Ellie still wasn’t sure if she believed in this Jamie.Why would Abby need to speak to a criminal lawyer about all this mess if she’s planning on doing me in?
Oh!Ellie’s blood suddenly ran cold.
Abby pulled up at a T-junction and waited for instruction. Ellie glanced down at the map but it was blurred. She tried following the map with her finger but the image wouldn’t steady. Everything was in double vision. She looked up out of the windscreen. It was the same with the landscape. Two hedges, two electricity pylons, two birds balancing on the wires.
‘Left or right?’ asked Abby.
Ellie lifted the map closer. It didn’t help. She shook it, frustrated.
‘Are you OK?’
‘It’s gone a bit blurred,’ admitted Ellie.
‘Want me to take a look?’
Ellie handed the road map over and Abby silently checked it, then she gave it back and turned the car left.
‘What was all that about?’ Abby asked once they were driving again.
Ellie shrugged.
‘Do you think...?’
Ellie looked up at her sister. Abby was biting her lip.
‘What?’
‘It’s just a thought...’
‘Spit it out.’
‘You haven’t been right since we left on Tuesday afternoon.’
‘And?’
‘Mum served up. Your first night here. She was alone in the kitchen. You don’t think she gave you something, do you?’
Ellie looked over at her sister. Nothing but innocence and concern sprang from her eyes.
FORTY-FIVE
The reporter was one of the best-turned-out women Susanna had ever seen. She wore a navy pencil skirt with a discreet split up the thigh. Her elegant arms were caressed by a fluid silk shirt in a soft pink. At her tanned neck was a single, subtle diamond. Gabriella was in her early forties, but Susanna thought she looked much younger. Her glossy dark brown hair was lifted with copper highlights and her skin glowed. Oh, how Susanna envied her skin, her smooth face. Ashamed of her own, she’d insisted on having her back to the camera and under no circumstances was the cameraman to take any shots of her sunburned face.
Susanna felt insignificant sat in front of this Italian beauty, but reminded herself it wasn’t all painful. Gabriella had contacted her asking for an exclusive interview for their cable magazine show, a call that had caught Susanna unawares, and a producer had offered a fee. Something else that had surprised her. The producer had been quite persuasive, Susanna remembered, and she’d concluded that it couldn’t do any harm, especially as they’d promised not to broadcast any of the interview until Ellie had been found. They didn’t want to get in the way of the investigation and knew that Abby mustn’t find out that Susanna was alive in case it made her act rashly.
Susanna had trusted them and invited them in. Matteo had been told to keep out – it was her story, they were her daughters. And it helped to talk about it. She was so desperate for Ellie to be safe and well and she had no one else to confide in. She’d kept the secret of Ellie and Abby’s childhood for decades. Matteo was hard to talk to – he was struggling to believe his new wife was temperamental and volatile. It was understandable, but Susanna was losing patience.
‘Are you ready?’ asked Gabriella in her beautifully accented English.
Susanna nodded. ‘Just don’t...’ she began again, nervously.
‘It’s OK. Paolo will not show your face,’ reassured Gabriella. ‘Now remember, my introduction will be in Italian and then we will conduct the interview itself in English. OK?’
Susanna nodded.
Gabriella took a breath, then another, a well-practised act of composure. She nodded at Paolo, who’d set his camera up behind Susanna. Then, on his signal, she began to speak.
‘It was meant to be a special time, a family reunion between a mother and her two grown-up daughters. One of them lives here, on our beautiful island of Elba; the other has come to visit from London. These sisters have a history of being estranged, after a difficult and painful childhood. There has been a terrible rivalry, where Abby, the older sister, has resented her beautiful blonde baby sister, Ellie, since birth. Imagine the difficulty for Susanna, the poor mother caught between them, who is here with me today. Imagine her heartbreak when her eldest daughter, Abby, rejects the younger one, Ellie. Then imagine her horror when she discovers Abby tried to murder Ellie when they were children.’
