Chapter 18

Lara was in Superdrug, trying to choose a new roll-on deodorant and sniffing her way through all the different kinds, because how could you buy one without wanting to know what your underarms were going to smell like?

God, though, so much choice. So much. Waterlily and Mint. Silkflower and Mandarin. Passionfruit and Pink Pepper… that one sounded like an hors d’oeuvre…

Her phone was ringing. She fished it out of her bag and saw Flynn’s name flash up. “Hello?”

“Hi. I just called round to the house and no one’s in. Where are you?”

His voice still had the ability to make her pulse quicken; the novelty hadn’t worn off yet.

“What are you, our parole officer?” Assuming by “you” he meant the two of them, Lara said, “Gigi’s gone to get her hair cut. She must have switched her phone off.”

“I wasn’t asking about Gigi. It’s you I’m after.” Oo-er, he definitely didn’t mean that the way it sounded.

“I’m shopping.” She put the other deodorants back on the shelf and went for Passionfruit and Pink Pepper, dropping it into her basket alongside the exfoliating scrub and razors. Oh, the glamour. Hopefully Flynn would be picturing her wafting through Jolly’s buying glamorous underwear and designer shoes.

As if.

“In town? Can we meet up? How about at the Moon and Sixpence in fifteen minutes?”

Lara checked her watch; it was midday. “OK, but I have to be somewhere by one. Why do you want to see me? Is it about Gigi?” As she said it, her stomach tightened with fear; was he tiring of his daughter already? Did he feel overwhelmed by her full-on enthusiasm? Had it seemed like a good idea at the time, but the actual reality of being landed with her was turning out to be too much of a responsibility for—

“Yes, I do need to talk to you about Gigi.” Flynn paused and fear spiraled into maternal outrage; if he dared to utter just one word of criticism… “But this is mainly about you.”

Lara made her way up past the Roman baths, thronged with tourists. The Moon and Sixpence was on Milsom Place. She bagged the last empty table outside in the private courtyard and sat down to wait. Flynn would be here in a few minutes. Damn, her underarms felt a bit sticky, but if she were to pay a visit to the ladies’ someone else might come along and grab the table.

OK, no problem, she could do this. Just to be on the safe side, Lara waited for the waitress to disappear inside before sneaking the deodorant out of her bag and surreptitiously slipping it up under her top. Left arm, done. OK, now swap over. Right arm…

“Hello.”

Bugger, caught in the act. Trust Flynn to be early. She chucked the lid into her handbag and left the roll-on wedged under her arm. Not ideal, but better than him seeing what she’d been up to.

“Hi, you’re here!” Now she could escape to the ladies’; keeping her right arm clamped to her side, Lara rose to her feet. Awkwardly, Flynn thought she was doing it to greet him with a cheek kiss. She experienced an involuntary frisson as his mouth brushed the side of her face, then felt his hand on her shoulder, gently guiding her back into her seat.

“I am. There was a parking space right outside. You’re looking smart.”

In honor of her upcoming interview she was wearing a white jersey top and a charcoal pencil skirt. He looked smart too, in his dark suit. Was Flynn the kind of man for whom parking spaces magically materialized wherever he went? Lara watched him as the waitress came rushing over.

“Drink?” said Flynn.

“No, thanks. Just coffee.”

“Two coffees, please.”

The waitress was visibly, effortlessly charmed by his smile.

“Go on then,” Lara prompted when she’d left them to it. “What’s this about Gigi?”

He heard the tension in her voice and looked surprised. “My God, relax. What are you expecting me to say?”

“I don’t know. I just want you to tell me.”

“I thought it was best to check with you first, in case you have other plans. But if you don’t, I’ve spoken to the Grays and it’s fine by them. We’d like to offer Gigi a job.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t been expecting that. “At the wine merchants?”

“No, at the circus.” Flynn nodded. “Yes. Not full time. Probably thirty hours a week. How does that sound?”

“Um, good.”

He frowned. “Are you OK? You look kind of… stiff. Have you done something to your neck?”

It was hard to relax with a roll-on deodorant clenched under your arm like an alternative version of pass-the-orange. Lara shifted in her seat. “I’m fine. I thought you were going to say something else.”

“Like what?”

“Like would it be OK if you took a step back, you’ve done your stint with Gigi, she knows who you are now, can you just get on with your own life?”

“You seriously think I’d say that?”

“I don’t know! How would I? All I know is this is my daughter we’re talking about and it’s my job to protect her,” said Lara. “And that’s something I’ll do until the day I die.”

Flynn said, “She’s my daughter too.”

“Fathers walk away from their kids all the time.”

“Sometimes mothers do too.”

“Not me.”

“Nor me.” He shook his head before they went any further. “This is crazy. We’re on the same side here. Based on no grounds whatsoever, you thought I wanted to opt out of having anything more to do with Gigi. But that isn’t true, so that means there’s nothing to argue about.”

