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She snorted loudly. ‘Don’t you believe it. That Gerry Jackson will find me, I’m certain of it. Greasy Bloody Ger is an absoluteexpertat sniffing out the dirt, and he’s never forgiven me for knocking his camera out of his hand once when I was emerging from a nightclub at three in the morning, a guy on each arm. It was all perfectly innocent, by the way. They’re both well and truly out of the closet.’
‘Right. Gosh, what a glam life you lead, compared to mine.’
She sighed wearily, looking the total opposite of glamorous. ‘Gerry Jackson will track me down. I swear, even if I relocated toAntarctica and became a penguin, I’d be waddling about looking for fish and up he’d pop with his stupid camera.’
I laughed. ‘Don’t exaggerate.’
‘I’m not. Not really. You don’t know what it’s like, Squidge, to feel as if you’re living in a fishbowl, your life on view for any old stranger to criticise.’
‘Skye?’
‘Yes?’
‘Can you stop calling me Squidge? I’m not five anymore.’
She shrugged. ‘Okay.’
‘Why did you nickname me Squidge anyway?’
‘Oh, well, you had thecutestsquidgy nose when you were a baby.’ She smiled, a faraway look in her eyes.
I laughed. ‘Now it’s just my thighs that are squidgy.’
‘Rubbish. You’ve got a great figure. And that hair’s fabulous. Is it a wig?’
Smiling grimly, I reached into the cupboard for two wine glasses and presented them to her. ‘I’ll have one as well, please.’ The wig was actually itchy and sweaty and I didn’t want to talk about it.
I wasn’t the only one keeping quiet. Skye clearly didn’t want to talk about the incident in the pub. Yet. Although Iwouldget it out of her.
It was just a massive relief, for now, to know that tonight’s ‘stalker’ was my sister. And she wasn’t actually a killer!
CHAPTER TWENTY
Later, I lay in bed, my mind in a whirl.
Skye had said she was starving (‘I don’t think I’ve ever been this hungry in my entire life!’) so I’d taken eggs and cheese from the fridge and made her an omelette. While I cooked, she started hunting through my cupboards and munched her way through an entire family-size bag of salt and vinegar crisps (the expensive ‘handmade’ variety that I was keeping as a treat for the weekend). Then she found an unopened box of chocolate cherry liqueurs that I was also saving for a special occasion, and began working her way through those for afters.
Omelette ready, I swiped the half-empty box from her hand and told her to sit down.
At which point she turned her nose up at the omelette I’d made and said she wasn’t hungry anymore, and could I please just show her to her bed because she was so exhausted, she could probably sleep on a tightrope.
Fuming over the uneaten omelette, I felt like ushering her outside to the washing line, as the next best thing to a tightrope. But instead I took a deep breath and reminded myself she’d had the day from hell. Then I forced a smile, grabbed a fresh towel from the pile and showed her the spare room. There was a fresh set of linen in there but I hadn’t got round to making the bed, and my heart sank. Wrestling a cover on a duvet seemed a task too far, and it was clear Skye had no intention of helping. She was already getting undressed.
Biting my tongue, I started putting on the bottom sheet. But next moment, Skye was whipping it out of my hands.
‘Why are you always such a martyr?’ she ordered. ‘I don’t think it’ll kill me to sleep under a duvet without a cover for one night, do you? We can sort all that out tomorrow.’
‘Okay. Well, goodnight.’ I headed for the door, and when I turned, she was already in bed and turned on her side, eyes closed.
‘Night,’ she mumbled. ‘Oh, Rori?’
‘Yes?’ I looked back.
‘Get me a glass of water, will you, there’s a love?’
I stomped to the kitchen and filled a glass, my heart sinking a little as I recalled her casual comment about sleeping under a cover-less duvet tonight.
We can sort all that out tomorrow,she’d said.
