Page 139 of Guilty Pleasures

‘Of course I’m upset about Johnny, but I don’t know why I feel so upset and responsible about my father,’ said Stella tracing her finger along the car window. ‘It’s not as if we’re close.’

‘But he’s still your father,’ said Tom turning his head to look at her. ‘My dad moved to South Africa about twenty years ago and yet I still hope he’ll turn up for my birthday, or Christmas, or phone me when he hears something good has happened in my life, rare though that may be. I used to get the occasional card with a twenty quid note but even those have stopped. Even though I expect nothing from him, I still get disappointed.’

‘Does Cassandra?’ asked Stella, although it was hard to imagine Tom’s ball-busting sister having a vulnerable side.

‘Nah,’ he smiled. ‘That’s the thing about rejection. It either fucks you up or toughens you up.’

It was dark by the time they approached Trencarrow and that only added to the drama of the setting. The house stood on a grassy headland a few miles outside St Ives, only a hundred metres away from the cliff edge. Seagulls wheeled around overhead; the steely grey sea glinted in the distance. Tom slowed the car down. Gradually the road had been getting more and more narrow, until it was just a bumpy farm track and he could hear thick mud churning under the wheels. They turned the corner to see Trencarrow silhouetted against the sky; only one leaded window glowing orange.

‘Let’s get in quickly,’ said Stella as she stepped out of the car and buttoned up her coat. ‘It’s starting to rain.’

They knocked at the front door, flipping up their collars and hunching against the wind which had suddenly whipped up. The door creaked open to reveal Christopher Chase in a tartan dressing-gown and a pair of Aran socks, looking every one of his seventy-three years. There was a scratch of white hair on his chin as if he hadn’t shaved in days and Stella was sure he was even more bowed since the last time she had seen him in June. For someone who had always looked so vibrant and stylish, even in his advancing years, it was a shock.

‘Stella!’ he said. ‘Well, this is a surprise.’

She put out her arms to embrace him. ‘I told you I’d come.’

‘I didn’t think you would,’ he replied.

She introduced him quickly to Tom.

‘Ah, little Tommy,’ said Christopher with a sad smile. ‘Oh, I remember you as a wee mite on your mother’s knee. Do come in, both of you.’

Christopher led the way into the dark living room, which was only lit by a single lamp. Stella sat down on a leather Chesterfield, glad when Tom came to sit beside her. Her eyes darted around the room while Christopher fixed them a glass of whisky each from a bottle that was three-quarters empty. Trencarrow was far more expensively furnished than she remembered – like a country boutique hotel. There were at least half a dozen photographs of Chessie dotted around the room. Idly, she wondered what had happened to the childhood photos of herself, Andrew and Nancy, her half-brother and – sister from Christopher’s first marriage. At one time, they had filled the stone mantelpiece.

‘Do you know where she is?’ asked Stella when her father had settled into his wing-back chair.

‘Chessie? In London somewhere,’ he replied with the wave of a hand. ‘That’s where she met him.’

‘Who is he?’ asked Stella cautiously.

‘Her bloody new boyfriend, of course! I gather he’s got one of those fancy townhouses in Connaught Square near our flat.’

‘It’s not Tony Blair is it?’ piped up Tom suddenly. ‘He’s got a gaff around there.’

Stella shot him a look and the impish grin fell from his face.

‘He’s called Graham,’ said Christopher, staring at the rain on the dark window. ‘Apparently they’ve been carrying on together for the best part of a year. She says she was going to end it with him when we got pregnant, but it turns out she loves him,’ he said, spitting out the words.

‘And are you sure it’s your baby?’

Stella regretted saying it as soon as the words came out of her mouth but Christopher looked too defeated to be angry.

‘She says it is, although that might be just so she can get the farmhouse. But even so, I want to believe it’s our child.’

He fell silent. Stella looked to Tom for support, then turned back when she heard the sound of gentle sobbing.

‘I’m going to have to get rid of the farmhouse, you know,’ said Christopher through the tears, covering his mouth with one gnarled hand. ‘I’m going to lose Trencarrow on top of everything else.’

Stella moved over to him, feeling a fierce wave of anger towards Chessie, and sat on the arm of his chair putting an arm across his shoulder. It was funny how concentrating on her father’s problems was making her forget her own.

‘I devoted myself to that woman,’ he said, looking up at her. ‘I didn’t go to Saul’s funeral because she was getting breast implants, did you know that? I missed my best friend’s funeral just to be with her.’

Stella felt a sudden impulse to laugh at the image of Chessie thrusting her silicone breasts in front of Christopher and banning him from going to Chilcot. But she was quite sure her father wouldn’t see the funny side of anything at that moment.

‘Surely you don’t have to sell the farm,’ said Tom, frowning. ‘After all, she left you.’

‘I’m not sure that’s how the lawyers will see it,’ sighed Christopher. ‘We’ve been married eight years and she’s carrying our child. She’ll want something, probably everything. But the truth is I’ve got nothing to give her. Nothing except the house.’