose, I’d forget how he had exploded unexpectedly into my life, bringing fun, chaos, noise and his irresistible charm with him.

  And perhaps I’d forget how adorable he’d looked when he’d asked me to have dinner with him.

  Perhaps.

  I sighed, a long shuddering sigh.

  I sped up as much as I could as Weaver’s Cottage came into view. I’d gone past the tearful stage but my legs had turned to jelly, my head was spinning and my stomach was leaden with sorrow.

  I had abandoned my handbag up at the Wickham Hall festival office. I had my phone, but no purse, and no door key. But I was beyond caring about my possessions and I knew I could let myself into the cottage: we always kept a spare key hidden in the garden. I lifted a geranium-filled terracotta pot to reveal it, unlocked the door and almost collapsed with relief as I stepped into the cool, cramped hallway.

  Stopping briefly in the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water, I stumbled up the stairs to my mum’s room and sat at her dressing table, my stomach quivering as I stared at her jewellery box.

  I lifted the lid, removed the satin-lined inner tray and let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

  There it was, right at the bottom: the pearl bracelet with its S-shaped diamond clasp.

  I picked it up, coiled it into the palm of my hand and closed my fingers around it.

  Lord Fortescue had bought at least three bracelets like this: one for Lady Fortescue, one for his mother and another for his aunt. Was it possible he’d bought a fourth for the seventeen-year-old Lucy Swift? Only Mum could tell me the truth and she wouldn’t be home until the festival closed at the end of the day.

  A wave of tiredness washed over me, every inch of my skin felt raw and despite the heat of the afternoon I shuddered feverishly. I picked up my glass and dragged myself into my own bedroom.

  Sometimes, I thought, as sleep began to steal my consciousness, life deals us a blow so cruel that we are convinced the bruises will never fade . . .

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to banish the puzzled look on Ben’s face as I’d run from the sunken gardens and out of his sight.

  The sound of a key rattling in the wooden front door jolted me from sleep. My bedroom was bathed in a golden evening light and the edge of my curtains fluttered in a gentle breeze through the open window. I was still clutching the bracelet and when I looked at my palm it was pitted with the shape of each pearl.

  I didn’t have the energy to call out, so I listened instead, waiting for Mum to find me. She pottered around downstairs for a few minutes, opening the doors into the back garden, and then I heard her coming up the stairs humming merrily to herself.

  My heart thumped with tension as she reached the landing.

  ‘Mum?’ I called.

  ‘Holly! You frightened me to death!’ she said, poking her head around my bedroom door. ‘I thought you’d be . . . Good gracious, love, what happened to you?’

  She crossed the room, sat on my bed and pressed a hand to my forehead. ‘You’re very hot. How long have you been lying here like this?’

  I shrugged weakly.

  Mum held out my glass of water and I raised myself up enough to drink. She bustled out of the room and returned with some headache tablets.

  ‘I’ve been expecting something like this to happen ever since you started working at the hall.’ She sighed, popping two tablets out of the foil wrapper and putting them in my hand.

  ‘You did?’ I rasped, blinking at her. My heart ached, wishing we’d had this conversation twenty-four hours ago, before Ben and I had . . .

  ‘You work too hard,’ she scolded, shaking her head. She sat back down on my bed and stroked the hair back off my forehead. ‘Darling, I know you’re a perfectionist, but working so hard isn’t good for the soul. What . . .?’
/>   Her voice faded as I unfurled my fingers and dropped the pearl bracelet into her lap.

  ‘Where did you get this, Mum? Tell me the story. And please, I need the truth.’

  Mum held the pearls up to her cheek and her shoulders slumped as she looked at me.

  ‘I should never have kept it.’

  I held my breath and stared at her as she squirmed beside me. ‘Then why did you?’

  ‘It was the only thing I had left of him, I—’

  ‘Who?’ My mouth dried and I took another sip of water. ‘Mum, I know this is hard for you, but you don’t understand. I need to know. Tonight, before . . .’ I shook my head and swallowed. Before I make any more mistakes with a man who may be my half-brother.

  She pressed her hands to her cheeks and groaned. ‘I’ve been dreading this coming out.’

