Page 231 of The Black Trilogy

“Yeah.”

“It’s really nice. Why on earth were you living in a caravan at Hazelwood Farm if you had this?”

“I needed to get away for a while. Hazelwood Farm made a convenient place to lie low.”

“What, because of your cheating fiancé? He must have really hurt you if you chose to stay in that awful caravan instead of here.”

“The whole fiancé thing wasn’t exactly true, I’m afraid.”

“Then why?”

“It was still man trouble. I used to be married and someone murdered my husband.”

She went quiet for a second. “Luke said that, but he’s been drinking so much lately, I thought he’d made the story up. He thinks you did it.”

“Do you?”

She shook her head, then clambered off her stool and hugged me. I froze for a second before hugging her back, careful not to squeeze too hard.

“It’s not been a great few months,” I said.

“I’m so sorry,” she mumbled in my ear. “I must have made things even worse for you. I was so nasty when we first met. If I’d known what had happened, I’d never have been mean like that.”

“It’s over and done with now. No matter how much we’d like to, we can’t change what happened in the past.” And I didn’t particularly want to discuss it either. “How about we both go to bed? I don’t know about you, but I’m knackered.”

“I’m super tired too. Do you think I could borrow some pyjamas and maybe a toothbrush? I literally have nothing but my phone. Not even my handbag. I managed to leave it in Theo’s car when I jumped out.”

In this place, we had spare everything. Most of my friends treated it like a hotel. “Sure, I’ll show you where my wardrobe is—borrow whatever you want. There are spare toothbrushes in every bathroom. Did you have anything important in your bag?”

“My wallet and some antibiotics I’ve been taking. I had a bad chest last week.” She groaned. “And my house keys. I guess I’ll have to ask Luke to change the locks. He’s gonna be really mad at me, especially when he sees my eye.”

“We’ll worry about that in the morning.”

“Perhaps I could just keep out of his way and not tell him? At least he’s gone back to work now, so he’s less likely to notice if I’m not there. He moped around the house for ages after you left.”

“Did he? He looked as though he wanted to poke my eyes out when I saw him the other day.”

“Oh, that was only after he found out you were still engaged. He said he felt used.”

I didn’t know whether to choke or laugh. “Engaged? Who am I engaged to?”

“Nick, he said. The guy who helped rescue me?”

“Where on earth did he hear that? I’m not and never have been engaged to Nick.”

“I don’t know. I think maybe one of his friends told him? Luke came home that night and said you and Nick were dancing together.”

“Dancing, yes. But that doesn’t automatically mean I’m going to marry the guy.”

“So you’ve never been involved with Nick?”

“We had a thing once, but that was almost a decade ago.” I thought I might as well put that on the table. “We’ve only been friends for years.”

“Oh. Luke got completely the wrong end of the stick, then.”

“Looks that way, doesn’t it? What’s Theo’s surname?” I changed the subject in an effort to avoid getting into a deep analysis of my failed relationships with my ex-boyfriend’s sister.

“Baldwin. Theo Baldwin. Why?”

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