There was no point in trying to apologise again and there was no way Fi was going to try and offer an explanation. She’d never told anyone. Ever.
She certainly wasn’t going to tell someone who embodied the very reason she’d kept it secret. When just three of the words he’d thrown at her were still echoing in the back of her head.
‘Who’d want you…?’
* * *
The small quarters on the mezzanine floor of these stables had been a bonus when Fi had applied for the job as the in-house farrier and stable hand for this prestigious livery. She’d loved living right in the stables like this but her room offered no comfort when she reached it now.
The clock was ticking.
She had no idea of where she could go. The first place that came to mind was her childhood home in Oban, but that was no more than a fleeting pang of the homesickness she’d never allowed herself to act on. It was not an option. She couldn’t do that to her mother. She would be far too ashamed to confess that she’d done something so horribly similar to the crime her father had committed in nearly killing someone before he’d destroyed their world by walking out and never returning.
Besides, there was no time to think of anything other than the most important things she wanted to pack. She had limited time and knew there was no way she would ever be able to come back here.
She sucked in a quick breath. It helped that this felt as if she was trying to run from a fire and could only take what was most precious to her, like the leather tool bag full of her farrier tools. She rolled up her well-worn leather apron and tucked the heavy roll between the sturdy handles of the bag. Then she hurriedly stuffed some clothes into a waxed canvas holdall. She grabbed the personal items from the top of her chest of drawers, including a family photo of herself with her two sisters and their mother.
With no real idea of how many minutes had already gone by, Fi moved towards the door again but then stopped abruptly. Her wallet and her phone were in a top drawer. And her passport. Thank goodness she’d remembered them.
She had also almost forgotten what else was in that drawer, hidden under some underwear that had long since become too tight to be comfortable.
A key.
A large, old-fashioned kind of key that wasn’t going to open any door on this side of the English Channel. This key belonged to a little house in the South of France, called La Maisonette, and it had been her sister Ellie who had told her to keep it when Fi had been there last Christmas.
‘You never know,’ she’d said. ‘You might need it one day.’
Right now, she couldn’t remember much about the little stone cottage, enveloped by the mist of fear that was pushing her to flee while she still had time.
She could, however, remember the donkeys that lived in the olive grove beside the cottage. She might not be able to catch the thought enough to define it but she knew the memory was significant.
Important.
In this moment, with her world tipped upside down from having been brutally shoved back into a past she’d thought she’d finally put to rest, it felt like it could even be lifesaving.
Fi was clutching the key in her hand as she left the stables behind her, threw the holdall into the back of her little hatchback and drove away without a backward glance.
She was leaving the life she’d been living long enough for it to feel safe. To feel like home.
But it wasn’t safe any longer.
It had become part of what she’d run from a long, long time ago.
She knew she had to escape. She hadn’t known where to go, but now she did.
She had a direction. Something to aim for. Fi knew where she needed to be.
La Maisonette.
2
‘Is she still there?’
Ellie Gilchrist stood up from the comfortable armchair where she’d been sitting to feed her baby and shifted her daughter onto her shoulder so that she could rub her back. From the second storey of her home, she could easily see into the olive grove that lay between this house and the little stone cottage next door.
La Maisonette.
Her whisper felt like she was passing on secret information as she leaned towards where she had left her phone on speaker, perched on the arm of the chair.