“OK.” He had a point. But he also had no idea how easy it was to fear the worst. Lara forced herself to relax, while still unobtrusively keeping her right arm clamped to her side. Actually, now would be a good time to nip inside and get rid of the roll-on…

“So that’s that sorted,” said Flynn. “If you’re fine with it, I’ll go ahead and talk to Gigi. Now, the other thing,” he announced just as she was about to push back her chair. “The main reason I wanted to see you.”

“Is it good news or bad news?” Either way, she was on her way to the loo.

“Good news, I hope.”

When had she ever been able to resist good news? Lara stayed put. There was something about the way he was saying it. “Go on.”

“I’ve found your mum’s friend.”

She stared at him. “You can’t have.”

“Ah, but I have.” Flynn was smiling, evidently pleased with himself.

“How?”

“I’m quite clever.”

“You’re not David Blaine though. I don’t see that it’s possible. How do you know it’s her?”

“I emailed her this morning. Twenty minutes ago she emailed me back. And I did have some help,” he added. “That was a long list we had to work through. It took a while to narrow it down.”

“But…?” Lara was stunned; she couldn’t begin to imagine how he’d managed it. She sat back as the waitress returned with their tray of coffee.

Flynn waited until they were alone again before saying in a low voice, “I have a friend in the police force. They can trace people through their credit card details.”

Lara’s eyes widened. “Isn’t that illegal?”

“Probably. But it’s all in a good cause.”

“And that’s how you found her?”

“It’s how we found a lot of people who weren’t her.” Flynn took out his iPhone and began tapping away at it.

“Are you calling her now? Don’t!” yelped Lara. “It’s too soon, I’m not ready!”

“Calm down, I’m just showing you the email. I Googled the name and found a blog. And the details seemed to fit, so I started reading, and then there was a mention of having once lived in Bath, so I sent her a message asking if she’d ever known someone called Barbara Carson…”

“And she said yes?”

Flynn nodded and passed his phone over so she could see the reply for herself. “Her name’s Jo Finnegan. She lives up in the hills outside Barcelona.”

Jo Finnegan. Possibly Josie or Joanne. It still didn’t ring a bell but that was because she’d never really known the name in the first place. And it no longer mattered because Flynn had found her anyway. Lara gazed at the email on the screen and saw that Jo Finnegan hadn’t just said yes, she’d bellowed:

YES I DID KNOW BARBARA!!! And I remember who you are too—how amazing to hear from you after all this time! Longing to know why you’re contacting me and assuming—hoping—it has something to do with Barbara’s daughter. (Good news, preferably.) Please let me know at once. Sorry, my mobile is kaput but send another message and I will reply asap.

Very best wishes, Jo.

Lara exhaled. How amazing. Against all the odds, he’d found her mum’s friend. Not that there was any guarantee that this woman would be able to answer any of the questions she had for her, but it would still be wonderful to contact another person who’d known her mother. As the years had gone by, she hated the sensation that her own memories were depleting, leaving her with a picture like a jigsaw with more and more pieces falling away…

“Want to see what she looks like?” Taking back the iPhone, Flynn found the blog and scrolled down. “There you go.” The photograph was small but it was recognizably her mother’s friend, a head and shoulders snapshot of a woman in her sixties with a round tanned face. No makeup but plenty of paler laughter lines fanning out from the corners of her wide-set brown eyes. A crooked nose. Wavy light-brown hair fastened up at the sides with barrettes. Big silver earrings and a generous double chin.

Did she look like the kind of person you’d want to confide your deepest, darkest secrets in? Studying her carefully, Lara thought she probably did.

God, I hope so.

She raised her gaze to Flynn and said, “Yes, I remember her face. Those eyes. Thank you.”

“No problem.”

“Did it take ages?”

“Yes. But it was worth it.”

“One minute I want to kill you,” said Lara. “The next minute, you go and do something nice.”

“Drink your coffee.” He pushed her saucer closer. “You haven’t touched it.”

“In a minute. Let me go to the loo first.” Her brain in a whirl, Lara remembered that this was what she had to do next and jumped to her feet. Sadly she’d forgotten why she was meant to be doing it and reaching for her handbag caused the glass bottle of roll-on deodorant to drop out of her top and land head first with a clatter and a splash in her coffee cup.

Noisy and messy. Plus, everyone was turning to stare. Terrific.

With admirable restraint, Flynn surveyed the scene of the accident. “Is that a… roll-on deodorant?”

“Looks like it.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Am I allowed to ask where you were keeping that thing?”

“It was under my arm, OK? I forgot it was there. What can I say? You make me nervous.” Lara hastily mopped up the mess with a napkin and handed the cup with the upended deodorant in it to the waitress who was doing her best not to smirk.

Flynn said, “Am I allowed to ask if there’s another one under the other arm?”

“No there isn’t. Because that would be ridiculous.”

He nodded gravely. “You’re right, it would.”

“Everyone’s still looking at me. Maybe we can go now.”

His mouth began to twitch. “If that’s what you want.”