A Walk In The Park

by Jill Mansell

  James.

  Agnew.

  Together the two words made up the name she’d so badly needed to know. And at this very moment Flynn and Gigi were side by side at the computer, narrowing down the likely suspects with the help of 192.com.

  Which not only gave you the address and phone number of all the James Agnews in the UK but their ages too. Who knew?

  ‘He’ll be in his mid-seventies, I’m guessing.’ Jo was peering over Lara’s shoulder. ‘I’m sure he was a few years older than Barbara.’

  ‘If he’s living in the UK, he’s either this one or this one.’ Flynn brought up the two options. The amount of information available was staggering; how long each man had been living at their current address, details of the other occupants of the property, lists of the neighbour’s details, aerial photographs of the address and recent house prices in the vicinity.

  The first James lived with his family in a back-to-back terrace in a dodgy part of Birmingham. If this was the one, his lifestyle had undergone a dramatic downward slide.

  ‘We can try him,’ Jo said doubtfully, ‘but I wouldn’t bet money on it being that one.’

  Flynn moved on to the second James Agnew, listed as the sole occupier of a rather more salubrious address in London. The house was situated in a leafy avenue in Wimbledon where the average selling price was over two million.

  Was it him? Was this her father?

  ‘I’m going to call the number.’ Reaching for her mobile, Lara did it before she had a chance to start hyperventilating. It rang at the other end . . . and rang . . . and rang again . . .

  Please, someone answer the phone, just pick up . . .

  ‘’Allo?’

  A female voice, foreign and hesitant.

  ‘Hi, could I speak to James Agnew, please?’

  ‘No, no.’

  Lara’s palms grew damp as the silence lengthened. ‘OK. Why not?’

  ‘Meester Agnew ’oliday.’

  Not dead then. That was good.

  ‘Right. Um, does he have a mobile phone?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Is there another number I can reach him on? Or an address?’

  ‘No . . . I clean ’ouse.’

  ‘Where is he? Meester Agnew?’ This heavy accent was catching.

  ‘On water. Beeg boat.’

  ‘OK. When will he be back?’

  ‘Yes, I ’ave bad back. Ver’ bad, ow, hurt ver’ much.’

  They carried on like this for a couple more minutes. Lara finally hung up, frustrated and none the wiser. She’d left her number but who knew if the cleaner had even written it down, let alone understood that she was meant to pass it on?

  And it might not be the right man anyway. Her James Agnew could be living anywhere in the world. Or he might not still be alive.

  Well, she’d try the number again in a few days.

  In the meantime, at least they could press ahead with the DNA test.

  Six days had passed and Lara had left two more messages with James Agnew’s cleaning lady. She had also called the house an embarrassing number of times and failed to get any reply. Wherever he’d gone on holiday, he wasn’t back yet. It didn’t help either that Gigi had brightly suggested the woman at the other end of the phone might be James’s current ladyfriend, fobbing off potential rivals by pretending to be his foreign I-know-nussing cleaner.

  Anyway, she had her new job to keep her occupied. Don Temple was great company in the shop. Fond of gossip and as camp as Christmas, he was capable of keeping up the most scurrilous running commentaries on the people walking past the window, which would get him sued for slander if they ever heard him. He sang too, and encouraged Lara to join in. His regular customers loved him and he was hugely popular with the ladies, in that flirtatious way only truly non-threatening men could get away with.

  In fact it was happening right now. The customer, a well-kept woman in her late sixties, had come in ostensibly to have the claws checked on her diamond bracelet. In reality she was doing her level best to convince Don to join her for a few days at her holiday apartment in the Algarve. ‘Darling, you’d love it, you know you would! And we’d have such fun together. Oh, please say you’ll come . . . I do so hate going on my own.’

  By the time the woman eventually left, she’d persuaded him to at least consider the offer, before sweeping out of the shop in a cloud of Dior No. 19.

  ‘Bless her heart, it’s hard to say no.’ Don raised his neat eyebrows and shook his head as the door clanged shut behind her. ‘She’s lonely since her husband died. I’m still not going, mind.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Lara. ‘You might have a brilliant time. I can look after the shop for you.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m worried about. She invited me to a dinner party at her house last year. Wanted me to . . . stay behind, if you know what I mean, after all the other guests had left.’ He shuddered fastidiously. ‘Poor darling, completely desperate.’

