Still, no one uttered a word but, one by one, they all looked at something behind him on the magazine and newspaper rack. Without turning round, he had a feeling that a trap door had opened underneath him and he was standing on thin air.
Slowly, he twisted round and scanned the display. The other villagers burst into motion and chatter, and more than one darted out of the shop without buying anything.
What the…?
He shut his eyes and opened them again, just to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. There was a woman he knew very well on the front of one of the tabloids, looking grim and angry with her arms crossed. Only, it wasn’t Louise-it was Megan!
‘LOUISE GOT HER CLAWS INTO MY MAN’, the headline screamed in tall white letters on a black background. Below, were two smaller pictures, one a heart-shaped photo of him and Megan from the last summer holiday they’d shared together-graphically altered by putting a jagged rip between the two of them-and a headshot of Louise, taken from below, so it seemed as if she was looking down her nose at something.
He snatched the paper off the shelf. What the hell was Megan playing at?
What if Jasmine saw this? Or even her friends?
At first he was relieved that there only seemed to be three copies on display but, eventually, his brain kicked in and he realised that must be because the rest had been sold. He grabbed all three of them, marched up to the counter and threw a two pound coin down. He wasn’t about to wait for change.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself for selling such trash,’ he told Mrs Green.
She gave him a stony look. ‘Well, Mr Oliver, we all know Megan left a while ago, but you know what they say…’
Suddenly, he
‘There’s no smoke without fire.’
CHAPTER TEN
WHAT a pity the old stable block had deteriorated so badly. Louise pushed gingerly at one of the doors. The building was huge-a double-height room with gigantic arched doors at one end, big enough to take a carriage or two. The low-ceilinged central section had enough stalls for one, two, three…ten horses.
There was a hatch in the ceiling above one of the abandoned stalls. What was upstairs? Those skylights in the steep slate-tiled roof had to be there for a reason. She was dying to find out. Or, at least, she was dying to think of something other than the email that had blithely pinged into her inbox earlier that morning, and pulling things apart and putting them back together again was a familiar displacement activity for her. Safe. Comforting. All- consuming.
In a corner she found a stepladder, obviously not authentic Georgian as it was made of aluminium. Still, it would do. She dragged it underneath the hatch and unfolded it, making sure the safety catches were in place.
She was up the steps in a shot and, when she pushed the hatch door, she was showered with dust and dirt and probably a hundred creepy-crawlies. Holding on to the ladder for support, she brushed her hair down with her free hand.
When she’d stopped coughing, she poked her head through the hole. Enough light was filtering through the streaky grey skylights for her to see a long loft, with fabulous supporting beams in the roof. She turned round to look in the other direction. Goodness, this must run the whole length of the stables. It was easily sixty feet long. Just think what a great space this would be if it was converted into a guest house.
Now she’d finished with the main house and the boathouse, she needed a new project.
Louise turned round and sat on the large, flat step on the top of the stepladder.
She already had a house full of rooms she didn’t know what to do with. What on earth did she need a guest house for?
‘Louise!’
That was Ben’s voice. A second later, he appeared in the stable door, breathless and dishevelled.
‘Up here,’ she called, her skin cold and tingling as he peered into the dingy interior. He spotted her and ran to the bottom of the ladder. How was she going to tell him? How did she prepare him for the poisonous taste of her world? He was going to hate her for this.
‘What are you doing…? Never mind.’ He held a hand out and she used it to steady herself as she descended the ladder. He looked unusually pale and serious, his mouth a thin line. Her heart began to stammer.
‘Ben? What is it? Is everything okay?’
‘No! Everything is not bloody okay!’ He pulled away from her, then marched to the door.
It was too late. He already knew. Just as she thought he was going to disappear out of the door, he turned and strode back towards her.
‘Louise, I’m sorry. It’s not you…I’m not angry with you, but I could happily throttle-’
‘Ben!’ He wasn’t making sense, and that really wasn’t like him. Cold horror dripped through her at the thought that something else-something far worse-might have happened. She swallowed. ‘Start from the beginning! Is somebody hurt?’
He looked at her, a confused expression on his face, then shook his head. ‘No. But…’He pulled a folded newspaper from his back pocket and she was surprised to feel relief that her original assumption had been correct.
‘It’s Megan. She’s outdone herself this time and I am so, so sorry…’
‘Ben?’
‘I just went into the newsagent’s this morning and…well, there it was…and the whole village staring…’
She tried to make eye contact but he was talking to himself, reliving some memory more than he was talking to her. ‘Ben!’
‘And we were trying to keep it secret, for the kids…’
She grabbed him by the shoulder. ‘Ben!’
He stopped mid-sentence and stared at her.
‘I know.’
He blinked, then looked down at the paper in his hands.
‘Toby’s agent sent me an email. He has a press agency that deals with all his cuttings…’She shrugged and gave him what she hoped was an encouraging smile. ‘Seems the cat is out of the bag.’
The frown lines on his forehead deepened. ‘How can you be so blase about it? Don’t you know what she said about you…about me? Don’t you know how she made it sound?’
Yes, she knew. She knew Megan had told the papers that she and Ben had been on the verge of a reconciliation when nasty old Louise had slunk up and stolen her man away. People would believe it. Even after it had come out that Toby had been unfaithful, the public had forgiven him and, somehow, there seemed to be an undercurrent that it had been her fault. She was too cold, too remote. Couldn’t give him what he needed.
Well, they were right about that. What Toby really needed was a good kick in the pants, but she wasn’t about to generate even more column inches for herself by being the one who provided it. She only cared about the smudged print on the paper if it affected how Ben felt about her, about starting something with her. Anything else was irrelevant.
‘Forget it,’ she said.
He stared at the paper again, then hurled it into the nearest stall. ‘I can’t!’
Louise thought back to her first really awful press story. It had hurt, cut deep. Nowadays she just ignored them. But Ben wasn’t used to this. In one fell swoop, his ordered, stable little universe had been set on its head.
Silently, she walked over to him and put her arms round him. He was shaking with rage. She kissed him gently on the cheek, on the nose, on the lips, until he threw his arms round her and kissed her back.
It didn’t matter what anyone else thought. He’d understand that eventually.
‘Ben,’ she whispered in his ear, ‘the only thing that matters is that I love you.’
