by Jill Mansell
Lainey spluttered, “No.”
“OK, keep your hair on. You’re going a bit pink, though, so what does that mean? Do you have a crush on my son, is that it?”
“Mum, stop.” Seth was shaking his head.
“Just saying what I see, darling. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility, after all. And what’s wrong with having a crush on your boss anyway? It’s fun!”
“Says my mother, who’s never had a job in her life. This is Lainey,” Seth continued evenly. “She and her boyfriend work here—they joined us after Maisie left.”
“Maisie. Was that the dowdy one with the ankles? Well, I can’t imagine anyone’s crying themselves to sleep because they’re missing her so much. What’s happened to your stepmother? I thought she was working with you.”
“Majella’s off sick today,” said Seth. “She’s in bed with—”
“Ooh, a man? Bit of excitement at last?”
“Not quite. She’s in bed with a migraine. Lainey’s just helping me out until Majella’s back on her feet.”
“Wonderful!” Christina beamed at Lainey. “So you can hold the fort here while my son takes me out to lunch.”
“Mum, we’re busy. I can’t go out to lunch.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, of course you can.”
“You should have told me you were coming down. Look, I could see you this evening—”
“But that’ll be too late! We’re flying out of Newquay at six, heading to Marbella for a few weeks. We stopped off here specially so I could see you! Oh, come on, darling. What’s more important? Spending a couple of hours in a boring old office or catching up over a bottle of wine with the woman who gave you life?”
Seth exhaled, clearly torn. Lainey now understood the reason for the earlier twist of exasperation on his face; Christina had no intention of taking no for an answer.
“Honestly, I’ll be fine here,” she said. “If anyone phones with a problem that really can’t wait, I’ll give you a call.”
“There! See? You don’t have to be here.” Christina nodded in triumph. “You aren’t indispensable after all!”
“You said ‘we.’” Seth nodded in defeat and reached for the jacket hanging over the back of his chair. “Who have you got with you?”
“Oh I can’t wait to introduce you! His name’s Laszlo”—Christina’s kohl-lined eyes danced—“and he’s your potential new stepfather.”
* * *
“No problems here. Everything’s under control,” said Lainey when Seth returned exactly two hours later.
“Thanks. Well, there you go. You’ve met my mother.” He took the sheet of paper with details of all the phone calls listed she was holding out to him.
“And you’ve met your potential new stepfather. How was that?”
“Put it this way, I won’t hold my breath for a wedding invitation. He started accusing my mother of flirting with the pilot of the charter plane they flew down in. Apparently the pilot was very good-looking, with buckets of charm, which is why Mum took a few sneaky photos of him on her phone. Well, she said a few, but when she showed them to me, it was more like fifty. So I can’t see her and Laszlo lasting more than another couple of weeks.”
“Ah.”
“Also,” Seth continued drily, “I don’t know how you’re picturing him in your head, but my potential new stepfather is actually younger than me.”
“Oh wow.”
“Quite. My mother has always marched to the beat of her own drum. For the last decade her boyfriends have been getting progressively younger. Laszlo is twenty-nine.”
“And your mum is…?”
“Fifty-one. She was eighteen when she had me.” A flicker of a smile. “Some eighteen-year-olds take to motherhood. Mine never really did.”
What could you say to that? “But she loves you.”
“Oh yes, of course she does. In her own way. And I didn’t have a terrible childhood, because the nannies she hired were great. But it didn’t take long before I found myself spending more and more time with Dad, especially once he’d settled down with Majella. Which couldn’t have been easy for Majella, God knows, but she was amazing and always made me feel so welcome, like it was the biggest treat for her to have me there staying with them.” He paused, remembering. “I always knew how lucky I was. While Mum was jetting off around the world on her adventures, it meant I still had a family I loved and somewhere to live.”
The phone rang again. Seth answered it, and work resumed. An hour later, a text came through. He checked the screen. “It’s from Mum. They’ve arrived back at the airport and she’s just found out the handsome pilot is called Dan. He’s also told her he’s very happy with his gorgeous girlfriend Lily.”
Lainey kept a straight face. “That’s a shame.”
Seth grinned. “On the plus side, she says Laszlo is delighted.”
* * *
India’s toes were still bothering Lainey.
As the girl rolled around the kitchen floor that evening, teasing the dogs with their favorite toys, Lainey said, “I do like your nail polish.”
“Thanks, me too.”
“Such a great color.”
“I know.”
Lainey rinsed a couple more plates in the sink and fitted them into their slots in the dishwasher. “Where’d you get it?”
“Can’t remember, but you can borrow it if you like.” India pretended to wrestle Ernie’s battered teddy bear from his mouth. “Oh, Ernie, don’t be so mean. Give me your teddy. Let me have him!”
“I saw one that color the other day, in the pharmacy on the esplanade.” Lainey paused, then added casually, “It was weird, though, one minute it was there, and the next minute, I couldn’t see it anymore.”
