Now
We boarded the train, each of us clutching a plastic bag full of snacks and bottles of water we’d bought from M&S, and took our seats. Charlie, Piper and the Armstrongs filled up a table of four, which left Ethan and me sitting in a cramped two-seater. We shuffled awkwardly next to each other, careful not to touch accidentally across the armrest, and after a brief ‘All set?’ he proceeded to stare out of the window and ignore me. The London suburbs whizzed by, rows of gray- and red-brick houses backing onto tiny squares of garden, and then out into the countryside, where patchwork green fields spread neatly outwards, occasionally dotted with a few scattered sheep. From the occasional glimpses I had around the back of Ethan’s head, I could tell the views were beautiful, but I forced myself to concentrate on the paperback thriller I’d bought at the airport. Eventually, I dozed off, lulled by the dull whir of the engine.
I woke up to find Ethan nudging me – not all that gently – off of his shoulder. ‘We’re almost there,’ he said, not all that nicely. ‘Time to wake up.’
‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. I figured I’d probably been asleep for a couple of hours, and judging by Ethan’s reserved air and the – oh God, mortifying – slightly damp patch on his shirt, I suspected that I’d spent most of that time unconsciously cozying up to him. I jumped up and started gathering up the detritus that had coalesced under the seat during the trip. ‘Almost there, guys!’ I said, leaning over the neighboring table, where all four present-and-future Armstrongs were asleep, open-mouthed.
Barbara startled awake. ‘What have I missed?’ she asked, staring frantically out of the window at yet another sheep-scattered field.
‘Nothing,’ Charlie said, raising his arms in a stretch. ‘Just a load of grass. What time is it?’
‘Nearly six o’clock,’ Ethan said. ‘We’re the next stop, so we should get the bags together.’
The train pulled into the station with a groan, and the six of us tumbled out through the door and onto the platform. It was still a bright, blue-skied day, but the air in the north had a crisp edge to it. At the end of the platform stood a man with a round, florid face, wearing a slightly-too-small suit. He was smiling and holding a piece of white paper with the name ‘Bailey’ scrawled on it.
‘Oh, Ethan, what have you done now?’ Barbara said, her face flushed with pleasure.
‘I thought it would be easier to book a driver for the week rather than having to rent a car,’ Ethan said.
‘Just look at his cap! Isn’t it darling?’
‘You must be Ethan,’ the man said, holding out a large, calloused hand. ‘The name’s Victor, but please just call me Vic. Can I give anyone a hand with their luggage?’ He took Barbara’s over-stuffed Vera Bradley bag out of her hands and swung it over his shoulder without waiting for an answer. ‘Follow me,’ he said, striding down the steps and out into the parking lot.
‘All right, Vic,’ called a man smoking a cigarette by the front entrance.
‘All right, Carl,’ he called back. ‘You still owe me a tenner for those Tom Jones tickets I bought!’
‘Aye, you’ve been after that tenner for months, and I keep buying you pints and saying we’re even!’
‘A pint is not a tenner, it’s a gesture of hospitality, you cheap bastard!’ The two men erupted in laughter and Vic led us on to an enormous black SUV, Barbara shooting nervous glances back at Carl.
‘He wasn’t very nice to call Carl a bastard!’ she whispered to Ethan.
‘I think he was just kidding, Mrs A,’ he said. ‘Here, let me take your suitcase for you – you must be exhausted.’ He dragged the case to the car and loaded it into the trunk with the rest of the luggage before wordlessly reaching for mine.
‘I’ve got it,’ I said. I distinctly felt something snap behind my kneecap when I swung the suitcase in, but refused to let myself wince.
Barbara climbed into the van and settled herself on a seat. ‘Ooh,’ she said. ‘This is just like what Charles and Camilla travel in!’
‘Oh yes, I remember from that documentary we watched,’ Bob said, buckling himself in to the seat next to her. ‘They seemed like a nice couple.’
