Savage Awakening. Anne Mather
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his doorstep.
When Colonel Phillips was alive and Fliss had worked at the house three mornings a week, Amy had often accompanied her. The old man had been especially fond of the little girl and he’d encouraged Fliss to bring her along. So, whenever Amy had been away from school, for holidays and suchlike, she’d been a welcome visitor at the house.
Sometimes the colonel had played board games with her, and she’d been fascinated by his display cases filled with coins gleaned from almost a century of collecting. The house had been an Aladdin’s cave to the little girl, and she’d been encouraged to share it.
In consequence, Amy had missed him almost as much as Fliss when he’d suddenly been taken into hospital. She hadn’t understood why she couldn’t go to visit him and, although Fliss had explained the circumstances of his illness, she suspected the child still regarded the Old Coaching House as his home.
When he died the house had been inherited by a distant cousin, who had apparently lost no time in putting it on the market, Fliss thought wryly. No one in the village had known anything about it or she was sure her father would have picked up the news on the grapevine.
Now she got up from the table, carrying her empty cup across to the sink. The overgrown lawn at the back of the cottage reminded her that she had other jobs she’d promised herself she’d do today. Dammit, if only Amy had let the rabbit go to the shelter and been done with it.
‘So what’s the new owner like?’ asked her father, getting up from the table to bring his own dishes to be washed. Then he opened the door to let the dog out, stepping outside for a moment and taking a deep breath of the warm, flower-scented air. ‘Mmm, those roses have never smelt better,’ he added. ‘I don’t know why you don’t bring some of them into the house.’
Because I don’t have the time, thought Fliss grimly, fighting a brief spurt of irritation. But it would never have occurred to her father to do something like that himself. No more than it occurred to him to wash his own dishes or make his own bed in the mornings. She filled the washing-up bowl with soapy water and dropped his cup, saucer and plate into the hot suds. She sighed. She mustn’t let her annoyance over the rabbit influence her attitude towards her father. He was the way he was, and there was nothing she could do about it.
But despite his admiration for the roses, he hadn’t forgotten his original question. ‘Who is he?’ he asked, coming back into the kitchen. ‘The man you spoke to at the big house? Did he tell you his name?’
Deciding there was no point in prevaricating, Fliss shrugged. ‘I think he said his name was Quinn,’ she replied carelessly. She finished drying the dishes and hung the tea towel over the rail to dry. ‘I might as well go and get Buttons now. You never know, he may have gone out. Do you think it would be all right if I took the rabbit without his say-so?’
‘Why not?’ asked her father, but he was looking pensive. ‘Quinn,’ he said ruminatively. ‘Quinn.’ He frowned. ‘Where have I heard that name before?’
‘The Mighty Quinn?’ suggested Fliss, giving her reflection a quick once-over in the mirror beside the hall door.
She looked unusually flushed, she thought ruefully, and she hadn’t even set out on her mission yet. Pale skin, that never tanned no matter how long she stayed out in the sun, had the hectic blush of colour, vying with the vivid tangle of her hair. Blue eyes—her father insisted they were violet—stared back with a mixture of excitement and apprehension, and she felt a frustrated surge of impatience. She wasn’t going on a date! She was going to rescue a rabbit, for pity’s sake.
‘I know!’ Her father’s sudden exclamation had her swinging round in surprise to find him balling a fist into his palm. ‘That name, Quinn. I knew I’d heard it recently. That’s the name of that man—that journalist—who spent about eighteen months as a prisoner of the rebels in Abuqara. You remember, don’t you? They did a documentary about it on television recently. He escaped. Yes, that’s right, he escaped. But not before he’d suffered God knows what treatment at the enemy’s hands.’
Fliss swallowed with difficulty. Her breath suddenly seemed constricted somewhere down in her throat. ‘I—don’t remember,’ she said faintly.
But she did. Now that her father had reminded her of it, she remembered the documentary very well. Not that Matthew Quinn himself had appeared in it. It had simply been an examination of the situation in Abuqara, with Matthew Quinn’s imprisonment used to illustrate the violence meted out to foreigners who got caught up in the country’s civil war.
‘Not that I’m suggesting that your Mr Quinn is the same man,’ her father was going on, unaware of his daughter’s reaction. ‘That would be a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think? What with his aversion to the media and me being a part-time hack myself.’
‘Y-e-s.’ Fliss let the word string out, not sure why she didn’t just admit what she was thinking there and then. But the memory of Matthew Quinn’s dark, haunted face was still sharply etched in her mind, and, if he was who she thought he was, she couldn’t betray him. Not even to her own father. ‘Um—I ought to get going. I’ll take the car. I can easily dump the hutch in the back.’
‘Right.’ But her father was still looking thoughtful and her nerves tightened. ‘Perhaps I ought to come with you. Introduce myself, welcome him to the village, show him we’re a friendly lot. What do you think?’
‘I—no.’ Fliss realised he might take umbrage at the sharpness of her tone and hurried to justify herself. ‘I mean—I don’t think this is a good time, Dad. What with the trouble over the rabbit and all. Let’s let the dust settle, hmm? We don’t want—the family—to think we’re pushy.’
‘Well, you could be right.’ He looked downcast. ‘It’s a pity, though. It would have been a good opportunity to get to know them.’
‘Later,’ said Fliss fervently, picking up the car keys. ‘See you soon.’
‘Wait.’ As she was about to leave, her father came after her. ‘How are you going to lift the hutch into the car? It’s heavy, you know. It was all Amy could do to push it on the wheelbarrow.’
‘I’ll manage.’ Fliss thought she’d do anything rather than have her father discover who the new occupant of the Old Coaching House was because of her. As he’d said, he took his journalism seriously, and he wouldn’t be able to resist talking about a scoop like this. ’Bye.’
It was only a few minutes’ drive from the cottage to the Old Coaching House. Their cottage adjoined the grounds of the church on one side and the Old Coaching House adjoined them on the other.
But there the similarity ended. Cherry Tree Cottage was set in a modest garden whereas the Old Coaching House had extensive grounds, with lawns and flowerbeds and an apple orchard, as well as a tennis court at the back of the house.
As she drove, Fliss had to concede that Amy had done well to wheel the rabbit this far. Of course, when Fliss was working for Colonel Phillips, they had taken the short cut around the back of the church, but it was still some distance. She gave a rueful smile. Amy had obviously been determined to keep the pet that one of her school friends had given her.
The front of the old house was still impressive, despite its air of faded grandeur. Stone gateposts, with rusting iron gates that hung rather optimistically from them, gave access to a drive that definitely required some maintenance. Fliss’s father’s elderly hatchback bumped rather resentfully over the holes in the tarmac, and Fliss realised she would have to make sure the rabbit hutch didn’t bounce out again as she was driving home.
Tall poplars lined the drive, framing the house with greenery. The rhododendron bushes that flanked them had been a mass of colour a couple of weeks ago, but now they were shedding their brilliant petals onto the grass verge. They made Fliss feel sad. Colonel Phillips had loved those rhododendrons.
There was a car parked at the foot of the shallow steps that led up to the terrace, one of those expensive off-roaders, much favoured by people who wanted to make a statement about