Erik is still in Devon.
But he says he’ll be back by next week, in time for the fayre.
Why do I not feel reassured?
Every time I point out crossly that without an auctioneer, the whole day will be ruined, he just laughs and tells me to chillax. But it really isn’t funny.
I’m trying not to freak out about it but every time I think of the fayre happening in little over a week, I practically have to reach for the nearest tea towel and bite down hard.
Erik won’t let me down this time. Not when he has a chance to perform in front of an audience.
The other variable, apart from Erik, is the weather.
We’ve been enjoying a spell of clear blue skies and warm sunshine recently. It’s been so unseasonably warm, in fact, that I’m starting to worry I’ll need that chill room sooner rather than later.
But typically, the great weather is due to break down next week. Sunshine and showers are forecast and I keep agonising over what this actually means. I even look up ‘shower’ in the dictionary, hoping it might say something like, ‘precipitation you barely notice and which is highly unlikely to ruin an outdoor event’.
But what it actually says is ‘a short period of rain or snow’. I shriek and throw down the book.
My usual deliveries on Thursday take twice as long because my customers want to talk about the fayre and hand over items for the auction. I collect five bottles of wine, a set of placemats depicting steam trains, a five-hundred piece jigsaw of Westminster Abbey and a milk jug that looks like a cow.
Anna phones just as I’m consulting the A–Z to find the last drop of the day.
‘Tortoise races are off,’ she says brusquely.
‘Really? Why?’
‘Health and Safety.’
I laugh incredulously. ‘But half a dozen tortoises aren’t going to rampage about the place maiming thousands, are they?’
‘Terrapin-related illnesses,’ she says flatly. ‘They’re worried people might catch one.’
Anna’s bizarre news has a calming effect on me. We can do without the tortoises. Erik will be back in time and he’ll be the perfect auctioneer.
Everything is going to be absolutely fine.
I’m still grinning at the ‘terrapin-related illnesses’ as I pull the last box of the day from the back of the van and head into a Victorian house converted into flats.
Miss C Dodds, a brand new customer, lives on the first floor.
I press the doorbell and when there’s no sound from within, I prepare to leave the box by the door as we agreed. Then just as I’m jotting the cost of the box on a compliment slip, I hear a bolt being pulled back.
Miss C Dodds is dressed in slim-fitting jeans and a sky-blue T-shirt. She has dark hair pulled into a loose knot and huge, slightly wary brown eyes. Her arms are very pale and slender. No bingo wings for her, I think, a split-second before it hits me.
I know this person.
I’ve seen her before. Standing in the street watching me.
Miss C Dodds. C for Charlotte.
Lottie.
‘Hi.’ I force a jollity I’m not feeling. ‘Standard box. No onions. Extra apples?’
She stares at me with frightened eyes, still holding on to the door handle.
‘I planned what I’d say,’ she whispers at last. ‘But now you’re here …’
My heart bumps in my chest.
I ask her if she’s all right because she quite plainly isn’t.
‘Will you come in?’ She pulls the door wide and after a second’s hesitation, I cross the threshold, placing the box on the floor.
She indicates the sofa and I sit down.
Lottie perches at the other end and stares for a moment at her hands gripped in her lap. ‘I feel bad getting you here under false pretences. But I didn’t want to come to your house because he might be there.’
I’m thrown for a second. Then I realise she’s talking about Erik.
‘But why would you want to avoid Erik? I thought you were friends.’
She gives a curious little laugh. ‘Friends. Lovers. Even talked about getting engaged.’ She looks at me with a sad smile. ‘Oh, we’ve done the lot.’
My heart is hammering uncomfortably.
Erik said she was suffering from psychological problems made worse when her fiancé called off the wedding. Perhaps she really does need help.
‘You’re nice and you deserve better,’ she’s saying. ‘Erik will break your heart. If he hasn’t already.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘It’s true,’ she says simply.
‘I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.’
‘Yes, you do.’ She presses a weary hand to her forehead. ‘You must have suspected.’
My heart gives a little jolt.
‘Suspected what?’
‘That Erik couldn’t be faithful if his life depended on it.’
She looks down at her hands again.
Her hair is sleek and glossy. A lock of it has escaped the knot and slipped down over her cheek. I stare at it, mesmerised, my head reeling.
Erik said she had a crush on him and implied she was unhinged. And now she’s lured me here under false pretences. Is that really the action of a sane person?
Perhaps she and Erik once had a fling and now she wants him back.
I swallow down a feeling of nausea. ‘Why are you saying this?’
She looks up at me with her sad eyes. ‘Because it’s true and I think you ought to know. The others meant nothing. I could tell. But you’re different. He thinks you’re special.’ Her mouth twists with irony. ‘Just not quite special enough.’
‘The others?’
Lottie nods.
In the silence, a wasp bumps fruitlessly against the big bay window.
