Coco du Ciel

by Elise Noble

  Wait a second… A broken nut, priceless according to his uncle. A mysterious trespasser. Had she climbed up to steal Albert’s pride and joy and then slipped? It seemed like a definite possibility. Should he call the police? How else was he meant to deal with a naked burglar?

  A naked freaking burglar.

  “Did you touch that thing?” Rhys pointed at the foliage.

  The girl followed his gaze. “What thing?”

  “Well, obviously it’s not there anymore. But it was a giant nut, and it’s broken right where you claim to have landed.”

  “I… I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “You’d better tell me the truth, otherwise I’m the one that’s gonna get it in the neck when my uncle gets home.”

  “I swear, I don’t remember touching it.” She glanced around, brow creased. “Do you know me?”

  “Lady, do I look as if I know you?”

  “Where am I?”

  She didn’t know? Maybe she needed an ambulance as well as the cops? And possibly a straitjacket too. Where had she come from? Her accent was bland, difficult to pin down, and Rhys was ninety-nine percent sure he hadn’t seen her on his trek to the village shop. A pretty girl like that? He’d definitely remember.

  “You’re in Llanefion.”

  Her blank expression said that didn’t help.

  “It’s a village in Gwynedd.” Nothing. “Wales?”

  “Wales?”

  “The country? You know, sheep. Mount Snowdon. Daffodils, dragons, rugby.”

  “In Europe?”

  “Yes.” Finally, they were getting somewhere. “Are you here on holiday? Vacation?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They’d hit an impasse. Rhys’s phone was in the house, and now the girl was shivering despite the fancy heating system. Probably he should act chivalrous and at least get her a blanket before he asked any more questions.

  “Don’t go anywhere, okay? I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Okay.”

  Rhys backed away. At least if she bolted, someone would notice. Even in deepest, darkest Wales, a naked woman skipping through the countryside would raise eyebrows.

  As he jogged into the house, Rhys paused to pinch himself. Was he still asleep? Was this his subconscious getting Wales and Stacey and that brunette from last night’s TV game show all mixed up? Ouch. Apparently not. He ran through a mental checklist—no, he hadn’t been drinking, or smoking anything funny, or getting adventurous with any pharmaceuticals. But he’d eaten mushrooms on his pizza last night. Could some joker at the supermarket have swapped them for the magic variety?

  When Rhys got back to the greenhouse with an old grey woollen blanket—the best he could find—he half expected the girl to have vanished. Or perhaps that was just wishful thinking? It would undoubtedly have made his life easier if she’d taken off. But no, there she was, exactly where he’d left her.

  “Here.” He held out the blanket. “Sorry it smells a bit fusty.”

  She didn’t make eye contact until she’d wrapped it around her shoulders like a cloak. When she straightened, she only came up to his chin in bare feet, and at five feet ten, Rhys had never considered himself particularly tall. She licked her lips the way Stacey sometimes did, but it was a nervous gesture as opposed to Stacey’s usual confident teasing.

  “What now?” she whispered, glancing towards the door.

  Words stuck in Rhys’s throat. What was the proper etiquette for dealing with an admittedly pretty, very naked stranger who didn’t know who she was or where she’d come from?

  “You’d better come inside, I guess. I mean, you can’t stay out here in the greenhouse.”

  He offered a hand, but when the girl just stared, he slowly retracted it. Gee, this wasn’t awkward in the slightest.

  “Uh, follow me.”

  She stopped a foot inside the kitchen door, hesitant to go any farther. Rhys couldn’t blame her—he was a stranger too, after all. And truth be told, he didn’t particularly want her in the house.

  “So, er, do you want a cup of tea?” A good cuppa was the British answer to everything.

  She gave the tiniest of nods.

  Uncle Albert still had an old gas kettle rather than an electric one, and Rhys set it to boil on the stove. Mugs lived in the cupboard beside the fridge, and he picked out the two with the fewest chips. Every item of crockery was decorated with flowers, and worryingly, Rhys could actually identify some of the blooms now.

