Chapter Seven

21 December, 8.30 a.m.

The Christmas hamper, emblazoned with the logo of a famous London department store, was huge. So big that the delivery man staggered a little under the weight as he pulled it loose from the back of his van.

‘Where do you want it, Miss?’ He threw a dubious glance at the cottage at the end of the row, shrouded in scaffolding, with a pile of rust-stained radiators stacked in the tiny front garden. The builders had already begun to strip the dark grey Welsh slates from the roof.

‘Um.’ Lori was distracted by the sight of her sister’s name on the prominent gift tag. What’s going on? ‘Can you put it in the back of my car?’ She gestured to the open boot of her Fiesta. There was just about room. Remembering her manners, she added, ‘Please.’ It wasn’t the poor man’s fault that the sight of Lark’s name sent her heart somewhere down to her boots. The delivery man grinned. ‘Right here, next to the box from Carluccio’s?’

‘Er, yes, thanks.’ Lori bent to shift the other box further into a corner.

Why does your family think you need all this food?

To be fair, the present from her parents and her brother, as well as the edible Italian goodies, included a cashmere sweater in a soft pearly grey. In a spirit of goodwill – it really was a lovely sweater – Lori was assuming her mother had chosen it because she remembered that it would echo the colour of her elder daughter’s eyes. It was two sizes too big, but that meant she could get plenty of layers on underneath it. Although when the cottage had its new heating system …

‘Sign here, please, Miss.’ The delivery man was holding out an electronic pad. Lori scrawled something that didn’t look anything like her name on the small screen, but the man seemed happy with it. He clambered back into the cab of his van and made off down the little cul-de-sac as Lori leaned into the back of her car to look at the tag again. The hamper was definitely from her sister and with a message she hadn’t noticed. ‘Hope you both enjoy it.’ Both? Was Lark assuming she was still with Frazer?

‘Not going to starve then?’ Lori jumped as Paulie walked past from his truck, with a couple of lengths of copper pipe over his shoulder. He nodded towards the boot with its cardboard boxes.

‘No,’ Lori agreed. She looked doubtfully at the hampers. ‘Not that I’m going to be able to do anything much with them until you’ve finished and I get my kitchen back. I hope there’s nothing perishable in there.’

‘Nah. It’s all Christmas puddings and fancy jam and tea and stuff, isn’t it? My Mam has one every year, pays into it weekly at the club. Not a posh one like that though.’ He grinned. ‘Think there’s any booze in it?’

‘Possibly. It seems to be heavy enough.’ She was looking for any sign of a list of contents when a yell from the cottage made her turn. Mike, the lanky apprentice, was standing in the doorway, peering out from under the scaffolding.

‘You ready to turn the water off, boss?’

‘Yeah. I’ll be there now, in a minute.’ Paulie put the pipes down carefully, so they lay along the edge of the path. He rubbed his hands down his overalls. ‘You about set to go?’

‘Just need to get Griff in his basket and I’ll be out of your hair until the end of the week.’

‘No problem.’ Paulie grinned. ‘Last time I saw Griff he was asleep on the roof of the old privy, down the garden. Will you be okay to get him in the box or should I send Mike along?’

Lori shook her head. ‘Thanks, but Griff will be fine. He’s the most placid cat I’ve ever come across.’

Lori was coaxing the boot of the Fiesta to shut over the unexpected gift when a large black car nosed its way into the narrow road in front of the row of cottages and parked behind Paulie’s truck. A big black car with a lot of chrome and an expensive looking shine to it. Lori’s heart-rate picked up as the back door opened.

‘Lori!’ Lark was as beautiful as ever. Cascading blonde curls, eyes like a startled doe and the pink and white complexion of a porcelain doll. Lori stifled a small sigh. It wasn’t that she envied her younger sister her looks or her lifestyle. She was quite happy with her own life, thank you, but when she was around Skylark … she had a brief flashback – herself, age fifteen. Their mother, standing in the kitchen looking up at her. ‘Your build is more … athletic, darling.’ If athletic is wide shoulders and small boobs, then athletic is what I am.

Her sister’s cream wool coat had a deep fur collar that was almost the same colour as Lark’s platinum hair. Lori knew for a fact that her sister had a little help with that. Her natural colour was closer to Lori’s dirty blond. The coat swept dramatically all the way to the floor, a vision straight off the Russian steppes.

