Nausea surged. Her breath came shallow and quick.
The past and present were pulling tight together, leaving nowhere to hide. Martyn looked wrecked but smug, like a man who’d crawled over a finishing line and still thought he’d won. Her mother, as ever, looked inconvenienced. She batted away a fly with a sharp flick, eyes locking onto Skye with steely focus.
“There you are,” she said, as if the desolate hillside on a remote Greek island were a prearranged meeting place and all she had done was show up a few minutes late.
Skye opened her mouth, but no words came. Her hands began to tremble.
“There she is,” Martyn intoned, his voice dripping in sarcasm. Skye didn’t look at him,couldn’tlook at him. An image of his face the last time she’d seen him flashed through her mind, and she shuddered, repulsed by the memory, enraged by it. It was this sudden surge of defiant anger that helped her to raise her chin and meet his gaze.
“Here I am,” she said, surprising herself with how calm she sounded. Inside, it felt as if all her organs were vibrating in unison. The air, already hot, seemed to crackle.
“We had to wait almost an hour for a taxi,” her mother said, removing her wide-brimmed straw hat and fanning herself with it. There was a faint pink line across her forehead, and her usually immaculate hair appeared damp at the roots. “And then the driver refused to bring us up here, dropped us off miles away. We had no choice but to carry our luggage up here like a couple of donkeys.”
The two people dragging suitcases along the road. Victoria had almost hit them.
“It’s a rough track,” Skye said. “You need something with four-wheel drive.”
She glanced instinctively over to the sisters’ house. Dusty’s truck was parked outside, its bumpers caked in dirt, the back a mess of tools, planks, and bags of dry cement.
“Well, then,” her mother went on, staring around, “which one of these is yours?”
Skye looked at Martyn. Fear closed fist-like around her throat as she took in his mocking smile, the twist of his mouth that told her he’d won.
“I…I, er.”
“For heaven’s sake, Skye,” her mother snapped. “We’ve come a long way—a very long way. The least you can do is invite us in for a cold drink.”
How was this happening?
Skye was torn between the urge to fight and be polite, the need to escape and the importance of standing her ground. She felt suddenly exhausted, every limb a water-soaked log.
“It’s over here,” she said faintly. “The house with the blue door.”
Time thickened. Each crunch of dry earth rang out like thunder in Skye’s ears. The key was a weight in her hand, her fingers sluggish, skin tingling with dread. She didn’t want him here. He had no right to cross this threshold, to pollute the only space she’d kept untouched by him. He knew that; of course he did. That was why he’d brought her mother. Cassandra MacKinnon—cool, composed, impossible to refuse—was his Trojan horse. His way inside. Martyn meant to trap her.
She couldn’t let him.
There was a dull thud as her mum’s suitcase rolled down the step. Martyn followed with only a gym bag, the same ostentatious leather one he’d had monogrammed in gold, as if it were a trophy. There was a matching one with her initials back in London, presumably languishing in the bottom of the wardrobe where she’d left it. In Skye’s mind, she was no longer anSL—Lockhart now a name she wanted nothing to do with. She fought the urge to slam the door in Martyn’s face, stopping just inside with her arms folded to hide the shake in her hands.
When he stepped forward, she stepped back.
“I was going to give you a kiss, but if you’re going to be like that…” he said. His eyes glittered with something Skye didn’t want to name. She turned away.
“Where are the tea bags?” her mother called. She had wandered through into the kitchen, and leaving Martyn by the door, Skye went to join her.
“I’ll make it,” she said, reaching for the jar.
To her dismay, Martyn followed. He leaned against the doorframe with all the nonchalance of a Roger Moore–era JamesBond, though with none of the charm. Cassandra had helped herself to a bottle of water from the fridge and sipped it demurely as she looked out over the back garden.
“Looks as if a bomb’s gone off out there,” she observed. “We read about your little discovery. This mess is down to the authorities, I presume?”
“They didn’t want to leave a stone unturned,” Skye replied. “Not once they’d seen the bones.”
Her mother gave a nod.
“And did they find anything else?”
Skye dropped the teaspoon she was holding, and it clattered against the draining board. Her bag was on the table, and she heard her phone buzz from inside. It was bound to be Joy, asking where she was, impatient to sit and enjoy a cold beer with her friend. Skye made no move to retrieve it. The phone was safer hidden away, where it couldn’t be snatched from her hand or thrown against the wall.