  “Do you take sugar?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

  Her eyes began to glisten, and Rhys took a step back. Bloody hell. He could cope with nudity and amnesia and even the prospect of his uncle’s anger, but tears were beyond him.

  “Hey, it’s okay.” Rhys patted her stiffly on the shoulder, then plucked a leaf from her hair. “We’ll get this sorted out. Somehow,” he added under his breath.

  “I’m s-s-so sorry. For being in your greenhouse, for interrupting your morning, for whatever I might have done to that plant.”

  Was it possible that she’d escaped from somewhere? A hospital?

  “Here, have a tissue.”

  Okay, it was a paper towel, but it would have to do. Rhys helped her onto a stool at the breakfast bar just as the kettle started to whistle.

  “Thanks.” Her hand trembled as she wiped her eyes. “I can’t imagine I’ve ever been this scared before.”

  She wasn’t the only one shaking. He slopped boiling water across the counter as he tried to pour it into the mugs. Plenty of milk, two sugars for the strange stranger.

  “You really don’t remember? Nothing’s coming back?”

  Tick, tick, tick… The old-fashioned grandfather clock in the hallway was the loudest thing in the house, and its steady countdown only served to remind Rhys how fast his heart was beating.

  “I know your accent is English and this is a kitchen and the sky is blue. But specifics? Anything about me?” She shrugged. “There’s nothing.”

  “Sounds like amnesia,” Rhys said. “We should try the hospital.”

  And with any luck, they’d take her off his hands.

  “But I’m not injured. I feel fine.”

  Rhys’s ringing phone interrupted the conversation. In an ideal world, he’d have ignored it, but he recognised his uncle’s ringtone, and when he’d accidentally missed a call from Albert last week, a flurry of panicked text messages had quickly followed.

  “Uh, excuse me, I have to take this.” He stepped into the hallway. “How are the Himalayas?”

  “Bloody freezing, lad. You’ve got the better end of the deal, that’s for sure.”

  When he thought of the waif sitting in the kitchen and the mess in the greenhouse, Rhys knew that was a lie.

  “We’ll have to agree to differ on that.”

  Uncle Albert laughed heartily. “Just so long as you’re not slacking. Those plants won’t look after themselves.”

  “I’ve been following your instructions to the letter.”

  “Everything going okay?”

  Rhys should have fessed up about the incident with the coco du ciel tree, he knew he should have, but he didn’t want to ruin Albert’s holiday. At least, that’s what he convinced himself. There was also the small issue of facing his uncle’s inevitable fury, and why do today what you could put off until tomorrow?

  “Absolutely fine. Couldn’t be better.”

  “I should get going, then. Saussurea gossypiphora is calling me.”

  “Sassy-what?”

  “It’s a herb. A rare herb. Tell my babies I said hello.”

  The line went dead, and Rhys let out a long, shaky breath. Okay, he’d bought himself a few days. If he timed it to perfection, perhaps he could leave a “Sorry I screwed up” note and be halfway back to London before Albert started yelling? A definite possibility.

  But he’d worry about that tomorrow. Today, he had the mysterious girl to deal with…

  CHAPTER 3

&nb
sp; RHYS LINGERED IN the hallway for a moment before he headed back into the kitchen, hoping once again that the girl would have disappeared as suddenly as she arrived, taking his problems with her. Well, not all of his problems—that would be impossible—but certainly the ones that had the potential to keep him away from work today. He designed apps for a living, and one advantage of staying in the countryside was the peace and quiet.

  But Lady Luck wasn’t smiling down this morning.

  The brunette gazed up from her seat at the breakfast bar, those doe eyes wide and watery. What should he say? Even before Stacey had knocked the stuffing out of him, he’d never been the most confident around pretty girls, let alone pretty girls who’d dropped in from another dimension.

  “Tea all right?”

  “I don’t think I take sugar.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.” She seemed quite sweet enough without it, just really, really odd. “Are you hungry? Do you remember when you last ate?”

  “Yes, and no.”

  “I’ll make you some breakfast. Toast okay?”

