The Summer Swap

Chapter 2

Cecilia

She was far too old to run away from something difficult, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her.

Cecilia Lapthorne gazed out of her bedroom window at the top of the old sprawling mansion and wondered how best to make her escape. She could climb through a window, but that seemed a little dramatic when there was a perfectly good staircase within easy reach of her bedroom. Or she could walk boldly through the front door (it was, after all, her own front door) and if challenged by her children simply tell them that she would return when this ridiculous party they’d insisted on throwing was over.

She watched with mounting frustration as the lawns and the terrace were prepared for an invasion of people she had no wish to meet. Was there anything less satisfying than small talk? She’d rather have one decent conversation about something, than a hundred conversations about nothing.

She knew that Kristen and Winston were doing what they felt was right for her, but what they felt was right and what she felt was right were two different things. When they’d first told her about the party they had planned, she’d tried to talk them out of it, but they’d insisted it was exactly what she needed to lift her out of her grief. She wondered if it was revenge for all the times she’d insisted they eat broccoli when they were toddlers.

Either way, they’d ignored her entreaties, which shouldn’t have surprised her. She was seventy-five years old and for a little over fifty of those years she’d lived in Cameron’s shadow, dominated by his large and loud personality, the mouse to his lion (less generous folk used to say that Cameron’s voice arrived in a room at least five minutes before he did). At public events she was “Cameron Lapthorne’s wife,” or sometimes “the artist’s wife.” She was an accessory, although not, she liked to think, as useless as that ridiculous pocket watch he’d taken to wearing in the mistaken belief that it made him seem endearingly eccentric.

They don’t notice me, she’d once said to Cameron who had replied without a trace of irony, Of course they notice you—you’re with me.

And that was how she’d spent most of their married life. She was a plus-one. An also. A satellite. Images in the press were captioned Cameron Lapthorne and his wife, Cecilia. Never Cecilia Lapthorne and her husband, Cameron. There had never been any doubt as to where she ranked in order of importance. Most of the time she hadn’t minded. She was a quieter, altogether more private person than her loud, ebullient husband. She was happy for him to live in the limelight, while she hovered on the fringes away from unwanted attention.

Cameron had been dead for a year, but his passing hadn’t released her from his shadow. Now, instead of being his wife, she was his widow, her existence still defined by her relationship with the man.

She was the keeper of his legacy, the custodian of his bright and brilliant talent.

She needed to move on. But how?

It was hard to step into a new life when you were surrounded by the old one. Cameron’s presence was everywhere, wrapping around her like tentacles, holding her in place.

A month after his death she had moved all Cameron’s personal items into one room and locked the door. She’d removed his paintings from the walls of her bedroom. She would have done the same to the rest of the house but it would have raised eyebrows as well as leaving a large number of blank spaces on the walls.

She’d briefly contemplated moving, but she couldn’t bear to leave the beautiful gardens she’d spent three decades nurturing. When she was younger, her passion for art had been as great as Cameron’s. She’d painted, sketched, lost herself in a visual world. These days the gardens were her canvas where she experimented with shape, color and texture. Her gardens had received national acclaim, but she didn’t do it for the attention or the affirmation. She did it for her own enjoyment. Garden design satisfied her own need to be creative without in any way competing with her husband.

And now there was this party. A celebration of the artistic greatness that was Cameron Lapthorne. A retrospective of his work, displaying some pieces never before seen in public, offering fresh insights into the man.

Cecilia could have offered plenty of insights into the man, including the fact that much of what the public knew was false. They saw only the genius. They didn’t see the insecurities or the flaws.

The party had been Kristen’s idea of course. Kristen, their eldest child. Daddy’s girl. Kristen, who was so much more forceful than her younger brother, Winston.

Did Cecilia love her? Yes, of course she did. But did she like her daughter? Not always. Not right now.

It was Kristen who handled the day-to-day management of the Lapthorne legacy. While Cameron was alive she had helped him with the archive, carefully cataloging each piece that he produced. She collaborated with museums, galleries and private collectors, arranged storage, shipping and installation of artwork. Along with a small, carefully selected team, she handled the press and all research requests.

And she’d organized this party to jointly celebrate Cameron’s life and Cecilia’s seventy-fifth birthday.

Kristen was the reason Cecilia hadn’t divorced Cameron.

