Page 1 of Finding Home in Hartfell
Chapter One
Pippa Douglas turned off the car’s engine and the brief view she’d had of golden stone walls and mullioned windows framing a farmhouse vanished in the darkness. She glanced at her daughter in the passenger seat, letting a long, weary breath escape. Finally, they were here; she couldn’t remember when she’d last driven so far. London to the Yorkshire Dales was a journey she’d not made in many years, and she didn’t want to think of the last time, not now.
Harriet’s eyes were closed, her pale, oval face shadowed by darkness. Pippa reached across, tucking a long strand of sun-kissed brown hair behind Harriet’s ear, a maternal gesture often denied her now that her daughter was a teenager. How had that happened so fast? It seemed only moments since she’d been tiny, toddling from nursery into primary school and beyond.
‘Harriet? We’re here, sweetheart.’ Pippa was gentle, not wanting to jolt her from sleep too suddenly. ‘Time to wake up.’
‘Huh?’ Harriet grimaced as she rearranged herself on the seat and rubbed her neck. Her eyes automatically fell to the phone in her hand, the light from the screen brightening her confused expression. ‘Already?’
‘You’ve been out for the past two hours, since we set off after the services. You obviously needed the rest.’ Pippa held back a sigh as Harriet’s fingers darted over the screen, brightening it some more. ‘Come on, we may as well get on with it.’
‘Aren’t you even a little bit curious about the house?’
‘Are you?’
‘Stop trying to deflect.’
Pippa’s hand was on the door, and she pushed it open, deciding to ignore the suggestion of sharpness in Harriet’s reply. ‘You know me too well.’
‘So that’s a no, then. Come on, Mum, it’ll be an adventure.’
‘I’m not looking for an adventure, and the last thing I needed was your grandad dumping another of his problems in my lap right at the beginning of the summer holidays.’
Pippa had long been the unofficial head of her dad’s blended family, a role he was perfectly happy to let her occupy. Everyone automatically gravitated to her when a decision needed making or a problem solved. As the eldest of his five children, she was the one who remembered birthdays, arranged meet-ups, sent flowers, checked in. Somehow, she held them all together.
She didn’t resent the role she’d taken upon herself twenty-five years ago after her mum had died, but there were occasions when she wished the family didn’t ping everything they wanted sorting out straight to her inbox. It wasn’t that their dad didn’t love them, but he led a relatively unconventional life, and family was something he fitted in alongside his career.
Jonny Jones was almost as famous for his northern roots as he was for being the lead singer of legendary rock band Blue at Midnight. For Pippa, it was a given that he wouldn’t slide quietly into old age and stop attracting headlines for his love life as well as the band’s long-awaited, supposedly final album. Currently on the Australian leg of a seemingly never-ending world retirement tour – the dates of which only Pippa in the family had marked on her calendar – Jonny had flown to Bali for a break away from the mayhem of his own life.
But then last week, just when Harriet’s summer term had ended – which immediately made Pippa suspicious because generally her dad knew nothing about such things – he’d got in touch by email to say that a property he owned needed sorting out and she was the only one he trusted to take care of it. And seeing as she’d need to visit and have a proper look at the house, why didn’t she take Harriet along as well? Pippa, at the beginning of her own summer break from her job as a Fine Arts lecturer at a London college, had tried to put Jonny off and suggest his business manager or the family solicitor step in, but he’d been absolutely insistent on Pippa being the one to deal with the house.
She said no very firmly at first, firing off a couple of frustrated emails and pointing out she was busy with her own plans in reply to his increasingly pleading ones. But then he’d deployed his secret weapon and swerved right around her to Harriet, who, to Pippa’s utter astonishment, had been all for Jonny’s scheme, and so here they were: parked in the dark outside a house she had never seen and couldn’t remember her dad ever visiting or mentioning.
‘So far as I’m concerned, the sooner we’re in and out of here, the better. We still have plans for the summer and none of them include spending time in this backwater, wherever it actually is. I’ve forgotten.’
Pippa shoved the car door open, and Harriet followed her onto the drive with a degree of enthusiasm she’d almost forgotten her daughter possessed. Usually it was only the threat of her phone running out of charge that would send Harriet moving rapidly in search of the nearest source of power. Or playing wing attack in netball, at which she excelled.
‘Hartfell, Mum. The jewel in this unspoiled Yorkshire dale, to be precise.’ Harriet slammed her door, the noise reverberating through the night, and Pippa shuddered when an owl screeched somewhere in the trees leaning towards the house. Where was all the traffic and the ever-present background noise she was used to? The artificial lights blotting out the stars? Gravel was crisp under their feet, the late evening air warm and still.
‘Who told you it was a jewel?’
‘Google.’
‘Ah. Right. Not your grandad, then?’ Pippa was surprised that Harriet had bothered to look up the location of their base for the next week or so. She knew her dad had grown up somewhere around here, but he rarely talked about those days, and she hadn’t thought to question the location of this property.
‘No, haven’t spoken to him since he went to Bali with whatshername.’
‘Dana, Harriet. Your grandad’s partner is called Dana.’
‘She is this month.’
Pippa was rooting through her bag, feeling for the unfamiliar set of keys her dad’s solicitor had couriered round yesterday. ‘That’s not entirely fair, they’ve only broken up and got back together twice as far as I know.’
‘Three times, Mum. Freddie told me. He doesn’t like her, he thinks they’ll be over by Christmas, for good this time.’
‘And what else has your uncle said to you about…?’ Pippa hesitated. She didn’t generally discuss her dad’s love life with her daughter, but these things did tend to crop up when you were the eldest child of a rock legend, and online gossip was sometimes hard to ignore. Harriet was way savvier and more clued up about life than Pippa had been at that age, and she still thought it a very good thing that the internet had barely been invented when Jonny’s band had been in its heyday back in the Eighties.
As his much adored and only grandchild, despite the three daughters and two sons he had fathered, Harriet had access to Jonny that even Pippa couldn’t attain. He always picked up Harriet’s calls and he checked in with her online every week, no matter where in the world he was.
