Page 112 of The Christmas Retreat
‘It does sound wonderful. I’m looking forward to seeing it.’
‘I like happy endings, both in my books and in real life,’ said Noel, twinkling, as he got up to leave.
‘The night is young,’ Evie said, getting up too. ‘I’ll walk back with you, Noel.’
Then she added that no one need wait up for her because she’d take one of the keys from the drawer in the garden hall.
I looked after her anxiously. Really, having a mother like Evie must be worse than having a teenager!
I decided to go to bed, too, not long afterwards. My head seemed to be buzzing with even more ideas, speculations and worries now!
Rhys followed me out, saying he’d better check on Cariad, who was quite likely to keep reading until midnight, if left to her own devices, now she was well into the Harry Potter books.
As soon as the door had closed behind us I asked him if he’d heard anything back yet from Finn Flint.
‘No, not so far.’
‘We could be entirely wrong in our suspicions and perhaps he’s baffled by your text,’ I suggested. ‘After all, we could be putting two and two together and making five.’
‘Maybe …’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘We’ll just have to wait and hope he replies to find out.’
And then, since we were standing under the great bunch of mistletoe again, he gave me another kiss – although not, this time, a fleeting one – and I lost track of time or, indeed, anything else …
35
Slammed
I suppose it wasn’t really surprising that I should have had the old accident nightmare again that night, but it morphed into a much more bizarre one in which Cosmo Caradoc, clad in a 1920s flapper dress and cloche hat, was pursuing me through a maze …
I awoke shaking and cold in the early hours and didn’t fall asleep again until the time I usually got up, so that I was pale and wan when I went down to breakfast.
The others were already there, including Cariad, who told me her friend Mel was coming over and they were going to make a big collage of the aquarium they had visited, in Auntie Nerys’s studio.
‘Butquietly, I hope,’ said Verity plaintively. ‘Because I’ll beworkingin there, you know.’
‘Well, Auntie Nerys will be, too, and if she doesn’t mind, I don’t see why you should!’ retorted Cariad spiritedly.
‘Manners, Cariad,’ said Nerys mildly. ‘I’m sure you will both be concentrating so hard, you’ll be practically silent.’
When I sat down with my porridge I looked questioninglyat Rhys, but he just shook his head a little. When he helped himself to another coffee while the others were leaving, I lingered too.
‘So, you still haven’t heard anything from Flint?’ I asked.
‘Actually, I have. I just didn’t want to say anything in front of the others. I not only had a text in reply to mine, but he followed it up with a phone call – at two in the morning. He’s in the States.’
‘What did he say?’
Rhys finished his coffee and got up. ‘Come on – Tudor will want to clear and we don’t want to be overheard.’
I followed him through the hall, and he shut the sitting-room door firmly behind us.
I hardly waited for him to sit down before demanding eagerly: ‘Well? He must have had something to tell you, if he actually rang you from America!’
Rhys ran his fingers through his black curls in a now very familiar gesture and I took in for the first time that he looked as tired as I felt.
‘He was on the phone for ages and he was either drunk or high on something, and seemed desperate to get what really happened on the night of Annie’s accident off his conscience.’
‘So we were right – therewassomething more to what happened?’
