The Carlswick Affair

by SL Beaumont

  Chapter 26

  James drove straight into the village and pulled into a small service alley behind the main street.

  Removing his helmet, he turned to her and said, “Food. I need to eat or I can’t think straight.”

  She hopped off the bike and adjusted her bag. It was heavy. James helped her with her helmet and then lifted the bag over her head.

  “Here, let me carry that,” he said. He closed the gap between them, his knee brushing her thigh as he settled her bag across his back.

  “That was a blast – thank you. Did you see the look on his face?” Stephanie cracked up laughing, with relief more than anything. “You don’t think he’ll come looking for me in town, do you?” she asked, becoming serious.

  James put his hands on her waist. “Don’t worry – even if he does, what can he do in the middle of a busy street?” He brushed her hair out of her eyes and pulled her close, kissing her gently on the lips. Stephanie sighed and relaxed into his embrace, enjoying a brief moment of respite.

  Hand in hand they walked through a narrow gap between the old buildings to the front of the tea rooms. Once inside they ordered breakfast – James a full English breakfast, Stephanie, one poached egg on grainy toast, and a big pot of tea between them. They chose a table in the window behind a pretty lace curtain that hid them from the street, but allowed them to look out. Stephanie poured the tea and they sat hand in hand smiling at each other waiting for their food.

  “I know I said it last night, but I am really sorry that I was so horrible to you over the last couple of weeks,” James said softly. “I was mad at first with you and your grandmother, but seeing you with Sam that night at the pub made me just crazy. And then Alex got involved.”

  Stephanie squeezed his hand and smiled at him.

  “Just so long as you know that I was trying to protect you from Alex,” he continued. “And his threats.” He shuddered.

  The waitress interrupted them with their breakfasts. James tucked into his pile of food with gusto. Stephanie nibbled her egg and toast and looked wistfully at James devouring bacon, eggs, sausages, sautéed potatoes, tomato, baked beans and mushrooms. After everything that had happened over the last few days, she had lost her appetite.

  “Okay – so Andy and I have a song writing session today out at his place. The others are still up in London and not due back until later tonight. Do you want to come?” James asked, wiping his mouth.

  “Won’t I just be in the way?” Stephanie said.

  “No – I’d like you to be there. It will give us a little more time to work out just what is going on. And you will be safe, from everyone,” he said.

  Except you, she thought, but hastily pushed that thought away. I’ve made my decision. Now is not the time to start second guessing myself.

  After breakfast, they drove out to Andy’s parents’ farm. Several years earlier, when the boys first put the band together, Andy’s father had let them turn an old unused shed into a practice space. They had spent days, during one school holiday clearing it out, painting and redecorating it. About a year ago, when it became clear that they were actually going somewhere with their music, Andy’s father had installed heating and plumbing in the shed, and it now sported a bathroom and kitchenette.

  Andy was already in the shed strumming away on an acoustic guitar. He looked up as they walked in.

  “Hey, dude.” He did a double take. “Steph.”

  “Hi, Andy. I promise not to get in the way. I just need to hang out here for a while,” she said.

  “It’s fine with me, darlin’. I’m just a little confused to see you two together. Last time I saw you, you were mouthing off at one another. What’s happened?” he asked.

  “I realised that I was being an idiot,” James replied simply.

  “Really, dude? You’ve only just realised that?” Andy said. They laughed.

  Andy suddenly registered the shiny bruise on James’s cheek. “Aw, Jamie, who have you been fighting with now?”

  James grinned and said, “I have Steph here to thank for this one.”

  “What?” Andy was incredulous. Stephanie rather sheepishly held up her bruised knuckles. “What did he do to deserve that?”

  “He tackled me,” she said.

  “Only to stop the police finding you outside my house in the middle of the night,” James replied.

  “Maybe,” she conceded, “but then he kept acting ignorant of what his brother is up to and after everything that has happened over the last few days, I saw red and lost my temper.”

  “Hang on,” Andy interrupted. “I’m missing quite a lot here.”

  “Actually, it’s a bit complicated. Steph, okay if I fill Andy in?” James turned to her and asked.