“Maybe someone bought it.” India glanced at her, then rolled over and sat up, pulling Ernie’s wriggling body onto her lap. “That’s usually the way shops work. I’ve remembered now. I bought mine ages ago from the big pharmacy in Launceston.”
The too-innocent look in her eyes was what convinced Lainey she was lying.
But what could she do? She had no proof and no doubt at all that any accusations would be met with indignant denial. She murmured, “Right,” and continued loading the dishwasher.
“Ernie, you great lump. You’re too heavy! Come on, why don’t I take you out for a walk?”
Two minutes later, having run upstairs and down again, India placed the little bottle of fluorescent pink nail polish on the counter with a glassy plink. “Here you are! You must definitely do yours too. Then we’ll have matching toes!”
She whistled to Glenda to join her and Ernie and ran outside with them.
Lainey looked at the bottle. If she were to paint her nails with the polish, would that count as handling stolen goods?
More to the point, India was a girl with everything she could possibly want, living the kind of idyllic life any teenager would envy. Why would she be stealing cheap nail polish in the first place?
* * *
The next morning as Lainey was driving the girls to school, they passed a gift shop on the outskirts of Launceston with posters announcing a closing-down sale plastered across the window.
“Oh no, look. What a shame.” She slowed and pointed. “One of my friends used to have a dear little shop like that. Poor Jen, she was distraught when it went out of business.”
Admittedly, there was a certain irony in having to lie in order to make a point about the importance of honesty, but sometimes you just had to make do with whatever came to hand. She glanced in the rearview mirror, at India texting while Violet industriously made notes in a history textbook. “Can you guess why Jen had to close her shop?”
India said, “Did it sell really tacky stuff for tourists, like that one? Because I’ve been in there and it was pretty awful. Plus it smelled of old cabbages.”
India returned her attention to the phone in her hand and carried on texting.
“It’s just people don’t realize what can happen. They wouldn’t dream of stopping a stranger in the street and demanding money, but they think it’s fine to take things that don’t belong to them. And it isn’t fine,” Lainey emphasized. “It’s stealing, it’s dishonest, and it can end up wrecking other people’s lives.”
Violet closed her textbook. “Didn’t your friend have security cameras in her shop?”
Poor nonexistent Jen. “No, she didn’t.”
“Well, it might have helped.”
“I know.” Lainey shook her head sadly. “But she couldn’t afford it.”
* * *
At five that afternoon, Richard ambled into the kitchen and dumped a sheaf of papers on the oak table before helping himself to a vodka and soda from the fridge. Lainey, who was at the sink peeling potatoes, watched him open the window and call out, “Girls, who’d like to give me a helping hand? Bit of forgery. Won’t take long.”
Lainey raised an eyebrow. From outside, Violet shouted, “Are you paying?”
“Honestly, young people today.” Richard tutted. “Fine, a tenner.”
India, who was sunbathing on a towel, called out, “I’m busy.”
“Go on then, I’ll do it.” Putting her homework aside, Violet rose to her feet.
The girls came into the kitchen together, Violet to sit at the table and India to pour herself a glass of pineapple juice.
“Right.” Richard pushed the papers across to Violet, scrawled his name on the uppermost sheet, and handed her his Mont Blanc fountain pen. “Two hundred of those, there’s a good girl.”
“What are they?” Peering over, Lainey saw that the sheets were divided into rectangular peel-off stickers, each one bearing a photo in the top right-hand corner of Richard during his heyday.
“Bookplates from a big book club in Washington, DC. They invited me over to meet them, but I said I couldn’t manage that, so they’ve sent me these instead. Once they’re signed and returned, they’re going to stick them into the front of the books and hold some kind of fund-raising event for charity, which was why I couldn’t say no.” Richard paused to swirl the clanking ice cubes in his glass before taking an appreciative swig. “Plus, my publisher told me I had to do it.”
“Which means you have to do it,” Lainey told him. “Not Violet.”
He waved an unconcerned hand. “How are they ever going to know?”
She stared at him in disbelief. “No, Richard, you can’t do that.” It was slightly surreal to think that upon meeting Sir Richard Myles for the first time, she’d been overwhelmed by the experience and pretty starstruck. Yet now here she was, three weeks later, about to give him a right telling off.
“It’s only a bunch of bookplates,” Richard protested.
“It’s dishonest. Those people will think they’re getting your signature!”
“And it will look exactly like my signature,” he exclaimed. “If not even better.”
“You’d get into trouble if they ever found out. They’d be distraught.”
“They won’t find out.”
“They will if I tell them,” said Lainey.
“Would you?”
“I might.” She paused. “Yes, I would.”
“Here we go.” India rolled her eyes. “Time for another lecture about honesty.”
“But it matters,” Lainey insisted. “It does. When I was seven, I loved Take That and they sent me a birthday card with little messages and their signatures, and it was my most precious possession in the world. I kissed it every day and slept with it under my pillow every night. Then a year later my uncle told me he’d sent it himself, as a joke. I was completely heartbroken.”
