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Gabriel had played that “if only” game a lot afterward. If only he hadn’t taken the quarry route that day, if only he’d left half an hour later, because if he had, the chances were that Charlie would have died before he’d come across him. But would he really have wanted Charlie to die alone? Charlie had recognized him, had called him Mr. Pelley. It made Gabriel think that he’d been predestined to find him, predestined to have had to make a difficult choice. Maybe someone up there thought he’d had life too easy and had decided to screw it up a bit by giving him a lose-lose situation, where you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. And now a letter had arrived.
He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled it out. It had come while he and Iris were in Scotland and the only good thing about it was that its contents had trumped his worry over Pierre. He looked at the earth he’d just turned over, and fought the urge to bury the letter deep into the soil.
He took a breath, then stuffed it back in his pocket.
11
Laure put her head around the bedroom door.
“Iris, could I borrow something to wear, please?”
“Of course.” Iris waved a hand toward her wardrobe. “Help yourself.”
They were due at Esme and Hugh’s for supper in an hour. Wrapped in her bathrobe, Iris carried on putting the finishing touches to her makeup.
“It’s kind of Esme to have invited me,” Laure said.
“She’s lovely, you’ll like her. She’s very natural, really happy in her skin.”
In the mirror, she watched as Laure pulled a yellow-patterned dress from the rail; it was already mid-length on Iris and completely swamped Laure.
“What do you think?” Laure asked.
“Too big,” Iris said firmly. “Try one of my shorter dresses. Or a skirt.”
Laure took out another dress, shorter this time. It was still a little big, so Iris found a black leather belt to nip in the waist.
“That looks lovely,” she said, admiring Laure’s slim figure.
Laure grimaced and shook her head. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“That’s because all my clothes are at least a size too big for you. Are you sure you don’t want me to take you shopping? I know you said you could manage with borrowing mine until you go back to Paris, but we could at least get you a pair of shorts and a dress that fits.”
Laure shook her head. “It’s not worth it. I’ve already got a lot of clothes so I don’t really want to add to my wardrobe.”
“Okay.” Iris ran her eye along the rail and pulled out a denim skirt. “How about this, with a white shirt?”
“Not dressy enough.” Laure spotted a black dress. “This looks nice.”
“Try it.”
But it wasn’t right either, and by the time Laure had decided to wear Iris’s new white dress, it looked as if the wardrobe had exploded, shedding clothes on every available surface.
“What do think?” she asked, tying a colorful scarf around her waist and looking at herself from different angles in the mirror.
“Stunning,” Iris replied with a mixture of relief and exasperation, relief that after forty-five minutes, Laure had finally found something she was happy with, exasperation because she had planned to wear that dress herself.
“We need to leave!” Gabriel called from downstairs.
“Ready!” Laure sang back.
Except that Iris wasn’t, and as she hastily pulled on the black dress that Laure had discarded, she already felt exhausted.
Downstairs, she took the beautifully-scented yellow roses she’d cut from the garden, and tied a ribbon around the stems.
“Isn’t that the dress that you were going to wear?” Gabriel murmured, nodding toward Laure, waiting by the front door, designer sunglasses adding to her film-star looks.
Iris rolled her eyes. “Don’t ask. But just to warn you, the bedroom looks like a battlefield.”
