Page 16 of Healing Hearts on Thistledown Lane: Part 3
Maura’s gut twisted at the speed with which the world was spinning. She supposed she should be grateful he hadn’t saidZoe’s, even though it was probably the truth. ‘Obviously you can leave your stuff here,’ she said, and her lips felt suddenly stiff, as though they belonged to someone else. ‘Until you find somewhere more permanent.’
‘Okay,’ he said again. ‘I’ll pay you for the storage space.’
She shook her head. ‘You don’t have to.’
He sighed. ‘Be sensible. You don’t earn enough to pay the bills, Maura. You never have.’
‘I’m earning more now,’ she said, raising her chin. ‘The ghosts are doing well.’
He glanced at her then and she knew he was about to say something poisonous about Fraser. But he seemed to think better of it. ‘All the same, I’ll pay you until I’ve moved everything out. Like you say, I owe you.’
Not money, she wanted to cry – he had always been more than fair on that score. But she didn’t have the resilience to argue the point. Instead, she simply nodded.
Placing his half-full glass on the table, Jamie levered himself out of the armchair. ‘I’ll go and pack a bag.’
She watched him go, a sudden black hole of panic yawning where certainty had been only minutes before. Now that he was leaving, she wasn’t sure it was the right thing. Perhaps his affair with Zoe was a merely symptom of his unhappiness, not the remedy. Maybe there was something she could do to put things right, get back to where they had once been. But even as dread tried to overwhelm her, she remembered Giulia’s parting words.Hold firm and tell him it’s over.
The sentiment kept her upright when Jamie came back with a black holdall in one hand and an armful of coat-hangered suits and shirts in the other. It sustained her as he passed by, not pausing to meet her gaze or speak, and swept down the stairs to the front door and the cobbled street beyond. It propelled her to the kitchen, albeit in stilted fashion, on legs that barely bent at the knees, and allowed her to fill the kettle, make a pot of tea. And it carried her back to the sofa with the tray, where she retrieved the box of pastries and stared down at it with dull, barely seeing eyes. Only then did it give way, taking with it the last remnants of Maura’s brittle self-control. With an anguished sob, she dropped her head into her hands and let the pain pour out.
Chapter Five
There was no doubt about it, Fraser thought with a frown as he checked his calendar and compared it to the printed schedule on his desk. The ghosts were late. Maura was late, by more than a week, and the customers who had pre-ordered from the latest batch of Agnes were starting to ask when they could expect their delivery. And Maura herself had fallen uncharacteristically silent, failing to answer his previous four messages, which hadn’t actually been about the missing ghosts. Two had been jaunty texts checking how she was doing, another had been letting her know Ewan McRae wanted a meeting to discuss a possible exhibition of her work at the castle, and the most recent had been a link to a funny Instagram video about a ninja penguin. As far as Fraser could tell, she hadn’t read any of them. It was very unlike her. He was beginning to wonder if something was wrong.
‘Maybe you should give her a call,’ Tom, one of the other tour guides said, when Fraser advised him not to mention the ghosts during his walks for the rest of the week.
‘I’m sure she’s just caught up with other projects,’ Fraser replied. ‘She said she’d taken on a couple of commissions after ScotPot – maybe they’ve taken longer than she anticipated.’
‘That’s not really our problem, though,’ Tom said doubtfully. ‘And if there is an issue, she should let you know. Ignoring your messages isn’t exactly helpful.’
‘It’s only been a week,’ Fraser pointed out, feeling the need to defend Maura. ‘And I doubled the order last time round. She’s told me before that pottery can be a slow business – it’s probably my fault for demanding too much.’
Tom raised his hands. ‘If you say so. There are bound to be people who ask about the ghosts, even if I don’t push them. What do you want me to tell them?’
Fraser thought for a moment. Maybe there was a way to turn the lack of ghosts into an opportunity. ‘Tell them pre-orders are closed at the moment but if they sign up to the newsletter, they’ll get the details of an exclusive flash sale in the next month.’
‘Risky,’ Tom said. ‘Didn’t you say most of the orders come in directly after a tour finishes? What if they forget to sign up?’
‘Then they miss out,’ Fraser said, spreading his hands. ‘But my gut feeling is that they won’t forget. And at least this way, we won’t be selling a product we don’t actually have.’
‘You’re the boss,’ Tom replied. ‘I just do as I’m told. It’s good things are going so well, though.’
And they were going well, Fraser knew. The ghost tours at the castle had been a roaring success, receiving glowing reviews in the press and ensuring Dead Famous had seen a corresponding upsurge in bookings that had stretched all three tour guides to full capacity. Each ran one tour per night, in different areas of the city, and all were fully booked for the next three weeks. July and August were the busiest months for the tourist trade, meaning the streets would be fuller than ever. The newest Dead Famous guide, Rebecca, was already considering adding a second tour, starting at nine o’clock, to cope with demand. But what Fraser needed most was for Maura to deliver the overdue ghosts. He could only hope she wouldn’t keep him waiting much longer.
Fraser would be lying if he said he wasn’t curious about seeing Naomi again. They’d spoken once or twice since the break-up, mostly to discuss practicalities, and she’d messaged a week ago to ask whether it would be possible to collect some more of her things from the Leith apartment they’d shared. Fraser had readily agreed – there was no animosity between them, after all – but now that Naomi’s arrival was imminent, he wondered how the sight of her might make him feel. He had no regrets about the end of their relationship, was sure she didn’t either, but they’d had some good times together, admittedly mostly before he’d persuaded her to move from London to Edinburgh. And he had no doubt she would be as beautiful as ever. His heart might well offer a pang or two when she walked through the door.
What he wasn’t prepared for was the effusiveness of her greeting. Naomi had always been impossibly cool, channelling more than a touch of Kate Moss at her most alluringly remote, and it was only the conviction that she was utterly out of reach that had given Fraser the confidence to flirt with her in the first place. That she’d deigned to flirt back had blown his mind and he’d been putty in her hands from that moment on. But she was not given to public displays of affection. And she was definitely not a hugger.
‘It’s so good to see you!’ she declared when he opened the door to let her into the flat. She threw her arms around him almost before she was across the doorstep, enveloping him in a cloud of expensive perfume and cashmere. It was not, he had to admit, an unpleasant experience.
‘Hi,’ he said, his voice slightly muffled by the silky blonde tresses that hung loose around her shoulders. Gently, he disentangled himself and stepped back. ‘Good to see you too. How was your journey?’
She pulled a face. ‘The usual. A scrum at baggage reclaim.’ Fraser’s gaze slid to the corridor beyond her and saw a large suitcase. ‘It’s empty. I brought it to fill up with the clothes I left here.’
‘Good idea,’ Fraser said, picturing how empty the wardrobes would be once bereft of Naomi’s many designer dresses and coats. He might be able to hang his own clothes up at long last. Reaching past her for the case, he wheeled it inside and closed the front door. ‘How long are you here for?’
‘One night,’ she said, slipping her shoes off and padding through to the living room as though she still lived there. ‘I’ve got a photoshoot in Cannes on Friday.’
Leaving the suitcase in the hall, Fraser followed Naomi. ‘Sounds awful,’ he said dryly. ‘How will you cope?’
