Page 84 of Happily Never After
I laugh. ‘I’m joking. If I tell you now, we won’t have anything to talk about at teatime tomorrow, will we?’
He grins. ‘That’s an excellent point. I might have to buy some better biscuits though. These digestives are definitely past their best.’
‘Hold off if you can,’ I tell him. ‘I think I might have an idea about that. Give me your address. I want to send you something.’
‘Everything OK?’ Liv asks when I join her downstairs. ‘Did you sort whatever it was?’
‘I did, thank you, but I need to ask a favour.’
‘Go on.’
‘You know how you’re the best pâtissière in Margate?’
‘I sense I’m being buttered up for something I’m not going to like. Yes?’
‘The point is you’re brilliant, and therefore you must know other brilliant pâtissiers. Who’s the best one in London?’
‘If it were me, I’d go to Jean-Luc. Why?’
‘I want to send someone some Madeleines.’
Her eyebrows shoot up. ‘Do you now? Am I allowed to know who?’
I grin. ‘Finn, if you must know. I think we might have made a breakthrough. That was him I was just talking to.’
By the time I’ve explained my idea for us to meet virtually for tea every day, recreating a little bit of what we had in Franceand hopefully setting the scene for our next real-life encounter to be much less awkward, she’s fully on board and it’s all I can do to stop her from ringing Jean-Luc to demand he drop whatever he’s doing to go and bake Finn some Madeleines this instant.
‘I’d still prefer it was me making them,’ she says when we’ve placed an online order for delivery the next day. ‘But Jean-Luc is one of the best, and I’ll send him a threatening text tomorrow to make sure he’s on his A-game.’
For the first time since our disastrous dinner, I feel at peace as I climb into bed that night. Even if this is as far as we go, it’s really nice to be speaking to Finn normally again.
30
‘This isn’t working, is it,’ I say exasperatedly. Although we haven’t managed to have a teatime catch-up every day, we have managed to meet quite a few times over the last couple of weeks. On screen, Finn’s face is concerned.
‘If I’m going to be brutally honest with you, I don’t think it is. Sorry. It seemed like such a good idea to begin with.’
I sigh. ‘So what now? Chuck it all in the bin? It feels like a waste, having come so far.’
‘Can I make a suggestion?’
‘Yes, anything.’
‘You could limp on, trying to make this work, but I can sense your heart isn’t in it. I get that you’ve invested a lot, but deep down you know this isn’t going to make you happy. So yes, painful as it is, I’d scrap Claire attempting to murder the neighbour and focus on the PAYE evidence.’
‘There isn’t any. HMRC only keep five years.’
He smiles. ‘Actually, I did some research on that for you. They do have older records, but the process of obtaining them is much slower.’
‘Really?’
‘Yup. So maybe the neighbour caves under the pressure of a formal police interview and says she can’t be 100 per cent sure that Claire is the girlfriend, even if she did look familiar. But then the DC – what’s her name?’
‘DC Carpenter.’
‘Yes, her. She’s been tenacious and got the PAYE records linking Claire to the pub.’
‘That only links her to the Pig and Whistle though, not the murder scene.’