  ‘Oops.’ Lara grinned, envisaging his horror. ‘Thought she could turn you, did she?’

  For a fraction of a second there was silence. Then Don frowned and said, ‘Turn me into what?’

  Help, backpedal, backpedal. ‘Um, I mean she was trying to win you over, make you change your mind about her.’

  But Don was giving her an odd look. ‘No, you don’t mean that. You said turn. Like you assumed I was gay. And now you’re blushing. Is that what you really think?’

  Well, this was awkward. ‘No, not at all!’ Lara felt her traitorous face turn the colour of ketchup. ‘OK, maybe I did. Just . . . you know, the tiniest bit.’

  ‘How strange. Why would you imagine I was gay?’ He seemed genuinely surprised. Did that mean he didn’t know? Was he actually oblivious to the impression he created with his fussy, gossipy persona, his great passion for show tunes and his pointy little patent-leather shoes?

  ‘Sorry, I’m so sorry . . . it must have been when you said you’d never married or had children . . . I just jumped to the wrong conclusion.’ Mortified, Lara said, ‘Because I’m an idiot.’

  ‘Oh, darling, don’t worry about it, I’m not offended. To be honest, it’s happened once or twice before. I just never expect people to think it, so it takes me by surprise every time.’ Don tilted his head to one side like a quizzical blackbird. ‘D’ you know, I sometimes think I must come across as a bit camp.’

  A bit camp? This from the man who kept a buffer about his person at all times so he could polish his fingernails to a mirror-bright shine?

  Aloud she said, ‘It doesn’t matter to me either way.’

  ‘I know, darling. But I’m not gay, never have been. I like the ladies,’ Don confided happily. ‘Maybe it does surprise people sometimes. Just because I dress nicely and take care of my appearance.’ His eyes twinkled as he smoothed his immaculately pressed trousers. ‘But we can’t all be hulking great burping, beer-swilling rugby players, can we?’

  Lara said with feeling, ‘I’m extra glad you’re not one of those.’

  ‘. . . so he’s completely hetero.’ Lara chopped up the tomatoes and threw them into the salad bowl. ‘I couldn’t believe it. And the next thing I know, he’s booking tickets for us to go and see Les Mis at the Bristol Hippodrome. He’s the gayest straight man on the planet.’

  ‘Good for him.’ Flynn had called in on the way back from work to let her know that Gigi had gone to the gym but would be home in an hour. ‘Maybe it’s his way of getting women to relax in his company and trust him.’ He paused. ‘Maybe I should give it a go.’

  ‘You could definitely try that.’ Lara added sliced spring onions and reached for the olive oil and balsamic vinegar mixture she’d whizzed up earlier. Pouring it into the bowl, she began tossing the salad with her fingers, lifting the leaves high into the air as she’d seen Jamie Oliver doing on TV the other day because it helped to distribute the dressing more evenly, apparently, plus it was more cheffy and artistic and made you look like a pro in the kitchen.

  ‘So you think acting gay m
ight help me?’ Flynn leaned against the worktop and pinched a crouton from the blue dish next to her.

  ‘When you’re as shy and retiring with the girls as you are, you need all the help you can get.’

  ‘I do have a couple of pink shirts.’ He thought for a moment. ‘And I was dragged along to the ballet once.’

  ‘Did you like it?’

  Flynn gave her a look. ‘No.’

  ‘You need to get more in touch with your feminine side,’ said Lara. ‘Talk about your emotions and how you’re feeling.’

  ‘Right now I’m feeling hungry.’ He was reaching for the croutons again. She nudged him away with her non-oily forearm and Flynn gave her a playful nudge back.

  ‘Hey, leave them alone.’ Lara whisked the blue dish out of reach, sadly misjudging the oiliness of her hands. The dish slipped from her grasp and went skidding across the worktop. Launching herself after it, she collided with Flynn and her elbow sent the salad bowl flying across the kitchen—

  ‘Noooo,’ yelped Lara.

  ‘Oh dear.’ Flynn pulled a face as they surveyed the mess; by some miracle the bowl hadn’t broken but the floor was now strewn with glistening salad. ‘That was careless of you.’

