‘Great!’ Olly said, jumping out of the back of the Wrangler.
‘Drink, Stephen?’ Selina said, getting up and sashaying down the steps towards him.
‘Shhh!’ Marcus said. ‘Damn.’
‘Marcus,’ Lara said. ‘You haven’t?’
‘I can keep a secret, darling,’ Selina said, leaning on the side of Stephen’s vehicle. ‘Selina Mountford.’ She stretched over towards him, extending her hand. ‘I
really
admire your work. I was in
Transform
, although I don’t think we ever met. I was one of the Water Girls.’
‘Hello,’ Stephen said, lifting Jack out of his car seat.
‘Oh, don’t worry about me,’ Selina said. ‘I’m discretion itself. It’s not as if I’m a civilian. I understand you have to keep a low profile. Do stay and join us.’
‘I’m sorry. I’ve got animals to get back to.’ Stephen handed the car seat to Lara. ‘’Bye, guys,’ he said, waving to Olly and Jack, who were heading towards the house. ‘’Bye, Lara.’ He gave her a brief, impersonal kiss on the cheek. ‘Marcus,’ he said, pointing a finger at him.
‘Cheers, matey,’ Marcus said, waving. He had got up and was leaning on the deck rail, swaying.
‘Thank you Stephen,’ Lara said. ‘That was a great night.’
‘My pleasure.’ He started the engine and took off. It was only when his tail lights had completely disappeared that Lara realised, with a pang, they hadn’t made a firm arrangement to meet up again.
‘Oll, could you get Jack ready for bed?’ Lara said. Olly tutted and sighed, but he scooped up his sleepy little brother and carried him indoors.
Lara turned to Marcus, diverting delayed shock after the incident on the road into anger at her husband. ‘You do know Stephen being here is supposed to be a secret?’
‘Come on,’ Marcus said, waving his arms around. ‘What harm can it do to let Selina here know?’
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ Lara said.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You
can
trust me, Lara,’ Selina said. ‘I do happen to have quite a few friends who are as famous as him, if not more so. I do know how difficult it is. I’m cool.’
‘I hope you’re right about that,’ Lara said. She wondered how gushing up to him and outlining the small part you played in a film he starred in eight years ago counted as cool, but she let it go. ‘He goes to great lengths to stay hidden. There’s a lot at stake for him.’
‘Oh come on!’ Marcus said. ‘Don’t you think he’s being a bit grand, a bit mysterious? Like he’s built this myth up about himself, and he believes it so much and no one’s telling him no, so it’s all just become a bit of a game for him.’
‘A game? You don’t understand, do you?’
‘Oh God.’ Marcus rolled his eyes. ‘What’s he been telling you?’
‘Do you know what? You don’t deserve to know.’
‘Look. We’ve all heard about the stalker business. But that’s in the past and on the other side of this giant country. So steady on there old girl.’ Marcus got up and attempted to put his arm around her. ‘Look. I’m sorry I told Selina. Does that help? Now, do you want a glass of something?’
‘Yes, do join us for a glass of wine,’ Selina said, touching her arm.
Lara looked down at her toes, which she had clenched so tightly they were cramping. She wanted to slap Selina in the face, then smash the stupid wine bottle and drive it into Marcus’s belly. She actually imagined herself doing this.
‘I’m tired,’ she said after a minute. ‘And I need to go and tuck Jack in.’ She wondered if she could make up a story about leaving something in Stephen’s car so she had an excuse to call him, just to hear his voice again, but her imagination deserted her. ‘You stay out here and enjoy yourselves,’ she said to Marcus and Selina. ‘Make sure you lock up when you come in.’
As she went in and started climbing the horrible stinking stairs, she heard Selina’s light laugh, underscored by Marcus’s low, throaty rumble. He must seem quite exotic to her, Lara thought, all plummily English, having been brought all the way from Europe to play the lead.
Well, she was welcome to him.
‘SO, DANNY WILL BE WITH YOU TOMORROW AT MIDDAY FOR
a spot of space clearing. I’ve called Marcus so he’ll be busy and need never know. Now then. Can my little chick make a rehearsal tomorrow evening about five?’
‘James, it’s a difficult time of day for a chap of his age. He’s not at his best.’
Lara heard James sigh at the other end of the line, as if this were just another
detail
for him to
deal with
. She hardly had the patience for this after the sleepless night she had endured. Every noise seemed to have had malice threaded through it, from the percussive barking of a dog over the hill behind the house to a creak on the stairs which, clog in hand, she had climbed out of bed to investigate at three in the morning.
