by Karen Clarke
He turned, his expression cooling. ‘Stag party, not night.’ He pushed a curl off his forehead. ‘Night implies the wedding was taking place the following day when, in fact, it was a month away.’
‘Oh, goodie,’ I said. ‘That’s so much better.’
He leaned against the sink and folded his arms. ‘And you must be Nina, who called off her wedding, then cut up her ex’s clothes and burnt his stuff.’
I gasped, even though – technically – that was exactly what had happened. Bloody Charlie. Or maybe Dolly had told him. Either way, I was hurt the information had been passed on and distorted. ‘I had a very good reason for calling off my wedding—’
‘So did I.’
‘—and it was only a couple of shirts and some photos,’ I bulldozed on, ignoring his interruption. ‘And a wallet.’
‘Oh, goodie,’ he deadpanned. ‘That’s so much better.’
‘Oh, be quiet.’ Heat stung my cheeks. Truthfully, I regretted letting Anna talk me into taking revenge on Scott. She’d insisted it would be symbolic and make me feel better, but I wasn’t really suited to acts of destruction. I’d felt guilty, hacking at his shirts with a pair of kitchen scissors and building a fire in the grate for the sole purpose of setting things alight.
He hadn’t even noticed. He’d never worn the shirts, and the photos I destroyed weren’t the most flattering – of me, anyway – and the wallet he’d thought ‘too girly’ had been empty.
‘I could have done a lot worse,’ I said, as Ryan appeared to be waiting for more. Anna had suggested all sorts of things: spray-painting twat on Scott’s beloved car, switching his shampoo for hair removal cream, washing his clothes in glitter and kicking him in his ‘junk’ to name a few. (She’d become bitter after her boyfriend got his ex-girlfriend pregnant and married her.) ‘He deserved it.’
‘Of course he did.’ Ryan’s tone was flat, as if it wasn’t worth arguing about. Whatever he’d been told, he’d obviously taken in the worst bits – about me – and formed an unflattering opinion. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘Sorry?’
‘You were making a cup of tea before I came in and scared you.’
Thrown by the change of topic, and strangely unwilling to let it go, I was about to mount a defence when he said in a rush, ‘Look, I don’t want to talk about the past. I’m trying to focus on the future while I’m here and I’m sure that you are too, so…’ His gaze swivelled to the kettle. ‘Tea?’
‘In case you’ve forgotten, I dropped the milk.’
‘There’s another carton.’ I stepped aside to let him open the fridge, catching a scent of musky, warm skin combined with a tang of citrus peel that suggested he’d been at the satsumas before I arrived. ‘I’d offer you some eucalyptus leaves, but they don’t grow very well in this part of the world.’
A reluctant smile tugged at my lips. ‘Luckily, I’m a new breed of koala that only drinks tea, and occasionally wines and spirits.’
A grin softened his face – the top half, at least. I couldn’t see much beneath his beard but a glimpse of straight, white teeth. He stuck out a hand. ‘I’m Ryan, good to meet you, Nina. Shall we start again?’
We shook hands. ‘Sounds good.’
‘I’m ashamed to say that until quite recently, I thought koalas were bears,’ he said, crossing to the kettle and switching it back on. Beneath the hem of his dressing gown, his calves were muscly and coated with dark hair – much like my own.
‘Most people do.’ I watched him take a clean mug from one of the cupboards and toss a teabag in. ‘It’s because they’re cute, I suppose.’ I winced. It sounded as if I was implying that I was cute, which blatantly wasn’t true.
He turned, the belt of his dressing gown loosening further, presenting a shadowy view of his chest. ‘My nephew put me straight after my sister and family moved to Australia last year. Apparently, koalas are more aggressive than a crocodile and have the smallest brain-to-body-size ratio of any mammal.’
My smile slipped. ‘Is that a dig at me?’
‘What?’ He paused in the act of reaching for the milk.
‘Forget it.’ I yanked my koala hood down so fast, my hair flattened to my scalp with static. ‘I don’t want any tea,’ I lied, backing towards the door, annoyed with myself for almost letting my guard drop. ‘See you around.’
