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Sabrina had not long left the house for work when there was a hard knock at Marielle’s door, the sort of knock a debt collector with a serious grievance might employ. She looked through the spyhole and saw the sour face of her cousin there. Well, that took longer than she thought it might. Shoresend may have been a town, but it was full of village gossipmongers.
Cilla Charlesworth marched in as if she was carrying a mace and a brass band was following behind.
‘Are you stupid, Mari Bonetti?’ She was the only one who ever shortened her name and it had always irritated her.
‘Pardon?’
‘You’ve done it again, haven’t you? You’re about to make a proper fool of yourself.’ Cilla was walking around expending nervous energy while Marielle watched on, waiting for her clockwork to wind down.
‘Cilla, what are you talking about?’ said Marielle, though she knew; of course she knew.
‘Letting some… tramp into your house to stay and rob you. Possibly even slit your throat while you’re sleeping. What sort of idiot are you?’
Marielle stiffened. She might have been touched if she’d thought this was Cilla concerned for her welfare but it wasn’t; it was about seizing a chance to belittle her, something Cilla had never been able to resist.
‘I have a guest staying with me, yes.’ Marielle forced herself to remain calm.
‘Ha. That’s what you call her, is it? Aguest.’
‘How did you know?’
‘Someone saw you buying clothes with a woman in town on Friday. So I rang Felicity to make discreet enquiries and she told me you hada friend, as she put it, staying with you and working at the restaurant. It wasn’t hard to join up the dots.’
‘Why is this any of your business, Cilla?’
‘Do you have to ask, Mari? I am family and as such I’m more than qualified to be worried. Can’t you remember what happened last time when you let someone rob you blind? How you weren’t killed in your bed is anyone’s guess. Everyone was saying as much.’
Well that little speech played straight into Marielle’s hands.
‘I’m so glad, Cilla, that you brought up how worried we should be about each other asfamily’ – she overloaded the word with enough sugar to make her kidneys cry – ‘because this Hugo of yours is very concerning. You barely know him and there you are splashing out eight grand on a cruise with him.’
Cilla’s neck shot back in indignation.
‘How do you know I spent that on a cruise?’
‘Who doesn’t know? You’ve told everyone. Plus a car because hisRolls-Royceis in the garage and Lord knows what else you’ve forked out for.’
‘Not this again,’ said Cilla. ‘If you’re trying to insinuate he hasn’t got a Roller then you’re wrong because I’ve seen photos of him in it.’
‘Oh Cilla,’ scoffed Marielle, ‘I bought Teddy a Ferrari experience last Christmas. We’ve got photos of him in it but it doesn’t mean he owns one.’
‘I’m not here to talk about Hugo.’
‘No, but while you are here, we will,’ Marielle threw back at her because she was cross and she wasn’t going to miss this golden opportunity to drum some sense into the woman.
‘You do know he went to Eton and he can absolutely prove that, not that he needs to,’ said Cilla.
‘So did Lord Lucan.’
‘Oh for god’s sake.’
‘Are you so desperate for this man to be genuine that you’re swallowing any old tripe that comes out of his mouth?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I love him and he loves me, it’s indisputable.’ Cilla was unexpectedly on the back foot now, and she didn’t like it at all.
‘Because he’s good in bed? Yes, you’ve told everyone that as well. Haven’t you ever seen those programmes where gullible women go to foreign climes and are seduced by hot young men? Don’t you think they can switch on being sexually attracted to some overripe desperado if they can squeeze the life savings out of her?’
‘Overripe?’ Cilla took great exception to that.
