Chapter One

Some people have no compass, no geographical clue.

“Maine? Where’s that?” Holly asks. “Please, Lara, tell me California because at least that would be dead cool.”

Holly’s so agog at the news I’m going to America, she called an urgent meeting at our favourite wine bar, Mel’s Garden, in South London.

Seriously? “Holly, didn’t you study geography in high school?”

“I failed.”

“Figures.”

“So where is it?”

“Do you know where Boston is?”

“Um, south of New York?”

“North! Maine is, roughly, north of Boston up toward the Canadian border,” I tell her. “Mountainous interior, craggy coastline, really beautiful.”

“Why there?”

“Because, Holly, that is where I have found a job.”

“What kind of job?”

I search in my bag for the email I printed. “Companion to Liz Dalton,” I read, “seventy-four, resident of Lobster Cove, Maine. She lives in a place called Blue Rocks.”

“What? Like a nursing home?”

“Hardly, or she wouldn’t need a companion, would she?”

Holly’s laughing at me. “Oh my God, you’re going to end up in a nursing home, sleeping in a single bed with an old lady in an adjoining room!”

“Am bloody not. Blue Rocks is a mansion on the beach.” I made that up, but I let it go.

Holly frowns at me over her empty glass. “Seventy-four is quite old, isn’t it?”

Is it? My own parents are in their mid-fifties, fit and healthy as you like, both PhDs, working on a research vessel in the southern Indian Ocean. Will they be old in twenty years? I don’t know.

Holly leans closer, elbows on the table. “I can’t understand why you’re doing this, Jazz.”

My name is Lara Jasmine Layla, surname Fairmont. Holly frequently calls me Jazz, Jazzy and other things. My parents never call me anything other than Lara Jasmine. What can I say? Both were students in the seventies—one foot grooving on the hippy trail and the other firmly nailed on the highway to Academia. With Holly, it’s open season on names, and has been since we started boarding school, aged ten, at St. Anne’s in Hampshire.

“I’m doing it, as you very well know, because my fledgling darling business, Hampers, went bust. Believe it or not, a mail order, posh picnic company cannot survive the tail end of a recession in a country where summer lasts a brief three weeks. With rain. I worked my butt off, and still, it failed—”

“I know, Jazz. I know all that.” She flaps a hand. “And I know the whole Hampers thing is a real bummer. I feel for you, I do, but why Maine?”

I thrust the email at her. “The money, sweetcheeks. I have debts. I narrowly missed going under.”

She takes the page and scans the text, eyes widening. “Oh. Wow. I see.”

Lucas Dalton, my employer, the old lady’s son, has offered me two and a half times what Hampers would have had I delivered on every picnic order at Ascot, the Henley Royal Regatta, Glyndebourne, the Hampton Court Flower Show and many more, Cristal and beluga option, ten times over.

“I can’t afford to say no, Hols.” Two can play that game.

“I can see that, but—” She waves down a waiter and orders two more glasses of chilled rosé. “—what if it’s a horrible job? I mean, what if the old girl is a right bitch, or throws fits or something?”

“If you read all the way down, you’ll see the agency confirms she exhibits normal behaviour for her age. There are no special requirements. It’s easy money. I mean, how hard can it be to look after an old lady for a few months? Go to the library, take her to tea, to visit friends, to the post office, drive along the coast, all that stuff.”

“I bet there’s a catch. I bet there’s a smelly little dog you’ll have to walk.”

“For that money—” I point at the email—“I will walk the smelly dog. The smelly dog may even sleep on my bed.”

“Yech.” Holly reads further and throws her head back in a squawk of husky laughter that turns every head in Mel’s—like it always does.

“What?”

“You’ve been approved by the Child Protection Services Authority.”

“So? It’s routine. In case the grandkids come around, and I herd them into the broom cupboard with dastardly motives.”

“What?” She looks at me, shaking her head. “For God’s sake!”

I shrug. “The world we live in.” I open the menu as our wine refills arrive. “Come on, let’s order something to eat before we fall off our chairs.” I scan the list of salads because, to be honest, I could lose some weight.

****

Right now, standing here in the wet gloom a few days after my lunch date with Holly in sunny South London, it feels strongly like the Canadian border end of things—like where Quebec meets Newfoundland in the north. Firstly, it’s pouring: cats, stair rods, dogs and rats. Secondly, this place, Lobster Cove, is also, in addition to the rain, cloaked in thick mist. I can’t see my hand in front of my face unless it’s on my face. Thirdly—and most sadly—the vibrant memories of my glittering few days en route, in New York City with Dad’s cousin Lauren—editor of glossy foodie magazine Filo—have sloshed down the road in the wake of the cream Bentley driven by Lauren’s strong, silent driver—a woman. I’m a city girl, a Londoner. What the hell am I doing in a place like Lobster Cove? At the very least, I want to—make that I wanna—go back to New York!

Where, I would like to know, are the pastel-hulled rowboats and dinghies bobbing at their moorings while their halyards sing in the gentle breeze? Where are the puttering lobster boats I’ve read so much about? Never mind that, where’s the pier? Where am I?

What do I do next? I have no idea what’s supposed to happen, bar the curt text message from Lucas Dalton: Maggie’s Diner, 8 p.m. latest.

The taillights of the Bentley, my deliverance, vanish into the drizzle-mist. Within the hiss of the rain, there’s the faint yet unmistakable sound of the ocean and the more insistent slap and slop of small waves against a dock, somewhere to my right. I take a step toward the sound and think again. Visibility’s not great and I don’t want to get lost, or end up upside-down in the harbour, first off. I peer left, groping my way to a blue sign flashing Maggie’s Diner in retro neon—apart from the second G, which has blown—up on the mist-draped gable of a grey shingle, weather-blasted building. Easy to see why Dalton suggested Maggie’s. It’s the only place open. Seems to me it’s low tide in Lobster Cove in oh so many ways.

