‘Much better.’ He kissed the back of her shoulder. ‘Go back to sleep, darling.’ In the morning… he’d talk to her in the morning. Or the day after at the latest. Definitely before the end of the week.
Breakfast was a lazy affair, with his mum stepping in to man the frying pan when Mia bolted from the room after the scent of bacon got too much for her stomach to handle. Daniel rose to head after her until Cathy brandished the spatula at him. ‘Sit down and give your poor wife five minutes’ peace, for goodness’ sake.’ The threat might have held more weight had she not been wearing a pink sweatshirt bearing a picture of a cute polar bear and the motto Ice love you. Luke glanced down at his own jumper covered in dancing Christmas trees and decided not to say anything. Mia had decreed the dress code for Boxing Day would be themed tops and jeans.
Abashed, Daniel sank down into his chair, though his head remained turned towards the half-open kitchen door. The expression on his face was a perfect match for the puzzled-looking reindeer on his T-shirt. Cathy flipped the bacon onto a piece of kitchen paper and added another packet of rashers to the pan. ‘I think this will be the last lot,’ she said to Nee, who stood beside her buttering bread to make sandwiches.
‘Here, you go, Dad.’ Nee placed a plate in front of George, and then a second in front of Daniel. ‘Stop pouting and eat. If she’s not down in ten minutes, you can take her up some ginger ale, okay?’ He nodded forlornly and it was all Luke could do not to smirk at the pathetic state of his friend.
‘Ten across, ‘Or What You Will’ in seven and five.’ His dad peered over the top of his glasses. ‘Come on, Luke. Prove I didn’t waste all my money on your education.’
Luke shook his head. ‘Give it a rest, Dad. At least until I’ve finished my coffee.’ He hooked his arm around Nee’s waist as she approached his side of the table with a doorstep sandwich. ‘Thanks, gorgeous.’
With a kiss to his lips, she leaned in to his embrace for a moment. ‘I gave you the extra-crispy bits.’ Her hair was held back from her face with a fluffy white headband that had two fat, jolly Santas attached to springs sticking up from it. They matched the larger one on her white jumper perfectly. It shouldn’t be possible for her to look sexy, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Here was a glimpse of his Nee – funny, sassy and just a touch outrageous. Maybe he’d just let his mum project her own worries onto him and he wouldn’t need to have that conversation with her after all.
He must have been staring because she waggled her head to make the Santas bobble around. ‘What? I thought you liked it well done?’
He nodded. ‘I do. I just wasn’t sure you’d remember.’
She laughed, negating his sudden panic that he’d said the wrong thing. ‘Of course I remember. I’ve put extra tomato ketchup on it, too.’
With a sense of dread, he lifted the corner of the top slice and sighed in relief at the dark, spicy slick of HP sauce on the bacon. He hated tomato ketchup almost as much as she loved it. Their first argument had been over a portion of fish and chips they’d shared on a bench on the way home from the pub one night. Starving, because they’d been too busy chatting to get around to ordering a meal, Nee had darted into the chip shop and returned with the greasy, heavenly treat wrapped in paper. Mouth watering at the smell of fried fish, salt and vinegar, he’d almost wept at the horror of red sauce coating everything. She’d settled back to gleefully stuff her face, leaving him to trudge back up the road to get a second, unsullied portion.
She patted his cheek for falling for her ruse, then leant across to study the crossword in front of his dad. ‘Twelfth Night,’ she said, then returned to her spot beside his mum, putting an extra swagger in her walk. If she’d been a cat, her tail would’ve been swishing.
‘Of course it is, clever girl.’ Brian blew her a quick kiss and filled in the answer. ‘Did you know your wife was a Shakespeare aficionado, son?’
Nee turned back and gave a little curtsy. ‘Brains, as well as beauty. What can I say?’ She winked at Luke.
‘Didn’t you study Twelfth Night as the set text for your GCSEs, Eirênê?’ George asked mildly, before taking a bite of his sandwich. To all intents and purposes, his entire attention was fixed on his breakfast, but there was a definite gleam in his eyes. Although a more subdued effort, the navy cardigan he wore over an open-necked shirt had a wide band of snowflakes at the hem and wrists.
