A Walk In The Park

by Jill Mansell

  Wow, she hadn’t expected that.

  ‘Look at us.’ Lara smiled slightly. ‘Behaving like mature adults. Who’d have thought it?’

  ‘Best way. For Gigi’s sake. Maybe we needed to get it out of our systems. Anyway, now that’s done, we can start again.’

  Her skin prickled in alarm; what did that mean? If he knew how she felt about him he could start toying with her emotions, messing her around like Joel had messed Evie around for years.

  ‘Start again as Gigi’s parents. Being civil to each other. That’s all.’

  ‘Exactly what I meant,’ Flynn countered. ‘So, am I staying out here on the doorstep, or were you thinking of letting me in?’

  ‘Right. Sorry.’ Lara opened the door wide; today he was taking Gigi into work with him to show her how the business was run. ‘You’re early. She’s still in the shower. I thought you were picking her up at nine.’

  Flynn shrugged. ‘The roads were clearer than usual. OK if I have a coffee?’

  ‘Can you make it yourself? I’m busy.’ She was painting the dining room now, apricot yellow and white to make the most of the sunlight pouring in through the south-facing windows.

  Flynn made coffee and brought one through to her.

  ‘Thanks.’ Lara breathed in his aftershave as he passed her the cup. She was getting to know it now.

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’

  ‘I expect you’re going to anyway.’ If he was about to give her more hassle she wouldn’t put up with it.

  ‘Relax, it’s not about Gigi. Well,’ Flynn amended, ‘it’s something she mentioned. About this house. I assumed your father left it to you in his will. But Gigi told me yesterday it wasn’t his to leave.’ He was looking puzzled. ‘She said this place belonged to your mother. Is that true?’

  Lara had been about to reload the paintbrush. Instead she put it down.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you know that before?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, no idea. Aunt Nettie didn’t know either.’

  ‘So, how did it happen? Where did the money come from?’

  ‘Not the foggiest.’ She leaned against the windowsill; having known her father all those years ago, Flynn was one of the very few people as curious about this as she was.

  He frowned. ‘Haven’t you wondered about it?’

  For heaven’s sake. Lara stared at him in disbelief. ‘Of course I’ve wondered! I’ve spent hours wondering about it, but there’s no way of finding out! If my mum didn’t tell Nettie, who else is there? I’ve asked the solicitor, but he only handled my father’s will. It was over thirty years ago. We know there was no mortgage. I’ve racked my brains but there’s nothing else to go on. I mean, it’s not as if she had any rich relatives who could leave her a fortune. And Nettie would have known if she’d won on the Premium Bonds. All I can think is that my father supplied the money and put the house into my mum’s name for . . . I don’t know, tax purposes or something.’

  ‘He was a cashier in a bank.’ Flynn looked dubious. ‘Where would he have suddenly got that amount of money from?’

  Mystified, Lara shrugged. ‘You’re asking me questions I don’t have the answers to. I have no idea. Unless he embezzled it from work and couldn’t buy the house in his name because it would mean them possibly finding out.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘And would you be interested in contacting the bank and asking them to investigate that?’

  ‘No I wouldn’t.’ Was he serious?

  ‘Because if it turned out to be true, they might want their house back?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Lara. Was it wrong to be admitting this? Oh well.

  Flynn smiled briefly and drank some coffee. ‘For what it’s worth, I don’t think that’s how it happened.’

  ‘Oh?’ They both heard the clunk upstairs of the shower being turned off. Despite their recent falling out, Lara was touched by the thought he was putting into this.

  ‘If it was your father’s money, he’d have made sure it went back to him. Sorry, but we both know what he was like. He wouldn’t have allowed your mum to leave the house to you. This was something he had no control over. And my God, I bet he hated that.’

  He was right. Her father had been the ultimate controlling character.

  ‘Makes sense.’ Lara nodded. ‘But it doesn’t tell us where the money came from.’

  ‘No friends you could contact?’

