Suddenly, there was a burst of light from outside. We broke off, staring at each other, confused.
‘Lightning?’ I guessed.
Another flash. We were both standing stock still in the lounge doorway. Frowning, Matt walked back towards the window, where he’d only drawn the curtains halfway across. He pulled them completely open – and immediately we were both almost blinded by a volley of flashing lights. At the same time, someone began hammering on the front door.
‘Candice!’ a voice shouted.
And another: ‘Come on, Candice, come out and talk to us!’
‘Who’s your new man, Candice? Does Shane know about it?’ yelled another.
‘Oh my God,’ I gasped. ‘Matt, they’ve found me.’
Shaking, I fell back onto the sofa, covering my face with the cushions ridiculously – as if cushions could hide me from the vultures outside.
‘Quick, out the back way,’ Matt said, pulling me to my feet again. ‘Come on, Emma – quickly! Before they find their way round the side.’
He got hold of my raincoat and pushed my arms into it, grabbed a black woolly hat from a peg in the hall and pushed it firmly onto my head, and manhandled me through the kitchen to the back door. I was almost too shocked to move of my own accord, but when I heard a shout from outside – ‘They’re going out the back!’ – I jumped into action. Together we dived out of the cottage’s back door into the darkness of the garden. I could still hear shouts of ‘Candice! Come out and talk to us, Candice!’ from the street, and then I became aware of more voices joining in the hullabaloo.
‘What’s going on? What’s all this noise about?’
‘What’s happened? Who’s Candice?’
‘Candice Nightingale!’ I heard one of the reporters yell back. ‘She’s in there! She’s been hiding out here in Crickleford, posing as a pet sitter, apparently.’
‘Do you know her?’ one of the other journalists was asking people now. Is she one of your neighbours? Emma Nightingale, she’s been calling herself. Has she looked after your pets?’
‘All the neighbours are out there,’ Matt whispered to me as he locked the back door after us. ‘They’ve all been woken up.’
‘Yes.’ I felt another wave of panic. I’d already recognised the voices of Pat, Pongo the Alsatian’s owner, and her next-door neighbour Hattie. Now they knew about my deception, it would be all over town in no time.
‘Come on! This way,’ Matt urged me, grasping my hand and tugging me after him. He obviously didn’t want to use a torch, and the path through the little plot was rough and overgrown. When we reached a gate in the far corner of the garden, he opened it and ushered me through. ‘It’s a footpath – it leads back to the top end of Fore Street but it’s quite overgrown all the way,’ he said quietly. ‘It doesn’t get used much. Hang onto my hand.’
It was a relief to be away from the shouts of the reporters and the flashes of their cameras, but my heart was still going nineteen to the dozen as we made our way through the brambles and mud of the little narrow path in the darkness. When I finally glimpsed the shapes of the Fore Street shops in the distance I slowed down, breathing heavily. There was nobody following us. It was quiet and dead in the town, the streetlights still out.
‘You won’t go back to the cottage yet, will you?’ I asked Matt. My heart was aching with regret and guilt. I’d ruined everything for him. His beautiful home would probably feel violated now.
‘No. I’ll give them a while to give up and go away. But you’d better not go back to Primrose Gardens yet, either. One of the neighbours in Moor View Lane might just blab about where you live. Come back to my flat.’
‘No.’ I stopped, put my hands up to his shoulders and rested my head against his chest just for a moment. ‘No, Matt. I can’t. It won’t work. They won’t give up, not now they know I’m in Crickleford. They’ll find me; you know that as well as I do.’
‘So, what are you going to do?’
‘Move on.’ I swallowed back my tears. I had no choice. It wouldn’t be fair to Matt or to anyone else here, for me to stay now. ‘I’ll go home quickly now and pack – hopefully I can be in and out before they get there. I’ll leave a note for Lauren. I’m so sorry, Matt. It’s all my own fault.’
‘No, it isn’t!’ He grasped my hands, trying to hold onto me. ‘Stay, Emma! Brazen it out. Once they’ve got their story, they’ll go.’
