ANNE BROOKE

Chapter One

Wouldn’t it be good to get rid of my father? Blood ties and family feeling apart, it might be the only solution. What else could a man in my situation do? Waiting at the crowded bar of the King’s Head, Limewater, for the landlord to finish pulling my pint of Suffolk’s best bitter, it was obvious there was no other choice. So what should it be then, I wondered, drumming my fingers on the glistening wooden counter. Arsenic? Strangling? Stabbing? Would Dad have a preference? Perhaps I should ask him first and he couldn’t later complain I’d …

“Father okay then, Jamie?”

“What?” I jumped as Michael pushed the foaming glass under my nose and stepped back to admire his handiwork.

He repeated the question.

“Fine, thanks,” I muttered. “Safely locked up at home where he can’t cause any more trouble.”

This wasn’t quite true of course. My father could always cause trouble, but it was a good phrase to use when you just didn’t want to discuss it.

“Good, good. Glad to hear it,” Michael said. “So the doctor put everything to rights, did he?”

Choking on my first gulp of bitter, I wondered if anything in this village was ever secret. Sneeze twice at breakfast and they’d have you in the obituary column of the local paper by supper.

“Sure. He just passed out for a couple of seconds, that’s all. Nothing to worry about.”

Or at least that was what the doctor had said. Michael pursed his lips and nodded as I suppressed guilty thoughts over what I’d just been planning, and scrabbled in my pockets for some change. Perhaps I should go home and check. But I’d promised David I’d meet up with him tonight and, as I hadn’t seen him for so long, I didn’t like to let him down. Besides, Dad had insisted he was fine and I should go.

“So you still had time to sort out the problems you were having with that London hotel, did you?” Michael went on.

This time, I gaped at him, “How on earth did you know about that?”

My glittering career as a conference organiser at the tail-end of the twentieth century meant doing business with hotels that made even Fawlty Towers look efficient and today had been no exception. After dealing with Dad, it had been anyone’s guess as to whether I would be able to salvage the disaster they’d been about to make. This time I’d survived. Just. But I hadn’t realised that people in the village had been taking notes.

“The grapevine. As usual,” Michael shrugged as he ran an expert eye over the coins I was handing him.

I should have known.

“Sure, I got there in time. In the end, the whole day went like a dream. Cheers,” I took another gulp of my pint and felt the warm liquid wash away the memories of the long drive home.

“Good, good. Well, better let you go,” he smiled. “I’m sure your young lady will be along soon. If that’s what you’re here for?”

A joke of course, but I didn’t much feel like laughing. Before I could think of a cutting reply, Michael strolled off to serve some of the less patient locals and I pushed my way towards an empty table in the corner. At least he’d been wrong with his last comment in more ways than one. David Fenchurch might have been many things, but he was no young lady. He was … what was he? I had no idea what he was doing now. I hadn’t seen him for four years, not since University days. He’d always been one for the girls though, a different one every night, from what I remembered. Not like me. As Michael had not so subtly reminded me. I had to get a girlfriend, if only for the sake of appearances. And soon. Mind you, in the country you were lucky to get a hint of any action at all between one lambing season and the next. Limewater wasn’t London.

I was just wondering when my old friend was going to put in an appearance or whether the sight of the A12 in all its long, grey glory had put him off when a shrill cry echoed round the horse brasses and old beamed ceiling of the pub, driving all thoughts out of my mind and into the smoky air.

“Jamie? Jamie Chadwick!”

At the sound of my name being shouted in a voice just on the wrong side of camp, I swung round. As did everyone else. All conversation then stopped, for the figure standing at the door was dressed in an orange shirt, purple checked trousers, an emerald dog-tooth jacket and a trilby hat. But this couldn’t be David, could it? No way. David had never in his life shown any signs of secret Boy George tendencies. So how on earth did this stranger know my name? And what was he doing here?

Before I could shake off my surprise, the vision of colour uttered another cry of joy, bounded round the teenagers leaning transfixed against the bar, seized me in a dramatic embrace and planted a kiss on my cheek.

“David?” I said, as my worst fears were proved true. “David Fenchurch?”

In the thirty-two seconds it took for my old friend to release me from his perfumed grip, I began to wonder if my father should after all be number two on my hit list.