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A wave of emotion swooped over her, and all Suzie could do was nod and attempt a watery smile. She had considered Rachel’s suggestion after the boardwalk fire, but the thought of working behind a bar terrified her. Whilst she was desperate for an income, a job that involved dealing with members of the public on a daily basis was just not possible for her. Even a year later, she still woke up in the middle of the night with palpitations, bathed in cold sweat as she re-lived vivid flashbacks of the day her life changed forever.
‘I’ll think about it, Rach.’
She wasn’t surprised to hear that her voice held a tremor. Holly had noticed it, too, and took pity on her by changing the subject to divert attention away from the nightmare her life had become to something she also wanted to know the answer to.
‘By the way, where’s Chloe? I thought she came over with you two in the Land Rover?’
‘She said she had an appointment in Sidmouth,’ said Beckie, helping herself to a second ginger biscuit. ‘We dropped her off at the bus stop on the coast road.’
‘Really?’ said Holly, her brow creasing. ‘When I spoke to her before the yoga class this morning, she told me she had nothing planned today. She even offered to help me clear out one of the sheds at the back of the kennels that I’m hoping to turn into an office. There’s a treasure trove of old spirit bottles left over from the pub that she said she could repurpose for when she starts making her artisan gins again.’
Rachel shrugged. ‘Maybe she forgot?’
‘Mmm, maybe,’ Holly murmured, fondling Ariel’s silky ears. ‘I hope she’s okay. I’m worried about her.’
‘Me too,’ said Beckie, her face filled with concern. ‘She was also supposed to call into the bistro yesterday to pick up a couple of travel books from the reading nook, but—’
The thunderous rumble of a powerful engine interrupted their conversation, and all four women turned in unison to watch a white Audi Cabriolet with blacked-out windows make its way, at speed, into the Fox & Fiddle car park. A thirty-something man in a trendy leather jacket, dark jeans, and mirrored sunglasses emerged from the driver’s seat and, after taking his time to survey his surroundings, he withdrew his phone and proceeded to take a number of photographs of the pub’s spruced up façade, and then the picturesque view out to sea.
Suzie’s stomach curdled; there was something familiar about their newly arrived visitor. While she couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure that he was the man she’d seen lurking in the woodland just before the horses had bolted from their paddock, he certainly had the look of a member of the dreaded paparazzi who had made her life a living hell before she’d fled from London to Devon.
If she was right, what was he doing here?
She couldn’t bear it any longer. She leapt from the bench, mumbled the word “bathroom” and, trying not to sprint from the beer garden like an Olympic runner hoping for a gold medal, she made her way to the back door of the Fox & Fiddle. She found herself in what had clearly once been the pub’s snug, and with a sigh of relief, she dropped down onto a mouldy old sofa to wait for her heartbeat to slow and her demons to release their stranglehold on her churning emotions.
Snippets of conversation floated through the open window. Straining her ears, Suzie heard the man introduce himself as Josh Carrington from Carrington & Goodman, a PR agency based in Islington. Her panic escalated, and just as she thought she was about to combust from an overload of stress, she heard him mention Oscar’s name and remembered that he was acelebrity chefwith his own prime-time TV show and a new restaurant business to promote. Josh Carrington was clearly here at Oscar’s invitation to help with that, and not to craft another painful exposé on her recent flirtation with notoriety.
Her anxiety immediately deflated, and heat flooded her cheeks. After giving herself a stern talking to about her constant skittishness – not to mention her presumptuousness – she was about to head back outside when her phone started to buzz again, and this time her spirits soared when she saw who was calling her.
Chapter Three
‘Hi, Amber. How’s Santorini?’
‘Wonderful, as always. You won’t be surprised to hear that it’s another glorious day. There isn’t a cloud in the sky, and now that it’s almost the end of September, the temperature has finally fallen below thirty degrees and there’s a lovely breeze in the evening. Oh, and the gallery was really busy this morning. I sold one of Katerina’s larger sculptures to a French collector, which she’s going to be very excited about, and a couple from New York promised they’d call back tomorrow to buy a pair of hand-blown glass vases that, and I quote “will match our kitchen cookware perfectly”. I’m not joking!’
Amber giggled and Suzie’s mood lifted further. Five years older than her, her sister had always been the sensible, no-nonsense one. Nothing fazed her; she had an answer for everything, and a way of saying exactly the right thing, at the right time, without causing indignation or offence.
However, Amber also possessed an eerie – and sometimes inconvenient – sixth sense of being able to sniff out distress, especially where Suzie was concerned. She didn’t know how her sister did it and she hoped that, as they were on a phone call and not a video call, she would be able to hide her recent brush with disaster from Amber’s intuitive radar. In order to give herself the best chance of doing that, she decided to steer their conversation to a subject close to her sister’s heart – her current love interest.
‘So, how’s Tom?’
‘Ah, well, yes, I…’
To Suzie’s dismay, she heard an uncharacteristic wobble in her sister’s voice before she paused to inhale a steadying breath.
‘Amber? What’s wrong? Is everything okay?’
‘Don’t worry, everything’s fine. Actually, it’smorethan fine.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Last night, I invited Tom over to the studio for dinner – nothing fancy, just one of Stefanos’ moussakas and a huge bowl of Greek salad – but he told me he had something else arranged for us. It turned out he’d borrowed a boat – well, it was more of a yacht, really – from one of his friends, and he took us out on the caldera for a romantic sunset cruise, something I’ve been wanting to do since I came over here. We cracked open a bottle of Champagne and watched the sky morph from pink to apricot to mauve as the sun disappeared behind the horizon. It was one of the most beautiful evenings of my life and… and the perfect way to say goodbye.’
‘Say goodbye? What do you mean?’
Amber expelled a long ragged sigh, her despondency evident even though Suzie couldn’t see her face. ‘Tom’s leaving.’
‘Leaving? Why?’
