She read the note on the flowers:
To Second Chances.
Anna stared at the words on the card for a long time before, with difficulty, she stood and started to look for a door.
Chapter 33
Instructions for Anna
Blue is meowing loudly onthe stairs.
He wants out, having finished the meager portion I put down in the kitchen and desperate to try his luck elsewhere. I take a breath. It’s now or never.
I hope he’ll make a beeline straight back to Anna, especially after that tin of tuna she gave him yesterday.
She’s clever—she must have given him something the first time, too, knowing he’d keep coming back for more.
I take off his collar and head to the kitchen; he follows fast on my tail.
I grab a pencil and tear a scrap from a pad, scrawl on it, and tightly fold it before taping it to the back of the tracker disc, just hidden from view.
Instructions for Anna.
Blue looks up at me, impatiently, his meow strong and insistent.
“Right, young man,” I tell him. He stares at me with mild interest, hopeful for more food.
“I need you to do something for me, Blue. Can you do that?”
He meows, whipping around in tight circles, burbling in anticipation.
I bend and secure the collar, with difficulty, as he continues to weave around. Once the collar is secure I open the back door, and he’s away into the bushes in three long, bounding leaps.
On my phone, I watch the small blue dot of the tracker blink a route already forming. And now I wait.
I pop on the kettle to make a tea, and that is when I hear a ruckus coming from out on the street: raised voices, the clatter of something hitting the ground.
I head straight for the front door. Across the road, a few houses down, an estate agent is trying to hammer aFor Salesign in front of Richard’s expansive villa while Greg is shouting at and baiting him. The estate agent, clearly harassed, drops the sign again, the wood clattering down onto the tarmac.
A minor scuffle ensues when Greg tries to physically grab the sign from the agent, a well-built young man in his late twenties. The pair briefly tussle, the younger man easily winning.
Greg falls to the ground, then quickly bursts up, finger pointed, legal threats issuing forth. It would be funny if the power dynamics weren’t so grossly off and if Greg weren’t quite so angry. I find myself hoping that he is Simon, hoping I find the right house and it is his.
Marina and Chris are also standing in their open doorway, watching, Chris’s hand protectively resting on Marina’s shoulder. They are too invested in the scene to notice me. But up the street Arabella spots me, our eyes locking, and she shrugs as if to say, “No idea.” It looks like she was unloading her car when the argument broke out, her boot still open. Daylesford Farm bags hang from each of her hands, and I realize she’s gone to and returned from a Saturday morning trip across the breadth of London in the time it’s taken me to get up and feed the cat.
I wave at her and she smiles back, clearly as keen to be friends as she was the day she came over. She gestures with one laden arm for me to join her.
Across the street, I notice that Chris is staring at me now, deeply suspicious, which is frankly ironic, given whatever is going on in his house.I’m on your side,I want to shout. Instead, I give Arabella a thumbs-up, then pop back inside and grab my house keys.
When I lock the front door, Marina has disappeared back inside her house and Chris is out on the street, attempting to talk Greg down.
The sign is now up outside Richard’s house, the estate agent pulling away in his logoed car. I wonder why he’s selling. His Bentleyisn’t in the drive, so I suppose he must be in Switzerland or Tuscany with the mystery wife, lucky him. Lucky her. Either way, I doubt they care a jot about whatever it is that has made Greg apoplectic with rage.
Perhaps Greg wanted to buy the property from them directly. He seems to be treating this area of London like his own mini–Monopoly board, with himself in the role of angry little top-hat man.
Arabella pulls open her front door before I can raise my hand to knock.
“Welcome, welcome,” she trills, stepping aside for me to enter. The hallway is spacious and suitably chaotic for a family of five. Raincoats have been haphazardly thrown on pegs, a few having even fallen into a heap on the Persian rug beneath, while tiny Crocs and sandals are piled higgledy-piggledy under the hall bench.
