by Holly Ford
She’d barely finished changing into something that didn’t smell of sheepdog when there was a knock on the bedroom door.
‘Lizzie?’ Luke called. ‘Are you in there?’
She opened the door.
‘I’m really sorry,’ he said, ‘but I have to head back to Christchurch this afternoon. Something urgent’s come up.’
‘Is everything okay?’ she asked. It wasn’t like him to look so ruffled.
‘A client’s having a bit of a crisis. It’s nothing that can’t be sorted out,’ he said, his mind clearly elsewhere. ‘But I do need to get up there.’
‘Of course.’ Lizzie knew better than to pry. Luke’s clients’ investments were highly confidential — especially in a crisis.
‘Thanks.’ He rubbed his hand over his face. ‘Look, Lizzie, I’m really sorry to do this to you. I had …’ Luke sighed. ‘I was having a really nice weekend.’
Oh, good. ‘Next time,’ she said, ‘you’ll have to come for longer.’
‘Yeah.’ He gave her an odd little look.
‘Lizzie?’ Cally appeared at the other end of the hall.
‘Hello,’ she smiled. ‘You’re back.’ She waited, looking for Ash.
‘Yes.’ Cally looked a little odd, too. ‘I just wanted to say goodbye. I’m getting a lift to Christchurch with Luke. I’m going to go and stay with Mum for a few days.’
Lizzie blinked. ‘You’re going right now?’
‘Carr said it was okay.’
‘Yes, of course, but—’
‘It makes more sense than someone having to drive me out to the bus tomorrow,’ Cally said.
Well, yes, it did, and Luke’s car would be a hell of a lot more comfortable than the bus, but — what had happened with Ash? ‘Is Ash with you?’ Lizzie asked.
‘No,’ said Cally, flatly.
So …? ‘Are you sure,’ she suggested gently, ‘that you don’t want to stay here tonight, and think about going to Christchurch in the morning?’
Looking awkward, Cally exchanged a glance with Luke. ‘I think I’d really rather go now,’ she said.
‘I’ll just throw my gear together,’ Luke said, looking at Cally. ‘Then we can take off.’
Cally nodded. ‘I’ll grab my stuff.’
As they went off to their rooms, Lizzie closed the door. What had been going on while she was away? She looked around the bedroom. Realising she’d finished what she came up to do, she wandered back downstairs.
Walking Luke and Cally out to the car twenty minutes later, she saw Ash’s ute in the drive. So he was back. Where the hell had he got to, then?
‘Do you think we missed something?’ she asked Carr, as the Aston rumbled away into the rapidly lengthening afternoon shadows.
‘I think maybe they’ve got the right idea.’ He looked back at the house. Following the direction of his thoughts, Lizzie sighed. Oh God, yes. Now she and Carr had Ash and Valentina all to themselves. Carr draped an arm around her. ‘Shame we can’t go, too.’
Chapter FIFTEEN
In a London hotel suite, Ella raised her chin as instructed, gazing out at the view of the Thames as Damian took his test shots.
‘You know,’ he joked, lowering the camera from his eye, ‘you’re becoming my all-time favourite subject.’
Their sitter’s publicist walked out of the bedroom, looking only slightly concerned. ‘He won’t be long now.’
‘We’re happy out here. He can take as long as he needs.’ As Damian resumed his merciless flirting with the publicist, Ella got up to answer the doorbell.
‘Madam.’ The bellboy nodded solemnly. ‘Where would you like your champagne?’
Ella smiled. ‘Over there with the rest would be great.’
Having placed the ice bucket with due care, and been subtly tipped by the publicist, he departed. Ella checked her watch. They were running twenty-five minutes late now. She eyed the copious platters of food. Would it be too rude if she started?
The bedroom door opened at last. The sitter — a budding Russian billionaire whose impossibly difficult name Ella had forgotten as soon as she’d read it — walked out. Crikey. He didn’t look like a man who sat still very long. And he was nervous. Damian was going to need all his considerable charm to pull something off here.
