Fame by Tilly Bagshawe

explain what’s happened to the nurses and meet you downstairs in five.’
     
     
    The rest of the day passed in a blur of frenetic activity and stress, with Tish and Carl breaking every speed limit in the book in Tish’s ancient Fiat Punto, tearing from one government agency to the next in an effort to prove their legal guardianship of little Sile. Two bribes, a phone call to the British Consulate and countless vicious screaming matches later – Romanian Child Services did not consider Letitia Crewe to be ‘too nice’; as far as they were concerned, she was a bolshy, strident, harridan who’d been a thorn in their side since the day she set foot in the country – the matter was at last resolved. ‘For now,’ the Child Protection Officer warned Tish sternly.
    As if we’re any bloody threat to him , Tish thought furiously as she finally started the drive back to her flat in the city. As if anyone on God’s earth gave a crap about that little boy until we took him in. Sometimes, most of the time, her work was so frustrating it made her want to scream. The Romanian government were like dinosaurs, terrified of change, resentful of any ‘outsider’ who wanted to help. As if any of the foreign NGOs wanted to be there. Don’t you think we’d love it if you sorted out your own bloody country and took care of your own kids, so we could all go home?
    Home.
    The word had been turning over and over in Tish’s mind all day. She would have to make a decision soon, tomorrow probably, and start making some concrete plans. She’d wanted Michel’s advice today, but deep down she already knew what he would have told her. Go. Go home and do what you need to do. There was no other way.
    Home for Tish was Loxley Hall, an idyllic Elizabethan pile in the heart of Derbyshire’s glorious Hope Valley. Much smaller than neighbouring Chatsworth, but widely considered more beautiful, Loxley had been the ancestral seat of the Crewe family for over eight generations. Growing up there as a little girl, Tish had never noticed the house’s grandeur, not least because behind the intricately carved, exterior with its stone mullioned windows and fairytale turrets, the family actually lived in a distinctly down-at-heel ‘apartment’ of seven, shabby rooms, and not in the immaculately preserved ballrooms and dining halls that the public saw. What Tish was aware of, however, was Loxley’s magic. The beauty of her grounds, with their ancient clipped yew hedges, endless expanses of lawn and deer-covered parkland beyond, punctuated by vast, four-hundred-year-old oaks. At the front of the house, beneath a crumbling medieval stone bridge, the river Derwent burbled sleepily, little more than a stream in the narrow part of the valley. As a child, Tish would sit on the bridge for hours, legs dangling, playing Poohsticks with herself or watching hopefully for an otter to make a thrilling, sleek-headed appearance. Her older brother Jago had never shared her fascination with the river, nor her romantic belief in Loxley Hall as some sort of magical kingdom. Mostly, Tish remembered him as rather distant and aloof (‘sensitive’, their mother called him), always playing inside with his computer games or his older, sophisticated friends from Thaxton House, the local boys’ prep school. Tish’s childhood playmates were her Jack Russell, Harrison, the family housekeeper Mrs Drummond, and on occasions her elderly but much beloved father, Henry.
    Henry Crewe had died two years ago and Tish still missed him terribly. It was Henry’s death that had set off the chain of events leading to the current crisis. Amid much familial wailing and gnashing of teeth, Henry Crewe had broken Loxley’s four-hundred-year entailment and left the house lock, stock and barrel to his estranged wife Vivianna, Tish and Jago’s mother. This was partly a romantic gesture. Although Vivi had left him and their children the better part of two decades ago to start a new life in Italy,