  ‘There were only a couple. And I don’t know their names. It was all so long ago.’ She’d been thirteen when her mum had died; it was only during the intervening years that she’d guessed the pattern of her parents’ marriage. In retrospect it seemed obvious that her father had discouraged friendship with others. All part of the control. ‘There was a blonde woman . . . I remember me and Mum meeting up with her in the park a few times when I was nine or ten. And another friend whose house we used to go to. Her name was Janey or Julie, something like that, and she used to give me Jaffa Cakes.’

  ‘Do you remember where she lived?’

  ‘No. But I think she moved away anyway, she was going to live abroad somewhere sunny. I never saw her again after the funeral.’

  Flynn frowned. ‘And you don’t have any old address books or diaries?’

  ‘Oh, that’s an idea!’ Did he think she was completely brainless? Lara said brightly, ‘You mean the address books and diaries that I’ve got upstairs, with all the names and addresses of people I’ve been longing to contact for decades? How silly of me not to think of looking inside them . . .’

  He raised his hands. ‘Fine, sorry, just trying to help.’

  Bugger, did that mean she had to apologise as well? Again? Too exasperated to want to, Lara made do with a me-too gesture with her free hand. ‘I don’t have anything. Nothing at all. I asked the solicitor to ask Janice to leave any of my mum’s personal effects with him. She told him there weren’t any.’

  ‘They destroyed everything?’

  Lara shrugged, determined not to get emotional at the thought of all traces of her mother’s existence being erased like writing on a whiteboard.

  ‘That’s what she said.’

  ‘But there must be ways of—’

  ‘Ready!’ Gigi burst into the room in a lime-green top and pink and green polka-dotted skirt. ‘Am I smart enough?’

  Lara saw the look of pride on Flynn’s face as he surveyed his daughter. ‘I don’t know.’ He paused. ‘What’s seven times eight?’

  ‘Ha ha, very good. If we’re going to be meeting customers I want to look nice.’

  He gave an approving nod. ‘You’re fine. And speedy. Which is always good.’

  ‘I’m really fast at getting ready to go out. One of my many talents.’ Gigi eyed Flynn’s car keys and said hopefully, ‘Want me to drive?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘She’s a good driver.’ Lara leapt to her daughter’s defence.

  Flynn smiled. ‘I’m sure she is. But I need to sort out the insurance first.’

  ‘Come on then, what are we waiting for?’ When he hesitated, Gigi hustled him out of the dining room. ‘Let’s get out of here, shall we? I want to learn about wine!’

  By six o’clock, the dining room was finished. Happy with the result, Lara had showered the paint spatters out of her hair and was now busy in the kitchen being a domestic goddess.

  Well, kind of. Stabbing a fork through the cellophane covering the pack of mushroom risotto – rat-tat-tat-tat-TATT – she stuck it in the microwave. In three minutes, when it was ready, she’d add a splash of double cream, a scattering of black pepper and masses of grated parmesan. That was goddessy enough, surely?

  Although a real goddess would probably be drinking chilled white wine with it, not Irn-Bru.

  Gigi and Flynn returned fifteen minutes later. Sitting outside in the back garden, Lara heard the car draw up outside. Doors banged, then came the sound of voices. Was Flynn dropping Gigi and heading off somewhere else, or was he coming in? The former, she hoped. This morning’s c
onversation had left her unsettled and on edge, reminding her of all that was missing from her life.

  ‘Mum? There you are!’ Gigi paused in the doorway before coming to join her, and Lara felt the tension dissipate, her muscles relax. Good, no Flynn. She could do without seeing him tonight.

  ‘Hi, sweetie, how’d it go? Was it fun?’

  ‘No, it was not. It was boring and tedious and duller than you could ever imagine.’ Gigi flopped down on to the grass next to her, in the manner of a teenager about to expire of boredom. ‘It was the opposite of fun.’

  ‘Oh.’ Lara put down her can of Irn-Bru. Not that it was the end of the world, but Flynn would be disappointed; he’d been looking forward to teaching Gigi about the business he loved. ‘I didn’t think it’d be dull. Weren’t you meeting lots of people?’

  ‘No! None!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because we were just stuck in the stupid office trawling through hundreds of dusty old invoices. Not hundreds,’ Gigi corrected herself. ‘Thousands. In fact, probably millions. Honestly, Mum, you have no idea.’

