Part I
5 years ago …
Chapter One
YOU CAN’T RUN away from your problems, Lili …
The voice of reason, which sounded suspiciously like my sister’s, echoed in my head as I walked briskly down a quiet London street.I’m not running away,I replied silently and very reasonably.I’m taking time to think. It’s a healthy, productive thing to do.
And, given the circumstances of my life, a very sensible one. I had a big decision to make, one that might change the course my life had been on since the age of eight. I hadn’t been able to think properly inside the house – too many eyes, too many expectations – so I’d come to the one place in the city where I knew I would find not only solitude but clarity.
Office buildings of different ages towered over me as I hurried down a narrow cobbled street. I passed the silent doorways, shut against the heat, and ducked through a wrought-iron gate into the grounds of what had once been a church.
The tower remained, as did three of the walls, but the roof and any stained glass had been lost generations earlier, thanks to a bomb blast in the Blitz. Where rubble and dust had once been was now a beautiful garden. Ivy wound around the delicate tracery at the tops of the empty windows.Fragrant shrubs perfumed the air.
It was mid-July and, thanks to a week-long heatwave, unbearably hot in the city centre. Even though it was only mid-morning, the pavements were beginning to bake and the air shimmered with exhaust fumes. But here … Here it was cool and shady, the noise of the traffic muffled. It was like slipping into another world. And, in this world, I could let everything slide away and be myself, no one looking, no one judging. That, in itself, was more delicious than the gentle breeze playing with the hem of my summer dress.
I followed the path through a small porch into what would have been the nave of the church. Benches were arranged around a fountain made from a large, flat stone set into the paving stones. I slipped one sandal off and extended my foot, relishing the shock of the cold water as it hit my skin and trickled down over my toes.
I kicked my other sandal off and walked a short way to sink both feet into the soft, springy grass near one of the high, arching windows. There were flowers up there amongst the ivy, possibly clematis or jasmine, but they were hidden too well by the vigorous climbers to tell which. I stepped a foot onto a warm patch of earth at the edge of the flower bed in an attempt to get a better view and reached for the branch of a nearby shrub to steady myself. However, before my fingers even locked around it, my hand jumped back, an almost electrical pain shooting up my finger and along my arm. ‘Ow!’ I said loudly and stumbled back onto the grass, clutching my throbbing finger.
‘Are you okay?’
I almost jumped out of my skin for the second time, as I turned to see a rather tall man running towards me. ‘Um …’ was all my adrenaline-riddled brain would allow me to say, then I waved my hand in his general direction. ‘Bee …’
His gaze was momentarily caught by the rather large black-and-yellow insect zig-zagging away from the bush I’d been reaching into. ‘You’ve been stung?’ he asked in a curling Scottish accent.
I nodded.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ve got you.’
For a moment, I thought he was going to go all Indiana Jones and suck the poison out of my finger. I was almost disappointed when he dashed off across the grass to where a fancy-looking tripod and camera stood, rummaged in his backpack, and returned with a small plastic case.
‘It only works if you get to it quickly,’ he said, nodding at me to hold my hand out while he unpacked the contents and assembled what looked like a fat syringe with a little clear plastic cup on the end instead of a needle. He took my hand, placed the device over where I indicated the sting was, and pulled the plunger. The suction caused the skin to balloon into a little dome and, magically, a little bead of what I assumed to be venom appeared on the surface. I watched wide-eyed as he released the device and wiped the evidence of the bee attack away with an antiseptic wipe. ‘There … It might still throb a bit, but it won’t be nearly as bad as if it had stayed in there.’
‘Th-thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’ He smiled at me, and I had another pulse-spiking adrenaline surge.
‘Do you think it’s going to die?’
He stopped smiling and looked confused.
‘Bees die after they sting something, don’t they?’ Now it had occurred to me, I was quite upset about that. After all, it had hardly been the bee’s fault I’d lumbered into its nectar-gathering session.
He glanced in the direction of where we’d last seen it. ‘I’m pretty sure it was a wasp, so I think you’re okay on that front. No bee murdering going on today.’ There was a lovely roll of the ‘r’ when he said ‘murder’. His expression grew more serious. ‘But what about you? You’re not allergic to bees … I mean, wasps … are you?’
He began turning my hand around to view my finger from different angles, checking for swelling, and oxygen no longer seemed to be reaching the bottom of my lungs as efficiently as it had done a few minutes earlier. Maybe Iwasallergic?
‘I don’t know,’ I said, managing to string a coherent sentence together, despite the soft brush of his skin against mine. ‘I don’t think so. But people develop weird allergies out of the blue sometimes, don’t they? My aunt ate shellfish with no trouble her whole life until she turned twenty-nine, and then –Bam! –one butterfly king prawn and they had to call an ambulance. She’s needed to carry an EpiPen ever since.’
Why was I telling him this? And why wasn’t he letting go of my hand?
‘Are you okay?’ he asked again, leaning in and looking into my eyes.
He was much taller than me, even though I was a pretty average height, but not burly – the sort of boy who would have been a rangy youth but had filled out a bit now he was a man.I guessed he was maybe a year or two older than me, and he had slightly shaggy dark hair with just a hint of red where the sun hit it, and the most ridiculously thick lashes. He wasn’t what some people would consider traditionally good-looking, but there was a strength to his features and a warmth in his brown eyes that was very appealing.
‘Yes … I think I’m okay,’ I said.
