They were passing the pines with the rooks’ nests now, and Will was signalling left, away from St Florian. A mad idea occurred to her. It wasn’t as though she had to get home yet.
‘Will,’ she said. ‘Stop and let me out.’
He hesitated. ‘Lucy, please. I’d like to get home sometime today if possible.’
‘I’m not coming.’
‘What?’ His face was a mask of disbelief.
‘Look – I’ve got a week,’ she told him. ‘I was just going to play about with photographs, maybe get some framed, but I can do that anytime. So I’ve decided I’m staying here. I want to take a proper look at Saint Florian, see if there’s anyone to ask about Carlyon and my family.’
‘That’s ridiculous. Where will you stay? You can’t just decide things like that.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll find somewhere.’ She reached for her handbag and camera. ‘Thanks, Will. For everything. It’s been fab.’ She leant across and gave him a quick kiss, then opened the door. He sat there, wooden, not looking at her. ‘Would you unlock the boot, please? I want my suitcase.’
He gazed at her, his expression anxious and unhappy, saying, ‘This is just stupid. Look, I’ll tell you what, I’ll drive you down to Saint Florian if you’re that serious. Then you’re coming back with me.’
It wasn’t only the tone of voice that maddened her, but the fact that he had no interest in this adventure.
‘You don’t have to, really. I can walk down. Please open the boot.’
‘Lucy—’
‘I want to do this on my own.’ She knew that now.
A moment later she was standing at the roadside with her suitcase, watching his car speed away.
‘Bye, Will,’ she whispered.
Trundling her case behind her, with the spring sun warming her back, she set off down the hill towards the town.
Chapter 2
Three months earlier
Lucy’s journey to St Florian was one her father, Tom, should have made when he was alive. But he chose not to, and so she was making it for him.
Her quest began one afternoon in mid-January when she visited her stepmother, Helena, in Suffolk. Helena had asked her down from London because she’d been clearing out Tom’s possessions and wanted to give her some things.
As Lucy drove her hired car through the stark East Anglian countryside she studied her feelings. It was odd, really, that her long resentment of Helena hadn’t eased since her father’s death in a car crash the previous June. If anything, it had intensified. She felt sorry for her stepmother, certainly. Anyone seeing Helena’s worn expression, her unconscious habit of wringing her hands, would know that she’d loved Tom very much and grieved for him. But Lucy couldn’t forgive Helena for taking her father away. She’d hated, too, the fact that Helena, the second wife, the latecomer in Tom Cardwell’s life, had assumed the central role in the formalities following his death. As Tom’s legal spouse, it was Helena, not Lucy or Lucy’s mother Gabriella, who was called to the hospital after the car wreck was found, Helena who took charge of the funeral arrangements, Helena who, in the absence of any will, had presided over the division of Tom’s estate, although she’d made no difficulty about Lucy receiving her legal entitlement.
In addition to her own muddled feelings, Lucy had been moved by her mother’s intense anguish. By dying, it was for Gabriella Cardwell as though Tom had abandoned her all over again, and she found no comfort in the fact that this time the Other Woman had lost him, too. The two widows were quite unable to meet and share their grief; Lucy gauged that each saw only too clearly in the other what they themselves lacked in relation to Tom, and she was fed up with being the bridge between them.
When Lucy left the car in the quiet lane outside Walnut Tree Cottage, she saw Helena waiting for her at the front door, a willowy figure in a twinset of pigeon grey. ‘You’re awfully late,’ Helena called, her light voice quivery. ‘I was getting worried.’
‘Sorry, Helena,’ Lucy said, feeling guilty. ‘I didn’t start off till one, then it took ages to get through London.’
‘That’s all right,’ Helena said. ‘It’s just, ever since your father . . . I can’t help being anxious.’ Her cheek, when Lucy kissed her, felt dry, and Lucy saw that her matt-brown hair was now tinged with grey, like a coating of ash.
The white carnations Lucy had bought when she’d stopped for petrol were bruised and parched. She passed them across with a muttered apology.
‘How thoughtful of you, dear. And I’m so glad you’ve come.’