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I couldn’t blame her for that, honestly.
“Right, I have to pee and leave for this meeting.” Amber put her empty dish in the sink. “Leave that. I’ll do the dishwasher when I get home,andI’ll cook us dinner when you’ve been grocery shopping.”
“I might just date you instead,” I muttered. “We have the chore split sorted.”
“Hey.” She stopped in the doorway and pointed at me. “If we’re both single at forty, you and I are going to get married and be platonic life partners. We’ll buy each other dildos for Christmas and cause drama whenever one of us brings home a guy. That’ll make them leave in the morning.”
I pursed my lips. “Fine. But no threesomes.”
“Done.”
***
Granny’s house was like walking into a warm hug for me. I’d spent so much time there growing up, almost as much as I had at Loxford House, but it felt so much more like home.
Granted, the fact that Loxford didn’t feel so much like home was because Carmen had a knack for always making me feel slightly unwelcome, but it was what it was.
I knocked three times on the front door and pushed it open. “Granny, it’s me!”
“In the kitchen!”
I shut the door behind me and walked through the hallway into her kitchen, pausing to kick my shoes off into the alcove under the stairs. “Sorry I’m late. I got stuck in some traffic on my way out of town.”
“Don’t worry about it, I figured you would. I have some lunch here.” She was wearing a dashing aqua blue shirt with cream linen trousers today, and she’d accessorised it with red and green bangles on both her wrists, not to mention her iconic spider eyelashes courtesy of half a tube of mascara.
“What is it?” I unzipped my coat. “And how was your flight back? I see you didn’t succeed in smuggling the parrot out.”
“BLTs, and no, I didn’t get the cockatiel. Although I am thinking about procuring one.” She set the sandwiches on the table and eyed me. “How did you know about that?”
“William told me,” I said nonchalantly, sitting down. “That bird despises me, and I was slightly worried you’d actually succeed in your mission.”
“Sadly not. Have you spoken about anything interesting?” she asked innocently, sitting opposite me at the table.
“Stop being nosy.”
“Never. That’s my job.”
“Mhmm. I’m sure. So how do you know the Glenrochs? I was surprised to see you there, and you never told me.”
Granny bobbed her head. “After your parents got married, your mother invited me to a few events as her plus one when your father couldn’t make it. Morag was at several of those, and we hit it off. We kept in touch all this time, and I’ve spent a few weeks with her in Scotland over the years, so she invited me to Freya’s wedding.”
“Huh. Did you ever see the rest of the family?”
“No, dear. They’ve had their issues, you know.”
“William told me.” I paused. “Did you know we were friends as kids?”
“Yes. In all honesty, Gracie, I assumed there was a reason you’d all never reconnected, and I didn’t want to pry.”
“That’s a lie. You always want to pry.”
She inclined her head in agreement. “True. But in this case, it was around the time your mum got ill, and then I simply forgot to ever bring it up. I didn’t really see the younger ones anyway, just Morag and Angus.”
I plucked a slice of tomato from my sandwich. “It’s amazing how small the world is.”
“Mm. Anyway, eat. We have something we need to talk about.”
“If it’s about my non-existent wedding to William, I don’t want to hear about it.”