‘But that’s not the point.’ I reached up, traced the line of his lips tenderly with my fingers and kissed him lightly before turning away. ‘I’ve lied to everyone here in Crickleford. When it all comes out, they’ll hate me. How can they trust their pets with me – someone who throws hairbrushes and mirrors at people’s heads? I can’t stay, Matt.’
‘Don’t do this!’ he said hoarsely. ‘I love you!’
‘I love you too,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m not staying to ruin your life.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I ran across the road, pounded down the deserted streets, tears pouring down my cheeks, not even stopping for breath until I reached Primrose Cottage, where I quietly let myself in and tiptoed upstairs to my little blue bedroom and packed my things. Within ten minutes I was in the kitchen, writing a note to Lauren and Jon saying I was sorry – sorry for lying, sorry for running away – but that I didn’t want to bring them trouble. They’d soon find out why. I asked them to please cancel the pet-sitting bookings that were in my diary, to apologise on my behalf and, of course, to take little Trixie back to the Bartons when they returned from Australia. I guessed they were already on their way back. I added some special kisses for Holly – my tears splashed onto the paper as I wrote them. Then I folded some money into the note, to make up for letting them down with the next month’s rent and thank them for sorting out my business. I propped it against the kettle with my door keys, gave Trixie a little goodbye stroke, and went cautiously back out into the street.
It had stopped raining, and the sky was beginning to lighten. Ironically, it looked like it was going to be a nice day. All the way into town, I kept glancing behind me and into the shadows, but the only people around were heading to the church hall with more items of comfort for those who’d been forced out of their homes. From the Town Square, I phoned for a taxi. The driver had to take a circuitous route out of town to avoid the floods, and the journey seemed to take forever, and cost a fortune. But by the time dawn had broken I was at Newton Abbot Station, boarding the first train of the morning heading back to London.
As the train sped across the country, I called my sister and asked her if I could sleep on her sofa that night. I couldn’t risk going to my parents – the paparazzi would be turning up there as soon as they realised I’d left Crickleford. And it wouldn’t take long for them to track down my sister’s address, either, so I’d have to move to a B&B the following day.
‘What on earth’s happened, Emma?’ she asked. ‘What’s gone wrong? I thought you were so happy there.’
‘I was.’ I sniffed and swallowed back tears. The young couple sitting opposite me were staring at me. If I mentioned the press pursuing me, their eyes would be out on stalks and before I knew it they’d have worked out who I was. ‘I’ll tell you when I get there,’ I said miserably. ‘I’m sorry, Kate. Sorry for worrying you, all over again.’
After I’d hung up, I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but despite having been awake for most of the night, my brain refused to wind down. I couldn’t stop turning everything over and over in my mind. The floods, the pony, the elderly couple we helped to rescue, the people cheering. Matt looking after me, taking me back to Bilberry Cottage, listening to my terrible story but still telling me he loved me. Oh my God – he said he loved me! I wiped my eyes again. I was running away from the man I loved! But how could I have stayed, now that the press had found me? They’d hound everyone in town for what they knew about me.
Then I sat up with a start, my eyes wide open again. How had those reporters found out about me? Matt had told me he’d
spoken to someone on every national paper, and that none of them knew where I was. ‘Your trail’s gone cold,’ he’d said. Was he lying to me? Oh, please God, don’t let him have been lying! Surely, if he’d been going to betray me, he’d have written the story himself, wouldn’t he, not passed it on to the national press? I could only think that one of the journalists he’d spoken to had been suspicious about his phone call, and finally guessed that I was in Crickleford with him. And anyone in town could have quite innocently told someone who was looking for Matt, about Bilberry Cottage.
By the end of the journey I was worn out from thinking about it all. Getting the Tube from Paddington to Liverpool Street and then changing lines for Loughton was the last straw. As usual there were no empty seats and I was so exhausted I’d have sat on the floor if there’d been room between people’s feet. When my sister opened her front door and took me straight into her arms, I instantly burst into tears.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I sobbed. ‘I’ve messed up again. Yet again. I’ve let everyone down.’
