Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Lily walked for almost an hour, following the path alongside the wide river.
In summer it must be stunning. Even with the grey cloud cover there was something magical about it.
The sound of the wind whistling through the trees and the calls of the birds gave Lily a sense of peace that she desperately needed.
She’d just turned to head back to Malporth when Flynn called.
“How is everything?” he asked, then yawned loudly.
“Have you just woken up?”
“Sadly, no. I was rudely awakened by Mrs Patel a couple of hours ago.”
“Why?” Lily said, with the strange feeling that he’d been spending time with one of her friends. In truth, she hardly knew Mrs Patel.
“She wanted to invite me over to meet Mrs Silverton on Sunday. It seems there’s some sort of residents’ meeting.”
“Will you go?” Lily asked.
“No. I’ll be sleeping after my night shift. I’ll call her and tell her I’ll be leaving.”
“I wonder if she’s going to keep the building or sell it?” Lily mused.
“Mrs Patel seems to think she’s keeping it and everyone will be able to continue living here.” Lily could hear the amusement in his voice when he spoke again. “Mr Patel is also helping me pack up my flat. He’s been here for the last couple of hours.”
Lily laughed loudly. “I assume his wife volunteered him?”
“Yes. I tried to refuse, but she insisted, and Mr Patel told me it’s easier if we just do what she says.”
“Is it awkward? You barely know the man.”
“I thought it would be, but it turns out he’s a whizz at listing items on eBay, so he’s dealing with anything I want to get rid of. He’s also a really nice guy. I think he was happy to hang out here for a while just to be out from under Mrs Patel’s feet.”
“Henry’s sweet,” Lily said. “It’s good that you’ve got help.”
“Yes. It would just have been nice to get a little more sleep this morning.”
“Only a few more shifts, then you’ll be back to your easy life on St Mary’s.” Lily smiled at the thought.
“How’s it going in Malporth?”
“I just met my old neighbour, Samantha. The one I was staying with on the night of the fire.”
“How was that?”
She hesitated, waiting to pass a couple of hikers before she answered.
“It was fine,” she said. “Weird, but fine. She seems quite sweet.”
“Any chance she started the fire?”
Lily released a breath. “I hope not. I like her. She’s not the most tactful person, but she seemed nice.”
“What was she being tactless about?”
“About my grandmother. She said it would probably have been for the best if she’d died immediately after her fall.”
“Wow,” Flynn whispered.
“That’s a bit blunter than the way she said it. She meant that my gran was so heartbroken at losing her daughter that it might have been kinder.”
“Still pretty harsh. Did she know any more about Clara? Like where she might be?”
“No. She seems to think Clara went a bit mad after the fire. She accused the neighbours of starting the fire, as well as the developers.”
“It’s weird that no one knows what happened to her.”
“The woman who owns the cottage I’m staying in thought she’d died a long time ago. Samantha seemed to think the same.”
“Did you speak to the owner of the gift shop?”
“Yes.” Lily felt deflated by the reminder. “She wasn’t helpful. There was nothing she could tell me about the cards, and she got quite worked up when I mentioned Clara.”
“How so?”
“She said she was a troublemaker and I shouldn’t mention her name around here. But Samantha said people were quite sympathetic towards my gran, so I don’t know what to think.”
“It’s interesting that the owner of the gift shop had such a strong reaction to you asking about Clara.”
“Maybe,” Lily said. “But I’m wondering if Clara was wrong about the fire.
” Lily fell silent while she got her thoughts in order.
“Maybe she was just grief-stricken and looking for someone to blame. I’ve got it into my head that someone deliberately started the fire, but it might have been an accident. ”
“What about someone pushing your grandmother down the steps?”
“She could just have fallen. It sounds as though she wasn’t in her right mind to start with, and then she had a blow to the head when she fell…”
“Maybe,” Flynn said. “But what about the other things? The fire at the ice cream shop and the private investigator who followed you in Italy.”
Lily groaned. He was right – there was unlikely to be an innocent explanation for all of it.
“I don’t know what to think. Samantha said my mum was coming around to the idea of selling. In which case it doesn’t even make sense that someone would start a fire to try and force the sale.”
“Maybe they thought the fire would nudge your mum towards the sale… that she’d see it as a sign.”
“It’s possible,” Lily agreed, rubbing her temple.
“This is probably a daft question, but are you going to keep digging?”
“Yes. I’d like to speak to Nancy, my childhood friend, and the other neighbours too.”
“Are they still there?”
“Yes. Which is also a little odd. If they were so eager to sell, why did none of them sell later?” She pondered her own question. “Richard Harper said he’d offered over market value so that could be a factor. Perhaps they only wanted to sell because it was such a good offer.”
“If someone started the fire, they might also have been so consumed with guilt that they never felt they could sell.”
“You’d think they’d sell up and move away rather than be confronted with that guilt every day.”
“True,” Flynn said softly. “I wish I was there.”
“Me too. I’m okay though,” she said to reassure him. “I asked Nancy’s mum to put us in touch with each other. Hopefully, I’ll hear from her. I want to question her about the neighbours, but I’m also really keen to get to know her.”
“Fingers crossed she gets in touch,” Flynn said before declaring he had to get on with his packing before work.
She told him she’d speak to him later and ended the call. For the rest of the walk back to Malporth, she didn’t encounter a soul and arrived at Kingfisher Cottage ravenous.
Just as she sat on the couch with a sandwich, her phone vibrated with a message from an unknown number. Intrigued, she clicked into it quickly.
