Ties That Bind by Rosie Meddon

Author:Rosie Meddon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

In Pursuit of the Truth

It had been a peculiar night. Although she had gone to bed quite early, every inch of her mind had been far too alert for her to stand any chance of falling asleep. When she had eventually nodded off, it had been to experience a peculiar dream from which she had awoken with a mixture of disappointment and relief. In it, she had been sitting in front of an old-fashioned hearth, a fire blazing, alongside her a man with his arm around the small of her back. With her head resting on his shoulder, it was a state in which she had felt warm and safe, with no doubt whatsoever that she was both loved and in love. The odd thing – that in her dream seemed not to bother her – was that every time she lifted her head to say something to her companion, his face was always just out of view, the only thing she could see with any certainty being dark hair.

While this hadn’t bothered her in her sleep, once awake, it was a different matter, playing on her mind in the manner of an infuriatingly cryptic riddle. Who was he supposed to be? Richard – the vagueness of his features having to do with her continued separation from him? Or Jack, the blurring signifying his status in her life as an unknown quantity – a stranger about whom she knew next to nothing? Either way, since the dream was proving difficult to banish from her thoughts, she had been glad of the knock at the door and the appearance of Louise, whose conversation she was hoping would prove a distraction.

‘Did you know,’ Louise said as she stood uncertainly just inside the door, ‘that you’d caught the hem of this?’

Turning to find her cousin examining the bottom of the tweed skirt she’d yesterday hung on the outside of the wardrobe to air, Esme finished fastening her earrings and went over to see for herself.

‘Bother,’ she said, peering at the stitching. ‘No, I didn’t know. Thanks for pointing it out. I’ll take a needle and thread to it. I should hate for it to unravel any further.’

‘A stitch in time and all that,’ Louise observed, straightening the skirt on its hanger.

‘Mm.’

‘Everything go all right last night?’ Louise went on to ask.

Bending to pull a sweater from the bottom drawer of the chest, Esme tensed. Then, deliberately slowly, to allow herself time to think, she pulled it over her head. One careless answer, one throwaway remark, and she could land herself in hot water.

‘Last night?’ She tugged the sleeves of the sweater down around her wrists. Golly, this house was cold – and they weren’t even in December yet.

‘The collection you had to go and do at the airfield.’

Oh. That. ‘Yes, that was fine, thank you. No hitches.’ What, though, was her cousin building up to discussing? She did hope she wasn’t still stewing about Uncle Luke.

‘At least it was dry for you. For a change.

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