Where We Belong, page 1
WHERE WE BELONG
SARAH BENNETT
For the Straw-Haired Chits x
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
More from Sarah Bennett
About the Author
About Boldwood Books
1
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Hope Travers groaned as the harsh sound of her alarm dragged her from the depths of sleep. Having tossed and turned for most of the night, she’d finally managed to drift off sometime after the church clock in the village had chimed a distant single note. There’d been a few complaints about the chimes over the years, mostly from weekend commuters who liked the idea of a pretty house in the country more than the realities of village life, but Hope found them soothing. The alarm buzzed again and she flailed her arm towards the bedside cabinet, knocking her phone off and under the bed in the process.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Muttering something unrepeatable, Hope forced her heavy head off the pillow and fumbled towards the bedside cabinet once again, managing to switch on the lamp this time. Squinting against the glare, she rolled onto her side, one hand groping around on the carpet for her phone. Three tissues, a KitKat wrapper and a pair of tweezers she’d presumed lost later, her fingers found the edge of the annoying device and she slid it out from under the edge of the divan base. After stabbing a finger at the off button before the alarm could buzz again, Hope flopped back against her pillow with a sigh. Perhaps a few more minutes wouldn’t do any harm…
A gentle rap against her door was followed by a sliver of light and a waft of familiar White Musk perfume, her Aunt Rowena’s signature scent. ‘Hope, darling, I’m going to put the kettle on and then I’ll make you something to eat. Shall I bring you up some tea?’
Ignoring her gritty eyes and the beginnings of a headache pressing against her temple, Hope forced herself to sit up. ‘You should’ve stayed in bed, Ro. Just because I’m up at some ungodly hour, doesn’t mean you have to be.’
The door swung wide and Rowena padded across the room to sit on the edge of Hope’s bed. She raised a hand to tuck a few strands of Hope’s long dark hair back behind her ear. ‘It’s an exciting day for you, darling, a busy one too. I couldn’t send you off without a bit of breakfast. You’ll probably be down at the site all day, so it’s important you start the day off right.’
Hope leaned into the gentle touch of her aunt’s palm with a smile. ‘You’re too good to me.’
‘Nonsense.’ Rowena leaned forward to give Hope a quick hug, her wild corkscrew curls brushing against Hope’s skin like a secondary caress. They were magenta this month, a vibrant shade that looked stunning against her emerald-green silk pyjamas. An artist by trade, Rowena’s wardrobe was its own palette. With a soft grunt, as though the effort was too much, Rowena pushed herself to her feet.
‘Are you okay?’ Hope pushed her covers back, ready to climb out and give her aunt a hand.
Rowena waved her off with a smile. ‘My back’s just a bit stiff. I was working on a new collage yesterday and I spent too long bent over my work bench, that’s all. I’ll sneak into Meena’s Pilates class later and that’ll sort me out.’
Another knock on the door had them both turning to see Stevie, Hope’s mother, standing in the doorway. ‘I thought I heard voices.’
‘Go back to bed, Mum,’ Hope urged, keeping her voice low before they managed to wake the rest of the family up. She turned to her aunt. ‘You, too.’
With an indelicate snort, Rowena knuckled her fists into the base of her spine then headed back towards the door to stand next to her sister-in-law. ‘As if we’re going to leave our girl to fend for herself this morning, of all mornings. Am I right, Stevie?’
‘Of course we’re not!’ Hope’s mother sounded as if the very idea was preposterous. They should’ve made a comical pair – tall, willowy Stevie in her neutral fabrics and pixie cut salt-and-pepper hair, and short, curvy Rowena with that mass of wild curls tumbling past her shoulders and almost to her waist, but somehow they complemented each other perfectly. And not just in looks. Together they ran the exclusive hotel and spa located in their family’s ancestral home and were as close as, if not closer than, blood sisters.
Hope climbed out of bed with a resigned shake of her head. ‘You’d think I was five, not twenty-five, the way you two cluck after me like a pair of Rhys’s prize hens.’ She’d meant it as a joke, but she should’ve known better. Though they were trying hard not to show it, Hope knew today was difficult for them.
‘We don’t mean to fuss,’ her mother said, a shadow dimming the sweet smile that was never far from her lips.
Rowena spoke almost on top of Stevie. ‘It was just an idea, if you’d rather we left you in peace, you just have to say.’
And now she felt like an ungrateful brat. ‘It’s a lovely idea, and one less thing for me to worry about, so thank you.’
The pair instantly brightened. ‘We’ll leave you to get ready,’ Rowena said as she reached for the door and began to pull it closed behind them. ‘No rush.’