‘Well, no one will ever replace Diana, and I’ll never forgive him for –’
‘How long until we get to the hotel?’ Piper cut her off from the back seat – I suspected she’d already heard Barbara’s thoughts on Princess Diana more than a few times in the run-up to the wedding. ‘I’m so hungry I could die, and my skin is literally shriveling up back here. I need to hydrate, like, yesterday.’
‘It’s not a long drive – about three-quarters of an hour or so – but I thought I’d take you the scenic route,’ Vic said. ‘Beautiful countryside around here, and I’ll take you past a few castles on the way.’
‘Did you say a few castles?’ Bob said, leaning forward. ‘You mean to say you’ve got more than one castle around here?’
‘We’ve got shedloads!’ he said with a booming laugh. ‘Can’t get bloody shifted for castles around here! Border country, you see. Someone always trying to invade us. Good luck to them, I say.’
‘The scenic route sounds great,’ Ethan said smoothly. ‘Piper, I’ve got some water in my bag if you want it?’
‘It’s fine,’ she said, but I could tell by the tone of her voice that it definitely wasn’t, and that we’d all pay for it later.
Vic was true to his word. ‘Castle!’ he called out every five minutes, pointing to a block of tumbling rock perched precariously by the side of the road, or the faint outline of a turret a few miles away. ‘There’s another one!’
‘It’s like castle bingo,’ I muttered after we sped past the fourth, and was pleased in spite of myself when I saw Ethan crack a smile.
Finally, the car pulled into a circular sweep in front of an imposing sandstone mansion, the front portico flanked with graceful fluted columns. Tall windows stared sightlessly out, some of them hooded with damask blinds. The well-manicured lawn stretched out in front, punctuated with thick tufts of pink roses and purple crane’s bill.
I climbed out of the car and shook out my stiff legs. My eyes were gritty and stinging from travel, but they still widened with awe when I saw the size of the place. ‘Is this another castle?’
‘What, this place?’ Vic lifted my suitcase out of the trunk and placed it next to me. ‘No, love, this is just Bugle Hall! It’s only been around since the eighteenth century – practically a new-build around these parts.’
I took a moment to process the idea that something from the eighteenth century could be considered ‘practically new’, while the rest of them tumbled out of the car, each of them stretching and blinking and gaping at the enormous house in front of them. Even Ethan, whose own home was presumably the size of an oil tanker, seemed impressed. Vic pulled the cases into the lobby of the hall, where a blue-haired woman wearing a tartan skirt and a blouse buttoned up to the neck was there to greet us.
Vic turned to us with a smile. ‘Right, well, you’re all settled then, so I’ll be off, unless there’s anything else you need me for?’
‘Thanks very much, but I think we’re fine for the rest of the evening. I have your number if we need anything.’ He reached over and shook Vic’s hand, sliding a wide purple note into it as he did so.
‘Lovely, thanks very much! Tarrah, everyone! See you in a tic!’
The blue-haired woman – whose name was Mrs Willocks, and who assured us several times that she ran a very tight ship – showed each of us to our rooms and told us that we had time to ‘freshen up’ before ‘tea is served in the drawing room’. Every phrase she uttered sent Bob and Barbara into further paroxysms of delight, and soon they had cornered her into walking them through the line of oil paintings hung in the hallway, inspecting each of them for a possible Armstrong family resemblance. (Barbara had done some light family tree research before the trip and they were now convinced that they were directly related to William of Orange.)
I used the distraction to slink off to my room – the smallest, of course, wedged at the top of the house in the old servant’s quarters – and prepare myself. This being the modern age, and me being a thoroughly modern woman, I knew just how to go about it. I pulled out my phone, waved it around until I found a signal, and typed the name Ethan Bailey into the search bar. Sure, I’d looked him up before, but now I needed to go deep. I needed to go full Mach-ten Google-stalk.
