Chapter 8

On a how-great-are-you-feeling scale, Flynn was currently scoring a two. Yesterday, thanks to Herculean efforts, he’d managed to arrive back from his wine-buying trip to Australia in the nick of time to attend Joel and Evie’s wedding which then hadn’t gone ahead. Joel’s solution to the problem had been to drink vast quantities of Jack Daniel’s and vintage Taittinger, and he’d felt obliged to keep the jilted bridegroom company. Which meant this morning he was suffering the killer combination of both full-on jet lag and a champagne hangover.

But yesterday something else had happened that was even more astonishing: he’d seen Lara again. Unbelievably. And for all of sixty seconds before—irony of ironies—she’d disappeared once more.

But the memory of it wasn’t going to go away in a hurry. The image of her had burned itself into his brain, taken his breath away. There she’d been, with that glossy dark brown hair falling to her shoulders, some of it curling in and some out, just as it had always done. And those incredible silver-gray eyes were the same too, beneath defined dark brows. She was looking better than ever. The figure-hugging red silk dress wasn’t something she would have worn in the old days, but she was thirty-five now and had carried it off with panache. She still had the best legs he’d ever seen too.

Flynn knew he had to see her again. Definitely. And no, he wasn’t expecting to find her here today, but all he needed was an address.

Flynn rang the doorbell and waited. He’d never been welcome at this house. The last time he’d done this, Lara’s horrific father had told him to clear off and make sure he didn’t come back. That had been eighteen years ago.

He heard movement inside the house, followed by the metallic jangle of locks being unfastened. Finally the door creaked open.

Janice Carson, older and grayer, met his gaze. If she recognized him, she gave no sign of it.

“What do you want?”

“Hi there, I’m hoping you can help me.” Flynn flashed her a smile. “I’m trying to contact Lara and—”

“I can’t help you.” Her mouth pursed like a cat’s bottom; she recognized him all right.

“Well, maybe I could speak to your husband?”

“He can’t help you either.” Without warning, she slammed the door shut. More clanking ensued. That was that, then. Unequivocally locked out.

Flynn headed down the drive. This was crazy. Reaching the pavement, he turned back and surveyed the house. A downstairs curtain twitched, signaling that they were keeping an eye on him.

Talk about frustrating. Where was Lara?

“Hello! Problem?”

He swung round to see who’d spoken. It was the next-door neighbor, semi-obscured by greenery. Moving along the pavement until he was out of Janice’s sight, he saw her properly; in her midforties, short, and voluptuous with friendly brown eyes and hennaed hair, she was wearing gardening gloves and carrying pruning shears.

“I was just hoping for a word with Mr. Carson.”

“Oh dear.” The neighbor stopped deadheading roses. “I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.”

“Clearly. His wife just shut the door in my face.”

“Mr. Carson died,” said the woman. “Let me see, when was it? About six weeks ago now.”

“Oh.” God, died. He hadn’t been expecting that.

“I would say that explains why she shut the door on you.” The woman leaned closer, her tone conspiratorial. “But to be honest, she’s never been the friendly type.”

Flynn nodded in agreement. “I knew her before. Many years ago.”

“You’re the skier chap, aren’t you?” The neighbor was eyeing him curiously.

“I am.” Another nod. “I’m just trying to contact Mr. Carson’s daughter. She hasn’t lived here for a long time, but I bumped into her yesterday and—”

“Oh yes, I heard about her! I’m Jacqueline Ann Cumiskey, by the way.” Whisking off a glove, the woman reached across the hedge and offered a soft, elegantly manicured hand in greeting. “She turned up at the funeral. I wasn’t able to go to the service, but I popped next door to pay my respects afterward. Everyone was talking about the daughter. I was dying to see her, but she didn’t come back to the house. Bit of a family feud, by the sound of things. Well, you may know more about it than I do.” She was evidently intrigued, longing to uncover a few more salient details.

“Look, could I ask you to do me a favor?” It was a long shot but what other choice did he have? Flynn took a business card out of his wallet. “Mrs. Carson doesn’t want to help me. But if you do happen to hear anything, or if Lara turns up again, could you give me a call and let me know?”

“Of course I can do that!” Jacqueline Ann Cumiskey’s eyes sparkled as she reached for the card and slid it into her shirt pocket. “No problem at all.”

So that was twice Lara had come back to Bath recently, the first time for her father’s funeral and then again for Evie’s wedding-that-never-was. Where were they now? Could they still be hiding out somewhere in the city? At the thought of seeing her again, properly, this time, Flynn felt a kick of adrenaline in his chest. This wasn’t about Joel and Evie and yesterday’s debacle. This was about Lara.

