‘Maya, I’m Maya.’
Gracie had nose-piercing envy as the diamond in the young Czech girl’s nose caught the sunlight that was streaming through the café window.
‘I promise I’m not being nosy, but I did overhear about a running club and I really could do with getting fit. I bloody smoke too much. My lungs could do with an airing.’
Gracie smiled. ‘It’s on Wimbledon Common. They set off at eight thirty and four thirty. The meeting point is the Windmill Café.’
‘Perfect. I can do the later one. That’s great, thank you, Gracie. Hope to see you there.’
Rob was making ‘hurry up’ gestures.
‘I’d better go. The boss has got ants in his pants.’ Gracie smiled.
As she sat back at her desk, Gracie felt momentarily peaceful. Work was sorted, tick! And she need never look at the harlot that was Annalize Good ever again; she was going to get fit and may even have made a new friend to boot. Then a dark cloud of realisation swept through her. Who was she kidding? Peaceful? Lewis had messaged her earlier wanting to take her out for dinner on Friday night.
This was probably just the calm before a very big storm ahead.
SIXTEEN
Lewis smiled nervously as he got up to greet Gracie at the bar at Zitas. She noticed his fitted blue jumper. She had always said how much she liked him in it. He had shaved, too, and she detected the swoon-inducing aftershave that he had been wearing the very night they met.
‘Hey,’ he said softly, handing her a bunch of daffodils, her ‘favourite flower in the whole world’.
‘Thanks.’ She held them to her chest.
‘You look beautiful.’ He moved to kiss her but she turned her head away. Feeling she had been foolish to agree to meet him so soon, she had an overwhelming urge to just run.
Suddenly faced with her future, Gracie felt far from beautiful. She felt sad, scared, unhappy and angry all at the same time. Why couldn’t life just give her a break? Just a teeny tiny one. It didn’t need to be a side-splitting guffaw of a break; an ongoing smile for a few months or so would do.
Here she was standing in front of the man to whom she had given seven years of her life. The man she had so wanted to be the father of her children. And suddenly he seemed like a stranger. She was thirty-eight years old, childless and at a crossroads in her life with no idea in which direction to turn.
The smart Italian waiter saw them to their table and pulled out her chair. With a heavy heart and a watery-eyed ‘thank you’, she took a deep breath and sat down.
SEVENTEEN
Cynthia Princeton pushed back on her comfy office chair and pulled up the large sash window of her wood-panelled office. She looked at the case file in front of her. Rape, her speciality. And she had dealt with enough criminals to know an innocent when she was faced with one. This poor lad was so likeable, came across as so honest, too. Which was great for a jury if it went that far.
Her colleagues would say that she should never be so confident, as it would get her into trouble one day. She most certainly had intuition on this one, but admittedly not a lot of evidence. It was the young girl’s word against his. Always tricky, always grey. But his family were putting up the money for a top defence lawyer and a top defence lawyer was what they were going to get.
She was just about to call her assistant when a text came through. It was her husband.
Therapy tonight, be home 9ish. I’ll eat en route.
‘Quelle surprise,’ she said aloud. She honestly didn’t know why she stayed married to Scott. She knew he was sleeping with someone or other at the moment, as she had smelt cheap perfume on him all too frequently. They had separate rooms, aside from the occasional drunken coitus, lived separate lives, really, but they occasionally rolled each other out for a necessary dinner party and they did genuinely like each other.
Scott Princeton made a good friend but a diabolical husband. The romance had long gone, but until Emma was at university, there was no way that she would leave him. Cynthia’s childhood home had been broken when she was small and, despite her very successful career, it had done her no favours.
She pushed her glasses to the end of her nose, undid a button on her crisp white shirt and called the new intern through. He sat himself nervously down in front of her. She could tell he was trying not to look at the tiny glimpse of white lace bra that was now showing. Imagining his firm ebony skin pressing against her paleness, she leant forward slightly.
‘Luke, I’m going to my Cornwall house this weekend to get my head around the Duke/Simpson case.’
‘That sounds like a sensible idea, Mrs Princeton.’
Cynthia pushed her glasses up and nonchalantly asked, ‘Do you think you could come with me?’
EIGHTEEN
‘So, I’ve met with Lewis,’ Gracie said quietly from her lying-down position.
