Hearts in the Land of Ferns_Love Tales in New Zealand. by Jude Knight

Author:Jude Knight [Knight, Jude]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780995110137
Goodreads: 43892241
Publisher: Jude Knight
Published: 2019-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

The police officer who called the next morning meant to be reassuring. “Some kid thought it would be funny, Ms Westerson, until the fire got away on him.”

“Call me Claudia,” she begged, and he invited her to use his first name, Marcus.

“We’re neighbours, after all,” he pointed out.

She fought the temptation to accept to be quiet and good, to allow Marcus to brush her off, and told him about the note. He was very quiet as he handled it carefully, putting on disposable gloves before taking it off her, and asking her for a plastic bag to put it into when he was finished.

“This puts a different complexion on it,” he acknowledged. “Do you know of anyone who means you harm?”

Claudia’s fears choked her, but she fought them back and gave him as coherent an account as she could. If Marcus thought she was lying or hysterical, he had the courtesy not to indicate that belief in any way, remaining courteous and kind.

“It was that photo,” she said once she was finished. “The one at the A&P show. One of them has seen that photo and come after us.”

“Talking of photos, do you have pictures of any of these men?”

Claudia thought about it. “Not of Jack. They were all digital, and I lost my files when my hard drive crashed. I have some prints of Ethan and my father.” She found them in the keepsakes box with her medals and awards—a tightly stuffed album with photos, newspaper clippings, and certificates.

Marcus leafed through the album. “You were quite the gymnast,” he commented. “My little girl Pearl is in your class, but I didn’t realize her teacher was a champion.”

“Pearl is a sweetie,” Claudia told the proud father, and they talked for a few minutes about gymnastics while he continued to look through the pictures. In the end, he took several of her father smiling while Claudia accepted a winner’s ribbon and a couple of Ethan, including her favourite. He was also on a winner’s podium, looking straight at the camera with a slight smile playing at the corners of his mouth. It had broken back into the broad grin he’d worn since the last ten minutes of the race, when he’d decided his lead made him invincible. His coach’s loudly expressed view that his swollen head could have lost him the race had dimmed the smile, but the medal brought it back. He was National Junior Cycling Champion, and on top of the world.

“That was nearly ten years ago,” Claudia warned Marcus. It all came apart shortly after that. She had a few more photos of Ethan, and none of that dreadful time between discovering she was pregnant with Abbie and reaching out desperately to the New Zealand grandmother she’d never met. The next photos in the album showed her, Grandma, and new-born Abbie.

“No more men,” she’d told Grandma.

“You’re young yet,” Grandma had said. “You might change your mind. But not till you are comfortable in your own skin, Claudia. That

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