Chapter Thirty
Now
I had a key to Spence’s house, but it was still only early, and for a few moments I hovered on the doorstep wondering what to do, trying to ignore the fact that if I turned around I would be able to see up to the top of the cliff, to Sterenlenn bathed in the golden light of dawn.
It was still too early for the trains to be running, and I wondered if Ethan had found some other way of getting home, or if he was still lying peacefully asleep in the huge bed, or if he’d discovered I’d left.
I tried to ignore the niggling internal voice that said walking away from him after I’d discovered his messages with Sarah was yet again the path of least resistance.
It felt like history was repeating itself, and I couldn’t cope with that.
What I needed to do was find out exactly what had been going on with Spence.
I took her house key out of my rucksack and unlocked the door.
‘Hello?’ I called softly as it swung inwards.
Spence was usually an early riser, but this might be too early even for her.
The corridor was thick with the vanilla scent of her air diffusers, and I called out again as I rounded the corner into the living room.
‘Jesus!’ I jumped. It had felt so quiet, so still, that I hadn’t expected her to be here. ‘Hey.’
‘Georgie.’ She was sitting in her chair, a cup of coffee resting in her lap. ‘You’re back.’
‘Of course I am. The open house was last night.’
She sipped her drink and I scrutinized her, wondering if my slowly developing hypothesis could be close to the truth, or if it was just the madness of having everything turned on its head in less than a day.
‘There’s coffee in the pot.’ She gestured to the kitchen, and I poured myself a cup, adding a generous slug of milk because she always made it strong enough to stand the spoon up in.
She hadn’t bombarded me with questions the moment I walked in, which was what I had expected after sending me on a mission like that.
I was sure, now, that there was something more going on than the simple plan we’d hatched.
I sat on the sofa opposite her. Outside, the sea was the colour of forget-me-nots, the early morning sun dancing across it. There was little evidence of the previous night’s storm, apart from the raindrops clinging to Spence’s immaculate front lawn and making it shimmer.
‘The event finished on time, did it?’ Spence asked.
‘For most people.’
She raised an eyebrow.
I took a deep breath. ‘For other people it turned into the world’s most ridiculous escape room, because Ethan’s Smart system malfunctioned and we got trapped inside.’
‘Goodness! I hope you weren’t stuck for too long.’
I briefly closed my eyes at her less than Oscar-worthy performance. ‘Only about half an hour,’ I said, and caught her quick-as-lightning frown. I put my coffee on the floor. ‘You knew about it. You knew the house was going to go wrong, and that Ethan and I would be trapped. How did you know?’
Spence smoothed down the skirt of her bottle-green dress. ‘You do remember that I was famous for creating love stories? And unlikely ones at that.’
‘Of course,’ I snapped. ‘We’ve spent hours talking about your books, about how we’re going to reunite the characters you let escape.’
Spence nodded. ‘But what if I found a more deserving couple? Another pair of lovers destined for each other, who had been torn apart at the worst possible moment?’
I stared at her. ‘But …’
‘It was obvious as soon as you started working for me, as soon as you mentioned his name, that Ethan was the love of your life. Never mind Rick in the Sailor’s Rest – Ethan was the man you were supposed to be with.’
‘We weren’t torn apart .’
‘No? From what you’ve told me, your families made it impossible for you to be together. His, mostly.’
I thought of the Sparkses’ trip to Scotland, how his dad had put Ethan beyond my reach for the whole of that summer. ‘Mum loved him.’
‘But she was over-protective of you. She’d been hurt, abandoned by a man when she was young, and she didn’t want the same to happen to you.’
‘Right, but with Ethan, we could have made more of an effort – we could have stayed in touch; used Facebook or email – I could have messaged and asked for his new number. But I was banking on him being here that first Christmas, then, when he wasn’t, contacting him when he hadn’t reached out to me felt like …
’ the path of least resistance , the voice in my head finished for me.
‘You thought you didn’t deserve him?’ Spence said.
‘No! That wasn’t it at all.’ I wasn’t sure how convincing I sounded.
‘Anyway, never mind why we broke up. I want to know what you had to do with last night, because not all of it was fun, and I need to know exactly how many people conspired to put me in that situation. Was it just Sarah? You and Sarah? All three of you?’