As Damian went to work on soothing his subject, Ella watched and learned. In the end, it took a lot less time than she’d thought. Within an hour, they were done, and — Gregor, she reminded herself — had vanished inside a scrum of security guards and gone on his merry way to God knew where.
Having packed up their gear, Ella glanced over at the corner in which Damian and the publicist were polishing off what remained of the champagne and beluga.
‘Mind if I take off?’ she asked.
Damian looked up with a grin. ‘You got a date?’
‘You could say that.’
Half an hour later, on the opposite side of the Thames, Ella tapped in the entry code to the apartment of the man she had known and loved all her life, but had never suspected, until her mother had finally spilled the beans last year, to be her father.
Richard looked up from his laptop as she let herself in. ‘Ella!’ he beamed, his beautiful voice full of warmth. ‘You’re back. How did the shoot go today?’
‘Fine, thanks.’ She hid a giggle at the sight of the famous actor Richard Bourne, action hero and stalwart of the sexiest-man-in-Britain charts, in reading glasses and— crikey, were those slippers?
He glanced back at his computer screen. ‘Go and pour us both a glass of wine, will you, sweetheart? I’ll just be a second here.’
Wandering into the kitchen, Ella located the wine in the fridge. ‘What are you working on?’ she asked, over the bench, looking around for some glasses.
‘My memoirs,’ Richard announced, with a touch of drama.
‘You’re writing your autobiography?’ She was impressed.
‘Well, not personally, you understand. But I do have to check in on it now and again.’
She smiled. ‘Is Mum in there?’ From what she had been able to gather, her mother’s secret affair with Richard had begun before Ella was born and continued — well, until Carr came along, pretty much.
‘She should be.’ Richard looked wistful. ‘Lizzie was rather my life’s recurring theme.’ He closed his laptop. ‘But no, I swore to her I’d leave her out. Which means’ — walking over to the bench, he took the glass Ella slid towards him — ‘I’m afraid I can’t mention you, either.’
Oh, thank God for that. The last thing she needed was to be outed to the press as Richard Bourne’s daughter. ‘That’s okay,’ she told him.
‘Is it?’ Richard shook his handsome head. ‘It doesn’t feel like it is.’
Ella patted his arm. ‘It is. I promise.’
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you got in last night,’ he said, in a brighter tone. ‘Re-recording for Agent Steele overran. The porters let you in okay?’
‘Yes, Nigel brought me up. It was fine. I was pretty shattered anyway.’ She sighed. ‘We had an awful day in Berlin.’
Richard nodded sympathetically. ‘So, how are things? What’s been happening since I last saw you?’
‘Not a lot. Lizzie’s fine, she sends her love.’
‘I meant with you.’ He studied her face. ‘Are you fine, too?’
‘I’m okay.’ Ella shrugged. ‘There’s not much to tell. I’ve spent a lot of time on planes. Apart from that, it’s been pretty much work and more work.’
‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’
‘I know. I should be grateful, shouldn’t I?’ She stared at her wine. ‘But it’s starting to feel like maybe it’s a problem.’
‘Is it Damian?’ Richard’s eyes hardened. ‘I’ve heard the stories.’
Stories about what? Ella tried not to get distracted from the matter at hand. ‘Damian’s a pussycat,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘If anyone’s a problem, it’s — well, it’s Luke.’
‘Luke?’
&
nbsp; Ella wasn’t sure why he sounded so surprised. He had met Luke, after all.
‘Things aren’t going well with you two?’
She sighed again. ‘I’m never there long enough for them to go either way.’
‘And Luke doesn’t like that?’ Richard caught himself. ‘Well, of course he doesn’t, who would? But — has he asked you to stop taking jobs?’
‘No. No, he hasn’t at all.’ Ella bit her lip.
‘What has he said?’
‘Just that …’ Suddenly, her eyes began to well up. ‘That he misses me.’ God, she missed him, too.
Richard looked perplexed. ‘You don’t want him to miss you?’
Ugh. Ella put her hands over her face. ‘I don’t know. I’m just … I’m just scared that if he gets too lonely, he’ll … well, you know. He’s Luke.’
