Page 100 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

‘Mum, I didn’t say it was a “he”?’

There was a slight hesitation before her mum reacted to the teasing interruption. Then, ‘So long as you are happy, Clemmie.’

‘Oh, Mum. I’m not gay! And I know you wouldn’t care if I was. Actually, it is a “he”, but don’t get excited. It’s Joaquin; he’s spending a couple of weeks at the manor.’

This was information that even her mum couldn’t spin into anything romantic. Aside from her belief in true love, her mum was too much of a realist.

The Joaquins of this world did not date women who were short, skinny and had red hair that refused to be tamed no matter how much product got poured on it.

‘Oh, right. It’s good that you have a lift, but since when was he coming here? No one told me. The house is closed up—and what about catering?’

Maplehurst Manor was normally closed at this time of year. Joaquin’s mother, who owned the place—a gift, apparently, from her husband—wasn’t keen on British winters, and every February the Perez family had a ritual en masse get-together in their Spanish castle.

The manor hadn’t always been closed up in the winter. Clemmie could recall sitting at one of the windows, rubbing a space in the frosted pane to watch the snow fall. She could even still recall her last Christmas there, when it had still been her family home.

She suspected she might have romanticised the memories. February snow had meant freezing to death, because the heating had never worked. But she still got a nostalgic ache, thinking about the logs spitting in the smoky, massive inglenooks of the Elizabethan mansion deep in the Dorset countryside that her father’s family had called home for centuries. That was before her dad had gambled it and pretty much everything else away.

Her handsome dad was not sentimental about the Leith family’s ancient seat. He wasn’t sentimental, full stop. He was charismatic, and charming, and when she had been too young to know better Clemmie had adored him, competing for his attention—which had been a waste of time and effort.

He had always preferred Chrissie.

His attempts to stay in touch with his only living daughter now involved the occasional postcard from wherever he was in the world.

She hadn’t seen him in years, and she knew that he’d never paid a penny of the child support he’d been meant to to her mum—who, since the divorce, had lived in the gatehouse that came with her new job: housekeeper in her old home. He had taken off when Chrissie was diagnosed, leaving a note saying it was ‘doing his head in’ and he couldn’t bear to see his pretty daughter lose her hair.

He had said he would come for the funeral, and Clemmie had rather stupidly believed him, but he hadn’t turned up.

‘I was looking forward to spending my time with you and Harry,’ her mother said now.

It was a lie, but not the sort that hurt people—the sort that Clemmie could never forgive.

She could see why her mum sounded disgruntled. When the house was empty her workload as housekeeper was light, but if any family member was in residence she was kept busy and often brought in casual local labour to help, along with outside catering firms to cope with social events.

‘It’s only Joaquin, as far as I know, so I’m sure you still can.’

‘Is he bringing anyone? Agirlfriend?’

Clemmie, who knew her mum’s appetite for celebrity gossip well—especially when she knew the celebrity personally, and had once regularly fed him at her kitchen table—stemmed the flow of speculation.

‘I haven’t the foggiest, Mum.’

As children, she and Joaquin had enjoyed an unexpected friendship. Unexpected when you considered that Joaquin and his family had lived in the grand house she had once called home while her mum, no longer lady of the manor, had become housekeeper to the new owners.

A perfect solution, her mum had said, because it came with the gatehouse cottage and Clemmie wouldn’t have the added disruption of changing schools.

Her mum had been pretty upbeat about what most people would consider a huge downgrade, pointing out that the roof didn’t leak and the plumbing was not ancient.

Clemmie had been less philosophical, but she’d pretended to be okay with the arrangement for her mum’s sake, while secretly she longed for her old room with the leaking roof.

The room she had shared with her twin, Chrissie.

Her mum, perhaps sensing how she felt, or maybe on the suggestion of the counsellor who had been part of Clemmie’s life for a couple years, had moved a second bed into her tiny new room at the gatehouse, and nobody had said anything when she’d arranged all Chrissie’s stuffed toys on it in the exact way that her twin had left them.

She had, however, hated Joaquin before she’d even known his name.

Her first encounter with the boy who hadstolenher home had been in the woods that surrounded the manor. Clemmie had still thought of them asherwoods, even though they were owned by this new family. That day she had climbed a tree to rescue a cat. The cat had rescued itself, which had left Clemmie hanging from a branch by her snagged cardigan.

Rescued by the new boy from the manor, she had responded by kicking him when he’d said, with the lofty superiority of ten years to her eight, that girls could not climb and told her she was trespassing.

---