I was hit with a wave of entries – reams and reams of them, all extolling Ethan’s many creative and capitalistic virtues. I scrolled past the New York Magazine piece and the subsequent AP Wire mentions, had a quick look at his company profile – ‘Ethan Bailey, widely regarded as one of the leading technological designers of the age, founded Albion in 2006 and currently serves as Head of Creative Development’ – before moving on to his social media. His Facebook feed was protected – smart guy – but his Twitter was public. There was a thumbnail image of him smiling confidently into the camera and wearing another very expensive suit. Most of his tweets were links to design articles and retweets of Albion company news, but there was the occasional direct tweet – a ‘nice to meet you’ or a ‘sorry I missed your call’ or, once, a ‘great connecting with you the other night. Dinner soon?’ – that led me down Twitter-link rabbit holes, staring beadily at the tiny photographs of women who may or may not have slept with Ethan. I hated all of them on sight.
I was halfway through an article likening him to Steve Jobs when I was interrupted by someone pounding at the door. ‘Ruby!’ Piper’s voiced called, ‘What are you doing in there? Dad and Candace are here and we’re all waiting for you!’
‘Coming!’ I croaked. I stumbled over to the basin – there was one in the bedroom rather than in the adjoining bathroom – and splashed cold water onto my face. I looked in the mirror and winced: the puffiness from the plane had lessened a little, but my eyes were bloodshot and there were dark hollows underneath them. I slapped my cheeks a few times to see if it would perk them up a little, but I still looked like death warmed up. There was no way I could compete with the Twitter ladies, at least not in this state. I sighed and trudged downstairs.
Bob and Barbara had obviously taken the suggestion to ‘freshen up’ seriously, because Bob was now wearing a beige linen suit, and Barbara was trussed into her Country Casuals separates. Both of them balanced a cup and saucer awkwardly on their knees. Piper, wearing a pair of Lululemon yoga pants and a cashmere sweater, Coach bag nestled neatly by her side, was scrolling idly through her iPhone. ‘She told me there was Wi-Fi,’ she tsked. ‘How am I supposed to get our wedding hashtag going if I can’t even tweet?’
And there, perched on a heavily fringed velvet divan, luggage stacked around them like fortress walls, were my dad and stepmother.
‘Hey there, champ!’ Dad called as I walked in. He pulled himself heavily to his feet and enveloped me in a hug. ‘How’s my girl?’ he asked. ‘You look fantastic!’
‘You’re a liar,’ I said, ‘but I’ll take it.’
It took me a minute to adjust my eyes to the sight of him. He was very, very orange, as he had been ever since they’d made the move down to Florida to, as he always said, ‘live the dream’. The reality was more of a nightmare. In the boom years of the mid-noughties, and riding high on his success with the Beechfield developments, he had drunk the Floridian Kool-Aid and bought up as much of Orlando as he could get his hands on, miles and miles of tract housing built on the promise of an endless supply of young professional couples, eager retirees and cheap money. After the property crash, he and Candace had decamped to one of their few remaining unforeclosed properties, a bungalow in Clearwater set in an Italianate village that they insisted on calling Botticelli’s Grotto. I’d never been able to imagine Botticelli living in a a pale-pink stucco ranch, but I knew when to keep my mouth shut. Sometimes.
‘Well, you’re always beautiful to me. You and your sister are both the apples of my eye. And Candace, of course. She’s my Candy Apple, aren’t you, sweetheart?’
Candace shot him a tight smile. Candace, also orange, had embraced the Miami side of the Floridian aesthetic and was wearing a pair of slightly shimmery purple leggings, a low-cut blouse covered in a palm-frond print and a pair of wedges so high they were almost vertical. She’d been a knockout when she got together with my dad, all legs and breasts and long, tousled waves that I’d spent hours in the mirror trying to replicate. She was still beautiful, but she was softer now – her face had lost its sharp angles and her waist had thickened a little. But you could tell that, in my dad’s eyes, she was still up there with the best of them.
Dad hitched up the waist of his plaid shorts and shrugged. ‘She’s a little pissed because we got lost on the way here.’
‘Alec, you drove us halfway to Glasgow!’
‘A little road trip!’ he said with a smile. ‘We had fun, didn’t we, Candy?’
Candace sighed and pulled me in for a hug. ‘Your father is going to be the death of me yet. How are you doing, sweets? You look a little washed out. Have they been working you too hard at that agency again?’
