Page 65 of New Beginnings At Pencarrow Bay
So Ted knows about that too? And he never said anything?She could barely breathe for mortification, let alone speak.
‘Anyway, I should get going, sweetheart. People to canvass, reviews to write, coffee stalls to save!’ She patted Peggy’s arm and delivered a warm-hearted smile, then bounced off up the hill.
Bewildered, Peggy tried to calm herself. She felt utterly betrayed. Ted had sat eating breakfast with Lindy and toldher all his troubles, having run from Peggy as if a pack of wolves was chasing him. And, worse, Lindy was saving him and his coffee van now? It was beyond belief. She took a deep breath and began walking as quickly as she could through the village to Quentin and Rory’s house. Only once she was safely inside, in the comforting presence of her friend, did she begin to breathe more easily.I can’t think about it now, she told herself firmly. It felt too big to think about at all, in fact.
29
‘You seem a bitdistrait, my lovely,’ Quentin observed, as she threw herself onto the deep navy sofa in the cosy sitting room and let out a long sigh. ‘What’s up?’
Peggy, who had shut her eyes for a second, opened them and pulled a face at him. ‘Where to start? There is so much wrong with my life at the moment that I might as well scrub out the whole damn thing and start again.’
Quentin’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘Oh, God, don’t do that, darling. You’d have to go through acne and Pythagoras and spotted dick and custard… although I did rather enjoy the latter.’
Peggy couldn’t help laughing. ‘Showing your age, Quentin. They’d moved on to chocolate pudding and pink custard in my day.’
‘Sounds filthy. Let me get you a cuppa and I’ll tell you what I remembered.’ He hobbled on his stick, back bent, obviously in pain, through to the kitchen in the rear of the open-plan room, which had once been the village dairy, old white tiles still covering one wall above the sink, and propped himself against the counter while he boiled the kettle.
When they were both seated, each with a cup of tea and a squishy chocolate-chip cookie from Hicks’s, Quentin levelled his gaze at her. ‘Right. Are you ready?’
She nodded, tried to concentrate as he waited a theatricalsecond before he went on: ‘The company you mentioned that day on the beach, one of the three your sinister technophile was linked to?’
She nodded.
‘Well, it came back to me, why I’d heard of Redmayne Capital. You see, Rory was telling me about an interesting sex-discrimination case he saw on his online newsfeed yesterday… And that triggered my ageing brain.’ He was spinning out the story. ‘This was a while ago, which is why I’d forgotten. But we were all in the pub one evening and Lindy was complaining about sex discrimination at the company she’d worked for. The company in question, I’m pretty certain, was Redmayne Capital.’ Quentin sat back, looking expectant as he waited for the penny to drop.
Peggy sat up. ‘Wait, I thought she worked for one of the big multinationals?’
‘She did. This was before that,’ Quentin said.
She stared at her friend. Bunny’s words from that morning came back to her with force:What do you have that someone else wants?… pure and simple jealousy. Peggy had finally come to the conclusion that Lindy was not telling the truth about Felix’s abuse. But sending the emails? When the thought had briefly flashed across her brain as she sat on the beach wall, she had quickly dismissed it as nonsense, beyond the pale.
‘Could be just coincidence,’ Quentin was saying. ‘Never wise to jump to conclusions.’
Peggy’s throat constricted. She had a sinking feeling in her gut as a montage of the past few weeks with Ted and Lindy flashed before her eyes. She couldn’t speak.
‘Look, it may be absolutely nothing to do with Lindy,’ Quentin went on. ‘The circumstantial connection is flimsy,at best. And I may have got it wrong… although I don’t think I have.’
‘The lawyer speaks,’ Peggy muttered, her body wired with the thoughts teeming in her brain. The image of Lindy’s smile that morning– was it smug?– when she realized Ted had shared things with her that he hadn’t told Peggy. Her almost gleeful possessiveness of Ted’s review problem. Thought back further to the crazy car ride and coffee, to the secret drink in the Wisket, the dry robe, the endless intimate chats Lindy had insisted on over the past weeks. She felt sick. Dense. Stupid. ‘I know she’s got a bit of a thing for Ted,’ she said lamely, ‘but actively trying to ruin my life?’
There was silence for a minute between the friends.
‘You can imagine how it would sound if we confronted Lindy, though,’ Quentin said, with a frown. He adopted a sonorous, finger-wagging tone as he went on, ‘Look, wethinkyou sent those emails, Lindy, because wethinkyou worked for Redmayne Capital yonks ago and wethinkthis Albanian no-good might have too. Or, at least, we’re not sure about his link with the company, or even if he has one. But still…’ He snorted. ‘Never stand up in court.’
Peggy gave a heavy sigh. ‘I honestly can’t get my head around it, Quentin… Could Lindy really be the emailer?’ She swallowed hard. ‘I’d rather it turned out to be Emerald.’
‘Emerald would be a better villain, I agree. Although it does seem quite extreme behaviour for either woman,’ Quentin commented.
‘Not sure what to do with your information,’ she told her friend quietly, quite unable to think clearly right now. ‘It’s so bizarre, the whole thing.’
Quentin shrugged. ‘Not sure either. Forewarned is forearmed, I suppose.’
Her phone buzzed with an incoming text, interrupting them.Where r u? xIt was Liam.
‘Oh, goodness, I’m supposed to be meeting my son at the ferry at twelve.’ She saw it was already seven minutes past– although Quentin’s house was only a three-minute dash from the quay if she was quick.
‘To be continued,’ Quentin said, with a warm smile, as she thanked him for the information and the tea and hurried out.
Peggy ran past the phone-box-cum-book-exchange on the way to the ferry. As she drew level with it, she slowed. Emerald was propping open the heavy red door, gazing at a paperback in her hand. She looked up as Peggy passed, brushing her dreadlocks out of her eyes, and their gazes met for a fraction of a second. Emerald gave Peggy a cool stare, then smiled, waved the book. ‘Found a good one,’ she said. Which took Peggy aback. She smiled in return, then ran on towards her waiting son.
