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‘This is not nothing. This is definitely something. Definitely, definitely something.’
Unable to bear her friend any longer, Holly pulled down her sunglasses and lay down on the sun lounger.
‘We’re not done talking about this,’ Caroline said as she followed suit and lay down next to her.
‘Yes, we are.’
Holly spoke as firmly as she could, but it was hard considering how much she was still smiling. With her eyes closed, her mind immediately returned to that moment. That near kiss that would, without any doubt, have been a full-on, earth-shattering smooch had they not been interrupted.
As she soaked in the afternoon sun, she wondered if there was some way she could make a habit of this. Coming somewhere warm, somewhere new and adventurous. After all, she needed to make the most of Hope being little. Soon, they would be bound by term dates and school holidays, and she wouldn’t have the freedom to travel.
She was busy planning where some of these exotic, frugal holidays would take her when her phone buzzed.
Her mum’s name on the screen.
Considering how often her mother sent photos of Hope when Holly was at work, she had considered it strange that she’d not received a single message from her that day. But she knew how much her mother was hoping she would switch off, and limiting contact was obviously her way of doing that.
With a smile on her face, she answered the video call, ready to see Hope grinning back at her, but instead it was her mother who was staring at the screen and she looked anything but happy.
Holly sat bolt upright.
‘Mum, what is it? What’s wrong? Is it Hope? Where is she? Is she okay?’
‘Hope’s fine, darling. She’s with Ben. He picked her up at lunchtime.’ A sigh of relief billowed through Holly, only to evaporate almost instantly.
‘What do you mean at lunchtime? She was meant to go back to his this afternoon. That’s what we arranged. Is it Dad? Is his heart okay?’
‘Your dad’s fine, darling. But I’m afraid there’s a bit of bad news.’ She paused, causing the tension to wrap around Holly like a cloak. ‘There’s been a break-in at the shop.’
27
Holly stared at her mother’s image on the screen before she shook her head, trying to make sense of what she just heard.
‘There’s been a break-in? At the sweet shop? At my shop?’
Caroline was staring at her, hanging on every word. And she probably had a right to listen in; she worked there too. But Holly was still having difficulty processing what her mother was saying. She walked into the house.
‘What do you mean, a break-in at the shop? What did they steal?’
She’d never judge anyone for having a sweet tooth, but breaking into a sweet shop felt a little far-fetched even for her.
‘They didn’t take anything, love. Arthur had emptied the till last night and he’d taken the cash home to go to the bank this morning. They didn’t find the safe either. They might have taken a box of Belgian truffles, but your dad can’t remember if he restocked that shelf or not.’ A quiet hiss echoed down the line, confirming Wendy’s belief that Arthur should have absolutely known how many boxes of truffles were on the shelf before the break-in. ‘If it makes you feel any better, you weren’t the only one. They hit four shops last night, including yours. The jeweller lost quite a bit. Such a shame.’
It didn’t make Holly feel any better that someone else’s business had been stolen from, though it was a small comfort that they hadn’t found the safe.
‘What about the CCTV? Did we get a video of them?’ She’d had the cameras installed when she very first moved there, after a shoplifting incident had left a sour taste in her mouth. They had been instrumental in proving Giles Caverty was responsible for planting a mouse by the chocolate hedgehogs. Though that whole incident felt so long ago, it was almost as if it had happened to someone else.
‘We’ve told police they can have any footage we’ve got, though the culprits were all dressed in black and you can’t make out much of their faces. Still, all the shops have cameras, so there’s a good chance one of the others has got a clearer picture. The police think it’s school children. You know. A prank gone too far. I’m sure they’ll catch them.’
Holly felt sick. It didn’t feel like a prank. It felt like somebody had invaded her home. And in Bourton, of all places. She would have expected it in a big city, or even some larger towns, but not a village like Bourton. More than once, when baby-brain and lack of sleep had been wreaking havoc on her, she’d got home from work to discover she’d left the back door of the cottage open all day. She wouldn’t be doing that again.
‘We had to close today,’ her mother carried on. ‘They made a bit of a mess with a few of the jars, so we cleaned that up and got the window repair man out. He did us a bit of a discount too, considering he’s got to do several on the row. And Andrea came down too, helped us clear the rest up.’
‘Thank you, Mum. Thank you for sorting it all out.’
‘Really, it wasn’t too much of a stress for us, though you should probably ring and thank Ben for picking up Hope early. We told him it was fine, that Arthur could do the clean up on his own, but he didn’t want to cause us any extra stress.’
‘I’ll message him now,’ Holly said with a pang of gratitude. It was a sign of how decent a guy Ben was that he still made such an effort with her parents. Then again, they were his child’s grandparents.