‘Oh tosh.’ Spence waved a hand. ‘Ethan had nothing to do with it. Sarah and I simply altered the system to suit our purposes.’
I reached down to pick up my mug, and realized my hand was shaking. ‘So it was you, too? It wasn’t just Sarah?’ On some level I had already known that, and my hurt mingled with the relief that, according to Spence, Ethan hadn’t been involved.
‘I saw a golden opportunity, but I needed a little help to turn my plot into reality.’
I rubbed my forehead. ‘I’m fairly certain I’m about to be incredibly angry with you, but could you explain exactly what happened, and I can decide just how angry I’m going to be?’
Spence laughed, and I already knew “incredibly angry” might not cut it.
‘Of course.’ Her eyes were bright. ‘But I hope you understand that this wouldn’t have happened if you’d questioned my plan. You agreed that we needed intimate knowledge of the new house for Amelie and Connor’s resurrection. You didn’t bat an eyelid.’
‘I had my own reasons for going last night,’ I said, a slow shame creeping over me that I hadn’t thought more about her motivation.
I’d said two words to Ethan and he’d challenged it, but me?
I’d just nodded along, as usual. Spence was looking at me curiously.
‘That’s not important now,’ I said. ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘Certainly.’ She cleared her throat, as if she was preparing to give an after-dinner speech at a grand gala somewhere. ‘A couple of years ago, I got the planning notice through the letterbox for Alperwick House – Tyller Klos, as you insist on calling it.’
Not any more , I thought but didn’t say. ‘The whole village did,’ I said instead. ‘We’ve known about the renovation for a long time.’
‘Yes, but I was particularly curious. It was a house I’d lived in for years, and I wanted to know what they were proposing for its new chapter. I called someone at the firm to talk through the details of the application and find out who would be transforming it.’
‘The planning team at the council?’
‘I called them first and asked them to put me in touch with the build team: the firm that was going to be responsible. They were reluctant to begin with, but I can be persuasive as you know, and eventually they gave me the details. I phoned, and spoke to a lovely young woman called Sarah.’
I pressed my lips together, gesturing for her to go on.
‘I explained who I was and why I was interested, and she was very receptive. She told me that she’d known about the house, had lived in Alperwick for six months, and that her brother had even spent some nights there with his friends, during the time it had been abandoned.
I listened to a sad story about how unhappy she’d been, how she’d turned into a teenage tearaway.
Her older brother had always looked out for her, kept her on course when she was so close to veering off into the weeds.
How, without his sacrifices, she wouldn’t have had the chance to turn things around.
She told me that, once he’d established his architectural practice, he’d brought her on board to work with him, using her skills in digital security and monitoring systems to create a new Smart system. ’
I gulped my coffee for something to do. ‘Ethan’s sister.’
‘Of course,’ Spence said smugly. ‘And it wasn’t that long into her story that I realized I’d heard echoes of something similar, but from a different perspective.
You’d recently started working for me, and it honestly felt like this was fate, destiny – whatever you want to call it.
I had my own admission for Sarah, about my dedicated PA and what she’d been through. ’
‘Oh my God.’
‘And you know,’ Spence continued gleefully, ignoring my horror, ‘Sarah is a spirited thing, and she still clearly has an adventurous streak, despite her dedication to her job. We stayed in touch during the build, she gave me titbits of information – though of course she didn’t want to betray her brother’s trust by telling me too much.
Then, when it was close to completion, I asked about the Sparks system and what it was capable of, and she said there were ways it could be manipulated – not wholesale, but as a one-off while it was still in Beta mode, because she’d had a hand in engineering it.
She told me she could personally tap into the mainframe, hear and respond to any Sparks requests, overriding the automatic process. ’
‘You set the whole thing up?’ My voice was a scratch.
‘I asked her about Ethan, and about you. Sarah said that he’d never got over you, and that she felt partly responsible for you splitting up. I offered her a chance to redeem herself.’
‘All those little asides,’ I murmured. ‘The things the house said that made no sense, that seemed more human than algorithm. She was listening.’
‘She could only respond to requests,’ Spence said firmly. ‘She assured me she couldn’t listen to everything – that the system doesn’t work like that – and, considering this involved her brother, I’m confident she was telling the truth.’