‘I don’t know if you know, but Marcus has offered to be chaperone,’ James went on. ‘So you don’t have to worry about a thing. You’ll be free for a couple of hours. To do what you want.’ A silence followed.
‘OK, look,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ll make sure Jack’s worn out in the morning so he puts in a long nap, then hopefully he’ll be brighter than usual at five. But not too late, OK?’
‘Thank you sweets. I’m sure it’s going to all work out marvellously.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ she said, and hung up.
For a few moments she stared at the phone and thought about calling Stephen, to apologise for Marcus’s big mouth the night before and, just, well, to hear his voice. Then, as if she had summoned it, the phone rang right before her eyes. Grabbing it, she pulled it to her ear.
‘Hello?’ she said.
‘Don’t get excited. It’s only me!’ Gina laughed down the other end.
‘Oh. Hi, Gina. How are you?’
‘I heard you went to the circus last night.’
‘How on earth?’
‘Simon saw you – remember, the guy from the party?’
‘Right, yes. We bumped into him.’
‘Was it any good?’
‘It was brilliant. You should go.’
‘Ah, it might be difficult with Bert. He’s not so good in crowds of strangers. Anyway, talking about Bert, he’s asleep right now, so I wondered if you’d like to come round for coffee?’
‘I’d love to. We’ll be over in ten minutes.’ The twins hadn’t yet surfaced, and Lara hadn’t been looking forward to spending the morning with Jack like a couple of sitting ducks in the marked house.
‘See you then.’
‘See, they’re not too bad now I’ve cleaned them up.’ Lara lifted her skirt to show Gina her knees.
‘You were crazy,’ Gina said. ‘You were so mad. And what I don’t get is why a woman like that would be going around stealing people’s clothes from the laundromat.’
Lara peered into her mug and took another bite of the cherry walnut cookie that Gladys had offered her before taking Jack upstairs to play.
‘And who was the mystery man?’ Gina said.
‘Eh?’
‘The guy Simon saw you with last night. The one he said sort of melted away when he came up to you.’
‘Oh. Just an old friend I bumped into.’
‘You bumped into an old friend out
here
?’ Gina asked. ‘That’s some coincidence.’
‘Yes. It was,’ Lara said. They were sitting in the shade at the back of Gina’s house. The sky was blue and the air surprisingly clear. A cool breeze funnelled down the side of the house towards them, and Lara reached into her bag for her cardigan. She slipped it on, folded her arms and sat back, watching the trees as they rustled in the wind.
‘Am I going to get any more out of you?’ Gina said, trying to catch her eye.
Lara shook her head. Looking into her friend’s kind eyes, she found herself on the verge of tears. ‘I wish I could tell you,’ she said. ‘But I can’t. It’s – too complicated.’
‘That’s OK,’ Gina said, reaching over and putting a hand on her leg. ‘You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to.’
‘I can’t,’ Lara said, forcing a smile, although her eyes were brimming. ‘Believe me. If I could, you’d be the first to know.’
‘It’s got nothing to do with a certain famous Brit actor who is “hiding” in the hills up thataway?’ Gina pointed in the direction of Stephen’s house.
If Gina had reached out and whacked her round the face, Lara would not have been more shocked.
Gina laughed. ‘Look, honey, some secrets aren’t quite as well kept as people would like to believe. Word flies around in Trout Island so fast you can’t even see it. The word grows into rumour and the rumour gets coloured in. And my house is right here, in the middle of the village, so I know everything. Just be aware of that and be careful, OK?’
Lara nodded. What exactly did Gina mean she had to be careful about, though: word, rumour or the fact that she knew everything?
Oh no
, Lara thought as she and Jack walked up the garden path to the house. There was a note, addressed to her, pinned to the front door.
From the lawn, she scanned the porch for anything nasty, any stray corpses or faeces, but there was nothing. She climbed the steps to the door and grabbed the note, as if it were a nettle needing a firm grasp.
Inside, written in a familiar hand that made the blood rush to her cheeks, was the message:
Blueberry picking today? Bring kids. Pick you up at 2. Sx
She felt the familiar, digestive flutter that Stephen stirred up. It was only half past twelve. How on earth could she wait a full hour and a half?