  ‘Careless of me?’ Lara gasped at the slur. ‘It was your fault!’

  He shook his head. ‘Oh no, it was definitely your elbow.’

  Lara picked a crouton out of the blue dish and threw it at him. Flynn deftly caught it in his left hand and placed it between his teeth. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You made me knock the salad on the floor.’ She threw more croutons at him; he caught and ate each one in turn.

  ‘Only because you physically assaulted me. In fact,’ Flynn rolled up his shirtsleeve, ‘I think you might have broken my arm.’

  Then he rolled up the other sleeve and together they began collecting up the oily lettuce leaves, the skittery cherry tomatoes, the chunks of avocado and the fiddly little slivers of spring onions.

  ‘What’s really annoying’, said Lara, ‘is I used my very best balsamic instead of the cheap one.’

  ‘I’ll buy you another bottle for your birthday.’ Their heads were close together as they began wiping up the oil with kitchen paper. Flynn paused to glance across at her. ‘You still have those long eyelashes.’

  ‘It’d be pretty weird if I didn’t.’

  He was smiling slightly. ‘True. You also have salad dressing on your cheek.’

  ‘That would be your fault.’ Lara was bare-legged, her skirt hitched up as she knelt – glamorously – on a square of kitchen paper. Inches away, crouching rather than kneeling in order to spare his black trousers, Flynn adjusted his balance and reached up to smooth the shininess away with the back of his index finger. The next moment he wiped it slowly and deliberately on the other cheek instead.

  His eyes, oh those beautiful eyes. Lara picked up a dressing-coated leaf of lollo rosso and carefully stuck it to the side of his face.

  Here they were, surrounded by bits of salad, and now it felt as though they were gazing into each other’s souls. Lara was abruptly ambushed by lust. Flynn reached across and smudged the dressing across the bridge of her nose. It was like being sixteen again. He truly did have the most incredible mouth. She found herself extending a hand without meaning to and experimentally brushing her fingertips across his lips, so soft compared with the golden stubble on his jaw. There hadn’t been as much of that when he was sixteen, but otherwise every line and angle was achingly familiar . . .

  And now he was cradling the back of her head, drawing her towards him, and she was peeling the lettuce leaf off the side of his face. His breath was warm, her heart was cantering away and their mouths were meeting and all those years of trying to remember exactly how that had felt were melting away because it was all coming back to her . . . this was the mouth, this was the kiss . . . it was both the same and better, and she just wanted it to go on and on and never st—

  ‘Dad? Dad!’ The front door opened and slammed shut, sending them ricocheting apart like violently opposing magnets. ‘You’ll never guess what, there was a power cut at the gym and they sent us all home! I ran all the way! Eurrgh, what happened in here?’

  What indeed?

  ‘Your mum knocked the salad on to the floor.’ Flynn recovered first. ‘I was helping her clear up the mess.’

  ‘It was his fault, not mine. He made me do it.’ Lara grabbed a handful of kitchen roll and began spraying the floor wildly with the bottle of Cif she’d managed to kick over while they’d been otherwise occupied.

  ‘Mum’s always been accident-prone. Well, you probably know that. Anyway, guess who I just had a text from?’

  Lara looked up, because Gigi was addressing her and sounding excited. ‘Who?’

  ‘Harry!’

  ‘Don’t be daft, Harry doesn’t know how to text.’ Harry did in fact own a cheap mobile but he used it as gingerly as if it were an unexploded grenade and spoke into it like someone from the nineteen fifties.

  Gigi shrugged. ‘Well, he does now. And he wanted to know if we’re in tonight, because if we are he’ll pop round.’

  ‘How can he pop round?’ Lara frowned; was Harry drunk? ‘Has he bought a TARDIS? Are you sure it wasn’t a joke text from one of your friends?’

  ‘It came from his number. By the way, you’ve got a bit of lettuce in your hair.’ Gigi helpfully picked it out. ‘How did you manage that?’

  Er . . .

  ‘Who’s Harry?’ said Flynn.

  ‘Oh, you remember, the one with the shirt factory and the rapper friend. You do remember,’ Gigi insisted when he continued to look blank. ‘I told you about him. The one that married Mum.’

