Creature Comforts. Trisha Ashley

have to, because I’m not shouldering the blame for things I didn’t do, when I still have to come to terms with the things I did,’ I said.

      Before I went to bed I rang Lulu.

      ‘I’m sorry it’s all gone horribly wrong,’ she said when I’d told her my news, ‘but I’m really glad you’re coming home because we all need you! And if you’re back tomorrow, you can be at my Halfhidden Regeneration Scheme meeting on Tuesday, can’t you? It’s in the Village Hut.’

      ‘Regeneration?’ I echoed and she said mysteriously that she’d taken some of my ideas about involving the whole village and run with them.

      ‘Cam has to teach an evening watercolour class in Ormskirk, so he’ll probably get there only for the very end of the meeting, though he knows all about it. He’s been helping me draw up maps and stuff. So I’ll really need your support,’ she added, refusing to be drawn on the details.

      ‘Are you upset about Kieran?’ she asked.

      ‘Yes – no, I don’t know,’ I confessed. ‘I did fall in love with him and … somehow, I seem to have just as suddenly fallen out of love again. Or perhaps I fell in love with a Kieran who didn’t really exist.’

      ‘I know the feeling,’ she said sadly. ‘I never want to fall in love again. My friend Solange says that that woman Guy’s living with keeps coming into the café and crying into her coffee, and it’s rumoured they’re having huge rows.’

      Lulu’s ex, Guy, was still occupying the house in the Dordogne from which she’d finally fled. He’d assumed she’d left because she’d found out about his affair, but she’d had no idea till afterwards, when her friend in the village told her the woman had moved in. Still, at least it meant that he left her alone.

      ‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ I said.

      ‘No, Guy was always a mistake – a controlling, bullying mistake, and I’m glad I got away.’

      ‘With Cam,’ I said slightly pointedly, for I knew their old friendship had taken a slightly different turn on their journey home from France.

      ‘Cam has been a huge comfort to me, but we don’t want to rush into anything and spoil the friendship we have … I mean, it’s always been the three of us, hasn’t it? And we all need space to get our lives back on track.’

      ‘True,’ I agreed. ‘Time will tell – about many things!’

       Chapter 3: Moving Pictures

      ‘No we don’t need her,’ snapped Cara from the back seat of the Range Rover. She was tall, ice-princess-fair, beautiful, nineteen, and hated Harry showing interest in any other girl. She hadn’t deigned even to acknowledge my callow, adolescent presence when I’d been out in the beer garden earlier collecting empty glasses, though Harry and Simon had said hello …

      I woke with a start and sat bolt upright, heart thumping, for my hazy dream, as familiar as an old friend, seemed to have come more sharply into focus, revealing words and details I’d previously forgotten … if they were memories and not, as Daisy had implied about the previous day’s flashback, something conjured up by my subconscious.

      Cara Ferris was the only witness with clear recollections of all that had happened and I was going to do my best to get them out of her, one way or another …

      I lay back for a few minutes, listening to the faint sounds of Daisy, who was a very early riser, clashing about in the basement kitchen. It was strangely soothing. My inner body clock was totally messed up after the long flight back and I wasn’t sure quite what time it thought it was now, except that all at once I was ravenously hungry.

      There were no further messages from Kieran on my phone, but he would by now be well on his way home. I’d sent him a brief reply last night, saying that once he’d thought about things calmly, he must see that I couldn’t have acted any differently and that the crash had not only come as a great shock, but brought back memories of my previous one.

      Then I’d added that I was heading home to Halfhidden, and left it at that. His move next – and I think he owed me a major apology for his last text.

      Before our arguments reached their recent crescendo, he’d had the habit of leaving a loving ‘Good morning, darling!’ message on my phone for me to wake up to every day. He had one of those fancy watches that told you the time wherever you were, though he was quite lazy, so I suspected he’d found some kind of app that worked the time difference out and sent the message for him … only now he appeared to have turned it off, along with the charm.

      After all these years, it left a Kieran-sized hole in my morning.

      I rang home after breakfast and got Judy, as I’d expected. Debo would be out in the kennels with Sandy, the kennelmaid, but on weekday mornings Judy could usually be found in the kitchen, baking bread and cakes that never seemed to have any effect on either Debo’s figure or mine, only on her own expanding girth. Judy didn’t care, though: she’d given up her struggle against weight gain, along with her career on the stage, when she’d moved in to help her best friend with my childcare, the housekeeping and their shared passion for rescuing dogs.

      When I told her I’d be home some time that afternoon, she expressed mild surprise.

      ‘I thought you were going to go and stay with Kieran’s parents in Oxford first?’

      ‘There’s been a slight change of plan … or even a big change of plan. I’ll tell you both about it when I get back. Did my boxes arrive? There should be three of them. One’s got fabrics and some sample dresses I had made up in it.’

      ‘Yes, all safe and sound and in your studio,’ she told me.

      Debo and Judy had created the studio-den out of the old conservatory at the side of the house as a welcome-home surprise for me when I’d returned from Daisy’s after my convalescence. She’d told them how interested I’d become in textiles, so they’d installed an old sofa, a small handloom, an easel and a scrubbed pine table, on which sat an antique black Singer sewing machine inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I’d cried when I saw it, but in a good way …

      ‘Debo will be pleased to hear you’re coming home today and now I know, I’ll bake your favourite coffee walnut cake.’

      ‘All your cakes are my favourite,’ I said, for while Judy’s loaves tended to be dark, dense affairs that took a fair bit of chewing, her cakes and scones were so light they practically floated off the plate.

      ‘If you tell me what time your train gets in I’ll come and meet it,’ she offered.

      ‘I’ll ring you just before I get there,’ I promised.

      As the train ate up the miles between London and Lancashire, my heart lightened. My decisions, too, seemed just as valid now they were exposed to the daylight, especially since there had been no further word from Kieran.

      By now he should be back in the UK, although unless his mother picked him up from the airport, he’d have to go to Oxford on the train, because presumably his father was grounded.

      I sighed, looking out of the dirty window at a watercolour-grey sky. I sort of missed Kieran, though perhaps I just missed the familiarity of having him in my life. But if he really loved me, I supposed he would follow me north – by which time I hoped to have laid Harry’s ghost to rest and made a new beginning.

      I really wasn’t looking forward to the first of those interviews with the others involved in the accident, but my inner voice, now I had tuned in again, assured me that it was the right thing to do. So I took out the spiral-bound notebook I’d bought at the station and began to jot down a list of the people involved in the accident that I needed to talk to.

      At