Page 105 of The Boathouse By the Loch

‘I told you. I told all of you, I don’t remember anything.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ he asked.

As Sean approached her, that episode came to mind, the memory she’d had when she’d visited Wilbur’s Bookstore and had remembered sitting at the table in the window. She had been sitting with someone at that table – she was sure of it.

As she was led out of the kitchen, she glanced over her shoulder at Jake Campbell-Ross, who was staring at her intently. Had the person she’d been sitting with been Eleanor?

She overheard Judith saying, ‘I can’t stay here. I’m getting my bags and leaving.’

Gayle said, ‘Where will you go? It’s the summer. A lot of places are booked up.’

‘Well, what do you suggest?’

‘Come and stay with me at Lark Lodge.’

Robyn overheard that as she walked out of the door, feeling herself getting emotional over losing her friends and the life she thought she’d built. She turned to the officer as he led her out tothe waiting police car. ‘Can you tell me who I am?’ she pleaded.

‘Well, that’s what I’m taking you to the station to find out.’

Chapter 37

Robyn sat in the police station, at a desk opposite Joe’s colleague, Sean, and nervously kneaded her hands, wondering what he’d find in their database. She was thinking of all that cash in the bottom of the rucksack.Oh, god! I’m a criminal on the run. It all made sense now. She’d burgled David’s house, and then by a bizarre twist of fate, they had collided on the road as she was speeding out of Aviemore. And very soon all her new friends, whom she’d unintentionally deceived, would find out.

She looked at the police officer and thought that it would have been good if Joe had accompanied her in the police car. He was David’s brother, and her friend. Or David himself could have run out of the house to go with her. She didn’t know whether they would have been allowed, but as she sat there, feeling so very alone, she realised that it was a moot point. Not one of them had made a move to accompany her for moral support – not one.

She looked at Sean, searching through his database, her mind focusing on that rucksack full of money and the burglary at David’s house on Christmas Day. She thought she knew exactly what had happened, and why she’d been on that snowy road, all alone, the previous Christmas. But that didn’t explain how she hadcome to be in Robyn Parker’s car with her suitcase. If she wasn’t Robyn Parker – which clearly she was not – then who the hell was she, and why did she have Robyn’s belongings, and her car?

‘Hmm.’

Robyn looked at Sean wide-eyed as he turned away from his PC screen and looked at her.

She thought she was going to be sick. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing – is what it is.’

‘Pardon me?’ Robyn stared at his computer. ‘So, I’m not in your database?’

Sean sat back in his chair. ‘No.’

Robyn looked at her hands. She could still see smudges of black on her fingertips where they’d taken her fingerprints. She hadn’t wanted her mugshot taken either. It made her feel like a criminal. But they’d needed both to run checks on her identity and see if she came up in the police database.

She’d kept saying to him on the way in the police car that it wasn’t what it looked like. She hadn’t been impersonating Robyn Parker on purpose. It had been just as much of a shock to her that she wasn’t who she thought she was as it had been for Judith – and everyone else in the room. She’d lost her memory in the accident. Dr Jamieson could vouch for that.

The problem was that although she’d had a bump on the head, and a mild concussion, Dr Jamieson had told her there was really nothing physically wrong with her. But how could she prove that she wasn’t faking it?

‘So, who am I?’ She really hoped that he wasn’t going to reply,You tell me.

Instead, he said, ‘I’ve looked at the report of the car accident you were involved in on Christmas Day. You have no idea how youcame to be in possession of Robyn’s car?’

‘I told you. I don’t remember anything.’ Robyn dropped her eyes from his gaze. She did remember two things: sitting in Wilbur’s Bookstore with a young woman, and sitting in a car in the dark outside David’s boathouse – neither of which she had any intention of sharing. She was not going to share the latter because of the money she’d found in the rucksack and the burglary at David’s. The last thing she wanted to do was implicate herself in a crime. She was in enough trouble as it was. She was not going to share the former because she really couldn’t see how it was relevant – sitting in Wilbur’s Bookstore with a woman. She suddenly sucked in a breath. Was that Robyn she had been sitting with in Wilbur’s Bookstore? TherealRobyn? She remembered the sketch in Robyn’s diary of two women sitting in the window.It was her and me, she thought. But if Robyn had let her borrow the car, why would she have left her suitcase in the car?

Robyn stared at Sean. There was only one logical explanation. She’d taken Robyn’s car – stolen it.Oh, god … so I am a criminal!

‘Are you all right?’ Sean asked. ‘You’ve gone awfully pale.’

‘Have I?’ she asked, feeling a little lightheaded.

‘Let me get you some water.’ He stood up and walked over to the water cooler. He’d just turned his back to her, about to pour her a glass, when he swiftly did an about-turn. ‘I don’t need to lock the door, do I?’

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