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‘Oh, I’m not even sure I’m going to go.’
‘Why not?’
‘I… I don’t think I’m ready to step on the dating carousel yet, that’s all.’
‘Well, far be it from me to say that it’s just a little bit of holiday fun!’ Ella laughed.
Millie smiled at her friend and was grateful that Ella didn’t push her for an explanation. She knew that it was the perfect time to share her story, but she wasn’t ready. Since her arrival in St Lucia, she had felt as though real life had been suspended, that she was living in an alternate dimension; one that did not include infidelity or heartache. She was enjoying being with people who saw her for who she was, not what had happened to her, and she wanted to extend that feeling for as long as possible. She knew Ella would forgive her reticence.
So, if this was another world, then why shouldn’t she have a night out with Jake? Did it matter how it turned out? They both knew that she was going back to the UK in a few days’ time so what did she have to lose?
She smiled at Ella. ‘I’ve got a lovely peach-and-cream sundress. Shall I try it on?’
‘Absolutely!’
Millie’s spirits edged up a notch and she realized she was actually looking forward to her no-strings-attached date.
Chapter Fifteen
With only three full work days left, including Friday – the scheduled completion day – Millie had to reluctantly admit that the renovations were seriously behind schedule. She had employed every technique in her armoury, every argument, every inducement, every method of persuasion she could think of to move things along. She had even resorted to baking a selection of mouth-watering French pastries to cajole the trio of artisans into upping their speed from plodding to at least rolling. But nothing she did or said succeeded in increasing their work rate. The gear stick was well and truly stuck on dawdle.
Every day they arrived in the courtyard to the accompaniment of a Bob Marley classic at eight a.m., instead of the required seven. It was so hot in the middle of the day that the extra hour in the morning was vital to progress. She couldn’t blame them for breaking for lunch, relaxing either on the sunloungers on the terrace or taking a snooze in the back of their van until two o’clock when the sun had burned its brightest.
Occasionally they would disappear home for their lunch – or so Millie had naively assumed. She had been informed by an irate Ella the previous day that they were spending their two hours away from the villa in a bar on the road to Soufrière. She should have realised, given Vic’s propensity to drop his tools in the pool on his return.
She had spoken to Fitz that morning about the slippage in the schedule, tried to impress upon him how important it was to get the kitchen finished. He had listened to her litany of suggestions with a serene expression, the habitual cigarette dangling from his lips, a pencil poking from behind his ear, but had simply shrugged and told her to relax.
‘But Fitz, there are six wedding guests arriving on Monday and they will be expecting a high-spec, professional-standard kitchen which is pristine – and safe! Claudia’s reputation is on the line, never mind her money.’ However, Millie knew the words “deadline” and “schedule” and “rush” would never appear on Fitz’s Scrabble board.
‘No problem, Millie.’
‘We’re at least two days behind!’ she had cried, but Fitz simply met her desperate pleading with a slow, languid smile and patted her on the arm before turning the radio up, sucking on his unlit cigarette like a toddler on his dummy. Apparently, Wednesday was a big night out and the guys had spent the whole day chattering about their plans for the evening in a selection of Castries’s infamous bars.
A helix of panic had escalated with each passing day as she surveyed the progress when Fitz, Alph and Vic left for the evening. She knew the delay was her fault and an uncomfortable ball of dread nestled in the pit of her stomach.
At least she was happy with theculinaryprogress.
She and Ella had most of the recipes sorted and what a fabulous selection there was. Waves of excitement crashed through her as she rolled through the list of exotic dishes in her mind. All finalised recipes had been emailed to Claudia who was holed up, bored to distraction in her bedroom at her manor house in the Cotswolds. She was always eager to hear their suggestions for tweaking her recipes. After the operation to pin her ankle, the doctors had prescribed her such potent painkillers that she had confessed to not feeling in complete control of her faculties and had told them to trust their instincts and she would accept their judgement. When Millie had questioned whether she would be fit enough to fly out to St Lucia at the weekend, Claudia had assured her that she would be and it was a brave medic that would keep her away.
So, at least the cookery school part of things would be ready. If only she could be as confident about Fitz delivering on his kitchen promise, she would be able to enjoy her adventure in the Caribbean a whole lot more. As the men were currently indulging in their daily siesta, Millie decided to take the opportunity to wash down the paintwork and the marble floor and do whatever she could to get a head start on the finishing touches.
She grabbed a cleaning cloth and a brush and skipped across the courtyard to the villa’s back door. Again, a jolt of surprise hit her. Just that morning she had purposely stacked the empty wooden crates and bamboo basket in the shed behind the garage to remove any further possibility of having to question her sanity. But here they were, back in their usual place on the doorstep, two of them, with the basket perched on the top filled with cocoa pods. Now sheknewsomething was going on. She resolved to speak to Fitz the following day as it could only be one of his gang who had done this – possibly as a joke, but it wasn’t funny any more.
She opened the concertinaed glass doors and stood on the veranda to survey the kitchen. Itwouldbe spectacular. The skeleton was in place – the run of worktops in front of the windows to take full advantage of the view, the huge stainless-steel professional-grade oven, the enormous SMEG fridge-freezer standing to attention on the back wall, the marble-topped island unit at the centre of the room – minus its sink and taps – from where Claudia would present her Paradise Cookery School courses.
There was space for two students at each of the four workbenches which had their own sinks, swan-necked taps and electric ovens. A white granite-topped table had been delivered the previous day and would easily accommodate the course tutor and eight diners sitting down to sample their creations at the end of the day.
Millie set about polishing the table and the countertops, then moved on to brush the floor free of sawdust and splodges of plaster and glue. The carcases had no doors. There were no wall units, no skirting boards fitted, and the wall tiles still had to be grouted. A squirm of discomfort reinforced the fear that there was a real risk the project would not be completed on time.
There was no way they could accept paying guests into a work-in-progress.
She ditched her cloth and scoured the room for her favourite appliance – a Fracino Retro coffee machine. Every item that had been delivered had been unpacked and most of the appliances were in place. But she couldn’t see the coffee machine anywhere. It wasn’t difficult to perform a search as the cupboards were all open. She scoured the larder, whose shelves were bare save for a pile of handles and hinges. Then she sauntered down the corridor to the six bedrooms; nothing.
An unpleasant thought entered her head.
She had definitely seen the box and now it was missing. Just like the cocoa pods. Was there more to the mysterious disappearances than she was giving credit for? Okay, the pods had no value, but a commercial-grade coffee machine was a different league. Should she share her concerns with Claudia? First the obvious delay in the schedule, and now the possibility of a theft of the appliances she was responsible for?
Millie’s throat tightened around a knot of anxiety that had nothing to do with the fact that the renovations were behind schedule. Perhaps unwisely, she had told Pippa about her date with Jake and her friend was so excited about her first foray into the dating game since they had met that she had been emailing and texting her every couple of hours with tips on what to wear and what to talk about on a first date.