  ‘Who gave this to you?’ I repeated, peeling her hands from her face.

  Her blue eyes looked haunted and my heart went out to her. I held her hands gently in mine and waited.

  ‘The truth is that I found it in the bushes at the edge of the sunken garden at Wickham Hall. The diamond fastening glinted through the undergrowth and caught my eye.’

  ‘You found it?’ My eyes locked onto hers. ‘So it wasn’t a gift?’

  She shook her head. ‘Holly, I was seventeen and I had never seen such a beautiful bracelet. Pearls were really in fashion at the time. But even then I knew that this was the real thing, not like the cheap stuff we were all wearing at school. I knew I should hand it in but Antonio said—’

  ‘Antonio?’ I sat up quickly and then instantly regretted it as a wave of dizziness blurred my vision.

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded, cheeks pink. She smoothed the skirt of her dress and cleared her throat. ‘Antonio was my first love. Your father.’

  I gazed at her. In twenty-nine years I had never heard the name Antonio. Was this a rapidly concocted story to disguise the truth? I so hoped not.

  ‘Mum,’ I took a deep breath, willing my voice to stay steady, ‘Lord Fortescue bought bracelets like this for his wife, his mother and his aunt. Are you sure he didn’t buy one for you, too?’

  She frowned. ‘Darling, I think you might have had a little too much sun. Why on earth would he do that?’

  ‘Because . . .’ I shook my head, my thoughts spinning and colliding as I tried to get the facts straight. My mind whooshed backwards to the conversation I’d had with Esme. What if this is why Mum had never wanted to move away from the shadows of Wickham Hall?

  I looked at my mum’s pretty face, creased with confusion.

  What reason would she have to lie after all these years?

  ‘Why have you never mentioned Antonio before?’

  An insistent pulse was beating in my temple and my head ached. I forced myself to stay focused on Mum’s face. She closed her eyes for a few seconds and I held my breath. I wasn’t going to rush her any more; I’d waited long enough for her story. A few more minutes wouldn’t hurt. After a long moment, Mum took my hand in hers and stroked it gently.

  ‘Holly, you are the most precious thing in my world and I don’t regret a thing. Even though you weren’t planned, I have loved you with every fibre of my body, every beat of my heart, since you lit up my life.’

  I squeezed her fingers and she smiled, her eyes glittering with tears.

  ‘When you were little it was easy to keep you safe, but then almost overnight it felt like I was a young mum with a beautiful teenage daughter and I desperately didn’t want you to follow my example. I have always been afraid to tell you the whole story in case you thought less of me or, worse, made the same mistakes that I made.’

  ‘Mistakes?’

  She gazed at me and it was impossible to miss the pain behind her eyes.

  ‘Falling in love so instantly, giving myself to someone I barely knew, which meant an accidental pregnancy and years of solitary motherhood.’

  Poor Mum. My heart ached with sadness for her.

  ‘But how can falling in love ever be a mistake?’ I argued. As soon as I uttered the words, Ben’s face appeared in my mind. I squeezed my eyes shut tight and heard Mum mumble my name sadly under her breath.

  I touched her arm. ‘But if Antonio is my father, if you were so in love, where is he now? Why have I never met him?’

  Mum sighed and dropped her eyes to her lap, allowing the pearl bracelet to fall from one hand to the other.

  ‘Good question. It’s so stuffy in here; shall we go and sit in the garden? And I promise I’ll tell you everything.’

  I wasn’t sure I could trust my legs to carry me downstairs, but I nodded and five minutes later we were sitting outside on the garden bench with glasses of iced water. I positioned myself at the shady end and Mum sat down beside me.

  ‘Whatever happened,’ I said softly, ‘I’m not here to judge you. I love you and I hope you know that. But I do need the truth.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, taking a shaky breath. ‘Thirty years ago, a week before the festival started . . .’

  I looped my arm through hers and laid my head on her shoulder and as the sun sank slowly over the rooftops turning the sky crimson, Mum began her story.

