by Jill Mansell
Chapter 16
“Hi.” Realizing she was being watched, the woman dusted her hands on the sides of her jeans and said cheerily, “Anything I can do for you?”
“Hope so.” All of a sudden, Declan no longer knew what to do with his own hands. His pulse began to speed up. Taking his car keys out of his pants pocket for something to jangle, he promptly dropped them. Which meant having to bend down and pick them up and pray his back didn’t go into spasms and make him look eighty. Finally, vertical once more, he said, “I’m looking for Lily.”
“Oh, she’s not here, I’m afraid. Did she speak to you on the phone? What’s it about… Is it something on the website? Maybe I can help you instead.”
“Er, well, what time’s she likely to be back?” Not usually at a loss for words, Declan now found himself prevaricating. What if Lily hadn’t told anyone else she was contacting him? Maybe she didn’t want it to become public knowledge.
But as he dithered, the expression on the woman’s face began to change. Her eyes widened and she raised a tentative index finger like a child in a classroom thinking she might know the answer.
“Wait.” She searched his face for clues, then said in wonder and disbelief, “Are you…Declan?”
Her voice was beautiful, clear and gentle, with no discernible accent. He liked the way she said his name.
“Possibly.” He eyed her with amusement. “Are you Coral?”
At that moment, a burly builder type ambled past and clapped her on the shoulder. “She’s Coral, I’m Ted, and I’m starving.”
Coral shook her head at him. “Ted, you’re always starving. The country would be knee-deep in sausage rolls if it wasn’t for you. Off you go.”
Ted strolled off down the street, pausing to rub the ears of the Labrador outside the pub. Coral clasped her hands to her chest and turned to Declan. “You’re here to see Lily! I can’t believe it! She’s been checking her emails every five minutes for the last four days. She was starting to think you were never going to reply.”
“The letter arrived, then it got lost, then this morning it turned up again. I know I should have emailed,” Declan said, “but I wanted to see her in person. I couldn’t wait.” He paused, disappointed. “Except it looks like I’m going to have to.”
“Oh, not for too long; she’ll be back by three. If you can stay that long.”
As if he’d leave now. Declan nodded; he’d just have to call Gail and let her know he wouldn’t be back for the detox steamed fish and summer greens. “It’s OK, I can stay.”
“Hooray, that’s fantastic! She’s going to be so thrilled to see you. In fact, come here.” Coral spread her arms and gave him a hug. “We’re all thrilled. You have no idea how much this means to Lily.”
Declan was aware of the feel of her hands on his shoulders, the front of her T-shirt against his chest, the fresh, woody scent of the perfume she was wearing. “Thanks. It means a lot to me too.” He paused, then said with a crooked smile, “I don’t even know why it feels so important. It just does.”
And now she was stepping back, holding him at arm’s length, studying his face. “I’ve seen the letter Lily wrote to you. You really were the love of Jo’s life, you know.”
Hearing her repeat what Lily had said in the letter caused a surge of emotion to well up. Declan hesitated, then nodded. “And it turns out Jo was the love of my life too.”
Did that sound melodramatic? It was true, though. He’d expected to meet someone else; he had met plenty of someone elses over the years, but none of them had ever made him feel quite the way he’d felt about Jo.
“Oh, and you probably didn’t know she’d died. That must have come as an awful shock.” Coral touched his arm.
“It did. I mean, it wasn’t something that had ever occurred to me. I know we hadn’t seen each other for all those years, but I’d assumed she was out there somewhere.” Declan shrugged. “I always hoped she was happy.”
“Come along inside.” Guiding him through the gates of Goldstone Salvage & Treasure, Coral led him across the flagstones, past an eclectic assortment of items for sale, and into a low building that turned out to be an office.
“Marty, could you keep an eye on things out there? This is someone I need to chat with in private for ten minutes.”
Middle-aged Marty, also wearing a blue Goldstone T-shirt and jeans, nodded and left them alone. Coral offered Declan a swivel chair and perched herself on the edge of the desk next to the computer.