When Kristen was nine years old, Cecilia had broken the news that she and Cameron were getting a divorce. She hadn’t shared her reasons with Kristen because she hadn’t wanted to drive a wedge between father and daughter. She’d been proud of her restrained, adult behavior given the circumstances. Sadly, her restraint had backfired and the result was that Kristen placed all the blame on Cecilia. Cecilia was the one still in the house. Her father had been forced out against his will. Kristen had made up her mind that her mother was a horrible person. (Winston had been five years old and almost all of it had gone over his head.)

Kristen had been so upset she’d refused to stay in the same space as her mother. She’d sprinted from the house crying and been hit by a car which just happened to be driving down Commonwealth Avenue as she was running across it with tears blurring her vision. For days her life had hung in the balance. Cecilia and Cameron had put their differences aside and reunited by her bedside. Cecilia had blamed herself and she’d known from Cameron’s ostentatious silence that he had blamed her, too. When Kristen had finally woken up, she’d wanted them both by her bedside and they’d been so relieved she was alive, and so determined to make up for the trauma, that there had been no more talk of separating.

Cameron had been smugly relieved that the accident had achieved something that all his apologies and entreaties had failed to do.

The day before Kristen was due to be discharged from the hospital, Cameron had quietly moved back into the family home.

Cecilia had put her children’s needs ahead of her own. She’d been consumed by guilt that her actions had inadvertently led to their daughter’s accident.

Somehow, she and Cameron had stumbled through those early years after their separation and Kristen’s accident, and gradually they’d settled into a rhythm.

Kristen had slowly recovered, but her relationship with her mother was forever changed. She became fiercely protective of her father, taking his side in everything. The two of them grew close and stayed that way.

Gazing down into the gardens now, Cecilia could see her waving her hands and delivering instructions to the flustered staff who normally led quiet, untroubled lives. They ran her household with little interference from Cecilia, who believed in employing someone to do a job and then letting them do it. Her daughter, on the other hand, believed in giving someone a job and then overseeing every moment of the task for the sole purpose, or so it seemed, of telling everyone where they were going wrong.

She’d been dictating everyone’s actions since the day she’d arrived home from the hospital.

When she’d decided it was time to marry, she’d married a surgeon who was so dedicated to his work he was more than happy to allow his wife to run every other aspect of his life. Cecilia’s feelings toward her son-in-law, Theo, were complicated. He was without doubt a brilliant man and a skilled surgeon by all accounts, but on the rare occasion he made it to a family event his mind was elsewhere and more often than not, thanks to endless urgent calls from the hospital, the rest of him soon followed. His professional importance wasn’t in question although occasionally Cecilia wondered who would save all the trauma victims of Massachusetts if Theo died of a heart attack brought on by overwork. There were times when she’d been in mid-conversation with him only to suddenly find herself talking to an empty space because he’d felt the vibration of his phone and absented himself to answer it. Despite that, she had developed a deep fondness for him. It was hard not to care for someone who was so committed to his job and the preservation of human life, although having spent most of her life with a man who prioritized his work above everything else, Cecilia also sympathized with her daughter. But Kristen didn’t seem to mind. She didn’t seem to suffer any of the frustrations that Cecilia had experienced. Kristen was busy working for her father and keeping the house and, until they’d left home, raising the kids.

Since Cameron’s death she’d taken to visiting Cecilia once a week to “check on her,” an experience they both found stressful. Kristen wanted to talk endlessly about Cameron. Cecilia wanted to think about anything other than Cameron.

“Mom?” Kristen’s voice came from behind her. “What are you doing hiding away up here?”

Cecilia gave a start and turned from her contemplation of the seven catering vans that had just arrived. (Seven? Were they feeding the whole of Boston?) She’d been absorbed in her own thoughts and hadn’t noticed her daughter leave the gardens, but now here she was in the doorway of Cecilia’s bedroom in full control mode. The concern on her face barely masked her exasperation.

Cecilia was exasperated, too. She’d intended to somehow do a vanishing act before Kristen appeared.

“I’m not hiding. I’m taking my time.”

Kristen stepped into the room. “The guests will be arriving soon, and you’re not even dressed. Is something wrong? Does the suit fit? You’ve lost weight since Dad died. I wish you’d see a doctor.”

Fix, fix, fix. That was Kristen’s approach to everything. She didn’t seem to understand that some things couldn’t be fixed and had to be endured and accepted.