  School had finished for the summer and she had spent the days in the run-up to the Wickham Hall Summer Festival hanging out with friends, sunbathing and having fun on the village green. Her world changed for ever when Antonio appeared one morning and asked the girls for change for the telephone box to call his mother in Italy. His mama missed him when he was away, he’d said, in faltering English, and when he turned his soft brown eyes towards Mum, her heart had melted and she’d thought that if he was hers she would never let him out of her sight.

  Mum didn’t see him again until the first morning of the Wickham Hall Festival; he spotted her working at the ice-cream kiosk and asked her to meet him at lunchtime. His family had a leather business in Italy, he explained, and he and his father spent the summer months travelling around county shows and festivals like this one selling their purses, belts and bags. Antonio had kissed her hand, telling her that she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, and declared that she had stolen his heart. Mum, of course, was besotted.

  For the next two days, they spent every spare minute together: walking in Wickham Hall gardens, sitting outside his father’s caravan, or sharing a bottle of wine by the river and always, always, wrapped in each other’s arms.

  Mum had never known such happiness and on their last night together under a sky sprinkled with stars amongst the rhododendron bushes, Antonio laid down a blanket and they made love, whispering their promises to somehow stay together for ever.

  As the sky began to lighten with the promise of dawn, they stood to leave. Mum had to go back to the cottage to get ready to return to the festival for work at nine. And it was as they kissed their goodbyes that she noticed the bracelet glinting on the ground.

  Antonio had kissed her one last time, telling her to keep it, saying that it would always remind her of their first night together. Mum had nodded, dropping it into her pocket, but secretly thinking as she did so that it had been a night that she would never forget for the rest of her life.

  It was the third and last day of the festival, he and his father would be packing up to leave at the end of the day, but Mum and Antonio would have one last afternoon together to say their goodbyes, exchange addresses and arrange to meet up in the autumn.

  Mum slipped into the cottage hoping that her father hadn’t noticed that she’d been gone all night. But as she climbed the narrow staircase she heard him gasping for breath. She rushed into his room and found him, eyes wide with terror, clutching his heart in agony.

  The ambulance ride, the interminable wait in the hospital corridor, gripping onto the pearl bracelet like a talisman, guilt threatening to overcome her entirely . . .

  And then it was all over. Her father didn’t recover from the massive heart attack, and Mum was left alone in the world at the age of seventeen. By the time she made it to the Wic
kham Hall campsite late, hollow with grief and shaking with exhaustion, the place was deserted. No caravans, no tents, not even a scrap of rubbish; the area had been completely cleared and no evidence remained of Antonio or of their stolen night together. He had left without trace; she had no contact details, no photograph of him, nothing . . . She didn’t even know his last name.

  Despite being numb with loss, she spent the weeks after her father’s funeral trying to track Antonio down, buying every newspaper and magazine she could lay her hands on with festival coverage, scouring them for a picture, a name . . . anything that could lead her back to him. Throughout August, she even journeyed around the country, visiting other shows and festivals, searching for leather goods makers, asking everywhere she went if anyone had seen an Italian boy with golden hair and brown eyes. But he had vanished.

  ‘And then September came around and I went back to school to finish my A levels . . .’ Mum sighed.

  There was such pain in her eyes that I thought my heart would burst with sadness for her. ‘I was nearly eighteen and I had the cottage, so I was allowed to live on my own but by October I realized I was pregnant.’

  I reached across and wiped the tears from her cheeks with my thumb.

  ‘Mum,’ I whispered softly, ‘I had no idea that Granddad died that summer. You poor thing, having to go through all that alone and so young.’

  ‘I was torn apart with guilt: for leaving my dad on his own the night he had his heart attack, for not turning up to say goodbye to Antonio and then when you were born I felt guilty for not being a proper family.’

  ‘Hey, there’s no need for that.’ I put an arm around her and pulled her close. Her shoulders were shaking with silent tears. ‘You got Granddad to the hospital, that was the main thing. And you were with him. It wasn’t your fault he had a heart attack. And don’t worry about me; I turned out all right, didn’t I? And as for my father . . .’

  Words failed me then, it was such a tragic tale and a lump formed in my throat, blocking my voice.