Fiona Harper - Best of Fiona Harper

I could tell as I was doing the last of the measuring that Izzi was revving up to something. She kept giggling to herself and pressing her fingers over her mouth. She’d announced earlier that she’d tell us which parts she’d assigned us today, and I was dying to know who I’d be.

As I wound my tape measure I let myself dream about playing the part of the debutante. The whole murder-mystery thing was to be set around a family gathering on a country estate, as far as I could tell. I guessed that Nicholas would probably end up as the heir to the family fortune, and I was desperate to play his devoted fiancée. I even had a midnight-blue floaty chiffon dress picked out that would really set off my colouring.

Izzi made a big show of gathering us all on two vast sofas that faced each other near the fireplace, and produced a little notebook and silver pencil from her bag.

‘Boys first!’ she exclaimed, and fixed her eyes on Julian.

It turned out he was going to play the carousing younger brother. Marcus slapped him on the back and almost made Julian choke on his coffee. ‘That means you’re actually going to have to talk to a girl!’ he bellowed. Poor old Julian just blushed and stammered something about talking to girls on a fairly regular basis, actually.

Marcus was going to be the layabout best friend of the son and heir, to which he merely said, ‘Nothing new there, then!’ and slapped Julian twice as hard on the shoulder. He’d better be careful. From the looks Julian was giving him there might be a second murder at Izzi’s weekend. An unplanned one.

When Izzi said that Adam was going to play the cousin, who happened to be a vicar, I almost snorted my coffee out through my nose. Oh, I was going to have such fun with him! I wondered if he’d let me give him false teeth and a bald wig.

That meant, of course, that Nicholas was to be just who he should be—Prince Charming, for want of a better description—and I was more than willing to step into the shoes of his devoted princess. I sighed and reached for a pain au chocolat, completely forgetting myself.

If I’d thought Izzi was excited at dishing out the ‘boy’ parts, as she called them, she notched it up a gear when it came to us girls.

‘I’m going to be Lady Southerby,’ she said, clapping her hands loudly and waiting for us to all hoot and exclaim. ‘Isn’t it going to be wild! I’m going to be a crusty old matriarch and you’re all going to have to do as I say!’

‘Not much change there, then,’ Marcus said again, as he rammed half a croissant into his mouth and sprayed crumbs everywhere.

Izzi was far too pleased with herself even to give him one of her withering looks. And then she turned to me.

My heart began to pound. I clasped my hands together on my knees and looked at her with wide, unblinking eyes.

‘You’re going to love your part, Coreen,’ she said. ‘I guarantee it’s absolutely perfect for you.’

Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps…

Coreen’s Confessions

No. 5—I’ve worn red lipstick every day of my life since I turned seventeen.

‘I STILL can’t believe Izzi did that to me!’ The corners of my mouth tugged downwards and made my bottom lip protrude slightly. ‘I thought we were friends!’

Adam glanced over at me, but kept his attention on the road. Just as well, really, since we were hurtling around the M25 in his Range Rover. ‘It’s been two weeks, Coreen. You need to let it go.’

Okay, I may have mentioned my displeasure regarding the matter to Adam a few times already.

‘It is what it is,’ he added, with an annoying air of superiority. ‘Sometimes life doesn’t hand us what we want, so we have to find a way to make what we have got work to our advantage.’

I folded my arms across my chest and stared at the number plate of the car in front. ‘Thank you for that bit of priceless wisdom, Socrates.’

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Adam had lifted one eyebrow. I decided his character for the murder-mystery weekend was going to his head. He was being annoyingly serene in the face of my abject distress.

‘I don’t need you to get all philosophical on me,’ I said sulkily. ‘I need you to be…to be my…’ What was the word I was looking for? It wouldn’t dislodge itself from my memory banks.

‘Your back-up?’ he suggested.

Exactly! I told him as much.

His mouth straightened out of its ever-present smile. ‘Always,’ he said quietly. ‘You know that.’

I sighed loudly and let my folded arms drop into my lap. Yes, I did know that.

Adam indicated and swiftly changed lanes to overtake a van. I held my breath, wishing I was behind the wheel instead. Adam might be steady and reliable in most aspects of his life, but none of that seemed to rub off on his driving. If my car had had a bigger boot we wouldn’t be having this problem, but unfortunately my treasured Beetle didn’t have the space for all this lovingly pressed vintage clothing.

He saw me tense up and chuckled under his breath. ‘Just because I’m here this weekend to be your “back-up”, it doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun along the way too.’ And he pressed harder on the accelerator, reaching a speed my poor little Volkswagen could only dream about.

‘Mongrel,’ I muttered, as I dug my fingernails into the edge of my seat.

‘Drama queen,’ he shot back.

I didn’t have much of a defence to that, so I slumped back into the comfortable leather seat and tried to smooth down the little catches I’d made with my nails only seconds earlier before Adam noticed them.

‘When did you get rid of Dolly?’

Dolly had been Adam’s old Land Rover. Older even than my little car. He’d had her ever since I could remember. But when he’d come to pick me up that afternoon he’d arrived in a gleaming new Range Rover, with a glossy black exterior and parchment-coloured leather seats. It was almost sexy—at least as sexy as a giant hulk of a machine like that can be.