She didn’t understand that Cecilia’s grief was complicated.

Her solution to Cecilia’s negative response to the party had been to buy her a new outfit. It was currently laid out on the bed ready for her.

Cecilia had no idea if it fitted because she hadn’t tried it on. It wasn’t her clothes that she needed to change; it was her life.

“I don’t need a doctor. I have no wish to attend this party, that’s all. Something I’ve made clear to you from the beginning.” Did that sound petulant?

Kristen obviously thought so because she took a calming breath and closed the bedroom door.

Cecilia sighed. The closed door meant they were going to have “a talk.”

She often wondered if she was the focus of her daughter’s regular sessions with her therapist. My mother is difficult. We don’t have the easiest relationship.

Kristen had collapsed when her father died. When she’d been given the news she’d literally fallen to the floor and screamed. (She’d done the same when Simon Overbrook had dumped her in her second year of college because she absolutely had not wanted it to happen but it had happened anyway and the realization that she couldn’t control everything and everyone around her by willpower and the sheer force of her personality had come as a searing shock.)

She’d shouted Why? Why? And Cecilia had assumed she was asking why her father and not her mother.

No one had been able to comfort her because apparently no one would ever be able to understand, and no one could ever replace her father. At the funeral Theo had stood frozen, immobilized by the sheer scale of his wife’s grief. Physical hemorrhage in no way daunted him, but dealing with emotional hemorrhage was beyond him.

Kristen had seemed to gradually pull herself out of her debilitating grief and had thrown herself into work. She was busy, busy, busy, as if determined not to allow herself even a moment of space in which to think about her father.

It occurred to Cecilia that perhaps this exhibition was Kristen’s way of keeping her father alive.

She crossed the room now with a brisk stride and dropped into a crouch by Cecilia’s chair (flexibility courtesy of two yoga sessions a week and a private Pilates instructor) and took her mother’s hand.

“You’re sad, I know. Grief is a terrible thing. Relentless. Exhausting. You must feel devastated.” She squeezed, presumably to offer reassurance that everything Cecilia was feeling was normal.

Cecilia knew that nothing she was feeling was normal. She was supposed to feel devastated, but she didn’t. It wasn’t that she wasn’t grieving. She was. She’d spent a lifetime with Cameron. But the one thing she couldn’t admit was that she also felt free.

And she had yet to decide what to do with that freedom. For the first time ever, she had only herself to think about. It was both exciting and terrifying.

She breathed in a waft of her daughter’s perfume.

From this angle she could see that Kristen’s hair was freshly highlighted, her style a little softer than her usual blunt bob. Her dress was a figure-skimming swirl of blues and greens that could have been inspired by one of her father’s earlier watercolors. She looked younger somehow. Different.

For the first few weeks after Cameron had died Kristen hadn’t moved from the bed, but lately she seemed to have recovered her energy and today she was positively glowing.

“This must be very hard for you.” Kristen was looking at her with sympathy. “It’s emotional seeing so much of Dad’s art displayed together, isn’t it? I understand. It’s like seeing the story of his life.”

Cecilia blinked. Story of his life?

Knowing that a response was needed, she latched onto the one part of Kristen’s observation that was true. “It is hard.”

“I miss him, too. Every day.” Kristen’s eyes filled, tears never far from the surface when she thought about her father. “But this event is a celebration. It’s our chance to show the art world and his devoted fans who he really was. The whole of his career, beginning to end. And we’re lucky it’s such a beautiful day. We thought you could give your speech in the garden.”

She’d forgotten about the damned speech. Kristen had written it for her, and Cecilia had seen it only a few hours ago. She’d known immediately that she wouldn’t be able to deliver it. She didn’t want to talk about Cameron. She didn’t want to talk about their life together.

“I can’t do that.”

Kristen patted her hand. “That’s fine. We can cram everyone into the garden room if that makes you more comfortable.”

Cecilia stirred. “I mean the speech itself. I can’t give it, Kristen.”

Now would be a good time to confess she had no intention of going to the party. But she couldn’t stand the confrontation.

She was a coward.

Alarm flickered across Kristen’s face. “All you have to do is say a few nice words about Dad. It’s that easy.”

Cameron, Cameron. It was always about Cameron.

What had happened to her life? Where, in all this, was the real Cecilia?

“Mama?” Kristen sounded anxious and Cecilia sat upright.