“Like I said, Lily should be back by three o’clock. I’m not going to call her and say you’re here, because I don’t want her racing back down the motorway like a maniac. And I’m not going to talk to you about her either, because that wouldn’t be fair. Lily deserves to be the one who does that.”
“Absolutely.” Declan nodded in agreement.
“But you won’t be disappointed.” Coral smiled at him. “I can promise you that much. She’s a gorgeous girl. I won’t show you any photos. You’ll see for yourself when she gets back.”
“Fair enough.” Now that he knew it was definitely going to happen, he was fine to wait.
“And we’re pretty busy here today, but we can chat about Jo, if you’d like to.”
“You were her best friend,” Declan said. “I’d really like to.”
“Jo was so great. The first time we met was the day we both moved into the residence hall at Exeter. There was this weird whacking sound coming from the room next door to mine, and a voice kept saying ‘Oh, you bugger.’ In the end, I went to see what was going on, and there was Jo trying to hit a bluebottle fly with a rolled-up magazine, but every time she took a swipe at it, it flew off. The first words she said to me were ‘Oh, hi, have you come to watch me murder my new roommate?’ And at that exact moment, the bluebottle flew around her in a circle and landed on her head.”
“Ha.” Declan smiled, already glad he’d made the journey down. Hearing stories about Jo wasn’t only going to benefit Lily, it seemed. “I can just picture that happening.” He could almost hear Jo saying the words, mischievous yet deadpan. Comic timing had always been her forte.
“We were friends from that moment on,” said Coral. “It’s scary to think we might not have met. If some bored office admin person had allocated us different rooms or put us in different halls… Well, everything could have been so different.”
“The first time I saw Jo,” Declan said, “I was just turning up for my shift at the restaurant in Barcelona. An old Scottish woman on vacation had had her purse snatched, and the thief was running off down Las Ramblas. Jo had seen it happen, and she raced off after him. She was still carrying her tray,” he remembered. “The thief had an accomplice waiting for him on a moped at the end of the street.
“Just as he was about to jump on the back of the moped and escape, Jo threw the metal tray at him like a Frisbee, and it hit him smack in the back of the legs. I saw it with my own eyes. The thief dropped the purse and went flying. The guy on the moped rode off without him, and Jo picked up the purse and the tray and came back up the street to the restaurant. The old lady was sobbing with gratitude and tried to give her some money to say thank you. Jo said, ‘No way, that’s the best fun I’ve had in weeks.’”
“That’s exactly what she was like.” Coral was laughing now. “All she told me was that she once threw a tray at a thief in Barcelona. I never got to hear the whole story.” She shook her head. “This is amazing. It’s like filling in all the gaps. We could keep doing this for hours.”
“I’ve brought a photo album with me.” Declan waved his hand in the rough direction of the parking lot. “I’ll wait until Lily’s back. I mean, I know Jo had photos too…”
“Of you and her together? Oh, but she didn’t. Well, she did once,” Coral hastily amended. “I saw them when we were first at college. But they disappeared during our second year, just vanished. Jo was distraught when
she realized they’d gone missing. I’m sure it was her boyfriend. He always denied it, but I’d bet any money it was him. Anyway, Lily never got to see them, obviously, so she’ll be thrilled to see your photo album.”
“Which boyfriend was this?” By the curl of her lip, Declan suspected she wasn’t a fan.
“Keir. Lily’s biological father.” Coral made an even more disparaging face. “Honestly, I can’t tell you how much I despise that man. He left Jo high and dry, refused to have anything to do with her once he found out she was pregnant, and got his parents to do his dirty work for him. Eurgh.”
Declan closed his eyes briefly. Whatever had Jo been thinking, getting involved with someone who so clearly didn’t deserve her?
Aloud, he said, “Why was she with him in the first place?”