Dad leaned forward and punched me lightly on the shoulder, nearly clipping Candace in the process. ‘Nothing wrong with a little hard work, right, kid?’
I smiled weakly. ‘I’m fine, really,’ I said, extracting myself gently from her Poison-infused embrace. I had never adjusted to Candace’s Californian touchy-feeliness, even after nearly twenty years as my stepmother. ‘I’m just a little jet-lagged. How are you doing? How was your trip?’
‘Oh God,’ she said, throwing up her hands. ‘It was an absolute nightmare. We had three connections – three! At one point, we were in Dubai, though God knows why. And your father forgot his heart medication –’
‘Dad!’
He held up his hands. ‘I’m fine! I’m fine! I’ve been meaning to get off that stuff for a while. Makes me feel a little loopy.’
‘You’re not supposed to go off it cold turkey!’ Candace said.
‘Hey, I’m a tough guy,’ he said, thumping himself on the chest. ‘This old ticker of mine isn’t going to give me any trouble, I can promise you that. I’m fitter than I was when we met!’
I looked at the small paunch hanging over his belt buckle. ‘I feel like you should try to get your medicine over here,’ I said. ‘Maybe we could get your doctor to call a local pharmacy or something?’
‘Ruby, I’m fine.’ His tone had turned stern, and I raised an eyebrow at him. He thwacked me in the shoulder again, harder this time, and cracked one of his patented Alec Atlas Winning Smiles. ‘Hey, how’s work? You killing them out there?’
‘I’m trying,’ I said.
‘Good for you, good for you.’
Piper, who’d been silent until this point, looked up from her phone with a frown. ‘What’s the emoji for “living my best life”?’
‘How’s the golf game, Bob?’ Dad asked, pushing past me and settling himself in an armchair next to a startled-looking Mr Armstrong. ‘You still bogeying all over the course?’ He let out a guffaw and slapped Bob on the back. I was starting to worry that all this joviality would end up with an assault charge by the end of the trip.
‘My handicap has actually gone down a couple of points recently,’ Bob said, stiffening.
‘Is that right? Are they letting you use the kiddie course or something! Ha ha!’
‘Bob and I won the Spring Fling Couples Tournament,’ Barbara said, placing a protective hand on Bob’s thigh. ‘We were given matching blazers.’
‘How sweet!’ Candace said, hoping to smooth things over. From the look on Barbara’s face, it hadn’t worked.
‘It’s something, all right,’ Dad said. ‘How is the old club, anyway? Surviving without me?’ One of the great injustices of my father’s life was being kicked out of the Beechfield Country Club for non-payment of dues after the crash. On his last night, he made a rousing speech on the front lawn and burned his membership card, but I knew how hurt he’d been by the whole thing. It was like watching a teenage girl get kicked off the cheerleading squad: swift, brutal and socially annihilating.
‘The club’s doing just fine. We just got a new sauna, in fact.’ Bob was a board member at the club, and a staunch defender of its principles and traditions – even if those principles and traditions meant kicking his son’s future father-in-law out of the club. My father hadn’t forgotten, and, from the look of it, hadn’t forgiven, either.
‘I hear those saunas are breeding grounds for bacteria. Better watch it, Bob – you might sit in something you’ll regret.’
‘Now, hang on a minute –’
‘Why don’t you guys drop off your bags and get a little sleep?’ I hoisted my dad out of his chair and steered him and Candace towards the door. ‘You must be exhausted after all the traveling.’
‘You’re so right,’ Candace said, looking at me gratefully. ‘Did I tell you we almost went to Glasgow?’
‘Let me help you with that,’ I said, taking my dad’s suitcase from him and shoving him firmly up the stairs. I noticed that the stitching on the LVs didn’t match up. A few years ago, Candace wouldn’t have been caught dead carrying anything other than the real thing. Times were apparently still tough in Florida.
‘It’s definitely prayer hands,’ I heard Piper say as I lugged the heavy case up the stairs. ‘Kimberly is going to freak when she reads this Facebook post.’