“I won’t do it, Kristen. You speak if you want to, but I won’t.”

“But why?”

Because she wasn’t confident that the words that left her lips would be the right ones.

It was time to leave the past in the past. Time to move on.

“I’m too old to give speeches,” she said finally and Kristen stood up abruptly.

“Fine. I’ll do it.”

Cecilia could see her mentally reordering her never-ending to-do list. She watched as Kristen checked her phone quickly, as if she was waiting for something.

“Is Theo here?”

“No. He couldn’t get away from the hospital, but he sends his apologies and his love.” Kristen slipped her phone back into the pocket of her jacket. “You should get dressed. You know things take you a little longer these days.”

“Things don’t take me longer.” She resented the implication that she was a crumbling shadow of her former self. “I choose to take more time over things because I can.”

Secrets made you lonely, she realized. There could be no deep human connection without honesty, and she’d hidden too much from her children to expect them to understand her. It created a distance because there were so many things she knew that they didn’t.

Kristen swept across the room and picked up Cecilia’s suit. “I can’t wait to see you wearing this. It’s going to look stunning on you and you’ll look great in the photographs.”

Cecilia imagined the caption. Cameron Lapthorne’s widow, Cecilia.

“When you were six you often refused to get dressed and go to school.”

Kristen held the suit against her body. “Is this revenge for something I did when I was six?”

“No. The reason you didn’t want to get dressed and go to school was because you didn’t see the point. It wasn’t something you wanted to do.”

“And you’re saying that today is like that? You don’t see the point? That’s hurtful, Mom.” Her eyes shone. “Planning this celebration has been a ton of work. Do you have any idea how much stress it has caused?”

“I’m sorry if you’re stressed,” Cecilia said, “but you were the one who insisted on it.”

But she was partly to blame. She should have expressed her views more strongly before now. Instead, she’d let it happen.

So much of her life had been spent letting things happen. It was time she took control, but she wasn’t sure she even knew how. Could you really change the habit of a lifetime?

Hurt crossed Kristen’s face. “This party is for you, too. I’ve put hours and hours of work into making it perfect.”

Perfect for whom?

Cecilia studied her daughter. There was definitely something different about her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it and there was no point in asking because they didn’t have that sort of relationship. They’d never had mother-and-daughter shopping trips, or mother-and-daughter spa days. She felt a stab of guilt because she knew that was partly her fault. She should have tried harder to bridge the gulf that had appeared between them.

But even so she wished that Kristen would ask, just once, what she wanted and then pay attention to the answer.

“We both know this party is not for me, Kristen.”

Kristen was still holding the suit. “We are celebrating your birthday. Of course it’s for you. I don’t understand why you don’t want to do this. Is it the paintings? Is it because we chose to use this opportunity to present a retrospective of Dad’s work? Is it upsetting you?”

“Leave it, Kristen.”

“No, I won’t leave it. All we do in this family is ignore things that are uncomfortable and frankly it’s exhausting. Let’s be honest for once. Is it grief? Does seeing his art on the walls upset you?” Kristen glanced around her. “Obviously we’ve noticed that you don’t have a single painting of his in this room.”

She imagined her children speculating. What is going on with Mother?

Cecilia could feel her heart thudding hard. It pounded against her ribs, as if giving her a warning. Was she having a heart attack? If she collapsed, then she wouldn’t have to attend the party. She could leave in an ambulance, which was a method of escape that had only just occurred to her. She wondered briefly if she could fake it. She could throw herself to the floor and clutch her chest, but there was a danger that Kristen might feel compelled to move in to look after her and that would be alarming for them both.

“His paintings are all around the house. I don’t want them in my bedroom.”

“Because it hurts too badly?” Kristen was looking at her with mounting concern. “You need to talk to someone. I’ve thought it for a while.” She paused, trying to find answers from Cecilia’s brief responses. “Or is it something else completely? Is it the fact that his work has gained even more attention since he died? It’s a constant reminder, isn’t it? It’s both wonderful and difficult.”

It was more difficult than wonderful. There was no moving on. In many ways her life hadn’t changed at all, except that Cameron himself was no longer part of it. Her life continued, only this time her companion was the ghost not the man.

“Kristen—”

“I understand,” Kristen said, “but it wouldn’t be right for us to keep his talent to ourselves. Other people have a right to enjoy his work. This is an unprecedented exhibition, of international importance. Many of the paintings have never been on display before. Fifty years of Cameron Lapthorne.”

