When You Walked Back Into My Life Read Free

his crestfallen expression. ‘But it’s been good to see you too,’ she added, hearing the formal, almost prim tone of her voice as she hurried away and instantly regretting it.
    The rest of the shopping was conducted in a blur. She moved up and down the aisles, plucking the necessary items mechanically from the shelves, not daring to look up from her task in case she saw him again. She felt lightheaded, but she kept focused until she was safely out of the store, then almost ran back to Dorothea’s flat as if the devil were on her tail.
    Keith hadn’t moved from his desk. He looked up as she shot round the corner.
    ‘No need to panic. I haven’t heard a peep out of her.’
    ‘Oh … thanks, thanks for keeping an eye.’
    ‘You OK?’ He peered at her through the gloom of the hall.
    ‘Fine, yes.’ She smiled brightly and hurriedly closed the door of the flat behind her, only able to relax when she had a physical barrier between herself and Fin McCrea.
    *
    That evening Flora stood in her sister’s immaculate, state-of-the-art kitchen, telling her about the supermarket encounter. It was nearly nine – Flora only finished work at eight, and Prue was just back from a gallery opening in the West End.
    Prue took a wine glass from the cupboard and set it on the polished black granite worktop with a sharp click. She poured out red wine from an already opened bottle of Australian Shiraz and handed it to Flora, her face set and angry.
    ‘Bloody man.’
    Prue, three years Flora’s senior, was about as unlike her sister as it was possible to be and yet still be related. She looked good for her forty-four years, her clothes classic and expensive, giving only a passing nod to trend. Her hair, short, layered and tastefully blonde, framed a round face, seldom seen without extensive make-up; her nails were long, manicured, and varnished a rich, shiny crimson. Theonly similarity to her sister was her gold-flecked brown eyes. Financially ambitious from an early age, Prue was now an interior designer of considerable fame and popularity amongst the international set with homes in London; she never stopped working. Her husband, Philip, a lawyer, was usually the one at home making supper for their teenage daughter, Bel.
    ‘He wanted to have a drink with me,’ Flora said. She had somehow managed to get through the rest of the day with some semblance of normality. Rene had come round for tea with Dorothea, the doctor had visited, Mary, the night nurse, had bent her ear about what they would all do if Dorothea died. So she hadn’t yet had time to make sense of what had happened.
    ‘And you said no, right?’ Prue asked, not really concentrating as she checked her BlackBerry and replied at once to whatever message she’d just received – Prue’s phone was never more than grabbing distance from her hand. Laying it temporarily on the counter, she opened the fridge and pulled out a box of butternut squash and sage ravioli, a bag of watercress, a lemon and a block of Parmesan cheese. ‘Have you eaten?’
    Flora shook her head. ‘Where are Philip and Bel?’
    ‘Bel’s staying with Holly … getting up to some unspeakable fifteen-year-old mischief, no doubt. And Philip is havingdinner with an old college mate.’ Prue stopped what she was doing to peer closely at her sister. ‘You didn’t give him your number, did you?’
    ‘No, no, of course I didn’t.’ And then she burst into tears.
    ‘Darling … come here.’ Prue wrapped Flora in her arms and held her close. ‘Poor you, it must have been a terrible shock.’
    Flora rested in her sister’s embrace for only a moment before pulling away and wiping the tears away with the back of her cardigan sleeve. Prue made a disapproving face and passed her a piece of kitchen roll.
    ‘It
was
a shock.’
    ‘What was he doing in Waitrose in the Cromwell Road for Christ’s sake? He spends his entire life up a mountain.’
    ‘He had a bad fall, he said. He was in Charing Cross