Is someone casting for a remake of Anna Karenina?

Automatically Lori checked behind her sister, expecting a small figure to be scrambling out of the back of the car. The implications of the hamper were suddenly becoming clear. Oh no! Not now.

‘Darling.’ Lark flowed forward to engulf Lori in a blast of expensive scent, and then leaned back, holding her at arm’s length to survey the worn tracksuit and washed-out fleece, with the broken zip, that Lori was wearing to move furniture. ‘Oh sweetie, what are we going to do with you?’ She tilted her head up, face turning tragic. ‘And you’ve been cutting your own hair again.’

‘My hair is fine.’

Something that felt distressingly like panic was building in Lori’s chest. She breathed deep, trying to make it evaporate.

It worked.

Sort of.

‘Lark, why are you here?’

‘To wish you a happy Christmas, of course.’ Strangely the easy response wasn’t doing anything for the panic. It was rising again. Just say no. Lori stepped back, out of her sister’s embrace. And breathe.

The doe eyes, which missed nothing, unless they wanted to miss it, had noted the hamper. ‘Oh good, my present arrived. I have a few little things—’ She waved towards the car that had brought her. ‘But we can get them out in a moment. Maybe someone could help my driver …’ She paused, as if expecting a flunky to appear at her elbow – possibly in uniform. Lori stifled a grin as, almost on cue, Gareth, Paulie’s plasterer and tiler edged past them, behind Lark. He raised his eyebrows and grinned at Lori before sauntering up the path, heading for the sounds of hammering and Radio One that were coming from the back of the house. Lark, looking put out, turned her attention to the cottage as if she’d only just noticed the scaffolding. ‘Darling, what are you doing?’

‘New roof, new heating, new flooring. After the flood,’ Lori explained, knowing from the blank look that her sister remembered nothing of the storm that had swept through the village, ripping tiles from the roof and sending water down through the back of the house and up from a blocked drainage ditch two fields away. The new kitchen and two new windows were add-ons that Lori could just about afford, as the builders were on site, but she wasn’t going into that much detail.

Lark had already lost interest.

‘That man …’ She waved her hand to the side of the house, where Gareth had disappeared, perfect eyebrows drawn together in a frown and perfect mouth pouting.

Lori knew immediately what the grievance was. ‘He’s gay.’

‘Ah.’ Reassured that her powers to stun were not slipping, Lark smiled. It was like the sun coming out.

Oh no, no, no. Do not let her talk you into anything.

Her sister’s butterfly attention had returned to the scaffolding swathing the house. She surveyed it doubtfully, the hint of a frown back to disturb the unlined brow. ‘I expect it’s … er … fun. Like camping out,’ she suggested brightly, with the tiniest suggestion of concern buried in the depths of the blue eyes. Only a sister would know it was there. Oh hell. Lori took another deep breath. The panic subsided abruptly, replaced by dogged determination. Whatever it was her sister wanted, and she had her suspicions, the answer had to be no.

‘Lark,’ she asked the question again. ‘Why are you here?’

Skylark laughed, and it really did sound like the tinkling of fairy bells, as one enraptured theatre critic had declared, after witnessing Lark’s portrayal of Titania. She patted Lori’s arm. ‘To see you, of course. And Misty.’ She looked around. ‘Where is she? Where’s my little girl?’

The edges of Lori’s vision seemed to go black. It was much much worse than she’d thought. In everything she’d imagined, she’d never imagined this. Her voice, when she found it, was hoarse and scratchy. She could barely get the words out. ‘Misty isn’t here.’

‘What do you mean?’ For a split second confusion shifted across Lark’s perfect face. ‘Oh, you mean she’s with a little friend? On a play date?’ she pronounced the words carefully, and with a shade of triumph, as if they were something in a foreign language, looking down at the slim rose-gold watch adorning the equally slim wrist. ‘Look, I don’t have too much time. My plane – can we go and fetch her?’

‘Lark!’ Horror made Lori grab her sister’s shoulders. ‘Lark, it’s not a matter of a play date. Misty isn’t here. You didn’t leave your daughter with me.’