The Girl Who Came Back (6 page)

‘Is anyone paying up?’

‘I’ve no idea, but I’m guessing some are or they’d surely have cleared off by now.’

‘Or someone would have been hurt,’ Ruthie added ominously.

To Jules Em said, ‘Will Kian pay?’

Jules was indignant. ‘No way!’ she declared hotly. ‘I’d rather close the place down than start bowing to the likes of them.’ In a sudden blaze of fury, she started for the door. ‘I’m going out there.’

‘No, Jules, you can’t!’ Ruthie and Em cried, grabbing her back.

‘You don’t know what they’re capable of,’ Ruthie cautioned wisely. ‘If you go upsetting them they might take it out on Kian.’

Jules returned to the window, still steaming and frustrated. When she saw what was happening now her jaw dropped in shock. ‘Oh my God! He’s only treating them to a bloody flamenco,’ she exclaimed, starting to laugh. ‘He’s out of his mind.’

The others started to laugh too. Kian was nothing if not unpredictable.

Suddenly Jules froze. ‘
Christ!
Is that a gun?’ she gasped, fear coursing through her so fast she started to shake.

Bob was backing off, white-faced, hands in the air.

Kian carried on dancing, clicking his heels, waving his hands and throwing out his cloak.

‘This is like the scene from
Indiana Jones
when he pulls the gun and shoots the baddie,’ Liam declared over their shoulders.

‘Except in this case the baddie’s got the gun,’ Ruthie pointed out.

Jules couldn’t watch for another minute. She had to get out there and put a stop to it all.

‘Come back,’ Ruthie seethed, grabbing her again. ‘I’ll tell you what he’s up to. He’s making out he’s a nutjob, or drunk, someone who isn’t the owner of the business, so they’re wasting their time trying to get anything out of him.’

‘If you go out there,’ Em told her gravely, ‘there’s every chance you’ll get hurt, and that definitely wouldn’t be Kian’s plan.’

Unable to argue with that, Jules turned to Liam as he said, ‘Looks like they’re going.’

Returning to the window she watched the thugs getting into their car while Kian, unbelievably, just carried on dancing and Bob, by the look of him, was bending double trying not to laugh.

As the Mercedes reversed back to the road and disappeared, Jules threw open the door and shouted across the garden, ‘My husband and his best friend have to be the only idiots in the world who treat a visit from the mafia as a joke.’

Kian spluttered, ‘Did you see their faces? They didn’t know what the hell to do.’

‘So they pulled a gun. These guys are dangerous, Kian. People who mess around with them end up dead.’

‘Did you call Danny?’ Kian wanted to know.

‘He’s on his way, with backup.’

‘OK, we’ll deal with it from here, so you just go on about your day and don’t worry yourself any more about nasty little men who make nasty little threats that they can’t carry out. Especially not with Julio Rivero!’

Unable not to laugh, Jules turned back inside, still worried, although loyally confident that Kian and his cousins would find a way to see the Romanians, and any other chancers with similar aims, off for good. If they didn’t then their dreams really might be over before they’d begun, since she was serious about not working for some lowlife hoodlums of any nationality who had the audacity to try and set up their vile racketeering in her home town.

‘Have you had many visits like that?’ Em asked as Jules led the way past the bar to the stairs.

‘No, that was the first, and let’s hope it’s the last or things could really turn ugly. Actually, I heard the other day that the police are calling a meeting with local business-owners to come up with a solidarity type of plan to try and sort this out. Kian will be sure to go, especially now, probably along with half the Temple Fields estate. You know how they’re always spoiling for some sort of fight.’

‘It’ll make a change for them to be on the same side as the police,’ Em remarked drily as they climbed the stairs. ‘So, are you missing being over there? It must seem very quiet on the posh side of town by comparison.’

Jules paused as she reached the top of the stairs where boxes were piled on the landing, and a warm breeze was stealing through an open sash window.

‘What is it?’ Em asked, trying to peer around her.

Jules shook her head. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I just thought …’ She picked up an old-fashioned cream leather shoe with a fraying lace and broken stitching around the pointed toe. There was no heel as such, and the sole was worn thin, though not through. ‘The builders found this lodged in one of the window frames while they were carrying out the renovations,’ she said, showing it to Em. ‘I keep wondering about who might have owned it.’

