Page 115 of The Christmas Retreat
‘Then you can also tell Nerys I’m shaking the dust of this place off my feet at first light and she can get Tudor to bring my dinner up to my room tonight.’
She opened the door and paused. ‘And also tell her I expect a refund for the time I won’t be spending here!’
And on that note of anticlimax, she slammed out.
36
Other Engagements
Nerys was alone in the studio, apart from Pompey, whom she was painting, although a large collage with a blue background was pinned across one wall, showing evidence that the girls had spent the morning there.
‘Whathaveyou been saying to Verity?’ she demanded the moment she saw us, looking intrigued. ‘She just came in here like a whirlwind, gathered up her stuff, said you’d totally insulted her and she expected I’d believe every word you said. Andthenshe said she was leaving first thing tomorrow morning!’
‘That’s what we’ve come to tell you about,’ said Rhys. Then he told her everything we’d discovered and described the final scene with Verity.
‘Well, I can’t say I’m really surprised. I always had her down as a two-faced bitch and I never believed she kept putting her foot in it by sheer accident,’ Nerys said bluntly. ‘Especially after she came here when you and Annie divorced and was all over you like treacle till she realized she wasn’t getting anywhere.’
‘I don’t think any of us ever really liked her,’ said Rhys. ‘Iput up with her being around for years because she was Annie’s best friend – or we thought she was, anyway.’
‘Verity – never was a woman more misnamed!’ I said, and Nerys gave her sudden, attractive grin.
‘I’m so glad she’s going, and that she’ll never be able to show her face here again.’
‘She’s not coming down for dinner, either,’ Rhys told her. ‘She wants it in her room.
‘A meal of bitter herbs, perhaps?’ suggested Nerys.
‘Better not, because she’s already said she’s going to demand a refund for the days of the retreat she won’t be spending here, and you don’t want to give her any more ammunition.’
‘I suppose not. It will have to be Bronwen’s finest cooking, as usual, but it is a shame,’ she said regretfully. ‘What are we going to tell the other guests about her dining alone and then leaving at dawn?’
‘We can let Bronwen and Tudor know the real reason, but we could just tell the guests that she’s feeling so washed out by her flu that she’s decided to go home early to recover properly.’
‘Or that she needs to go home in order to fill up her poison sacs again,’ suggested Nerys. ‘She’s a toothless viper at the moment, but if that’s how she gets her kicks, then I expect she’ll soon be looking round for a new victim.’
‘I think you’re right,’ Rhys said. ‘She should come with a health warning.’
Then he turned to me. ‘Come on, Ginny, let’s go for a walk. I think we’re both in need of some fresh air and a soul-cleanse after all that.’
‘Mel and Cariad have gone to the cove to look for more pebbles and anything interesting they can stick to their collage, so you might meet them while you’re out,’ suggested Nerys.
‘There’s certainly no shortage of pebbles in the cove,’ Rhys said.
‘Ah, but they have to be therightpebbles,’ she said, before turning back to her canvas.
Her subject matter, Pompey, was still fast asleep on a length of sumptuous, embroidered fabric, like a changeling prince.
*
‘Let’s go the long way round to the cove, shall we?’ he suggested as we left the house. ‘There’s no hurry, and I want to breathe some good clean air into my lungs first.’
As we headed up the now-familiar track towards the oak grove he took my hand in his. When I glanced up at him, however, he seemed deeply lost in thought so that I wasn’t sure he even realized he’d done it. I let it lie, anyway.
It was a milder kind of day, the air laying damp hands on my face, and as we wandered through the wood and then up to Mab’s Grave, I had a sudden feeling that we belonged together and in this ancient landscape … that we wererighttogether.
There was nothing now to keep us apart, not even Annie’s ghost, except, of course, for my nervousness about going from being a solitary bee, buzzing around in her own little world, to a worker in a busy hive.
That, and my fear that my bloodhound of a mother might have sniffed out something unsavoury about Cosmo Caradoc.
