Lottie sighed. ‘She answered the phone as Megan, but—’
Her mother let out an excited screech. ‘It was her! It really was.’
‘Go back, Daniel,’ instructed Nicola.
Daniel turned into the driveway of the manor. ‘No way. I’m with Lottie. I don’t think it was her. And anyway, she’ll be gone by now.’
‘Lottie, you want to go back too, don’t you?’ wheedled Angie.
‘Nope. I think it was one of those lookalike people.’
‘In a brand-new Range Rover?’ asked Nicola, incredulously.
Daniel parked next to Joe’s Land Rover; it was dwarfed by the enormous car. He got out and shut the door. ‘He’s such a killjoy,’ said Angie. She slammed the door and studied Joe’s car. ‘Oh, now look at this.’ She pointed cheerily at Lottie’s artwork.
‘It’s very imaginative,’ said Nicola. She peered closely at the letters. ‘It’s not a vinyl stick-on thing either.’
‘I did it,’ said Lottie. She felt partly proud and a little embarrassed. It was a long while since she’d painted anything at all. This hadn’t exactly stretched her, but it was a start.
Angie straightened and Lottie braced herself for the thinly veiled insult. ‘Oh. I quite like it.’ Lottie couldn’t have been more shocked if all of Santa’s reindeers had pirouetted across the drive.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Emily had just made a round of teas when the hospital visitors returned in a flurry of excitement. Angie, with some help from Nicola, retold the story of the American woman in an elaborate and dramatic way.
Lottie coughed. ‘Great Uncle Bernard is doing okay, by the way.’ She gave each of them a hard stare.
‘That’s good,’ said Zach, and Scott nodded.
Angie was shooting her daggers for interrupting their story. ‘Anyway, we were this close to meeting royalty.’
Emily had been rapt by the tale. ‘So was it really her?’ she asked.
‘Definitely,’ said Angie, clasping her hands in front of her and flopping into Great Uncle Bernard’s armchair.
‘Doubtful,’ said Daniel, pulling the lid off the Quality Street. ‘What on earth would she be doing round here?’
‘Didn’t they get a place in the Cotswolds?’ asked Emily. She thought she remembered reading something in a magazine about it. ‘Chippen or Chipping something?’ Uncle Daniel passed her the Quality Street.
‘Chipping Norton?’ suggested Zach, leaning over and taking a green triangle from the tin.
‘I think so,’ Emily said, hunting for a purple one. They’d all gone.
‘That’s it then,’ Angie’s excitement went up another notch, ‘it must have been her.’ She twisted to look at Lottie. ‘I told you it was. How did you not recognise her?’
‘Because she didn’t look like her.’ Lottie threw up her hands, looking frustrated.
Her mother puffed out a breath. ‘Why are you always like this?’ Angie asked.
Lottie chuckled. ‘Like what?’
‘If I say it’s black, you say it’s white. It obviously was Meghan Markle, so—’
‘Isn’t she Meghan Windsor now?’ asked Emily. She shrank away from the glare that Angie gave her for butting in whilst she was berating her daughter. ‘Sorry.’ She took a strawberry cream and passed the tin to Lottie.
‘Duchess of Sussex,’ said Zach, and Uncle Daniel raised his eyebrows. ‘What? I remember stuff like that.’
‘How far is Chipping Norton?’ asked Scott.