  The back door swung open once more and Flynn appeared in the garden. Lara’s stomach did a quick up-and-down shimmy at the sight of him in his white shirt and well-cut black suit trousers. On the one hand, he had a body to die for. On the other, he was getting on her nerves all over again.

  ‘What have you been making Gigi do?’ She shielded her eyes against the sun, all the better to scowl at him accusingly. ‘I thought you were going to show her how the company was run. She’s not your slave, you know.’

  The expression on Flynn’s face was inscrutable. ‘I do know.’

  ‘Mu-um, stop it, I was joking.’ Gigi jack-knifed into a sitting position and rolled her eyes like an embarrassed parent.

  Teenagers, honestly. ‘Thanks for telling me. How was I meant to know it was a joke? So you weren’t stuck in an office trawling through millions of boring old invoices.’ This was to let Flynn know she’d snapped for a reason.

  ‘Oh yes, we were.’ Her smile impish, Gigi said, ‘Millions.’

  There was some kind of in-joke going on here. Presumably there was also a point to it. Lara looked over at Flynn. ‘So what’s this about?’

  He pulled out a chair, sat down opposite her and leaned forward, resting his tanned forearms on the table. ‘OK, let me just say I don’t have a definitive answer. Yet. But with a bit of luck we’ll get there.’

  Something about the way he was saying it caused Lara’s blood to race that bit faster around her body. ‘Get where?’

  Flynn said, ‘What we were talking about this morning reminded me of something. I was going to mention it when Gigi came down and dragged me away. Plus, I needed to think it through.’

  Lara blinked. ‘Go on.’

  ‘It was nine or ten years ago. I was working at Grey’s.’ He paused, ‘A woman came in to buy some wine. We were running a tasting and she was trying a few different kinds. We got chatting, then all of a sudden she asked me if I was the skier. I told her I was, and then she said did I used to have a girlfriend called Lara.’

  ‘Who was she?’

  ‘I said yes I had,’ Flynn continued steadily. ‘And she said she thought so, that she’d known you when you were growing up; she’d moved away years ago, but during her last visit back to Bath she’d seen the two of us together. She recognised me from the TV and was so glad to see you looking so happy. She asked if I was still in touch with you and I told her I wasn’t, that you’d left Bath and hadn’t kept in touch with anyone here.’

  Lara’s heart was thudding away. ‘What was her name?’

  ‘I don’t know. But she talked about you for a bit, told me she’d been a friend of your mum’s and how awful it must have been for you when she died. She said she left Bath just after it happened, and that she’d written to you but never had any reply.’

  ‘I didn’t get any letter.’ Her mind was racing ahead. ‘She might have sent one, but I never saw it. Anyway, carry on. What else?’

  But Flynn was already shaking his head. ‘That’s it, that’s all there was. Bearing in mind that I didn’t have any reason to remember her. But I’m sure she was more tanned than the other people in the shop, as if she’d been abroad on holiday . . .’

  ‘Or if she lived somewhere hot,’ Gigi put in helpfully, ‘and had just come back to Bath.’

  ‘But you don’t have her name,’ said Lara. ‘So that means we still don’t know who she is.’

  ‘She bought some wine.’ Flynn leaned to one side and drew a folded sheet of paper from his trouser pocket. ‘It was before I got the business computerised.’ The Greys had been famously anti-technology prior to his arrival. ‘But we’ve been through all the old invoices today. I’ve made a list of every female whose name begins with a J.’

  ‘So you see,’ Gigi chimed in again, ‘it was boring, but it was worth it!’

  ‘Can I see?’ Lara reached for the sheet of paper. The names were in Flynn’s hand, instantly transporting her back to their teenage years together; that untidy, spiky writing style was spookily unchanged.

  She scanned the names, so many of them . . . Jane Morgan . . . J. Lancaster . . . Julie Knight . . . Judith Childerley . . . Jennifer Fuge . . . Joanne Margason . . . Josephine Pride . . . J. Carter . . . Jean Drew . . .

  There were more. She scrutinised them all, willing the right one to leap out at her, released like a tiger from the depths of her subconscious.

  ‘It’s no good, I can’t tell.’ Reaching the end, she put the list down and felt her throat tighten with disappointment. ‘I don’t think I ever knew her surname. We’re never going to know which one’s her. Even if we could find out, those invoices are years old . . .’