  It had better be—the Rice Krispies had gone soft.

  “Toast’s good.”

  Her eyes tracked him around the kitchen as he fetched bread, butter, and plates. As an afterthought, he turned on the local news, just in case there was any mention of an escaped psychiatric patient, or a failed mind-control experiment at a nearby swimming pool, or an alien spaceship crash. You know, the usual.

  “What happened to your clothes? Did you take them off?”

  “When I woke up, I wasn’t wearing any.”

  Ordinarily, a man would dream of hearing those words, but this was more of a nightmare.

  “I’ll find you something to borrow. You can’t sit there in a blanket all day.”

  Was that a blush?

  “Thanks.”

  Rhys hadn’t brought many clothes with him, and he certainly hadn’t envisaged a situation where a rather shapely female might need to borrow them. For a moment, he toyed with the idea of checking his uncle’s wardrobe, but he wouldn’t wish a pair of unfashionable corduroy trousers on anyone. The girl would have to make do with tracksuit bottoms and a sweatshirt. When he got back to the kitchen, he found her trying to hold up the blanket with one hand and scrape the burnt bits off the toast with the other.

  “Sorry, I forgot to say the toaster’s dodgy.” He should have mentioned it, but funnily enough, he’d been slightly distracted. “Half the time, it doesn’t pop up when it should.”

  “I’m sure I’ve eaten worse, and right now, I’m so hungry I could eat charcoal.” She glanced at the blackened bread. “Which is just as well, I guess.”

  “Want me to toast you another slice?”

  “No, this is fine.” She took a bite and made a face. “Really.”

  “You don’t eat butter?”

  “Butter? Right, butter.”

  The girl grabbed the knife again, but with the wrong hand, and the blanket slithered to the floor. Rhys moved to pick it up, and they cracked heads.

  “Sorry.”

  “Sorry.”

  It might have been funny if it wasn’t so weird. This chick was seriously spaced out. Was she on something? Prescription drugs? Regular drugs? Didn’t some plants have psychedelic properties? What if she’d snuck into the greenhouse intent on pilfering, got high on leaves, and this was the result? That seemed the most plausible scenario so far. But where were her clothes? Still in the greenhouse? Rhys needed to check.

  “Here, let me do the butter. And I brought you spare clothes to wear.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ah, damn, that smile was dangerous. Just a tiny quirk of her lips, but it was enough to make Rhys twitch in places he shouldn’t. Why were the pretty ones always trouble?

  She ate like a starved dog, hunched over, barely chewing one mouthful before she took the next. Cannabis munchies? Rhys’s ex-housemate Dave—now sadly in jail—had eaten eighteen Greggs sausage rolls and six steak bakes after he got high one night, and then he’d fallen asleep, dead to the world. Unfortunately, he hadn’t woken until the bakery manager arrived for work the next morning and found him curled up in a pile of broken glass.

  “Still hungry?” Rhys asked as she swallowed the last crust.

  “I should go change. Like you said, I can’t sit here in a blanket all day.”

  He showed her to the downstairs bathroom and left her to it. Part of him questioned the wisdom of having a suspected thief in the house, but Uncle Albert kept his valuables in the greenhouses. No self-respecting twenty-something would nick a china ornament or a dusty encyclopaedia.

  Besides, what other option did Rhys have? He could hardly kick her out naked.

  While she changed, he ran out to the greenhouses to search for any evidence of clothing. A discarded sweater, a pair of trousers, underwear… But there was nothing. And the only footprints he found were in the hothouse around the coco du ciel trees, all bare, directionless, a patchwork of panic in the damp earth. Sunlight sliced through the spiky leaves, shimmering onto the lesser plants below while Albert’s prized specimens stood majestic. Kings lording it over their peons.

  Odder and odder.

  Rhys had made it back into the kitchen when the girl reappeared, and he got his first good look at her without feeling like a pervert. She was slender but not to the point of malnourishment, and she had the palest skin. White, almost translucent, as if she’d spent her entire life indoors. Her dark hair provided a sharp contrast, untidy but not greasy. She must have washed it recently. And her eyes… They were the window to the soul, or so the saying went, and the girl’s puzzled him. A rich brown with flecks of gold, they spoke of secrets and past regrets that her mind didn’t register.