Fifty years? Two-thirds of her life. No wonder she felt lost. She was adrift on the ocean, with no idea where land might be.

So much of life was chance.

If she hadn’t been on the beach that day of her twenty-second birthday, and if she hadn’t happened to turn and smile at the deliciously handsome young man sprawled on the sand with a sketchbook in his hand, she might be in a very different place right now. She would have led a different life. A life where she had played the lead part, and not the supporting role. If Seth hadn’t just broken up with her...

Seth.

She hadn’t thought about him in years, and then a month after Cameron’s funeral the card had arrived.

She’d thought about him then, and she thought about him now and wondered about his life. Had he made good choices? Did he have regrets?

Cecilia felt suddenly tired, weighed down by past decisions. It was impossible not to look back and think, What if?

And yet part of her felt sympathy for the woman she’d been. That woman on the beach with the sun on her face and the wind in her hair hadn’t intentionally stepped into the life she’d ended up living. It had happened by accident, step by step, moment by moment, one choice followed by another choice, and surely it wasn’t a crime to have trusted fully and loved deeply? Even though many years had passed she could still remember the intensity of her feelings and the heady excitement of those early days.

“I know you’re sad,” Kristen said. “And I know it’s hard. I’m sure you’re lonely—” She paused, as if her mind was on something else. “Life is no fairy tale, is it?”

Cecilia looked closely at her daughter. Was she talking about Cecilia’s life or her own?

Was something wrong with Kristen? Had something happened with Theo?

She opened her mouth to ask, but then closed it again. Even if she asked, Kristen was unlikely to tell her the truth. They never talked about things like that.

And they weren’t going to do so now because the door opened, interrupting their conversation.

Winston stood there. He was four years younger than his sister and bore a strong resemblance to Cameron at the same age. A little on the stocky side, but handsome enough to compensate for any deficiencies in height. He’d arrived alone because his wife, Nina, had sprained her ankle playing tennis and was lying on the sofa with her leg buried in ice packs.

“Is there a problem? The guests are arriving, Kris, and I have no idea who anyone is. I’m worried I’ll ignore someone important. Why aren’t you downstairs?”

Kristen swung round. “Mom doesn’t want to speak at the party. I’m handling it.”

She was something to be handled. A problem, like not enough glasses or a catering issue.

As always, Winston was quick to side with his sister. “Kristen has worked hard, Mom.”

Cecilia roused herself. Enough. She stood up. “I can hardly dress with you two standing in my bedroom. I need privacy.”

They glanced at each other, not sure if they’d won the battle.

Cecilia wanted badly to be rid of them both. She glanced out of the window at the chairs that were currently being carefully set in rows. Presumably that was where Kristen had planned for her to address the guests.

Thank goodness Kristen had agreed to deliver the speech herself because Cecilia would have choked on the paragraph of sickly prose. It painted a fairy tale, not reality. Did people think Cameron had made it big by himself? Did they really think he would have become as famous as he had if she hadn’t been there?

They had no idea of the part she’d played.

But Cameron had known.

“I came to tell you that a couple of journalists have arrived,” Winston said. “One of them is asking questions about a painting called The Girl on the Shore. I asked Rita and she has no record of such a painting.”

“That’s strange, because someone else asked me about that painting recently. I checked with Rita, too. She worked for Dad for forty years. If she can’t remember it, then I doubt it exists.” Kristen tapped her fingers against her jaw as she trawled through her memory. “Maybe it was one of his early works. Dad frequently destroyed paintings that didn’t come up to his standard. All part of his creative temperament. Mom? Do you remember it?”

The Girl on the Shore.

Cecilia felt suddenly dizzy. Her chest felt tight, and now she wasn’t faking it.

It had all started with that painting. Everything could be traced back to that work. It had changed their lives in ways neither of them could have imagined.

Cameron had been unknown then. Just another struggling artist living a pared down, self-indulgent existence where the only focus was art. Eight of them had crammed into a small, clapboard cottage tucked in the dunes of the Outer Cape, close to the seashore. They’d cared more about the light and the landscape than sleep and food. Rest was something they did to pass the time until they could paint again.

For a moment Cecilia was back there with the sun on her face and the wind blowing her hair and Cameron smiling at her in the way only he could smile.

