Falling for you

in Marcella’s best interests .. .

Anyway, why had it suddenly gone so quiet in here? As the conversation died, Maddy swivelled round on her stool, realising that someone had just walked into the pub behind her.

Oh shit, please don’t let it be Kerr McKinnon.

It wasn’t, although the new arrival had caused just as much of a stir. Although stirs were supposed to be noisy, weren’t they? And this was the opposite of noisy, more of an anti-stir.

Along with everyone else, Maddy couldn’t help gazing at Kate Taylor-Trent. She would have done it anyway, even if Kate’s accident hadn’t happened; it had been eight years since she’d last seen her, after all. But the livid scars were there for all to see, despite the baseball cap pulled down over her forehead. As Kate followed her mother through the pub to the restaurant area, she gazed determinedly ahead, refusing to catch anyone’s eye.

Under his breath, Jake murmured, ‘It’s like that bit in High Noon.’

Apart from a few of the locals acknowledging Estelle with a nod and a mumbled, ‘Evening, Mrs Taylor-Trent,’ nobody else was speaking. Desperate to break the embarrassing silence, Maddy burst out laughing as if she’d just heard a brilliant joke, then realised too late that she sounded as if she was laughing at Kate. Hurrying to cover the faux pas, she said brightly, ‘Juliet, you should have seen them, they were so funny,’ and promptly realised that this only made her sound more guilty.

For good measure, Kate chose this moment to look back over her shoulder and stare directly at her.

Feeling dreadful and prickling all over with embarrassment, Maddy pretended she hadn’t noticed and took a huge glug of Fitou.

‘Who were so funny?’ said Juliet, puzzled.

Highly entertained, Jake ruffled Maddy’s hair and said, ‘Nobody. Well, apart from my sister.’

‘Tiff and Sophie, I was talking about.’ Maddy decided to go for the bluff and pretend she hadn’t just been blurting out any old rubbish. ‘They looked so sweet tonight in their bunkbeds, that’s all I meant. Sophie insisted on sleeping in her wedding dress.’

‘And you’re still blushing,’ Jake couldn’t resist pointing out.

‘Oh, shut up.’ Seeing Kate had caused her to regress; she was feeling stupid and inadequate all over again and now to cap it all she was redder than her glass of red wine. Right, stop it, enough.

Nuala Stratton leaned across the bar, agog. ‘Is that her? Is that the one who was always so horrid to you?’

As if Estelle Taylor-Trent were likely to bring any number of half-stunning, half-scarred 26-year-olds into the restaurant for dinner.

‘Come on,’ said Jake cheerfully, ‘time we hit the dartboard before the opposition gets here. We could all do with the practice.’

Kate was hating every moment. Everyone was pretending not to look at her. They had ordered from the menu and now she longed for a cigarette, but the dining section was non-smoking and she definitely wasn’t going to venture through to the bar to be ogled at close quarters.

‘Hungry, darling?’ Valiantly attempting to pretend there was nothing wrong, that this was just a normal, happy mother-daughter outing, Estelle was struggling to keep the conversation going. ‘The new chef’s much better than the old one. Daddy and I had a fantastic bouillabaisse last time we were in.’

Kate pointedly examined the salt cellar. In desperation, her mother gazed around the other tables.

‘Ooh, those mussels look nice.’

How could mussels look nice? Mussels were mussels, for crying out loud, nothing more than a heap of black shiny shells.

‘Sweetheart, trust me, everything’s going to be fine,’ Estelle whispered. ‘Just give them a few days to get used to you and—’

‘Oh please, Mum, don’t treat me like a kid,’ Kate hissed back. ‘Everything isn’t going to be fine. How can it, with me looking like this? I’ve had almost a year to get used to it,’ she went on bitterly, ‘and it hasn’t happened yet.’

‘But darling, it’s only a few little scars! How you look on the outside isn’t important, you’re still you ... oh Kate, where are you going? Sweetheart, come back.’

Chapter 6

It was no good, she couldn’t do this. Feeling horribly trapped, Kate stood up so fast she almost tipped her chair over. If she was going to cry, she had to get out of here before it happened. But pushing back through the crowded bar – past the darts teams limbering up for their match – would be too much of an ordeal.

Glimpsing the corridor to the right, Kate abruptly veered towards it. The ladies’ loo was through a door on the left. Locking herself into the cubicle with trembling hands, she collapsed onto the lowered lavatory seat and took several deep breaths, tilting her head back and willing the tears to go back down.

Thankfully it worked. When it was safe to return her head to the upright position, Kate snapped open her Prada bag, took out her cigarettes and lit one. This was what she was reduced to now; hiding in the toilet, smoking a Marlboro Light, hideously aware that out in the bar people were laughing and talking about her, and. there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to stop it.

All her life she’d adored being the centre of attention. But not like this.

Exhaling furiously, Kate pictured Maddy Harvey, whom until tonight she hadn’t seen for eight years. The change in her was amazing; Maddy had been the original ugly duckling.

If Estelle hadn’t kept her up to date with developments, she might not have recognised her. But having been told what to expect, she had known at once that the sparky blonde at the bar was Maddy.

She’d heard the burst of laughter, too, after she and Estelle had made their way through the bar. And when they’d been seated at their table she’d found herself covertly glancing over at her. Being prepared for an improvement was one thing, but this much of a transformation had come as a major shock. Maddy may only have been wearing a little black vest and black trousers, but the colour enhanced her bouncing, layered, white-blonde hair and golden tan. As she drank and joked with the visiting darts team, she exuded down-to-earth glamour and the kind of easy confidence that Oh hell.