“Well, the trouble with some people is you don’t find out what they’re really like until it’s too late. To begin with, he seemed fine.” Coral shrugged. “On the surface he was good-looking and he had plenty of charm. He could be good company too, if I’m being honest. Jo never would have gotten together with him if he’d been awful. He was fun to have around. And they seemed happy together, until Jo got pregnant and Keir decided he wanted nothing to do with the situation. That was it, relationship over.”
“God. And how about now? Does Lily see much of him these days?”
“Who, Keir? She’s never seen him.”
Declan did a double take. “What? Never ever?”
“His parents paid Jo to have the ‘inconvenience’ taken care of. She told them she wasn’t going to do that. So she bought a car, left Exeter, and ended up here instead.”
It didn’t bear thinking about. “Poor Jo. What a thing to have to go through. She must have been—”
“Devastated?” Coral was already shaking her head. “Maybe at first, but not for long. By the time she arrived here, she’d made up her mind. If Keir didn’t want to know, he wasn’t worth crying over. It was his loss, and she wasn’t going to waste a minute of her time wishing things could have been different. Well”—another amendment—“between her and Keir.”
“So Keir never even knew he had a daughter?”
“Oh, he did, after she was born. Jo wrote to tell him the news, just because she thought he should know. If he’d wanted a relationship with his daughter, she would have allowed it to happen, for Lily’s sake rather than his. But it never did happen. Keir wrote back and said it was her decision to have the baby and nothing to do with him.”
“Nice.”
Coral shrugged. “As I said, he revealed his true colors. There was never any more contact after that.”
“What, not even child support?”
She shook her head. “You know what Jo was like. Once she made up her mind to do something, that was it. If Keir didn’t want to know, it was his loss, and he’d be the one missing out.”
Declan watched a wasp bashing itself against one of the smaller windows in the office. He did know what Jo was like. Her ability to make a decision and stick to it was something he’d been only too familiar with.
“Um, Coral?” The door opened, and Marty stuck his head in. “Sorry, but it’s getting busy out here. A new delivery just arrived, someone’s asking about the Venetian chandelier, and Mrs. Ingalls wants a hand getting those church pews into the back of her truck.”
“No problem, on my way.” Coral slid down from the desk and looked at Declan. “I’m sorry, I need to get out there. Look, do you want to go off and explore the village, then come back just before three?”
Through the open door, they heard a female voice saying, “I’ve tried, I really have, but I just can’t lift them by myself.”
“I can go off and explore if you want me out of the way,” Declan said. “Or if you could do with an extra pair of hands here, I’m happy to stay and help out.”
Coral said, “Would you? Are you sure?”
“Of course.” He rose to his feet. “Just tell me what to do.”
* * *
For the next three and a half hours, Declan worked with Marty, lifting and carrying oversize objects, helping to load heavy items into cars and vans, and offering honest opinions when potential customers were torn between various options.
Across the yard, Coral was doing the same. Every so often Declan would pause to watch her, listening to her interactions with other people and observing the way her blond hair glistened when she moved her head. Occasionally, catching his eye, she would mouth: Everything OK? And he would nod, because everything was more than OK. As far as days went, this one was turning out to be pretty much perfect.
And he hadn’t even met Lily yet.
Chapter 17
At twenty to three, Declan was outside the gates, hauling the last of a stack of Cotswold roof tiles into the back of an ancient Volvo, when a van drew up and parked half on, half off the sidewalk next to a sporty silver Toyota. The Toyota’s owner, her arms full of flowers and shopping, was standing beside her car, rooting around in her bag for her keys.
The van was dark blue, with the Goldstone logo on the side. Declan straightened up, held his breath, and waited for the driver’s door to swing open.
The next moment it did, and his heart stepped up a pace as the girl who had to be Lily jumped out. Simultaneously, the silver Toyota sped away from the curb and something fell onto the road with a thunk. The girl who had to be Lily bent down to retrieve the pink leather purse that the driver of the Toyota had managed to leave on the roof of her car.
