Page 11 of Don't Believe A Word

‘I’d make you end your farce of a marriage, that’s what I’d do.’

Mia stared at her open-mouthed.

‘You should never have married him in the first place,’ Lottie scolded, ‘and I shouldn’t have encouraged it. He’s only ever been interested in your money …’ She stopped at Mia’s stricken look. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly, ‘but you know it’s true. You’re worth so much more than he could ever offer, so let’s pay him off, get rid of him once and for all.’

‘And that,’ Mia said hoarsely, ‘is how you’d write my life?’

‘It’s how I’d write ours, going forward,’ Lottie replied. ‘So now, drink up if you want to hear the rest.’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘It’s definitely got me intrigued,’ Connor declared, his voice booming around the electric Smart car that Cristy had borrowed from David’s mother that morning. She hadn’t found the volume control yet, but at least she’d managed to hit the right button when Connor’s name had flashed across the screen letting her know he was calling.

‘It’s different,’ he continued. ‘Usually this kind of story is all about someone who’s gone missing never to be seen again. Here we have the victim, so to speak, we just need to find out who lost her.’

‘Or gave her away, or whatever,’ Jodi added. Connor’s wife always took a keen interest in their podcasts and Cristy always welcomed her input.

‘Presuming the chapters we’ve seen so far aren’t fiction,’ Connor said, ‘and I don’t reckon they are, not with the names being the same and dates tying in … I’m seeing them as more of a … confession?’

‘Purging of conscience?’ Jodi suggested.

‘It’s hard to say when there’s so little to go on,’ Cristy said, taking a careful right turn onto a heavily wooded road where almost nothing was visible through the dense fog that had fallen overnight.

She’d scanned and emailed the latest chapter first thing this morning while David was still in bed sleeping off a few too many glasses toasting in the New Year. With so many friends and family at the party and him being the host, he’d found himself in such demand that Cristy had barely seen him after midnight. She’d lost track of Juliette too, not that she’d been keeping an eye out for her, though she’d noticed her when she’d appeared on the dancefloor – with David. How closely and well they’d moved together, and how intimate they’d seemed, until David had caught her eye and winked. Anyway, she was determined not to start exercising herself over his past, it was clearly what the woman wanted and Cristy was damned if she was going to allow herself to be dragged into childish games. She just hoped Juliette had slept well on the bunk in Laurent’s room while David had crashed out in his own bed next to Cristy.

‘Are you still there?’ Connor’s voice was slightly broken as he asked.

‘Sorry, yes, just not a great reception. Anyway, I’m clearly not getting off this island today, there are no flights or ferries probably until tomorrow, or Wednesday, so I’m on my way to meet Mia Winters. Unsurprisingly, Sadie doesn’t want me to reveal why I’m there, so I’m just a new friend who’s visiting the Gaudions, while actually getting a take on how batty, or not, the old lady is. That’s Anna’s word, by the way. Sadie insists she’s quite lucid when she wants to be and uses her battiness to avoid things she doesn’t want to do, or discuss.’

‘Sadie’s got to have realized that if it turns out she was abducted her aunt’s going to have some hard questions to answer,’ Jodi pointed out. ‘Is that really what she wants?’

‘All I can tell you,’ Cristy replied, ‘is that she believes there’s a lot more to her story than we’ve seen so far, and I don’t think we can argue with that. So let’s try not to jump to obvious conclusions before we have a fuller picture, and whether we get that through more pages, or hard research, remains to be seen.’

‘Do you have any recording equipment with you?’

‘Only my phone, but I’m not about to go covert on the old lady.’

‘I wasn’t meaning that. You could just lay down a description of the house, grounds, that part of the island, et cetera.’

‘If I could see it, I would,’ she retorted wryly, as she plunged into a deeper morass of fog. ‘I don’t think I should be out in this, to be honest. There’s no one else on the roads … If I can find the place without going over a cliff it’ll be a miracle.’

‘Maybe turn back,’ Jodi suggested. ‘It’s not as if it’s urgent. Wait for the weather to clear and go then?’

‘It’s not far now, and Sadie’s waiting for me. With any luck she might have found more pages by the time I get there.’

‘Call us again when you have news from the aunt, or Sadie,’ Connor said. ‘Meantime I’m going to start working on what we already have.’

‘It’s New Year’s Day!’ Cristy cried, and immediately gulped as she almost hit a roadside rock. ‘I really should ring off,’ she said, ‘I need to concentrate on where I’m going.’

As the call ended, the sudden silence that descended felt oddly disorientating, leaving her with a disturbing sense of isolation in this tiny car that was inching along a barely visible highway with only the satnav to guide her through the virtually invisible mass of fallen cloud.

Keeping the speed right down she followed the map on the screen, mounting a hill, dipping around a bend and climbing another before a disembodied voice suddenly bellowed, ‘You have reached your destination.’

Certain she was in the middle of nowhere Cristy came to a halt, praying that nothing approached from behind, or in front, to slam her and the little Smart car into the great beyond. She looked around. It wasn’t until a space briefly opened in the drifting fog that she saw the towering gates to Villa des Roches,the Winters family estate.

Relieved, and amazed she’d actually got here, she turned gingerly into the welcome layby and decided to call Sadie rather than try to find a bell to gain entry. However, the gates were already starting to swing slowly open, telling her that someone must be watching on video.

She’d moved forward only a few yards when Sadie appeared out of the mist and gestured for her to open the passenger door. ‘That’s where Jasper and I live,’ she said, jumping in. ‘The lodge, not that you can see much of it in this. It’s a bit clearer down at the house, or it was when I left half an hour ago. Are you OK? I’m surprised you came.’

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