  “So,” he said, more to himself than her. “What should we do now?”

  A shrug.

  “You still haven’t remembered anything?”

  “This place, the plants, you… I have no idea what I’m doing here.”

  “What about further back? Your parents? Your childhood?”

  Tears rolled down her cheeks. Ah, shit.

  “Okay, okay. We should speak to the police. Someone must know who you are, and maybe they filed a missing persons report. Probably you should get checked out by a doctor too.”

  “I guess.”

  “The hospital here isn’t too bad. When Uncle Albert put a garden fork through his foot, they fixed him up. Besides, the sooner you get your memory back, the sooner you can go home.”

  “Will you come with me? To the hospital?”

  Who could resist that pleading note in her voice? Not Rhys, unfortunately.

  “As long as I’m back in time to water everything this evening.”

  Rhys had never embraced the student lifestyle to its fullest extent. While his housemates partied and spent their student loans on two-for-one happy hour in the Students’ Union bar, he’d kept nights out to a minimum and lived frugally, tucking his spare money away for the future. But he’d splurged on a car. Okay, not splurged, exactly, but after the old chap who lived next door to his previous home had a near miss with a dustbin lorry, his daughter had banned him from driving, and Rhys picked up his fifteen-year-old Ford Fiesta for a song. It was only a matter of time until it made its way to the great scrap heap in the sky, but by some miracle, it had got all the way from West London to Wales without any vital parts falling off along the way. Gary took the piss out of him for driving a banger, but since Gary’s only goal in life was to do as little as possible, Rhys discounted his opinion. He wanted to finish the travels he’d started before his mum died. See the sands of the Sahara and the desolate beauty of the Andes before he settled down. And that would take cash.

  Still, as he swept an empty crisp packet and a stray glove off the passenger seat, he wished he’d at least given the car a tidy. The girl didn’t seem bothered, though.

  “Seat belt,” Rhys reminded her.

  “Huh?”

  “You need to put your seat belt o
n.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  When she made no move towards doing so, he reached across her and clipped it into place. The last thing he needed was a fine, although if the Old Bill pulled them over, it might save him a trip to the police station. He could just hand the girl over.

  Where was the police station, anyway? Six miles from Llanefion, according to Google, and the hospital was three miles farther.

  “Police first?” Rhys suggested.

  He took her shrug as a “yes.”

  In hindsight, they should have gone to the pub next door to the station instead. Not only did Rhys need hard liquor by the time they’d finished speaking with the duty sergeant, but the landlord would probably have been more helpful.

  For twenty minutes, they sat on hard plastic chairs in a room where the stink of week-old vomit had battled disinfectant and won. The lady beside them picked at her fingernails while a guy in a suit berated the woman behind the desk over an impounded car. Park in a tow-away zone, get a ticket—what was so difficult to understand?

  “Are you waiting?” Rhys asked the lady.

  “Been waiting for hours. The sergeant went to check the database or something. Probably gone for lunch.”

  Great. As if hanging out with a complete stranger in Uncle Albert’s kitchen hadn’t been bad enough, now Rhys had to endure the scrutiny of every cop who walked past, plus a cleaner. The girl sat on her hands and gave him the silent treatment.

  “Who’s next?” the desk lady asked as Suit Guy slammed the door hard enough to make the hinges rattle.

  “We are.”

  “Yes?”

  “We need to report a missing person.”

  “I’ll need a name and description.”

  “I don’t know the name, but this is her.” Rhys gestured at the brunette, and she tried a tentative smile.

  “How is she missing? She’s right here.”

  “Okay, so she’s not missing exactly, more found. But she must be missing from somewhere.”

  “Is this a joke? Because wasting police time’s a criminal offence.”

  “No, I swear! She’s got amnesia. I found her wandering around my uncle’s garden this morning.”