‘It looks very old,’ Em commented, treating it carefully as she turned it over in her hands.

‘It is. Mum took it to one of the antique dealers in town, who reckons it dates from the mid-nineteenth century and probably belonged to a young girl or small woman. Because it’s leather and is clearly for the right foot he says she was unlikely to have been a peasant.’

‘What does the right foot have to do with it?’

‘Apparently only the better off were having shoes shaped for each foot around that time. I’ve been trying to decide where to put it, and I was sure I took it down to the bar this morning …’ Shrugging, she put it on the top of a box and carried on along the landing.

As she pushed open the sitting-room door she felt her heart swell to see how elegant and welcoming it was with its up-to-the-minute fawn suedette sofas, thick-pile champagne-coloured rugs, whitewashed stone walls and perfectly restored Georgian sash windows, all open and allowing the sun to cast the room in an almost dreamlike glow.

‘I’m still having to pinch myself,’ she confessed, as Em followed her in. ‘I mean, imagine me and Kian having a home like this. It’s straight out of a magazine.’

‘And it’s no less than you deserve,’ Em told her fondly. ‘If that money had gone to someone else I bet they’d never have given as much away, or done as much for the community as you two are doing.’

‘Who knows,’ Jules shrugged, ‘I’m just glad we’re bringing this place back to life, because right from the minute we stepped through the door, when it was still practically a ruin, it’s felt like we belong here. Mum’s been digging out stuff from the library so we can read about its history. I mean, we know from all the searches and everything that it’s always been an inn, but it would be fascinating to know something about the people who’ve lived here.’

‘Wouldn’t it just,’ Em agreed, rapt by the romance of it.

Heading for the windows, Jules said, ‘We’ve already had a few locals dropping in to tell us stories, and even give us photographs of when their great-grandparents used to come here, back at the beginning of the last century. Apparently it was called the Smuggler for a while during the twenties, but it became the Mermaid again in 1930. We’re going to hang the photos in the main bar, and Mum’s been rummaging around local charity and antique shops to see what else she can find that might be fitting.’ She was watching Danny and his entourage of hard men with shaven heads and tattoos piling out of Danny’s battered old Land Rover, apparently torn between bristling for a fight and laughing at Kian’s crazy costume.

‘To think,’ she murmured teasingly as Em joined her, ‘Danny Bright could have been all yours if you hadn’t met Don and skedaddled off to the States.’

Sighing nostalgically, Em said, ‘I was so in love with him when I was twelve.’

‘Sixteen,’ Jules corrected.

Em twinkled. ‘You’ve got to admit he was a real looker back then, and he still would be if it weren’t for the broken nose and scary scars.’

‘He’s been in a few scrapes,’ Jules admitted. ‘And when you consider the kind of club he owns … Shall we go and say hello?’

As she made to turn away Em caught her hand and gently pulled her back. ‘In a minute,’ she said, her grey eyes full of concern. ‘I want to make sure you’re OK first.’

Jules made herself smile. ‘I’m fine,’ she promised. ‘It’s just one of those things. If it’s not meant to be, then it’s not meant to be.’

Hearing the emotional tear in her voice, Em drew her into an embrace. ‘You’ve got so much going on at the moment,’ she soothed gently, ‘so maybe now isn’t the best time for a baby.’

Pulling away, Jules said, ‘How would you have felt if someone had said that to you when you were trying for Matilda? Oh that’s right, you didn’t try, it just happened, the way these things do for most people.’

Em regarded her helplessly.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jules sighed. ‘I’m not bitter really, or maybe I am. I mean I don’t begrudge you Matilda, please don’t think that for a moment, I just can’t understand why it should be so difficult for me when no one can find anything wrong with me.’

Clearly desperate to keep hope alive, Em said, ‘I’m a firm believer in everything happening when it’s supposed to. So there’ll be some divine reason why you’re not getting pregnant now, and in time you’ll look back and think, thank God it didn’t happen then, because it’s much better that it’s happened now.’

Though Jules smiled gratefully, in her heart she was wishing her best friend had been able to come up with something a little more original, or at least some form of comfort that both their mothers and Aileen didn’t regularly trot out. ‘Remind me,’ she said, needing to change the subject, ‘why did we come up here?’