‘What just happened?’ He sounded bemused. ‘You don’t think I meant…? Hang on…’
But I didn’t look back as I hurried through the grotto-like living room, swearing as I tripped over a lead trailing across the floor from a laptop on the two-seater dining table by the window. As I slammed into the table, the laptop screen leapt to life, revealing a document with the words Chapter One typed in a fancy script, and underneath, a series of words written in gigantic font.
If Grace Benedict doesn’t find a case to solve REALLY SOON I’m F***ED!!!!!!!!!!!! ARGHHHHHHH!!!! SHOULD HAVE KILLED HER OFF. I don’t even like her any more. Why the hell did I give her a bloody parrot?????
An impressive array of angry and sad emojis followed – as well as one of a mischievous-looking parrot. A parrot called… called Buddy, who’d helped Grace solve a case. Grace Benedict. A beautiful detective with a troubled past, who played the cello, wore sharp suits and fastened her hair up with pencils.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
I whipped round to see Ryan approaching at speed, his dressing gown flapping open. My gaze became trapped in his jersey shorts, which were black and extremely snug, as he dived for his laptop and slammed it shut, knocking over an acrylic, light-up polar bear in the process.
‘That’s private,’ he snapped. He was breathing heavily.
Dragging my eyes from his nether regions, I shot him a furious frown. ‘I tripped over your stupid charger.’ I pointed to the trailing lead. ‘I didn’t know your computer was going to come on.’
He tracked the cable, which had become detached from his laptop. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said sheepishly. ‘There’s no socket near the table.’
‘I’m fine, thank you for asking.’
He looked concerned. ‘Are you?’
‘Yes,’ I said grudgingly.
‘Oh.’ That seemed to throw him. ‘Well… good.’
The music downstairs had stopped and in the silence that ensued, I realised I was breathing heavily too – probably from the shock of nearly falling over. I straightened my shoulders in an effort to regain control and said, ‘You’re R.A. Sadler,’ more accusingly than I’d intended. ‘You wrote The Midnight Hour.’
Ryan winced, as though I’d reminded him of something traumatic he’d rather forget. ‘I thought you knew that already.’
‘It came to me just now, when I read what you’d written—’
‘I knew you had.’
I threw him a look. ‘—that my mum mentioned a while ago that Dolly told her an old friend of Charlie’s had written a book and got it published.’ Too many words. ‘I didn’t make the connection before,’ I added.
‘I wasn’t suggesting you ought to have known, only that…’ Ryan’s words trailed off, as though finishing the sentence was too much effort. ‘You haven’t read the book then?’
‘Actually, I have.’ I rewound to my first night home after leaving Scott. I’d been nursing swollen eyes, a thumping headache and a sense of failure in my childhood bedroom, and Mum had brought me a novel with a cup of hot chocolate, to ‘take my mind off things’. It had always worked in the past; everything from Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl, to Meg Rosoff and Dad’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but it was only Mum’s enthusiasm about this book by ‘Charlie’s friend’ that had stopped me tossing it out of the window. Surprisingly, I’d found myself engrossed to the point where I’d stayed up all night reading. ‘It was… good,’ I said.
Ryan hiked up an eyebrow. ‘You should write that up for The Times.’
I gave him a chilly smile. ‘OK, it was very good.’
Above his beard, his cheeks flushed.
I wouldn’t have had him down as the type to seek cheap reassurances, but then again, I’d only just met him. ‘I know it’s good,’ he said, with a flash of frustration. ‘I’ve got the awards to prove it.’
I wasn’t exactly surprised, recalling the way that the gripping storyline and clever writing had transported me from my misery for several hours. ‘No one likes a show-off,’ I said, instead of congratulating him.
He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Believe me, I’m not showing off.’ He still had a hand on the laptop lid, as if to stop it springing open and spilling words on the floor. ‘If anything, I’m starting to wish it had sunk without a trace.’
‘What?’ I was taken aback by his vehemence. ‘Why? It was brilliant, the way you described Grace.’ I perched on the arm of the sofa to make my point. ‘You really know how to write women. I honestly thought R.A. Sadler was a woman,’ I said. ‘And Buddy the parrot was hilarious, the way he swore all the time and kept impersonating the neighbour, and then it turned out the neighbour was the murderer all along and Buddy had been trying to help Grace…’ I stopped. I was on the verge of gushing. ‘You’re telling me you’d rather you hadn’t written a bestselling murder mystery?’