‘I’m sleepy, Mummy,’ Jack said, not surprisingly, since he had spent the entire morning playing ballet school mascot for Gina’s daughters in tutu, blusher and all.
‘Why don’t you stretch out on the swing seat?’ Lara said. ‘It’s lovely and cool out here.’
She settled him on the porch, plumping up the cushions so he could lie fully down. Unlocking the front door, she stood in the scene-of-the-crime hall and called up the stairs.
‘Bella? Olly?’ There was no reply, so she supposed they must be out. A part of her she wasn’t proud of hoped they would stay out, so it would only be she and Jack – who noticed less than his brother and sister – who went blueberry picking. She could get away with more that way.
In the kitchen, she cleared up the post-breakfast carnage that proved the twins had, at some point in the morning, surfaced and fed themselves. Then she took a shower and put on her new dress, the one she had bought the day before.
Remembering that she had to remove a liberal application of make-up from Jack’s face, she headed for the front porch. But when she got out there, her heart jumped into her mouth. The swing seat was empty. Jack wasn’t on the porch, nor was he in the front garden.
‘Jack!’ Lara called, dashing into the house. But he wasn’t inside either. She ran out of the kitchen door and scanned the backyard and the hill beyond. He was nowhere to be seen.
‘Jack!’ she yelled, tearing back down the driveway to the front. A cold panic rose in her throat. She had lost her son. He had gone. He had been taken. She ran out on to the pavement and looked one way down Main Street, then the other. Apart from a distant truck slowly making its way towards her it was deserted, as usual.
She grabbed on to a streetlight and pressed her forehead against the hot metal, trying to think straight and stop the whirling behind her eyes.
‘Mummy!’
She jerked her head up. Jack was running towards her along the side street across the road from her. He had some sort of long, chewy sweet in one hand. In the other was what looked like the long-lost Cyril Bear.
‘Jack, STOP!’ she screamed just as he reached the kerb of the road that separated them. Shocked, he obeyed her, and in doing so was saved from running out in front of the truck as it thundered between them. Looking both ways, Lara darted across the road to the little boy, who was standing, wide-eyed, on the pavement, sticky sweet and make-up mingling with the tears of shock caused by his mother yelling at him.
‘What happened, Jacky? How did you get across the road? Who gave you that sweetie?’ She pulled the thing out of his fingers and threw it on the ground, as if it were about to explode in his hands. ‘And where did you find Cyril?’
Jack took a deep breath in and wailed, now outraged at losing his candy.
‘Who was it?’ Lara said. But she knew the answer already.
‘Lady,’ Jack said. ‘That lady gave me Cyril.’
By the time she had washed the stickiness from him, both Lara and Jack had calmed down. She told him he must never, ever go off with a stranger again.
‘But she’s not a stranger. She’s the lady.’
‘Most particularly you mustn’t go off with the lady,’ Lara said. ‘She’s not a nice lady. Remember?’
‘But she gave me a sweetie,’ Jack said.
‘And you must never take sweeties from the lady or from strangers. Understood?’
Jack nodded his red head. All clean and safe, he looked, more than ever, like an angelic version of his father. All the good without any of the infuriating.
Hearing the rumble of the Wrangler in the driveway, she glanced out of her bedroom window and saw him, Stephen, there, in the driving seat.
‘Now, not a word about the nasty lady to Stephen,’ she said, miming a zip over her mouth.
Jack nodded and zipped his lips in the same way.
She picked him up, grabbed her bag and set off outside to greet Stephen.
‘No twins?’ he said, getting out to help her.
‘They’re out.’
‘Ah well. Take a look at that dent,’ he said, showing her the side of the Wrangler. ‘I’m still puzzling over why that idiot wanted to do that to us. Has everything been all right here since yesterday? Nothing odd happened?’
‘Yes,’ Lara said. ‘I mean, no, nothing odd.’
‘Good,’ Stephen said, frowning slightly. ‘You would tell me, wouldn’t you, if something was worrying you?’
‘Of course,’ Lara said. ‘I’ll just get the car seat.’ She dashed into the hall and picked it up from where she had left it the night before. She wanted to tell Stephen what was going on. But Betty’s words rung in her head.
If Stephen finds out she’s back, it will kill him
.
Lara didn’t want any more blood on her hands. Besides, she wanted to nail this woman once and for all, using her own devices.
‘Where are we going to do this blueberry picking?’ she asked as they drove out of Trout Island.