‘Loneliness,’ Richard said guardedly, ‘can be tough.’
She sniffed.
‘But Luke loves you,’ he added gently. ‘You’ll work it out.’
Ella pulled a face.
‘You don’t think he loves you?’
‘He says he does.’
‘But you don’t think he means it?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. He means it right now, maybe, yes. But will he love me a year from now? A week from now?’ She shrugged dismissively.
There was a long pause. ‘God help us all,’ Richard said.
Ella stared at him in surprise.
‘That’s exactly what your mother used to say.’
‘About you?’
He nodded.
Well, Lizzie had been right, hadn’t she? Richard had married not one, but two, other women and had a never-ending string of affairs, most of them overlapping.
‘The thing is, Ella’ — he shot her a wry little smile — ‘she said it for over twenty-five years.’
She smiled back. ‘That isn’t quite the story I’ve heard.’
Or witnessed, for that matter. Had he forgotten how long she’d known him? How many Tabithas, Tamsins and Arabellas she’d seen paraded on his arm?
‘I was no saint,’ he admitted.
Crikey, that was the understatement of the year. Ooh, Richard would make a great Simon Templar, though …
‘But Lizzie,’ he went on, ‘never asked me to be faithful. She never asked me to be anything. She didn’t believe I had it in me.’
‘Was she wrong?’ Ella asked sceptically.
‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ He sipped his wine. ‘We’ll never know.’
Did he have a point? He had been there, after all, all those years, at Lizzie’s side, the very closest of friends. That said something about fidelity, didn’t it?
‘Lizzie always expected the worst of me,’ Richard said. ‘And God knows that’s what she got.’
‘So you’re saying,’ she said drily, ‘that really, it was all Lizzie’s fault?’
Richard laughed. ‘If only it were! I could shuffle off feeling so much better.’ He topped up her glass. ‘I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I think faith is a two-way street. And some beliefs can be self-fulfilling.’
‘So I should have faith in Luke?’
‘Would that be so hard?’
‘I want to. I just … Well, it seems so … naïve, I suppose. Like I’m setting myself up for a horrible fall.’
‘Do you love him?’
Ella nodded, feeling the tears well again. Apart from anything — everything — else, he was fast becoming the best friend she had ever had. She couldn’t stand to think of how life would be without him. That was the problem.
‘Then forget how it seems. Just do it.’ Richard put his hand over hers. ‘And hold on.’
His eyes, she noticed, looked a little moist, too. He turned away, making rather a show of checking his watch. ‘Shall we get something to eat? You’ll be hard to explain if we go out, but they do a good curry around the corner. I can ask them to send something up. Tikka masala? What do you like?’
‘That sounds great.’ Making her way to the other side of the bench, Ella put her arms around him.
At Heathrow the next morning, Damian was finally looking his age. As Ella took the chair opposite him in the lounge, he leaned his head back against the sofa.
‘Be an angel,’ he said, his voice more than usually rough, ‘and get me a Bloody Mary, would you? I’ll take it strong.’
‘Have a good night?’ she smiled.
‘And a pretty good morning.’ He peered in the direction of the bar. ‘If there’s breakfast, I’ll take some of that, too.’
Shaking her head in admiration, Ella made him his drink and fossicked up a plate of sausage rolls. She checked the departure screen above her. Yes! Their flight looked to be boarding on time. God, she just couldn’t wait to get home.
‘Don’t you ever get tired of this?’ she asked him, sitting back down. ‘All the airports? The travelling?’
‘You know, it’s funny you should ask.’ He rubbed his neatly trimmed jaw. ‘I’m starting to think maybe I do.’ Damian seemed to remember something. ‘Oh, by the way, we’re stopping off to do a quick job in LA. I’ve already changed our flights.’
Chapter SIXTEEN
Cally settled reverently into the Aston’s leather seat. The whole car was like an incredibly expensive cocoon.
Luke glanced over at her. ‘All set?’
She nodded. She was as ready as she was ever going to be.
‘Sorry we couldn’t get away earlier,’ he said, pulling away from the kerb outside her mother’s house. ‘I’ve been stuck in meetings all morning.’
