Nina nodded, taking a long sip of her drink. ‘Yeah, it's just a bit shocking, isn't it? I mean, to think she's been lurking around, knowing all this stuff about us. It can’t be a coincidence.’
‘It is,’ Nancy agreed, her voice serious. ‘You've got to be careful, Nina. People like Lindsay don't just change overnight. If she's back in Lovely, there's got to be a reason for it.’
Nina shivered despite the warm evening. ‘I know. It's creepy, isn't it? To think she's been watching and waiting. Makes you wonder what she's planning.’
‘That's why you've got to stay one step ahead,’ Nancy said firmly. ‘Keep your eyes open and don't let her get under your skin. Keep away from her and don’t engage.’
Nina swallowed, thinking about the vast number of text exchanges she’d had with Lindsay. She didn’t tell Nancy aboutthe interactions. ‘I will. I'm not going to let Lindsay ruin what I've got here. Lovely's been too good to me.’
Nancy smiled, raising her glass. ‘To Lovely, and Nina.’
‘To Lovely,’ Nina echoed, clinking her glass against Nancy's. ‘And to getting rid of unwanted pests.’
They both laughed, but Nina wasn’t feeling too happy. She’d clocked the weird vibes from Lindsay from day one. She just hoped she wasn’t going to find out more.
40
Nina typed Lindsay's name into the search bar and scrolled up. There were many entries, none of them made Lindsay sound very nice. In fact, it seemed as if she was one nasty piece of work. Moving back up to the top, Nina rested her finger on the mouse, right-clicked on the first link, opened it in a new tab, and did the same all the way down the results until she came to about halfway down the screen.
She took a sip of her coffee and started to read the first article from a daily national newspaper. Lindsay was clearly one shady character. There were eight men who had taken Lindsay to court and three women. As Nina clicked and scrolled agog, she realised as she took in the information that Lindsay seemed to have a formula that worked quite well; she would make someone her friend, try to scam them out of some money and then turn nasty when they wanted to get rid of her. She had done it time and time again, all along the south coast. Nina went cold as she waded through and read. She opened the next article and read the same as the third and fourth. By the time she got to the end of the tabs, she wasn't sure if she wanted to read more or not.
Nina sat in a bit of a daze as she read through. This was not a small thing. She was reading about an out-and-outcalculated criminal who had not only committed lots of crimes but also had been reported in various online publications about other situations she had got away with. From what Nina could ascertain Lindsay had a well-thought-out strategy executed with precision time and time again.
Her heart pounded as Lindsay's unsavoury history unfolded further on her screen. The articles painted a picture of a woman skilled in manipulation, leaving a trail of betrayed friendships and legal battles across the south coast. Nina felt a chill run down her spine and wrapped her arms around herself, trying to shake off the unsettling feeling.
Nina couldn’t believe that Robby hadn’t told her. She remembered one of the things Nancy had said when Nina had first started seeing Robby. Nancy had said that Robby had been through quite a lot. Nina had always assumed it was just the death of his partner when he was young, but it seemed this was something, too. As she sat trying to get all the information to make sense in her brain, she was upset that he hadn't told her; it was a significant thing that had happened in his life. A bit strange that he’d keep it quiet if you asked her. She wondered why he hadn't talked about it. Maybe it was one of those things that was very deep down that he didn’t want to come back up to the surface. That could be an explanation, she supposed.
The weight of scrolling and reading felt like a tonne of bricks in her stomach. The implication of the articles swirled in her mind. Every time she clicked, every article she opened had made her feel worse as she’d dived deeper into something she hadn't expected to find. As she sat trying to make sense of what she’d just read, everything around her seemed to shrink, and the walls felt as if they were closing in.
The more she thought about it, the more she realised that she just had to talk to Robby about it. She presumed that he wasn’t deliberately keeping things from her. She closed her laptop witha sigh. She’d believed that Lovely Bay was this dream-like place where nothing bad ever happened, but maybe she wasn’t quite so right after all.
41
Nina was up to her neck in bubbly water in the bath. It was the first deep bath she'd had since buying the property by the harbour. When she’d bought the place, the bathroom had needed a serious amount of work. She'd had to get the toilet replaced in the end, despite the amount of chemicals she’d thrown down it guiltily, but now it was a good place for a nice soak in the tub. She took a sip of her gin and tonic and mentally went through what still needed to be done for the wedding. Now, the dress was altered, it was at the dry cleaners and needed to be collected, but everything else to do with the wedding was arranged and there wasn’t anything else left to do.
On the work front, she was very much chipping away at all her jobs, including the chocolate shop. It had been a long week where she'd been at the shop for a few afternoons organising the shelving units and final bits and bobs. She was most definitely feeling her busy week in her bones and the soak was doing its job.
With her phone propped up on the side of the bath, she stared at the top of the vintage medicine vanity unit where a Tom Ford perfume, matching body cream, and bath oil stood in a neat row. She shook her head and laughed. She'd treated herself tothe scent for the wedding and the three little bottles with fancy lids showed how far she'd come in her journey. When she'd been in the flat deep in the depths of life on her own, her self-care had been more or less non-existent. It had been about all she could manage to make the effort to slap on a bit of E45 and wash her hair a couple of times a week. Now, here she was buying fancy, expensive scents, making semi-regular trips to Beauty by Bianca, the beauty therapist in town, and taking care of herself a lot more often than she ever had. The bath up to her neck was part of her newly found ‘Take Care of Herself’ routine. It had been a long time coming.
After about fifteen minutes of staring into space and thinking, mainly about the situation with Lindsay, her phone buzzed from the side. She answered a video call from Robby and giggled as he came onto the screen.
'Oh, nice view. I don’t mind when my soon-to-be wife answers the phone in her birthday suit.'
'Very funny,' Nina replied. 'You can’t see me, so...'
'I can imagine, thank you very much.’
'How are you? How did it all go?' she said, referring to a huge job Robby had been to in Birmingham where he'd collaborated with another company to deliver the contract.
'Yeah, good,' Robby nodded. 'I wish I was home, though. It’s been a long few days. How are you getting on?'
Nina shook her head. She wanted to bring up the Lindsay thing. It was as if it was sitting between them like a huge elephant in the room. The timing wasn’t great so she decided to keep quiet about what she’d learnt. 'Same, which is why you find me here. I’ve been in the chocolate shop. I seem to have broken the back of it now, so that’s good. It really was a lot to take on at this stage of the game.’
‘I did try to warn you about doing that, especially for free.'
'That’s the way it works around here, isn’t it?' Nina replied.
'Well, yes, for sure, but still…’