“Mom?” Kristen’s voice cut through her thoughts. “The Girl on the Shore?”

It had been decades since anyone had mentioned that painting. She’d assumed—hoped—it had been forgotten.

But clearly not. Someone was asking questions.

Cecilia couldn’t breathe properly.

“Mom?” Kristen’s voice held a note of alarm. “Are you okay?”

“She’s not okay,” Winston said. “This party is too much. A huge public event when she’s still grieving—maybe it wasn’t such a great idea, Kris.”

Cecilia barely heard them. What was she going to do? How had a journalist ever found out about it? Neither she nor Cameron had spoken of it for years. They’d agreed that destroying it was the best course of action. He’d promised her he would get rid of it. So many years had passed that they’d been confident that the painting was forgotten.

Except it clearly hadn’t been forgotten.

A chill came over her and she rubbed her arms, trying to warm herself.

Why would someone be asking about that particular work now, after all this time?

If Cameron had done what he’d promised to do, then the painting shouldn’t still exist.

But what if he hadn’t? He’d made other promises he hadn’t kept.

“Mom? Are you all right? Do you remember a painting by that name?”

Feeling distinctly unwell, she assembled her features into an expression she hoped was suitably vague. “My memory isn’t what it was. I forget things.” If only. There were some things she would have been relieved to forget, and The Girl on the Shore was one of them. “If it once existed then your father must have destroyed it.”

It wasn’t entirely a lie. He was supposed to have done just that.

But she couldn’t squash the anxiety that the painting might still exist.

Winston frowned. “Could it be in a private collection?”

“Definitely not.” Kristen shook her head. “If that were the case then we would have a record of it. What does this journalist look like? I’ll go and talk to him.”

“Slightly shorter than me. Fifties? Glasses. Academic looking. He asked to talk to you, but I didn’t know where you were.”

Kristen’s cheeks turned pink, and she dropped her phone. “Sorry.” She stooped to retrieve it. “Right. I’ll talk to him.”

For the first time since his death, Cecilia wished Cameron were here. He would have dispatched the journalist with a few sharp words.

Her feeling of anxiety increased. “Why do we have journalists here?”

“Because we are celebrating Dad’s life and work. He’s probably an art editor, rather than a journalist.”

That explanation did nothing to soothe Cecilia’s anxiety. If the person asking the question was knowledgeable about art, then that was even more concerning.

“Uncle Winston!” Another voice came from outside her room, this time it was Todd, Kristen and Theo’s son.

Cecilia was relieved to see a friendly face. She was close to her grandchildren and considered that she’d been a better grandmother than she ever had been a mother.

Grandchildren were a second chance.

At twenty-eight years old, Todd was handsome, good-natured and very much his own man. Cameron and Theo had wanted him to study law, but Todd had chosen to major in environmental studies and sustainability, and nothing they said had changed his mind. There had been several uncomfortable family dinners during with Cameron had bellowed at him, and Theo had lectured him on secure careers and giving back to society (and also having a guaranteed income for life). Everyone had been tense except Todd, who had carried on calmly eating his dinner and asked for second helpings. Fortunately, his younger sister, Hannah, had stepped up and announced her wish to study medicine and be a surgeon just like her father, which had taken the heat off Todd.

After Todd had graduated, he’d worked for a year for a Fortune 100 company trying to polish their green credentials before leaving to work for an artisan carpentry company that used reclaimed and sustainable materials. He’d trained as a carpenter and now he worked for himself, accepting commissions, and sometimes working freelance for the company who had originally employed him.

Cecilia admired his quiet strength. He listened respectfully to his parents’ views and then went ahead and did what he felt was right for him, undeterred by their strongly expressed opinions.

Todd was living the life he wanted to live. He was something of a hero to her.

In her eyes he could do no wrong, at least until last week when he’d unexpectedly become engaged. Amelie Watkins wasn’t at all the woman that Cecilia would have chosen for Todd, and she’d been astonished when he had given them the news. They seemed entirely wrong for each other, but what did she know? She wasn’t exactly an expert on love.

Flourishing a balloon and a wrapped gift, he crossed the room and hugged her. “Happy Birthday, Nanna.” He kissed her on the cheek and presented her with the gift and the balloon. “Open it later when the crowds have left. That shade of blue suits you. You look glamorous and not a day over forty.”

