With sudden energy, Lydia quickly walked round to the back of the cottage and stared at the small upstairs window. It was tantalisingly open. If she could just climb on to the flat roof, reaching the window would be child’s play. It didn’t look that difficult.
She glanced over her shoulder. There was no one around. No one to ask if they’d seen Wendy Bennington that morning.
There was no choice…
Lydia carefully concealed her briefcase beneath a large rhododendron and stood back to consider her options. It really wasn’t going to be difficult—as long as the flat roof was strong enough to take her weight.
She took a moment to pull a black velvet scrunchie from her jacket pocket and twist her long hair into an untidy topknot before pulling the dustbin up against the wall. Then, holding on to the drain pipe, she hoisted herself up the first few feet—just high enough to get a grip on the roof.
Easy. Well, perhaps, not easy…but easy enough. And if Wendy Bennington wasn’t home it would be just as straightforward getting out again. No one need know.
With the dexterity of the county-level gymnast she’d once been, Lydia swung her leg up and pulled herself on to the roof. If nothing else she could tell the elderly woman her home was a security disaster. Anyone could break in. Where she lived in London no one would dream of doing anything as foolish as going out and leaving a window open. You didn’t even leave your car unattended in Hammersmith for five minutes without careful thought.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
A man’s voice shot through the silence. Lydia’s hand paused on the open window, her heart somewhere in the vicinity of her throat.
‘Get down! Now.’
Startled, she turned and looked at the man standing below on the crazy paving. Tall. Handsome…in a scruffy, rough kind of a way. Mid-thirties, maybe late. It was difficult to tell.
And angry. Definitely angry. No doubt about that at all.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he repeated.
Lydia moved away from the open window. ‘Getting in. I thought I heard a noise.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really,’ she fired back, irritated by the heavy sarcasm in his voice. How many burglars did he know who went out on a job dressed in a genuine Anastasia Wilson jacket? It was time he took a reality check. ‘I had an appointment with Wendy Bennington at ten—’
‘It didn’t occur to you to wait until she answered the door?’ he asked with dangerous politeness, his accent at odds with his very casual clothes. Lydia looked at him more carefully. Whoever he was, he certainly wasn’t the farm labourer she’d thought he might be.
And he wasn’t as handsome, either. He had a hard face and an arrogant stance that made her want to explain the principles of feminism—very slowly—because he’d probably never grasped the concept of equality.
‘It occurred to me, yes—’
‘So, what changed your mind?’ he asked, still in that same supercilious tone of voice.
Lydia struggled to hang on to her temper. ‘Forty minutes standing about in the garden is probably what did it. I’m going to climb in and see if she’s hurt. If that’s all right with you?’ she added, turning her back on him.
‘It isn’t.’
She looked round. ‘Pardon?’
‘I said, it isn’t.’
‘Don’t be so…stupid. I had a ten o’clock appointment. I’m sure Wendy wouldn’t have forgotten, it was too important. She might be lying hurt inside. Have you thought of that?’ Lydia turned and pushed the tiny window open.
‘I’d rather you used the key.’
‘What?’ She swung round in time to see him open the back door. ‘H-How did you do that? The door was locked. I checked—’
‘She keeps a spare key under the pot.’
Lydia watched him disappear inside with a sense of disbelief. Damn it! This couldn’t be happening to her. It had been a very long time since anyone had managed to make her feel so completely foolish.
Logically she knew there was no reason for her to have known Wendy Bennington kept a key hidden. The idea that a formidable campaigner of human rights would keep her back door key under a terracotta flowerpot seemed, frankly, incongruous. But clearly she did…and the local populace all knew about it.
At least this particular member of it did. Who in…blazes was he anyway? Arrogant, sarcastic, supercilious…The words flowed easily. It didn’t help knowing she might have reacted in a very similar way herself if she’d discovered someone about to break into a neighbour’s upstairs window. Presumably he was a neighbour?
Gingerly Lydia lowered herself down, careful not to scrape her jacket on the brickwork. She brushed herself down and picked up her briefcase from under the rhododendron.
‘Tall, dark and sarcastic’ had left the door open, no doubt expecting her to follow him. She wiped her feet on the worn doormat and let her eyes adjust to the gloom. The small cottage window ensured the kitchen would always be dark, but the situation was made so much worse by the heavy net curtain hung on plastic-coated wire.
Lydia let out a low whistle. Even though the outside of the cottage was looking frayed around the edges and the garden was hopelessly overgrown, she honestly hadn’t believed anyone lived like this any more.
The kitchen looked like something out of a nineteen-forties movie. There were no fitted kitchen units at all. Just a freestanding gas cooker that looked as if it ought to be consigned to a museum and a thickly painted cupboard with bakelite handles. The orange and cream marmoleum floor tiles had begun to lift and the whole room was dominated by a floor-standing boiler.
It was, frankly, grim.
She hadn’t been aware that she’d had any preconceptions about what she’d expected Wendy Bennington’s home to be like—but, clearly, she’d had many. She stepped over the twin bowls of water and cat food respectively and tried to ignore the faint odour of animal and stale cigarettes.
This had been a mistake. She should have stayed in Vienna, marvelled at the Stephansdom, eaten sachertorte and enjoyed the opera like any other sensible person. What the heck was she doing here?
She’d given up her holiday…for this. Crazy. She was crazy.
And there was still no sign of Wendy Bennington. The house was completely quiet except for the ticking of a clock somewhere in the further recesses of the cottage. She placed her briefcase down by the rusting boiler and looked across at the man as he flicked through the mail on the kitchen table.
‘I’m Lydia Stanford,’ she said with pointed emphasis, waiting for him to look up and acknowledge she was there.
‘I know.’
‘You know?’ He said nothing. ‘And you are?’
‘Nick.’ His eyes were still on the sheaf of letters in his hand. ‘Nick Regan.’
Which told her absolutely nothing.
‘Do you live nearby?’ If he’d looked up he’d have seen her head indicate the direction of the only other house within a mile or so of the cottage.
‘No.’
No? ‘You’re not a neighbour?’
He looked up at that. Very briefly. The expression in his brown eyes made it absolutely clear he’d no intention of assuaging her curiosity. ‘No.’
Nick Regan.
Had