house. A little different from the first time she’d come up this driveway, her heart pounding like a jackhammer, her stomach in sickening knots. Back then she’d been as nervous as the heroine in Rebecca, driving up to Manderley with her wealthy new husband at her side.
Fiona could well understand that poor young bride’s feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. She’d felt exactly the same way back then. Ironic that on her unexpected return to Manderley she was now the first wife.
The house grew larger on approach. But of course it was large. Wide, white and two-storeyed, with a huge pitched grey slate roof and long, tall, symmetrically placed windows. It looked English in design, and somewhat in setting, with its clumps of English trees and ordered gardens. Nothing, however, could disguise the Australian-ness of the bright clear blue sky, or the mountains in the distance, also blue with the haze from the millions of eucalypti which covered them.
The tarred and winding driveway finally gave way to a more formal circular section, with a red gravel surface and a Versailles-like fountain in the middle. The Audi crunched to a halt in front of the white-columned portico and almost immediately the front door opened and the lady of the house stepped out into the sunshine.
Fiona frowned as she stared over at Philip’s mother.
Kathryn was still as superbly groomed as she remembered. And just as elegant, in a royal blue woollen dress, with pearls at her throat and not a blonde hair out of place.
But she looked older. Much older. Probably even around her real age.
She had to be coming up for sixty, Fiona supposed. Ten years ago she’d been in her late forties, though she’d looked no more than thirty-five.
She appeared frail as well now, as though the stuffing had been knocked out of her. There was a slight stoop about her shoulders and a sadness in her face which struck an annoyingly sympathetic chord in Fiona.
Her whole insides revolted at this unlikely response. Sympathy for Kathryn Forsythe? Never!
Steeling herself against such a heresy, Fiona pulled the keys out of the ignition, practically threw them in her handbag, climbed out and swung the door shut. Sweeping off her sunglasses, she turned to face her one-time enemy, waiting coolly to be appraised and not recognised.
Kathryn’s lovely but faded blue eyes did sweep slowly over her from head to toe, but, as Fiona had predicted to Owen, there was not a hint of recognition, let alone rejection. Nothing but acceptance and approval. One could even go so far as to say...admiration.
Oddly, this did not give Fiona the satisfaction she’d hoped for. She didn’t feel triumphant at all. Suddenly, she felt mean and underhand.
‘You must be Fiona,’ Kathryn said in a softly gentle voice, smiling warmly as she came forward and held out a welcoming hand.
Fiona found herself totally disarmed, smiling stiffly back and taking the offered hand while her mind fairly whirled. She’s only being nice to you because you look the way you do, she warned herself. Don’t ever think this woman has really changed, not down deep, where it matters. She’s still a terrible snob. If she ever found out who you really were, she’d cut you dead, and, yes, she’d be furious. Make no mistake about that. So put on a good act here, darling heart, make your abject apologies and get the hell out of Manderley!
‘And you must be Mrs Forsythe,’ she returned in her now well-educated voice, a far cry from the rough Aussie drawl she’d once used, with slang and the odd swear-word thrown in for good measure.
‘Not to you, my dear. You must call me Kathryn.’ Philip’s mother actually linked arms with her, gathering her to her side and giving her a little squeeze.
Fiona froze. The Kathryn Forsythe of ten years before would never have done such a thing, not even to her friends and relatives. Philip’s mother had been a reserved and distant woman with an aversion to touching.
‘After all,’ Kathryn went on, before Fiona could recover from her shock to form a single word, ‘we’re going to be spending a lot of time together over the next few weeks, aren’t we?’
Fiona should have put her right then and there, but she hesitated too long and the moment was lost.
‘So how did your wedding go yesterday, dear?’ Kathryn asked as she steered Fiona over towards the house. ‘You had lovely weather for it, considering it’s August.’
‘It...um...it went very well,’ Fiona replied truthfully, while she tried to work out how to tactfully escape this increasingly awkward situation.
‘I can imagine everything you do goes very well, my dear,’ Kathryn complimented her. ‘I’m already impressed with your punctuality and your appearance. A lot of people these days don’t seem to care how late they are for an appointment, or how they look when they get there. I’ve always felt that clothes reveal a lot about a man, and everything about a woman. You and I are going to get along very well, my dear. Very well indeed.’
Now that sounded more like the old Kathryn, Fiona thought.
To be strictly honest, however, she now shared some of those sentiments. She couldn’t abide people who were late for business appointments. Neither was she impressed with the slovenly dressed, or the grunge brigade. Fiona had found that people who didn’t care about their own appearance were usually not much good at their jobs.
You mean you judge a book by its cover these days, darling? an annoying inner voice pointed out drily.
The sound of a car speeding up the driveway interrupted her distracting train of thought.
‘That will be my son,’ Kathryn said, just as a black Jaguar with tinted windows roared into view. It braked hard inches before the gravel section, then passed sedately by them before purring to a cat-like halt on the other side of her Audi.
Panic had Fiona jamming her sunglasses back over her suddenly terrified eyes and praying Philip wouldn’t recognise her with them on.
‘I thought you said Phi...your son...couldn’t come today,’ she pronounced tautly.
Fortunately, Kathryn didn’t seem to notice her agitation. ‘He rang a while back on his mobile to say that Corinne—she’s his fiancée—had woken with a migraine this morning and begged off going on the harbour cruise luncheon they were supposed to attend. He didn’t fancy going alone so decided to pop home for lunch instead. He rang off before I could remind him you would be here as well.’
Fiona found herself staring over at the car. From the side, she couldn’t see the driver, because of the tinted windows. Several fraught seconds ticked away without Philip making an appearance, and she found herself waiting breathlessly for that moment when the driver’s door would open.
Fiona began to feel sick to her stomach. It had been a dreadful mistake coming here today, she was beginning to realise. A dreadful, dreadful mistake!
As though in slow motion, the door finally opened and his dark head came into view, followed by his shoulders—his very broad shoulders. Once fully upright, he turned to glance at them over the bonnet of the car.
Was she imagining it or was he staring at her? Surely not. She had to be imagining it. He couldn’t have recognised her, not with her sunglasses on!
She was being paranoid. Besides, he was wearing sunglasses too. Impossible to see where his eyes were being directed, or to determine their expression with those masking shades on.
Which was a reassuring factor from her own point of view, because the moment he strode round the front of his car and started towards them Fiona’s eyes began eating him up in exactly the same way they had the very first day he’d walked into Gino’s fish and chip shop ten years before.
Yet he was only wearing jeans and a grey sweater. Nothing fancy. Just casual clothes.
Philip the man, she was forced to accept, was even more impressive than Philip the youth, the promise of future perfection now fulfilled. His long, lanky frame was all filled out, his once boyishly handsome face fined down to a