‘Oh, I haven’t got rid of the old girl,’ Adam said, smiling to himself. ‘But I need something a little more…confidence inspiring…when I go to meet clients. And a vehicle that doesn’t backfire rust and can get from A to B without the help of a recovery truck tends to help with that.’

I trailed a finger along the immaculately stitched seam on my seat. Dolly Mark Two was certainly very impressive. And rather expensive, I’d have guessed. How on earth had Adam managed to afford her? I hoped he hadn’t sold a kidney or something.

The clock on the dashboard said twenty to three. Only fifteen minutes more and we’d be at Inglewood Manor. Everyone else was due to arrive around four, to get ready, but Adam and I were getting there early so I could hang the outfits in each of the guest’s rooms and check that every last cufflink and clutch bag was present and correct.

Ugh. Thinking about what everyone was wearing just made me remember the fashion monstrosities that I was going to have to wear over the coming weekend, and that brought me both down to earth and back to square one.

I closed my eyes, shook my head and let out a loud huff. ‘I still can’t believe that Izzi—’

‘Get over it, already!’ Adam half-yelled, half-chuckled, cutting me off. I clamped my mouth shut and resumed my pout.

I suppose Izzi hadn’t sabotaged my plans on purpose. She was just dying to get out of her glamorous clothes and play against type. She must have thought I’d be game for a laugh, ready to do the same. I really shouldn’t be cross with her, but I had to be cross with someone, and she was the only one in the firing line at present.

Adam performed another bit of outrageous overtaking and then looked over at me. I grimaced back.

‘Okay…’ he said in conciliatory kind of voice. ‘Maybe you have got a little bit of a point.’ I didn’t like his tone, for all its sympathy and understanding. When Adam stopped bantering and talked to me that way it only meant one thing—trouble.

He let out a soft chuckle as he clocked a large blue road sign up ahead. ‘What was Izzi thinking when she cast a girl who changes her mind every ten seconds as Constance?’

I was too depressed to box his ears or give a witty comeback. I just sat in silence as Adam turned off the motorway and headed in the direction of Inglewood Manor.

Yep. That was my role for the whole weekend: Constance Michaels. The dowdy, frumpy sister of Adam’s country vicar. Not a hint of silk or chiffon in Constance’s wardrobe—oh, no. That was all going to rotten old Louisa. I was stuck with tweed and dreary floral prints. Sensible shoes and good, clean living. It was going to be dire. The only consolation was that as the Reverend Harry Michaels’s sister I’d be able to give Adam all the ear-flicks and Chinese burns I wanted, and he wouldn’t be able to complain.

As we turned off the main road and through an imposing set of gates I sat up straighter in my seat. We were finally there. But, rather than the sweeping drive through open parkland that I’d imagined, the road to the manor was lined with fir trees. I could half imagine that they’d picked up their skirts only moments before and run to stand on the edges of the drive, eager to see the approaching guests. Through their dark branches I glimpsed clipped lawns, rose gardens and finally a vast redbrick house.

It wasn’t until we were almost directly in front of Inglewood Manor that the drive widened and split to circle an oval-shaped lawn dotted with miniature firs in the most beautiful assortment of shapes and sizes.

I’d seen pictures of Inglewood Manor before, of course. Had known that it was grand and elegant. But now that I was actually there I realised that this vast multi-roomed house was also very pretty, even though it rose to three storeys. The windows were long and perfectly proportioned, and the unusual parapet of stepped battlements and cones, along with twisting redbrick chimneys, gave the house a fairytale air.

It struck me that Nicholas Chatterton-Jones was a man with a very attractive guarantee. Generations of tradition cemented his feet to the ground; he’d been bred to stay put, to build a family not to tear it apart. Chatterton-Jones men didn’t do runners. Never would. So why did that realisation make me feel more nervous, instead of more convinced I’d pinned my hopes on the right man?

Adam brought the car to a halt, switched it off, and turned his body to face me. ‘Raring to go…Constance?’

I jabbed him in the shoulder with a fingernail. ‘Just you remember that Socrates met a very nasty end. Poison, if I remember rightly. And this is a murder-mystery weekend.’

The corners of Adam’s eyes crinkled. ‘I hear the deadly draught was self-inflicted in that particular case.’

I ignored him. ‘Bring the clothes in, will you?’ I said, waving towards the boot, and then I opened the door, exited the car with an elegant sweep of my legs and walked off to the huge wooden front door, channelling every bit of Marilyn I could.

‘Starting to understand what drove the poor bloke to it,’ Adam muttered as he pulled his key out of the ignition and jumped out of the car.

The rest of the afternoon went in a bit of a blur. Before I’d even unpacked all the clothes the hordes descended, and rather than being able to concentrate on making what I’d got to wear work to my advantage suddenly it was, ‘Coreen, can you do this zip up?’ or ‘Coreen, how do I put spats on?’ Or a million and five other stupid questions.

I hardly had time to notice the lovely wood-panelled landing between the various bedrooms, or lose myself in the ornate plaster ceilings, elegant furnishings and antiques.