  She nodded.

  “Let’s sit.” James led her across the wide rehearsal space to an area with mismatched sofas and armchairs at the back of the room. Stephanie looked around the shed. Three of the walls and the ceiling rafters were all painted white, making the room seem even bigger than it was. The third wall, opposite the door, was painted with a mixture of splashes of colour and words. James saw her looking at it.

  “That’s the result of one of Liam’s artistic expression phases,” he explained, rolling his eyes.

  At the opposite end of the room from the seating area, the band had all their equipment set up on a series of rugs. Drum kit in the centre, keyboard off to one side, a couple of racks of guitars, microphones and amps littered the area immediately in front.

  Andy had walked to the kitchenette at the side of the sofas. It, of course, contained an industrial sized espresso machine. “I sense we will need coffee?” he said.

  James threw himself down on one of the sofas and grabbed Stephanie’s hand, pulling her down onto his lap. She landed awkwardly sprawled across him, laughing. He leaned his head down and kissed her. She struggled to a sitting position and sat sideways across his knee, resting her back against the arm of the sofa. He reached up and stroked her hair, gazing into her eyes as he did. His other hand ran down her leg from her thigh to the top of her boots and back again. He rested it there absentmindedly tapping out a beat as he leaned over and kissed her just below her ear.

  “Okay – here we go,” said Andy, clearing his throat as he deposited three lattes on the coffee table in front of them. “Am I going to have to separate you two to get anything sensible out of you?” he teased.

  They spent the next half an hour filling Andy in on what had been going on.

  “What do you think?” Stephanie asked when they had finished. “Is it just a coincidence that my dad is down here?”

  “As Einstein once said, ‘Coincidence is just God’s way of remaining anonymous’,” Andy said. “I think your dad is involved somehow.” He turned to James. “Do you really think your grandfather’s been hiding a piece of stolen art all these years and has just now decided to sell it?”

  “It has to be Alex, my grandfather is too far gone to be involved in anything like that,” James said.

  “Maybe my father is working with people to buy the painting from Alex. And I got in the way by getting friendly with you,” she said, looking at James. “Sam mentioned something about scaring me off, so maybe he was behind the brick through the window, so that Dad could get me out of the village and up to London while some deal went down.”

  “Well, Alex did say that I had to keep you away for three or four days and then I could do what I liked with you,” James said.

  “Charming,” she replied sarcastically. “You obviously couldn’t wait that long!”

  “I thought it unnecessarily cruel to make you wait any longer,” he said grinning.

  “Huh. The only thing is, I just can’t believe Dad would have Anna and me followed to that club and have someone try to run us down outside. He wouldn’t do that,” Stephanie said, shaking her head. “He might want me out of the village for a few days, but he wouldn’t hurt me to do it.”

  “Yeah – you never finished telling me abou
t that,” James said thoughtfully. “Alex also knew you were at the club. That’s who I was talking to on the phone.”

  “I have to admit, I thought it might have been you driving the car,” she said, looking sideways at him.

  James looked hurt for a moment.

  Andy shook his head. “There’s no way that it could have been. He was with me after you and Anna left, being a miserable git,” he said. James threw a cushion at him.

  “Nothing adds up here. I feel like there is something that I am missing,” Stephanie said, frustrated.

  “Jack and I were talking to our grandfathers at the pub the other night. They were both teenagers when war broke out,” Andy said. “I was asking them what they remembered about your feud. They didn’t really know anything, but they do remember a very active black market operating in Carlswick during the war.”

  They talked in circles for a while longer until Stephanie looked at her watch. “Okay – I’ve held you guys up long enough. Go and write a song or whatever it is that you do and I will try and do some more research,” she said. She stood up from James’s lap and pulled him to his feet. Andy wandered over to the guitars and selected one. James put his arms around Stephanie and slipped his hands into the back pockets of her jeans, squeezing her butt gently. She jumped against him and giggled. He bent down and buried his face in her hair and whispered, “I can’t wait for all this to be over, so we can properly spend some time together.” She shivered pleasantly at the thought and knew that he had felt her reaction, because he wore a suggestive smirk as broke away from her.

