‘Two whole hours? Oh well, that's all right then.'
‘Please don't be like that,' said Patsy. ‘It was a moment of weakness. And it's still a secret, I promise. Nobody else is going to know you're here!'
‘And you did invite us back.' Lily shrugged. ‘We were going to go to the pub until you sent that text. We couldn't just abandon Coral, could we? That would have been cruel.'
‘You wanted company,' Patsy reminded him. ‘You've got company. Just a little bit more company than you were expecting.'
She'd called it a moment of weakness. Which was basically what he'd succumbed to when he'd sent the text to Patsy saying that if she wanted to bring Lily back with her later for a nightcap, it would be fine by him.
But it was still annoying. ‘Do you see where this is going, though?' he said. ‘Last night only one person living in this village knew I was here. This afternoon it became two. And now it's three.'
‘You know what?' said Lily suddenly. ‘I think we should leave.'
‘Oh darling, not you.' Coral, who had been observing the exchange from over by the door, shook her head at Lily. ‘He isn't cross with you. I'll go home.' She turned to address Eddie. ‘I'm so sorry about this, I really am. I'm going now.'
‘I'll come with you,' said Lily.
‘OK, stop.' Eddie shook his head in disbelief. ‘This is stupid. You're here, you've seen me now, so what's the point of leaving? It's not as if it's going to erase your memory.'
‘Look.' Lily was equally blunt. ‘It's my birthday. You're not in the sunniest of moods. We've been out and had a fantastic evening and I really don't want the rest of it spoiled by some grumpy stranger.'
‘Well if you two are going,' said Patsy, ‘I'm coming with you. You're not leaving me here with him.'
‘Whoa, this is getting out of hand.' Eddie marvelled at the way Patsy had broken her promise to him yet somehow he'd managed to become the bad guy. ‘Can you give me a break here? I'm sorry if I was grumpy. How about if none of you leave and we open that bottle of wine?' He turned from Patsy to Lily and from Lily to Coral. ‘Sorry … sorry … very very sorry. Please stay.'
And because he was Eddie Tessler, with buckets of charm and a smile capable of melting ice when he chose to use it, they did.
It was 1.30 in the morning when Lily looked across at the chiming clock and said, ‘You know, we probably should be thinking of going home. It's not my birthday any more and some of us have to get up for work soon.' She pulled a face. ‘Those of us who aren't film stars, I mean.'
Eddie grinned, because it wasn't every day you got to watch a girl with blond ringlets do a Michael Jackson moonwalk across a kitchen floor in a pair of stripy socks borrowed for the occasion in order to facilitate the necessary slidiness. Even more impressively, she was doing it without spilling a drop of her bright pink drink.
‘I can't believe I have to cut people's hair in a few hours,' Patsy marvelled. She made extravagant scissory gestures with both hands and said, ‘Imagine!'
Coral nodded in agreement. ‘We should go, we really should. It's later than I thought.' She looked around, puzzled. ‘What did I do with my shoes?'
‘You took them off when you did the tango.' Eddie fetched them for her from the windowsill.
‘Oh for heaven's sake, what a silly place to leave them!' Coral shook her head as she took the red stilettos and put the left one on to her right foot. ‘Whoever put them there?'
As he helped her keep her balance, Eddie hid a smile, because the last couple of hours had been an experience he wouldn't forget in a hurry. Now that he'd heard the story of their joined-together lives, he understood how the three women had forged such a close bond. Coral was twelve years older than Patsy, who was in turn ten years older than Lily, but the loss of Lily's mother had pulled them together, and as the years had passed, the ties had only strengthened.
Now, after much laughter and dancing and possibly ill-advised combinations of alcohol, he was very glad he'd managed to persuade them to stay.
Then again, he was even more glad he wouldn't be having his hair cut by Patsy in the morning.
Chapter 9
Eddie Tessler wanted to kiss her, Lily could tell. She knew by the way he was gazing at her. Worse still, he seemed to know that she wanted it to happen. She heard her own breathing quicken and looked away, stretching out the tape measure in her hands and concentrating hard on the purple velvet curtains.
‘What are you doing?' He moved up behind her and she felt his warm breath on the side of her neck.
‘Measuring the curtains.'
‘Why?'
Lily couldn't answer; she had no idea why, and now he was closer still. His mouth brushed her jawline and he murmured, ‘That isn't a tape measure, by the way. It's a telephone charger. And you should probably answer that phone.'
The phone carried on ringing and Lily opened her eyes, rushing up to the surface and experiencing a mixture of disappointment and relief that it had been a dream. On the one hand, the prospect of being kissed had been thrilling; on the other, thank goodness she hadn't really been trying to measure Patsy's living-room curtains with a charger cable.
Oh God, though. Her head.
Wincing, she rolled over in bed and scooped her phone off the floor, which worsened the headache dramatically. She deserved some kind of medal for fortitude in the face of adversity.
‘Urgh … ' It wasn't much, but it was the best she could do.
‘Morning! Is that your way of saying hello? Happy Boxing Birthday,' said Dan, who was always disgustingly cheery first thing.
‘Hang on.' At least she'd had the foresight to leave a tumbler of water next to the bed, although drinking it last night might have been a wiser move. The glass clanked against her teeth as she gulped the water down in one go.
‘Good night, I take it?'
‘I wish you had taken it, then I wouldn't be feeling like this now.' Flopping back against the pillows, Lily said, ‘You know Patsy's drinks cupboard? I think we may have finished the lot.'
‘Oh God. Cocktails.'
‘That's one way to describe them.' They'd both experienced Patsy's adventurous streak before. When the normal drinks ran out – and last night's single bottle of wine hadn't gone far between the four of them – she liked to make concoctions from whatever was in the cupboard. There had been blue curaçao, Tia Maria, lime-flavoured vodka, some weird pomegranate liqueur, Jack Daniel's … oh, and the raspberry Chambord.
Plenty of Chambord.
How could something so completely delicious make you feel so dreadful the next day?
‘What time did you get home?' said Dan.
‘Three o'clock, I think.' Lily massaged her temples. ‘Your sister's a shocking influence.'
‘Tell me about it. Anyway, did you manage to find those tickets?'
‘I did, they're right here. They were under your bed, like you said.'
And he had no idea who had spent the last two nights in his bed.
‘I'm always right. And you were meant to text me to let me know you'd found them. I thought you would.'
‘I know, sorry. Got distracted.' By the famous person who's been sleeping in your bed. ‘Hey, are you in a rush? Are you at work?'
‘Not yet. I'm in Milan. Lying in bed in my hotel room. With no hangover.'
‘Lucky you.'
‘And no clothes on either.' He was grinning, she could tell.
‘Spare me the mental picture. OK now, shush for a minute and listen.' Lily relayed to him the details of her mum's letter, then explained that she'd almost certainly tracked down Declan Madison. When she'd finished, she said, ‘So I'm going to write to him!'
‘You are? Why?'
‘So I can let him know about Mum leaving me the bracelet he gave her. And tell him how much he meant to her … and then he can tell me things about her that I haven't heard before.'
‘Riiiiight,' Dan said slowly.
‘Why are you sounding like that?'
‘I just don't want you to be hurt if he says he can't remember your mum. It was so long ago. They were eighteen then. I was eighteen nine years ago and I'm struggling to remember who I went out with back then.'
‘You went out with Janice Frayn,' Lily reminded him patiently. ‘And Tonda Whittington. And that girl with the spiky blond hair … she drove a yellow Fiat and had your name tattooed on her hip … ooh, what was she called?'