He unlocked his car and nodded at the next-door neighbor. “Thanks.”

***

Derwentwater stretched out ahead of them, cobalt blue and glittering in the sunlight like a lavishly sequinned quilt. Evie stopped walking, collapsed onto the grass, and filled her lungs with fresh clean air. How, how had she never visited the Lake District before? And now it was almost time to leave. She turned her head slowly to take in the spectacle of the view, the islands dotting the lake, and the fells surrounding it. She’d learned their names now. Cat Bells and Black Crag to the west, Castlerigg Fell to the east. And over there, rising up beyond Keswick, Skiddow. What a stunning part of the world this was, even if exploring the fells and mountains was giving her body more of a workout than it had experienced in years.

“Muscles still aching?”

“Just a bit.” Evie stretched her legs and arched her back.

Next to her, Gigi grinned. “That’s because you’re so old.”

“Mean girl.” She aimed a foot at Gigi’s ankle.

“See those deer up on the fells over there?” Having become her tour guide over the course of the last week, Gigi pointed them out.

“Yes, dear.”

It was Gigi’s turn to give her a playful nudge. Evie unfastened her water bottle and took a drink. “You’re going to miss all this, you know.”

“But it’s not going anywhere. It’ll still be here when I come back and visit.”

This was true. What a revelation Lara’s daughter was turning out to be. Tilting her head sideways, Evie studied Gigi’s profile, the intelligent eyes, Lara’s nose, those high cheekbones dusted with freckles, and that neat, determined chin. Meeting her had certainly taken her mind off last week’s farcical events.

Not that it was so astonishing to discover that Lara had a daughter. But discovering her age and who her father was had hit Evie for six.

Lara had relayed the whole story to her in the car as they’d completed the last leg of the journey from Bath to Keswick. Finally her disappearance made complete sense. Almost nineteen years on, Evie’s heart had gone out to her friend. Sixteen, pregnant, and cast out by her family—for goodness sake, it was like something out of Dickens.

And then, in no time at all, she’d been meeting the end result. Gigi Carson, with her mad freckles, dancing silver-gray eyes, and insatiable curiosity. This wasn’t a girl to be brushed off or ignored; if she had a question, she liked it to be answered. She was tall and long-limbed, her straight toffee-brown hair swished from side to side as she talked and she had one of those laughs that every now and again ended in a comedy snort. Evie had been captivated from the word go. Apart from the snorty thing, it was like having the teenage Lara back again.

Interspersed with spooky flashes of Flynn.

“What?” Gigi was watching her. “What are you thinking about now?”

She was also scarily intuitive.

“I’m thinking about your father. In a couple of days he’s going to find out you exist.”

“Lucky him.” Pulling a fat blade of grass out of the ground, Gigi stretched it between her thumbs. She blew against it, producing a long quacking sound like a lovelorn duck.

“Are you nervous?”

“No.”

Was that really true? Evie marveled at such self-confidence. How must it feel to be so supremely comfortable in your own skin?

“Don’t get me wrong, I want it to go well,” Gigi went on. “But I can’t change me, can I? If he decides he doesn’t like me, there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not going to pretend to be someone different.”

“Of course he’ll like you,” said Evie.

“He might not. He might only want the kind of daughter who’s mad on physics and museums and trips to the theater to see plays by Shakespeare. Or,” Gigi added as Evie opened her mouth to tell her just how unlikely that was, “he might decide he doesn’t want any kind of daughter at all.”

“Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t do that.”

“You don’t know, though. Or he might pretend to be pleased, just to get over the embarrassing bit, then back off a couple of weeks later. That happens quite a lot.” Gigi nodded sagely. “I’ve watched Jerry Springer.”

“I don’t think that’ll happen.” Evie watched a windsurfer scud across the surface of the lake, veering perilously close to a rowing boat.

Gigi shrugged. “But if it does, it won’t be my fault. So that’s why I’m not going to waste time getting nervous. How about you?”

“Me? Oh, I’m definitely nervous.”

“About going back? Why?”

She sounded so genuinely puzzled. “You’re eighteen. I’m thirty-four. And you’re brave,” said Evie. “I’m not.”

“Come on,” Gigi protested. “How can you say that, after what you did? That was an amazingly brave thing to do.”

“It was. But it was pretty much the first brave thing I’ve ever done in my life. And it’s OK while I’m up here, but it’s not going to be so easy once we’re back. Everyone’s going to know. I don’t know what’ll happen with my job. It’s just… scary.”

“No, it isn’t.” Gigi jumped up and held out a hand to pull her to her feet. “Anyway, you’ll have us. Even if no one else in the whole of Bath is speaking to you, we still will.” She paused then added mischievously, “Well, so long as you pay us.”