How I miss Lauren’s driver, while I lug my bags through the entrance. I abandon them next to the door and look around: blue checks, blue vinyl and a lot of cream and chrome.

“Hi.” A young waitress approaches. “I’m Sally. How may I help you?” She ushers me to a booth next to the window with a swirly, white view onto the deserted main street.

“Thanks,” I say. “I’m Lara F—”

“The new help for the Daltons up at Blue Rocks?”

“That’s me.”

She hands over a laminated menu the size of a broadsheet. “Lucas asked for us to call Skeet as soon as you arrived. I just did that.”

Skeet? What is a skeet? Sally reads my expression and smiles. “Skeet’s our local cab driver. He’ll run you up to Blue Rocks. Lucas can’t leave Liz. Wouldn’t wanna bring her out in this.” She pulls a face at the window. “You wanna order something while you wait?”

Our local cab driver? One? Didn’t Boris Johnson say in a BBC interview last week that there were close on twenty thousand licensed taxicabs in London? Maybe I misheard. Maybe Sally said, “Skeet’s a local taxi driver.” That means there could be more than one. That means there could be two. I swallow a despondent sigh and order tea, handing back the giant menu, aware I’m not hungry, nevertheless feeling a tweak of guilt for the unchallenged chef waiting through the blue door behind the counter. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

I gaze around the diner: no one. I get my phone out of my bag: no messages. I look through the window: nowhere. I message Holly. Arrived safe in Lobster Cove, Maine. Yet to meet my gracious charge. Remind me, what am I doing here? Will call soon. Love xxx

No answer.

Sally arrives with my tea. “How long you gonna stay?”

“My contract with Mr. Dalton is for three months, then we’ll see.”

“Mr. Dalton. You English are so cute! He’s gonna love that. Do you know anything about Blue Rocks and the Dalton family?” She places cup and saucer in front of me, and a small jug of milk and bowl of sugar to the right.

“Not really.”

“They’re okay, I guess, though it’s not what I’d call a normal household.”

“Why’s that?”

Sally looks at me for a few seconds, considering. “Lucas is real nice in spite of what people say, and think, but things ain’t the same at Blue Rocks since Liz went. She was the glue.”

“I see.” Alarm bells! I pour a little milk into the teacup, followed by tea.

“Then there was that whole murder business.”

I sip, calm, like murder is a daily event for me. My heartbeat changes gear. Alarm bells develop into the whole of Scotland Yard gunning down Regent Street in squad cars, sirens screaming. “So—” deep breath, and first things first—“you say Mrs. Dalton was the glue? What do you mean was?”

Sally smiles, head on one side, eyes distant. “She died last spring, honey. She’s gone.”

Add some fire engines. “She was murdered?”

“No. No, not Liz.”

“I see.” I do not see. “So why…” I’m about to ask Sally whether I’ve crossed the North Atlantic to work for a dead woman—and, PS, what’s this about a murder?—when the door opens and a giant man pushes his stomach into the diner.

“Miz Fairmont? You ready? Gotta do a pickup at the station for the sheriff in forty,” he says.

Abandoning my too-hot tea, I jump up and follow him to the door. He lifts my bags in one hand—the size of a Christmas turkey—and backs outside, his heavy tread rattling a display of blue and white porcelain lobsters on a shelf above the window.

I try to pay Sally, but she waves me off. “On the house, honey. In any case, I’m sure to see you around in the week, when you bring Alice in to town.”

Alice? No time for questions because Turkey Hands has blown his hooter, I mean honked his horn. Listen to me. I’m American already. Maybe Alice is that little smelly dog? I dash out into the rain and dive into the back seat of his Chevy.

****

God, I’m tired. I yawn and look at my watch: five past eight. Hardly late and not quite dark—at least I don’t think so—but there’s nothing to see in the gloom. Skeet clearly has talent for driving blind. All I can gather is that we drive away from Maggie’s, up the main road, turn right and start climbing, then it’s downhill for a bit, then up, then down, and I don’t see a single car coming or going in any direction.

“Pretty quiet around here,” I remark to the back of Skeet’s neck. To be frank, it’s not so much a neck as an extension of his broad, bald head downward into mighty, pudgy shoulders.

“Yeah,” he says, after a while. “Fog keeps folks indoors. Keeps the tourists away. Delays the season.”

“For how long?”

“It’ll clear soon enough.”

I doubt Skeet’s soon enough is the same as my soon enough, but I keep that to myself. No wonder poor old Liz Dalton needs a companion. Who could live in a place like this without one? I imagine a cosy scene, me and Liz locked in by mist, toasting tea cakes by a blazing fire. Only, it’s not cold, so a blazing fire, so…no, wait, I need to ask Skeet about Liz being dead, although…although it could be another Liz, a cousin perhaps. Too bad she’s dead. Sad. No toasted teacakes and a blazing fire for her, uh…

“Blue Rocks,” Skeet proclaims, like he’s unveiled a remodelled Pentagon, waking me. Damn. I had meant to ask all sorts of questions about the Daltons, but Skeet’s laid-back attitude lulled me to sleep. Sleep! I yawn and rub my eyes fervently hoping the Daltons will let me go to bed immediately on arrival. I look at the time on the dashboard clock: 8:25.

“Hey, Skeet,” someone calls from the house—a man. Skeet’s already out of the driver’s seat with the boot open and my bags on the driveway.

“Hey, boss. Still okay for eleven tomorrow morning?”

“You bet.” The man, in jeans and a long-sleeved tee-shirt pushed up to the elbows, leaves the shadow of the porch and walks, barefoot, out onto the drive.

My, my. And just who is this?