  Flynn may have spent the last couple of weeks being bombarded with information, relevant or otherwise, by his newfound daughter, but his face was a picture now. This bit of information evidently took the biscuit. Her emotions in a fizz as it was, Lara spluttered with laughter and said, ‘I’m not married to him now.’

  Between them they cleaned up the mess, then Lara set about making another salad.

  ‘So were you going to mention this husband at any stage,’ Flynn said finally, ‘or was it just not interesting enough to bother me with?’

  Well, he was bound to ask.

  ‘It didn’t occur to me to tell you.’ Lara was busy chopping up yet more tomatoes. ‘It honestly wasn’t that important. I suppose I thought Gigi might have mentioned it.’

  ‘And I thought Mum had probably already said something,’ Gigi chimed in. ‘So in the end neither of us did. But it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s hardly relevant.’

  ‘Not relevant that you had a stepfather?’ Flynn raised his eyebrows in disbelief as he swung his gaze back to Lara. ‘Not relevant that you married another man? When you told me you’d brought Gigi up as a single mother, that there hadn’t been anyone else, that it had been such a terrible struggle, just the two of you on your own . . .?’

  ‘OK, let me explain.’ Lara put down the knife. ‘It was just one of those stupid mistakes. It didn’t even last a year. All I wanted was to be a good mother and make Gigi happy. When she was four, she started infants’ school. One day she came home and asked me where her daddy was. She said other children had daddies and she wanted one too.’

  ‘I can’t remember any of this, by the way,’ Gigi put in helpfully. ‘I don’t remember saying it at all.’

  ‘Well, you did.’ Aware that Flynn might feel she should have used this as an opportunity to contact him and keen to avoid that argument again, Lara said, ‘Anyway, I was twenty years old and there weren’t many boys in the area interested in hooking up with someone in my situation. But Harry was there, and he was different from the rest of them. He was twenty-three and he liked me. We were good friends.’

  ‘He felt sorry for you,’ said Gigi. ‘Harry always wants to do the right thing,’ she explained to Flynn. ‘He likes to be helpful, it’s just the way he is. He’s lovely.’

  ‘So you told him you wanted to get married,�
� Flynn turned back to Lara, ‘and he went along with it?’

  Did this paint her in a really bad light? Well, there was nothing she could do about that. ‘Yes he did. But I didn’t force him,’ said Lara. ‘He offered. He’d known Gigi since she was born. He already loved her. And she adored him. At the time it just seemed perfect, the answer to everything.’

  ‘Except you didn’t love him. Or did you?’

  She prevaricated. No, of course she hadn’t loved Harry, not in that way. But as a friend you couldn’t have asked for more. He was thoughtful and unselfish, and had done her the biggest favour just when she most needed it.

  ‘I wanted us to be a happy family. We tried to make it work. Harry’s a good man.’ Lara did her best to explain. ‘I hoped we could, you know, grow into a couple. I thought the whole falling-in-love thing was probably massively overrated and we could get by as we were.’

  ‘But you said it lasted less than a year.’ Flynn was leaning against the fridge, watching her intently. ‘What happened?’

  ‘It just didn’t work out.’ Lara had no intention of telling him the real reason; it was none of his business. ‘We were like two kids playing house, pretending to be a couple. It was wrong. We kept waiting for everything to click into place and start feeling normal . . . real . . . but it just didn’t happen. We realised we’d made a mistake and cut our losses. Me and Gigi moved back in with Nettie. But there weren’t any hard feelings. We’ve stayed friends ever since.’

  ‘And how about you?’ Flynn turned to Gigi. ‘Did you like having him as a stepfather?’

  ‘I don’t remember any of it. I was a flower girl at the wedding,’ Gigi spread her arms, ‘and I can’t even remember being there. But there are photos, so I definitely was!’

  ‘We did it because she wanted a daddy. Ironically,’ said Lara, ‘she never did call him that. It was always Harry. Except she couldn’t pronounce her r’s back then.’

  ‘I used to call him Hawwy.’ Gigi beamed at Flynn. ‘So don’t worry, no need to get jealous. After all these years you’re the first one I’ve ever called Dad.’