‘Of course you haven’t,’ she soothed me, taking me through to the lounge and sitting me down. ‘Whatever’s happened, you could never let us down. We’re your family and we love you.’
This, of course, just made me cry all the more. By the time I’d managed to give Kate the full story, I felt completely drained. She heated me up some soup and sat by me, insisting I finished it all, and although I hadn’t wanted it I realised it had been a long time since I’d eaten.
‘Now I’m going to pick the children up,’ she said when I’d finished, explaining that she’d left them with a friend so that she could give me her full attention. ‘And when I come back, I expect you to be asleep. On my bed. I insist. I’ll close the curtains, shut the door and keep the kids away from you until you wake up.’
Too tired to argue, I allowed myself to be tucked up for a nap as if I were a child myself. I fell asleep almost instantly, but woke up to loud ‘shushes’ from Kate, when she came back with the children. I lay there for another hour, pretending to be asleep, and when I eventually went downstairs it was to hugs and kisses from little Jeremy and one-year-old Rose, who had apparently been told by their mum that Auntie Emma was feeling very poorly and needed lots of rest.
I stayed for two days, by which time I felt stronger but no less depressed. I’d spoken to my parents, and the disappointment in their voices had made me feel sick. Apparently the house had been surrounded by reporters again, as I’d guessed, but they were drifting away now that they seemed to have accepted that they’d lost me.
‘Stay with us,’ Kate and Tim had both urged me. ‘They don’t know where we live.’
‘They’ll find out. It’s lovely of you to offer, but it’s not fair,’ I said, and I found myself a room in a nearby B&B, which would do until I could get a job and rent a flat.
Would I have to move away again, somewhere new? The thought made me feel sad and weary. Would it ever end, this running away? Had I been naive to think I could settle in Crickleford and make a new life for myself without ever being found out? That I could run my own business and be a success – me, stupid little Emma who failed all her exams, who failed her family, failed in her relationship, even failed to be a success as a celebrity! Let’s face it, I thought, I was just a failure all round, always had been. I’d have given anything to stay in Crickleford, to stay with Matt. My heart ached with a real, physical pain every time I thought about him. But I’d even failed him, in the end. Running away seemed to be the only thing I was good at.
October seemed a long month. The weather was getting colder, my heart getting heavier and heavier. I had countless texts and emails and missed calls from Matt, saying it was safe for me to go back, that the paparazzi had left Crickleford. But how could I go back, after all the stupid lies I’d told, how I’d deceived everyone and let them down. It would be ridiculous, anyway, to believe Matt would still want me back after I’d run away from him like that. Eventually the calls and messages stopped, so I guessed I’d been right. He’d given up on me, and I couldn’t blame him.
I couldn’t seem to stop feeling sorry for myself. I let the Cheeky Chestnut hair colour grow out, and surprise, surprise, nobody in Loughton recognised the drab, pathetic woman with unkempt red hair as the glamorous Candice Nightingale. I hardly even recognised myself. I got a job in a supermarket, stacking shelves. It was boring, punishing work but I felt like it served me right. I couldn’t be bothered to look for a flat, staying instead in the same tatty B&B, where my dingy room overlooked a council car park. At night I dreamed of my little blue room in Primrose Cottage, of Castle Hill and Fore Street, the views across Dartmoor, the river, the Town Square and, of course, Bilberry Cottage. I’d wake up with nothing to look forward to, no hope in my heart. My life was going nowhere. Of course, I was suffering from depression, but I didn’t recognise it as such. I just felt worthless.
It was a little dog who finally started to bring me out of the darkness. Kate called me one day during the last week of October to tell me she and Tim had got a rescue puppy, and of course I couldn’t resist going round to see him. Jeremy was rolling around on the floor with this little scrap of fur, not much bigger than my hand, and it was impossible to look at him without smiling.
