The knocking came again. There was someone at the door. I had no idea who, and I didn’t care. I’d cling to anyone like a life raft in that moment.
I calmed my breathing, quickly threw on some clothes and headed downstairs.
CHAPTER 28
Through the mottled glass in the door was a silhouette I didn’t immediately recognise. I peeled the door open, chain still on, and peered out.
Maggie—or who I assumed was called Maggie—from Maggie’s Café was on my doorstep.
“Alright, hen,” she said without a smile.
“Oh, hi.”
How did she know where I lived? I wondered if she’d come to formally accuse me of planting all those flowers around the village. This is a citizen’s arrest! I am charging you with the crime of grand illicit gardening. Anything you say or think or might think or might possibly be perceived to have thought will be used against you in a court of your own head.
Parked behind my car on the driveway was a muddy, navy flatbed truck with the hardware store’s name along the side and a learner’s ‘L’ stuck in the windshield. Rowan was examining my smashed windscreen and politely ignoring the vomit next to the front wheel. He spotted me looking and waved.
Oh God. There’s no hiding it now.
I undid the chain.
It was startling to be visited. By someone from the village. At this house. I didn’t know what to say, who to be. The house and the village had been two separate realities to me. Having someone from there here felt like universes colliding, like when you see your police-recommended therapist at the big supermarket on your exodus out of town.
“Sorry to bother you”—she squinted inside the house—“but Viv said you left this at the pub last night.”
She held out a tartan scarf.
“Viv?”
“Aye, Viv. Owns The Curtyard. Loves a zebra.”
“Oh, right.”
“Anyway, I thought you’d come by the café this morning, but when you didn’t Ro offered to drive me over on my way home so I could drop it off. And now I have.”
She pushed the tartan scarf toward me.
“That isn’t mine,” I said.
Maggie’s face somehow found a way to be even less smiley.
“Really? She swore it was yours.”
I took it from her. I recognised it now. The last time I’d seen it, it had been tied over my neighbour’s eyes as she aimed a hoop.
“Oh, this belongs to…”
Definitely not a ghost then. Unless ghosts go to the pub. In the middle of the day.
“You alright, hen?” Maggie took a step back. “You’ve gone awfully pale.”
I didn’t know what question to ask so I asked them all.
“Were you there last night? At the pub? Did you see her?”
I prepared myself to hear Maggie go on about her being the ‘sweetest thing’ or a ‘good laugh’.
“No. Who’re we talking about?”
