Deep down, she’d sort of hoped it would be a horrible house that looked as if it should be demolished, in some rundown area where Joel wouldn’t last five minutes. She could imagine him living quite comfortably somewhere like this, even though he generally scorned new-builds and wasn’t keen on flats anyway. He’d be in no hurry to leave it…
There was no point sitting here. There would be a back entrance, and Joel and Annette would no doubt enter the building that way. She was wasting her time, and she didn’t have time to waste. She had to get to work.
Somehow, she had to put all this out of her mind and get on with it.
It was a relief to arrive back in Kelsea Sands, to see the sunlight gleaming on the Humber and pass the welcoming white walls of The North Star. She turned into the drive at Watersmeet and rushed inside to greet her daughters and assure her mum and Mac that she was fine, but traffic had been horrendous. Then she bid them all farewell and dashed across the road to the pub.
‘Thought you’d got lost,’ Sam joked when she walked through the door at last.
‘I’m really sorry,’ she told him. ‘It was the traffic. It was just awful. Never seen anything like it.’
‘No worries,’ he said. ‘As long as you’re okay, that’s all that matters.’
The guilt burned deep within her. She shouldn’t have lied to him, and she shouldn’t have made herself late in the first place by chasing after Joel. What on earth had possessed her? The pub was heaving with customers who’d decided that today was the perfect day to have dinner – or tea, as most of them called it – at The North Star, many of them choosing to sit at the outside tables. Sam was clearly rushed off his feet, and she should have been there helping him.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, when she apologised again a little later, ‘It wasn’t so much of a problem now that Cathy’s back.’
Cathy had returned to work the previous day and had been very friendly towards Jenna. She was a smiley sort of person, probably in her fifties, and lived in Weltringham with her husband and two dogs. She’d spent every spare minute telling the rest of the staff all about her recent holiday in Lloret de Mar and sighing because she now had a whole year before she’d be able to return there.
Even so, she’d thrown herself back into work with gusto, and Jenna realised she was invaluable to Sam and a great asset to The North Star.
‘Briar will be back tomorrow, too,’ he said, sounding relieved. ‘She flies home first thing in the morning, and she’s offered to come in for the evening shift. I told her there was no need, but she said she didn’t mind, and she needed money as she’d pretty much blown every penny she had in Majorca.’
‘Will I be surplus to requirements then?’ Jenna queried, not sure how to feel about that.
Sam’s smile died and he shook his head. ‘Never.’
There was a moment when Jenna completely forgot to breathe as she stared into his blue eyes, held captive by the intensity of his gaze.
Then he turned away and the spell was broken. She blinked, feeling dazed as he headed into the kitchen. What the hell was that?
‘It’s nothing,’ she muttered to herself. ‘You’re just reading too much into things because you’re feeling lonely and rejected. Sam’s just a nice man, remember that. Don’t mess this up, for goodness’ sake!’
The rest of the shift passed without complications, but Jenna couldn’t shake the guilt about lying to Sam. She’d also realised that her need to see Annette was far from over. She wanted to repeat the exercise. She wanted to return to the block of flats. She wanted to watch them until she finally got the answer she needed.
What did Annette look like?
‘Sam,’ she said hesitantly after the final customer said goodnight and the two of them were wiping down tables in the bar. ‘Can I have a word with you?’
Sam straightened and gave her a nervous look. ‘Sounds serious.’
‘It is. I’m afraid I owe you an apology.’
He looked puzzled. ‘You do? For what?’
‘Thing is…’ She could hardly look at him as she stood there, anxiously twisting the cleaning cloth between her fingers. ‘The thing is, I lied to you earlier. I wasn’t stuck in traffic at all. I was on a mission.’
Sam pulled up a chair and sat down, eyeing her with some amusement. ‘A mission? Sounds very important.’
‘I suppose it was. Or it seemed it at the time. But even if it was, I shouldn’t have done it when I was supposed to be at work. I feel terribly guilty. I’m so sorry.’
‘So, you didn’t go to the dentist’s then?’
‘Oh, yes! That was true.’ She sat down beside him at the table and absently rubbed at a mark with the cloth. ‘It was afterwards, when I should have been coming back to work. I-I went to my husband’s workplace.’
Sam’s expression changed from one of amusement to one of studied neutrality. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Well, that’s understandable. You’ve been here in Kelsea Sands away from him a while now, and you must be missing him.’
‘Not to talk to him,’ she said awkwardly. ‘To… to see who he was with.’
