“Do you really have to go?” he asks in a whiny voice.
He looks quite forlorn – until he notices something:
“Hey, we’re standing under the mistletoe!”
“What?” I glance upwards. He’s right, this part of the ceiling’s totally covered with it. Before I know what’s happening, he’s pressing his lips against mine. His breath smells of cheese and onion crisps. I pull back, repulsed, just as Sonya returns.
She raises her eyebrows. “You ready to go?”
“Very.”
“Oh, you know you loved it,” Stu calls after my departing back. “All the ladies do. Once you’ve had Stu, no one else will do!”
I make the call just before work on Monday morning. I reason that a successful businessman like Bernie Greengrass isn’t one to loll about in bed, so I’m sure he won’t mind me calling him a little early.
“About time!” he chuckles, when he hears my voice. “How about you pop in to see me, and we can discuss the details.”
“Sounds great. When?”
“Let’s see – I’ve just had a lunch cancellation, actually. Can you do twelve o’clock?”
Wow, this is all happening so fast!
“OK, I’ll see you then.”
“Morning Isabel,” Alicia bounds up to me in the car park when I get to work. She has the energy of a Labrador puppy.
“Hi,” I reply cautiously. “How was the ball?” I was dreading this conversation, but somehow, with the lunch-time meeting in my pocket, it’s not quite so bad.
“It was incredible! Deacon’s such a great dancer!”
She giggles. – I don’t know what at.
“Did you have fun at your party?” She leans a little closer. “I heard you and Stu kissed!”
“Yeah, well don’t believe everything you hear.”
I brush past her into the store.
“Have you seen Stu?” Sonya asks with glee. “His skin is definitely a few shades lighter today!”
I smile, but to be honest I can’t tell the difference. “Um, Sonya, is it OK if I take a long lunch break today? I need to go to the post office and you know what the queues are like this close to Christmas.”
“Course, just make sure you’re back by two.”
So at half past eleven, I head off for my interview.
“Good luck,” Alicia whispers, as I walk by. I look at her sharply. How the hell does she know? But Alicia just smiles sweetly, in that annoying way she has.
Must be a lucky guess, I tell myself. I bet half the staff here are job hunting at the moment.
I arrive at Filbert’s a little early, so I sit in the car and smoke a cigarette while I think about what I want to get out of this meeting. Obviously, I want a pay rise, but I also need to know what my career prospects would be, though they couldn’t be any worse than they are at Robertson’s.
I’m just stubbing out my cigarette, when a loud beeping sound makes me jump. I reach into my bag and pull out my keys. It’s my bloody smoke detector. It doesn’t usually go off when I smoke. So why’s it become so sensitive all of a sudden? Slowly, I look up.
Crap! There’s a car on fire!
I can see flames coming out of the boot.
I know I should call 999, but I can’t from here. I can’t be around fire. Not when I’m already under so much suspicion. With shaking hands, I stick the keys back in the ignition and speed towards the exit. As I wait for the woman in front of me to pull out, I glance back at the car that’s on fire. It’s a beautiful, shiny new Jaguar, with customised registration plates that read ‘Bernie1’.
I speed back to Robertson’s, violating about twelve different traffic laws along the way.
“That was quick,” says Sonya, as I walk back into the office. “I thought you’d be at least an hour.”
“Yeah, well the queue looked a bit too crazy. I’ll go another day. Have you seen Alicia by any chance?”
I have to know if she’s behind this.
“She’s on her lunch break.”
“Down in the canteen?”
“No, she said something about going into town.”
Which means it could have been her who started that fire!
I don’t know what that girl’s up to, but I don’t trust her. Not one bit.
Chapter Eight
I tip my sodden clothes into the dryer. The machine whirls and then judders as it picks up speed. I watch for a moment, as my clothes whiz round and round and the thoughts tumble around in my head in a similar manner.
Until now, I forced myself to give Alicia the benefit of the doubt, because the alternative was way too sinister for me to even comprehend. I thought I was being crazy, paranoid. But not anymore. Now, there has been one fire too many and like DS Penney, I don’t believe in coincidences. I don’t know why Alicia is out to get me or how she’s setting all these fires but it’s about time I found out.
To start with, how did the police know to connect me to the fire at Rose Cottage? It happened all those years ago, and it’s not like I have a criminal record. And how is it that Alicia has ingratiated herself with my friends? Somehow, she’s made them all trust her instantly. My friends have become her friends. Anything she wants to know about me, she can get from them, the people who know me better than anyone. And yet I know nothing about her.
That has to change.
I think back through all the time we’ve spent together, but she leaves very few clues. She has a skill of turning the conversation around to other people and since people love to talk about themselves, I don’t think anyone ever notices.
I sit down in front of my laptop and type her name into Google. It takes some time to trawl through all the Alicia McBrides, but none look or sound like her. She has no Facebook profile, no obvious Twitter account. I draw a big fat blank.
A car honks outside. I go to the window and peer out.
Damn, I’d forgotten Kate was picking me up. Quickly, I run a brush though my hair and grab my handbag. Normally, I spend ages getting ready for a night out but I was too engrossed in what I was doing.
“So, what are you doing for Christmas?” I ask, as I fasten my seat belt.
“Staying here in Queensbeach,” she says, reversing out of the driveway. “I’m on call at the hospital, so the family are coming to me.”
“I was thinking of going away for a few days,” I tell her. “Do you think you could feed Fluffy?”
She glances at me out of the corner of her eye.
“You’re going to see Julio?”
“Yes.”
“And his new fiancée?”
“Yes.”
She bites her lip and an awkward silence descends.
“So you’ve got all the family coming to stay?” I ask, in an attempt to resuscitate the conversation.
“And Alicia.”
This time, it’s my turn to bite my lip.
“Doesn’t she have a family of her own?”
“No. Not that she talks about, anyway.”
Poor little orphan Alicia. I know I should probably feel sorry for her but instead I just feel annoyed. How dare she intrude on Kate’s family Christmas? How dare she take advantage of her generous nature?
The knot in my stomach tightens as Deacon and Alicia walk into Mustafa’s, hand in hand. I can barely look at them, either of them. I pick up my glass of wine and drink it straight down.
“So when are we having our Christmas dinner?” Kate asks, oblivious to my pain.
The four of us always get together for a Christmas meal before everyone leaves town for the holidays.
“How about next Sunday?” Rhett suggests. The others nod in agreement.
“Hey, how about I host it this year?” I suggest brightly.
They all look at me blankly.
“Oh, I assumed we’d be having it at Rhett and Deacon’s,” Kate says awkwardly.