Em shrugged. ‘I just followed you.’

Jules gave a laugh as she looked around. ‘I guess I love it so much up here that I can’t stay away. Actually, I feel like that about the whole place, and it’s fantastic that you’re going to stay with us for your last couple of days. Did you bring your stuff?’

‘Mum and Dad are driving it over later so they can see for themselves how things are going here. I just love the way the whole town is talking about it. There’s such a buzz going on. I can’t believe I’m going to miss out on the grand opening.’

‘But you’ll come for Christmas,’ Jules reminded her. ‘All of you.’

‘You bet. Don’s folks are even talking about coming too, but don’t worry, no one will have to put them up,’ Em hastily added. ‘They can afford one of the smart hotels on the front, and would probably prefer it anyway.’

Relieved to hear that, since she, Kian and her mother had found Don’s wealthy parents a little daunting when they’d been in the States for the wedding, Jules said, ‘Obviously they’ll be very welcome, but I hope they’re prepared for the Brights en masse.’

Em laughed. ‘Rosemary and Gray are much easier-going than you think, and I’m sure they’ll love all you Brights every bit as much as I do.’

Feeling suddenly downcast at the thought of Em being part of a family that was so far away, and so very different to her own, Jules turned to the door. ‘I’ll just pop to the bathroom,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Meet you downstairs?’

As Em started along the landing Jules watched her go, wondering what she was thinking now, if her thoughts had already flitted off across the Atlantic to Matilda and Don. Jules couldn’t imagine thinking of anything but her child if she had one, no matter where she was; there again, she was thinking about it anyway and it didn’t even exist.

Turning into the bedroom, she gave a sigh of exasperation to discover that she’d left most of the dresser drawers and the wardrobe doors wide open. As if she needed any evidence of the state of mind she’d been in when she’d dressed earlier.

Annoyed with herself, she closed everything up and went into the bathroom to sort out the mess she knew she’d left there. However, to her surprise everything was as it should be. The tampons were back in their box and inside the cabinet, and the towels were hanging neatly on a heated rail when she was sure she’d left them heaped on the floor.

Realising Kian must have found a moment to tidy it all up, she sank down on the edge of the bath and dropped her head in her hands. Though she loved him for doing it, it was making her sadder than ever to think of how he must have felt when he’d walked into the evidence of her frustration and grief. Everybody made this all about her, including him, but she knew that he was suffering too, yet instead of sitting around feeling sorry for himself, or throwing things about the place, he’d gone out and bought her a car. Not only that, he’d got himself all kitted out as a dancing Spaniard simply to make her smile. Only she knew that it had provided a crazy persona for him to hide behind, which, as it turned out, had served him well when the Romanians had come calling.

She wondered if they’d come back, and in that moment she wasn’t sure that she cared. All that mattered was the baby that she and Kian couldn’t produce. Her heart was already swollen with love for it; her arms were so ready to hold it she found it hard to keep them at her sides. There were times when she was sure she could feel it, even hear it, and whenever she went shopping she had to force herself not to buy things ready to welcome it into the world.

‘It doesn’t do any good to remind you of how young you are,’ her lovely doctor had said the last time she was there. ‘When the instinct is upon you the way it is now, it’s one of the fiercest things in the world, which is why I’m going to do everything I can to help you.’

Jules wondered if Dr Moore would still feel the same when she let her know that the IVF hadn’t worked. It was extremely expensive, and not everyone was lucky enough to get it, so maybe they’d decide that Jules was too young to be given a second chance; she would either have to wait for conception to happen naturally, or go to a private clinic. She and Kian had already discussed that, and were perfectly prepared to pay. In fact, they should probably have done so anyway, given how well off they were. Now she came to think of it, it could very well be the unfairness of that that was at the root of the problem. It wasn’t her turn. Whoever handed out babies up there had decided she’d elbowed her way into the wrong queue, and until she got into the right one nothing was coming her way.

Hearing a noise in the bedroom she lifted her head, expecting someone to call out her name. When no one did she concluded that the wind must have blown something over, and getting to her feet she went to check her face in the mirror.