Their arrival downstairs was greeted with a chorus of happy barks from the family’s motley collection of dogs and Hope closed her eyes in silent apology to her uncles and her cousin. Once the dogs were up, everyone was up. Swallowing a sigh, Hope grabbed a hair tie from her bedside cabinet and twisted her thick hair up into a messy knot on the back of her head. She’d washed it the night before as it took so long to dry these days. She kept promising herself she was going to get it cut off, get something manageable like a chin-length bob or one of those modern takes on a page-boy style with a nice undercut at the back to keep her neck cool during the hot summer days to come. Then something would come up at work and she’d end up cancelling her appointment and trimming the ends off herself.
She wandered across the hall to the bathroom she shared with her cousin, Rhys, and regarded her reflection in the mirror over the sink. With a wince, she tugged at the uneven strands of her fringe. Perhaps taking the kitchen scissors to it the other day hadn’t been the wisest idea. Once everything was sorted out, she would book herself a day off and spend it indulging herself at the spa. What was the point of living on the doorstep of the most exclusive establishment in the county if she never took advantage of the facilities there? For now, she’d settle for using one of the never-ending samples her mother gave to her in an effort to persuade Hope to take her skin care regime more seriously. She surveyed her cluttered half of the countertop, her three-quarters of the countertop might be more accurate, she thought ruefully, as she eyed the motley collection of bottles, pots and tubes before plucking a pastel-pink tube at random and reading the label. Brightening and lifting, hmm? Hope met her tired reflection once more. After weeks doing battle with the planners, the architect, three different building contractors and various members of her family, she could do with all the help she could get.
She squeezed a generous gloop of cream onto one hand then set the tube on the edge of the sink before rubbing her palms together and massaging the cream into her skin the way she would with her usual no-frills facewash. She only realised her mistake when her eyes began to burn and fill with tears. ‘Ow! Ow! Ow!’ Hope forced one eye open long enough to help her find the cold tap, turning it too far in her haste to wash the mess from her face and sending a jet of icy water over the front of the thin-strapped vest which served as a pyjama top.
‘Bloody hell!’ Arching her body away from the offending spray, Hope leaned too far forward and banged her forehead on the mirrored front of the cupboard over the sink. The next words that left her lips were even less polite.
‘Hope Elizabeth Travers!’
Whirling towards the laughing exclamation, Hope squinted through her agony to make out the familiar shape of her cousin. ‘It’s not funny!’ she snapped.
‘I think you’ll find it is,’ Rhys replied, still laughing as he leaned past her and tugged a towel off the wall rail. ‘Here, hold still a minute.’ He wrapped a corner of the towel around his finger and started trying to wipe the cream from her face.
‘I can do it myself.’ Hope snatched the material from his hands and scrubbed her skin clean. ‘I’m not five.’
‘I’m not five,’ he mimicked in the exaggerated voice he’d known since she was that age was guaranteed to drive her up the wall.
‘What do you want?’ Hope said, trying to cling onto the last vestiges of her temper.
‘Well, I was hoping for a shower.’ Rhys held his arms out in a look-at-the-state-of-me gesture.
With the last of the tears now wiped from her eyes, Hope was able to focus on him properly. The front of his grey T-shirt was covered in blood and various other bodily fluids, the knees of his old jeans filthy from kneeling in the dirt. ‘What happened?’
&nbs
‘We’re breaking ground today, so I wanted to try and get myself sorted before the builders arrive.’
Rhys raised a mucky hand as though to slap himself in the forehead, only remembering at the last minute where it had been not too long ago. ‘I completely forgot.’ Comprehension dawned in his eyes. ‘That’s why the mothers are fussing around in the kitchen.’
‘They decided to make me breakfast.’ She knew she sounded ungrateful but there was a fine line between mothering and smothering and just lately it felt like they’d tipped into the latter. She hung the towel back on the rack. ‘I’ll use the shower in Mum’s room.’
Rhys looked relieved. ‘Are you sure?’
Hope wrinkled her nose towards him. ‘Your need is much greater than mine.’
‘Gee, thanks!’ Rhys’s laughter followed Hope along the landing as she made her way to her mother’s room and the tiny en suite her uncle, Ziggy, had installed about twelve years ago in what had once been a walk-in storage space. He’d built it about the same time as he’d decamped downstairs and converted the rarely used dining room into a bedroom and bathroom for himself, having decried the inability to get into the main family bathroom now there were two teenagers in the house. Rhys had moved out of his tiny box room on the third floor and into Ziggy’s room, leaving the top floor of the farmhouse to his parents.
Hope paused to look out of the window. Her mother’s room was at the front of the farmhouse, offering a gorgeous view across the sprawling parkland of the estate towards the Palladian-style mansion that dominated the landscape. Built in the early seventeenth century and altered and extended by many subsequent generations, the family had decamped from Stourton Hall, or just ‘the Hall’ as everyone referred to it, when the four Travers siblings had decided it was time for radical change. Their father – Hope and Rhys’s grandfather, Monty – had shown zero interest in taking up the reins of estate management from his own father and things had grown rather neglected under his brief spell in charge.