  “Don’t go getting too sure of yourself, Knox. I am by no means a certain bet,” she called to his retreating back.

  He stopped and turned back to her. “I’ll remember that when you are begging for it,” he said, quietly laughing.

  “Cheeky, much?” she muttered and pulled her iPad from her bag. She settled herself on the sofa and quickly became engrossed in her research.

  In the background, the boys ran through chord sequences, putting lyrics together with new melodies. After a while she realised that they had stopped playing and had their heads together talking quietly. James, as if he felt her looking, glanced over and winked at her. She felt a tingling sensation flood through her. I really hope he is for real and that I haven’t made a mistake trusting him? She mused and then pushed the thought from her mind. She had made the decision to trust him, now she had to follow it through.

  She sat back and closed her eyes. A little while later she felt her iPad being pulled from her hands and she opened her eyes. James was leaning over her.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I just didn’t want you to drop this on the floor,” he said gently. He placed the iPad on the table.

  “I can’t believe that I fell asleep,” she murmured.

  “I can. You have had a couple of strange days. Lie down and sleep some more. You are safe here,” he said kindly, laying a blanket over her.

  Stephanie lay on her side, with a cushion beneath her head, watching him walk back over to Andy. She closed her eyes and slept.

  A couple of hours later she woke feeling refreshed. She lay on the sofa watching Andy and James for a few minutes. It was almost as if they had forgotten she was there and were strumming and singing together. The song was one she hadn’t heard before. She looked at her watch; four-thirty pm – where had the day gone? She stood up, stretched and walked over to the small bathroom.

  When she came out, they had stood up and were plugging their guitars into the amps.

  “Hey, sleepyhead,” James called.

  “I like that song you were singing before. Is it new?” she replied.

  “Yup. Now you are awake we’ll plug in and you can tell us what you think,” he said.

  They launched into the song – it started softly with just James’s voice and then hit the chorus with a wall of sound bouncing off the walls. Andy harmonised with James’s husky tones. They had written a really sweet love song, about a girl who had gotten in behind a boy’s well-constructed defences, but he wasn’t able to tell her how he felt, as she was with someone else. But they played it with the speed and attitude of a punk number. It was fantastic.

  They both looked to her with enquiring eyes when they finished. “Obviously it has to have better drums and keyboard and Liam’s dulcet tones, but what do you think?” Andy asked.

  “Amazing. How do you make such a sweet song sound so raw and energetic and full of promise?” she said stunned.

  James and Andy hi-fived each other.

  “That’s exactly the reaction we want,” Andy said, pleased.

  “How long has it taken you to write it? You didn’t just do that this afternoon?” she asked.

  The boys exchanged glances. “About a month,” James replied cautiously.

  “Yeah, his inspiration kept pissing him off, so it would go from love to hate and back again,” Andy said, cracking up laughing at James’s glare. “What – better that she knows you wrote it for her than anyone else, dude.”

  James flushed and busied himself unplugging his guitar.

  Andy rubbed his arms. “It’s cooling down. I’m just gonna pop into the house and get a sweater.” He loped to the door and winked at Stephanie.

  She wandered over to James, who was studiously ignoring her.

  “No one has ever written a song for me before,” she said shyly. James reached over and pulled her into him and kissed her hard on the lips. “I seem to be able to write about the stuff that I find too difficult to say.” He looked at her hesitantly.

  She smiled at him and settled into his embrace, breaking away when Andy returned.

  “James, I think I’d like to go and visit Michael before work. Can you drop me home to get my car?” she said.

  “Do you think it’s wise to go back to your place? Sam might still be there,” he asked.

  “Well, I’ll call Grandma first and see who’s about,” she said, pulling her phone from her back pocket. Sam had indeed gone back up to London and he was not best pleased, having to wade into the pond to retrieve his keys. Her father had returned and his conference was underway again.

  Okay, Stephanie decided, after work I am going to slip in the back entrance of the guest house and find out just what my father is up to.