He thrust a hand through his hair, seeming unaware that his dressing gown was open, showing his underwear. At least he was wearing pants. ‘I know I must sound like an ungrateful idiot, but what with everything that’s happened this year, I’m struggling to get going with the next book and I’ve already missed one deadline.’
‘I gathered it wasn’t going well.’ I glanced at the laptop. ‘You wish you’d killed Grace off.’
He nodded and pushed out a sigh. ‘I never meant her to feature in the next book, but my agent—’
‘Helloooo!’ Before he could finish, Dolly burst round the door, eyebrows disappearing into her fringe. ‘How are you two getting along?’
I sprang to my feet and Ryan pivoted to face her, stiff as a soldier on parade.
‘Hi,’ we said simultaneously, as she bustled over and straightened the acrylic, light-up polar bear and gave him a pat on the head.
‘Look at the pair of you.’ Her eyes were as twinkly as the lights on the tree as they darted between Ryan and me. He fastened his dressing gown belt and I yanked the zip on my onesie up to my neck. ‘You both look like you’re ready for bed!’
Four
I woke the next morning to the muffled sounds of the café below and buried myself deeper beneath the duvet, keen to cling onto sleep. When I’d first moved back home, Mum had taken to charging in first thing with a mug of coffee and a list of jobs to get me ‘out of my pit’. She was a firm believer in the power of doing rather than thinking and, to be fair, she’d had a point. It had been hard to wallow when there was straw to bale, and sheep were lambing and the pigs needed mucking out. Not to mention helping in the farm shop, which had proved a runaway success with people flocking for miles to buy freshly-laid eggs, and home-grown produce and catch up on local gossip.
‘You’ve got a job here, if you want it,’ Mum had said hopefully, during that first week, harbouring visions of us running the shop together, like Charlie and Dolly at the café, but we’d both known it wouldn’t work. Apart from anything, Mum – like Dolly – was terrible at delegating, and it turned out I had a knack for putting customers off, even when they’d come prepared to spend.
‘What on earth did you say to Mrs Danvers?’ Mum asked, when her wealthiest and most regular client had fled the shop empty-handed, her lips drawn in an unforgiving line.
‘She asked what was in the jar of pickled rhubarb and I told her it was rhubarb that had been pickled.’
‘For goodness sake, Nina.’ Mum had called Mrs Danvers to apologise, and to offer her two free jars as compensation. ‘She thought you were taking the mickey,’ she said, when she’d finished stroking Mrs Danvers’ ego, but I wasn’t. I just hadn’t known that pickling rhubarb involved cider vinegar, water, sea salt, sugar, pink peppercorns and cloves. Who did, apart from Mum?
‘You could have asked,’ she said.
I’d apologised, and Mum had sighed.
Then I’d tried rearranging the shop so the displays were less haphazard, but Mum put everything back, preferring the element of chaos, and that’s when I’d embarked on a series of courses in my quest for a career.
Flipping over in bed, I pulled the duvet higher, but sleep was slipping away as the day seeped in, and I wondered what Ryan was doing.
After Dolly’s loaded comment, we’d caught each other’s eye, and there’d been a moment when we might have laughed or made a joke, if we’d known and liked each other. Then Ryan had murmured something about taking a shower and left the room with his laptop under his arm and Dolly had given me an innocent smile and said, ‘He’s lovely, isn’t he?’
I’d immediately suspected that she was planning to set us up. Now that Charlie had apparently met The One, she needed an outlet for her matchmaking tendencies. ‘She won’t be able to help herself,’ Mum had warned, but with a hopeful air that suggested she wouldn’t mind Dolly finding me a nice Frenchman to settle down with. I hadn’t taken much notice. The idea of meeting someone new – never mind liking them – had seemed ludicrous.
‘It’s a bit too soon to say,’ I’d said cagily. ‘He’s Charlie’s friend, so I suppose he must be OK.’