Zap and Ziggy had been barely out of university when they’d confronted Monty about the perilous state of the family finances, not to mention the leaky roof and ancient electrics which were a fire disaster waiting to happen. With barely a murmur of protest, Monty had signed responsibility for the estate over to his four children and he and his wife, Alice, had loaded up their worldly goods in the back of their VW camper and headed off to explore the world. They rattled their way home every now and again, staying long enough to cause chaos and renew their prescriptions before off they went again on a new adventure.
It had been during their last visit home, a riotous and very merry Christmas, that Hope had decided she needed a space of her own. She adored her family, but some days she just wanted to shut the door on everyone and everything, which was simply impossible when you lived under the same roof with five other adults – seven when her grandparents landed. Hope cast one last look at the Hall. When she’d been a little girl, she’d loved to explore the opulent guest suites and imagine one of them was her bedroom. Now, for all they lived on top of each other in the farmhouse, Hope was grateful that her uncles and her mother had seized the opportunity and made the most of the family assets. Not only had they saved the Hall from potential ruin, they’d created a huge range of opportunities, for both the family and many of the residents of nearby Stourton-in-the-Vale. Now it was Hope’s turn to claim a little corner of the estate for herself. She checked the clock on her mother’s bedside table and gasped when she saw the time. So much for getting ahead of things, the builders would be here in less than an hour!
2
Thirty minutes later, a half-eaten bacon roll in one hand and a thermos cup of coffee in the other, Hope rushed out the back door of the farmhouse, calling thanks to her mum and Rowena. Sooty and Sweep, her pair of black Labradors, shot out into the yard, determined to join her. It cost her the remains of her roll, but she managed to coax them back inside with the help of Ziggy, who’d been woken by all the kerfuffle just as she’d feared. With a quick apology to him for the noise, she managed to slip back out the door and shut it before her two hellion pups could stage a second breakout. They normally joined her wherever she went and even had baskets in the corner of her office, but there was no way she could take them to the worksite – it just wasn’t safe. Still, their desperate yowls and whines at being left behind shredded her heart and she promised to make time to take them on an extra-long walk later.
She made her way over to the small fleet of black Range Rovers, each bearing the discreet logo her Uncle Ziggy had designed on the bonnet and each of the front doors. He’d chosen a sprig of greenery with a bright purple berry next to the words Juniper Meadows in a swirling calligraphy font – the name he and the others had opted for when rebranding the estate. They used it for everything, from labelling the award-winning gin Zap made at their private distillery, to the luxury toiletries available in every guest room in the hotel and spa. It was even on the packaging of the free-range organic meat and dairy products from the estate’s farm, which Rhys managed. Hope pointed the set of keys she’d grabbed off the kitchen table and aimed it at the row of cars. The orange hazard lights on the one nearest the gate flashed.
By the time she’d secured her coffee in the drinks holder and adjusted the seat so she could reach the pedals – the perils of being five foot four in a family of six-foot-tall men – Rhys had appeared to unlock the gate for her. His border collie, Samson, sat smartly at his heels and Hope could only sigh at how well-behaved her cousin’s dog was. She’d kept meaning to sign Sooty and Sweep up for some training classes, but that was even further down her to-do list than finding time to get a proper haircut. The sight of Rhys’s other dog, a miniature dachshund named Delilah, nestled in his arms like the spoiled princess she was cheered Hope up. He might be the dog whisperer when it came to Samson, but Delilah was a diva from the tip of her nose to the end of her stubby little tail. ‘Thanks for saving me a job,’ she called to Rhys through the open passenger window.
‘It’s no hassle. I’m on my way back to check on Blossom and her litter, make sure they’re all bonding.’
‘Take some photos for—’
‘The Instagram page,’ he said, cutting her off with a laugh. He raised a hand to pat the phone in his top pocket. ‘Don’t worry, you can rely on me.’
The truth of those words struck her heart like an arrow shot from Robin Hood’s bow. Eighteen months older than her, Rhys had been a big brother to her in every way that mattered. They’d been inseparable. Two musketeers. He’d been there to help her with everything from learning to tie her shoelaces, to chasing off unsuitable boyfriends. She hoped her moving out wouldn’t change things between them. ‘You’ll come to dinner all the time, won’t you?’
‘I’ll be there so much, you’ll be sick of the sight of me,’ he promised with a grin. Leaning down, he rested one arm on the open window of the car, the other still holding Delilah securely against his chest. ‘You’ve got this.’
It wasn’t much of a pep talk, but it was everything she needed to hear. ‘Thanks, Rhys. I’d better get going.’ He stepped back and kept one hand on the gate until she was safely on the other side. Though she knew he would lock it properly, she still watched via the rear-view mirror until he’d secured it and wandered off towards the barn with a wave, Samson close as a shadow. Only then did she turn her attention to the road ahead.