‘Dad! You’re supposed to stick up for me, not give away my secrets.’ The Santas on her headband wobbled in outrage.
‘Sorry, dear.’ George put his sandwich down and met Luke’s eyes in a solemn gaze. ‘My youngest daughter is an intelligent, most attractive young woman and you are lucky to have her.’ He rather spoiled the sincerity of his declaration by turning to Nee and adding, ‘Happy now?’
Whatever pert response was forming on her lips was avoided by the timely arrival of Madeline and Richard bearing a new stack of daily papers. ‘Ooh, is that bacon I smell?’ Richard’s eyes lit up as he slid into a vacant chair at the breakfast table and poured himself a cup of tea from the large pot in the centre.
‘You’d think I never fed him!’ Madeline scoffed as she crossed to greet Nee and Cathy with kisses. ‘What’s on the agenda today?’ She peered out of the window at the rain. ‘The forecast is promising this will clear up soon. They’re even threatening snow overnight, although I’ll believe that when I see it. What were they calling it, darling? Something terribly dramatic.’
‘An Arctic blast,’ Richard supplied, and she nodded. ‘That’s it. Goodness, they love a bit of drama on the weather these days with their amber warnings and suchlike. We’ve had a couple of nasty freezes in the past, but I don’t remember more than a few flakes falling. Certainly not enough to stick.’
‘Well, if we get snowed in, there’s enough food to last at any rate.’ Cathy added more bacon to the pan, paused and glanced at Madeline. ‘Am I adding enough for you, too?’
Madeline bit her lip before giving a quick shrug. ‘Oh, go on. It’d be rude not to!’
Luke stood up and held the back of his chair. ‘Here, have my spot. I’m finished and I want to get a few things set up next door.’ He met Nee’s curious gaze. ‘Want to give me a hand?’ She took his hand and he led her out of the kitchen to a chorus of speculative remarks. They’d hardly cleared the doorway before the legs of a chair scraped on the floor and Daniel shot past them and sprinted up the stairs, a bottle of ginger ale in his hand.
‘Poor chap, he’s suffering almost more than she is.’ Nee turned to face him. ‘So, what did you want to show me?’ He couldn’t help but laugh at the cheeky grin on her face.
‘Well, yes, that, but we’ll save that for later.’ He led her towards the large Welsh dresser in the dining room and knelt down before the lower cupboards. ‘Look, I had a chat with Mia after I suggested we spend this week together because I thought if we did something fun it might help you get your creative spark back. Now, though, it feels like maybe I’m heaping too much pressure on you, so if you’d rather not, we can get some of the board games out and play those instead.’
Nee crouched beside him and pressed a finger to his lips. ‘You’re babbling, Luke. What are you talking about?’
Taking a deep breath, he opened the cupboard doors and showed her the arts and crafts supplies. There were jewellery-making kits, some paint-by-numbers sets for both children and adults, and a box of ceramic tealight holders shaped like lighthouses with paints for decorating. Nee picked up one of the boxes and studied the instructions on the back. ‘And this was your idea?’
All the guilt he’d been feeling in the middle of the night came rushing back like a freight train, and he sat down with a miserable thud, knowing he deserved the bruise the parquet flooring would likely leave on his backside. ‘I’m sorry. It’s too much, I’m being too pushy. I wanted something which would keep the children entertained and you did such a great job helping Charlie decorate the place settings for the wedding.’
‘It was bloody hard work,
even doing that,’ she admitted, eyes still fixed on the back of the box. He would have taken it from her and shoved the damn thing back into the cupboard had she not held it out of reach when he grabbed for it. ‘But once I let myself forget about the fact it was ‘art’ it became a lot easier.’
Putting the box down carefully, she took his hand and wrapped her fingers around it. ‘Thank you for thinking of me. For trying so hard to help me with everything. It means the world to me.’
She pulled him closer, and he let himself be drawn into her embrace, shielding his face in her shoulder. He couldn’t bear to look at her, to see the gratitude in her voice reflected in her eyes, not when he knew the truth of it now. He was a selfish git. Yes, he wanted Nee to be happy and whole again, but only because it suited his own desires. If he truly loved her the way she deserved, he’d have found a way to do all this for her without any strings attached. Perhaps he was more his mother’s son than he’d realised.