Kristen sighed. “She is wearing her nightgown, Todd.”

“So what? It looks great. Nanna looks fantastic whatever she wears. Not that it matters what anyone else thinks, and, anyway, I’m sure they’ll simply excuse her as a famous and eccentric artist.”

“Except that she’s not the famous artist,” Kristen said, “so unless the gene for eccentricity passes through marriage, she can’t really use that excuse, can she? And I’m sure she doesn’t want to see photographs of herself in her nightwear all over social media. I bought her the perfect outfit so there is no reason for her not to look her best.”

Todd kept his arm round his grandmother.

“A person should be allowed to wear what they like to their own party.”

Cecilia was about to point out that it wasn’t her party at all, but she didn’t want to draw Todd into this web of family tension.

She changed the subject. “Thank you for setting up my new phone, Todd.”

“You’re welcome. Everything working fine?”

“I’m sure it is.” She patted his hand. “You know me and smartphones. In my case the least smart thing about it is the user, but I’m managing thanks to you. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.”

“You have my number keyed in there,” Todd said, “so if you need help call me.”

“I’ll do that. Where’s Amelie? Is she downstairs?” She tried to sound enthusiastic. If her grandson loved Amelie, then she was determined to love her, too. Maybe the woman was cold and distant because she was shy. Maybe she’d warm up in time.

“She’s not downstairs,” Todd said. “She’s not coming.”

“What?” Kristen frowned. “Where is she?”

“She’s not feeling too good.” Todd looked at his mother. “I need to talk to you about the wedding at some point.”

“Can it wait? I need to focus on this event, and—” Kristen broke off as her phone buzzed. She checked the screen, then flushed deeply. “I need to answer this. Excuse me. And, Winston, tell anyone who asks that they’ve been misinformed. There is no painting called The Girl on the Shore.”

Flustered, she headed to the door leaving Winston staring after her, flummoxed.

Cecilia decided this was the perfect time to clear them all out. She needed to think. She needed to plan.

“If you’d all give me privacy, I’ll change into something that won’t embarrass Kristen. Thank you for the present, Todd. You’re the dearest boy.”

Still holding tightly to Todd’s gift, she managed to usher them out of the room and closed the door behind them. Her hands were clammy, her pulse racing.

The Girl on the Shore.

She leaned against the closed door, trying to think clearly. There was no way she could go to the party now. What if the journalist asked her about the painting directly? She was a hopeless liar. She’d give herself away.

She needed to stay calm and figure this out.

The guests had already started arriving. Soon there would be hundreds of people milling around, mostly people who wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to nose around the Lapthorne mansion. It was all so impersonal. She’d be expected to mingle, make small talk and accept condolences. Yes, there would be art lovers, but there would also be people who were there for the free champagne, the free food, the chance to see and be seen. Then there were the people who wanted to be able to drop into conversation that they’d been at the Lapthorne mansion for the party. They might casually mention some of the paintings they’d seen and pretend a level of knowledge they didn’t possess. There would be few guests who would be there because they loved Cecilia. When she was younger, she might have mistaken the attention for friendship. One of the advantages of reaching the age of seventy-five was that you saw the world as it was, and not how you wanted it to be. There would be no one there who had known her in those lean years before fame had shone its light on them. There would be no one who really knew her.

She walked to the window again, staring out across the estate.

The extensive gardens were bordered by woodland and beyond that was the road. Driving north would take her to Boston, with its harbor and history. Heading south would take her toward the wind-battered shores of the Cape where their story had started.

Finally she allowed her mind to go there, to think about things she tried never to think about.

She’d avoided the place for so long. She’d had no reason to go and every reason to stay away. Until now.

She walked across the bedroom and opened the small drawer in her nightstand. The envelope had been given to her by the lawyer, six months after Cameron’s death. After she’d read it, she’d tucked it inside her worn first edition of Henry Thoreau’s Cape Cod and spent a long time digesting the fact that Cameron’s last act had been to confess to another lie.

She’d been so angry and upset she’d simply left the letter inside the book where no one was likely to find it. At the time she hadn’t been in the right emotional state to contemplate doing anything with the information that the letter contained. But now?

She still wasn’t in the right emotional state, but now she had no choice. It was no good telling herself that everything was fine. She had to see for herself. She had to find out what else Cameron had lied about. She had to see for herself whether the painting still existed.

She had to go back.