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Charlotte

After Billy had been found, the rehearsal proved to be a big success. Most of the kids remembered their lines, and the parents who came to watch seemed suitably impressed. Billy Toad, in his elevated role, was particularly good, carrying on the confidence that Jacob and Mark had given him. Charlotte tried to call Jacob to ask if he was free for lunch, but she couldn’t get a connection. The weather had been playing havoc with everything digital, so she gave up and headed home, sure she would see him later.

Clive dropped Harry off at three o’clock, hanging around for a few minutes for Charlotte to cheekily grill him about Kelly before he managed to escape, claiming another appointment. Charlotte called Kelly on her landline, but Kelly was on shift, so getting a proper low-down on her best friend’s new relationship would have to wait until later.

With no school for a couple of weeks, she got into the Christmas spirit by making some gingerbread men using one of Grandma’s old recipes. When she had finished, she set them out to cool and took Harry out into the garden for a play in the snow. When they both came back in, she sat down and shared a gingerbread man with the dog, who was less impressed by the taste than she was.

Then she noticed the locket James had given her on the kitchen table where she had left it earlier, having tried to get it to open.

She picked it up, then found a magnifying glass in a drawer and examined it more closely. Perhaps it wasn’t supposed to open. It was obviously old, but she was sure she could see a crack in the seal between the front and back of the star, so she got another pin and tried to wrestle it into the gap. Unsuccessful, next she tried using a knife. Finally, wondering if there was some way she could loosen it, she boiled the kettle and dropped the locket into the hot water.

A couple of minutes later it was scalding hot, but using a tissue to hold it, she tried again to push the pin into the crack, and this time the locket popped open.

Delighted at her success, she found herself staring at two tiny pictures, encased behind circles of glass. The faces of a man and a woman, seemingly from some time in the distant past. James’s parents. Unsure why he had given it to her, she fetched the magnifying glass again and peered closer, trying to make out the pictures in more detail. There was something about the man in particular that seemed familiar—

When she realised, she nearly dropped the locket. The man bore a striking resemblance not to James, but to Jacob. And the woman too….

‘Huh.’

She shook her head, disbelieving. These weren’t James’s parents … they were Jacob’s. So why had he given it to her? Had he intended for—

She frowned. He couldn’t have. He wasn’t surely that cruel.

Fetching her phone, she tried to call Jacob, but he didn’t answer. Despairing, she called the tearoom instead, wondering if he was working this evening. When Marjorie answered and told her that Jacob was off, she ended up blurting out her fears to a woman she hardly knew.

Marjorie listened to her, and then chuckled. ‘Do you know what I’d do, if I were you?’ she asked. ‘Have you got a pen and paper?’

Twenty minutes later, Charlotte’s little car pulled up outside a line of terraces on a snowy street just outside Brentwell. It had been a tough drive in the snow, the car slipping and sliding, but luckily there weren’t many other cars to worry about. Charlotte checked the address on the piece of paper, then walked up to the front door and pressed the doorbell.

When the door opened and Charlotte looked at the older woman standing there, she was left in no doubt that she was right. She smiled as the woman frowned at her, then said, ‘I’m so sorry to stop round like this. Are you Julie?’

‘Yes, I am. And you…?’

‘I’m….’ Charlotte took a deep breath and gave the woman her most welcoming smile, the one she reserved for the kids who were always late due to hardworking parents not having time to drop them off at school, the ones she most wanted to forgive. ‘I’m Charlotte. I’m Jacob’s … girlfriend. I think I have something that belongs to you. Is it okay if I come in for a moment?’

Julie smiled. ‘Well, it’s lovely to meet you, dear. A little unexpected … but come on in. I’ll put the kettle on.’

A few minutes later, they were sitting at Julie’s kitchen table. Julie sniffed as she turned the locket over in her hands. ‘I never thought I’d ever see this again. Colin stole everything. I assumed he pawned it and put the money into James’s career. I’d kept it all hidden away but he found it all in the end. Perhaps he thought I’d never notice.’

‘I don’t know why James gave it to me.’

‘Oh, I know exactly why,’ Julie said, her voice turning hard. ‘I used to show this to Jacob, to prove to him that his father and I were once in love. Things didn’t work out and he left when Jacob was a baby, but for a while….’ She smiled. ‘For a while things were good. Jacob used to look at this all the time. After the fire … almost everything was destroyed. This is perhaps the only photo of Jacob’s father that’s left.’

‘And James gave it to me knowing that Jacob would recognise it?’

‘I’m certain of it. Just another one of his wedges, driven between people. James’s specialty was turning people against each other. I see nothing much has changed.’

‘But he seemed so genuine.’

‘His charm is like his magic, it’s easy to believe. He sent me a box of cheeses and crackers. I was impressed. I guessed it was from him, but the moment I knew it was from him was when I found the label at the bottom, from last year. An old hamper, perhaps something he’d been given by a fan and had left lying around. Everything in it was out of date.’

‘Jacob said he overheard James reading out a letter to you, asking for your forgiveness.’

‘Well, if he did, he never sent it to me. Jacob told me about that, too. He told me all about it. James knew he was coming and played him, that’s all. I wondered if there was some way that James had known, and I wracked my brains. I remember Jacob saying that he was admiring James’s car. I looked it up on the internet. It’s one of those posh new types that has a security alert. It has cameras that switch on if anyone approaches, and they can send an alert to your phone. Clever, really. James must have known Jacob was coming and set him up. You have to remember, he’s a master at it. That’s what he does for a living.’

‘I have one question, though.’ Charlotte tapped the side of her cup, wondering if she would have the nerve to ask. ‘I don’t want to sound intrusive … but I tried to find your court case online. Nothing came up.’