‘That’s okay.’ Quite a few of the neighbours, Cally noticed, had come to their windows to stare at Luke’s car. Did they think he was her boyfriend? She certainly hoped so.
Luke looked at the clock on the dash. ‘We should still have you back at Glencairn by dinner time.’
‘You’re not staying?’
‘No, I’m heading straight through to Queenstown. Ella gets back from London tomorrow night.’
As they joined the crawl of Friday afternoon traffic heading down the main south road, Cally entertained herself with a brief fantasy of being Ella. Model good looks, gorgeous boyfriend, glamorous job …
Luke tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. ‘Maybe I should have let you take the bus,’ he said. ‘You might have got there quicker.’
Sooner, maybe, yes. But as for faster, she doubted it. ‘I’m not complaining,’ she told him. Quite apart from anything else, she suspected Ash would have been sent to pick her up from the bus stop. Remembering the first time he’d done so, two months before, Cally imagined a drive back to Glencairn just as silent, but a lot more awkward. No, the Aston was more comfortable in every respect.
‘Sorry,’ Luke said, as the dashboard started to ring. ‘I’d better take this call.’
Cally looked out the window, trying not to listen any more than she had to as the winter-dreary plains rolled by and the calls kept coming in. God, she thought admiringly, as they left the traffic behind and turned inland, the guy was a human PowerPoint presentation. How did he manage to keep so much information about so many different projects straight?
Outside of Geraldine, Luke’s phone lost signal at last.
‘Sorry about all that,’ he said, turning the stereo on. As the road climbed into the steep, scrubby hills, he put his foot down.
Cally tried not to grin like an idiot. God, she loved this car. She still couldn’t quite believe she was in it. Three months ago, she was taking The Orbiter bus to the Pinehurst Motel. It was funny how life worked out. Enjoy it while it lasts, she told herself — you’ll be back on the bus soon enough.
Heading where? She’d decided to tough it out at Glencairn until Carr could find a replacement, but as for what she was going to do after that, she still had no idea. Outside, a fine drizzle started to fall. Cally watched the droplets race across the side window. Was she crazy to be going back at all? Valentina might have gone for now, but she’d be back, wouldn’t she? Or if no
t her, another girl just like her. And Ash … Ash wasn’t going anywhere. God, just thinking about him hurt. His eyes in the mirror, holding hers. The brush of his palm across her skin. Did she really think she could get through seeing him every single day and not—
‘You okay?’ Luke asked.
‘Sure.’ Her urge to grin was well and truly gone, but she managed to muster a smile.
‘Want me to slow down?’
Cally shook her head. ‘No, I’m fine.’ It wasn’t Luke’s cornering that was the problem. She had been over this argument so many times in the last six days she’d lost track of which sides of it her head and her heart were on. Which of them had insisted she should go back to Glencairn? Every time she tried to reason it out, she ended up sure of only two things. That it was wrong to leave Carr in the lurch. And that, however bad the thought of going back made her feel, the thought of not going back made her feel ten times worse.
By the time they reached Burkes Pass, the drizzle had thickened to sleet. Cally gazed out as the Mackenzie Basin opened up around them, the vast tussock land no less spectacular under a heavy grey sky, scraps of low cloud caught on the flanks of the hills. Maybe she was doing the right thing after all. Weirdly, this felt more like a homecoming than driving back into Christchurch had. The Port Hills were all very lovely, but this was God’s country, surely.
The city had seemed to consist of nothing but concrete and mud, everyone she had met up with had been pale as a sheet and either just coming down with, or just getting over, some kind of lurgy, and all the vegetables in the supermarket looked as limp as her mood. The view of the fence from her mother’s living room had never been inspiring, but by day three the house Cally had grown up in had started to seem positively claustrophobic.
She had arrived on Saturday night full of intentions to spend the week looking for a proper job. Instead, she’d spent five days drinking coffee and redesigning her CV, which, as of today, was still unsent. Her friends who did have jobs didn’t seem to be enjoying them much, anyway — she’d barely been able to stay awake through their work stories.