  ‘Don’t be such a pessimist. Keep thinking about that name beginning with J. It might come to you.’ Flynn retrieved the list then rose to his feet. ‘Right, I have work to do. Better be off.’ The moment he said it, Gigi jumped up and gave him a hug. Still in a daze, Lara nevertheless experienced a twinge of envy that he’d managed to get her off the ground; if she’d been the one leaving, Gigi would have stayed where she was and said, ‘Bye, Mum!’

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dad’s leaving now. Are you going to say anything?’

  ‘Oh. Um, goodbye.’

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘What?’ Gigi was giving her a don’t-be-so-rude look.

  ‘You could try saying thank you.’

  ‘Right. Yes of course, sorry.’ Lara looked up at Flynn, silhouetted against the sun with Gigi still clinging to his arm. ‘Thanks. Very much.’

  Thanks for raising my hopes and dashing them again, thanks for stirring up all the old feelings, thanks for making me feel like a failure for not being able to remember my mum’s friend’s name.

  He smiled slightly, as if reading her mind. ‘No problem. Just trying to help.’

  Evie was stuck in traffic on her way to drop off an order before heading home. Well, not her own home. Lara’s. But in just a few days they’d fallen into such an easy routine it felt as if they’d been there for weeks.

  The traffic lights changed and she edged forward in the queue of cars. It had been both strange and nice being back at work today. Some of the customers had known about the wedding-that-never-was and had been astonished to see her there in the shop with Bonnie and Ray. Others, complete strangers, had no clue about any of it. And a regular customer called Kevin, just back from a month-long visit to Canada, had greeted her with a cheery, ‘So how’s married life treating the new Mrs Barber? Everything you wished for and more, I hope!’

  Which had resulted in one of those slightly awkward pauses until Ray had put a supportive arm around Evie’s shoulder and said, ‘Whoops, do you want to tell him, pet? Or shall I?’

  The eventual consensus had been that Joel was a plonker. Then, just as Kevin was leaving the shop, an Interflora delivery had arrived. The young girl handed Evie a lavish cellophane-wrapped bouquet of Asiatic lilies, alstroe
meria and germini.

  ‘Blimey.’ Kevin looked impressed. ‘New boyfriend? That’s what I call quick work.’

  Because that was so likely, wasn’t it?

  ‘Oh yes, I’m beating them off with a stick.’ Evie tore open the mini-envelope and glanced at the card which said: I’m sorry. I love you. ‘But these are from the old one.’

  ‘Ah, don’t you love it when that happens? He’s seen the error of his ways and now he wants to win you back.’ Kevin had three teenage daughters and was accustomed to the associated traumas. ‘Am I right?’

  ‘You’re right. But it’s not going to happen.’ Out of the corner of her eye, Evie saw Bonnie’s face fall. Oh dear, did that mean she hadn’t completely believed her before?

  Now the traffic was starting to move again. The smell of the lilies was strong inside the car. Evie had tried to leave them with Bonnie but had been forced to bring them home with her. She reached the junction and turned left; ironically the outfits she had in the boot of the car needed to be dropped off at the hotel Lara had been booked into for the night of the wedding.

  Driving in through the gates, she was relieved to see plenty of free spaces today. No sea of cars, no glamorous nuptials in progress, no grumpy gardener types waiting to have a go at her for parking in the wrong spot.

  Evie lugged everything out of the boot and crunched across the gravel to the Ellison’s imposing entrance.

  OK, spoke too soon. As she approached the steps, the grumpy gardener appeared at the top of them with a watering can, evidently about to start watering the flowers in the stone tubs on either side of the heavy double doors.

  Spotting her, he put the watering can down and said, ‘Hello there, hang on, let me give you a hand with those.’

  ‘It’s alright, I can manage—’ As she said it, one of the slippery polythene dry-cleaning covers slithered from her grasp, probably just to spite her, and she had to catch it between elbow and hip.

  ‘Don’t worry, no problem. I’ll get them.’ He didn’t appear to have recognised her, which was good. Evie let him take three of the polythene-covered outfits and one of the bags containing various accessories.