The next moment she was off, racing up the street after the departing Toyota, waving madly and clutching the purse in her other hand. Up ahead, the traffic light turned from green to red and the car slowed. Declan watched as the girl kept running, finally catching up and tapping on the Toyota’s passenger-side window. The window slid down, the purse was handed back to its rightful owner, and the girl laughed at something the driver said. Then the traffic light changed back to green, the Toyota pulled away once more, and the girl who had to be Lily began to make her way back down the main street to Goldstone House.
Had there been any question that this was Jo’s daughter? She had her mother’s mass of streaky blond ringlets, her dancing dark eyes, and her infectious smile. God, it was incredible.
Coral had appeared at his side. Reading his mind, she murmured, “Looks like Jo, doesn’t she?”
Declan nodded. “Just a bit.”
When she was only fifteen feet away, Lily said cheerily to Coral, “Did you see what happened? She left her purse on the roof of her car and drove off. She’d be on her way up to Sheffield without it by now if the traffic light hadn’t turned red.”
“And if you hadn’t gone chasing after her like Usain Bolt.” As she said it, Coral gave Declan a gentle nudge.
Declan looked at Lily. “The first time I met your mum, she was doing much the same.”
Lily stopped dead in her tracks, a slew of expressions flickering across her face as she took in the unexpected words of a complete stranger. The silence probably lasted only a second, but it seemed far longer as she stared at him in disbelief. Then she saw that Coral was grinning broadly.
“Oh my God.” Her dark-brown eyes fixed on him once more. “Are you…Declan?”
“I am.” He nodded, breaking into a smile himself. “And you’re Lily. Hi.”
“Oh, this is amazing.” Lily covered her mouth. “I was just checking my email to see if you’d been in touch yet, and now you’re here. You’re really here. Hello!”
And then she was hugging him, and it felt like hugging the daughter he’d never had. When they broke apart, Declan reached for her left wrist and studied the bangle she was wearing.
“There it is. That’s the one. I bought it for Jo from a jeweler who had a tiny studio in one of the back streets of Barcelona.” He nodded in recognition. “I can’t believe I’m seeing it again all these years
later. It didn’t cost a lot,” he added. “We didn’t have much money to spare back then. It might turn your skin green.”
“I don’t care if it does. It’s beautiful.” Lily twisted her arm so the tiny embedded stones caught the light. “Thank you for choosing it for her.”
“You two go on into the house,” Coral said. “Me and Marty can take care of things out here.”
“You’re busy,” Declan said. “We can wait until you close, if that makes it easier.”
“Er, hello? I don’t think so.” Lily was already shaking her head in mock horror at this hideous suggestion. “You might be happy to wait another three hours,” she told him. “But I’m not!”
* * *
Lily was feeling dizzy with discovery. “I honestly don’t know which is best,” she said when Coral joined them at five thirty in the back garden. “Hearing the stories or seeing the photographs.”
“Except you don’t have to choose.” Declan smiled at her as he said it. “I’ve got both.”
“You do have both. It’s so brilliant, I can’t tell you.” Lily wondered if either of them could fully understand how much this meant to her. “This has been one of the best days of my life.”
“Shall I leave you two in peace?” Coral asked. “I’ll go in the kitchen and put some food together.”
“No, don’t. Stay out here with us. You have to see these photos.” Lily patted the sun-warmed cushions beside her on the garden seat. “I could look at them forever.”
Joining her on the seat, Coral said, “Go on then, show me.”
“I love this one.” Swiveling the open album on the table so Coral could see, Lily looked at Declan. “You tell her. They’re your stories.”
And she loved to listen to them. Maybe only someone in her position could appreciate how it felt to learn more about the person you’d loved and lost so many years ago. It felt like being presented with glorious long-buried treasure.
“That was the first one taken of the two of us together,” Declan said. “I’d been pretty smitten by Jo from day one, when she brought down that thief with her serving tray. And I thought there was a chance she might like me too, but she was playing it cool, getting her bearings, and finding her way around the new job. She’d only just arrived in Spain.”