The message from Nancy was succinct – saying she’d love to see Lily and asking if she wanted to go to the pub for dinner that night.
Lily accepted the invitation without hesitation.
The doorbell rang at six thirty, taking Lily by surprise. She was due to meet Nancy in the Heron Inn in half an hour. She was ready to go and had just sat down with a glass of wine for a bit of Dutch courage.
The woman on the doorstep was around Lily’s age, with blonde hair that flowed in voluptuous waves past her shoulders.
“Hello.” She shifted her weight and dragged her teeth over her lips, disturbing her pink gloss.
“Hi,” Lily said, confused.
“I’m sorry.” Her face contorted as though she were in pain.
“We were going to meet at the pub, but I got all nervous, so I thought I’d get there early and have a drink.
But then I wondered if you were nervous too.
And I don’t know if you’re someone who’s comfortable walking into a pub on your own.
I don’t usually like to myself, but at this time of year, when there are hardly any tourists, I know just about everyone in the Heron Inn …
you don’t though. Oh, god. I’m wittering away. What must you think of me?”
Lily smiled, endeared by the rambling. “You must be Nancy?”
“Oh, my god!” She slapped her hands against her cheeks. “I didn’t even introduce myself. Imagine if I’d got the wrong person and just started going on!”
All of Lily’s previous nerves evaporated. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said and offered her hand.
Nancy’s smile was unconvincing as they shook hands.
“I kind of want to hug you, but that’s probably a bit much.
I’m sorry I’m such a wreck. I’ve been all over the place since Mum told me you were here.
I think I have some unresolved trauma or something.
Which is ridiculous. You were the one who suffered a trauma. ”
“Do you want to come in?” Lily asked.
“Yes, please.” She stepped over the threshold. “Do you want to go to the pub, or would you rather not?”
“I’m quite happy to. I looked at the menu online and got excited about the food.”
“It is good food,” she said. “Hearty meals and they don’t scrimp on the portions.” Her gaze drifted into the living room. “Looks as though you had the same idea as me of having a drink first.”
“Yes.” Lily scrunched her nose up. “I was nervous too.”
“Shall we have a drink here first?” Nancy asked shyly.
Lily nodded and went to the kitchen for another glass and the bottle of wine.
“Cheers!” Lily said, holding out her glass once they were both settled on the couch.
Nancy clinked her glass against Lily’s. She looked as though she might say something, but took a large gulp instead.
“I missed you,” she said quietly, setting her glass on the table.
“I’m sure you’ll think that’s very weird, especially as Mum said you don’t really remember living here, but I thought about you a lot when I was growing up.
I didn’t make friends easily, and I always had this idea that if you’d stayed we’d have remained best friends. ”
“Maybe we would have,” Lily said.
“You might have got sick of me talking too much, like everyone else. You never seemed to mind it. Not that I realised I was doing it back then, but I remember that I’d talk a lot and you’d mostly just nod along.
Mum said the same – that you were always a quiet, thoughtful child and I was like a whirlwind.
Maybe it was also because you were younger than me. ”
Lily took a sip of her wine. “I was wondering about something earlier. Did there used to be a yellow playhouse in your garden?”
“That was your garden.” She tilted her head sympathetically. “Your dad built it and it was so lovely. We played in it all the time. We even said we were going to run away and live in it together.”
“Run away from home and live in the garden?” Lily said with a chuckle.
“No.” Nancy’s eyes filled with sorrow. “If we had to move away from each other, we were going to run away and meet back there. I guess it didn’t occur to us that if the development project went through, the playhouse wouldn’t be there anymore.
We’d have been living in a retirement home with a bunch of pensioners. ”
“We knew we might have to move?”
“Yes. I suppose our parents tried to keep it from us at first, but everyone was talking about it. My parents argued about it a lot. Eventually Mum explained we might move, and you might too, but I’d still see you.
I was devastated at first. Until we came up with the plan to run away and live in the Sunshine House – that’s what we called the playhouse.
I remember feeling fine about everything after that.
Apparently at six years old, I really thought that was a solid plan.
” She smiled lightly and reached for her wine.
“It’s weird that you remember all this and I don’t.”
“You were only four,” she said. “Also, I had constant reminders of it throughout my childhood. Did you even have photos after the fire? I guess it wasn’t all digital back then – not like these days.”
“I had some photos of my parents and me…” She paused, thinking. “But I don’t think there were any of us at home. I think they were from holidays.”
Had that been intentional? Had Uncle Derek purposefully made sure she didn’t remember?
“I was still going into the Sunshine House for years afterwards,” Nancy said. “I used to daydream that you’d run away from your uncle and come back there.”
Lily swallowed the lump in her throat. “It was still there?”
“Yes. It was right at the end of the garden. I guess the people who bought the land didn’t think too much about it since it was hidden away.
They used it as a shed, but I used to sneak in.
I’d ignore the gardening equipment and pretend it was just like before.
Eventually, they took it down. I begged Dad to talk to them.
If they didn’t want it, I didn’t see why they couldn’t move it into our garden, but he said the wood was rotten.
He promised to build me one, but he never did.
” She sighed. “He was always too busy with work for something like that. Not like your dad, who always seemed to have time.”
Lily’s stomach twisted into a knot. “Would you mind if we got moving?” she said, needing a break from the intensity of the conversation. “I’m getting hungry.”
“Good idea.” Nancy giggled. “I shouldn’t drink much more on an empty stomach. I’m a lightweight.”