She hadn’t had to make up a story this time; it was the truth.
“The people buying my book won’t be seven years old,” Richard argued.
“But that’s not the point. They could still love you, like Pauline and all those people who belong to your fan club. You can’t cheat them out of a signature. It’s just wrong.”
“Another touching personal story with a moral to it,” India said good-naturedly as she helped herself to a cookie. She flashed a bright smile at Lainey. “Makes you wonder if they ever really happened.”
Which was extra infuriating when this one had.
Thankfully, Violet came to the rescue. She shook her head at Richard. “Lainey’s right, Grandad. It would be unfair. I think you should probably do it yourself.”
Hooray for the voice of reason. Relieved, Lainey added helpfully, “And then you won’t need to feel guilty.”
“I wasn’t planning on feeling guilty anyway.” But Richard’s eyes sparkled as he knocked back his vodka and soda, pulled out a chair, and took the fountain pen back from Violet. “Fine then, you’ve bullied me into it. Now, who’d like to make me another drink?”
Chapter 13
Two days later, the good weather came to an end, a gray sky hung over St. Carys, and for the first time in weeks, Lainey needed to dig something warmer out from her side of the wardrobe. Finding her denim jacket, she wore it over a T-shirt and leggings to drive India and Violet to school, then stopped off afterward in St. Carys to buy the sheets of stamps Majella had asked her to pick up.
It wasn’t until she was in line at the post office that she tucked her chilly hands into the pockets of the jacket and encountered something unfamiliar. Normally, there might be a few loose coins in there or half a packet of chewing gum or a scrunchie for her hair, but this was a handkerchief with something wrapped inside it. Only slightly puzzled, Lainey pulled it out of her pocket and felt the flat, circular item that was coin-sized but hollow, as well as bumpy on one side…
Her brain was slow to catch up with her fingers, which meant she was staring at the uncovered ring for a good couple of seconds before the pieces of the puzzle dropped into place. Her memory scrolled back to the night at the chateau when she’d thrown her jacket on over her nighttime T-shirt and raced outside to make sure Wyatt wasn’t about to do anything drastic. Then, while they’d been sitting on the grass beneath the trees, he’d been overcome with emotion and had wiped his eyes with the balled-up hankie. And when at last she’d persuaded him to head back inside to sleep, he’d left the hankie lying in the grass, and she’d scooped it up and stuffed it into her pocket before helping him back to the chateau.
She’d worn the jacket on the long bus journey home to the UK but clearly hadn’t investigated the pockets. Then it had been stuffed into her suitcase, with the ring still inside the handkerchief.
The ring with the stunning three-carat diamond.
The ring that had cost Wyatt forty thousand pounds…and the one he blamed himself entirely for having lost.
“Are you just going to stand there like a lemon?” said the irritable man behind her in line. “Because some of us don’t have all day.”
Lainey hurried up to the counter. “Hi, can I have some stamps, please?”
Through the safety glass, the cashier said, “How many d’you want, love?”
“Um, forty thousand.” No, that wasn’t right; Lainey hastily corrected herself. “Sorry, I meant two hundred.”
* * *
Arriving bac
k at Menhenick House, she swung the car onto the driveway. Her pulse, already racing, stepped up another gear when she saw Seth lifting boxes of glossy brochures out of the trunk of his own car.
“Hey. Everything OK?” As always, he missed nothing. “Looking a bit…frazzled.”
“You won’t believe what I’ve just found…”
“You’re not OK. Oh God.” The boxes landed with a thud in the trunk, and he was in front of her, visibly concerned. “What’s happened? Tell me. What is it?” His gaze dropped to her hands, which were tightly clasped together. “What have you found?”
He sounded so serious, so worried. Lainey shook her head. “It’s not bad news. It’s something really good!”
“It is?” Seth was frowning.
She brought her breathing under control. No one would ever know the less than saintly thoughts that had darted like quicksilver through her mind between leaving the post office and arriving back here just a few minutes later. The idea that she could sell the ring and stealthily pay the proceeds into her bank account had only ever been the briefest of fantasies. Of course she wouldn’t really have done it; she was an honest person who’d never stolen anything in her life. Look at that lecture she’d given India about the nail polish.
Slowly, finger by finger, she unclasped her hands to reveal the three-carat diamond ring. At first, terrified of losing it, she’d tucked it away inside her bra, before realizing that the safest place to keep it was on an actual finger.
“What’s this?” A muscle was jumping in Seth’s jaw; his gaze shifted from the ring to her face. “You’re…engaged?”
It was a look of shock mixed with disbelief, and no wonder. She burst out laughing. “Because of course Kit could afford to buy me a ring that costs more than a vintage Rolls-Royce. It’s a real diamond!” She waggled her hand at him to make him understand. “This is the ring that was lost at the chateau after the proposal that went horribly wrong. I was lining up just now in the post office, and when I put my hand in my pocket, there it was!”