‘We’ve called him Casper. We don’t know what breed he is – well, what mixture of breeds,’ Kate said, laughing, as she lifted the puppy up and passed him to me for a cuddle. But over the next couple of weeks, as he grew bigger, I saw a definite resemblance to both Trixie, and Scrap, Mary’s Cairn terrier.
‘He could be a cross between a spaniel and a terrier,’ I said as I went with Kate and the children to take Casper for his first outdoor walk after he’d had his second vaccination. I’d been spending more time with them since they’d got the puppy. ‘He reminds me of a couple of the dogs I used to look after.’
‘You must miss them,’ she said, glancing at me sympathetically, and I just nodded. The less I had to talk about my time in Crickleford, the easier I found it. But Kate didn’t give up that easily. ‘You must miss him, too,’ she added.
I’d told her about Matt, that first day I arrived back in Loughton, and she knew I’d ignored all his emails and phone calls.
‘It’s too late,’ I said, shrugging as if it didn’t matter. ‘He’s probably found someone else by now.’ I knew she could see through my flippancy. My heart still felt as if it was going to break, just talking about him.
But with the puppy to take for walks, which meant I saw more of the children too, my mood gradually lightened a little. November passed, with its damp, dreary chill in the air, and its sudden onslaught of far-too-early Christmas tat in all the shops, and to my surprise my mum told me how much they were looking forward to me spending Christmas with them.
‘It won’t be like last year,’ she said. ‘That’s all behind us now.’
I wasn’t sure whether that made me feel better or worse.
And then, one Saturday morning during the first week of December, she called me to say something had arrived at their house for me in the post.
‘But nobody knows your address,’ I said, puzzled. ‘It’s not from America, is it?’ I added, going suddenly hot with panic.
‘No, love. It’s a brown envelope, quite a big one. Come and pick it up – it might be important.’
As soon as I saw the envelope I knew it was from Matt. My heart began to pound. What was this? It was too big to be a letter, and even if he’d wanted to write to me, how had he got my parents’ address? I thanked Mum but declined her offer to sit down in her lounge and open it while she made me a cup of tea. I needed privacy for this.
I went back to my grotty room at the B&B, sat on the bed and stared at the envelope, turning it over and over in my hands for several minutes before finally ripping it open. And then I froze. Inside there was just a single item: a folded page of a newspaper. I recognised it straight away as the Crickleford Chronicle. I made out only the headline before screwing up the page and thr
owing it across the room:
CRICKLEFORD’S SECRET CELEBRITY
He’d betrayed me. After all his promises, making me believe he’d never write about me, never tell anyone who I was! How could he do this to me? He’d obviously known that now it was out there, in the press, all the national papers would pick it up and the whole thing would blow up again. He’d done this to me – after telling me he loved me! Was this some kind of revenge on his part? Was he so angry and upset with me for not taking his calls or responding to his messages that he’d wanted to spite me?
If Kate hadn’t called me at that precise moment, suggesting we take Casper for a walk, the newspaper page would probably have stayed screwed up in the corner until I put it in the bin. But when I answered the call she obviously picked up on the tone of my voice.
‘What is it?’ she asked sharply. And when I couldn’t answer, she said: ‘I’m coming straight round.’
I let her in, and just pointed at the ball of paper.
‘He’s written about me. And sent it to me, just to make it even worse.’
She picked up the paper and straightened it out, glancing at the headline.
‘Have you read it?’ she asked. We exchanged a look. ‘Sorry,’ she said quietly, and started to read it to herself.
‘Oh, don’t bother,’ I told her impatiently. ‘It’s obvious what it’ll be about. How I lied to everyone in Crickleford, and the awful thing I did when I found Shane in bed with—’
She held up her hand to silence me, still reading.
‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ she told me, looking up at me with wide eyes. ‘Listen.’
And she proceeded to read it to me. And it changed everything.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
‘CRICKLEFORD’S SECRET CELEBRITY,’ Kate read out. ‘Crickleford residents have been surprised to learn that a popular resident of the town, who has endeared herself to the community since arriving here almost a year ago, turns out to have a very distinguished background.’
The Pets at Primrose Cottage Page 26