Self-awareness was an absolute bitch.
They’d wound the dining-room table out to its furthest extent, covered it in a plastic sheet and several layers of newspaper and set everything out by the time Aaron and Kiki arrived with the children. Mia and Daniel had returned and, as Cathy had predicted, she looked right as rain once again. Luke got his iPod set up and found a playlist of classic Christmas hits to keep them entertained as everyone settled around the big table. Madeline, Maggie and his mum commandeered the jewellery-making kits, whilst Nee and her sisters settled with the children at the other end to decorate the lighthouse candle-holders. Mia had bought enough for the tables in the tearoom, and Luke had to agree they would add a charming, homely touch to the place.
His dad and George sat opposite each other, tackling an ambitious paint-by-numbers picture of Nelson’s flagship Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, and Richard contented himself with the papers he’d brought with him. Aaron fiddled with his smartphone, keeping them apprised of the cold front as it made its way slowly down the country from Scotland. He seemed nearly as excited as the kids at the prospect of snow reaching them. Not really in the mood to settle to anything, even though the crafting had been his idea, Luke kept himself busy, opening the windows as the smell of the paint grew; fetching drinks for those who wanted them, an extra cardigan for Nee to throw over her shoulders when she shivered in a draft from the window.
Cackling laughter rose from where his mum and the other two older women were sitting, loud enough for Richard to lower his newspaper and observe they sounded like the opening scene from Macbeth. Madeline glanced towards the children and, seeing them occupied, flipped a quick ‘v’ sign at her husband, who blew a kiss in return.
Luke circled the table to peer over her shoulder and barked out a laugh. The three of them were making friendship bracelets, but instead of the recipient’s name, or something cute, theirs spelled out ‘old fart’, ‘grumpy git’ and ‘dusty fossil’, in between the bright rainbow of beads. ‘You three are incorrigible,’ he said, brushing a kiss on his mum’s cheek when she turned her grinning face up to his.
She winked at him. ‘I don’t suppose its fizz o’clock yet, is it? This is thirsty work.’
He checked his watch. ‘Close enough for those that care about propriety.’
‘Not us then!’ Maggie’s wry comment sent the three of them into fits again, and he beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen to sort out aperitifs and some snacks to go with them.
Trying to carry everything in one go, he just about made it back into the dining room before the packed tray in his hands started to wobble a bit. ‘Give us a hand, Bumble.’
Quick as a flash, his brother jumped up to steady the tray, and between them they set it down on the sideboard without any mishaps. They circled the table in opposite directions, clearing coffee cups and replacing them with glasses of Cava, small bottles of beer and soft drinks. Brushes, bags of beads and pots of paint were shoved aside to make room for small bowls of peanuts, crisps and the like as everyone abandoned their projects for a break.
Charlie made a grab for her cherryade, knocking a small pot of red paint over in the process. Nee righted the pot before much of the contents had spilled, and quickly balled up the sheet of paint-covered newspaper. Luke held out his hand and took it from her to dispose of in the kitchen rubbish bin. The music had changed by the time he came back – the gentle strains of Bing’s ‘White Christmas’ replaced by the raucous, rowdy lyrics of ‘Fairytale of New York’. Daniel was slurring along in a pretty accurate impression of Shane MacGowan, with Maggie, of all people, giving him hell as she fired back Kirsty MacColl’s biting lyrics.
The smile on his lips froze as Luke caught sight of Nee’s pale, stricken face. The significance of the song, with its tale of shattered dreams and betrayal, hadn’t even occurred to him when he’d primed his iPod earlier. It was just a Christmas song, like all the others. Shit! He dived for the iPod and flicked on to the next track, drawing shouts of protest. Giving Daniel a sharp jab in the shoulder, he nodded across the table at Nee, who was staring down at her lap. ‘Oh hell, I didn’t think,’ Daniel muttered. ‘Sorry.’
Nee appeared oblivious to everyone around her as Luke hurried around the table to her side. By the time he reached her, she was on her feet clutching a sheet of Friday’s newspaper in her shaking hands. The main article was one of those ‘Top shows to look out for in 2017’ pieces, and featured a prominent, familiar face beneath the byline.
