He pulls a face. “The old Collisons’ place is up for sale. Alex’s old cottage.”
I consider this. “Where Alex set up a nursery for me, and ended up taking Kiara.”
“Yeah.” He shakes his head. “It’s too weird, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter. Something else will come up.”
“I’m going to move back into Summerbourne,” I say. “Vera’s solicitor wrote to me a couple of weeks ago. She wants me to have the house after all.”
Vera is still in custody, awaiting her trial for the attempted murder of Laura. Only Edwin visits her. She continues to maintain that she knocked the stone onto Laura’s head by accident, and was then too shocked to rush down the staircase to help Joel carry Laura back to the house. She continues to insist that Dad was fit and well when she left him, that our mother committed suicide in front of her.
Joel watches me. “You okay?”
I nod.
I’m coming to terms with the idea that we might never know the true extent of Vera’s guilt or innocence. The Crown Prosecution Service has decided not to proceed with the other charges—Martin says there’s not enough evidence in the case of Dad’s fall, and really none at all in the case of our mother.
Joel’s pupils are large in the dim hallway. “Will Danny mind if she gives you the house?”
I smile. “Can you imagine Brooke living out in the sticks? He’s fine with it. And I’m going to put it in both our names anyway—if and when it ever does legally become mine.”
He dips his head closer to me. “I’d better go. I don’t want Kiara leaping in a taxi before I get to the station. Do you want to come with me?”
“No, I want to talk to Laura, actually, before anyone else gets here.”
“Okay.” He doesn’t move. His gaze slips from my eyes to my lips and back again.
“Joel,” I say. The wool of his coat over his chest is faintly damp under my hands. He runs his thumb lightly across my cheek.
“Seraphine.”
We kiss then. I’m still getting used to this delicious feeling of being wanted by him. Like I said, I haven’t seen him often enough in the last three months. He claims he’s been in love with me for as long as he can remember, and whenever he says this, I tell him I don’t believe him, and then he smiles his slow smile at me, and then I forget that it might not be true and decide to believe him after all.
The clock chimes, and we pull apart.
“I have a better idea for where you could live in the village,” I say.
He laughs softly. “Oh yes?”
“At Summerbourne. With me.”
The laugh is still on his lips, and I kiss him again. We’re interrupted by the kitchen door opening, and Laura exclaiming, “Oh, excuse me,” before she ducks back inside.
Joel draws back, smiling. “I really should go.”
“You’ll think about it?”
“I’ll think about it,” he says.
I stand for a couple of minutes after he’s gone, waiting for my heart rate to settle, trying to synchronize it with the solid ticking of the clock. When I enter the kitchen, Edwin is shifting pans around on the cooktop and waves a spatula at me.
“Seph, for goodness’ sake, can you let Laura get to the cloakroom if you’ve finished canoodling with Joel?” He grins as he turns back to the stove.
There’s something in particular I want to ask Laura about, and I examine her in brief glances once she returns to the kitchen. She makes small talk with Edwin about the meal he’s preparing, but she checks her watch frequently, and I suspect she’s more nervous of hearing the doorbell ring than I am. She offers to do some washing up, but I step in front of the sink, blocking her access.
“Let me show you the Winterbourne garden,” I say. “Before the others arrive. There’s something I think might interest you.”
We grab our coats, and she looks curiously into the other rooms as we pass them on our way to the back door, but she doesn’t ask any questions. We shove our hands into our pockets as we stroll down the long central garden path, past the winter-flowering cherry trees with their frilly pink blossoms. Autumn colors linger in the borders, and it’s remarkably peaceful away from the traffic on the street.
“Thank you for this, Seraphine,” Laura says. “For inviting me here.”
