She was safe.
She could rest, at least for a little while.
4
There was a disconcerting moment, just before Fi opened her eyes again, where she had absolutely no idea where she was. She drew in a breath and held it and stayed very, very still.
She could hear voices and it made her think she was still dreaming because she knew those voices as well as her own. Laura, her beautiful, determined, bossy older sister. And Ellie – the baby. The gentle, happy little soul that everybody loved.
Fi could only ever remember being in the middle. Overshadowed enough to feel invisible sometimes. Never able to shine quite brightly enough to be really seen most of the time. But she’d always been loved – all of the time.
‘What time is it?’ Fi didn’t realise she’d spoken aloud until she heard Ellie’s response.
‘Oh… you’reawake. We were getting worried about you.’
Laura was beside Ellie. They both looked as though they wanted to hug her but were unsure of whether she would welcome it.
She would welcome it, Fi thought. But she couldn’t blame them for being unsure when she’d avoided getting too close for so long. She’d pushed her family away. Or dragged herself away fromthem. The difference was immaterial because the result had been the same. The inheritance of this property, the new connections to France that had been created and the reasons to reconnect with each other had become strong enough to lead Fi to take the first tentative steps to get past a well-established barrier but they hadn’t taken her far enough to be safely inside a solid family circle yet.
Maybe, when they knew why she was here, they wouldn’t want her to be inside it.
It was hard to swallow because her mouth was so dry. ‘How long have I been asleep?’
‘Almost all day. It’s after three o’clock.’
‘What?’ Fi sat up so fast it made her dizzy. She tried to push her hair back from her face but her fingers caught in the tangle of corkscrew curls and she winced. ‘Oh, my God,’ she muttered. ‘I need to… to…’ She couldn’t quite catch what seemed so urgent because her head was still spinning.
It was then that she noticed Ellie’s little dog was lying on the sofa beside her. She reached out to lay a hand on his back, instinctively seeking the comfort of touching an animal.
‘Let me get you a cup of tea,’ Ellie said. ‘I’ve got plenty of time. Julien’s going to pick Theo up from school and Bonnie’s sound asleep upstairs for now.’
‘And Noah’s taken Lili to the office with him for the afternoon,’ Laura added. ‘I could run you a bath while you’re having that cup of tea. Mam’s flight is due to land about 6p.m. but I’ll have to leave in good time because you never know how bad the traffic’s going to be.’
Fi’s thoughts snapped back into clarity.Thiswas what was so urgent.
‘I can’t stay,’ she said. ‘I can’t be here when Mam arrives.’
‘Why not?’ Laura asked.
‘Where would you go?’ Ellie sounded bewildered.
‘I don’t know…’
Fi’s voice wavered and she covered her face with her hands. She felt the little dog move away and the cushions of the sofa dip as Laura sat beside her and put a hand on her arm. Through a gap in her fingers she could see Ellie kneeling on the floor in front of her and then she felt the touch ofherhands on her knees. The physical connection between the three sisters created a bond that felt like a lifeline.
‘What is it, Fi?’ Ellie asked, a desperate note in her voice. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I hit someone,’ Fi blurted. ‘On the head. With a shovel.’ She gulped in some more air. ‘I tried to kill him… just like Dada did to that man…’
Not that he’d used a shovel. Gordon Gilchrist had used his own forehead and delivered a Glasgow kiss that had been close enough to being fatal to brand him as a murderer in his absence.
There was a moment’s silence. Her sisters understood. They’d all tried so hard to protect their mother when they were children even though they didn’t understand why their world had been turned inside out. There had been an unspoken agreement that part of that protection was to never talk about it. They could understand why Fi didn’t want to be the one to open that can of worms so brutally now, but what they didn’t understand was why history was repeating itself. She could feel their fear that she was also going to vanish from their lives forever. They knew how much that would hurt all of them, especially their mother.
‘Was he badly hurt?’ Laura asked.
‘No. He got up very quickly. But he told me if I was still on the property in fifteen minutes he was going to call the police and get me charged with assault.’
‘Why?’ Ellie asked quietly. ‘You must have had a reason to hit him.’