‘Christ.’ It hadn’t been the stupid song that upset her, but the image of fucking Devin Rees, all blow-waved hair and shiny, capped teeth set in a mocking grin.
‘That’s mine,’ she whispered, turning limpid eyes swimming with pain to him. He stared down at the photograph of a painting next to that wanker’s picture. There were two figures, anonymous, but clearly masculine and feminine, on a stark white background. The male was turned away from the female, who stretched her arms towards him, fighting against a sea of hands that clawed at her body. Scrawled in bright red across the hands were words like ‘ambition’, ‘pride’ and ‘deception’.
Confused, Luke turned his attention back to Nee. ‘What d’you mean it’s yours? Did you paint this?’
She shook her head, hand convulsing on the sheet of paper until it crumpled in one corner. ‘No. This isn’t one of the works I produced from his designs. This is much worse.’ A tear spilled over and rolled down her cheek. ‘This is personal. Private. From my sketchbook.’ The paper drifted to the ground as she grabbed for his arm. ‘This is us, Luke.’
Anger rushed through him, thick and black as bile. She’d told him Devin passed off his students’ work as his own, but to see proof of it in stark colour stunned him. His own fury was nothing in comparison to the rictus of pain her delicate features had twisted into. Shoving it aside, he reached for her, but she stepped back, letting the sheet of paper drift to the floor between them. ‘No.’
Her denial struck him like a body blow. How could one word hurt so damn much? Maybe it wasn’t him she repudiated, but she might as well have. ‘Nee.’
‘No. No. No.’ She turned blindly, almost tripping over the leg of Madeline’s chair in her haste to escape the room. To escape him.
Questions whirled behind him, and he heard the sound of at least one person standing. ‘No. Leave her,’ he snapped, without turning around. If someone needed to go after her, it was him, but not like this, not until he had some sense of control back. Feet rooted to the floor, he stared down at the grinning face of Devin Rees and wished the man himself was in front of him – a proper target for the useless, impotent rage surging in his veins.
Aaron came to stand beside him, nudging Luke with his shoulder just enough to make his presence known. He studied the picture. ‘Who’s that?’
He had to say something, offer some explanation to the others without betraying Nee’s confidence. ‘That’s the reason she left New York.’ Drawn by his master’s presence, the puppy crawled out from beneath the table and sniffed at the fallen sheet of newspap
er. Turning in a circle, Tigger cocked one leg and peed on the grinning, smug-faced bane of Luke’s very existence.
A flash of red in the garden caught his eye. ‘I’ve got to go.’
Chapter Sixteen
Out. She had to get out. The word pounded in her brain as she made a dash for the kitchen, skidding across the floor in the thick woolly socks she’d chosen to match her jumper. A pair of muddy Wellington boots stood beside the back door, and she paused only long enough to shove her feet into them before she ran out and onto the driveway. The gravel crunched beneath her heels, a mocking echo of the time she’d run crying from Luke after their run-in at the wedding. Running away. She was always bloody running away. Hating herself, but unable to stop her headlong flight, she ran for the steps that would take her to the relative privacy of the beach.
Pausing at the top step, she dashed the moisture from her face, found it warm, not cold, and understood the rain had finally stopped. With one hand on the rail, she blinked away the still-falling tears enough to see her path and clattered down to the dark, wet sand. It sucked at her boots, threatening to pull her over until she slowed her pace. The tide was in, white horses pounding the shoreline in charging waves, a match for the swirling riot of emotions riding inside her.
He’d gone through her things.
The thought was enough to bring a wash of bile to choke the back of her throat. Her portfolio was one thing – those were images she’d chosen to present to the world, parts of herself she’d been willing to put on display for people to view, and judge, and comment upon. Her sketches, though… oh, God.
She bent at the waist, gasping for breath, heart racing a mile a minute in the same panicked confusion of that night she still couldn’t remember clearly. Fighting the panic, she ran through the list of what she did recall, as the helpline had suggested as a way of countering the crushing pressure of not knowing. She’d found no trace of him upon her, no physical proof or sensation he’d done anything other than remove some of her clothing. Enough to convince herself there’d been no physical violation.
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