She’d studied me for an uncomfortably long moment, as though trying to work something out, then instructed me to help myself to food and get a good night’s sleep. ‘I was going to invite you for dinner and to meet Frank, but we’ll leave it for another day,’ she’d said, before blowing a kiss at a photo on the wall of her with the film star Jay Merino, who’d made a film, featuring his serial character Max Weaver, on the island earlier in the year and was now in a relationship with Charlie’s close friend Natalie. (The Mum/Dolly grapevine had gone bananas the week that happened.) ‘Have a good night’s sleep and I’ll see you in the morning.’
Assuming she was talking to me, not Jay Merino, I’d watched her retreat with my face moulded into a smile, then retired to my room, where I’d flopped on the bed and tried for a while to think of a name for my travel blog. After popping back out for a bowl of soup and a chat with Charlie, while Ryan took a walk to ‘think about his book’, I’d taken a shower, before settling down and instantly falling asleep.
Now, I debated whether to get up or have a lie-in, but before I could decide, the door creaked open and a hand grabbed my foot through the duvet.
‘ARGH!’ I jerked free and rolled over to see Dolly, standing at the end of the bed with a steaming mug, a fragrant scent of coffee filling the room.
‘Wakey, wakey, rise and shine!’ She placed the mug on the bedside table and lovingly tweaked the photo of Charlie and Elle, before crossing to the window and pulling the curtains back.
‘Morning.’ I squinted against the brightness flooding in. ‘What time is it?’
‘Time to get up,’ she announced cheerily.
I cowered as she approached, clutching the duvet to my chest as if she might be about to rip it off, and she sat on the side of the bed and patted my knee. ‘I thought you might need a wake-up call.’
‘Thanks.’ I sat up, ruffling my hair into place with my fingers. It became unruly after being in contact with pillows – even ones with silky covers like Dolly’s. ‘Is it still snowing?’
‘It’s stopped for now, but there’s more on the way.’ She picked up my hand and pressed it between both of hers. ‘Now, I know you’ve come here partly to get away from everything,’ she said. ‘I want to say properly how sorry I am about your gran, I know how hard it is.’
I nodded. Mum and Dolly had been extremely close to their grandmother, Augustine – Mum had even given me her name as one of my middle names. She’d stepped into the breach when a car crash killed their parents, and they’d always been fiercely protective of her.
‘Gran was only hanging on to see me married, and I let her down,’ I said.
‘Now stop that.’ Dolly
bounced my hand. ‘She wouldn’t have wanted you to be unhappy.’
‘It’s just the look on her face, when I told her the wedding wasn’t happening…’
Dolly tutted. ‘Oh, love. Now listen to me. Augustine used to get a look on her face,’ she said. ‘It was every New Year’s Eve, and I know she was thinking about that man… the one she wished she’d married. Grandmothers know better than anyone – you only marry the right one. They have a sixth sense for this sort of thing, I promise you.’
‘Dolly, you don’t know that’s what she was thinking.’ I’d heard the story before – a supposed lover that Augustine had been secretly pining for, based on a throwaway comment she’d made after one too many gins one Christmas. It had set Mum and Dolly wondering whether she’d ever really loved their grandpa. Something about a ship, and the power of first love. Augustine had refused to acknowledge it the next day, and never spoke of it again, but Dolly occasionally poked at the subject, like a fire just before it goes out.
‘Well, if I misinterpreted that look, then so did you with your gran,’ she said, and I knew I’d lost the argument – if that’s what it was – before it had even begun.
Dolly dusted herself down, as if getting rid of non-existent flour. I smiled at her, thinking of the café downstairs, filled with home-baked treats. ‘Now,’ she said, giving me a beady look, ‘I don’t think it’s healthy for you to stay cooped up in here all day.’
‘Oh no, I wasn’t planning to,’ I said. ‘I’m going to use the time here to get my… um… things off the ground.’
She cocked her head, her fringe falling to one side. ‘Things?’
‘I, er…’ I’d planned to be vague about my plans until my blog was established, when I could point people towards it and impress them, but realised that being vague made me sound both wishy-washy and too mysterious. Plus, I’d already confided in Charlie, which made it real. ‘It’s a travel thing,’ I mumbled.
‘Hmm?’ She let go of my hand and cupped her ear. ‘Sorry, love, I didn’t hear you.’