AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And then two things happened which changed her world. The first was that a lawyer contacted her through the employment agency and Julia said no, she didn’t have a clue what it was about, but that there was a phone number for Ashley to ring.
Cautiously, Ashley did so—withholding her number and prepared to hang up if it was anything to do with Jack. But it was not. It was to do with her mother—or, rather, the family of her late mother who had decided that her neglected offspring must be traced.
It was strange, thought Ashley—as she sat opposite a well-spoken lawyer in his London office one afternoon—how death could sometimes help heal the quarrels of the living. Her maternal grandmother seemed to have been struck by a death-bed bout of guilt and remorse and had amended her will accordingly. She was determined in some small way to compensate the granddaughter she had failed to acknowledge during her lifetime. In fact, she was more than generous—and extremely wealthy. It transpired that Ashley had inherited a substantial amount of money—as well as an extended and scattered family who were curious to meet her.
The money was enough to ensure that Ashley could banish some of her uncertainty about her future. She would certainly need to keep working—but at least now she was going to be able to buy a property of her own. For the first time in her life she could afford a roof over her head—her own place at last. It was her first real experience of security and she discovered she liked it—and that it went a long way in helping her shake off some of her ingrained feelings of inferiority.
Her habitual reserve initially made her baulk at the thought of getting to know a whole batch of newly discovered relations—but the aching hole in her heart left by the end of her affair with Jack made her make a tentative move towards meeting them. A large family party followed—a confusing and noisy affair which left Ashley feeling faintly bemused. But to her surprise, she was welcomed into the fold and she quickly began to know and to love her little nieces and nephews. Her weekends now began to include occasional trips to Gloucestershire, where many of them were based—and having her own family gave her another unfamiliar taste of security, and of roots.
But the second thing which happened rocked Ashley’s world far more than an unexpected inheritance. Another phone call arrived from the agency—with Julia moaning that she felt like her personal secretary—telling her that Christine had been in touch and was pleading with Ashley to ring her, urgently.
Ashley hesitated for only a moment because she knew that Jack wouldn’t dream of asking his housekeeper to intervene on his behalf. He was much too proud for that—he could have tried himself through the agency and he hadn’t done. So why was she wanted? Some instinct made fear swell up inside her stomach and grip at her throat. She stood in a quiet alcove at the boutique hotel as she gripped the phone, while a shaky-voiced Christine told her that there had been an accident.
‘What kind of an accident?’ demanded Ashley.
‘A fire. A terrible fire. Ashley.’ There was a kind of gulping sound, the sound of someone swallowing their tears. ‘Blackwood has been destroyed.’
Ashley’s knees buckled. The world threatened to cave in around her. ‘And Jack? Was he hurt?’
There was a silence—a terrible, gathering silence.
‘He was,’ said Christine, her solid voice sounding precariously close to breaking. ‘Badly hurt. He’s blind, Ashley. Mr Marchant’s blind.’
Blind? Her beloved Jack blind? Only some inner strength she didn’t know she possessed stopped Ashley from falling to the ground—and from railing at a God who was clearly not listening. Sucking in a ragged breath, she steadied her breathing enough to ask, ‘And where is he? Where is he now?’
‘He’s living in one of the other properties on the other side of the estate. You know the old Ivy House?’
‘I do.’
‘He’s there. I still work for him. I go in most days now and he has… well, he has a couple of carers living in who help look after him.’
Carers? Her brave, strong Jack—the man who had been commended for bravery in all the active service he had seen—was being looked after by carers? Ashley swallowed down the acrid taste of horror as she tried to imagine the reality of his life. How on earth would such an independent man cope with having to rely on others for his very existence?
‘Christine,’ she said slowly. ‘I’m coming to see him—but you must not tell him. You must not. That is imperative. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Ashley. I understand.’
Ashley went into the office to speak to her boss. He was a fair man who she hoped would let her go with his blessing—though she knew that she would leave without it, for she had no choice. ‘I need to go urgently to see a dear friend who is very sick,’ she said, in a low voice—the irony not escaping her that this was the second time she had failed to give adequate notice to her employer.
‘And are you planning on coming back?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly—for wasn’t honesty the only thing she had ever been able to rely on?
Something in her face made him treat her kindly, as though she herself were some kind of invalid, and Ashley made the long journey back north with nothing more than an overnight bag. The journey took hours—punctuated by delays at two railway stations and a train which seemed to rattle like a sack of bones. Her stomach was so churned up that she couldn’t bear to eat anything—sipping only at weak, warm tea and unable to settle until at last the train drew into Stonecanton station.
She jumped into the waiting taxi and gave the driver directions and, if he looked at her curiously, she was too tired and too scared to satisfy his curiosity with any kind of explanation. Ivy House was on the western side of the estate but the taxi took her past Blackwood and, on an impulse, Ashley made the driver take the car up the long drive so that she could have a look at it.
From a distance, it all looked the same as the first time she’d seen it. The same imposing and beautiful structure which had so impressed her—straddling the edges of the stark northern moorland she’d grown to love. But as the car drew closer she could see that the façade was nothing but an illusion. She told the driver to stop and she got out, her heart as heavy as a stone. Much of the building had crumbled and was lost—and at the back were just blackened remains where once a home had stood. A grim ghost of a place with pane-less windows and no roof or chimney. Jack’s beloved Blackwood was nothing but a fragile shell with all the life blown away from it.
Hearing something was not the same as seeing it for yourself and the reality of the destruction made her feel sick. Tears threatened to burn her horrified eyes—but there was no time for tears and she climbed back into the taxi, taking one last forlorn look out of the window. The lawns were wild now and the shrubs badly in need of pruning and with every second that mounted Ashley could feel the painful acceleration of her heart as the car took her towards the Ivy House.
What would she find there? Would blindness and disfigurement have changed Jack beyond recognition?
A woman she didn’t know opened the door, and she looked at Ashley with a question in her eyes.
‘Can I help you?’
‘I’m… a friend of Jack’s. I heard about his accident and I’ve come to see him.’
