Luckily her handbag was lying on the window ledge and inside it were the necessary bottles of contact lens cleaning and soaking solution. Grabbing the bag, Maddy headed upstairs to the bathroom, still blinking lemon juice out of her eye.

Chapter 60

‘Right,’ said Marcella, ‘here we go.’ Her dark eyes danced as she climbed out of the dark blue Mercedes. ‘Kerr, you come with me. Darling,’ she turned to Den, ‘would you mind awfully waiting here for a few minutes? It’s just that Jake’s at the party, and I want to be able to explain everything to him first.’

‘That’s fine.’ Den wasn’t offended. ‘No problem. I’ll just sit here on this wall.’ At the sound of a door slamming behind him, he turned and saw a girl emerging from the Fallen Angel, the same girl he’d seen here the other day. Her hair was lit by the sun and she was carrying two hefty bags of ice. As she looked up and saw she was being watched, her eyes widened in recognition. Fumbling with the keys to the pub, she clutched both ice bags to her chest, which surely couldn’t be comfortable.

‘Nuala!’ Marcella clapped her hands in delight. ‘Just the girl! Will you do me a huge favour, darling? Wait out here for two minutes with this charming young man and keep him company?’

‘Um ...’ stammered Nuala, going bright pink and gazing helplessly at Den, then briefly at Kerr, then back again at Den. ‘Er, OK.’

‘You two just have a nice chat,’ Marcella said helpfully, ‘and we’ll give you a shout when we’re ready for you. Now,’ she went on, slipping her arm through Kerr’s, ‘let’s have a bit of fun, shall we?’

Nuala watched Marcella and her mystery companion disappear together through the front door of Snow Cottage. Finding her tongue at last, Nuala said, ‘Hello.’

‘Hi,’ said Den.

‘Um, did I see you here the other day?’

‘You did.’ Den nodded, discreetly taking in the gorgeous curvy legs which had previously been hidden by a pair of jeans. ‘Watch out for frostbite, by the way.’

‘Hmm? Oh!’ Belatedly discovering she still had the bags of ice cubes clamped to her chest, Nuala placed them on the ground beside her feet. Attempting to hide the fact that beneath her white top her nipples (yelping, ‘Ouch, we’re cold!’) were standing to attention, she said, ‘So, um, who was that with Marcella?’

Den wanted to kiss her. OK, not yet, have some decorum. ‘Him? That’s my brother.’

‘And who are you?’ Nuala was studying him with just as much undisguised pleasure as he’d been studying her.

It wasn’t just his imagination, he realised. She really wanted to kiss him too. Feeling as if he’d truly come home, he took a step towards her.

‘I’m his brother,’ said Den.

The ice cubes were beginning to melt at Nuala’s feet. Moving them into the shade of the garden wall would help, but Nuala was finding it hard to care about the fate of a bunch of ice cubes. She hadn’t the faintest idea where Marcella had managed to get hold of these two brothers but she was jolly glad she had. Anyway, that was Maddy’s mother for you; you never knew what she might do next.

In a daze, Nuala wondered if Marcella had met the pair by chance in Bath, running into them in the street and persuading them, in that impulsive, irresistible way of hers, to come along with her to a party in Ashcombe. Or maybe she’d been for one of her antenatal appointments at the hospital and had got chatting to them, as you do, in the waiting room .. .

Oh Lord.

Gulping, Nuala blurted out, ‘Is your wife having a baby?’

‘I don’t have a wife.’ His thin, tanned face – oh, those cheekbones! – registered amusement at the question. ‘Or a girlfriend. And I most definitely don’t have a baby.’

Having screwed the tops onto the plastic bottles of cleansing and wetting solution, Maddy checked her face in the bathroom mirror. The contact lens was safely back in place. She could see again – namely, her own unsmiling reflection, in sharp contrast to all the cheerful animated faces out in the garden. This wasn’t good enough, it really wasn’t, she should be looking jollier, today was a celebration of-

‘Maddy, are you up there?’

Maddy looked in the mirror, reminding herself of a tight lipped, long-suffering mother whose wayward teenage daughter had promised to be home two hours ago.

Except this was no wayward teenager, it was Marcella.

‘So you bothered to turn up at last,’ she called out, unzipping her make-up bag. ‘You were supposed to be back before three.’

‘I know. Sorry, darling. I got held up. But I’m here now,’ Marcella shouted. ‘Are you coming down?’

Why? Did they need her to make more salads? Rustle up a few quiches? Find a mop because someone had just spilled their drink?

Slowly taking out her Maybelline mascara, because all that faffing about with her contact lens had left her with a bald right eye, Maddy called out, ‘In a minute. I’m busy.’

There, see? She wasn’t a pushover.

‘Come down now.’ Marcella’s tone was cajoling. ‘I’ve brought you a present.’

‘What is it?’

‘Something nice.’

Maddy finished with the mascara and gravely regarded her reflection. She loved Marcella more than life itself, but when it came to presents her taste could be inescapably dodgy. The last time she’d done this had been after Maddy had happened to mention in passing that she’d enjoyed the latest Harry Potter film.

Two days later, following a visit to Aldridge’s Auction House in Bath, Marcella had arrived home in a taxi with a moth-eaten stuffed barn owl in a glass case.

‘Come on,’ Marcella said now. ‘You’ll like it, I promise.’

Hmm. Maddy squirted on some perfume in an attempt to launch herself into more of a party mood. Her lipstick had worn off. Should she put more on, or not bother? If it wasn’t going to cheer her up, was there really any point?

No, sod it, why should she?

‘Maddy, will you get out of that bathroom!’

‘I’m BUSY,’ Maddy bellowed.

‘And I’m PREGNANT,’ Marcella shouted back up the stairs, ‘which means I win, because if I don’t get to the loo this minute, I’m going to—’

‘OK, OK.’ Conceding defeat, Maddy irritably straightened the straps on her pink dress then unlocked the bathroom door. As she stomped out onto the landing, she froze.

There he was. Kerr. Maddy blinked and clutched the banister rail, wondering if she was in fact awake.

Right, pinch yourself. Go on, pinch your arm really hard – ow.

It made no sense, but it appeared to be actually happening.

Kerr McKinnon was here in Snow Cottage, at the bottom of this very staircase, with Marcella at his side.

‘Hi,’ said Kerr, his dark eyes glinting with amusement and what looked like love.

Feeling giddy, Maddy stammered, ‘H-hi.’

Marcella said delightedly, ‘You see? I told you it was a nice surprise!’

Determined not to faint Maddy nodded. ‘Um, yes.’

Marcella tucked her arm affectionately through Kerr’s and gave it a squeeze. ‘My daughter doesn’t trust me,’ she confided. ‘I think she thought you might be another stuffed owl in a glass case.’

‘What’s going on?’ Maddy began to descend the stairs. ‘I was kidnapped,’ said Kerr. ‘From my office.’

‘By me,’ Marcella added with pride.

Kerr, propelling Marcella gently but firmly in the direction of the kitchen, said, ‘Thanks, but I think we can manage the rest of this by ourselves.’

When the kitchen door had closed behind Marcella, Maddy ventured further down the staircase.

Scarcely daring to breathe, she whispered, ‘Is it really you?’

‘Damn, don’t tell me you haven’t got your lenses in again.’ Kerr was smiling now; as she reached the last step, he took her trembling hands in his. ‘You’re about to be horribly disappointed if you thought I was Brad Pitt.’

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