It’s all so surreal. Sitting in a strange flat, with a woman I barely know informing me my boyfriend is a liar and a cheat.
‘Didn’t you suspect anything when I came to your house that time?’ she asks.
‘Well, obviously I wondered what was going on,’ I say slowly. ‘But Erik explained to me later all about your fiancé.’
‘My fiancé?’
‘Sorry, this is probably the last thing you want to talk about,’ I say apologetically. ‘With the wedding being called off and everything.’
She breathes out incredulously. ‘My God, what else did he tell you? That I’m demented with grief and should be locked up for my own safety?’
‘So there was no wedding?’ I ask carefully.
She laughs. ‘No. And no fiancé either.’
‘So were you and Erik … together?’ My voice sounds far away, as if it belongs to someone else altogether.
She folds her arms and looks over at the window. ‘Not any more. I’ve had enough. He’s mucked me about once too often.’
‘So how long were you … ?’
‘Three years, on and off. God knows how many other women he’s been with in that time. I only knew about Larissa. And you.’
Larissa?
Is it possible that all the time I’ve known Erik, he was still seeing other women? But we were together practically all the time, especially at the beginning. And then he’s been down in Devon. How would he have had the time or opportunity?
I shake my head firmly. ‘He’s only with me now.’
‘Oh, really.’ She gives a sad little smile.
My heart lurches because suddenly, I know for sure that Lottie is not insane. And neither is she lying to me.
‘Hang on, though. This doesn’t make sense.’ I still can’t believe he duped me so completely. ‘You knew about me all along? And you claim there were other women as well as me?’
She nods.
‘So why the hell would you stay with someone who lies to you and sleeps with other women behind your back?’
Lottie’s mouth twists. ‘Because I love him? Because I’m utterly pathetic? Because I’m too weak to say no?’
We stare at one another.
Then I find my voice. ‘When you came to my house that time, was it because you’d just found out Erik was seeing me?’
She laughs. ‘No. I knew almost from the start. He was away one Monday. He said he was watching the match with a mate but I knew he wasn’t.’
‘One Monday?’ I say slowly, remembering the day he helped me with my deliveries. No wonder he couldn’t stay when I invited him for supper. He had to get back to Lottie.
‘I convinced myself I’d been wrong. But then he bumped into your friend in town one Sunday; the weekend he was doing his living statue project for college.’
‘Jess,’ I murmur. ‘I’d been to visit my mother and she phoned me on the train to find out when I’d arrive at King’s Cross.’
Lottie shrugs to show she’s not interested in the details of my life. ‘He needed somewhere to pose as Cupid. So after talking to – Jess – he had the idea to set up at the station and see if you recognised him when you got off the train.’ She smiles faintly. ‘Kill two birds with one stone if you like.’
‘How do you know all this?’ I ask. ‘Did Erik tell you?’
Lottie slumps back on the sofa and stares up at the ceiling.
‘He stayed at yours that night and I didn’t see him for weeks. When he finally came round, he told me about you and begged me to give him another chance. He swore to me you were just a meaningless fling.’
‘And you took him back?’
She lifts her head. ‘Why look so shocked? I bet you gave him a few “second chances”.’
I sigh heavily because of course, she’s right.
She folds her arms tightly across her stomach. ‘When I saw you that time in the High Street, in the car with your friend, I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to warn you what you’d got yourself into. But I chickened out.’
I absorb this in silence.
I’m beginning to realise that Lottie and I are in exactly the same boat.
‘So what excuse has he given you for his latest absence?’ I ask at last. ‘He told me he’s visiting his family in Devon. God knows what he’s really up to.’
Lottie swallows hard. ‘He was with me.’
I stare at her, unable to speak.
‘We were on a drama course in Bath. We stayed with my brother and his wife most of the time.’
‘So you were with him all the time?’
She nods.
‘And you were there … together? As a couple?’
‘Yes.’
Angry tears well up.
I can’t bloody believe he told me so many lies; made so many excuses … and I swallowed the lot!
My chest feels tight. I need to get out of this stuffy flat, breathe some fresh air.
I turn at the door. ‘Who’s Larissa?’
‘Oh, some tart who works at his local,’ she says, with a dismissive wave of her hand. ‘He says it’s finished. It never meant anything.’
I stare at Lottie. We are linked, she and I. Erik has duped us both.
But there’s one vital difference between us.
‘You’re going to stay with him, aren’t you?’ I say sadly. ‘Even after all that’s happened.’
She sniffs and tosses her head. ‘No, of course not. I’m not that pathetic!’
But she can’t fool me. I can see it in her eyes because I have been down that road myself. She will keep on taking Erik back, making excuses for him, until she finally comes to the realisation that having him will only ever make her miserable.
I pull the door behind me and clatter down the stairs, suddenly desperate to put as much distance between us as possible.